Wesley Corpus

Looking up, and seeing, what he had not seen for so long a time, the sun in the midst of heaven, he cried out, “How can any one, who sees that glorious creature, worship any but the God that made it?” The Father who attended immediately ordered a gag to be run through his lip, that he might speak no more. See the Christians, who have received all the advantages of education, all the helps of modern and ancient learning!“Nay, but we have still greater helps than them. We are reformed from the errors of Popery; we protest against all those novel corruptions, with which the Church of Rome has polluted ancient Christianity. The enormities, therefore, of Popish countries are not to be charged upon us: We are Protestants, and have nothing to do with the vices and villanies of Romish nations.” 9. Have we not? Are Protestant nations nothing concerned in those melancholy reflections of Mr. Cowley?--“If twenty thousand naked Americans were not able to resist the assaults of but twenty well-armed Spaniards, how is it possible for one honest man to defend himself against twenty thousand knaves, who are all furnished cap-à-pié, with the defensive arms of worldly prudence, and the offensive too of craft and malice? He will find no less odds than this against him, if he have much to do in human affairs. Do you wonder, then, that a virtuous man should love to be alone? It is hard for him to be otherwise. He is so when he is among ten thousand. Nor is it so uncomfortable to be alone, without any other creature, as it is to be alone in the midst of wild beasts. Man is to man all kinds of beasts, a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture. The civilest, methinks, of all nations, are those whom we account the most barbarous. There is some moderation and good nature in the Toupinambaltions, who eat no men but their enemies; while we learned and polite and Christian Europeans, like so many pikes and sharks, prey upon everything that we can swallow.” .