Lord, I believe a rest remains To all Thy people known, A rest where pure enjoyment reigns, And Thou art loved alone: A rest, where all our soul’s desire Is fixed on things above; Where fear, and sin, and grief expire, Cast out by perfect love. O that I now the rest might know, Believe, and enter in! Now, Saviour, now the power bestow, And let me cease from sin. Remove this hardness from my heart, This unbelief remove: To me the rest of faith impart, The Sabbath of Thy love. The doctrine of Entire Sanctification, as it was believed and taught by the Wesleys, is set forth in the hymn-book with emphasis, but the expressions are rarely open to serious objection, nearly every phrase having Scriptural precedent. In early days Charles Wesley had often prayed for death, believing that through its gate alone could he find entrance into ‘the land of rest from inbred sin.’ In one of his first hymns, published in 1739, he had written— Fain would I leave this world below, Of pain and sin the dark abode, Where shadowy joy or solid woe Allures or tears me from my God; Doubtful and insecure of bliss, Since death alone confirms me His.[150] But in later years he had outgrown this mood. John Wesley wrote _No_ against the last line of the stanza, and in his hymn-book gave— Since _faith_ alone confirms me His. The brothers taught that sanctification was progressive, yet might be ‘cut short in righteousness,’ a phrase which they often quoted. In one of the hymns for those that wait for ‘full redemption,’[151] Charles Wesley writes— Surely I have pardon found, Grace doth more than sin abound, God, I know, is pacified; Thou for me, for me hast died; But I cannot rest herein, All my nature still is sin, Comforted I will not be Till my soul is all like Thee. See my burdened, sin-sick soul, Give me faith, and make me whole! Finish Thy great work of grace, Cut it short in righteousness. Speak the second time, ‘Be clean!’ Take away my inbred sin; Now the stumbling-block remove, Cast it out by perfect love. This doctrine of what has been called ‘the second blessing’ is often met with in Charles Wesley, but he used expressions which John disapproved, and would not repeat in his _Collection_, as in the second verse of the great hymn, ‘Love divine, all loves excelling,’ which reads— Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit, Into every troubled breast; Let us all in Thee inherit, Let us find that second rest; Take away the power of sinning, Alpha and Omega be; End of faith as its beginning, Set our hearts at liberty. John Fletcher suggested that ‘power’ should be altered to ‘love.’