Wesley Corpus

They pray directly to it, to “increase grace in the ungodly, and blot out the sins of the guilty.” Yea, they give latria to it. And this, they themselves say, “is the sovereign worship that is due only to God.” But indeed they have no authority of Scripture for their distinction between latria and dulia; the former of which they say is due to God alone, the latter that which is due to saints. But here they have forgotten their own distinction. For although they own latria is due only to God, yet they do in fact give it to the cross. This then, by their own account, is flat idolatry. 8. And so it is to represent the blessed Trinity by pictures and images, and to worship them. Yet these are made in every Romish country, and recommended to the people to be worshipped; although there is nothing more expressly for bidden in Scripture, than to make any image or representation of God. God himself never appeared in any bodily shape. The representation of “the Ancient of days,” mentioned in Daniel, was a mere prophetical figure; and did no more literally belong to God, than the eyes or ears that are ascribed to him in Scripture. t OF THE SACRAMENTS. 1. THE Church of Rome says, “A sacrament is a sensible thing, instituted by God himself, as a sign and a means of grace. “The sacraments are seven: Baptism, confirmation, the Lord’s supper, penance, extreme unction, orders, and marriage. “The parts of a sacrament are, the matter, and the form, or words of consecration. So in baptism, the matter is water; the form, ‘I baptize thee,’” &c. On this we remark, Peter Lombard lived about one thousand one hundred and forty years after Christ. And he was the first that ever determined the sacraments to be seven. St. Austin (a greater than he) positively affirms, “that there are but two of divine institution.” Again: To say that a sacrament consists of matter and form, and yet either has no form, as confirmation and extreme unction, (neither of which is ever pretended to have any form of words, instituted by God himself) or has neither matter nor form, as penance or marriage, is to make them sacra ments and no sacraments. For they do not answer that definition of a sacrament which themselves have given. 2.