Wesley Corpus

But suppose a gentleman bred at the University in Dublin, with all the advantages of education, after he has undergone the usual trials, and been regularly authorized to save souls from death: 6. Suppose, I say, this Minister settles at , for some years, and yet saves no soul at all, saves no sinners from their sins; but after he has preached all this time to five or six hundred persons, cannot show that he has converted one from the error of his ways; many of his parishioners dying as they lived, and the rest remaining just as they were before he Came : 7. Will you condemn a man, who, having compassion on dying souls, and some knowledge of the gospel of Christ, with out any temporal reward, saves them from their sins whom the Minister could not save? 8. At least did not; nor ever was likely to do it; for he did not go to them, and they would not come to him. 9. Will you condemn such a Preacher because he has not earning, or has not had an University education? What then? He saves those sinners from their sins whom the man of learning and education cannot save. A peasant being brought before the College of Physicians, at Paris, a learned Doctor accosted him, “What, friend, do you pretend to prescribe to people that have agues? Dost thou know what an ague is?” He replied, “Yes, Sir; an ague is what I can cure, and you cannot.” 10. Will you object, “But he is no Minister, nor has any authority to save souls?” I must beg leave to dissent from you in this. I think he is a true, evangelical Minister, 8vakovos, “servant” of Christ and his Church, who ovro Buakovet, “ so ministers,” as to save souls from death, to reclaim sinners from their sins; and that every Christian, if he is able to do it, has authority to save a dying soul. But if you only mean, “He has no authority to take tithes,” I grant it. He takes none: As he has freely received, so he freely gives. 11.