Wesley Corpus

4. 'The Church of Rome (to which on so many accounts they were much obliged, and as gratefully returned the obligation) taught them to set up for infallible interpreters of Scripture' (page 54). Pray on what accounts are we 'obliged to the Church of Rome' and how have we 'returned the obligation' I beg you would please (1) to explain this; and (2) to prove that we ever yet (whoever taught us) 'set up for infallible interpreters of Scripture.' So far from it, that we have over and over declared, in print as well as in public preaching, 'We are no more to expect any living man to be infallible than to be omniscient.'[Works, vi. 4.] 5. 'As to other extraordinary gifts, influences, and operations of the Holy Ghost, no man who has but once dipped into their Journals and other ostentatious trash of the same kind can doubt their looking upon themselves as not coming one whit behind the greatest of the Apostles' (page 21). I acquit you, sir, of ever having 'once dipped into that ostentatious trash.' I do not accuse you of having read so much as the titles of my Journals. I say my Journals; for (as little as you seem to know it) my brother has published none. [Extracts were published in 1793 in Whitehead's Life of John and Charles Wesley, and in Jackson's Charles Wesley in 1841. The Journal itself did not appear till 1849.] I therefore look upon this as simple ignorance. You talk thus because you know no better. You do not know that in these very Journals I utterly disclaim the 'extraordinary gifts of the Spirit,' and all other 'influences and operations of the Holy Ghost' than those that are common to all real Christians. And yet I will not say this ignorance is blameless. For ought you not to have known better Ought you not to have taken the pains of procuring better information when it might so easily have been had Ought you to have publicly advanced so heavy charges as these without knowing whether they were true or no