Wesley Corpus

By his sin he stripped himself of his original righteousness and corrupted himself. We were in him repre sentatively, as our moral head; we were in him seminally, as our natural head. Hence we fell in him; (as Levi ‘paid tithes’ when ‘in the loins of Abraham;’) “by his disobe dience’ we ‘were made sinners;’ his first sin is imputed to us. And we are left without that original righteousness. which, being given to him as a common person, he cast off. And this is necessarily followed, in him and us, by the cor ruption of our whole nature; righteousness and corruption being two contraries, one of which must always be in man. And Adam, our common father, being corrupt, so are we;. for, ‘who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?’ “It remains only to apply this doctrine. And First, for information: Is man’s nature wholly corrupted? Then, 1. No wonder the grave opens its devouring mouth for us as soon as the womb has cast us forth. For we are all, in a spiritual sense, dead-born; yea, and ‘filthy,' (Psalm xiv. 3,) noisome, rank, and stinking, as a corrupt thing; so the word imports. Let us not complain of the miseries we are exposed to at our entrance, or during our continuance, in the world. Here is the venom that has poisoned all the springs of earthly enjoyments. It is the corruption of human nature, which brings forth all the miseries of life. “2. Behold here, as in a glass, the spring of all the wicked mess, profaneness, and formality in the world. Every thing acts agreeable to its own nature; and so corrupt man acts corruptly. You need not wonder at the sinfulness of your own heart and life, nor at the sinfulness and perverseness of others. If a man be crooked, he cannot but halt; and if the clock be set wrong, how can it point the hour right? “3. See here why sin is so pleasant, and religion such a bur den, to men: Sin is natural; holiness not so. Oxen cannot feed in the sea, nor fishes in the fruitful field. A swine brought into a palace would prefer the mire. And corrupt nature tends ever to impurity. “4. Learn from hence the nature and necessity of regene ration. (1.) The nature: It is not a partial, but a total, change.