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.”[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 would be vain, and faith also vain. If you ask us to reconcile all the differences arising 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] ----- Footnote 48: _Athenian Oracle_, vol. i. p. 178. Footnote 49: _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. 111. Footnote 50: _Ibid._, vol. i. p. 58. Footnote 51: _Athenian Oracle_, vol. ii. p. 101. ----- Mr Wesley believed in the doctrine of universal redemption; in other words, that Jesus Christ “atoned so far for the sins of all mankind as to make them in a salvable condition, or to repair the ruins which were made by the first Adam, which is plain from Rom. v. 12, 18, &c.”[52] “God really wills the salvation of all men, as far as is consistent with the liberty of man and His own purity and justice;” and He “has also used all the necessary means for our salvation;” “He offers pardon of all sin, and right to life in Christ, to all men without exception, on condition of believing and acceptance.”[53] ----- Footnote 52: _Ibid._, vol. iii. p. 531. Footnote 53: _Ibid._, p. 260. -----