Wesley Corpus

Upon this ground I join issue with every admirer of Jacob Behmen in England. I appeal to every candid man, every man of piety and common sense, whether this explanation deserves those violent encomiums contained in the Advertisement. I ask any person of understanding, First, whether any man in his senses, from the beginning of the world, ever thought of explaining any treatise, divine or human, syllable by syllable. Did a more absurd imagination ever enter into a madman's brain? Is it possible by this means to make sense of any text from Genesis to the Revelation? Must there not be a very high degree of lunacy before any such 518 SPECIMEN of BEHMEN’s DIVINITY, &c. design could be formed ? I ask, Secondly, If any scripture could be thus explained, if any meaning could be extracted from the several syllables, must it not be from the syllables of the original, not of a translation, whether German or English? I ask, Thirdly, whether this explanation be any explanation at all; whether it gives the meaning of any one petition; nay, whether it does not reduce the divine Prayer, all the parts of which are accurately connected together, into an unconnected, incoherent jumble of no one can tell what! I ask, Fourthly, whether we may not pronounce, with the utmost certainty, of one who thus distorts, mangles, and murders the word of God, that the light which is in him is darkness; that he is illuminated from beneath, rather than from above; and that he ought to be styled a demonosopher, rather than a theosopher !