Wesley Corpus

‘From Adam’s desire turned toward the world the earth got a power of giving forth an evil tree. It was his will which opened a passage for the evil hid in the earth’ (I know not how it came there before Adam fell) ‘to bring forth a tree in its own likeness. No sooner was it brought forth than God assured him that death was hid in it: a plain proof that this tree was not from God, but from a power in the earth, which could not show itself till Adam desired to taste something which was not paradisiacal.’ (Page 96.) This is the marvelous in the highest degree, and affords many questions not very easy to be answered. But, waiving all these, can anything be more flatly contradictory to the Mosaic account We read there: ‘The Lord God formed man. And the Lord planted a garden. And out of the ground made the Lord God every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.’ (Gen. if. 7-9.) Is it not here plainly taught that this tree was from God that not the desire of Adam but the Lord God made this tree to grow as well as the tree of life And when was it that God gave him that solemn warning, ‘In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die' (verse 17) Not as soon as that tree was brought forth, but when Adam was put into the garden. ‘At first all the natural properties of man’s creaturely life were hid in God, just as the natural qualities of darkness are hid till glorified by the light’ (Spirit of Love, Part II. p. 181). Nay, were they not sufficiently hid by the heavenly man Need they be hid over and over ‘But when man fell, all these properties broke forth, just as the darkness when it has lost the light must show forth its own coldness, horror, and other uncomfortable qualities.’ Exemplum placet! But are either coldness or horror natural qualities of darkness If so, they must be inseparable from it. But who will affirm this