Six Sermons on the Inquiry Is There Immortality in Sin and Suffering?

THE CREATION OF MAN

Where is the evidence that God acted contrary to what is, evidently, His established order in the Creation and Development of Man? In other words - Where is the evidence that Adam was, at the first period of his existence, such an intellectual and moral giant as the current theology makes him? I am persuaded there is more fancy and assumption than proof of any such giant-like knowledge and holiness as has been attributed to him. It appears to me these assumptions have grown out of that misanthropic spirit which takes delight in maligning Adam’s posterity under the pretence of honoring God, and has been the prolific parent of hatred to our fellow men, instead of that love which God requires; and its tendency is to produce despair in the minds of men of ever attaining to that knowledge and holiness which God requires. SSII 140.2