Wesley Corpus

“I will give you an infallible touchstone. Retire from all conversation. only for a month. Neither write, nor read, nor debate anything with yourself. Stop all the former workings of your heart and mind, and stand all this month in prayer to God. If your heart cannot give itself up in this manner to prayer, be fully assured you are an infidel.” (Spirit of Prayer, Part II., p. 163.) If this be so, the infidels are a goodly company l if every man be of that number who cannot “stop all the former workings of his heart and mind, and stand thus in prayer to: God for a month together.” But I would gladly know by what authority you give us this touchstone; and how you prove it to be infallible. I read nothing like it in the oracles of God. I cannot find one word there of “refraining from all conversation, from writing, and reading, for a month.” (I fear you make no exception in favour of public worship or reading the word of God.) Where does the Bible speak of this? of stopping for a month, or a day, all the former workings of my heart and mind? of refraining from all converse with the children of God, and from reading his word? It would be no wonder, should any man make this unscriptural (if not anti-scriptural) experiment, if Satan were permitted to work in him “a strong delusion,” so that he should “believe a lie.” Nearly related to this touchstone is the direction which you give elsewhere: “Stop all self-activity; be retired, silent, passive, and humbly attentive to the inward light.” (Part I., pp. 77, 82.) But beware “the light which is in thee be not darkness; ” as it surely is, if it agree not with “the law and the testi mony.” “Open thy heart to all its impressions,” if they agree with that truly infallible touchstone. Otherwise regard no impression of any kind, at the peril of thy soul,--“wholly stopping the workings of thy own reason and judgment.” I find no such advice in the word of God. And I fear they who stop the workings of their reason, lie the more open to the workings of their imagination.