the discussion on the issue that I desired, namely, Scripture
WRITINGS OF JOHN WESLEY
gospel. If this was so, it was clear I did not have faith. But I was not willing to be convinced of this. Therefore, I disputed with all my might, and labored to prove that faith might be where these were not, especially where the sense of forgiveness was not. For all the Scriptures relating to this I had been long since taught to interpret differently. Besides, I well saw that no one could, in the nature of things, have such a sense of forgiveness, and not feel it. But I did not feel it. If then there was no faith without this, all my pretensions to faith dropped at once.
12. When I met Peter Béhler again, he consented to focus the discussion on the issue that I desired, namely, Scripture and experience. I first consulted the Scripture. But when I set aside the glosses of men and simply considered the words of God, comparing them together, endeavoring to illustrate the obscure by the plainer passages, I found they all worked against me. I was forced to retreat to my last hold: that experience would never agree with the /iteral interpretation of those scriptures, nor could I admit it to be true till I] found some living witnesses of it. Accordingly, the next day he came again with three others, all of whom testified of their own personal experience that a true living faith in Christ is inseparable from a sense of pardon for all past—and freedom from all present— sins. They added with one mouth that this faith was the gift, the free gift of God; and that he would surely bestow it upon every soul who earnestly and perseveringly sought it. I was now thoroughly convinced. By the grace of God, I resolved to seek