The above pamphlet is full of such daring impudence; and in one of his sublime hymns he thus sings—
“My cup it runs o’er, I have comfort and power, I have pardon, and what can a sinner want more; He can have a new heart, so as never to start From thy ways, he may be in the world as _thou_ art;
He may be without sin, _all_ holy and clean; He may be as his master, all glorious within, Without blemish or blot, without wrinkle or spot, _Without power_ to offend thee, in deed, word, or thought.”
This is the sublime poetry of Wesley, who has been classed with Dr. Watts as a poet; yea, almost with the psalmist, David, in a recent publication called “The Conference; or, Sketches of Wesleyan Methodism.” The author of which very far exceeds the Wesleys, either John or Charles. But I beg leave to say, the writers of the Evangelical Magazine, very highly applaud the work. I think the following lines on Mr. Wesley, in the above work, fulsome:—
“Thou, too, art gone, _sweet_ leader of the choir, Thou soul of music with a seraph’s lyre; When Royal David made his final will, Sweet fancy added this last codicil— I give to Solomon my crown and throne, This sacred harp shall Watts and _Wesley_ own; And _thou_ hast touch’d the strings with so much skill, The Hebrew melodist enchant us still.”
The propriety of this classification I leave to your judgment, and conclude with one remark more. Finding by all my strivings, _that_ that which is born of the spirit is spirit, and can never alter; and that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and can never become any thing else. Reading the word of God it shewed me that _the cause_ of all the groans, tears, complaints, sighs, distresses and afflictions, of all the old and new testament saints was, _in-dwelling sin_; and by tracing the lives of those eminent characters, I found they were sinners saved by grace alone—sinners to the last moment, as it respects their sinful nature: but _as_ they, and all the church of God, stand accepted in Christ, they are perfect before God; and to that perfection they will arrive at the glorious resurrection, and not before. Seeing this was the case, I gave up all hopes of being perfect in the fleshly nature, and was enabled to rejoice in my perfection in the love of God’s heart towards me; _in_ my oneness in Christ, _in_ my complete justification _in_ his obedience, and _in_ my perfect pardon, and cleansing from all sin in the sight of God, as revealed in the law by the great atonement of the God-man Christ Jesus. Herein is the perfection of the Christian, and it is the gracious work of the Holy Spirit, to lead up the minds of his own people to know and to enjoy these great privileges, and not to set them an utterly impossible task, of gaining fleshly perfection, which is a _mere delusion of the devil_. A great writer { 229} observed to Mr. Wesley, on Perfection—“You formed a scheme of collecting as many perfect ones as you could, to live together in one house: a number of these flowers were accordingly transplanted from some of your nursery beds to the hot-house, and an hot-house it soon proved; for, would we believe it, the _sinless_ people quarrelled in a short time, at so violent a rate, that you found yourself forced to disband this select regiment: had you kept them together much longer, that line would have been literally verified in the squabbling members of your church militant.”