Wesley Corpus

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. “Another passage that,” your Lordship thinks, “has been misapplied by enthusiasts, but was really peculiar to the times of the Apostles, is 1 John ii. 20, 27: ‘Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.--But theanointing which ye have received of him abideth in you : And ye need not that any man teach you, but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie. And even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.’ Here the Apostle arms the true Christians against seducers, by an argument drawn from ‘the unction from the Holy One,” that was in, or rather, among them; that is, from the immediate inspiration of some of their Teachers.” (Pp. 35, 37.) Here it rests upon your Lordship to prove, as well as affirm, oF REASON AND RELIGION. 9I (1.) That ev should be translated among : (2.) That this “unction from the Holy One” means the inspiration of some of their Teachers. The latter your Lordship attempts to prove thus:-- “The inspired Teachers of old were set apart for that office, by an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Ghost: Therefore, “‘The unction from the Holy One here means such an effusion.” (P. 38.) I deny the consequence; so the question is still to be proved. Your Lordship's second argument is drawn from the twenty sixth verse of the fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel. Proposed in form, it will stand thus:-- “If those words, “He shall teach you all things, relate only to a miraculous gift of the Holy Ghost, then these words, ‘The same anointing teacheth you of all things, relate to the same miraculous gift : “But those words relate only to a miraculous gift : “Therefore these relate to the same.” I conceive, it will not be very easy to make good the conse quence in the first proposition. But I deny the minor also: The contradictory whereto, I trust, has appeared to be true.