Wesley Corpus

“And justly liable to all punishments in th world, and that which is to come.” That all men are liable to these for Adam’s sin alone, I d not assert; but they are so, for their own outward and in ward sins, which, through their own fault, spring from th infection of their nature. And this, I think, may fairly t inferred from Rom. vi. 23: “The wages of sin is death; (pages 157, 158;) its due reward; death, temporal, spiritua and eternal. God grant that we may never feel it so ! 20. You conclude this Part : “I cannot see that we hal advanced one step further than where we were at the conclu sion of the First Part; namely, That the consequences Adam’s first sin upon us are labour, sorrow, and mortalit, and no other.” (Page 162.) The contrary to this having been so largely proved, instea of repeating those proofs over again, I shall close this Pa with that beautiful description of the present state of ma which Mr. Hervey gives us from Mr. Howe’s “Living Temple, “Only,” says he, “let me hint, that it considers the huma soul as originally a habitation of God through the Spirit: ” “That he hath withdrawn himself, and left this his temp desolate, we have many sad and plain proofs before us. Th stately ruins are visible to every eye, and bear in their front (yet extant) this doleful inscription: ‘Here God once dwelt.” Enough appears of the admirable structure of the soul of man to show the divine presence did sometime reside in it; more than enough of vicious deformity to proclaim, He is now retired and gone. The lamps are extinct; the altar overturned; the light and love are now vanished, which did the one shine with so heavenly brightness, the other burn with so pious fervour. The golden candlestick is displaced, to make room for the throne of the prince of darkness. The sacred incense, which sent up its rich perfumes, is exchanged for a poisonous hellish vapour. The comely order of this house is all turned into confusion; the beauties of holiness into noisome impurities; the house of prayer into a den of thieves: Thieves of the worst kind; for every lust is a thief, and every theft is sacri lege.