Wesley Corpus

18. The very first society of Christians at Rome were not altogether free from this evil leaven. There were "divisions and offences" among them also; (Rom. 16:17;) although, in general, they seem to have "walked in love." But how early did the "mystery of iniquity" work, and how powerfully, in the Church at Corinth! Not only schisms and heresies, animosities, fierce and bitter contentions were among them; but open, actual sins; yea, "such fornication as was not named among the Heathens." (1 Cor. 5:1.) Nay, there was need to remind them that "neither adulterers, nor thieves, nor drunkards" could "enter into the kingdom of heaven." (1 Cor. 6:9, 10.) And in all St. Paul's Epistles we meet with abundant proof, that tares grew up, with the wheat in all the Churches, and that "the mystery of iniquity" did every where, in a thousand forms, counterwork "the mystery of godliness." 19. When St. James wrote his Epistle, directed more immediately "to the twelve tribes scattered abroad," to the converted Jews, the tares sown among his wheat had produced a plentiful harvest. That grand pest of Christianity, a faith without works, was spread far and wide; filling the Church with a "wisdom from beneath," which was "earthly, sensual, devilish," and which gave rise, not only to rash judging and evil-speaking, but to "envy, strife, confusion, and every evil work." Indeed, whoever peruses the fourth and fifth chapters of this Epistle, with serious attention, will be inclined to believe, that even in this early period the tares had nigh choked the wheat, and that among most of those to whom St. James wrote, no more than the form of godliness, if so much, was left.