Wesley Corpus

Now, what benefits, I say, have these from their sufferings? Are they also “tried and purified thereby?” Do sufferings “correct their inordinate passions, and dispose their minds to sober reflections?” Do they “give them opportunity of exercising kindness and compassion in relieving each other’s distresses?” That I know not; but I know by this and a thousand proofs, that when man, the lord of the visible creation, rebelled against God, every part of the creation began to suffer on account of his sin. And to suffering on account of sin, I can give no properer name than that of punishment. “It was to reclaim offenders that an extraordinary power was exercised, either immediately by our Lord himself, or by his Apostles, of inflicting bodily distempers, and, in some cases, death itself.” (Page 25.) I do not remember any more than one single case, wherein one of the Apostles “inflicted death.” I remember no instance recorded in Scripture, of their “inflicting bodily distempers; ” (the blindness inflicted on Elymas cannot be so termed, without great impropriety;) and certain I am, that our Lord himself inflicted neither one nor the other. The citations in the next page prove no more than that we may reap benefit from the punishments of others. (Page 26.) But though either we or they reap benefit from them, yet they are punishments still. “We do not here consider death and suffering as they stand in the threatening of the law.” (Page 27.) You are sensible, if we did, all mankind must acknowledge them to be punishments. And this is the very light wherein we do and must consider them in the present question. We consider death and suffering as they stand in that threatening, “Thou shalt surely die.” That this was denounced to all mankind, we know, because it is executed on all. Therefore, considering suffering and death as so threatened and executed, we cannot deny that they are punishments,--punishments not on Adam only, but on all that in fact do either die or suffer.