But, my Lord, what reasonable evidence does your Lordship require? Did I not receive letters dimissory from your Lordship’s own hands to be ordained a priest? Did I not, when ordained deacon, affirm, “that I was inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost, to take upon me that office and ministration?” Did not my Lord of Gloucester, when he ordained me priest, say unto me, “Receive thou the Holy Ghost now committed unto thee, by the imposition of our hands, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?” And is not this, my Lord, a reasonable evidence that I act by a divine Commission? If this be not true, must not all those whom your Lordship, or the other Bishops ordain, act only by a human Commission? Nay, to use the words of Bishop Burnet in his Pastoral Letter, “must not they who are ordained, lie not only unto man but unto God, by saying, they are inwardly moved by the Holy Spirit?”
If your Lordship in any wise disputes my acting by a divine Commission, you disclaim your own divine right and authority; nor can you possibly avoid the dilemma, of either allowing my divine Commission, or denying your own.
After your Lordship has insinuated a demand for the evidences of my divine Commission, immediately follows these words; “when they tell us of extraordinary communications they have with God.”
If by extraordinary communications, your Lordship means the extraordinary operations of the Holy Spirit, as working miracles, and speaking with tongues; your Lordship may assure yourself, I never pretended to any such thing. If, by extraordinary communications, your Lordship means more assistance and comforts from God, at some times, than I have at others, (which is all I mean by extraordinary communications) I own the charge? And what is there, my Lord, extraordinary in that?
Again, your Lordship says, (page 28.) “When they talk in the language of those, who have a special and immediate mission from God.”
And does your Lordship, and the rest of the Bishops, ordain any, without obliging them first to give good proofs, that they have a special call or immediate mission from God to the work of the ministry? If ever you so do, my Lord, do not your Lordships lay hands too suddenly upon men?
Page 29. Your Lordship writes thus. “When they profess to think and act under the immediate guidance of a divine Inspiration.”
And does not your Lordship think and act by the same rule? Why, otherwise, does your Lordship pray when you administer the holy Communion, “that God would cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit?”
Page 31. Your Lordship says, “when they speak of their preaching and expounding, and the effects of them, as the sole work of a divine Power.”
And would your Lordship have me ascribe any, the least thing to myself? The good that is done upon earth, doth not God do it himself? Does not the Apostle say, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God?” And where then, my Lord, is the absurdity of ascribing the effects of expounding and preaching to the sole work of a divine Power?