Wesley Corpus

Observe: The question is, whether I contradict myself; not whether I con tradict somebody else; be it Mr. Baxter, Goodwin, Fletcher, the “Christian Library,” or even my own brother: These are not myself. “Nay, but you have published them.” If I publish them ten times over, still they are not myself. I insist upon it, that no man’s words but my own can ever prove that I contradict myself. Now, if Mr. H. scorns to yield, let him fall to work, and prove by my own words, that I contradict myself (that is the present question) in these hundred instances. If he can prove this, I am a blunderer; I must plead Guilty to the charge. If he cannot, he is one of the most cruel and inhuman slanderers that ever set pen to paper. 20. I bless God, that the words cited from the sermon on “A Catholic Spirit” do quite “come to myself,” not indeed as I am painted by Mr. Hill, but as I really am. From the year 1738, I have not been “unsettled as to any fundamental doctrine of the gospel.” No, not in one; I am as clear of this charge, as of that wonderful one advanced in the note, page 146: “Though this Sermon be entitled ‘Catholic Spirit,' yet it inculcates an attendance upon one only congregation; in other words, Hear me, and those I send out, and no one else.” Mr. Hill himself knows better; he knows I advise all of the Church to hear the parish Minister. I do not advise even Dissenters of any kind, not to hear their own Teachers. But I advise all, Do not “heap to yourselves Preachers, having itching ears.” Do not run hither and thither to hear every new thing, else you will be established in nothing. “However, it is by stratagems of this sort, that he holds so many souls in his shackles, and prevents them from coming to the knowledge of all the glorious truths of the gospel.” Observe, gospel is with Mr. Hill the same as Calvinism. So where he says, “There is no gospel,” he means no predes tination. By the same figure of speech, some of his admirers used to say, “There is no honey in the book.” Here lies the core; this is the wrong, for which the bigots of this gospel will never forgive me.