500 His toe y of Methodism 



some great principle, and multitudes suppose that the question at 

 issue is divinely settled by the events of war. 



They who arrogate to themselves an apostolic spirit, and claim the 

 right to dictate in religion, and think they see through the intrica- 

 cies of Divine Providence, but who nevertheless have the same in- 

 firmities and weakness of understanding with other men, and are 

 blessed with no greater supernatural helps and revelations, should 

 beware, lest joining confidence with weakness they pervert God's 

 dealings with man, and distribute blessings and curses at random — 

 often blessing whom God curses, and cursing whom he blesses, thus 

 repeating the error of the barbarians mentioned in the Acts of the 

 Apostles, who, when they saw the venomous beast hang on Paul's 

 hand after he had escaped shipwreck, said among themselves, with 

 the air of men who looked upon themselves as no ordinary persons 

 in judging of such things, " No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, 

 though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live." 

 Howbeit, when he shook oft* the beast into the fire and felt no harm, 

 they changed their minds, and said he was a god. if prosperity or 

 adversity, if success or failure in enterprise, constitute the rule by 

 which you are to decide what is true or erroneous in faith, and right 

 or wrong in practice, then you are lost in an endless labyrinth of 

 perplexity and confusion, since there is no shade of religious be- 

 lief, and no variety of human conduct which has not been accredited 

 by some success, and discredited also by some reverse in the his- 

 tory of God's permissive providence. Non eventu rerum, sed fide 

 verborum stamus — " You are to stand to the truth of God's word, not 

 to the event of things" — is therefore a wise theological maxim. The 

 history of every age and nation has furnished an example of an af- 

 flicted truth, or a prevailing sin. To be innocent and to be op- 

 pressed are the body and soul of Christianity. For, although in the 

 law of Moses, God made with his people a covenant of temporal 

 prosperity , and "his saints did bind the kings of the Amorites and 

 the Philistines in chains, and their nobles with links of iron, and 

 then that was the honor which all his saints had;" yet in Christ 

 Jesus he has made a covenant of suffering. All his doctrines and 

 precepts expressly and by consequence enjoin and support sufferings. 

 His very promises are sufferings; his beatitudes are sufferings; his 

 rewards and his arguments to invite men to follow him are only 

 taken from sufferings in this life, and the rewards of sufferings in the 

 life to come. So that if you will serve, the King of sufferings, whose 

 crown was of thorns, whose scepter was a reed of scorn, whose im- 



