'The sole, divine, and supernatural agencies': when a Hackney Phalanx sermon sounds like the Wesleys

Continuing with the series of extracts from an 1814 collection of sermons by Christopher Wordsworth (senior, d.1846), associated with the Hackney Phalanx, this extract demonstrates how the preaching of the Hackney Phalanx - and the Old High tradition more generally - was not defined by 'moralism' (a tired, Old Hat caricature that has no place in serious analysis of this tradition and its preaching) but, rather, had at is centre a lively proclamation of salvation in Christ. Indeed, this particular extract would not be out of place in the preaching of the Wesleys:

That which the recovery of sight is to the blind, of feet to the lame, of hearing to the deaf, the same is our religion to the intellectual eye and ear, to the several faculties of man's understanding. Without the Gospel, men wander on their way, not knowing what they are, whence they come, nor whither they are going. They are blind to their real good, followers after phantoms and shadows, and the darkness and the dreams of night are fit emblems of their blank, gloomy, and unsubstantial condition. But, where true religion has once purged the eyes of the mind, light riseth out of darkness, and the lamp of God goeth before, to guide the sojourner in his pilgrimage to the promised land.

Thus is it likewise with the heart of man. The lepers in heart were cleansed of old by the word of Jesus, and the spiritually dead were called to life again. And so also is it now. The dead in trespasses and sins are regenerated. Ye are cleansed with water and the Holy Ghost; ye are washed; ye are sanctified; ye are begotten again to a lively hope; and death and the grave shall no more have dominion over you: gracious and miraculous operations, in which the power of man can do nothing, in which the will of the Father, the spirit of God, and the blood of the Lord, are the sole, divine, and supernatural agencies.