Wesley Corpus

Verse 21: “I find then that when I would do good,” when I choose and earnestly desire it, I cannot; “evil is present with me;” as it were, gets in between. “Verse 22: “For I delight in the law of God, after the inward man: My mind, my conscience approves it. “Verse 23: “But I see another law in my members, which warreth against the law in my mind: Another principle of action, which fights against my reason and conscience, ‘and bringeth me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members: Which captivates and enslaves me to the principle of wickedness.” (Page 219.) (Strange language for you to use !) “Seated in the lusts of the flesh:” Seated indeed in all my tempers, passions, and appetites, which are the several members of “the old man.” “‘O wretched man that I am I who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Verse 24.) He is under the power of such passions as his own reason disapproves, but is too weak to conquer; and, N. B., being a Jew, he stands condemned to eternal death by the law. How shall such a wretched Jew be delivered from sinful lusts, and the curse of the law P” Did, then, none but a Jew ever cry out, under the burden of sin, “Wretched man that I am?” Are none but Jews “under the power of such passions as their own reason disapproves, but is too weak to conquer?” And does the law of God condemn to eternal death no sinners beside Jews? Do not Christians also (in the wide sense of the word) groan to be delivered “from the body of this death?” With what truth, with what sense, can you restrain this passage to a Jew any more than to a Turk? I cannot but observe, upon the whole, the question is, Does not Rom. vii. 23, show that we come into the world with sinful propensities?