Page:The works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., late fellow of Lincoln-College, Oxford (IA worksofrevjohnwe3wesl).pdf/299

 whereof the Lord had commanded him, ''Thou shalt not eat thereof''. By this wilful act of disobedience to his Creator, this flat rebellion against his Sovereign, he openly declared, that he would no longer have God to rule over him: that he would be governed by his own will, and not the will of him that created him, and that he would not seek his happiness in God, but in the world, in the works of his hands. Now God had told him before, In the day that thou eatest of that fruit thou shalt surely die. And the word of the Lord cannot be broken. Accordingly in that day he did die: he died to God, the most dreadful of all deaths. He lost the life of God: he was separated from him, in union with whom his spiritual life consisted. The body dies, when it is separated from the soul; the soul, when it is separated from God. But this separation from God Adam sustained in the day, the hour he ate of the forbidden fruit. And of this he gave immediate proof; presently shewing by his behaviour, that the love of God was extinguished in his soul, which was now alienated from the life of God. Instead of this, he was now under the power of servile fear, so that he fled from the presence of the Lord. Yea, so little did he retain even of the knowledge of him, who filleth heaven and earth, that he endeavoured to [A] ''hide himself from the Lord God, among the trees of the garden''! So had he lost both the knowledge

[Footnote A: Gen. iii. 8.]