Such then were the great doctrines which Wesley grasped, and began to preach in 1738. It was the preaching of these doctrines that gave birth to the greatest revival of religion chronicled in the history of the church of Christ. From such doctrines Wesley never wavered; and God forbid that they should ever be abandoned, or even partially neglected, by any of Wesley’s successors. They are not Moravian whims, or the fancies of fanatics. They are a great deal more than even Bible truths of subordinate importance. They are essentially and vitally connected with man’s salvation both here and hereafter, and no church has ever prospered except in proportion as its ministers have prominently and faithfully taught and enforced them in their congregations. It may reasonably be asked how was it that Wesley—the son of a most able divine of the Church of England, and himself a man of extensive learning, and a devoted student of Christian truth—how was it, that he lived so long without a knowledge of one of the greatest, and yet most clearly taught doctrines of the holy Bible, the doctrine of the sinner’s salvation by faith alone? Wesley himself tells us: from early life he had been warned against the papistical error of laying too much stress on outward works. After this, he read certain Lutheran and Calvinist authors, whose confused and indigested expositions magnified faith to such an amazing size that it quite hid all the rest of the commandments. In this labyrinth he was bewildered. He wished, on the one hand, to avoid the popish doctrine of salvation by works; but, in doing this, he was beset, on the other hand, with an uncouth hypothesis concerning salvation by faith, which he found it impossible to reconcile either with Scripture or common sense. From these well meaning but wrong headed writers, he turned to authors like Beveridge, Nelson, and Jeremy Taylor, by whom his difficulties were, to some extent, relieved; but even these he found interpreting Scripture in different ways, and he was nearly as much confused as ever. After this, he was taught that he ought to interpret the Bible by the general teachings of the ancient church. Adopting this rule, he, for a season, made antiquity a co-ordinate rather than subordinate rule with Scripture, and, by extending his antiquity principle too far, his confusion of mind became greater instead of less. He then became acquainted with the Mystics, whose “noble descriptions of union with God, and internal religion, made everything else appear mean and flat;” yet here again, on reflection, he found that he was wrong. Mysticism was nothing like the religion which Christ and His apostles lived and taught.[244] Thus was this sincere and earnest inquirer after truth led to and fro in a wilderness of perplexing entanglements, until Peter Bohler took him by the hand, and led him as a contrite sinner to the cross of Christ.