Wesley Corpus

“When the commandment comes, sin revives.” What reason can be assigned for this, but the natural enmity of the heart against the holy law P. We conclude then, that the unregenerate are heart-enemies to God, his Son, his Spirit, and his law; that there is a natural contrariety, opposition, and enmity in the will of man, to God himself and his holy will. “Fifthly. The unrenewed will is wholly perverse, in refer ence to the end of man. Man is a merely dependent being; having no existence or goodness originally from himself; but all he has is from God, as the first cause and spring of all per fection, natural and moral. Dependence is woven into his very nature; so that, should God withdraw from him, he would sink into nothing. Since then whatever man is, he is of Him, surely whatever he is, he should be to Him; as the waters which came out of the sea return thither again. And thus man was cre ated looking directly to God, as his last end; but, falling into sin, he fell off from God, and turned into himself. Now, this infers a total apostasy and universal corruption in man; for where the last end is changed, there can be no real goodness. And this is the case of all men in their natural state: They seek not God, but themselves. Hence though many fair shreds of morality are among them, yet ‘there is none that doeth good, no, not one. For though some of them “run well, they are still off the way; they never aim at the right mark. Whithersoever they move, they cannot move beyond the circle of self. They seek themselves, they act for themselves; their natural, civil, and religious actions, from whatever spring they come, do all run into, and meet in, this dead sea. “Most men are so far from making God their end in their natural and civil actions, that he is not in all their thoughts. They eat and drink for no higher end, than their own pleasure or necessity. Nor do the drops of sweetness God has put into the creatures raise their souls toward that ocean of delights that are in the Creator. And what are the natural man’s civil actions, such as buying, selling, working, but fruit to himself?