Wesley Corpus

I incline to think that when you engaged in business, though you had no leisure for reading polemical writers, you had leisure to converse with those who ridiculed the doctrines which you till then believed, and perhaps of hearing a preacher who disbelieved them, and talked largely against human authority, bodies of divinity, systems of doctrine, and compiling of creeds. These declamations would certainly make an impression upon an unexperienced mind, especially when confirmed by frequent descants upon the errors of translators; although I really believe our English translation, with all its faults, is the best translation of the Bible now in the world. When you had heard a good deal of this kind, then was the time to offer you such arguments as the cause afforded; which, to a mind so prepared, would naturally appear as so many demonstrations. And it is no wonder at all that, by lending you a few books and properly commenting upon them, those new apostles should confirm you in the sentiments which they had so artfully infused. To the questions which you propose, I answer:-- 1. I really think that if an hundred or an hundred thousand sincere, honest (I add humble, modest, self-diffident) men were with attention and care to read over the New Testament, uninfluenced by any but the Holy Spirit, nine in ten of them at least, if not every one, would discover that the Son of God was 'adorable' and one God with the Father; and would be immediately led to 'honour Him, even as they honoured the Father'; which would be gross, undeniable idolatry, unless He and the Father are one.