This is what I have taught from first to last. And now, Sir, what becomes of your heavy charge? On which side lies the “pertinacious confidence” now? How clearly have you made out, my _inconsistency_ and _self-contradiction_? And that I “occasionally either defend or give up, my favourite notions and principal points?”
22. “¹_Inspiration and the extraordinary calls and guidances of the Holy Ghost_, are what you next affirm to be _given up_.” Not by me. I do not _give up_ one tittle on this head, which I ever maintained. But observe. Before you attempt to prove my _giving them up_, you are to prove, that I laid claim to them: that I laid claim to some _extraordinary_ inspiration, call, or guidance of the Holy Ghost.
¹ Section 13, page 106, &c.
You say, “My _concessions_ on this head (to Mr. _Church_) are _ambiguous_ and _evasive_.” Sir, you mistake the fact. I make no concessions at all, either to him or you. I give up nothing that ever I advanced on this head. But when Mr. _Church_ charged me with what I did not advance, I replied, “I claim no other _direction of God’s_, but what is common to all believers.” I pretend to be no otherwise _inspired_, than you are, if you love God. Where is the _ambiguity_ or _evasion_ in this? I meant it for a flat denial of the charge.
23. ¹Your next section, _Spirat tragicum satis_, charges the _Methodists_; “with _scepticism and infidelity_, with doubts and denials of the truth of revelation, and atheism itself.” The passages brought from my _journals_ to prove this charge, which you have prudently transposed, I beg leave to consider in the same order, as they stand there.
¹ Section 14, page 110, &c. 1 Journal, page 14.
The first, you preface thus: “Upon the people’s _ill usage_ (or _supposed_ ill usage) of Mr. _Wesley_ in _Georgia_, and their speaking of all manner of evil, _falsely_ (as he says) against him; and trampling under foot the word, after having been very attentive to it: what an emotion in him is hereby raised? ‘I do hereby bear witness against myself, that _I could scarce refrain from giving the lie to experience and reason and scripture all together_.’”
The passage, as I wrote it, stands thus: “_Sunday, March 7._ I entered upon my ministry at _Savannah_. In the second lesson, _Luke 18._ was our Lord’s prediction of the treatment which he himself, and consequently his followers, were to meet with from the world.”
“Yet notwithstanding these plain declarations of our Lord, notwithstanding my own repeated experience, notwithstanding the experience of all the sincere followers of Christ, whom I ever talked with, read or heard of, nay and the reason of the thing, evincing to a demonstration, that all who love not the light, must hate him who is continually labouring to pour it in upon them: I do here bear witness against myself, that when I saw the number of people crowding into the church, the deep attention with which they received the word, and the seriousness that afterwards sat on all their faces: I could scarce refrain from giving the lie to experience, and reason, and scripture, all together. I could hardly believe, that the greater, the far greater part of this attentive, serious people, would hereafter trample underfoot that word, and say all manner of evil falsely of him that spoke it.”
Sir, does this prove me guilty of _scepticism_ or _infidelity_? Of _doubting_ or _denying_ the _truth of revelation_? Did I speak this, “upon the peoples _using_ me _ill_, and saying _all manner of evil_ against me”? Or am I here describing any _emotion, raised in me hereby_? Blush, blush, Sir, if you _can_ blush. You had here no possible room for mistake. You grosly and wilfully falsify the whole passage, to support a groundless, shameless accusation.
¹24. The second passage (written _January 24, 1737‒8_,) is this. “In a storm I think, What if the gospel be not true? Then thou art of all men most foolish. For what hast thou given thy goods, thy ease, thy friends, thy reputation, thy country, thy life? For what art thou wandering over the face of the earth? A dream? A cunningly devised fable?”
¹ 1 Journal, page 67.
I am here describing the thoughts which past through my mind, when I was confessedly an unbeliever. But even this implies no _scepticism_, much less _atheism_; no _denial of the truth of revelation_: but barely such transient doubts as I presume may assault any thinking man that knows not God.
The third ¹passage, (which you tack to the former, as if they were one and the same) runs thus. “I have not such a peace as excludes the possibility either of doubt or fear. When holy men have told me, I had no faith, I have often doubted whether I had or no? And those doubts have made me very uneasy, till I was relieved by prayer and the holy scriptures.”
¹ 3 Journal, page 12.