Wesley Corpus

I do not understand the term. Be so kind as to let me know what you mean by a “general Providence, contradistinguished from a particular one.” I doubt you are at a loss for an answer; unless you mean some huge, unwieldy thing, (I suppose, resembling the primum snobile in the Ptolemaic system,) which continually whirls the whole universe round, without affecting one thing more than another. I doubt this hypothesis will demand more proof than you are at present able to produce; beside that, it is attended with a thousand difficulties, such as you cannot readily solve. It may be, therefore, your wisest way for once to think with the vulgar, to acquiesce in the plainscriptural account. This informs us, that although God dwelleth in heaven, yet he still “ruleth over all;” that his providence extends to every individual in the whole system of beings which he hath made; that all natural causes of every kind depend wholly upon his will; and he increases, lessens, suspends, or destroys their efficacy, according to his own good pleasure; that he uses preternatural causes at his will,--the ministry of good or of evil angels; and that he hath never yet precluded himself from exerting his own immediate power, from speaking life or death into any of his creatures, from looking a world into being or into nothing. “Thinkest thou then, O man, that thou shalt escape the judgment of” this great God? O, no longer “treasure up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath!” Thou canst not recal what is past; but now “keep thyself pure,” even were it at the price of all that thou hast; and acknowledge the goodness. of God, in that he did not long since cut thee off, and send thee to thy own place.- 15. The Jews of old were charged by God with profaning his Sabbath also. And do we Christians come behind them herein? (I speak of those who acknowledge the obligation.) Do we call “the Sabbath a delight, holy of the Lord, honourable; not doing our own ways, not finding our own pleasure, nor speaking our own words?” Do our “man-servant and maid-servant” rest thereon, and “the stranger that is within our gates?” Is no business, but what is really neces sary, done within our house?