Wesley Corpus

I have now weighed, as my leisure would permit, all the arguments advanced in your Three Parts. And this I have done with continual prayer, that I might know “the truth as it is in Jesus.” But still I see no ground to alter my senti ments touching the general corruption of human nature. Nor can I find any better or any other way of accounting for that general wickedness which has prevailed in all nations, and through all ages, nearly from the beginning of the world to this day. January 25, 1757. AN ANswer. To DR. TAYLOR's suPPLEMENT. YoU subjoin to your book a very large Supplement, in answer to Dr. Jennings and Dr. Watts. All that they have advanced, I am not engaged to defend; but such parts only as affect the merits of the cause. You divide this part of your work into eight sections. The first treats And here you roundly affirm, “No action is said in Scrip ture to be imputed to any person for righteousness or con demnation, but the proper act and deed of that person.” (Supplement, page 7.) Were, then, the iniquities and sins which were put upon the scape-goat, his own “proper act and deed?” You answer, “Here was no imputation of sin to the goat. It was only a figurative way of signifying the removal of guilt from the penitent Israelites, by the goat’s going into the wilderness.” But how could it be a figure of any such thing, if no guilt was imputed to him? “Aaron is commanded to put the iniquities of Israel upon the scape-goat; (Lev. xvi. 21;) and this goat is said to bear the iniquities of the people. (Verse 22.) This was plainly an impu tation. Yet it could not possibly be an imputation of anything done by the animal itself. The effects also which took place upon the execution of the ordinance indicate a translation of guilt; for the congregation was cleansed, but the goat was pol luted: The congregation so cleansed, that their iniquities were borne away, and to be found no more; the goat so polluted that it communicated defilement to the person who conducted it into a land not inhabited.” (Theron and Aspasio.) In truth, the scape-goat was a figure of Him “on whom the Lord laid the iniquities of us all.” (Isai.