Wesley Corpus

On the Trinity

AuthorJohn Wesley
Typesermon
Year1775
Passage IDjw-sermon-055-006
Words350
Pneumatology Scriptural Authority
12. You surely believe you have a body, together with your soul, and that each is dependent on the other. Run only a thorn into your hand; immediately pain is felt in your soul. On the other side is shame felt in your soul Instantly a blush overspreads your cheek. Does the soul feel fear or violent anger Presently the body trembles. These also are facts which you cannot deny; nor can you account for them. 13. I bring but one instance more: At the command of your soul, your hand is lifted up. But who is able to account for this For the connexion between the act of the mind, and the outward actions Nay, who can account for muscular motion at all; in any instance of it whatever When one of the most ingenious Physicians in England had finished his lecture upon that head, he added, Now, gentlemen, I have told you all the discoveries of our enlightened age; and now, if you understand one jot of the matter, you understand more than I do." The short of the matter is this: Those who will not believe anything but what they can comprehend, must not believe that there is a sun in the firmament; that there is light shining around them; that there is air, though it encompasses them on every side; that there is any earth, though they stand upon it. They must not believe they have a soul; no, nor that they have a body. 14. But, secondly, as strange as it may seem. in requiring you to believe, "there arc three that bear record in heaven the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: And these three are one;" you are not required to believe any mystery. Nay, that, great and good man, Dr. Peter Browne, sometime Bishop of Cork, has proved at large that the Bible does not require you to believe any mystery at all. Thee Bible barely requires you to believe such facts; not the manner of them. Now the mystery does not lie in the fact, but altogether in the manner.