Wesley Corpus

‘He must be born of water because that heavenly body which Adam lost was formed out of the heavenly materiality, which is called water’ (Ibid.). Vain philosophy! The plain meaning of the expression, ‘Except a man be born of water,’ is neither more nor less than this, ‘Except he be baptized.’ And the plain reason why he ought to be thus born of water is because God hath appointed it. He hath appointed it as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace; which grace is ‘a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness.’ ‘The necessity of our regaining our first heavenly body is the necessity’ (I presume you mean the ground of the necessity) ‘of our eating the body and blood of Christ’ (page 10). Neither can I believe this till I find it in the Bible. I am there taught to believe that our ‘spiritually receiving the body and blood of Christ,’ which is most eminently done in the Lord’s Supper, is necessary to ‘strengthen and refresh our souls, as our bodies are by the bread and wine.’ ‘The necessity of having again our first heavenly spirit is shown by the necessity of our being baptized with the Holy Ghost’! (Ibid.) No. That we ‘must be baptized with the Holy Ghost’ implies this and no more -- that we cannot be ‘renewed in righteousness and true holiness’ any otherwise than by being overshadowed, quickened, and animated by that blessed Spirit. ‘Our fall is nothing else but the falling of our soul from its heavenly body and spirit into a bestial body and spirit. Our redemption’ (you mean our new birth) ‘is nothing else but the regaining our first angelic spirit and body.’ (Ibid.) What an account is here of the Christian redemption! How would Dr. Tindal [See letter of June 19, 1731.] have smiled at this! Where you say, ‘Redemption is nothing else but the life of God in the soul,’ you allow an essential part of it. But here you allow it to be nothing else but that which is no part of it at all; nothing else but a whim, a madman's dream, a chimera, a mere non-entity! ‘This’ (angelic spirit and body) ‘in Scripture is called our “new” or “inward man”’ (ibid.).