Wesley Corpus

2. All this time I have been arguing on your own suppositions that these five apostolic Fathers all wrote circular Epistles to the Churches, and yet never mentioned these gifts therein. But neither of these suppositions is true. For (1) Hermas wrote no Epistle at all. (2) Although the rest wrote Epistles to particular Churches (Clemens to the Corinthians, Ignatius to the Romans, &c.), yet not one of them wrote any circular Epistle to the Churches, like those of St. James and St. Peter; unless we allow that to be a genuine Epistle which bears the name of St. Barnabas. (3) You own they all 'speak of spiritual gifts as abounding among the Christians of that age'; but assert, 'These cannot mean anything more than faith, hope, and charity' (ibid.). You assert: but the proof, sir I I want the proof. Though I am but one of the vulgar, yet I am not half so credulous as you apprehend the first Christians to have been. Ipse dixi will not satisfy me: I want plain, clear, logical proof; especially when I consider how much you build upon this--that it is the main foundation whereon your hypothesis stands. You yourself must allow that in the Epistles of St. Paul pneumatikaV carivsmata, 'spiritual gifts,' does always mean more than faith, hope, and charity; that it constantly means 'miraculous gifts.' How, then, do you prove that in the Epistles of St. Ignatius it means quite another thing not miraculous gifts, but only the ordinary gifts and graces of the gospel I thought 'the reader' was to 'find no evasive distinctions in the following sheets' (Preface, p. 31). Prove, then, that this distinction is not evasive, that the same words mean absolutely different things. Till this is clearly and solidly done, reasonable men must believe that this and the like expressions mean the same thing in the writings of the apostolical Fathers as they do in the writings of the Apostles--namely, not the ordinary graces of the gospel, but the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost.