Wesley Corpus

The comely order of this house is all turned into confusion; the beauties of holiness into noisome impurities; the house of prayer into a den of thieves: Thieves of the worst kind; for every lust is a thief, and every theft is sacri lege. The noble powers which were designed and dedicated to divine contemplation and delight in God, are alienated to the service of the most despicable idols, and employed in the vilest embraces: To behold and admire lying vanities; to indulge and cherish lust and wickedness. “There is not now a system, an entire table, of coherent truths to be found, or a frame of holiness: but some shivered parcels. And if any with great toil and labour apply them selves to draw out here one piece, and there another, and set them together; they serve rather to show, how exquisite the divine workmanship was in the original composition, than to the excellent purposes for which the whole was at first designed. Some pieces agree, and own one another; but how soon are our inquiries nonplussed and superseded! How many attempts have been made, since that fearful fall and ruin of this fabric, to compose again the truths of so many several kinds into their distinct orders, and make up frames of science or useful know ledge And after so many ages, nothing is finished in any kind. Sometimes truths are misplaced; and what belongs to one kind is transferred to another, where it will not fitly match; some times falsehood inserted, which shatters or disturbs the whole frame. And what with much fruitless pains is done by one hand, is dashed in pieces by another; and it is the work of a following age, to sweep away the fine-spun cobwebs of a for mer. And those truths which are of greatest use, though not most out of sight, are least regarded; their tendency and design are overlooked, or they are so loosened and torn off, that they cannot be wrought in, so as to take hold of the soul, but hover as faint, ineffectual motions that signify nothing. “Its very fundamental powers are shaken and disjointed, and their order toward one another confounded and broken; so that what is judged considerable, is not considered; what is recom mended as lovely and eligible, is not loved and chosen.