Wesley Corpus

Indeed these cannot be put asunder, as sufficiently appears from the words cited before,-- ‘He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors; where the Holy Ghost closely joins his inter cession with his satisfaction made by sacrifice. These and a thousand other solid arguments that might be advanced in proof of this fundamental doctrine, overturn all the cavils that flow from corrupt reason, which indeed are weak and thin as a spider’s web.” I have dwelt the longer on this head, because of its inex pressible moment. For whether or no the doctrine of justifi cation by faith be, as all Protestants thought at the time of the Reformation, articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiae, “a doctrine without which there can be no Christian church;” most certainly there can be none where the whole notion of justification is ridiculed and exploded, unless it be such a Church as includes, according to your account, every child of man, of which, consequently, Turks, Deists, and Pagans are as real members as the most pious Christian under the sun. I cannot but observe, that this is the very essence of Deism; no serious Infidel need contend for more. I would therefore no more set one of this opinion to convert Deists, than I would set a Turk to convert Mahometans. 4. As every one that is justified is born of God, I am natu rally led to consider, in the next place, (so far as it is delivered in the tracts now before us,) your doctrine of the new birth. “In the day that Adam ate of the tree, he died; that is, his heavenly spirit, with its heavenly body, were extinguished. To make that heavenly spirit and body to be alive again in man, this is regeneration.” (Spirit of Prayer, Part I., p. 9.) O no; this is not; nor anything like it. This is the unscrip tural dream of Behmen’s heated imagination. “See the true reason why only the Son of God could be our Redeemer.