Page:The works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., late fellow of Lincoln-College, Oxford (IA worksofrevjohnwe3wesl).pdf/270

 evil, of an heart bent to backsliding, of the still-continuing tendency of the flesh to ''lust against the spirit''. Sometimes, unless we continually watch and pray, it lusteth to pride, sometimes to anger, sometimes to love of the world, love of ease, love of honour, or love of pleasure more than of God. It is a conviction of the tendency of our heart to self-will, to atheism, or idolatry: and above all to unbelief, whereby in a thousand ways, and under a thousand pretences, we are ever departing, more or less, from the living God.

7. With this conviction of the sin remaining in our hearts, there is joined a clear conviction of the sin remaining in our lives, still cleaving to all our words and actions. In the best of these we now discern a mixture of evil, either in the spirit, the matter or the manner of them: something that could not endure the righteous judgment of God, were he extreme to mark what is done amiss. Where we least suspected it, we find a taint of pride or self-will, of unbelief or idolatry: so that we are now more ashamed of our best duties, than formerly of our worst sins: and hence we cannot but feel, that these are so far from having any thing meritorious in them, yea so far from being able to stand, in sight of the divine justice, that for those also we should be guilty before God, were it not for the blood of the covenant.