Wesley Corpus

“My glory,” saith the Lord, “I will not give to another.” How comes it then to be given to the Lamb? (5.) You proceed: “The worthiness of Christ is his consum mate virtue, obedience to God, and benevolence to his crea tures.” Is this the only ground of his worthiness to be “honoured even as the Father?” Is it on this ground alone, that “all the angels of God” are to “worship him?” Or rather, because “in the beginning,” from everlasting, he “was with God, and was God?” “Virtue is the only price which purchaseth everything with God. True virtue, or the right exercise of reason, is true worth, and the only valuable consideration which prevails with God.” (Page 73.) Do youthen conceive this to be the exact meaning of St. Paul, when he says, “Ye are bought with a price?” and that where he speaks of “the Church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood,” he means with his own virtue? Agreeable to which, “Thou hast redeemed us by thy blood,” must mean, by the right exercise of thy reason * Well, then, might Father Socinus say, Tota redemption is nostrae per Christum meta phora: “The whole metaphor of our redemption by Christ.” For on this scheme there is nothing real in it. “It was not the mere natural power or strength of the Lamb, but his most excellent character.”--Sir, do “you honour the Son, even as you honour the Father?” If you did, could you possibly talk of him in this strain? However, all this does not affect the question; but it still remains an unshaken truth, that all men's dying in Adam is the grand cause why “the whole world lieth in wickedness.” NEWINGTON, January 18, 1757. 1. In your Second Part you profess to “examine the princi pal passages of Scripture, which Divines have applied in support of the doctrine of original sin; particularly those cited by the Assembly of Divines in their Larger Catechism.” (Pages 87, 88.) To this I never subscribed; but I think it is in the main a very excellent composition, which I shall therefore cheerfully endeavour to defend, so far as I conceive it is grounded on clear Scripture. But I would first observe in general, with Dr.