Wesley Corpus

Nay, many even of the heathen philosophers believed it, from their own experience, and their daily survey of mankind; though they were utterly at a loss how to account for it. And what, if we could not assign a sufficient and satisfactory reason for it, or show how this spreading degeneracy began, or how it came to take place so universally? What, if we were still at a loss to explain how all this guilt and misery came upon us,--must we therefore deny the things which we see, and hear, and feel, daily?” (Page 91.) “Can we account for all the secret things in the creation of God? And must we deny whatever we cannot account for? Does any man refuse to believe that the infinite variety of plants and flowers, in all their beauteous colours and forms, grow out of the same earth, because he does not know all the springs of their vegetation? Do men doubt of a loadstone's drawing iron to itself, because they cannot find out the way of its operation? Are we not sure that food nourishes our bodies, and medicines relieve our pains? Yet we know not all the ferment and motions of those atoms by which we are relieved and nourished. Why then should we deny that degeneracy of our nature which admits of so full and various proof, though we are not able to account for every circumstance relating to it, or to solve every difficulty that may attend it?” (Page 92.) “How came vice and misery to overspread mankind in all nations, and in all ages? “Heathen philosophers could never answer this; but Chris tians may from the oracles of God.” (Page 94.) “These inform us, that the first man was a ‘common head and representative of all mankind;’ and that he, by sinning against his Maker, lost his own holiness and happiness, and exposed himself and his posterity (whom he naturally pro duced, and whom he legally represented) to the displeasure of his Maker, and so spread sin and misery through his whole offspring.” (Page 102.) “So St. Paul: “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; even so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” (Rom. v. 12.) All are esteemed in some sort guilty before God, though they “did not sin after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.