Wesley Corpus

II. Now to apply. 1. Seeing life everlasting and holiness, or health of soul, are things of so great importance, it was highly expedient that ministers, being physicians of the soul, should have all advantages of education and learning. 2. That full trial should be made of them in all respects, and that by the most competent judges, before they enter on the public exercise of their office, the saving souls from death. 3. That after such trial they be authorized to exercise that office by those who are empowered to convey that authority. (I believe bishops are empowered to do this, and have been so from the apostolic age.) 4. And that those whose souls they save ought in the meantime to provide them what is needful for the body. 5. But, suppose a gentleman bred at the University of Dublin, with all the advantages of education, after he has undergone the usual trials, and been regularly authorized to save souls from death,-- 6. Suppose, I say, this minister settles at for some years, and yet saves no soul at all, saves no sinners from their sins; but, after he has preached all this time to five or six hundred persons, cannot show that he has converted one from the error of his ways, many of his parishioners dying as they lived, and the rest remaining just as they were before he came,-- 7. Will you condemn a man who, having compassion on dying souls and some knowledge of the gospel of Christ, without any temporal reward, saves many from their sins whom the minister could not save-- 8. At least, did not: nor ever was likely to do it; for he did not go to them, and they would not come to him. 9. Will you condemn such a preacher, because he has not learning or has not had an university education What then He saves those sinners from their sins whom the man of learning and education cannot save. A peasant being brought before the College of Physicians in Paris, a learned doctor accosted him, 'What, friend, do you pretend to prescribe to people that have agues Dost thou know what an ague is' He replied, 'Yes, sir. An ague is what I can cure and you cannot.'