Wesley Corpus

It is most abundant goodness that they have any comforts left, and that their miseries are not doubled. Now, the inspired writers do consider mankind as fallen from God; and so his goodness is evident in a thousand instances; though it must be confessed there are also a thousand instances of his just hatred of sin, and his righteous punishments among all nations.” (Page 73.) “11. If we put together all these scenes of vice and misery, it is evident that creatures lying in such deplorable circum stances are not such as they came out of the hands of their Cre ator, who is wise, holy, and good. His wisdom, which is all harmony and order, would not suffer him to frame a whole race of beings, under such wild and innumerable disorders, moral as well as matural; his holiness would not permit him to create beings with innate principles of iniquity; nor his goodness to produce a whole order of creatures in such circumstances of pain, torment, and death.” (Page 74.) “Could the holy and blessed God originally design and frame a whole world of intelligent creatures in such circumstances, that every one of them, coming into being, according to the laws of nature, in a long succession of ages, in different climates, of different constitutions and tempers, and in ten thousand differ ent stations and conditions of life; that every one of them should break the laws of reason, and more or less defile them selves with sin? that every one should offend his Maker? every one become guilty in his sight? every one expose him self to God’s displeasure, to pain, and misery, and mortality, without one single exception? If men were such creatures as God at first made them, would not one man among so many millions have made a right use of his reason and conscience, and so have avoided sin and death? Would this have been the universal consequent of their original constitution, as framed by the hand of a wise, holy, merciful God? What can be more absurd to imagine than this?