Wesley Corpus

Do not destroy thy own soul with an everlasting destruction | 1t was made for God. Do not give it into the hands of that old mur derer of men! Thou canst not stupify it long. When it leaves the body, it will awake and sleep no more. Yet a little while, and it launches out into the great deep, to live, and think, and feel for ever. And what will cheer thy spirit there, if thou hast not a drop of water to cool thy tongue? But the die is not yet cast: Now cry to God, and iniquity shall not be thy ruin. 18. Of old time there were also those that “were at ease in Zion, that lay upon beds of ivory, and stretched themselves upon their couches, that ate the lambs out of the flock, and calves out of the stall.” But how inelegant were these ancient epicures !“Lambs out of the flock, and calves out of the stall!” Were these the best dainties they could procure? How have we improved since Jeroboam’s time! Who can number the varieties of our tables? or the arts we have “to enlarge the pleasure of tasting?” And what are their couches, or beds of ivory, to the furniture of our apartments? or their “chains, and bracelets, and mantles, and changeable suits of apparel,” to the ornaments of our persons? What comparison is there between their diversions and ours? Look at Solomon in all his glory, and yet may we not question, whether he was not an utter stranger to the pleasures of the chase ? And, notwith standing his forty thousand horses, did he ever see a race in his life? He “made gardens, and orchards, and pools of water; he planted vineyards, and built houses; ” but had he one theatre among them all? No. This is the glory of later times. Or had he any conception of a ball, an assembly, a masquerade, or a ridotto ? And who imagines that all his instruments of music, put together, were any more to be com pared to ours, than his or his father’s rumbling Hebrew verses, To the soft sing-song of Italian lays. In all these points, our pre-eminence over the Jews is much every way.- Yea, and over our own ancestors, as well as theirs. But is this our glory, or our shame? Were Edward III.