Wesley Corpus

And whereas the all-wise God, for kind reasons, has limited the gratification of these appetites by rules of virtue; perhaps those very rules, through the corruption of our nature, irritate mankind to greater excesses.” (Pages 368, 369.) “Would the affairs of human life, in infancy, childhood, and youth, have ever been in such a sore and painful situation, if man had been such a being as God at first made him, and had continued in the favour of his Maker? Could divine wisdom and goodness admit of these scenes, were there not a degeneracy through the whole race, which, by the just per mission of God, exerts itself some way or other in every stage of life?” (Page 370.) “Follow mankind to the age of public appearance upon the stage of the world, and what shall we find there, but infinite cares, labours, and toil, attended with fond hopes almost always frustrated with endless crosses and disappointments, through ten thousand accidents that are every moment flying across this mortal stage As for the poor, how does the sultry toil exhaust their lives in summer, and what starving wretchedness do they feel in winter ! How is a miserable life sustained among all the pains and fatigues of nature, with the oppression, cruelty, and scorn of the rich !” (Page 371.) “Let us follow on the track to the close of life. What a scene is presented us in old age How innumerable and how inexpressible are the disasters and sorrows, the pains and aches, the groans and wretchedness, that meet man on the borders of the grave, before they plunge him into it ! “And indeed, is there any person on earth, high or low, without such distresses and difficulties, such crossing accidents and perplexing cares, such painful infirmities in some or other part of life, as must pronounce mankind, upon the whole, a miserable being? Whatever scenes of happiness seem to attend him, in any shining hour, a dark cloud soon casts a gloom over them, and the pleasing vision vanishes as a dream. “And what are the boasted pleasures which some have sup posed to balance the sorrows of life? Are not most of them owing, in a good degree, to some previous uneasiness? It is the pain of hunger which makes food so relishing; the pain of weariness that renders sleep so refreshing.