This is extremely puzzling; but we are bound to give it as we find it. It may be said that Wesley merely says, that “one who had had the form of godliness many years wrote these reflections;” but, comparing them with the two entries under the dates of October 14 and December 16, 1738, and with his letter to his brother Samuel, dated October 30, it would be folly to contend that he was not relating his own experience. The reader must form his own opinion, and grapple with the difficulties, thus presented, as he best can. Wesley acknowledges, in the above extract, that, some months before, he “received such a sense of the forgiveness of his sins as till then he never knew;” and yet here we find him full of doubt, and writing the bitterest things against himself. Let us pursue his correspondence with his brother Samuel a little farther. Wesley held the doctrine of the Spirit’s witness; though he asserts he did not yet experience it. Samuel, in a letter dated November 15, 1738, asks his brother “whether he will own or disown, in terms, the necessity of a sensible information from God of pardon?”[251] This was not a fair putting of the question. Wesley had defined the πληροφορια πιστεως, or witness of the Spirit, as “the love of God shed abroad in the heart, producing joy which no man taketh away; joy unspeakable and full of glory:” but his brother here changes the term _witness_, and what it meant, to the term “_sensible information_,” that is, information received through the senses, thus connecting with the witness visions and voices, and other Moravian follies at that time rampant. A fortnight later Wesley replied to this:— “I believe every Christian, who has not yet received it, should pray for the witness of God’s Spirit that he is a child of God. This witness, I believe, is necessary for my salvation. How far invincible ignorance may excuse others I know not. But this, you say, is delusive and dangerous, because it encourages and abets idle visions and dreams. It may do this accidentally, but not essentially; but this is no objection against it; for, in the same way, weak minds may pervert to an idle use every truth in the oracles of God. Such visions, indeed, as you mention are given up; but does it follow that visions and dreams in general are bad branches of a bad root? God forbid. This would prove more than you desire.”[252] In answer, Samuel, on December 13, declares that his brother misinterprets the witness of the Spirit, and refers him to a sermon of Bishop Bull’s in proof. John replies, that Bishop Bull’s sermon is full of gross perversions of Scripture; and adds: “I find more persons, day by day, who experience a clear evidence of their being in a state of salvation; but I never said this continues equally clear in all, as long as they continue in a state of salvation.”[253]