universe would have been a mere machine. 2. That would have been wanting which is most pleasing to God of any thing in the universe, namely, the free service of his reasonable creatures. 3. His reasonable creatures would have been in a worse state than they are now; for only free agents can be perfectly happy; as, without a possibility of doing wrong, there can be no freedom.

The second way by which God might prevent the abuse of liberty, is, by overruling this power, and constraining us to choose right. But this would be to do and undo, to contradict himself, to take away what he had given.

The third way by which God might have hindered his creatures from making an ill use of liberty, is, by placing them where they should have had no temptation to abuse it. But this too would have been the same in effect, as to have given them no liberty at all.

I am, dear Sir, your affectionate and dutiful Son,

JOHN WESLEY.

DEAR SIR,

TO DR. ROBERTSON.

Bristol, Sept. 24, 1753.

I HAVE lately had the pleasure of reading Mr. Ramsay's Principles of Religion, with the notes you have annexed to them. Doubtless he was a person of a bright and strong understanding, but, I think, not of a very clear apprehension. Perhaps it might be owing to this, that not distinctly perceiving the strength of some of the objections to his hypothesis; he is very peremptory in his assertions, and apt to treat his opponent with an air of contempt and disdain. This seems to have been a blemish even in his moral character. I am afraid the using guile is another. For surely it is a mere artifice to impute to the schoolmen the rise of almost every opinion which he censures. Seeing he must have known that most, if not all of those opinions, preceded the schoolmen several hundreds of years.

The Treatise itself gave me a stronger conviction than ever I had before, both of the fallaciousness and unsatisfactoriness of the mathematical method of reasoning on religious subjects. Extremely fallacious it is; for if we slip but in one line, a whole train of errors may follow and utterly unsatisfactorily, at least to me, because I can never be sufficiently assured that this is not the case.

The two first books, although, doubtless they are a fine chain of reasoning, yet gave me the less satisfaction, because I am clearly of Mr. H's judgment, that all this is beginning at the wrong end: that we can have no idea of God, nor any sufficient proof of his very being, but from the creatures and that the meanest plant is a far stronger proof hereof, than all Dr. Clark's or the Chevalier's demonstrations.

Among the latter, I was surprised to find a demonstration of the

manner how God is present to all beings, p. 57.

How he begat the

Son from all eternity, p. 77, and how the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son! p. 85. "Quanto satius est fateri nescire quæ nescias, quam ista effutientem nauseare, et ipsum tibi displicere?" How much better to keep to his own conclusion, p. 95. "Reason proves that this mystery is possible." Revelation assures us, that it is true: heaven alone can show us how it is.

There are several propositions in his second book which I cannot assent to particularly with regard to the divine foreknowledge. I can by no means acquiesce in the twenty-second proposition. That it is a matter of free choice in God, to think of finite ideas." I cannot reconcile this, with the assertion of the Apostle, "Known unto God are all his works an' aiavos, from eternity. And if any one ask, How is God's foreknowledge consistent with our freedom? I plainly answer, "I cannot tell."

In the third book, p. 209, I read, "The desire of God, purely as beatifying, as the source of infinite pleasure, is a necessary consequence of the natural love we have for happiness." I deny it absolutely. My natural love for happiness, was as strong thirty years ago as at this instant. Yet I had then no more desire of God, as the source of any pleasure at all, than I had of the Devil, or of hell. So totally false is that, "That the soul inevitably loves what it judges to be the best."

Equally false is his next corollary: ibid. that "If ever fallen spirits see and feel that moral evil is a source of eternal misery, they cannot continue to will it deliberately." I can now show living proofs of the contrary. But I take knowledge, both from this and -many other of his assertions, that Mr. R. never rightly understood the height and depth of that corruption which is in man, as well as diabolical nature.

The doctrine of pure love, as it is stated in the fourth book and elsewhere, (the loving God chiefly if not solely for his inherent perfections,) I once firmly espoused. But I was at length unwillingly convinced, that I must give it up, or give up the Bible. And for near twenty years I have thought (as I do now) that it is at least unscriptural, if not anti-scriptural. For the Scripture gives not the least intimation, that I can find, of any higher, or indeed any other love of God, than that mentioned by St. John, "We love him, because he first loved us.' And I desire no higher love of God, till my

spirit returns to him.

P. 313. "There can be but two possible ways of curing moral evil the sensation of pleasure in the discovery of truth, or the sensation of pain in the love of error."

So here is one who has searched out the Almighty to perfection! Who knows every way wherein he can exert his omnipotence !

I am not clear in this. I believe it is very possible for God to act in some third way. I believe he can make me as holy as an archangel, without any sensation at all preceding.

P. 324. "Hence it is, that the chaos mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis; cannot be understood of the primitive state of nature."

Why not, if God created the world gradually, as we are assured he did?

In the fifth book, p. 334, I read a more extraordinary assertion than any of the preceding. "The infusion of such supernatural habits, by one instantaneous act is impossible. We cannot be confirmed in immutable habits of good, but by a long and continued repetition of free acts." I dare not say so. I am persuaded God can, this moment, confirm me immutably good.

"Such is the nature of finite spirits, that after a certain degree of good habits contracted, they become unpervertible and immutable in the love of order," p. 335. If so, "After a certain degree of evil habits contracted, must they not become unconvertible and immutable in the hatred of order?" And if Omnipotence cannot prevent the one, neither can it prevent the other.

;.

P. 343. "No creature can suffer, but what has merited punishment." This is not true; for the man Christ Jesus was a creature. But he suffered; yet he had not merited punishment: unless our sins were imputed to him. But if so, Adam's sin might be imputed to us; and on that account even an infant may suffer.

Now if these things are so, if a creature may suffer for the sin of another imputed to him, then the whole frame of reasoning for the pre-existence of souls, raised from the contrary supposition, falls to the ground.

P. 347. "There are but three opinions concerning the transmission of original sin." i. e. There are but three ways of accounting, "How it is transmitted." I care not, if there were none. The fact I know, both by Scripture and by experience. I know it is transmitted but how it is transmitted, I neither know nor desire to know.

P. 353. "By this insensibility and spiritual lethargy in which all souls remain, e'er they awake into mortal bodies; the habits of evil in some are totally extinguished."

Then it seems there is a third possible way of curing moral evil. And why may not all souls be cured this way, without any pain or suffering at all?

Ibid. "If any impurity remains in them, it is destroyed in a middle state after death."

I read nothing of either of these purgations in the Bible. But it appears to me, from the whole tenor of his writings, that the Chevalier's notions are about one quarter Scriptural; one quarter Popish, and two quarters Mystic.

P. 360. God dissipated the chaos introduced into the solar system by the fall of angels." Does sacred writ affirm this? Where is it written? Except in Jacob Behmen.

P. 366. "Physical evil is the only means of curing moral evil." This is absolutely contrary both to Scripture, experience, and his own words, p. 353. And, "This great principle," as he terms it, is one of those fundamental mistakes which runs through the whole Mystic divinity.

Almost all that is asserted in the following pages, may likewise bë confuted by simply denying it.

P. 373. "Hence we see the necessity of sufferings and expiatory pains, in order to purify lapsed beings.-The intrinsic efficacy of physical to cure moral evil."

"Expiatory pains," is pure, unmixed Popery: but they can have no place in the Mystic scheme. This only asserts, "The intrinsic efficacy of physical to cure moral evil, and the absolute necessity of sufferings, to purify lapsed beings." Neither of which I can find in the Bible: though I really believe there is as much of this efficacy in sufferings, as in spiritual lethargy.

P. 374. "If beasts have any souls, they are either material, or immaterial to be annihilated after death; or degraded intelligences." No: they may be immaterial, and yet not to be annihilated.

If you ask, But how are they to subsist after death? I answer, He that made them knows.

The sixth book, I fear, is more dangerously wrong than any of the preceding, as it effectually undermines the whole scriptural account of God's reconciling the world unto himself, and turns the whole redemption of man by the blood of Christ into a mere metaphor. I doubt whether Jacob Behmen does not do the same. I am sure he does, if Mr. Law understands him right.

I have not time to specify all the exceptionable passages; if I did, I must transcribe part of almost every page.

P. 393. "The Divinity is unsusceptible of anger." I take this to be the nearor Veudos of all the Mystics. But I demand the proof. I take anger to have the same relation to justice, as love has to mercy.

But if we grant them this, then they will prove their point. For if God was never angry, his anger could never be appeased: and then we may safely adopt the very words of Socinus, Tota redemptionis nostræ per Christum Metaphora: seeing Christ died, only to "show to all the celestial quires, God's infinite aversion to disorder."

P. 394. "He suffered, because of the sin of men, infinite agonies, as a tender father suffers to see the vices of his children. He felt all that lapsed angels and men should have suffered to all eternity. Without this sacrifice, celestial spirits could never have known the horrible deformity of vice. In this sense, he substituted himself as a victim to take away the sins of the world: not to appease vindictive justice, but to show God's infinite love of justice."

This is as broad Socinianism as can be imagined. Nay, it is more. It is not only denying the satisfaction of Christ, but supposing that he died for devils as much, and for the angels in heaven much more than he did for man.

Indeed he calls him an expiatory sacrifice, a propitiatory victim: but remember, it was only in this sense. For you are told again, p. 399, "See the deplorable ignorance of those who represent the expiatory sacrifice of Christ, as destined to appease vindictive justice, and avert divine vengeance. It is by such frivolous and blasphemous notions that the schoolmen have exposed this divine mystery."

"These frivolous and blasphemous notions," do I receive, as the precious truths of God. And so deplorable is my ignorance, that I verily believe all who deny them, deny the Lord that bought them.

P. 400. The immediate, essential, necessary means of reuniting men to God, are prayer, mortification, and self-denial."

No: the immediate, essential, necessary mean of reuniting me to God, is living faith. And that alone, without this, I cannot be reunited to God. With this, I cannot but be reunited.

Prayer, mortification, and self-denial, are the fruits of faith, and the grand means of continuing and increasing it.

But I object to the account Mr. R. (and all the Mystics) give of those. It is far too lax and general. And hence those who receive all he says, will live just as they did before, in all the ease, pleasure, and state, they can afford.

P. 403. "Prayer, mortification, and self-denial, produce, necessarily in the soul, faith, hope, and charity."

On the contrary, faith must necessarily precede both prayer, mortification, and self-denial, if we mean thereby, "Adoring God in spirit and in truth, a continual death to all that is visible, and a constant, universal suppression and sacrifice of all the motions of false love." And the Chevalier talks of all these like a mere parrot, if he did not know and feel in his inmost soul, that it is absolutely false that any of these should subsist in our heart, till we truly believe in the Son of God.

"True faith is a divine light in the soul that discovers the laws of eternal order, the all of God, and the nothingness of the creatures.” It does; but it discovers first of all, that Christ loved me and gave himself for me, and washes me from my sins in his own blood. I am, dear sir, your affectionate brother, JOHN WESLEY.

CONSIDERING the variety of business which must lie upon you, I am not willing to trouble you too often. Yet cannot any longer delay to return thanks, for your favour of May 21st How happy is it that there is a higher Wisdom than our own, to guide us through the mazes of life! That we have an unction from the Holy One, to teach us of all things where human teaching fails! And it certainly must fail in a thousand instances. General rules cannot reach all particular cases: in some of which there is such a complication of circumstances, that God alone can show what steps we should take. There is one circumstance in your case, which claims your peculiar attention, and makes it necessary often to check that