It was for want of seeing things in their proper light, and
putting them in their proper shape before their hearers and readers,
that made their efforts to keep people from doubt and unbelief
unavailing. They, in truth, made unbelief or infidelity to consist in
something in which it did not consist, and made people think they were
infidels when they were no such thing. If they had given up all that was
erroneous with regard to the Bible, and undertaken the defence of
nothing but what was true, they might both have convinced the honest
skeptic, and strengthened the faith of Christians. But they undertook to
defend the false, and to assail the true, and the consequence was, they
were beaten, and the cause which they sought to serve was injured.
John Wesley says, that the way to drive the doctrine of Christian
perfection, or 'true holiness,' out of the world, is to place it too
high,--to make it consist in something that is beyond man's power. And
the way to drive the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the
Scriptures out of the world, is to give the doctrine a form which the
Scriptures themselves do not give it,--to change it from a truth into an
error,--to teach that divine inspiration produces effects which it does
not produce,--that it imparts qualities which it does not impart, and
which the Scriptures themselves do not exhibit.
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