Wesley Corpus

How often do men give themselves a loose in those things, wherein if God had left them at liberty, they would have bound up themselves! And is not this a repeating of our father’s folly, that men will rather climb for forbidden fruit, than gather what Providence offers to them, when they have God’s express allowance for it? “(2.) Is it not natural to us, to care for the body, at the expense of the soul? This was one ingredient in the sin of our first parents. (Gen. iii. 6.) O how happy might we be, if we were but at half the pains about our souls, which we bestow upon our bodies ! if that question, ‘What must I do to be saved?” did but run near so often through our minds, as those, ‘What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed ?” “(3.) Is not every one by nature discontent with his present lot, or with some one thing or other in it? Some one thing is always missing; so that man is a creature given to change. If any doubt of this, let them look over all their enjoyments, and, after a review of them, listen to their own hearts, and they will hear a secret murmuring for want of something. Since the hearts of our first parents wandered from God, their pos terity have a natural disease, which Solomon calls, ‘the wandering of desire; literally, ‘the walking of the soul.” (Eccles. vi. 9.) This is a sort of diabolical trance, wherein the soul traverseth the world, feeds itself with a thousand airy nothings, snatcheth at this and the other imagined excellency; goes here and there and everywhere, except where it should go. And the soul is never cured of this disease till it takes up its rest in God through Christ. “(4.) Do not Adam's children naturally follow his foot steps, in ‘hiding’ themselves “from the presence of the Lord?” (Gen. iii. 8.) We are just as blind in this matter as he was, who thought to ‘hide himself from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. We promise ourselves more security in a secret sin than in one that is openly committed.