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WESLEY

GOD'S LOVE TO FALLEN MAN[1]

Born in 1703, died in 1791; educated at Oxford; became at Oxford in 1729 the leader of a band of young men who founded Methodism; visited Georgia as a missionary in 1735; began open air preaching in England in 1739; held the first Methodist Conference in 1744.

How exceedingly common and how bitter is the outcry against our first parent for the mischief which he not only brought upon himself, but entailed upon his latest posterity! It was by his wilful rebellion against God "that sin entered into the world." "By one man's disobedience," as the Apostle observes, the many, as many as were then in the loins of their forefathers, were made, or constituted sinners: not only deprived of the favor of God, but also of His image, of all virtue, righteousness, and true holiness, and sunk partly into the image of the devil, in pride, malice, and all other diabolical tempers; partly into the image of the brute, being fallen under the dominion of brutal passions and groveling appetites. Hence also death entered into the world with all its fore-

  1. ↑ A sermon from the text, "Not as the transgression, so is the free gift," Romans 5:15. Wesley's sermons to the number of one hundred and forty-one, covering the period 1726–90, have been published. His works were first collected by himself In thirty-two volumes in 1771–74.

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