Page:The works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., late fellow of Lincoln-College, Oxford (IA worksofrevjohnwe3wesl).pdf/92

 fort, if I were to preach or to hear no discourses but on the sufferings of Christ. These by constant repetition would lose their force and grow more and more flat and dead: 'till at length they would become a dull round of words, without any spirit or life or virtue. So that thus to preach Christ, must in process of time, make void the gospel as well as the law.

II. 1. A second way of ''making void the law thro' faith'', is, the teaching that faith supersedes the necessity of holiness. This divides itself into a thousand smaller paths: and many there are that walk therein. Indeed there are few that wholly escape it: few who are convinced, we are saved by faith, but are sooner or later, more or less, drawn aside into this by-way.

2. * All those are drawn into this by-way, who if it be not their settled judgment, that faith in Christ intirely sets aside the necessity of keeping his law, yet suppose either, 1. That holiness is less necessary now than it was before Christ: or, 2. That a less degree of it is necessary; or, 3. That it is less necessary to believers than to others. Yea, and so are all those, who altho' their judgment be right in the general, yet think they may take more liberty in particular cases, than they could have done before they believed. Indeed the using the term liberty, in such a manner, for "Liberty from obedience or holiness," shews at once, that their judgment is perverted,