Wesley Corpus

Tues. 18.--We had a solemn watch-night at Zoar. Wed. 26.-- Being much importuned thereto, I wrote “Serious Thoughts on the Earthquake at Lisbon ;” directed, not as I designed at first, to the small vulgar, but the great; to the learned, rich, and honourable Heathens, commonly called Christians. Tues. December 2.--I received a remarkable letter, part of which I have here subjoined :-- “Tt may seem strange, sir, that 1, whom you have no personal knowledge of, should write with the freedom I am now going to take. But, I trust, you desire as much to instruct, as I to be instructed. I have long laboured under a disease, which comes the nearest to that which is named skepticism. I rejoice at one time in the belief, that the religion of my country is true: but how transient my joy! While my busy imagination ranges through nature, books, and men, I often drop into that horrible pit of Deism, and in vain bemoan my fall. The two main springs, which alternately move my soul to these opposite opinions, are, first, Can it be that the great God of the boundless universe containing many thousaud §92 REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. |, Dec. 1755. better worlds than this, should become incarnate here, and die on a piece of wood? There I lose my belief of Christianity. “ But on the other hand I think, Well, let me examine the fitness of - things which Deism boasts of. And certain it is, I discern nothing bu. _ beauty and wisdom in the inanimate parts of the creation. But how is the animate side of nature? It shocks me with powerful cruelty, and bleeding innocence. JI cannot call the earth, (as Fontenelle does,) ‘ A great rolling globe, covered over with focls;’ but rather, a great rolling globe. covered over with slaughter houses ; where few beings can escape but those of the butcher kind, the lion, wolf, or tiger. And as to man himself, he is undoubtedly the supreme lord, nay the uncontrollable tyrant, of this globe. Yet, survey him in a state of Deism, and I must pronounce him a very oor creature: he is then a kind of jack-catch, an executioner-general.