Wesley Corpus

tenderness of conscience, and by degrees grow hardened in vice and impiety. Therefore this enemy of our souls, when he would seduce any of the servants of God from the path of right eousness, would make the first declension from that path as small as possible, that he might ensnare them in his nets, without their even perceiving the danger, and bring them unawares from the road to heaven to the gate of destruc tion. For instance, is drunkenness the sin to - which he tempts ? his method is to conceal this frightful vice, and its dreadful consequences, under the veil of innocent mirth and social pleasure, so that his victim is beguiled, by a desire of being easy and agreeable to his com panions, to weaken his understanding, till he becomes a beast, and makes shipwreck of his reason as well as conscience. Now had this man been so upon his guard as never to exceed the bounds of Christian temperance and so briety, had he been scrupulously exact in ob serving the rule of the apostle, of eating and drinking" only to the glory of God, he would have preserved the intellects which the Al mighty bestowed upon him avoided the stum-