# Summary Wesley is super duper in to a doctrine of [[original sin]] that emphasizes it's [[universality]] and it's [[total depravity]]. He contrasts the perspective of the ancients on what later romanticists will term "the state of nature" as like a good thing, vs the biblical account in Genesis of total depravity. Wesley is not convinced that human nature is "notwithstanding a few infirmities, to be very innocent and wise and virtuous." He will make some similarly unfounded statements about the state of the world and people, I don't know whether these are from common scientific understanding at the time or from his imagination. Wesley doesn't resolve the issue to my satisfaction whether Noah and his household were partakers of universal wickedness or not. Another exegete (such as I) would resolve this by saying God's election of Noah was notwithstanding his partaker in original sin. In I.3 he has a pretty good teaching on how God's understanding of wickedness is not the same as people's. II.4 has a pretty strong condemnation of [[natural theology]]. At this point I'm still learning Wesley's jargon a bit, so I spent a lot of time sort of grappling with the fact that he uses words and phrases differently than I do. I'm sure over the course of the summer I will learn how to "dwell in his idiom", as a friend put it to me. The basic idea that original sin and total depravity are necessary antecedents for the salvific work of Christ is sound. I feel like the rhetoric really picks up steam and starts to roll when he gets to the [[soteriology]] in section III.