Grace in Wesley

We're starting a new book today. It looks interesting; we'll see where it goes as we read it through. Here's the first excerpt, all the way in to page 53; this might be a short excerpt book; some books just don't lend themselves well to excerpting.

Grace is, in Wesley’s vision, what undergirds all of life. As Thomas Langford says about Wesley’s theology, “Grace is God’s active and continuous presence. Definitively expressed in Jesus Christ, grace covers the entirety of life: It creates, redeems, sustains, sanctifies, and glorifies.” Because of grace, Wesley can conceive of the Christian faith as having a certain purpose, or end, toward which everything points: “True religion is right tempers towards God and man. It is...gratitude and benevolence; gratitude to our Creator and supreme Benefactor, and benevolence to our fellow-creatures. In other words, it is the loving God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves.”— Reading the Way to Heaven, page 53