Wesley Corpus

Serious Thoughts Occasioned by the Late Earthquake at Lisbon Source: The Works of John Wesley, Volume 11 (Zondervan) Year: 1755 Author: John Wesley --- THINKING men generally allow that the greater part of amodern Christians are not more virtuous than the ancient Heathems; perhaps less so; since public spirit, love of our country, generous honesty, and simple truth, are scarce any where to be found. On the contrary, covetousness, ambition, various injustice, luxury, and falsehood in every kind, have infected every rank and denomination of people, the Clergy themselves not excepted. Now, they who believe there is a God are apt to believe he is not well pleased with this. Nay, they think, he has intimated it very plainly, in many parts of the Christian world. How many hundred thousand men have been swept away by war, in Europe only, within half a century! How many thousands, within little more than this, hath the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up ! Numbers sunk at Port-Royal, and rose no more! Many thousands went quick into the pit at Lima ! The whole city of Catanea, in Sicily, and every inhabitant of it, perished together. Nothing but heaps of ashes and cinders show where it stood. Not so much as one Lot escaped out of Sodom ! And what shall we say of the late accounts from Portugal? That some thousand houses, and many thousand persons, are no more ! that a fair city is now in ruinous heaps | Is there indeed a God that judges the world? And is he now making inquisition for blood? If so, it is not surprising, he should begin there, where so much blood has been poured on the * This quotation from IIorace is thus translated by Boscawen : “"Tis your own interest that calls When flames invade your neighbour's walls."-l.pl r. ground like water ! where so many brave men have been murdered, in the most base and cowardly as well as barbarous manner, almost every day, as well as every night, while none regarded or laid it to heart. “Let them hunt and destroy the precious life, so we may secure our stores of gold and precious stones.”* How long has their blood been crying from the earth!