Wesley Corpus

11.) And now, by the appointment of Christ, they are to be baptized; which shows they are unclean, and that there is no salvation for them, but “by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.’ “(4.) ‘We are by nature children of wrath. We are wor thy of, and liable to, the wrath of God; and that “by nature; and therefore, doubtless, we are by nature sinful creatures. We are condemned before we have done good or evil; under the curse ere we know what it is. But ‘will a lion roar in the forest while he hath no prey ?’ Will a holy and just God roar in his wrath against man, if he be not, by his sin, made a prey for wrath? No, he will not, he cannot. We conclude, then, that, according to the word of God, man’s nature is a corrupt nature. “2. If we consult experience, and observe the case of the world, in the things that are obvious to any person, we shall, by its fruits, easily discover the root of bitterness. I shall instance but in a few :-- “(1.) Who sees not a flood of miseries overflowing the world? Every one, at home and abroad, in city and country, in palaces and cottages, is groaning under some unpleasing circumstance or other. Some are oppressed with poverty or want; some chastened with pain or sickness; some are lamenting their losses; none is without a cross of one sort or another. No man’s condition is so soft but there is some thorn of uneasiness in it. And at length death, ‘the wages of sin,’ comes, and sweeps all away. Now, what but sin has opened the sluice? There is not a complaint or sigh heard in the world, or a tear that falls from our eye, but it is an evidence, that man is fallen as a star from heaven. For God ‘distributeth sorrows in his anger.” (Job xxi. 17.) This is a plain proof of the corruption of nature; forasmuch as those that have not actually sinned have their share of these sor rows; yea, and draw their first breath weeping.