Page:The works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., late fellow of Lincoln-College, Oxford (IA worksofrevjohnwe3wesl).pdf/342



1 i. 6.

''Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.''

1. In the preceding discourse I have particularly spoken of that darkness of mind, into which those are often observed to fall, who once walked in the light of God's countenance. Nearly related to this is the heaviness of soul, which is still more common, even among believers: indeed almost all the children of God, experience this, in an higher or lower degree. And so great is the resemblance between one and the other, that they are frequently confounded together: and we are apt to say indifferently, such an one is in darkness, or such an one is in heaviness; as if they were equivalent terms, one of which implied no more than the other. But they are far, very far from it. Darkness is one thing; heaviness is another. There is a difference, yea a wide, an essential difference, between the former and the latter. And such a difference it is, as all the children of God are deeply concern'd to understand: otherwise nothing will be more easy than for them to slide out of heaviness into dark