Wesley Corpus

But how have ye not been afraid, if ye believe there is a God, and that he knoweth the secrets of your hearts, (I speak now to you, preachers, more especially, of whatever denomination,) to declare so gross, palpable a lie, in the name of the God of truth? I cite you all, before the Judge of all the earth, either publicly to prove your charge ; or, by publicly retracting it, to make the best amends you can, to God, to me, and to the world. For the full satisfaction of those who have been abused by these shameless men, and almost brought to believe a lie, I will here add my serious judgment concerning the Church of Rome, wrote some time since, to a priest of that communion :-- *‘Srr,--I return you thanks both for the favour of your letter, and for your recommending my father’s proposals to the Sorbonne. “J have neither time nor inclination for controversy with any; but least. of all with the Romanists. And that, both because I cannot trust any of their quotations, without consulting every sentence they quote in the originals: and because the originals themselves can very hardly be trusted, in any of the points controverted between them and us. I am no stranger to their skill in mending those authors, who did not at first speak home to their purpose; as also in purging them from those passages which contradicted their emendations. And as they have not wanted opportunity to do this, so doubtless they have carefully used it with regard to a point that so nearly concerned them as the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. I am not therefore surprised, if the works of St. Cyprian (as they are called) do strenuously maintain it: but I am, that they have not been better corrected; for they still contain passages that absolutely overthrow it. What gross negligence was it to leave his seventy-fourth Epistle (to Pompeianus) out of the Index Expurgatorius, sl aaa a ely oe Aug. 1739.] REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. 151 wherein Pope Cyprian so flatly charges Pope Stephen with pride and obstinacy, and with being a defender of the cause of heretics, and that against Christians and the very Church of God? He that can reconcile this with his believing Stephen the infallible head of the Church, may reconcile the Gospel with the Koran.