Wesley Corpus

‘The next in place and punishment are they Who prodigally throw their lives away. Fools, who, repining at their wretched state, And loathing anxious life, have hurried on their fate. With late repentance now they would retrieve The bodies they forsook, and wish to live: All pain and poverty desire to bear, To view the light of heaven, and breathe the vital air. But fate forbids; the Stygian floods oppose, And with nine circling streams the captive souls inclose.” “I answer, 2. Suppose this love of life and aversion to death are found even where there is no regard to a future state, this will not prove that mankind is happy; but only that the God of nature hath wrought this principle into the souls of all men, in order to preserve the work of his own hands: So that reluctance against dying is owing to the natural principle of self-preservation, without any formed and sedate judgment, whether it is best to continue in this life or no, or whether life has more happiness or misery.” (Page 386.) “It may be objected, Secondly, “If brutes suffer nearly the same miseries with mankind, and yet have not sinned, how can these miseries prove that man is an apostate being?’” (Page 389. “7. I answer: It is by reason of man’s apostasy that even brute animals suffer. ‘The whole creation groaneth together’ on his account, ‘and travaileth together in pain to this day.” For the brute “creation was made subject to vanity, to abuse, pain, corruption, death, “not willingly, not by any act of its own, “but by reason of him that subjected it;’ of God, who, in consequence of Adam’s sin, whom he had appointed lord of the whole lower world, for his sake pronounced this curse, not only on the ground, but on all which was before under his dominion. “The misery, therefore, of the brute creation is so far from being an objection to the apostasy of man, that it is a visible standing demonstration thereof: If beasts suffer, then man is fallen.” (389.) “BUT whether or no the miseries of mankind alone will prove their apostasy from God, it is certain these, together with the sins of men, are an abundant proof that we are fallen creatures.