Wesley Corpus

That we “must be baptized with the Holy Ghost,” implies this and no more, that we cannot be “renewed in righteousness and true holiness” any otherwise than by being over-shadowed, quickened, and animated by that blessed Spirit. “Our fall is nothing else but the falling of our soul from its heavenly body and spirit, into a bestial body and spirit. Our redemption” (you mean, our new birth) “is nothing else but the regaining our first angelic spirit and body.” (Ibid.) What an account is here of the Christian redemption How would Dr. Tindal have smiled at this ! Where you say, “Re demption is nothing else but the life of God in the soul,” you allow an essential part of it. But here you allow it to be no thing else but that which is no part of it at all; nothing else but a whim, a madman’s dream, a chimera, a mere non-entity! “This,” (angelic spirit and body,) “in Scripture, is called our ‘new’ or ‘inward man.’” (Ibid.) The “inward man” in Scripture means one thing, the “new man” another. The former means, the mind, opposed to the body: “Though our outward man,” our body, “perish, yet the inward man,” the mind or soul, “is renewed day by day.” (2 Cor. iv. 16.) The latter means, universal holiness: “Put off the old man, which is corrupt; and put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness.” (Eph. iv. 22, 24.) But neither does the one nor the other ever mean “this angelic spirit and body.” You yourself know better what the new birth is. You describe it better, though still with amazing queerness of language, where you say, - “Man hath the light and water of an outward nature to quench the wrath of his own life, and the light and meekness of Christ, as a seed born in him, to bring forth anew the image of God.” But it is not strange, that you speak so confusedly and darkly, as you generally do, of the new birth, seeing you seem to have no conception of that faith whereby we are born again. This abundantly appears from your frank declaration, “We are neither saved by faith, nor by works.” (Spirit of Prayer, Part II., p. 36.) Flatly contrary to the declaration of St.