Wesley Corpus

Now, what could possibly induce a person of Mr. Hill’s character, a man of a good understanding, and of a generous temper, a well-bred gentle man, and a serious Christian, to violate all the rules of justice and truth, which at other times he so earnestly defends, by positively, deliberately, roundly asserting so entire a falsehood, merely to blacken one who loves his person, who esteems his character, and is ready to serve him in anything within his power? What, but so violent an attachment to his opinion, as, while that is in danger, suspends all his faculties, so that he neither can feel, nor think, nor speak like himself? 14. In the ninth and tenth volumes are two treatises of Dr. Preston's,--“The Breastplate of Faith and Love,” and “The New Covenant.” Is either of these “diametrically opposite to my present tenets?” . By no means. If a few sentences here and there (and this I only suppose, not grant) were carelessly left in, though I had scratched them out, which seem (perhaps only seem) to contradict them, these are not the whole tracts; the general tenor of which I still heartily subscribe to. The tenth volume likewise contains two sermons of Dr. Sibbs’s, and his tract upon Solomon’s Song. Are any of these “diametrically opposite to my present tenets?” No more than those of Dr. Preston’s. I as willingly as ever subscribe to these also. Is Dr. Owen’s tract, “Of the Remainder of Indwelling Sin in Believers,” “diametrically opposite to my present tenets?” So far from it, that a few years since I published a sermon on the very same subject. I hope there is no room to charge me with “quirk, quibble, artifice, evasion,” on this head; (though I believe as much as on any other;) I use only plain, manly reasoning; and such logic I am not ashamed to avow before the whole learned world. 15. But “I will go farther still,” says Mr. H. : “Let Mr. W. only bring me twenty lines together, out of the writings of those four eminent Divines, as they stand in the ‘Chris tian Library;’ and I will engage to prove that he has twenty times contradicted them in some of his other publications.” (Page 19.) Agreed: I bring him the following twenty lines with which Dr.