Wesley Corpus

Men’s minds have a natural dexterity to do mischief; none are so simple as to want skill for this. None needs to be taught it; but as weeds, without being sown, grow up of their own accord, so does this ‘earthly, sensual, devilish wisdom naturally grow up in us. “2. We naturally form gross conceptions of spiritual things, as if the soul were quite immersed in flesh and blood. Let men but look into themselves, and they will find this bias in their minds; whereof the idolatry which still prevails so far and wide is an incontestable evidence; for it plainly shows men would have a visible deity; therefore they change the “glory of the incorruptible God into an image.’ Indeed the Reforma tion of these nations has banished gross idolatry out of our churches: But heart-reformation alone can banished mental idolatry, subtle and refined image-worship, out of our minds. “3. How difficult is it to detain the carnal mind before the Lord! to fix it in the meditation of spiritual things | When God is speaking to man by his word, or they are speaking to him in prayer, the body remains before God, but the world steals away the heart. Though the eyes be closed, the man sees a thousand vanities, and the mind roves hither and thither; and many times the man scarce comes to himself, till he is ‘gone from the presence of the Lord. The worldly man’s mind does not wander when he is contriving business, casting up his accounts, or telling his money. If he answers you not at first, he tells you he did not hear you, he was busy, his mind was fixed. But the carnal mind employed about spiritual things is out of its element, and therefore cannot fix. “4. Consider how the carnal ‘imagination’ supplies the want of real objects to the corrupt heart. The unclean person is filled with speculative impurities, ‘having eyes full of adultery. The covetous man fills his heart with the world, if he cannot get his hands full of it. The malicious person acts his revenge in his own breast; the envious, within his own nar row soul, sees his neighbour laid low enough; and so every lust is fed by the imagination. These things may suffice to con vince us of the natural bias of the mind to evil. “Fourthly.