We shall proceed to give a brief statement of the fundamental doctrines held and advocated by Mr. Wesley, omitting any merely speculative opinions regarded by him as nonessential: I. THE DEITY OF CHRIST. While Mr. Wesley had charity for doubters, he held with great firmness _the supreme divinity and Godhead of Christ_. "The _Word existed_," he says, "without any beginning. He was when all things began to be, whatever had a beginning. He was the Word which the Father begat or spoke from eternity." "The Word was with God, therefore distinct from God the Father. The word rendered _with_ denotes a perpetual tendency, as it were, of the Son to the Father in unity of essence. He was with God alone, because nothing beside God had then any being. And the Word was God--supreme, eternal, independent. There was no creature in respect of which he could be styled God in a relative sense. Therefore he is styled so in the absolute sense."[E] II. THE FALL AND CORRUPTION OF MAN. In regard to the fall and consequent corruption of human nature, Mr. Wesley accepted the faith of the Church of England, which is as follows: "Original, or birth, sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature is inclined to evil, and that continually." He taught that sin was both _original_ and _actual_, sin of the _heart_ and sin of the _life_, or _outward_ sin and _inward_ sin. Of actual, or outward, sin he says: "Nothing is sin, strictly speaking, but a voluntary transgression of a known law of God. Therefore, every voluntary breach of the law of love is sin, and nothing else, if we speak properly." Speaking of a believer being freed from the actual commission of sin, he says: "I understand his of 'inward sin,' any sinful temper, passion, or affection, such as pride, self-will, love of the world." Mr. Wesley's views on this subject cannot be harmonized, except we admit his definition of sin--sin as an _outward_ act, expressed by the voluntary commission of sin; and sin as a _state_ or _condition_ of the heart, expressed by the text, "All unrighteousness is sin." Mr. Wesley's view of sin is no Unitarian view, but sin in all its destructive effects upon the human heart, holding it in its "unwilling grasp;" the soul "drinking in iniquity like water;" the "soul dead in trespasses and sin," and being "dragged at sin's chariot wheels," until in utter despair he cries, "O, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" At this point there comes deliverance to the soul. III. GENERAL OR UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION.