Wesley Corpus

“Is thine eye evil, because he is good?” The premises them being gone, what becomes of the con clusion: “So that the being ‘born into God’s peculiar kingdom depends upon a right use and application of our life and being, and is the privilege only of those wise men whose spirits attain to a habit of true holiness?” This stands without any proof at all. At best, therefore, it is extremely doubtful. But it must appear extremely absurd to those who believe, God can create spirits both wise and holy; that he can stamp any creature with what measure of holiness he sees good, at the first moment of its existence. The occasion of your running into this absurdity seems to be, that you stumbled at the very threshold. In the text under consideration, our Lord mentions two things,--the “new birth,” and the “kingdom of God.” These two your imagina tion blended into one; in consequence of which you run on with “born into his kingdom,” (a phrase never used by our Lord, nor any of his Apostles,) and a heap of other crude expressions of the same kind, all betraying that confusedness of thought which alone could prevent your usual clearness of language. Just in the same manner you go on: “Our first parents in Paradise were to form their minds to an habitual subjection to the law of God, without which they could not be received into his spiritual kingdom.” (Pages 252,253.) This runs upon the same mistaken supposition, that God could not create them boly. Certainly he could and did; and from the very moment that they were created, their minds were in subjection to the law of God, and they were members of his spiritual kingdom. “But if Adam was originally perfect in holiness,” (say, per fectly holy, made in the moral image of God,) “what occasion was there for any farther trial?” That there might be room for farther holiness and happiness. Entire holiness does not exclude growth; nor did the right state of all his faculties entitle him to that full reward which would have followed the right use of them. “Upon the whole, regeneration, or gaining habits of holiness, takes in no part of the doctrine of original sin.” (Page 254.) But regeneration is not “gaining habits of holiness;” it is quite a different thing.