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 earth: no earthquakes: but all was
unmoved as the pillars of heaven. There were then no such things as
eruptions of fire: there were no volcanoes, or burning mountains.
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