Title: The works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 07 (of 32)
Author: John Wesley
Release date: March 25, 2024 [eBook #73261]
Language: English
Original publication: Bristol: William Pine, 1771
Credits: Richard Hulse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Transcriber’s Notes
The cover image was provided by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Punctuation has been standardized.
Most of the non-common abbreviations used to save space in printing have been expanded to the non-abbreviated form for easier reading.
The author has used an asterisk (*) to indicate passages he considers most worthy of attention.
The text may show quotations within quotations, all set off by similar quote marks. The inner quotations have been changed to alternate quote marks for improved readability.
This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated with a Transcriber’s Note.
The symbol ‘‡’ indicates the description in parenthesis has been added to an illustration. This may be needed if there is no caption or if the caption does not describe the image adequately.
Footnotes are identified in the text with a superscript number and are shown immediately below the paragraph in which they appear.
Transcriber’s Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes are identified by ♦♠♥♣ symbols in the text and are shown immediately below the paragraph in which they appear.
THE
WORKS
OF THE
Rev. JOHN WESLEY, M.A.
Late Fellow of Lincoln-College, Oxford.
Volume VII.
BRISTOL:
Printed by WILLIAM PINE, in Wine-Street.
MDCCLXXII.
An Extract from Mr. Law’s Spirit of Prayer.
PART I.
Treating of some matters preparatory to the Spirit of Prayer.
Discovering the true way of turning to God, and of finding the kingdom of heaven, the riches of eternity, in our souls.
PART II.
between Academicus, Rusticus and Theophilus. At which Humanus was present.
An Extract from Mr. Law’s Spirit of Love.
An Extract from Mr. Law’s Letters.
An Extract from Mr. Law’s Address to the Clergy.
An Extract from the Christian Pattern.
BOOK I.
Of the imitation of Christ and contempt of all the vanities of the world.
Of thinking humbly of ourselves.
Of the doctrine of truth.
Of prudence in our actions.
Of reading the holy scriptures.
Of avoiding vain hopes and pride.
That too much familiarity is to be shunned.
Of avoiding superfluity of words.
The obtaining of peace, and zeal for improvement.
Of the usefulness of adversity.
Of avoiding rash judgment.
Of works done out of charity.
Of bearing with the defects of others.
Of the examples of the holy fathers.
Of the love of solitude and silence.
Of compunction of heart.
Of the meditation of death.
Of judgment and the punishment of sins.
Of the zealous amendment of our whole life.
BOOK II.
Of the inward life.
Of humble submission.
Of a good and peaceable man.
Of a pure mind, and simple intention.
Of the consideration of one’s self.
PART I.
Treating of some matters preparatory to the Spirit of Prayer.
*THE greatest part of mankind, nay of Christians, may be said to be asleep; and that particular way of life, which takes up each man’s mind, thoughts, and actions, may well be called his particular dream. This degree of vanity is equally visible in every form and order of life. The learned and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, are all in the same state of slumber; only passing away a short life in a different kind of dream. But why so? It is because man is born into this world, not for the sake of living here, not for any thing this world can give him, but only to have time and place, to become either an eternal partaker of a divine life with God, or to have a hellish eternity amongst fallen angels: and therefore, every man who has not his eyes, his heart, and his hands, continually governed by this twofold eternity, may be justly said to be fast asleep. And a life devoted to the interests and enjoyments of this world, spent and wasted in the slavery of earthly desires, may be truly called a dream, as having all the shortness, vanity, and delusion of a dream; only with this great difference, that when a dream is over, nothing is lost but fictions and fancies: but when the dream of life is ended only by death, all that eternity is lost, for which we were brought into being. Now there is no misery in this world, nothing that makes either the life or death of man to be full of calamity, but this blindness and insensibility of his state, into which he so willingly, nay obstinately plunges himself. Every thing that has the nature of evil and distress in it, takes its rise from hence. Do but suppose a man to know himself; that he comes into this world on no other errand, but to rise out of the vanity of time into the riches of eternity; do but suppose him to govern his inward thoughts and outward actions by this view of himself, and then to him every day has lost all its evil; prosperity and adversity hath no difference, because he receives and uses them both in the same spirit; life and death are equally welcome, because equally parts of his way to eternity. For poor and miserable as this life is, we have all of us free access to all that is great and good, and happy; and carry within ourselves a key to all the treasures that heaven has to bestow upon us. We starve in the midst of plenty, groan under infirmities, with the remedy in our own hand: live and die, without knowing and feeling any thing of the one, only good, whilst we have it our power to know and enjoy it in as great a reality, as we know and feel the power of this world over us: for heaven is as near to our souls, as this world is to our bodies; and we are created, we are redeemed, to have our conversation in it. God, the only good of all intelligent natures, is not an absent or distant God, but is more present in and to our souls, than our own bodies: and we are strangers to heaven, and without God in the world, for this only reason, because we are void of that spirit of prayer, which alone can unite us with the one good and open heaven, and the kingdom of God within us. A root set in the finest soil, in the best climate, and blessed with all that sun, and air, and rain can do for it, is not in so sure a way to perfection, as a man whose spirit aspires after all that, which God is ready and infinitely desirous to give him. For the sun meets not the springing-bud that stretches towards him, with half that certainty, as God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.
We are all of us the offspring of God, more nearly related to him, than we are to one another: for in him we live, and move, and have our being. The first man that was brought forth from God, had the Spirit of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost breathed into him, and so he became a living soul. Thus was our first father born of God, and stood in paradise in the image and likeness of God. He was the image and likeness of God, not with regard to his outward shape, for no shape has any likeness to God; but because the Holy Trinity had breathed their own nature and Spirit into him. And as the Deity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are always in heaven, and make heaven to be every where; so this Spirit, breathed by them into man, brought heaven into man along with it; and so man was in heaven, as well as on earth, that is, in paradise, which signifies an heavenly state.
Adam had all that divine nature, which angels have: But as he was brought forth to be a lord, and ruler of a new world; so it was necessary that he should also have the material nature of this new created world in himself. His body was the medium or means thro’ which he was to have commerce with this world, become visible to its creatures, and rule over it and them. Thus stood our first father; an angel as to his spirit; yet dwelling in a body taken from this new created world; which however was as inferior to him, as subject to him, as the earth and all its creatures were.