Wesley Corpus

6. Perhaps this may obtain in the very case before us. Many may have spoken with new tongues of whom this is not recorded--at least, the records are lost in a course of so many years. Nay, it is not only possible that it may be so, but it is absolutely certain that it is so: and you yourself must acknowledge it; for you acknowledge that the Apostles when in strange countries spoke with strange tongues--that St. John, for instance, when in Asia Minor, St. Peter when in Italy (if he was really there), and the other Apostles when in other countries, in Parthia, Media Phrygia, Pamphylia, spoke each to the natives of each in their own tongues the wonderful works of God. And yet there is no authentic record of this: there is not in all history one well-attested instance of any particular Apostle's exercising this gift in any country whatsoever. Now, sir, if your axiom were allowed, what would be the ,consequence Even that the Apostles themselves no more spoke with tongues than any of their successors. 7. I need, therefore, take no trouble about your subsequent reasonings, seeing they are built on such a foundation. Only I must observe an historical mistake which occurs toward the bottom of your next page. Since the Reformation, you say, 'this gift has never once been heard of or pretended to by the Romanists themselves' (page 122). But has it been pretended to (whether justly or not) by no others, though not by the Romanists Has it 'never once been heard of' since that time Sir, your memory fails you again: it has undoubtedly been pretended to, and that at no great distance either from our time or country. It has been heard of more than once no farther off than the valleys of Dauphiny. Nor is it yet fifty years ago since the Protestant inhabitants of those valleys so loudly pretended to this and other miraculous powers as to give much disturbance to Paris itself. And how did the King of France confute that presence and prevent its being heard any more Not by the pen of his scholars, but by (a truly heathen way) the swords and bayonets of his dragoons.