Wesley Corpus

He says, “I told them they were not to judge of the spirit whereby any one spoke, either by appearances, or by common report, or by their own inward feelings; no, nor by any dreams, visions, or revela tions, supposed to be made to the soul, any more than by their tears, or any involuntary effects wrought upon their bodies. I warned them that all these things were in themselves of a doubtful, disputable nature: They might be from God, or they might not; and were therefore not simply to be relied on, any more than simply to be condemned; but to be tried by a farther rule, to be brought to the only certain test, the law and the testimony.” Now, is not this a formal recantation of what he had said just above?” (Page 235.) Nothing less, as I will show in two minutes, to every calm, impartial man. What I say now, I have said any time this thirty years; I have never varied therefrom for an hour: “Everything disputable is to be brought to the only certain test, ‘the law and the testimony.” “But did not you talk just now of visions and dreams?” Yes; but not as of a test of any thing; only as a channel through which God is sometimes pleased to convey “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, temperance,” the indisputable fruit of his Spirit: And these, we may observe, wherever they exist, must be in wardly felt. Now, where is the prevarication, where the formal recantation? They are vanished into air. But here is more proof: “At length he gives up all these divine agitations to the devil: ‘I inquired, says he, ‘into the case of those who had lately cried out aloud during the preach ing. I found this had come upon every one of them in a moment, without any previous notice. In that moment they dropped down, lost all their strength, and were seized with violent pain. Some said they felt as if a sword were running through them; others, as if their whole body was tearing in pieces. These symptoms I can no more impute to any natural cause, than to. the Spirit of God.