Wesley Corpus

And God’s special care of his innocent creature secured him against outward violence. Such were the holiness and the happiness of man in his original state. “But there is now a sad alteration in our nature. It is now entirely corrupted. Where at first there was nothing evil, there is now nothing good: I shall, “First, prove this. “Secondly, represent this corruption in its several parts. “Thirdly, show how man’s nature comes to be thus cor rupted. “First, I shall prove that man's nature is corrupted, both by God’s word, and by men’s experience and observation. “1. For proof from God’s word, let us consider, “(1.) How it takes particular notice of fallen Adam’s com municating his image to his posterity. ‘Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image.” (Gen. v. 3.) Compare this with verse 1: “In the day that God created man, in the image of God made he him. Behold here, how the ‘image’ after which man was ‘made,’ and the ‘image’ after which he is be gotten, are opposed. Man was ‘made’ in the likeness of God; a holy and righteous God “made a holy and righteous creature: But fallen Adam ‘begat’ a son, not in the likeness of God, but in his ‘own likeness; corrupt, sinful Adam begat a corrupt, sinful son. For as the image of God included ‘righteousness’ and “immortality, so this image of fallen Adam included ‘cor ruption’ and ‘death. Moses, giving us in this chapter the first bill of mortality that ever was in the world, ushers it in with this observation,-that dying Adam begat mortals. Having sinned, he became ‘mortal, according to the threatening. And so he ‘begat a son in his own likeness, sinful, and therefore mortal; and so “sin and death passed on all.’ “Let us consider, (2.) That text, ‘Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean P. Not one.” (Job xiv. 4.) Our first parents were unclean; how then can we be clean? How could our immediate parents be clean? Or how shall our children be so? The uncleanness here mentioned is a sinful uncleanness; for it is such as makes man’s days ‘full of trouble.’ And it is natural, being derived from unclean parents.