Wesley Corpus

For you had before you, while you wrote, the very tract wherein I corrected Mr. Bedford’s mistake, and explicitly declared, “The assurance whereof I speak is not an assurance of salva tion.” And the very passages you cite from me prove the same; every one of which (as you yourself know in your own conscience) relates wholly and solely to present pardon, not to future salvation. Of Christian perfection (page 45) I shall not say anything to you, till you have learned a little heathen honesty. 22. That this is a lesson you have not yet learned, appears, also, from your following section; wherein you roundly affirm, “Whatever they think, say, or do,” (that is, the Methodists, according to their own account,) “is from God. And whatever opposeth is from the devil.” I doubt not but Mr. Church believed this to be true when he asserted it. But this is no plea for you; who, having read the answer to Mr. Church, still assert what you know to be false. “Here we have,” say you, “the true spirit and very essence of enthusiasm, which sets men above carnal reason ing, and all conviction of plain Scripture.” (Page 49.) It may, or may not; that is nothing to me. I am not above either reason or Scripture. To either of these I am ready to submit. But I cannot receive scurrilous invective, instead of Scripture; nor pay the same regard to low buffoonery, as to clear and cogent reasons. 23. With your two following pages I have nothing to do. But in the fifty-second I read as follows: “‘A Methodist,’ says Mr. Wesley, ‘went to receive the sacrament; when God was pleased to let him see a crucified Saviour.” Very well; and what is this brought to prove? Why, (1.) That I am an enthusiast: (2.) That I “encourage the notion of the real, corporal presence, in the sacrifice of the mass.” How so? Why, “this is as good an argument for transubstantiation as several produced by Bellarmine.” (Page 57.) Very likely it may; and as good as several produced by you for the enthusiasm of the Methodists. 24. In that “seraphic rhapsody of divine love,” as you term it, which you condemn in the lump, as rant and mad Aness, there are several scriptural expressions, both from the Old and New Testament.