He further believed that no man can do an “action properly and perfectly acceptable to God by his own natural abilities, abstracted from the assistance of God’s Spirit, but by His common assistance he may pray, abstain from sin, and practise duty; and, if he continues in these good actions, he will have still more aid, and go on to perfection.”[54] ----- Footnote 54: _Ibid._, p. 531. ----- Respecting the doctrines of justification and justifying faith, Mr Wesley writes: “Forgiveness of sins is, at least, included in justification, nay, is the main part, if not the whole thereof. It may, without violence, be reckoned a convertible term with it. Our sins being pardoned, our being esteemed righteous by God, our justification through our Saviour’s merits, we think are but the same thing in different expressions.”[55] “By God’s justifying a sinner, is meant His looking upon us and treating us as just and innocent persons, although before we stood guilty of heinous sins, and thereupon liable to grievous punishments.”[56] “We are saved by the merits of Christ Jesus; for His sake, not our own; and this we look upon to be the same, in other words, as Christ’s imputed righteousness.”[57] “We are justified, or accepted with God, as a means, by faith, or a true belief of what God reveals, and by trusting in His mercy, through His Son.”[58] “But then this very faith must be justified by works, as Abraham’s was, for it would have been in vain for him to have pretended he had believed God’s promise to him, had he not, in obedience to His command, also offered up his son Isaac.”[59] That faith, without which there is no salvation, “is a steady belief of all that God reveals, especially in the gospel, particularly that Jesus is the Messiah, or Saviour of the _world_, and that He will save _me_, if I _depend_ on Him, and _obey_ His commands.”[60] No follower of John Wesley holds the doctrine of justification by faith more clearly, or more firmly, than did John Wesley’s noble-minded father. ----- Footnote 55: _Ibid._, vol. iv. p. 140. Footnote 56: _Ibid._, vol. i. p. 455. Footnote 57: _Athenian Oracle_, vol. i. p. 455. Footnote 58: _Ibid._ Footnote 59: _Ibid._, p. 456. Footnote 60: _Ibid._, vol. iii. p. 531. ----- The new birth, writes the clear-headed and thoroughly orthodox young clergyman, “is that particular aid of God’s Holy Spirit, which works an entire change in the mind, and turns men from evil to good, being a new principle of action in them.”[61] ----- Footnote 61: _Ibid._, p. 460. -----