Wesley Corpus

Can you believe it of Him? Can you conceive the Most High dressing up a scarecrow, as we do to fright chil dren? Far be it from him ! If there be then any such fraud in the Bible, the Bible is not of God. And indeed this must be the result of all: If there be “no unquenchable fire, no ever lasting burnings,” there is no dependence on those writings wherein they are so expressly asserted, nor of the eternity of heaven, any more than of hell. So that if we give up the one, we must give up the other. No hell, no heaven, no revelation 1 In vain you strive to supply the place of this, by putting purgatory in its room; by saying, “These virtues must have their perfect work in you, if not before, yet cert inly after, death. Everything else must be taken from you by fire, either here or hereafter.” (Spirit of Love, Part II., p. 232.) Poor, broken reed ! Nothing will “be taken from you” by that fire which is “prepared for the devil and his angels,” but all rest, all joy, all comfort, all hope. For “the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” I have now, Sir, delivered my own soul. And I have used great plainness of speech; such as I could not have prevailed on myself to use to one whom I so much respect, on any other occasion. O that your latter Works may be more and greater than your first! Surely they would, if you could ever be persuaded to study, instead of the writings of Tauler and Behmen, those of St. Paul, James, Peter, and John; to spew out of your mouth and out of your heart that vain philosophy, and speak neither higher nor lower things, neither more nor less, than the oracles of God; to renounce, despise, abhor all the high flown bombast, all the unintelligible jargon of the Mystics, and come back to the plain religion of the Bible, “We love him, because he first loved us.” January 6, 1756. I HAVE considered the Memoirs of Jacob Behmen, of which I will speak very freely. I believe he was a good man. But I see nothing extra ordinary either in his life or in his death.