Wesley Corpus

But how is this to prove prevarication 'Why, on a sudden he directly revokes all he had advanced. 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 revelations 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' 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 anything: 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 inwardly felt. Now, where is the prevarication where the formal recantation They are vanished into air.