Wesley Corpus

This is there shown, both by Scripture, by reason, and by authority, particularly that of Origen and Chrysostom, whom his Lordship of Lichfield had cited in his Charge [Richard Smallbroke, Bishop of Lichfield 1730-49, published treatises against Whiston and Woolaston. In a Charge, delivered in 1741 and published in 1744, he set himself ‘to obviate the Contagion of those Enthusiastical Pretensions that in several parts of the nation have lately, as well as formerly, betrayed whole Multitudes either into an unreasonable Presumption of their Salvation, or into melancholy if not desponding Opinions about it.’ He attempted to prove, with the aid of Origen and Chrysostom’s homily on I Cor. ii. 4, that the ‘demonstration of the Spirit and power’ referred to the miracles of the apostolic age (pp. 15, 26, 31-2), and that the Testimony of the Spirit, in the Sense of the Holy Scriptures, is abusively pretended to by a new sect of Enthusiastical Seducers among us.’ Whitefield wrote Some Remarks upon a late Charge against Enthusiasm, and Wesley answered the Bishop in A Farther Appeal.] as asserting just the contrary. But, waiving authorities, I reasoned thus: ‘You allow there is a testimony of the Spirit with our spirit that we are the children of God. But you say it is not a perceptible one. How is this Let us examine it thoroughly. It is allowed (1) the Spirit of God (2) bears testimony to my spirit (3) that I am a child of God. But I am not to perceive it. Not to perceive what the first, second, or third particular Am I not to perceive what is testified -- that I am a child of God Then it is not testified at all. This is saying and unlaying in the same breath. Or am I not to perceive that it is testified to my spirit Yea, but I must perceive what passes in my own soul! Or, lastly, am I to perceive that I am a child of God, and that this is testified to my spirit, but not to perceive who it is that testifies not to know it is the Spirit of God O sir, if there be really a man in the world who hath this testimony in himself, can it be supposed that he does not know who it is that testifies who it is that speaks to his heart’