Wesley Corpus

Upright both in heart and will, We by our God were made; But we turn'd from good to ill, And o'er the creatures stray'd; Multiplied our wandering thought, Which first was fix'd on God alone; In ten thousand objects sought The bliss we lost in one. 4. It would be endless to enumerate all the species of wickedness, whether in thought, word, or action, that now overspread the earth, in every nation, and city, and family. They all centre in this, -- Atheism, or idolatry; pride, either thinking of themselves more highly than they ought to think, or glorying in something which they have received, as though they had not received it; independence and self-will, -- doing their own will, not the will of Him that made them. Add to this, seeking happiness out of God, in gratifying the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life. Hence it is a melancholy truth that (unless when the Spirit of God has made the difference) all mankind now, as well as four thousand years ago, "have corrupted their ways before the Lord; and every imagination of the thought of man's heart is evil, only evil, and that continually." However therefore men may differ in their outward ways, (in which, undoubtedly, there are a thousand differences,) yet in the inward root, the enmity against God, Atheism, pride, self-will, and idolatry, it is true of all, that "the heart of man," of every natural man, "is desperately wicked." 5. But if this be the case, how is it that everyone is not conscious of it For who should "know the things of a man, like the spirit of a man that is in him" Why is it that so few know themselves For this plain reason: Because the heart is not only "desperately wicked," but "deceitful above all things." So deceitful, that we may well ask, "Who can know it" Who, indeed, save God that made it By his assistance we may, in the Second place, consider this, -- the deceitfulness of man's heart.