Christ alone , for salvation : and an assurance was given me , that He had taken away my sins , even mine , and saved me from the law of sin and death ." -- Ibid ., page 52 .
Through long years of wearisome and comfortless striving-- years of rigorous self-denial , of reproach and humiliation-- Wesley had steadfastly adhered to his one purpose of seeking God . Now he had found Him ; and he found that the grace which he had toiled to win by prayers and fasts , by almsdeeds and self-abnegation , was a gift , " without money and without price ." Once established in the faith of Christ , his whole soul burned with the desire to spread everywhere a knowledge of the glorious gospel of God ' s free grace . " I look upon all the world as my parish ," he said ; " in whatever part of it I am , I judge it meet , right , and my bounden duty , to declare unto all that are willing to hear , the glad tidings of salvation ." -- Ibid ., page 74 .
He continued his strict and self-denying life , not now as the ground , but the result of faith ; not the root , but the fruit of holiness . The grace of God in Christ is the foundation of the Christian ' s hope , and that grace will be manifested in obedience . Wesley ' s life was devoted to the preaching of the great truths which he had received--justification through faith in the atoning blood of Christ , and the renewing power of the Holy Spirit upon the heart , bringing forth fruit in a life conformed to the example of Christ .
Whitefield and the Wesleys had been prepared for their work by long and sharp personal convictions of their own lost condition ; and that they might be able to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ , they had been subjected to the fiery ordeal of scorn , derision , and persecution , both in the university and as they were entering the ministry . They and a few others who sympathized with them were contemptuously called Methodists by their ungodly fellow students-- a name which is at the present time regarded as honourable by one of the largest denominations in England and America .
As members of the Church of England they were strongly attached to her forms of worship , but the Lord had presented before them in His word a higher standard . The Holy Spirit urged them to preach Christ and Him crucified . The power of the Highest attended their labours . Thousands were convicted and truly converted . It was necessary that these sheep be protected from ravening wolves . Wesley had no thought of forming a new denomination , but he organized them under what was called the Methodist Connection .
Mysterious and trying was the opposition which these preachers encountered from the established church ; yet God , in His wisdom , had overruled events to cause the reform to begin within the church itself . Had it come wholly from without , it would not have penetrated where it was so much needed . But as the revival preachers were churchmen , and laboured within the pale of the church wherever they could find opportunity , the truth had an entrance where the doors would
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