Wesley Corpus

Would you yourself account it an honour or a reproach, to be ranked among those of whom it is said, “These are they which are not defiled with women: For they are virgins?” And how numerous are they now, even among such as are accounted men of honour and probity, “who are as fed horses, everyone neighing after his neighbour's wife!” But as if this were not enough, is not the sin of Sodom, too, more common among us than ever it was in Jerusalem? Are not our streets beset with those monsters of uncleanness, who “burn in their lust one toward another,” whom God hath “given up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient?” O Lord, thy compassions fail not: Therefore we are not consumed. 20. Neither do we yield to them in injustice, any more than uncleanness. How frequent are open robberies among us! Is not “the act of violence ’’ even “in our streets?” And what laws are sufficient to prevent it? Does not theft of various kinds abound in all parts of the land, even though death be the punishment of it? And are there not among us, who “take usury and increase,” who “greedily gain of their neighbour by extortion?” yea, whole trades which subsist by such extortion as was not named either among the Jews or Heathens? “Is there not ” yet “the scant measure, the wicked balances, and the bag of deceitful weights?” beside the thousand nameless ways of over-reaching and defrauding, the craft and mystery of every trade and profession. It were an endless task to descend to particulars, to point out in every circumstance, how not only sharpers and gamesters, (those public nuisances, those scandals to the English nation,) but high and low, rich and poor, men of character, and men of none, in every station of public or private life, “have corrupted themselves,” and generally applaud them selves, and count it policy and wisdom so to do; so that if gain be at hand, they care not though “justice stand afar off; ” so that “he which departeth from evil,” which cometh not into their secret, still “maketh himself a prey;” and “the wicked” still “devoureth the man that is more righteous than he.” And what redress?