Wesley Corpus

“Again, you mention, “as an awful providence, the case of a poor wretch, who was last week cursing and blaspheming, and had boasted to many that he would come again on Sunday, and no man should stop his mouth then.” His mouth was stopped before, in the midst of the most horrid blasphemies, by asking him, if he was stronger than God. “‘But on Friday, God laid his hand upon him, and on Sunday he was buried.” I do look on this asamanifest judgment of God on a hardened sinner, for his complicated wickedness. “Again, “one being just going to beat his wife, (which he frequently did,) God smote him in a moment; so that his hand dropped, and he fell down upon the ground, having no more strength than a new-born child.” (Page 67.) And can you, Sir, consider this as one of the common dispensations of Providence? Have you known a parallel one in your life? But it was never cited by me, as it is by you, as an immediate punishment on a man for opposing me. You have no authority, from any sentence or word of mine, for putting such a construction upon it; no more than you have for that strange intimation, (how remote both from jus tice and charity 1) that “I parallel these cases with those of Amanias and Sapphira, or of Elymas the sorcerer !” 10. You proceed to what you account a fifth instance of enthusiasm: “With regard to people’s falling in fits, it is plain, you look upon both the disorders and removals of them to be supernatural.” (Remarks, pp. 68, 69.) It is not quite plain. I look upon some of these cases as wholly natural; on the rest as mixed, both the disorder and the removal being partly natural and partly not. Six of these you pick out from, it may be, two hundred; and add, “From all which, you leave no room to doubt, that you would have these cases considered as those of the demoniacs in the New Testament; in order, I suppose, to parallel your supposed cures of them with the highest miracles of Christ and his disciples.” I should once have wondered at your making such a supposition; but I now wonder at nothing of this kind.