The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)Tyerman, L. (Luke)
History
The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)
Tyerman, L. (Luke)
Methodism; Wesley, John, 1703-1791
“I. With regard to yourself and your community. 1. Do you permit the
Brethren to style you ‘The angel of the church of Philadelphia’? 2.
Do not they almost implicitly believe your assertions, and obey your
directions? 3. Do not you think yourself, as a teacher, equal to any
of the apostles? 4. Do not you believe your doctrinal writings are of
equal authority with the Bible? 5. Do not you judge your church to be
the only true church under heaven; and the members of it the only true
Christians on earth? 6. Are the Brethren the 144,000 mentioned in the
Revelation? 7. Is it honest to term yourselves the Moravian church,
when you know you are not the Moravian church? 8. Do you yourself
expect to be judged at the last day? 9. Do you believe a thousand
souls of the wicked will be saved in that day at your intercession?
“II. With respect to your doctrines concerning the Trinity. Have you
spoken these words, or anything to the same effect, ‘Praying to God
the Father is not a whit better than praying to a wooden or stone God?
The preachers of God the Father are Satan’s professors? The Father and
the Holy Ghost minister to Christ in all things? The Holy Ghost is the
wife of God, the mother of Christ, and of the church?’
“III. With regard to the Son of God. Do you affirm, that He sometimes
gave answers to people that are not fit to be examined according to
logic; and, that He had nothing extraordinary in His turn of mind or
gifts?
“IV. With regard to the apostles and Scriptures. Do you affirm, that
the apostles, except St. Paul and John, did not know so much of the
blood theology as the Brethren? Were these your words, ‘I have ever,
and still do protest, that the first Christians cannot properly be
called a church, being no more than a troop of legalists’? Did you
affirm, that there are more than six hundred blunders in the four
gospels? Have you left out the whole epistle of St. James in your
edition of the New Testament? Are there any persons among you who
boast that they never read the Bible in their lives? Have you used it
as a term of reproach, to have ‘heads full of _Biblish_ lumber’? Did
any of the Brethren say, ‘The Bible is dung, fit only to be spit upon’?
“V. With regard to the moral law of God. Are these your own words,
‘There is but one duty, which is that of believing’? ‘Our method is
to preach no commandment but that of believing’? Is it true that, at
some of the merry meetings of the Brethren, there was an uproar as if
a madhouse had broken loose? that the Brethren threw one another on
the floor, and struggled, with many gross indecencies? Is it true,
that your son vindicated all this? And that you yourself said, it was
blasphemy to censure it?
“VI. With regard to idolatry and superstition. Have you not hymns
directed to angels, and the Virgin Mary? Has not a large image of our
Saviour been placed in the midst of the Brethren met together? Has not
incense been burnt for you?
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