Wesley Corpus

How often in the mid-career of your vice have you felt a secret reproof, which you knew not how to bear, and therefore stifled as soon as possible ! 18. And did not even this point at an hereafter; a future state of existence? The more reasonable among you have no doubt of this; you do not imagine the whole man dies together; r though you hardly suppose the soul, once disengaged, will dwell again in a house of clay. But how will your soul subsist without it? How are you qualified for a separate state? Sup pose this earthly covering, this vehicle of organized matter, whereby you hold commerce with the material world, were now to drop off! Now, what would you do in the regions of immor tality? You cannot eat or drink there. You cannot indulge either the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life. You love only worldly things; and they are gone, fled as smoke, driven away for ever. Here is no possibility of sen sual enjoyments; and you have a relish for nothing else. O what a separation is this, from all that you hold dear! What a breach is made, never to be healed ! But beside this, you are unholy, full of evil tempers; for you did not put off these with the body; you did not leave pride, revenge, malice, envy, discontent, behind you, when you left the world. And now you are no longer cheered by the light of the sun, nor diverted by the flux of various objects; but those dogs of hell are let loose to prey upon your soul, with their whole unrebated strength. Nor is there any hope that your spirit will now ever be restored to its original purity; not even that poor hope of a purging fire, so elegantly described by the heathen poet, some ages before the notion was wevived among the doctrines of the Romish Church. Aliae panduntur inanes Suspensae ad ventos; aliis sub gurgite vasto Infectum eluitur scelus, aut eruritur igni. Donec longa dies, perfecto temporis orbe, Coneretam eremit labem, purumque reliquit AEthereum sensum, atque aurai simplicis ignem." 19. What a great gulf then is fixed between you and happi ness, both in this world and that which is to come! Well may you shudder at the thought !