Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 70 CHAPTER XX. Wesley's Doctrines And Opinions. Wesley never departed willingly or knowingly from the doctrines of the Church of England, in which he had been trained up, and with which he was conscientiously satisfied, after full and free inquiry. Upon points which have not been revealed, but are within the scope of reason, he formed opinions for himself, which were generally clear, consistent with the Christian system, and creditable, for the most part, both to his feelings and his judgement. But he laid no stress upon them, and never proposed them for more than they were worth. In the following connected view of his scheme, care has been taken to preserve his own words, as far as possible, for the sake of fidelity. It is matter of earnest thought and deep concernment to me, ? and he little knows my heart who shall find the spirit of authorship in what I am about to say, ? to think that thousands will read this chapter, or the substance of it, in the writings of Wesley himself, and never complain of obscurity, or that it is, as Hone called my Aids to Reflection, a proper brain-cracker. And why is this ? In the words I use, or their collocation ? Not so: for no one has pointed out any passage of importance, which he having at length understood, he could propose other and more intelligible words that would have conveyed precisely the same meaning. No ! Wesley first relates his theory as a history: the ideas were for him, and through him for his readers, so many proper names, the substratum of meaning being supplied by the general image and abstraction, of the human form with the swarm of associations that cluster in it. Wesley takes for granted that his readers will all understand it, all at once, and without effort. The readers are far too well pleased with this...