Wesley Corpus

To Dr. Robertson Date: BRISTOL, September 24 1753. The treatise itself gave me a stronger conviction than ever I had before both of the rapaciousness and unsatisfactoriness of the mathematical method of reasoning on religious subjects. Extremely rapacious it is; for ff we slip but in one line, an whole train of errors may follow: and utterly unsatisfactory, at least to me, because I can never be sufficiently assured that this is not the case. The first two books, although doubtless they are a fine chain of reasoning, yet gave me the less satisfaction, because I am clearly of Mr. Hutchinson's John Hutchinson. See letter of Nov. 26 1756. 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. Clarke's Samuel Clarke (1675-1729). He delivered the Boyle Lectures, on The Being and Attributes of God, in 1704-5. See letter of Dec, 6 1726. or the Chevalier's demonstrations.