Wesley Corpus

You subjoin, 'This you may desire, for aught I know, to pass as a trifle too' (Second Letter, p. 134). No; it is so terrible an instance of the judgment of God (though at length ‘mercy rejoiced over judgment’), as ought never to be forgotten by those who fear God so long as the sun or moon endureth. 7. The account of people falling down in fits you cite as a fifth instance of my enthusiasm; it being ‘plain,’ you say, that I 'look upon both the disorders and the removals of them to be super natural' (Remarks, p. 67). I answered: ‘It is not quite plain. I look upon some of these cases as wholly natural; on the rest as mixed, both the disorders and the removals being partly natural and partly not.’ [See letter of Feb. 2, 1745, sect. III.10.] You reply, ‘It would have been kind to have let us know your rule by which you distinguish these.’ I will. I distinguish them by the circumstances that precede, accompany, and follow. ‘However, some of these you here allow to be in part supernatural. Miracles, therefore, are not wholly ceased.’ Can you prove they are by Scripture or reason You then refer to two or three cases (related in Journal, ii. 186-7). I believe there was a supernatural power on the minds of the persons there mentioned, which occasioned their bodies to be so affected by the natural laws of the vital union. This point, therefore, you have to prove, or here is no enthusiasm -- that there was no supernatural power in the case.