Wesley Corpus

Your Lordship adds, “But what was the ground of this pre ference that was given to Christians? It was plainly the mira culous gifts of the Spirit, which they had, and which the Jews had not.” This preference given to Christians was just before expressed by their becoming the sons of God instead of the Jews. Were the gifts of the Spirit then the ground of this pre ference, the ground of their becoming the sons of God? What an assertion is this ! And how little is it mended, though I al low that “these miraculous gifts of the Spirit were a testimony that God acknowledged the Christians to be his people, and not the Jews;” since the Christians, who worked miracles, did it, not “by the works of the law,” but by “the hearing of faith !” Your Lordship concludes, “From these passages of St. Paul, compared together, it clearly follows, that the fore-men tioned testimony of the Spirit was the public testimony of miraculous gifts; and, consequently, the witness of the Spirit that we are the children of God, cannot possibly be applied to the private testimony of the Spirit given to our own con sciences, as is pretended by modern enthusiasts.” (P. 20.) If your conclusion, my Lord, will stand without the pre mises, it may; but that it has no manner of connexion with them, I trust does partly, and will more fully, appear, when we view the whole passage to which you refer; and I believe that passage, with very little comment, will prove, in direct oppo sition to that conclusion, that the testimony of the Spirit, there mentioned, is not the public testimony of miraculous gifts, but must be applied to the private testimony of the Spirit, given to our own consciences. 10. St. Paul begins the eighth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, with the great privilege of every Christian believer, (whether Jew or Gentile before,) “There is now no con demnation for them that are in Christ Jesus,” engrafted into him by faith, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For” now every one of them may truly say, “The law,” or power, “of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” given unto me for his sake, “hath made me free from the law,” or power, “of sin and death.