Bursting Control File message body CRLF being stripped

I created a bursting control file with a content-type="text/html" and the message body has three paragraphs in the control file.  (See below)  The bursting engine strips out the CR+LF and makes it one long string of text (see below).  I've tried adding in HTML escape characters 
 and 
 but these have no effect on the output.

bursting example:
<xapi:message id="123" to="${EMAIL_TO}" attachment="true" content-type="text/html" subject="Test Subject">
First line of text.

Second line of text.

Third line of text.
</xapi:message>

current output:
First line of text.  Second line of text.  Third line of text.