Wesley Corpus

Those reasons have been coolly examined. And now let every impartial man, every person of true and unbiassed reason, calmly consider and judge, whether you have made out one point of all that you took in hand; and whether some miracles of each kind may not have been wrought in the ancient Church, for anything you have advanced to the contrary. 10. From page 127 to page 158, you relate miracles said to be wrought in the fourth century. I have no concern with these; but I must weigh an argument which you intermix therewith again and again. It is in substance this: “If we cannot believe the miracles attested by the later Fathers, then we ought not to believe those which are attested by the earliest writers of the Church.” I answer, The consequence is not good; because the case is not the same with the one and with the other. Several objections, which do not hold with regard to the earlier, may lie against the later, miracles; drawn either from the improbability of the facts themselves, such as we have no precedent of in holy writ; from the incompetency of the instruments said to perform them, such as bones, relics, or departed saints; or from the gross “credulity of a prejudiced, or the dishonesty of an interested, relater.” (Page 145.) 11. One or other of these objections holds against most of the later, though not the earlier, miracles. And if only one holds, it is enough; it is ground sufficient for making the difference. If, therefore, it was true that there was not a single Father of the fourth age, who was not equally pious with the best of the more ancient, still we might consistently reject most of the miracles of the fourth, while we allowed those of the preceding ages; both because of the far greater improbability of the facts themselves, and because of the incompetency of the instruments. (Page 159.) But it is not true, that “the Fathers of the fourth age,” whom you mention, were equally pious with the best of the preceding ages. Nay, according to your account, (which I shall not now contest,) they were not pious at all. For you say, “They were wilful, habitual liars.” And, if so, they had not a grain of piety.