Wesley Corpus

submit appetite to reason, and rise while the other sunk? “Process of time” does not help us out at all; for if it made the one half of mankind more and more vicious, it ought, by the same degrees, to have made the other half more and more virtuous. If men were no more inclined to one side than the other, this must absolutely have been the event. Turn and wind as you please, you will never be able to get over this. You will never account for this fact, that the bulk of mankind have, in all ages, “prostituted their reason to appetite,” even till they sunk into “lamentable ignorance, superstition, idolatry, injustice, and debauchery,” but by allowing their very nature to be in fault, to be more inclined to vice than virtue. “But if we have all a corrupt nature, which as we cannot, so God will not, wholly remove in this life, then why do we try to reform the world?” Why? Because, whether the corrupt nature be wholly removed or no, men may be so far reformed as to “cease from evil,” to be “renewed in the spirit of their mind, and by patient continuance in well-doing,” to “seek” and find, “glory, and honour, and immortality.” “I answer: (2.) If by moral circumstances you mean, provision and means for spiritual improvement, those given us through Christ are far greater than Adam had before he sinned.” (Page 169.) To those who believe in Christ they are. But above four-fifths of the world are Mahometans or Pagans still. And have these (immensely the greater part of mankind, to say nothing of Popish nations) greater pro vision and means for spiritual improvement than Adam before he sinned P “But if, (3.) by moral circumstances you mean moral” (rather natural) “abilities, or mental powers;” (a considera tion quite foreign to the question;) “I answer, The Scriptures nowhere compare our faculties with Adam’s. Nor know I how we can judge, but by comparing the actions of Adam in innocence with what men have performed since.” (Page 170.) Yes, we can judge thus: There could be no defect in Adam’s understanding, when he came first out of the hands of his Creator; but there are essential defects in mine and yours, and every man’s whom we know. Our apprehension is indis tinct, our judgment false, our reasoning wrong in a thousand instances.