Note 144–145 — INDEX OF NAMES OF PERSONS.

Samuel Wesley, like his son John, was a moderate Arminian. He fearlessly repudiates the doctrines of election and reprobation. “We cannot,” says he, “be satisfied by any of those scriptures which are brought for that purpose, that there is any such election of a determinate number as either puts a force on their natures, and irresistably saves them, or absolutely excludes all the rest of mankind from salvation. We think there is no one place in the Holy Scriptures which proves that so many men, and no more, were irresistably determined to everlasting salvation.”[48] He believed that “God predestinated those to salvation whom He foresaw would make a good use of His grace, resolving to damn only such as He foresaw would continue impenitent.”[49] He maintains that “God made man upright, and a free agent, and that God’s prescience presides over man’s free agency, but doth not overrule it, by saving man whether He will or no, or by damning him undeservedly.”undeservedly.”[50] “God necessitates no evil action, yet He foresees all. If God tempts no man to evil, much less does He necessitate. Indeed, were He to do this, the nature of man would be destroyed, the proposal of rewards and punishments would be ironical, preaching 145would be vain, and faith also vain. If you ask us to reconcile all the differences arisingarising out of the doctrines of God’s prescience and man’s free agency, we promise to do it when philosophers can solve the incommensurability of matter, and twenty other phenomena, and make them agree with demonstrations which appear diametrically opposite unto them. In the meantime, let us think soberly and modestly, as becomes us in these matters. Let every one enjoy his own sense, so he makes not God the author of sin, and let us all cry out, ‘How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out.’”[51]