Wesley Corpus

Calamy, who seem always to speak, not laughing, but weeping. To the matter I object, that if your argument hold, as it is proposed in your very title-page; if “a dissent from our Church be the genuine consequence of the allegi ance due to Christ;” then all who do not dissent have renounced that allegiance, and are in a state of damnation | I have not leisure to consider all that you advance in proof of this severe sentence. I can only at present examine your main argument, which indeed contains the strength of your cause: “My separation from the Church of England,” you say, “is a debt I owe to God, and an act of allegiance due to Christ, the only Lawgiver in the Church.” (Page 2.) Again: “The controversy turns upon one single point, Has the Church power to decree rites and ceremonies? If it has this power, then all the objections of the Dissenters, about kneeling at the Lord’s supper, and the like, are impertinent: If it has no power at all of this kind, yea, if Christ, the great Lawgiver and King of the Church, hath expressly commanded, that no power of this kind shall ever be claimed or ever be yielded by any of his followers; then the Dissenters will have honour before God for protesting against such usurpation.” (Page 3.) 502 LETTER. To I join issue on this single point: “If Christ hath expressly commanded, that no power of this kind shall ever be claimed, or ever yielded, by any of his followers;” then are all who yield it, all Churchmen, in a state of damnation, as much as those who “deny the Lord that bought them.” But if Christ hath not expressly commanded this, we may go to church, and yet not go to hell. To the point then: The power I speak of is a power of decreeing rites and ceremonies, of appointing such circum stantials (suppose) of public worship as are in themselves purely indifferent, being no way determined in Scripture. And the question is, “Hath Christ expressly commanded, that this power shall never be claimed, nor ever yielded, by any of his followers?” This I deny. How do you prove it? Why, thus: “If the Church of England has this power, so has the Church of Rome.” (Page 4.) Allowed. But this is not to the purpose.