Wesley Corpus

Indeed your Lordship says, this “appears from the following verse, in which is assigned the reason for using this method of proving Christianity to be true, namely, “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. By the power of God, therefore, must necessarily be understood the miracles performed by Christ and his Apostles.” By the illa tive particle, “therefore,” this proposition should be an infer ence from some other: But what other I cannot yet discern. So that, for the present, I can only look upon it as a fresh instance of begging the question. “He goes on in the seventh, tenth, and following verses, to explain this ‘demonstration of the Spirit and of power.’” But he does not say one syllable therein, either of the ancient prophecies, or of miracles. Nor will it be easily proved, that he speaks either of one or the other, from the beginning of the chapter to the end. After transcribing the thirteenth verse, “Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual,” your Lordship adds, “From which last passage it appears, that the words which the Holy Ghost is said to teach, must be the prophetical revelations of the Old Testament, which were discovered to the Apostles by the same Spirit.” I cannot apprehend how this appears. I cannot as yet see any connexion at all between the premises and the conclusion. Upon the whole, I desire any calm and serious man to read over this whole chapter; and then he will easily judge what is the natural meaning of the words in question; and whether (although it be allowed, that they were peculiarly fulfilled in the Apostles, yet) they do not manifestly belong, in a lower sense, to every true Minister of Christ. For what can be more undeniable than this, that our preaching also is vain, unless it be attended with the power of that Spirit who alone pierceth the heart? and that your hearing is vain, unless the same power be present to heal your soul, and to give you a faith which “standeth not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God?” 14.