Wesley Corpus

“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! Yea, how long has that bloody House of Mercy,t the scandal not only of all religion, but even of human mature, stood to insult both heaven and earth ! “And shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on such a city as this?” It has been the opinion of many, that even this nation has not been without some marks of God’s displeasure. Has not war been let loose even within our own land, so that London itself felt the alarm? Has not a pestilential sickness brokcn in upon our cattle, and, in many parts, left not one of them alive? And although the earth does not yet open in England or Ireland, has it not shook, and reeled to and fro like a drunken man? and that not in one or two places only, but almost from one end of the kingdom to the other? Perhaps one might ask, Was there nothing uncommon, nothing more than is usual at this season of the year, in the rains, the hail, the winds, the thunder and lightning which we have lately heard and scen? particularly, in the storm which was the same day and hour that they were playing off Macbeth's thunder and lightning at the theatre. One would almost think they designed this (inasmuch as the entertainment continued, notwithstanding all the artillery of heaven) as a formal answer to that question, “Canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?” What shall we say to the affair of Whitson Cliffs? of which, were it not for the unparalleled stupidity of the English, all England would have rang long ago, from one sea to another. And yet, seven miles from the place, they knew little more of it in May last, than if it had happened in China or Japan. The fact (of the truth of which any who will be at the pains of inquiring may soon be satisficd) is this: On Tuesday, * Merchants who have lived in Portugal inform us, that the King had a large building filled with diamonds; and more gold stored up, coined and uncoined, than all the other princes of Europe together.