Wesley Corpus

8.) 3. “The word of the Lord is right.” (Psalm xxxiii. 4.) “The ways of the Lord are right.” (Hosea xiv. 9.) 4. “Be glad and rejcice, ye righteous.” (Psalm xxxii. 11.) “Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous.” (Psalm xxxiii. 1.) In the very same sense it occurs in numberless places. As the word is there fore properly applied to God himself, to his word, his provi dences, and his people, (in all which cases it must necessarily mean righteous,) we cannot lightly depart from this its proper signification. But you think there is a necessity of departing from it here; because “to say, God created Adam righteous, is to affirm a contradiction, or what is inconsistent with the very nature of righteousness. For a righteousness wrought in him without his knowledge or consent, would have been no righteousness at all.” (Page 161.) You may call it by any name you like better. But we must use the old name still; as being persuaded that the love of God, governing the senses, appetites, and passions, however or whenever it is wrought in the soul, is true, essential righteousness. Nay, “righteousness is right action.” Indeed it is not. Here (as we said before) is your fundamental mistake. It is a right state of mind; which differs from right action, as the cause does from the effect. Righteousness is, properly and directly, a right temper or disposition of mind, or a complex of all right tempers. For want of observing this, you say, “Adam could not act before he was created. Therefore he must exist, and use his intellectual powers, before he could be righteous.” “But, according to this reasoning,” as Dr. Jennings observes, “Christ could not be righteous at his birth.” You answer, “He ex isted before he was made flesh.” I reply, He did,--as God. But the man Christ Jesus did not. Neither, therefore, did he use his intellectual powers. According to your reasoning, then, the man Christ Jesus could not be righteous at his birth. The Doctor adds: “Nay, according to this reasoning, God could not be righteous from eternity? because he must exist be fore he was righteous.” (Jennings's Windication.) You answer: “My reasoning would hold even with respect to God, were it true that he ever did begin to exist.