Wesley Corpus

4.)” And does not this point at original sin? You say, No: For “if Job and his friends had known that the reason of our uncleanness and imperfection was our receiving a corrupted nature from Adam, they ought to have given this reason of it.” And do they not in the very words before us? You say, “No; they turn our thoughts to a quite different reason; namely, the uncleanness of the best of creatures in his sight.” This is not a different reason, but falls in with the other; and the natural meaning of these texts is, “How can he be clean that is born of a woman;” and so conceived and born in sin? “Behold, even to the moon, and it shineth not,’ compared with God; “yea, the stars are not pure in his sight !” How “much less man that is a worm !” (xxv. 6.) In how much higher and stricter a sense is man impure, that carries about with him his mortality, the testimony of that unclean nature which he brought with him into the world? “‘Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?” (Job iv. 17, &c.)” (Page 143.) Shall man dare to arraign the justice of God; to say God punishes him more than he deserves? “Behold, he puts no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly.” Many of these left their first estates; even their wisdom was not to be depended on: “How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay;” whose bodies, liable to pain, sickness, death, are standing monuments of the folly and wickedness which are deep rooted in their souls “What is man, that he should be clean; and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous Behold, he putteth no trust in his holy ones;” yea, the heavens “are not pure in his sight.” His holy angels have fallen, and the highest creatures are not pure in comparison of him. “How much more abominable and filthy,” in the strictest sense, “is man;” every man born into the world: “Who drinketh iniquity like water;” (Job xv.