Wesley Corpus

The sixth of the miraculous gifts which you enumerated above, namely, “the discernment of spirits,” you just name, and then entirely pass over. The seventh is, that of “expounding the Scriptures.” (Page 116.) You tack to it, “or the mysteries of God.” But, inasmuch as it is not yet agreed (as was intimated above) whether this be the same gift, it may just as well be left out. 2. Now, as to this, you say, “There is no trace of it to be found since the days of the Apostles. For even in the second and third centuries, a most senseless and extravagant method of expounding them prevailed. For which when we censure any particular Father, his apologists with one voice allege, ‘This is to be charged to the age wherein he lived, which could not relish or endure any better.’” I doubt much, whether you can produce one single apologist for any “ridiculous comment on sacred writ,” who anywhere “alleges, that the second or third century could not relish or endure any better.” But if they were all to say this with one voice, yet no reasonable man could believe them. For it is notoriously contrary to matter of fact. It may be allowed, that some of these Fathers, being afraid of too literal a way of expounding the Scriptures, leaned sometimes to the other extreme. Yet nothing can be more unjust than to infer from hence, “that the age in which they lived could not relish or endure any but senseless, extravagant, enthusiastic, ridiculous comments on sacred writ.” Will you say, that all the comments on Scripture, still to be found in the writings of Ignatius, Polycarp, Athenagoras, or even of Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus, are senseless and extravagant? If not, this charge must fall to the ground; it being manifest, that even “the age in which they lived” could both “endure and relish” sound, sensible, rational (and yet spiritual) comments on holy writ. Yet this extravagant charge you have repeated over and over in various parts of your work; thrusting it upon your reader in season and out of season: How fairly, let all candid men judge. 3. Touching the miraculous gift of expounding Scripture, you say, “Justin Martyr affirms, it was conferred on him by the special grace of God.” (Page 117.) I cannot find where he affirms this.