Wesley Corpus

When you are with the Physician, O forget not this disease! They never yet knew their errand to Christ, who went not to Him for the sin of their nature; for his blood to take away the guilt and his Spirit to break the power of it. Though ye should lay before him a catalogue of sins, which might reach from earth to heaven, yet if you omit this, you have forgot the best part of the errand a poor sinner has to the Physician of souls. (2.) Have a special eye to it in your repentance. If you would repent indeed, let the streams lead you up to the fountain, and mourn over your corrupt nature, as the cause of all sin, in heart, word, and work. ‘Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (3.) Have a special eye to it in your mortification. “Crucify the flesh with its affections and desires.’ It is the root of bitterness which must be struck at, else we labour in vain. In vain do we go about to purge the streams, if we are at no pains about the muddy fountain. (4.) Ye are to eye this in your daily walk. He that would walk uprightly, must have one eye upward to Jesus Christ, another inward to the cor ruption of his own nature. “3. I shall offer some reasons, why we should especially observe the sin of our nature. (1.) Because, of all sins, it is the most extensive and diffusive. It goes through the whole man, and spoils all. Other sins mar particular parts of the image of God; but this defaces the whole. It is the poison of the old serpent cast into the fountain, and so infects every action, every breathing of the soul. “(2.) It is the cause of all particular sins, both in our hearts and lives. ‘Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, and all other abominations. It is the bitter foun tain; and particular lusts are but rivulets running from it, which bring forth into the life a part only, not the whole, of what is within. “(3.) It is virtually all sins; for it is the seed of all, which want but the occasion to set up their heads.