Wesley Corpus

You attempt to prove it thus: “‘In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels.’ Here we are told, (1.) That the being male and female in one person is the very nature of angels. (2.) That man shall be so too at the resurrection: Therefore he was so at first.” (Page 66.) Indeed, we are not told here, that angels are hermaphrodites. No, nor anything like it. The whole passage is: “They who are accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrec tion from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels;” (Luke xx. 35, 36;) namely, (not in being male and female, but) in this, that they “cannot die any more.” This is the indisputable meaning of the words. So this whole proof vanishes into air. You have one more thought, full as new as this: “All earthly beasts are but creaturely eruptions of the disorder that is broken out from the fallen spiritual world. So earthly ser pents are but transitory out-births of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath.” (Spirit of Love, Part II., p. 207.) How shall we reconcile this with the Mosaic account? “And God said, Let the earth bring forth cattle, and creeping thing, and beast. And God made the beast of the earth; and God saw that it was good.” (Gen. i. 24, 25.) Does anything here intimate that beasts or serpents literally crept out of the womb of sin? And what have serpents, in particular, to do with covetousness, or, indeed, with envy, unless in poetic fables? 4. Of the fall of man. “Adam had lost much of his perfection before Eve was taken out of him. “It is not good,” said God, ‘that man should be alone.” This shows that Adam had now made that not to be good, which God saw to be good when he created him.” (Spirit of Prayer, p. 74.) Nay, does it show either more or less than this, that it was not conducive to the wise ends God had in view, for man to remain single? “God then divided the human nature into a male and female creature: Otherwise man would have brought forth his own likeness out of himself, in the same manner as he had a birth from God.