Wesley Corpus

Thur. July 2.--I met Mr. Gambold again; who honestly told me, he was ashamed of my company ; and therefore must be excused from going to the society with me. This is plain dealing at least! Sat. 4. --I had much talk with Mr. V. . who allowed, 1. That there are many ‘not one only) commands of God, both to believers and unbelievers ; and, 2. That the Lord’s Supper, the Scripture, and both public and private prayer, are God’s ordinary means of conveying grace to man. But what will this private confession avail, so long as the quite contrary is still declared in those “ Sixteen Discourses,” published to all the world, and never yet either corrected or retracted ? Mon. 6.--Looking for a book in our college library, I took down, by mistake, the Works of Episcopius ; which opening on an account of the Synod of Dort, I believed it might be useful to read it through. But what a scene is here disclosed! I wonder not at the heavy curse of God, which so soon after fell on our Church and nation. What a pit it is, that the holy Synod of Trent, and that of Dort, did not sit at the same time ; nearly allied as they were, not only as to the purity of doctrine, which each of them established, but also as to the spuit wherewith they acted ; if the latter did not exceed ! Thur. 9.--Being in the Bodleian library, I light on Mr. Calvin’s account of the case of Michael Servetus ; several of whose letters he occasionally inserts ; wherein Servetus often declares in terms, “ I believe the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God.” Mr. Calvin, however, paints him such a monster as never was,--an Arian, a blasphemer, and what not: besides strewing over him his flowers of “dog, devil, swine,” and so on; which are the usual appellations he gives to his opponents. But still he utterly denies his being the cause of Servetus’s death. “No,” says he, “I only advised our magistrates, as having a right to restrain heretics by the sword, to seize upon and try that arch-heretic. But after he was condemned, I said not ane word about his execution !”