Wesley Corpus

8. You close this head with a very extraordinary thought. 'The gift of tongues may,' you say, 'be considered as a proper test or criterion for determining the miraculous pretensions of all Churches. If among their extraordinary gifts they cannot show us this, they have none to show which are genuine.' (Ibid.) Now, I really thought it had been otherwise. I thought it had been an adjudged rule in the case, 'All these worketh one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will'; and as to every man, so to every Church, every collective body of men. But if this be so, then yours is no proper test for determining the pretensions of all Churches: seeing He who worketh as He will may, with your good leave, give the gift of tongues where He gives no other; and may see abundant reasons so to do, whether you and I see them or not. For perhaps we have not always known the mind of the Lord, not being of the number of His counsellors. On the other hand, He may see good to give many other gifts where it is not His will to bestow this; particularly where it would be of no use, as in a Church where all are of one mind and all speak the same language. 9. You have now finished after a fashion what you proposed to do in the fourth place, which was 'to review all the several kinds of miraculous gifts which are pretended to have been in the primitive Church.' Indeed, you have dropped one or two of them by the way: against the rest you have brought forth your strong reasons. Those reasons have been coolly examined. And now let every impartial man, every person of true and unbiased reason, calmly consider and judge whether you have made out one point of all that you took in hand, and whether some miracles of each kind may not have been wrought in the ancient Church, for anything you have advanced to the contrary.