Wesley Corpus

Again: ‘The controversy turns upon one single point -- Has the Church power to decree rites and ceremonies If it has this power, then all the objections of the Dissenters about kneeling at the Lord's Supper and the like are impertinent; if it has no power at all of this kind -- yea, if Christ, the great Lawgiver and King of the Church, hath expressly commanded that no power of this kind shall ever be claimed or ever be yielded by any of His followers, then the Dissenters will have honor before God for protesting against such usurpation.’ (Page 3.) I join issue on this single point: ‘If Christ hath expressly commanded that no power of this kind shall ever be claimed or ever yielded by any of His followers,’ then are all who yield it, all Churchmen, in a state of damnation, as much as those who ‘deny the Lord that bought them.’ But if Christ hath not expressly commanded this, we may go to church and yet not go to hell. To the point then. The power I speak of is a power of decreeing rites and ceremonies, of appointing such circumstantials (suppose) of public worship as are in themselves purely indifferent, being no way determined in Scripture. And the question is, ‘Hath Christ expressly commanded that this power shall never be claimed nor ever yielded by any of His followers’ This I deny. How do you prove it Why, thus: ‘If the Church of England has this power, so has the Church of Rome’ (page 4). Allowed. But this is not to the purpose. I want ‘the express command of Christ.’ You say, ‘Secondly, the persons who have this power in England are not the clergy but the Parliament’ (pages 8-9). Perhaps so. But this also strikes wide. Where is ‘the express command of Christ’