No ear tickling here…..
“I see a danger you are in, which perhaps you do not see yourself Is it not most pleasing to me as well as you to be always preaching of the love of God? And is there not a time when we are peculiarly led thereto, and find a peculiar blessing therein? Without doubt so it is. But yet it would be utterly wrong and unscriptural to preach of nothing else. Let the law always prepare for the gospel. I scarce ever spoke more earnestly here of the love of God in Christ than last night; but it was after 1 had been tearing the unawakened in pieces. Go thou and do likewise. It is true the love of God in Christ alone feeds His children; but even they are to be guided as well as fed yea, and often physicked too; and the bulk of our hearers must be purged before they are fed; else we only feed the disease. Beware of all honey. It is the best extreme; but it is an extreme.”
(The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. John Telford (London: The Epworth Press, 1931), III, p. 34. This letter was written April 12, 1750.)
“This advice comes out of Wesley’s practical experience as an evangelist. Even well-intentioned preaching on the love of God could veer toward a dangerous sentimentalism and result in the feeding of the disease of sin rather than effecting its cure.”
(Wesley and the Law, William M. Arnett in The Asbury Seminarian)
“Love the strictest preaching best, that which most searches the heart and shows you wherein you are unlike Christ, and that which presses you most to love him with all your heart and serve him with all your strength.”
(John Wesley, “A Blow at the Root, or Christ Stabb’d in the House of His Friends,” Works (ed. Jackson) X, p. 369. Also, John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler, p. 382. )
From 1/13/2020 CBB