Wesley Corpus

Upon the whole: Whatever objections may lie against Dr. Watts's method of explaining it, it appears, from clear Scrip ture, and from your own words, that Adam was the repre sentative of mankind. BEFoRE I say anything on this head, I must premise, that there are a thousand circumstances relating to it, concerning which I can form no conception at all, but am utterly in the dark. I know not how my body was fashioned there; or when or how my soul was united to it: And it is far easier, in speak * Page 129. ing on so abstruse a subject to pull down, than to build up. I can easily object to any hypothesis which is advanced; but I cannot easily defend any. And if you ask me, how, in what determinate manner, sin is propagated; how it is transmitted from father to son: I answer plainly, I cannot tell; no more than I can tell how man is propagated, how a body is transmitted from father to son. I know both the one and the other fact; but I can account for neither. Thus much, however, is plain: That “God is the maker of every man who comes into the world.” (Page 138.) For it is God alone who gives man power to propagate his species. Or rather, it is God himself who does the work by man as an instrument; man (as you observed before) having no other part in producing man, than the oak has in producing an acorn. God is really the producer of every man, every ani mal, every vegetable in the world; as he is the true primum mobile, the spring of all motion throughout the universe. So far we agree. But when you subsume, “If it is the power of God whereby a sinful species is propagated, whereby a sin ful father begets a sinful son, then God is the author of sin; that sinfulness is chargeable upon him :” Here we divide; I cannot allow the consequence, because the same argument would make God chargeable with all the sinful actions of men. For it is the power of God whereby the murderer lifts up his arm, whereby the adulterer perpetrates his wickedness; full as much as it is his power whereby an acorn produces an oak, or a father a son.