Wesley Corpus

17. You charge them, secondly, 'with boldness and blasphemy, who, triumphing in their train of credulous and crazy followers, the spurious' (should it not be rather the genuine) 'offspring of their insidious craft, ascribe the glorious event to divine grace, and in almost every page of their paltry harangues invoke the blessed Spirit to go along with them in their soul-awakening work-- that is, to continue to assist them in seducing the simple and unwary' (page 41). What we ascribe to divine grace is this: the convincing sinners of the errors of their ways, and the 'turning them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God.' Do not you yourself ascribe this to grace And do not you too invoke the blessed Spirit to go along with you in every part of your work If you do not, you lose all your labour. Whether we 'seduce men into sin' or by His grace save them from it is another question. 18. You charge us, thirdly, with 'requiring a blind and implicit trust from our disciples' (page 10), who accordingly 'trust as implicitly in their preachers as the Papists in their Pope, Councils, or Church' (page 51). Far from it: neither do we require it; nor do they that hear us place any such trust in any creature. They 'search the Scriptures,' and hereby try every doctrine whether it be of God; and what is agreeable to Scripture they embrace, what is contrary to it they reject.