Wesley Corpus

‘Adam was created to keep what is called the curse covered and overcome by paradise. And as paradise concealed and overcame all the evil in the elements, so Adam's heavenly man concealed from him all the evil of the earthly nature that was under it.’ (Page 62.) Can we believe that there was any evil in man from the creation, if we believe the Bible ‘Our own good spirit is the very Spirit of God; and yet not God, but the Spirit of God kindled into a creaturely form.’ Is there any meaning in these words And how are they consistent with those that follow ‘This spirit is so related to God as my breath is to the air’ (page 195). Nay, if so, your spirit is God; for your breath is air. ‘That Adam had at first the nature of an angel is plain from hence, that he was both male and female in one person. Now, this (the being both male and female) is the very perfection of the angelic nature.’ (Page 65.) Naturalists say that snails have this perfection. But who can prove that angels have You attempt to prove it thus: ‘“In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels.” Here we are told (1) that the being male and female in one person is the very nature of angels: (2) that man shall be so too at the resurrection; therefore he was so at first.’ (Page 66.) Indeed, we are not told here that angels are hermaphrodites -- no, nor anything like it. The whole passage is: ‘They who are accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels’ (Luke xx. 35-6): namely, not in being male and female, but in this -- that they ‘cannot die any more.’ This is the indisputable meaning of the words. So this whole proof vanishes into air. You have one more thought full as new as this: ‘All earthly beasts are but creaturely eruptions of the disorder that is broken out from the fallen spiritual world. So earthly serpents are but transitory out-births of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath.’ (Spirit of Love, Part II. p. 207.)