Wesley Corpus

“However, this text gives no intimation that Adam’s posterity lost communion with God for his sin.” It shows that Adam did so; and all his posterity has done the same. Whence is this, unless from his sin P “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden, Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” (Gen. iii. 24.) Although God is equally present in every place, yet this was a clear token that man had not now that near communion with him which he had enjoyed before his sin. 18. Proposition. “The fall brought upon mankind God’s displeasure and curse, so as we are “by nature the children of wrath.” “The text on which this is grounded, (Eph. ii. 2, 3,) we have considered before.” (Page 150.) And those considera tions have been answered at large. You add: “How mankind could be justly brought under God’s displeasure for Adam’s sin, we cannot understand: On the contrary, we do understand, it is unjust. And therefore, unless our understanding or perception of truth be false, it must be unjust. But understanding must be the same in all beings, as far as they do understand. Therefore, if we understand that it is unjust, God understands it to be so too.” (Page 151.) Plausible enough. But let us take the argument in pieces: “How mankind could be justly brought under God’s displea sure for Adam’s sin, we cannot understand.” I allow it. Icannot understand, that is, clearly or fully comprehend, the deep of the divine judgment therein; no more than I can, how “the whole” brute “creation,” through his sin, should have been “made subject to vanity,” and should “groan together,” in weakness, in various pain, in death, “until this day.” “On the con trary, we do understand, it is unjust.” I do not understand it is. It is quite beyond my understanding. It is a depth which I cannot fathom. “Therefore, unless our understanding or perception of truth be false, it must be unjust.” Here lies the deceit. You shift the terms, and place as equivalent those which are not equivalent. Our perception of truth cannot be false; our understanding or apprehension of things may.