Wesley Corpus

I do not undertake formally to refute what you have asserted on any of these heads. I dare not; I cannot answer either to God or man such an employment of my time. I shall only give a sketch of this strange system, and ask a few obvious questions. And, I. Of things antecedent to the creation. ‘All that can be conceived is God, or nature, or creature’ (Spirit of Prayer, Part II. p. 33). Is nature created or not created It must be one or the other; for there is no medium. If not created, is it not God If created, is it not a creature How, then, can there be three -- God, nature, and creatures -- since nature must coincide either with God or creature ‘Nature is in itself an hungry, wrathful fire of life’ (page 34). ‘Nature is and can be only a desire. Desire is the very being of nature.’ (Spirit of Love, Part I. p. 20.) ‘Nature is only a desire, because it is for the sake of something else. Nature is only a torment, because it cannot help itself to that which it wants.’ (Page 34.) ‘Nature is the outward manifestation of the invisible glories of God’ (Part II. p. 62). Is not the last of these definitions contradictory to all that precede If desire is the very being of nature, if it is a torment, an hungry, wrathful fire, how is it ‘the outward manifestation of the invisible glories of God’ ‘Nature as well as God is antecedent to all creatures’ (page 59). ‘There is an eternal nature, as universal and as unlimited as God’ (page 64). Is, then, nature God Or are there two eternal, universal, infinite beings ‘Nothing is before eternal nature but God’ (ibid.). ‘Nothing but’! Is anything before that which is eternal But how is this grand account of nature consistent with what you say elsewhere ‘Nature and darkness and self are but three different expressions for one and the same thing’ (page 181). ‘Nature has all evil and no evil in it' (page 192). Yea, ‘Nature, self, or darkness has not only no evil in it, but is the only ground of all good’ (ibid.). Oh rare darkness!