Wesley Corpus

But what is it you are endeavouring to prove? Quorsum haec tam putida tendant * * The paragraph seems to point at me. But the plain, natural tendency of it is, to invalidate that great argument for Christi anity which is drawn from the constancy of the martyrs. Have you not here also spoken a little too plain? Had you not better have kept the mask on a little longer? Indeed, you lamely add, “The solid and just comforts which a true martyr receives from above are groundlessly applied to the counterfeit.” But this is not enough even to save appear ancéS. 18. You subjoin a truly surprising thought: “It may more over be observed, that both ancient and modern enthusiasts always take care to secure some advantage by their sufferings.” (Page 40.) O rare enthusiasts ! So they are not such fools neither as they are vulgarly supposed to be. This is just of a piece with the “cunning epileptic demoniacs,” in your other performance. And do not you think, (if you would but speak all that is in your heart, and let us into the whole secret,) that there was a compact, likewise, between Bishop Hooper and his executioner, as well as between the ventriloquist and the exorcist? But what “advantage do they take care to secure?” a good salary? a handsome fortune? No; quite another matter; “free communications with God, and fuller manifestations of his goodness.” (Ibid.) I dare say, you do not envy them, no * Thus translated from the Latin of Horace by Francis : “Whither tends This putid stuff?”--EDIT. more than you do those “self-interested enthusiasts” of old who “were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.” 19. You proceed to prove my enthusiasm from my notions of conversion. And here great allowances are to be made, because you are talking of things quite out of your sphere; you are got into an unknown world! Yet you still talk as magisterially as if you was only running down the Fathers of the primitive Church. And, First, you say, I “represent conversion as sudden and instantaneous.” (Ibid.) Soft and fair! Do you know what conversion is? (A term, indeed, which I very rarely use, because it rarely occurs in the New Testament.) “Yes; it is to “start up perfect men at once.’” (Page 41.) Indeed, Sir, it is not.