The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 263

of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” “This is good
and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men
to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is
one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
who gave Himself a ransom for all.” Titus 2:11; 1 Timothy 2:3-6. The
Spirit of God is freely bestowed to enable every man to lay hold upon the
means of salvation. Thus Christ, “the true Light,” “lighteth every man
that cometh into the world.” John 1:9. Men fail of salvation through
their own willful refusal of the gift of life.
In answer to the claim that at the death of Christ the precepts of the
Decalogue had been abolished with the ceremonial law, Wesley said:
“The moral law, contained in the Ten Commandments and enforced by
the prophets, He did not take away. It was not the design of His coming
to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken,
which ‘stands fast as the faithful witness in heaven.’ ... This was from
the beginning of the world, being ‘written not on tables of stone,’ but on
the hearts of all the children of men, when they came out of the hands
of the Creator. And however the letters once wrote by the finger of God
are now in a great measure defaced by sin, yet can they not wholly be
blotted out, while we have any consciousness of good and evil. Every
part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all ages; as
not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable
to change, but on the nature of God, and the nature of man, and their
unchangeable relation to each other.
“‘I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.’ ... Without question,
His meaning in this place is (consistently with all that goes before and
follows after),—I am come to establish it in its fullness, in spite of all the
glosses of men: I am come to place in a full and clear view whatsoever
was dark or obscure therein: I am come to declare the true and full import
of every part of it; to show the length and breadth, the entire extent, of
every commandment contained therein, and the

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