The works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 06 (of 32)Wesley, John
Religion
The works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 06 (of 32)
Wesley, John
Methodist Church; Theology -- Early works to 1800; Theology -- History -- 18th century
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.
In like manner must it be with the eternal world; every thing which
comes from it, must be in its degree, a _microcosm_ of all the powers
and glories of eternity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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