# Summary This sermon challenged me to interrogate my priors closely, not because of contradictions in the text with my convictions but the opposite; this understanding of grace (free in all, free for all) matches with my prior teaching quite directly. So I didn't want familiarity to cause me to miss something important. The opening of the sermon with the desire to avoid offending men who he owed a great deal to was a very human and relatable touch. It almost blunts his full broadside against the doctrine of predestination. "I'm sorry that you happen to be on the ship that Christ compels me to blow apart into smithereens" is the vibe. Wesley's critique of predestination seems to me to have, at it's fulcrum, an appeal to the character of Christ. "It just doesn't sound like the kind of thing God would do, if He does do it then he is a rank liar and deceiver and not worthy of worship, given the things he's said to us already." The Devil never said that it was his desire that all men should live, if God damns them anyways then that makes God worse then the Devil. Strong statement. What's interesting is that the lecturer pointed out that Wesley shares quite a bit of doctrine with the Calvinists, such as insisting that salvific grace is entirely an act of God, not something we earn or even walk up to and pick up. It's freely available for all men because of the work of God. Free in all and free for all. All holiness is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Section 26 was probably my favorite, compositionally. He pretty deftly wields an appeal to mystery by saying "Hold! What will you prove by scripture? That God is worse than the Devil? It cannot be. Whatever that Scripture proves, it never can prove this." Just because I can't say I know exactly what it means, I don't need to do that to disprove your interpretation of it. The scripture cannot be rightly made to testify against the goodness of God. Section 29 he gets to his positive (building or offering something) message, that God did indeed predestine, before the foundation of the world, to set before the sons of man life and death, cursing and blessing. God decreed that man will have a choice between the two things, that he could always choose life, and he could always choose death. It then rolls downhill to whatever the 18th century version of an altar call must have been. Surely my people didn't invent it two hundred years later.