In vol. 3, page 203, the following entry occurs:—“January 1st, 1765.—This week I wrote an answer to a warm letter published in the London Magazine, the author whereof is much displeased that I presume to doubt of the ‘modern astronomy.’ I cannot help it. Nay, the more I consider the more my doubts increase; so that at present I doubt whether any man on earth knows either the distance or magnitude, I will not say of a fixed Star, but Saturn or Jupiter—yea of the Sun or Moon.”
In vol. 13, page 359, he says:—“And so the whole hypothesis of innumerable Suns and worlds moving round them vanishes into air.” And again at page 430 of same volume, the following words occur:—“The planets revolutions we are acquainted with, but who is able to this day, regularly to demonstrate either their magnitude or their distance? Unless he will prove, as is the usual way, the magnitude from the distance, and the distance from the magnitude. * * * Dr. Rogers has evidently demonstrated that no conjunction of the centrifugal and centripetal forces can possibly account for this, or even cause any body to move in an ellipsis.” There are several other incidental remarks to be found in his writings which shew that the Rev. John Wesley was well acquainted with the then modern astronomy; and that he saw clearly both its self-contradictory and its anti-scriptural character.
It is a very popular idea among modern astronomers that the stellar universe is an endless congeries of systems, of Suns and attendant worlds peopled with sentient beings analogous in the purpose and destiny of their existence to the inhabitants of this earth. This doctrine of a plurality of worlds, although it conveys the most magnificent ideas of the universe, is purely fanciful, and may be compared to the “dreams of the alchemists” who laboured with unheard of enthusiasm to discover the “philosopher’s stone,” the elixir vitæ, and the “universal solvent.” However grand the first two projects might have been in their realisation, it is known that they were never developed in a practical sense, and the latter idea of a solvent which would dissolve everything was suddenly and unexpectedly destroyed by the few remarks of a simple but critical observer, who demanded to know what service a substance would be to them which would dissolve all things? What could they keep it in? for it would dissolve every vessel wherein they sought to preserve it! This idea of a plurality of worlds is but a natural and reasonable conclusion drawn from the doctrine of the Earth’s rotundity. But this doctrine being false its off shoot is equally so. The supposition that the heavenly bodies are Suns and inhabited worlds is demonstrably impossible in nature, and has no foundation whatever in Scripture. “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.” One Earth only is created; and the fact is more especially described in Genesis, ch. i., v. 10. Where, instead of the word “Earth” meaning both land and water as together forming a globe, as it does in the Newtonian astronomy, only the dry land was called earth,” and “the gathering together of the waters called He seas.” The Sun, Moon, and Stars are described as lights only and not worlds. A great number of passages might be quoted which prove that no other material world is ever in the slightest manner referred to by the sacred writers. The creation of the world; the origin of evil, and the fall of man; the plan of redemption by the death of Christ; the day of judgement, and the final consummation of all things are invariably associated with this Earth alone. The expression in Hebrews, ch. i., v. 2, “by whom also he made the worlds,” and in Heb., ch. ii., v. 3, “through faith we understand that the worlds were framed,” are known to be a comparatively recent rendering from the original Greek documents. The word which has been translated worlds is fully as capable of being rendered in the singular number as the plural; and previous to the introduction of the Copernican Astronomy was always translated “the world.” The Roman Catholic and the French Protestant Bibles still contain the singular number; and in a copy of an English Protestant Bible printed in the year 1608, the following translation is given:—“Through faith we understand that the world was ordained.” So that either the plural expression “worlds” was used in later translations to accord with the astronomical notions then recently introduced, or it was meant to include the Earth and the spiritual world, as referred to in:—
Hebrews ii., 5—“For unto angels hath he not put into subjection the world to come.”
Ephesians i., 21—“Far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.”
Luke xviii., 29, 30—“There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.”
Matthew xii., 32—“Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world neither in the world to come.”
The Scriptures teach that in the day of the Lord “the Heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat,” and the “stars of Heaven fall unto the Earth even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when shaken of a mighty wind.” The Newtonian system of astronomy declares that the stars and planets are mighty worlds—nearly all of them much larger than this Earth. The fixed stars are considered to be suns, equal to if not greater than our own sun, which is said to be above 800,000 miles in diameter. All this is proveably false, but to those who have been led to believe it, the difficult question arises,—“How can thousands of stars fall upon the Earth, which is many times less than any one of them?” How can the Earth with a supposed diameter of 8000 miles receive the numerous suns of the firmament many of which are said to be a million miles in diameter?
These stars are assumed to have positions so far from the Earth that the distance is almost inexpressible; figures indeed may be arranged on paper but in reading them no practical idea is conveyed to the mind. Many of them are said to be so distant that should they fall with the velocity of light or above one hundred and sixty thousand miles in a second, or six hundred millions of miles per hour, they would require nearly two millions of years to reach the Earth! Sir William Herschel in a paper on “The power of telescopes to penetrate into space,” published in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1800, affirms, that with his powerful instruments he discovered brilliant luminaries so far from the Earth that the light from them “could not have been less than one million nine hundred thousand years in its progress.” Again the difficulty presents itself—“If the stars of Heaven begin to fall to-day, and with the greatest imaginable velocity, millions of years must elapse before they reach the Earth!” But the Scriptures declare that these changes shall occur suddenly—shall come, indeed, “as a thief in the night.”
The same theory, with its false and inconceivable distances and magnitudes, operates to destroy all the ordinary, common sense, and scripturally authorised chronology. Christian and Jewish commentators, unless astronomically educated, hold and teach that the Earth, as well as the Sun, Moon, and Stars, were created about 4,000 years before the birth of Christ, or less than 6,000 years before the present time. But if many of these luminaries are so distant that their light would require above a million of years to reach us; and if, as we are taught, bodies are visible to us because of the light which they reflect or radiate, then their light has reached us, because we have been able to see them, and therefore they must have been shining, and must have been created at least one million nine hundred thousand years ago! The chronology of the bible indicates that a period of six thousand years has not yet elapsed since “the Heavens and the Earth were finished, and all the Host of them.”