The works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 06 (of 32)

by John Wesley

* But how can we know this? Only by God’s own teaching. For nothing can be truly known of God by the creature, but that which God makes known of himself.—So far as God operates in the creature, and manifests himself in it, so far it truly knows, and is taught of God.—Any other knowledge of God, however learned, high, or deep it may pretend to be, is as vain and spurious as that goodness which proceeds from something else, than God’s good Spirit living in us.

* Genius, parts and literature, however set forth with wit and rhetoric, have no affinity with divine knowledge; they can no more give it, than the lust of the eyes and the pride of life can generate humility and purity of heart. These accomplishments live and act in a sphere of their own, and have no more power of taking to themselves any living knowledge of God, than the art of painting to the life, can give the power of creating life.

* The blindness, and follies which have over-run both the antient and modern world in matters of religion, are a full proof of the capital doctrine of divine revelation, namely, that man (now the defaced image of God) is so miserably changed and fallen from his first created state, that nothing less than a new birth, can bring him again into the region of divine truth.

And hence it is, that tho’ religion has its deepest ground in the nature of man, tho’ God be essentially, present in the souls of all men, yet from the fall of Adam to the end of the world, it will be an immutable truth, that strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto divine knowledge; and none but the simple of heart, the poor in spirit, or the real followers of Christ can find it.

* But it is time to have done. I shall only trouble your Lordship with the few following remarks.—Dr. Warburton says, “He has proved that the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to be found in, nor did make a part of the Mosaic dispensation.”[¹] The Mosaic dispensation means nothing else, but a temporary ritual, and a temporary theocracy of worldly blessings and curses to support it. These are its fixed bounds within which it is confined.—Therefore, to prove that a state beyond this world, was not to be found in, nor did make a part of a state, that is confined to this world, is as easily and as vainly done, as to prove that the garden of Eden is not to be found in, nor makes a part of a map that is confined to England. And to infer that the Israelites therefore had no notion of an immortality, because it was not a part of their ritual, is no better than to infer, that the people of England can have no notion of the garden of Eden, because nothing of it is to be seen in the map of this island.—But tho’ not in the ritual, yet Moses in other parts of his books written for the instruction of those to whom he gave the ritual, has given them the fullest notice and highest proof of that godlike and immortal nature they received at their creation, shewing them to be the children of the patriarchal covenant, heirs of all the promises of eternal redemption made to their fathers from the beginning of the world. Nay, the most heavenly doctrines and precepts given by the apostles to the redeemed of Christ, as heirs of immortality, are to be found in the books of Moses.

[¹] D. L. Vol. II. page 474.

Dr. Warburton takes much pains to get rid of the only true sense of the following texts of Moses. Thus, Let us make man in our own image and likeness. From these words, he says, it is inferred, that the soul is immaterial. But he thinks Moses intimated quite another matter. And so do I; for to intimate the immateriality of the soul, by saying, that man was made in the image and likeness of God, is quite short of the sense of the words: to say, that the soul is immaterial, is saying no more, than that it is not a circle or a piece of clay, it is saying nothing at all of it but only of something that it is not. Therefore Moses cannot be supposed to intimate such a nothing as this, by the image and likeness of God. But he asserts a much higher matter, namely, that being created in the image of God, he was made a partaker of the divine nature, and therefore had not only immortality, but the riches and perfections of the Deity grounded and growing up. And this is the true ground of our eternal happiness, that is, of that eternal increase of union, perfection and glory, which the redeemed soul will find in God; it is because the image of God, being as a seed sown into it at its creation, it will to all eternity, after his admission into heaven, open more and more its divine nature, and spring forth in new and farther fruits of glory, beatitude and union with God.

Every thing that is endless, numberless in the depth of eternity, is endless and numberless in the silence of the soul; what seeing is, what hearing, feeling, &c. are in their boundless variety, and ever increasing newness of delights in eternity, these, with all their wonders, are the innate birthright and sure inheritance of every immortal godly soul. And on the other hand, the same boundless, numberless depth and growth of every tormenting, painful, frightful sensation, will open itself in every soul, that has lost its God, and is left to its own immortal life within itself.

Vain therefore, is that principle published to the world, by a celebrated philosopher of the last century, that the soul in its first created state, is a mere rasa tabula, or blank paper. A fiction, that is contradicted by all that we know of every created thing in nature.

For every creature of this world, animate or inanimate, is in its degree, a microcosm of all the powers, that are in the great world, of which it is a part. And nothing through all this universe, has in its essence, only the nature of a rasa tabula, or blank paper, but is in its kind, full of the riches, and powers of all outward nature.