The works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 15 (of 32)Wesley, John
History
The works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 15 (of 32)
Wesley, John
Methodist Church; Theology -- Early works to 1800; Theology -- History -- 18th century
17. I intreat you to reflect, whether there are not other inhabitants
in your breast, which leave no room for happiness there. May you not
discover, through a thousand disguises, pride? Too high an opinion of
yourself? Vanity, thirst of praise, even (who would believe it?) of
the applause of knaves and fools? Unevenness or sourness of temper?
Proneness to anger or revenge? Peevishness, fretfulness, or pining
discontent? Nay, perhaps even covetousness.――And did you ever think,
happiness could dwell with these? Awake out of that senseless dream.
Think not of reconciling things incompatible. All these tempers are
essential misery. So long as any of these are harboured in your breast,
you must be a stranger to inward peace. What avails it you, if there be
no other hell? Whenever these fiends are let loose upon you, you will
be constrained to own,
“Hell is where’er I am: myself am hell;”
And can the supreme Being love those tempers, which you yourself
abhor in all but yourself? If not, they imply guilt as well as misery.
Doubtless they do. Only enquire of your own heart. How often in the mid
career of your vice have you felt a secret reproof, which you knew not
how to bear, and therefore stifled as soon as possible?
18. And did not even _this_ point at an hereafter? A future state of
existence? The more reasonable among you have no doubt of this; you do
not imagine the whole man dies together: although you hardly suppose
the soul, once disengaged, will dwell again in an house of clay.
But how will your soul subsist without it? How are _you_ qualified
for a separate state? Suppose this earthly covering, this vehicle
of organized matter, whereby you hold commerce with the material
world, were now to drop off! Now, what would you do in the regions of
immortality? You cannot eat or drink there. You cannot indulge either
the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life.
You love only worldly things; and they are gone, fled as smoke, driven
away for ever. Here is no possibility of sensual enjoyments; and you
have a rellish for nothing else. O what a separation is this, from all
that you hold dear! What a breach is made, never to be healed!
But beside this, you are unholy: full of evil tempers: for you did not
put off these with the body. You did not leave pride, revenge, malice,
envy, discontent behind you, when you left the world. And now you are
no longer cheared by the light of the sun, nor diverted by the flux
of various objects: but those dogs of hell are let loose to prey upon
your soul, with their whole, unrebated strength. Nor is there any hope,
that your spirit will now ever be restored to its original purity;
not even that poor hope of a purging fire, so elegantly described by
the _Heathen_ poet some ages before the notion was revived among the
doctrines of the _Romish_ church
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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