Wesley Corpus

It seems, one grand design of that sacred history was, to discover the corruption of man’s nature. (vi.) Consider the remains of natural corruption, even in them that believe. Through grace has entered, corruption is not expelled; they find it with them at all times, and in all places. If a man have an ill neighbour, he may remove; but should he go into a wilderness, or pitch his tent on a remote rock in the sea, there it will be with him. I need not stand to prove so clear a point: But consider these few things on this head: 1st. If it be thus in the green tree, how must it be in the dry? Does so much of the old remain even in those who have received a new nature? How great, then, must that corruption be in those, where it is unmixed with renewing grace | 2d. Though natural corruption is no burden to a natural man, is he therefore free from it? No, no. Only he is dead, and feels not the sinking weight. Many a groan is heard from a sick bed, but never one from a grave. 3d. The good man resists the old nature; he strives to starve it; yet it remains. How must it spread, then, and strengthen itself in the soul, where it is not starved, but fed, as in unbelievers! If the garden of the diligent find him full work, in cutting off and rooting up, surely that of the sluggard must needs be ‘all grown over with thorns.” “I shall add but one observation more, that in every man maturally the image of fallen Adam appears: To evince which, I appeal to the consciences of all, in the following particulars:-- “(1.) If God by his holy law or wise providence put a restraint upon us, to keep us back from anything, does not that restraint whet the edge of our natural inclinations, and make us so much the keener in our desires? The very Hea thens were convinced, that there is this spirit of contradiction in us, though they knew not the spring of it. How often do men give themselves a loose in those things, wherein if God had left them at liberty, they would have bound up themselves!