Wesley Corpus

(4.) The other question is, “How shall we account for all men’s rising again, by the obedience of another man, Jesus Christ?” (Taylor's Doctrine, &c., p. 70.) “To set this in a clear light, I ask another question: What was it that gave the glorious Personage, emblemized by “the Lamb,” (Rev. v. 1, &c.,) his superior worthiness, his prevailing interest in God, beyond all others in heaven and earth? It was his being slain; that is, his obedience to God, and good will to men: It was his consummate virtue. ‘Thou artworthy.’ --Why? Because thou hast exhibited to God such an instance. of virtue, obedience, and goodness. Thou hast sacrificed thy life in the cause of truth, and ‘hast redeemed us” by that act of the highest obedience.” (Pages 71, 72.) With what extreme wariness is this whole paragraph worded! You do not care to say directly, “Jesus Christ is either a little God, or he is no God at all.” So you say it indirectly, in a heap of smooth, laboured, decent circumlocutions. Yet permit me to ask, Was “that act of obedience, the original and sole ground” of his prevailing interest in God, and of his worthiness, not only “to open the book,” but “to receive” from all the armies of heaven “the power, and the riches, and the wisdom, and the strength, and the honour, and the glory, and the blessing?” (Rev v. 12.) And is this act the original and the sole ground, why “all men” must “honour him even as they honour the Father?” Yea, and why “every creature which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all that are in them, say, To him that sitteth upon the throne and to the Lamb, is the blessing, and the honour, and the glory, and the power, for ever and ever?” (Verse 13.) “To Him that sitteth on the throne and to the Lamb :” --Does that mean, to the great God and the little God? If so, when all “creatures in heaven and earth,” all throughout the universe, thus “honour him even as they honour the Father,” are they not doing him too much honour? “My glory,” saith the Lord, “I will not give to another.” How comes it then to be given to the Lamb?