Wesley Corpus

Consider the character of mankind in general, with regard to religion and virtue, and it will be hard to believe they bear the image of their common Father in knowledge and holi ness. Some, I grant, are renewed in his image; but the bulk of the world are of another stamp, and sufficiently show, there is some fatal contagion spread through this province of God’s dominion. So St. John tells us, that, except the few who are ‘born of God, the whole world lieth in wickedness.” (Page 33.) “And can we think of that gross and stupid ignorance of God, which reigns through vast tracts of Asia, Africa, and America, and the thick darkness which buries all the heathen countries, and reduces them almost to brutes; can we think of the abominable idolatries, the lewd and cruel rites of worship, which have been spread through whole nations; the impious and ridiculous superstitions which are now practised among the greatest part of the world; and yet believe the blessed God would put such wretched, polluted workmanship out of his pure hands?” (Page 34.) “Can we survey the desperate impiety and profaneness, the swearing, and cursing, and wild blasphemy, that is practised, day and night, among vast multitudes of those who profess to know the true God; can we behold that almost universal neg lect of God, of his fear, his worship, and the obedience due to him, which is found even among them who are called Chris tians; and yet imagine, that these bear that image of God in which they were created? “Nor have men forgot God only, but they seem also to have abandoned their duties to their fellow-creatures also. Hence the perpetual practices of fraud and villany in the commerce of mankind, the innumerable instances of oppression and cruelty which run through the world; the pride and violence of the great; the wrath, ambition, and tyranny of princes, and the endless iniquities and mischiefs that arise from malice, envy, and revenge, in lower people.