Wesley Corpus

The treatise itself gave me a stronger conviction than ever I had before both of the rapaciousness and unsatisfactoriness of the mathematical method of reasoning on religious subjects. Extremely rapacious it is; for ff we slip but in one line, an whole train of errors may follow: and utterly unsatisfactory, at least to me, because I can never be sufficiently assured that this is not the case. The first two books, although doubtless they are a fine chain of reasoning, yet gave me the less satisfaction, because I am clearly of Mr. Hutchinson's [John Hutchinson. See letter of Nov. 26 1756.] judgment, that all this is beginning at the wrong end; that we can have no idea of God, nor any sufficient proof of His very being, but from the creatures; and that the meanest plant is a far stronger proof hereof than all Dr. Clarke’s [Samuel Clarke (1675-1729). He delivered the Boyle Lectures, on The Being and Attributes of God, in 1704-5. See letter of Dec, 6 1726.] or the Chevalier’s demonstrations. Among the latter I was surprised to find a demonstration of the manner how God is present to all beings (page 57), how He begat the Son from all eternity (page 77), and how the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son (page 85). Quanto satius est fateri nescire quae nescias, quam ista effutientern nauseare, et ipsurn tibi displicere! [‘How much more laudable would it be to acknowledge you do not know what you do not know, than to follow that blunderer whom you must surely despise!’ See Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, i. 30.] How much better to keep to his own conclusion (page 95), ‘Reason proves that this mystery is possible’! Revelation assures us that it is true; Heaven alone can show us how it is. There are several propositions in his second book which I cannot assent to, particularly with regard to the divine foreknowledge. I can by no means acquiesce in the twenty-second proposition, ‘That it is a matter of free choice in God to think of finite ideas.’ I cannot reconcile this with the assertion of the Apostle, ‘Known unto God are all His works p’ a, from eternity.’ And if any one ask, ‘How is God's foreknowledge consistent with our freedom’ I plainly answer, I cannot tell.