Wesley Corpus

‘Paradise is an heavenly birth of life’ (Spirit of Prayer, Part I. p. 6). How does this definition explain the thing defined ‘Adam had at first both an heavenly and an earthly body. Into the latter was the spirit of this world breathed; and in this spirit and body did the heavenly spirit and body of Adam dwell.’ (Page 7.) So he had originally two bodies and two souls! This will need abundance of proof. ‘The spirit and body of this world was the medium through which he was to have commerce with this world.’ The proof’ But it was no more alive in him than Satan and the serpent were alive in him at his first creation. Good and evil were then only in his outward body and in the outward world.’ What! was there evil in the world, and even in Adam, together with Satan and the serpent, at his first creation ‘But they were kept unactive by the power of the heavenly man within him.’ Did this case cover the earthly man, or the earthly case the heavenly But ‘he had power to choose whether he would use his outward body only as a means of opening the outward world to him’ (so it was not quite unactive neither), ‘or of opening the bestial life in himself. Till this was opened in him, nothing in this outward world, no more than his own outward body’ (so now it is unactive again), ‘could act upon him, make any impressions upon him, or raise any sensations in him; neither had he any feeling of good or evil from it.’ (Page 9.) All this being entirely new, we must beg clear and full proof of it. ‘God said to man at his creation, Rule thou over this imperfect, perishing world without partaking of its impure nature’ (page 21). Was not the world then at first perfect in its kind Was it impure then Or would it have perished if man had not sinned And are we sure that God spake thus ‘The end God proposed in the creation was the restoring all things to their glorious state’ (Part II. p. 61). ‘In the creation’! Was not this rather the end which He proposed in the redemption