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

by John Wesley

Had this elegant and most graphical description been only found in some minor poet, or school declamation, it might have been overlooked; but in a prose treatise of divinity, it ought not to pass uncensured. I know of nothing that can equal it, unless it be supposed that some ingenious anthropomorphite, reading these words, and the Lord God did unto Adam and Eve make coats of skins, and cloathed them; should thus describe the matter, “Here, God, the great artist, is represented, as having the skins of beasts before him, and with his divine hands, cutting, shaping and joining them together in forms of garments, fitted to the size and distinction of the first man and his wife.”

I may defy any one to shew, that this comment does not pay as great a regard to the letter, and do as much honour to the sense of this scripture, as the Doctor’s doth to the other text.

The sacred text, God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him the breath of life, is a short and full declaration of a most important truth, namely, that man was brought into being, in a twofold nature, having the nature of this outward world, and the nature of heaven; the former signified by his being formed of the dust of the ground, the latter, by the breath of God breathed into him. To be formed out of the dust of the ground, is the same thing, as if it had been said, that he was formed out of all the riches, powers, and virtues that are in this whole visible world. For every property of nature is hidden in the earth. And man, so far as he was designed to be a creature of this outward world, is therefore said to be formed out of the earth, because the earth is not only the treasure-house of all that is in outward nature, but is the mother of all the three other elements. And as all things of this world, whether animate or inanimate, are from the earth as their mother, so in the earth is there every power and blessing of life, to sustain every thing that has its body from it; as appears by that fruitful power, which is continually giving forth itself in all kinds of vegetable food, fitted to the wants of every living creature.

* What therefore can it be called, but a most deplorable blindness in learned reason, to consider man as making his first entrance into paradise in no better a state than that of dust and clay, formed into a dead lumpish figure of a man, for this reason, because he was said to be formed out of the dust of the ground? Blindness indeed! when it is so evident, that even now, after the curse is in the earth, yet every thing, even the poorest weed that comes out of the dust of the ground, is in a much higher state, and enters into this world with a degree of life from its mother the earth.—Had the Doctor never seen, or heard of any other things formed out of the earth, but such as our potters, and dealers in clay can make out of it, there might have been some sort of excuse for his Adam of dead clay formed out of the earth. But when every day of his life has shewn him that almost infinite variety, powers, virtues and wonders in the kingdom of vegetables, all coming out of the earth, and nourished by it; when the scripture has told him that the beasts and cattle of all kinds were formed out of the earth, and their flesh and blood from it, and their daily sustenance from its fruitful womb: it is strange to a degree of astonishment, that he should hold, that out of this rich earth, when in its paradisical state, when man, the glory of the creation, was formed out of it, and God the former, nothing would come forth, but a dead lump of clay in the figure of a man.

Again, What a total disregard has the Doctor here shewn to the very letter of scripture? The text saith, God formed man out of the dust of the ground, nothing else is ascribed to God, as his work in this matter; but the Doctor adds quite another matter as the work of God, namely, shaping and forming lumpish clay into a dead figure of a man.

And then follows another fiction equally against the letter of scripture. For he says, that AFTERWARDS, God, breathed life into it. But in the scripture account, there is not a syllable of any first, or afterwards.—Two things are spoken of the birth of man, and as they cannot be spoken both at once, so one must come after the other in the relation of them. The scripture mentions them as two distinct things; and the reason of mentioning them thus distinctly, is not to teach us, they were done at two different times, the one first, and the other afterwards, but to give us the assurance, that man came into the world in a twofold nature, the one from the heavenly breath of God, and the other from this visible world.

But the union of these two natures in the formation of man, was owing to one, and the same operation of God.—There is no sooner, or later, in the beginning of the soul, and of the body: the beginning of one, is the beginning of the other.

To suppose that man was made a dead image, and afterwards had life breathed into it, is no better philosophy, than to suppose, that God first created the vegetable creature, and afterwards added a vegetable life to it; that he first created the globe of the sun, and afterwards added heat and light to it.

God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature. What a folly to suppose, that the creature, and its life, are two separate things, that the one came first, and the other afterwards? No better, than supposing, that a circle and its roundness, are two separate things, that first comes forth the figure, and afterwards its roundness.

But the general design of the D. L. is to establish this most horrible doctrine, that Moses designedly and industriously secreted from God’s chosen people, all thought of any eternal relation that they had with God; which is the same as saying, that he designedly suppressed the one only possible foundation of true religion. For the immortality of the human nature, is the only ground of homage and regard to an invisible and eternal God. And unless man was by nature essentially related to God, and the eternal world, it would have been as unreasonable for the God of the eternal world to call man to an heavenly adoration of him, as to bid earthly flesh and blood be, and do that which angels are, and do in heaven. Therefore the first notice from an eternal God, given to man of a religious homage due to him, and the bare capacity of man to embrace such notice, is the greatest proofs that man has something of the eternal God in him. For as nothing can hunger, but that which by nature both wants and has a capacity to eat; so nothing can receive a religion relating to the eternal God, but that which has within itself, both a want and capacity to partake of the eternal world. And had not man an eternal spirit in him, as an offspring of the eternal God, he could no more want to have any intercourse with the eternal world, than a fish can want to be out of the water. Nor could any taught adoration of the one eternal God enter any further into his heart, or be of more use to him, than so much religion taught to a parrot. For man being, or believing himself to be, as merely a creature of this world, as the parrot is, could no more regard any thing, but what his earthly nature has a fondness for, than the parrot doth. Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die, would be the highest and truest philosophy, if there is no more of a divine life, or heavenly nature in man, than in the chattering sparrow. In this case, worldly craft, whether in a fox or a man, is the highest use of its natural powers. For if the earthly life is equally the all of both, earthly wisdom must be equally the perfection of them both. For it can no more be the duty of an earthly creature to be heavenly minded, than of a celestial creature to be carnally minded.