I only object to the inconsistency of
those who profess the same belief, and yet affect to look down with a
contemptuous or compassionate smile on John Wesley for rejecting the
Copernican system as incompatible therewith; or who exclaim
"Wonderful!" when they hear that Sir Matthew Hale sent a crazy old
woman to the gallows in honour of the Witch of Endor. In the latter
instance it might, I admit, have been an erroneous (though even at
this day the all but universally received) interpretation of the
word, which we have rendered by WITCH; but I challenge these divines
and their adherents to establish the compatibility of a belief in the
modern astronomy and natural philosophy with their and Wesley's
doctrine respecting the inspired Scriptures, without reducing the
doctrine itself to a plaything of wax; or rather to a half-inflated
bladder, which, when the contents are rarefied in the heat of
rhetorical generalities, swells out round, and without a crease or
wrinkle; but bring it into the cool temperature of particulars, and
you may press, and as it were except, what part you like--so it be
but one part at a time--between your thumb and finger.
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