Wesley Corpus

Would the innocent children of men have ever been formed to be the living prey of these devourers? Were the life and limbs of holy creatures made to become heaps of agonizing carnage? Or would their flesh and bones have been given up to be crushed and churned between the jaws of panthers and leopards, sharks and croco diles? Let brutes be content to prey on their fellow-brutes, but let man be their lord and ruler. “If man were not fallen, would there have been so many tribes of the serpent kind, armed with deadly venom? Would such subtle and active mischiefs have been made and sent to dwell in a world of innocents? And would the race of all these murderers and destructive animals have been propagated for six thousand years, in any province of God’s dominion, had not its rational inhabitants been in rebellion against God?” (Page24.) “What are the immense flights of locusts which darken the sky, and lay the fields desolate? What are the armies of hornets or musquitoes that frequently make a pleasant land almost intolerable? If they are found in the heats of Afric, and of the East and West Indies, one would think they should not infest the Polar regions, if the Creator had not designed them for a scourge to the nations on all sides of the globe. “What are the innumerable host of caterpillars, but so many messengers of the anger of God against a sinful race? And since we can neither resist nor subdue them, we may certainly infer, that we are not now such favourites of Heaven as God at first made us.” (Page 25.) “The troublesome and pernicious tribes of animals, both of large and smaller size, which are fellow-commoners with us on this great globe, together with our impotence to pre vent or escape their mischiefs, is a sufficient proof that we are not in the full favour and love of the God that made us, and that he has quartered his armies, his legions, among us, as Princes do in a rebellious province. “It is true, all these are trials for man during his state of probation.