Wesley Corpus

‘Therefore you are a rank enthusiast. ‘Before I answer, I must know what you mean by miraculous: if you term everything so which is “not strictly accountable for by the ordinary course of natural causes,” then I deny the latter part of the second proposition. And unless you can make this good, unless you can prove the effects in question are strictly accountable for by the ordinary course of natural causes, your argument is nothing worth.’ [See letter of Feb. 2, 1745, sect. III. 12.] Having largely answered your next objection relating to what I still term ‘a signal instance of God’s particular providence,’ I need only refer you to those answers, not having leisure to say the same thing ten times over. Whether I sometimes claim and sometimes disclaim miracles will be considered by-and-by. 9. In your seventh section you say, ‘I shall now give some account of their grievous conflicts and combats with Satan’ (page 53, &c.). O sir, spare yourself, if not the Methodists! Do not go so far out of your depth. This is a subject you are as utterly unacquainted with as with justification or the new birth. But I attend your motions. ‘Mr. Wesley,’ you say, ‘was advised to a very high degree of silence. And he spoke to none at all for two days, and traveling fourscore miles together. ‘The same whim,’ you go on, ‘has run through several of the Religious Orders. Hence St. Bonaventura says that silence in all the religious is necessary to perfection. St. Agatho held a stone in his mouth for three years, till he had learned taciturnity. St. Alcantara carried several pebbles in his mouth for three years likewise, and for the same reason. Theon observed a continual silence for thirty years. St. Francis observed it himself, and enjoined it upon his brethren. The rule of silence was religiously observed by St. Dominic.’ I have repeated more of your words than I otherwise should in order to show to a demonstration that a man of a lively imagination may run a parallel to any length without any foundation in nature.