Wesley Corpus

You say: ‘As no seeing eye could be created unless there was antecedent to it a natural visibility of things’ (Why not why might not visible things be created at the same instant with it), ‘so no creature could come into any natural life unless such a state of nature was antecedent to it’ (page 60). ‘All that God does is and must be done in and by the powers of nature’ (page 135). What, then, did it avail that, as you elsewhere say, God was before nature He not only could not then do all things, but He could do nothing till nature existed. But if so, how came nature itself, this second eternal, to exist at all ‘There cannot possibly be any other difference between created beings than arises from that out of which they were created’ (page 60). Why not Who will stay the hand of the Almighty or say unto Him, What doest Thou ‘No fruits or vegetables could have sprung up in the divided elements but because they are parts of that glassy sea where angelical fruits grew before’ (Spirit of Prayer, Part I. p. 19). But how came those fruits to grow before How came they to grow in the glassy sea Were they not produced out of nothing at first If not, God was not before nature. If they were, cannot He still produce out of nothing whatsoever pleaseth Him ‘All outward nature being fallen from heaven’ (that we deny) ‘must, as well as it can, do and work as it did in heaven’ (page 20). ‘As well as it can’! What can it do without God, who upholdeth all things by the word of His power And what can it not do, if He pleaseth Or, rather, what cannot He do, with or without it ‘Matter could not possibly be but from sin’ (Spirit of Love, Part I. p. 23). That is, in very plain terms, God could not have created matter if Satan had not sinned! ‘God could not create man with a soul and a body unless there was such a thing as nature antecedent to the creation of man’ (page 30).