Wesley Corpus

“Well, but he now enjoys many of the gifts of God, both gifts of nature and of providence. He has food and raiment, and comforts of various kinds. And are not all these great blessings?” No, not to him. At the price he is to pay for them, every one of these also is a curse. Every one of these comforts is, by an eternal decree, to cost him a thousand pangs in hell. For every moment’s pleasure which he now enjoys, he is to suffer the torments of more than a thousand years; for the smoke of that pit which is preparing for him ascendeth up for ever and ever. God knew this would be the fruit of whatever he should enjoy, before the vapour of life fled away. He designed it should. It was his very purpose, in giving him those enjoyments. So that, by all these, (according to your account,) he is, in truth and reality, only fatting the ox for the slaughter. “Nay, but God gives him grace too.” Yes; but what kind of grace? Saving grace, you own, he has none; none of a saving nature. And the common grace he has was not given with any design to save his soul; nor with any design to do him any good at all; but only to restrain him from hurting the elect. So far from doing him good, that this grace also necessarily increases his damnation. “And God knows this,” you say, “ and designed it should; it was one great end for which he gave it!” Then I desire to know, how is God good or loving to this man, either with regard to time or eternity? 43. Let us suppose a particular instance: Here stands a man who is reprobated from all eternity; or, if you would express it more smoothly, one who is not elected, whom God eternally decreed to pass by. Thou hast nothing therefore to expect from God after death, but to be cast into the lake of fire burning with brimstone; God having consigned thy unborn soul to hell, by a decree which cannot pass away. And from the time thou wast born under the irrevocable curse of God, thou canst have no peace. For there is no peace to the wicked; and such thou art doomed to continue, even from thy mother’s womb.