What Is Necessary for Salvation

From Wesley’s Journal, December 1, 1767:

“Being alone in the coach, I was considering several points of importance: and thus much appeared as clear as the day: That a man may be saved who cannot express himself properly concerning imputed righteousness. Therefore to do this is not necessary to salvation. 

“That a man may be saved who has not clear conceptions of it: (yea, that never heard the phrase). Therefore clear conceptions of it are not necessary to salvation; yea it is not necessary to salvation to use the phrase at all. 

“That a pious Churchman who has not clear conceptions even of justification by faith, may be saved; therefore clear conceptions even of this are not necessary to salvation. 

“That a Mystic who denies justification by faith (Mr. Law for instance), may be saved. But if so what becomes of ‘Articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae’? If so, is it not high time for us ‘Projicere ampullas et sesquipedalia verba’? and to return to the plain word, ‘He that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.”

(Quoted by David Martin, “The Denomination,” British Journal of Sociology 13 [1962] 5-6.)