Wesley Corpus

Letters 1766

AuthorJohn Wesley
Typeletter
YearNone
Passage IDjw-letters-1766-058
Words276
Assurance Pneumatology Catholic Spirit
But how is this to prove prevarication 'Why, on a sudden he directly revokes all he had advanced. He says: "I told them they were not to judge of the spirit whereby any one spoke, either by appearances, or by common report, or by their own inward feelings--no, nor by any dreams, visions, or revelations supposed to be made to the soul, any more than by their tears or any involuntary effects wrought upon their bodies. I warned them that all these things were in themselves of a doubtful, disputable nature; they might be from God or they might not, and were therefore not simply to be relied on any more than simply to be condemned, but to be tried by a farther rule, to be brought to the only certain test, the law and the testimony." Now, is not this a formal recantation of what he had said just above' (Page 235.) Nothing less, as I will show in two minutes to every calm, impartial man. What I say now I have said any time this thirty years; I have never varied therefrom for an hour: 'Everything disputable is to be brought to the only certain test, "the law and the testimony."' 'But did not you talk just now of visions and dreams' Yes; but not as of a test of anything: only as a channel through which God is sometimes pleased to convey 'love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, temperance,' the indisputable fruit of His Spirit; and these, we may observe, wherever they exist, must be inwardly felt. Now, where is the prevarication where the formal recantation They are vanished into air.