Wesley Corpus

But were there no lucid intervals; no happy moments wherein virtue gained the ascendancy? None; every imagination, every thought was only evil continually.”* 2. Such was the state of mankind for at least sixteen hundred years. Men were corrupting themselves and each other, and proceeding from one degree of wickedness to another, till they were all (save eight persons) ripe for destruction. So deplorable was the state of the moral world, while the natural was in its highest perfection. And yet it is highly probable, that the inhabitants of the earth were then abundantly more numerous than ever they have been since, considering the length of their lives, falling little short of a thousand years, and the strength and vigour of their bodies, which we may easily gather from the time they were to continue; to say nothing of the fertility of the earth, probably far greater than it is at present. Consequently, it was then capable of sustaining such a number of inhabitants as could not now subsist on the produce of it. 3. Let us next take a view of the “families of the sons of Noah,” the inhabitants of the earth after the flood. The first remarkable incident we read concerning them is, that while “they were all of one language, they said one to another, Let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.” It is not easy to determine what were the peculiar aggra vations which attended this attempt. But it is certain, there was daring wickedness therein, which brought upon them the very thing they feared; for “the Lord,” by “confounding their language,” (not their religious worship: Can we suppose God would confound this?) “scattered them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” (Gen. xi. 4, 9.) Now, whatever par ticulars in this account may be variously interpreted, thus much is clear and undeniable,--that all these, that is, all the in habitants of the earth, had again “corrupted their way;” the universal wickedness being legiblein the universal punishment. * Mr. Hervey's Theron and Aspasio: Dial. 11. 4. We have no account of their reforming their ways, of any universal or general repentance, before God separated Abraham to himself, to be the father of his chosen people. (Gen. xii.