Wesley Corpus

But in the meantime you think I ought to be still; because otherwise I should invade another’s office if I interfered with other people's business and intermeddled with souls that did not belong to me. You accordingly ask, ‘How is it that I assemble Christians, who are none of my charge, to sing psalms and pray and hear the Scriptures expounded’ and think it hard to justify doing this in other men's parishes, upon catholic principles. Permit me to speak plainly. If by catholic principles you mean any other than scriptural, they weigh nothing with me. I allow no other rule, whether of faith or practice, than the Holy Scriptures; but on scriptural principles I do not think it hard to justify whatever I do. God in Scripture commands me, according to my power, to instruct the ignorant, reform the wicked, confirm the virtuous. Man forbids me to do this in another's parish: that is, in effect, to do it at all; seeing I have now no parish of my own, nor probably ever shall. Whom, then, shall I hear, God or man ‘If it be just to obey man rather than God, judge you. A dispensation of the gospel is committed to me; and woe is me if I preach not the gospel.’ But where shall I preach it, upon the principles you mention Why, not in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America; not in any of the Christian parts, at least, of the habitable earth: for all these are, after a sort, divided into parishes. If it be said, ‘Go back, then, to the heathens from whence you came,’ nay, but neither could I now (on your principles) preach to them; for all the heathens in Georgia belong to the parish either of Savannah or Frederica.