Wesley Corpus

I have dwelt the longer on this head because of its inexpressible moment. For whether or no the doctrine of Justification by Faith be, as all Protestants thought at the time of the Reformation, articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiae, ‘a doctrine without which there can be no Christian Church,’ most certainly there can be none where the whole notion of justification is ridiculed and exploded, unless it be such a church as includes, according to your account, every child of man, of which, consequently, Turks, Deists, and Pagans are as real members as the most pious Christian under the sun. I cannot but observe that this is the very essence of Deism: no serious infidel need contend for more. I would therefore no more set one of this opinion to convert Deists than I would set a Turk to convert Mahometans. 4. As every one that is justified is born of God, I am naturally led to consider, in the next place (so far as it is delivered in the tracts now before us), your doctrine of the New Birth. ‘In the day that Adam ate of the tree he died -- that is, his heavenly spirit with its heavenly body were extinguished. To make that heavenly spirit and body to be alive again in man, this is regeneration’ (Spirit of Prayer, Part I. p. 9). Oh no, this is not, nor anything like it. This is the unscriptural dream of Behmen's heated imagination. ‘See the true reason why only the Son of God could be our Redeemer. It is because He alone could be able to bring to life again that celestial spirit and body which had died in Adam.’ (Ibid.) Not so; but He alone could be our Redeemer because He alone, ‘by that one oblation of Himself once offered,’ could make ‘a sufficient sacrifice and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.’ ‘See also why a man must “be born again of water and of the Spirit.” He must be born again of the Spirit because Adam’s heavenly spirit was lost.’ (Ibid.) Nay, but because Adam had lost the inward image of God wherein he was created. And no less than the almighty Spirit of God could renew that image in his soul.