The missing qualities in Wesley’s religious state at this time
[at Oxford] are obvious, It utterly lacked the element of joy.
Religion is meant to have for the spiritual landscape the office
of sunshine, but in Wesley’s spiritual sky burned no divine
light, whether of certainty or of hope. He imagined he could
distil the rich wine of spiritual gladness out of mechanical
religious exercises; but he found himself, to his own distress,
and in his own words, “dull, flat, and unaffected in the use of
the most solemn ordinances.” Fear, too, like a shadow, haunted
his mind: fear that he was not accepted before God; fear that he
might lose what grace he had; fear both of life and of death.
He dare not grant himself, he declared, the liberty that others
enjoyed. His brother Samuel, whose letters are always rich in
the salt of common sense, had remonstrated with his younger
brother for the austerities he practised and the rigors of
alarmed self-interrogation under which he lived. John Wesley
defends himself by the plea--in which there is an unconscious
pathos--that he lacks his brother’s strength and dare take no
risks.
“Mirth, I grant,” he says, “is very fit for you. But does it
follow that it is fit for me? If you are to rejoice evermore
because you have put your enemies to flight, am I to do the same
while they continually assault me? You are very glad because
you have passed from death to life. Well! but let him be afraid
who knows not whether he is to live or die. Whether this be my
condition or no, who can tell better than myself?”--W. H.
FITCHETT, “Wesley and His Century.”
(1084)
=Fearlessness of Death=--See MARTYR SPIRIT.
=Feast of the Soul=--See CHAINS.
=Fecundity=--See DESTRUCTION NECESSARY.