Wesley Corpus

Has not covetousness been the peculiar vice of old age? As death is nearer to the view, we plainly see that men have more and more regard for the things of a transitory world. We are sure, therefore, that death is no such benefit to the generality of men. On the contrary, it is the king of terrors to them, the burden of their lives, and bane of their pleasures. To talk, therefore, of death’s being a benefit, an original benefit, and that to all mankind, is to talk against the common sense and experience of the whole world. “It is strange, death should be originally given by God as a benefit to man, and that the shortening of man’s life afterward should be designed as a farther benefit; and yet that God should so often promise his peculiar people long iife as the reward of obedience, and threaten them with death as a punish ment of disobedience | “‘But the Scripture, he says, “affirms that sufferings are the chastisements of our heavenly Father, and death in parti cular. But does not every chastisement suppose a fault? Must he not be a cruel father who will chasten his children for no fault at all? If then God does but chasten us for Adam’s sin, the fault of it must some way lie upon us; else we suppose God’s dealings with his children to be unreasonable and unrighteous.” (Vindication, p. 36, &c.) (3.) I would only add two or three obvious questions: (i.) Did God propose death as a benefit in the original threatening? (ii.) Did he represent it as a benefit in the sentence pronounced on Adam : “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return?” (iii.) Do the inspired writers speak of God’s “bringing a flood on the world of the ungodly, as a benefit, or a punishment?” (iv.) Do they mention the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as designed for a benefit to them? (v.) Is it by way of benefit that God declares, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die?” Certainly this point is not defensible. Death is pro perly not a benefit, but a punishment. (4.) The other question is, “How shall we account for all men’s rising again, by the obedience of another man, Jesus Christ?” (Taylor's Doctrine, &c., p.