Wesley Corpus

Who will stay the hand of the Almighty, or say unto him, What doest thou? “No fruits or vegetables could have sprung up in the divided elements, but because they are parts of that glassy sea, where angelical fruits grew before.” (Spirit of Prayer, Part I., p. 19.) But how came those fruits to grow before? How came they to grow in the glassy sea? Were they not produced out of nothing at first 7 If not, God was not before nature. If they were, cannot he still produce out of nothing whatso ever pleaseth him? “All outward nature being fallen from heaven,” (that we deny,) “must, as well as it can, do and work as it did in heaven.” (Page 20.) “As well as it can l’” What can it do without God, who upholdeth all things by the word of his power? And what can it not do, if he pleaseth? Or, rather, what cannot he do, with or without it? “Matter could not possibly be, but from sin.” (Spirit of Love, Part I., p. 23.) That is, in very plain terms, God could not have created matter if Satan had not sinned ! “God could not create man with a soul and a body, unless there was such a thing as nature antecedent to the creation of man.” (Page 30.) Why could not God do this? Because “body and spirit are not two separate things, but are only the inward and outward condition of one and the same being. Every creature must have its own body, and cannot be without it. For its body is that” (Who would have thought it!) “which makes it manifest to itself. It cannot know either that it is, or what it is, but by its own body 1” (Page 32.) What a heap of bold assertions is here to curb omnipotence And not one of them has a tittle of proof, unless one can prove the other | But we have more still: “The body of any creature has nothing of its own, but is solely the outward manifestation of that which is inwardly in the soul. Every animal has nothing in its outward form or shape but that which is the form and growth of its spirit.