Wesley Corpus

12. I had not intended to say anything more concerning any of the miracles of the later ages; but your way of accounting for one, said to have been wrought in the fifth, is so extremely curious that I cannot pass it by. The story, it seems, is this: 'Hunneric, an Arian prince, in his persecution of the orthodox in Afric, ordered the tongues of a certain society of them to be cut out by the roots. But, by a surprising instance of God's good providence, they were enabled to speak articulately and distinctly without their tongues. And so, continuing to make open profession of the same doctrine, they became not only preachers but living witnesses of its truth.' (Page 182.) Do not mistake me, sir: I have no design at all to vouch for the truth of this miracle. I leave it just as I find it. But what I am concerned with is your manner of accounting for it. 13. And, first, you say: 'It may not improbably be supposed that though their tongues were ordered to be cut to the roots, yet the sentence might not be so strictly executed as not to leave in some of them such a share of that organ as was sufficient in a tolerable degree for the use of speech' (page 183). So you think, sir, if only an inch of a man's tongue were to be neatly taken off, he would be able to talk tolerably well as soon as the operation was over. But the most marvellous part is still behind. For you add: 'To come more close to the point,--if we should allow that the tongues of these confessors were cut away to the very roots, what will the learned doctor say if this boasted miracle should be found at last to be no miracle at all' (page 184). 'Say' Why, that you have more skill than all the 'strolling wonder-workers' of the first three centuries put together.