Wesley Corpus

What stupendous cliffs and promontories rise,--high and hideous to behold ! What dreadful precipices,--which make us giddy to look down, are ready to betray us into destruction | What immense extents are there in many countries of waste and barren ground ! What vast and almost impassable deserts | What broad and faithless morasses, which are made at once deaths and graves to unwary travellers ! What huge ruinous caverns, deep and wide, big enough to bury whole cities !” (Page 14.) “What resistless deluges of water, in a season of great rains, come rolling down the hills, bear all things before them, and spread spacious desolation | What roaring and tremendous waterfalls in several parts of the globe I What burning mountains, in whose caverns are lakes of liquid fire ready to burst upon the lower lands ! or they are a mere shell of earth, covering prodigious cavities of smoke, and furnaces of flame; and seem to wait a divine command, to break inward, and bury towns and provinces in fiery ruin.” (Page 15.) “What active treasures of wind are pent up in the bowels of the earth, ready to break out into wide and surprising mischief! What huge torrents of water rush and roar through the hollows of the globe we tread | What dreadful sounds and threatening appearances from the reign of meteors in the air! What clouds charged with flame, ready to burst on the earth, and discompose and terrify all nature ! “When I survey such scenes as these, I cannot but say within myself, ‘Surely this earth, in these rude and broken appearances, this unsettled and dangerous state, was designed as a dwelling for some unhappy inhabitants, who did or would transgress the laws of their Maker, and merit desolation from his hand. And he hath here stored up his magazines of divine artillery against the day of punishment.’” (Page 16.) “How often have the terrible occurrences of nature in the air, earth, and sea, and the calamitous incidents in several countries, given a strong confirmation of this sentiment 1 “What destructive storms have we and our father seen even in this temperate island of Great Britain | What floods of water and violent explosions of fire do we read of in the his tories of the world !