Wesley Corpus

I do not mean by misrepresenting his sentiments; (though some of his profound admirers are positive that you misunderstand and murder him throughout;) but by dragging him out of his awful obscurity; by pouring light upon his venerable darkness. Men may admire the deepness of the well, and the excellence of the water it contains: But if some officious person puts a light into it, it will appear to be both very shallow and very dirty. I could not have borne to spend so many words on so egre gious trifles, but that they are mischievous trifles: IIae nuga seria ducent In mala.t This is dreadfully apparent in your own case, (I would not speak, but that Idare not refrain,) whom, notwithstanding your * The example is pleasing.--EDIT. # This quotation from Horace is thus translated by Boscawen : *These trifles serious mischief brecd.”-EDIT, uncommon abilities, they have led astray in things of the greatest importance. Bad philosophy has, by insensible degrees, paved the way for bad divinity: In consequence of this miserable hypothesis, you advance many things in reli gion also, some of which are unsupported by Scripture, some even repugnant to it. II. Some of these I shall now mention with the utmost plainness, as knowing for whom, and before whom, I speak. And, 1. You deny the omnipotence of God. You say: “As no seeing eye could be created unless there was, antecedent to it, a natural visibility of things,” (Why not? Why might not visible things be created at the same instant with it?) “so no creature could come into any natural life, unless such a state of nature was antecedent to it.” (Page 60.) “All that God does is, and must be, done in and by the powers of nature.” (Page 135.) What then did it avail that, as you elsewhere say, God was before nature? He not only could not then do all things, but he could do nothing till nature existed. But if so, how came nature itself, this second eternal, to exist at all? “There cannot possibly be any other difference between created beings, than arises from that out of which they were created.” (Page 60.) Why not? Who will stay the hand of the Almighty, or say unto him, What doest thou?