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The theory of justification by works, to which the Church owed so much of its power and wealth, had, in its development, to a great extent deprived religion of all spiritual vitality, replacing its essentials with a dry and meaningless formalism.

Wesley and all his preachers present, except one, signed a declaration admitting that the minutes were not sufficiently guarded in the way they were expressed, and repudiating the meaning which had been put upon them, viz. that of justification by works.

This is what is meant by justification by works.

So that the doctrine of justification by works, in the sight of God, is altogether inconsistent with the whole Scripture, both of the Old Testament and the New, and with our holy Christian faith.

This attitude led him in 1520, by a logical development, to an open attack on all those ecclesiastical practices in which the doctrine of justification by works had become crystallized; e.g. indulgences and the abuse of holy water and consecrated salt.