Wesley Corpus

“Not to the principal champions of the Christian cause.” And yet you told us, not three pages since, that “these very Fathers were the chief champions of the Christian cause in those days!”--“But to boys, and to women.” I answer: “This is that which was spoken of by the Prophet Joel, It shall come to pass, that I will pour out my Spirit, saith the Lord, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy l’--a circumstance which turns this argument full against you, till you openly avow you do not believe those prophecies. “And, above all, to private and obscure laymen, not only of an inferior, but sometimes of a bad, character.” I answer, (1.) You cite only one Ante-Nicene writer, to prove them committed to “private and obscure laymen.” And he says this and no more: “Generally private men do things of this kind.”* By what rule of grammar you construe Biara, private and obscure laymen, I know not. (2.) To prove these * 0s erinay 18wra ro rous row wearlson.--Origen. Cont. Cels. l. vii. 28 LETTER. To were sometimes men of a bad character, you quote also but one Ante-Nicene Father; (for I presume you will not assert the genuineness of the, so called, “Apostolical Constitu tions;”) and that one is, in effect, none at all: It is Tertullian, who, in his “Prescription against Heretics,” says, “They will add many things of the authority” (or power) “ of every heretical teacher; that they raised the dead, healed the sick, foretold things to come.”* They will add / But did Ter tullian believe them? There is no shadow of reason to think he did. And if not, what is all this to the purpose? No more than the tales of later ages which you add, concerning the miracles wrought by bones and relics. 10.