Wesley Corpus

to be sunk into such gross ignorance both of our souls, our better selves, and of the glorious Being that made us! to lie under such heavy shades of darkness, such a world of mistakes and errors, as are mingled with our little faint glimpses, and low notices of God our Creator ! What, to be so far distant from God, and to endure such a long estrange ment from the Wisest and Best of Beings, in this foolish and fleshly state, with so few and slender communications with or from him | “What, to feel so many powerful and disquieting appe #tes, so many restless and unruly passions, which want the perpetual guard of a jealous eye, and a strong restraint over them; otherwise they will be ever breaking out into some new mischief! “What, to be ever surrounded with such delights of sense as are constant temptations to folly and sin! to have scarce any joys, but what we are liable to pay dear for, by an exces sive or irregular indulgence I Can this be a desirable state, for any wise being, who knows what happiness is, to be united to such a disorderly machine of flesh and blood with all its uneasy and unruly ferments?” (Page 378.) “Add to this another train of inbred miseries which attend this animal frame. What wise spirit would willingly put on such flesh and blood as ours, with all the springs of sickness and pain, anguish and disease, in it? What, to be liable to the racking disquietudes of gout and stone, and a thousand other distempers! to have nature worn out by slow and long aches and infirmities, and lie lingering many years on the borders of death, before we can find a grave “Solomon seems to be much of this mind, when, after a survey of the whole scheme of human life, in its variety of scenes, (without the views of hereafter,) he declares, ‘I praised the dead who were already dead, more than the living who are yet alive.” (Eccles. iv.