Wesley Corpus

MY LORD,--Your Lordship well observes, 'To employ buffoonery in the service of religion is to violate the majesty of truth and to deprive it of a fair hearing. To examine, men must be serious.' (Preface, p. 11.) I will endeavour to be so in all the following pages; and the rather, not only because I am writing to a person who is so far and in so many respects my superior, but also because of the importance of the subject: for is the question only, What I am a madman or a man in his senses a knave or an honest man No; this is only brought in by way of illustration. The question is of the office and operation of the Holy Spirit; with which the doctrine of the New Birth, and indeed the whole of real religion, is connected. On a subject of so deep concern I desire to be serious as death. But, at the same time, your Lordship will permit me to use great plainness. And this I am the more emboldened to do because, by naming my name, your Lordship, as it were, condescends to meet me on even ground. I shall consider first what your Lordship advances concerning me, and then what is advanced concerning the operations of the Holy Spirit. 1. First. Concerning me. It is true I am here dealing in crambe repetita, [Juvenal's Satires, vii. 154: 'Twice-cooked cabbage.'] reciting objections which have been urged and answered an hundred times. But as your Lordship is pleased to repeat them again, I am obliged to repeat the answers. Your Lordship begins: 'If the false prophet pretend to some extraordinary measure of the Spirit, we are directed to try that spirit by James iii. 17' (page 117). I answer: (1) (as I have done many times before) I do not pretend to any extraordinary measure of the Spirit. I pretend to no other measure of it than may be claimed by every Christian minister. (2) Where are we directed to 'try prophets' by this text How does it appear that it was given for any such purpose It is certain we may try Christians hereby whether they are real or pretended ones; but I know not that either St. James or any other inspired writer gives us the least hint of trying prophets thereby.