Wesley Corpus

11. I have largely considered, both in the Third Part of the Appeal and in the latter part of the Second Letter to Mr. Church, the unreasonableness of the common demand to prove our doctrine by miracles. I cannot but refer you to those tracts, having neither time nor inclination actum agere. [‘To do the same thing repeatedly.’] Only I would weigh what you have now advanced in support of that demand. ‘If the enthusiast is as confident of his inspiration as one really inspired is of his, a third person has a right to call for other proof than confident assertions’ -- that is, for miracles. So you explain yourself in the following sentence. Let us try how this consequence will hold in a particular instance: ‘The Spirit said unto Paul, Go not into Macedonia.’ When he related this to his companions, ought they to have replied, ‘We call for other proof of this than your confident assertion, seeing enthusiasts are as confident of theirs as you are of this revelation’ If you say, ‘They had seen his miracles at other times’; I know not that: perhaps they had, perhaps they had not. But to step a little forward: ‘If in the days of Origen and Chrysostom external miraculous powers were ceased, while internal inspiration still remained,’ what becomes of your demand here It is totally excluded; although there were, in those days also, pretenders to what they had not. And yet there might have been other sufficient reasons for believing the assertion of Origen, Chrysostom, and St. Bernard too, that they had this internal testimony. Such was, besides the holiness of their lives, that great and standing miracle -- their saving so many souls from death and hiding a multitude of sins. 12. There are at least as many pretenders to the love of God as there are to the witness of His Spirit. But does this give me a right, if a man asserts he loves God, to demand his proving that assertion by miracles Not so; but by their fruits I shall know a real and a pretended love of God. And in the same manner may I know him that has the witness of God's love from an enthusiastic pretender to it. But if a man disclaims it, he sets himself out of the question. It is beyond dispute that he has it not.