Wesley Corpus

You proceed: 'If the Scriptures are a complete rule (I reject the word 'sufficient,' because it is ambiguous), we do not want the Fathers as guides, or, if clear, as interpreters. An esteem for them has carried many into dangerous errors: the neglect of them can have no ill consequences.' (Page 97.) I answer: (1) The Scriptures are a complete rule of faith and practice; and they are clear in all necessary points. And yet their clearness does not prove that they need not be explained, nor their completeness that they need not be enforced. (2) The esteeming the writings of the first three centuries not equally with but next to the Scriptures never carried any man yet into dangerous errors, nor probably ever will. But it has brought many out of dangerous errors, and particularly out of the errors of Popery. (3) The neglect in your sense of the primitive Fathers--that is, the thinking they were all fools and knaves--has this natural consequence (which ,I grant is no ill one, according to your principles), to make all who are not real Christians think Jesus of Nazareth and His Apostles just as honest and wise as them. 16. You afterwards endeavour to show how the Church of England came to have such an esteem for the ancient Fathers. There are several particulars in this account which are liable to exception. But I let them pass, as they have little connexion with the point in question. 17. You conclude your Introductory Discourse thus: 'The design of the present treatise is to fix the religion of the Protestants on its proper basis--that is, on the Sacred Scriptures' (page 111). Here again you speak in your personated character; as also when you 'freely own the primitive writers to be of use in attesting and transmitting to us the genuine books of the Holy Scriptures'! (Page 112.) Books for the full attestation as well as safe transmission whereof you have doubtless the deepest concern!