we
cannot understand.

CHAPTER VI.

JOHN WESLEY AND HIS VIEWS ON CERTAIN POINTS.

How easy it is for men to mix up their own fancies, or the vain conceits
of others, with divine truth,--or rather, how hard it is to _avoid_
doing so,--we may see by the case of John Wesley. Wesley was one of the
most devout, and conscientious, and, on the whole, one of the most
rational, Scriptural, practical and common-sense men the Christian
Church ever had. Compared with theologians generally, he was worthy of
the highest praise. He had the greatest reverence for the Scriptures. He
early in life declared it to be his determination to be _a man of one
Book_, and that one book the BIBLE; and he acted in accordance
with this determination to the best of his knowledge and ability. The
Bible was his sole authority. Its testimony decided all questions,
settled all controversies. Yet such was the influence of prevailing
custom in the theological world, operating on his mind unconsciously
from his earliest days, that he unintentionally acted inconsistently
with this good resolution in cases without number. Shakespeare makes one
of his characters say, "If to do, were as easy as to know what is
fittest to be done, beggars would ride on horses, and poor men's
cottages would be princes' palaces. I could more easily tell twenty men
what it was best to do, than be one of the twenty to carry out my own
instructions." And we need no better proof or illustration of the truth
of this wise saying, than the case of the good and great John Wesley.

We have seen what his resolution was. Look now at one or two of his
sermons. Take first the sermon on God's Approbation of His Works. In
that discourse, referring to the primeval earth, he speaks as follows:
"The _whole surface_ of it was beautiful in a high degree. The
_universal face_ was clothed with living green. And every part was
_fertile_ as well as beautiful. It was no where deformed by rough or
ragged rocks: it did not shock the view with horrid precipices, huge
chasms, or dreary caverns: with deep, impassable morasses, or deserts
of barren sands. We have not any authority to say, with some learned and
ingenious authors, that there were no _mountains_ on the original earth,
no unevennesses on its surface, yet it is highly probable that they rose
and fell, by almost insensible degrees.

"There were no agitations within the bowels of the globe: no violent
convulsions: no concussions of the