“The Author of faith and salvation is God alone. He is the sole Giver of every good gift, and the sole Author of every good work. There is no more of power than of merit in man; but as all merit is in the Son of God, in what He has done and suffered for us, so all power is in the Spirit of God. And therefore every man, in order to believe unto salvation, must receive the Holy Ghost. This is essentially necessary to every Christian, in order to have faith, peace, joy, and love. Whoever has these fruits of the Spirit cannot but know and feel that God has wrought them in his heart.” The reader has here, in Wesley’s own words, a summary of all the doctrines which technically may be termed the doctrines of the _first Methodists_. It was the preaching of these doctrines, and of these only, that created Methodism in 1739. And, to be faithful to the principles of their founder, the Methodists of this, and of every age succeeding, _must_, MUST make these the _chief_ doctrines of their ministry. Wesley preached other truths besides these: but these were the truths which distinguished him from his fellows; which gave birth to the system that bears his name; and which he always made _prominent_ in his sermons and in his books, to the end of life. Methodism will sink and deservedly become extinct, when it ceases to proclaim, as its _greatest_ dogmas, the above summary of Methodistic doctrines, drawn up by Wesley himself in 1744. This summary is introduced here because, notwithstanding his deep religious feeling, his pure intentions, and his strict morality, the doctrines it embraces were doctrines of which Wesley remained strangely ignorant for nearly thirteen years after his ordination, in 1725. He writes: “It was many years after I was ordained deacon, before I was convinced of the great truths above recited. During all that time, I was utterly ignorant of the nature and condition of justification. Sometimes I confounded it with sanctification (particularly when I was in Georgia); at other times I had some confused notion about the forgiveness of sins; but then I took it for granted the time of this must be either the hour of death, or the day of judgment. I was equally ignorant of the nature of saving faith; apprehending it to mean no more than a ‘firm assent to all the propositions contained in the Old and New Testaments.’”[59]