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Sermon 1: Salvation by Faith

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon001

01:109

An Introductory Comment [to Sermons 1-4]

As we have seen, these first four sermons in this first volume of SOSO were ‘prefixed’ to the other eight on the advice of friends, and also as proof of the consistency of Wesley’s new preaching, whether before the University of Oxford or to the masses in Moorfields. But they also serve another function, unavowed but crucial: they mark out the successive stages of Wesley’s alienation from any further career as a reformer within the university, as he made the radical shift in his commitment to the Revival as his new vocation.

Along with other ordained Oxford M.A.s, the brothers Wesley were subject to occasional appointment as preachers in the rota of university services on Sundays and saints’ days (most of them in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, but others in St. Peter’s in the East and certain college chapels).

Cf. Oxford University Statutes, tr. by G. R. M. Ward (1845), Vol. I, ‘The Laudian Statutes’ (1636), Title XVI, chs. 1-7.

Attendance upon these services was a stated obligation of ‘all doctors, masters, graduates, and scholars’, who were enjoined to ‘be present at them from their beginning to their end…’; no one was ‘permitted to wander abroad to another church, or churches, under pain of chastisement…’, etc. (ch. 10). Even though these injunctions were often honoured in the breach, such occasions were still splendid sounding boards for eloquent preachers with earnest messages.

John Wesley’s first ‘university sermon’ had been delivered in St. Mary’s on November 15, 1730, ‘On Gen. 1:27’ (see No. 141, Vol. IV); a second on July 23, 1732 (‘A Consecration Sermon’, not extant); a third on January 1, 1733 (‘The Circumcision of the Heart’; see No. 17 below). This last may be reckoned as a landmark in the development of Wesley’s theology, and must also have made a favourable general impression, for in the next two and a half years he was invited to deliver 110 six more university sermons: March 26, 1733 (Easter); April 1, 1733 (Low Sunday); May 13, 1733 (Whitsunday); February 10, 1734; June 11, 1734 (St. Barnabas’s); September 21, 1735 (St. Matthew’s). This is out of all proportion to any typical rotation, and even if Wesley was serving as substitute for other appointed preachers, that would have required the approval of the Vice-Chancellor (cf. Statutes, XVI, ch. 6). The least that this can mean is that John Wesley was more widely appreciated at Oxford as a preacher than the popular stereotypes have suggested.

This fact sheds some light on the arrangement by the university officials for Wesley to preach again in Oxford soon after his return from Georgia (probably in expectation of his resumption of his duties there); the new appointment was set for the Festival of St. Barnabas, June 11, 1738. By that time, of course, Wesley had undergone the radical change of heart and mind described in the Journal for May 24, about which his Oxford colleagues would have known nothing.

Cf. Intro., above, p.4; see also Schmidt, Wesley, I.141-95, for a careful analysis of the theological developments involved in this ‘conversion’; JWJ, Feb. 7-May 28, sheds light on Wesley’s mood as he revised his sermon for this crucial new occasion.

Meanwhile, he had already tested his ‘new gospel’ (‘salvation by faith alone’) in several churches in and near London, and his presentation of it had almost invariably stirred up more offence than conversions.

See JWJ, Feb. 5 (Milbank, Westminster); Feb. 12 (St. Andrew’s, Holborn); Feb. 26 (thrice in London, the first, in St. Lawrence Jewry, being the most blessed ‘because it gave the most offence’); Mar. 6 (after being counselled by Böhler to ‘preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith’); Mar. 17, 26, and 27; Apr. 2, 25, 26; May 7, 9, 14, and 21 (this last being also the day of Charles Wesley’s experience of assurance).

In most of these instances, as he records with a trace of self-righteousness, he had been thenceforth barred from this pulpit and that. The Aldersgate experience had not produced a new doctrine, but a new resolution to make the most of his opportunities to expound the one to which he had already come.

He was by now very well aware of the controversial character of his message, and he could not have expected a sympathetic hearing at Oxford. ‘Salvation by Faith’ was, however, the first public occasion after his ‘Aldersgate’ experience for a positive evangelical manifesto. It is worth noting that its Moravian substance is qualified by echoes from the Edwardian Homilies, as in the claim that salvation involved a power not to commit sin (posse non peccare). There is also an obvious Anglican nuance in the definition of saving faith presented here.

When his turn as university preacher came round again (July 25, 1741), the Revival was in full swing and Wesley had found in its 111leadership an alternative career. He had not only begun to shift his loyalties from Oxford to his own Societies; he had also become one of Oxford’s harsher critics.

This may be seen in the Latin and English versions of a sermon on Isa. 1:21 which he had first prepared in 1739, probably in connection with his exercises for the B.D. degree which, as Fellow of Lincoln College, he was expected to take in due course (see below, Nos. 150, 151).

John Gambold had already advised him that he would face a hostile audience, but Wesley was in no mood to mollify them.

See JWJ, June 18, 1741: ‘All here [Gambold had said of the Oxford community] are so prejudiced that they will mind nothing you say.’ Wesley’s reaction: ‘I know that. However, I am to deliver my own soul, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear’ (one of Wesley’s standard formulae of alienation). A fortnight later even Wesley and Gambold had come to a parting of their ways (cf. JWJ, July 2). Earlier, he had finally got round to reading ‘that celebrated book, Martin Luther’s Comment on the Epistle to the Galatians’; his negative reaction to it was intemperate (see JWJ, June 15).

Indeed, the whole Journal record for June and July reflects a mounting tension, as if Wesley was aware of the crisis. On June 28 he preached ‘at Charles Square [London], to the largest congregation that, I believe, was ever seen there, on “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” [cf. Acts 26:28]’. This was the sermon that, revised and with its new ‘application’ explicitly aimed at Oxford, he delivered on the festival day of St. James the Apostle, July 25.

Its theme—the radical difference between nominal and real Christianity—was already a familiar one in Puritan preaching;

Cf. below, No. 2, The Almost Christian, proem and n.

it was, however, already conventional to ignore the text’s plain reference to Agrippa’s being almost persuaded to become a Christian rather than to his already being a nominal one. Wesley draws out the distinctions between the two stages of Christian experience (‘almost’ and ‘altogether’). Part I paints a vivid picture of the high-minded hypocrite (the ‘almost Christian’) and concludes with Wesley’s confession ‘that this had been his own state in all his days at Oxford’ (I.13). Part II delineates the ‘altogether Christian’ according to his new conceptions, and openly expresses doubt that there are many such in Oxford even now (II.7-9). There are no records of this sermon’s reception on this occasion, but it would not have been lost on his Methodist readers that their leader had bearded the Anglican establishment in one of its citadels and had survived.

In the following year Charles Wesley came up for an appointment as preacher in St. Mary’s on April 4, 1742. His evangelical conversion had preceded his brother’s, either on May 3, 1738 (when ‘it pleased God to open his eyes so that he saw clearly what was the nature of [saving] 112faith…’) or on May 19 (when he ‘had found rest to his soul’).

Cf. both CWJ and JWJ for these dates and experiences.

In any case, Charles was more exuberant in temperament and rhetoric than his elder brother.

See above, p. 2, n. 6: ‘…in connection I beat you; but in strong, pointed sentences you beat me.’

He had already preached a sermon on justification ‘before the university [July 1739] with great boldness…’.

CWJ, Sunday, July 1, 1739; this is followed (on Monday) by a note that the Vice-Chancellor and ‘all were against [that] sermon as liable to be misunderstood’. Had this been Charles’s reinforcing sequel to John’s Salvation by Faith?

His bidding prayer

In the unpublished MS of a sermon on Rom. 3:27-28.

indicates that this preaching service had been held in Christ Church Cathedral rather than St. Mary’s. On June 30, 1740, he reports having spent a week in Oxford ‘preaching repentance’ but also in discovering that ‘learned Gallio cared for none of these things’.

See Acts 18:17 for this analogy between a Roman proconsul’s and Oxford’s indifference.

Now, he was scheduled to preach in St. Mary’s itself—for the first and last time.

Charles’s message, with a barrage of invidious questions for its climax, fell largely on deaf ears; this is reported by a visitor who was in the audience: Thomas Salmon, a popular historian.

‘The times of the day the University go to this church are ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, on Sundays and holidays, the sermon usually lasting about half an hour. But when I happened to be at Oxford, in 1742, Mr. Wesley, the Methodist, of Christ Church, entertained his audience two hours, having insulted and abused all degrees from the highest to the lowest, was in a manner hissed out of the pulpit by the lads;’ Thomas Salmon, A Foreigner’s Companion through the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford (1748), p. 25, and quoted in CWJ, Apr. 15, 1750.

Charles Wesley’s denial of Salmon’s report appears in his Journal for April 15, 1750, and is emphatic;

‘And it would have been high time for them to do so, if the historian [Salmon] said true. But, unfortunately for him, I measured the time by my watch and it was within the hour; I abused neither high nor low, as my sermon in print will prove; neither was I hissed out of the pulpit or treated with the least incivility, either by young or old….’

he may have been right about the time, since the sermon as printed can be read aloud in thirty minutes. On the other hand, Charles’s accusations must surely have aroused resentment in his auditory, and Salmon would have been a competent judge of that. In any case this sermon would have persuaded any Methodist reader of Charles’s wholehearted identification with his brother’s cause and theirs. ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’ is then a lively evangelical statement, a personal identification with the Revival and a valedictory to Oxford.

By August 1744 the Revival was gaining momentum, the network (‘connexion’) of the Methodist Societies had extended over into Wales 113and had come under serious persecution by English mobs, the first ‘conference’ had just been held (June 25-29), and John Wesley had found his true mission in life. Even so, his turn as university preacher came up yet again for August 24 (another festival, this one for St. Bartholomew). This, of course, was an anniversary of the notorious Massacre of Paris (in 1572) and, again, of the Great Ejectment of the Nonconformists in England in 1662, in which both of Wesley’s grandfathers had suffered. Benjamin Kennicott’s explanation of Wesley’s appointment was that ‘as no clergyman [could] avoid his turn, so the university can refuse none; otherwise Mr. Wesley would not have preached.’

At this time, Kennicott was an undergraduate at Wadham College, but he was destined to set Old Testament studies in England upon a new level with his great Vetus Testamentum cum Variis Lectionibus (Vol. 1, 1776; Vol. 2, 1780). His account of Wesley’s sermon appeared in WMM, 1866, 47-48.

Actually, though, that rule was flexible; there was ample precedent for substitutions. One must wonder, therefore, how the appointment came about. Was it a gesture of academic freedom? Did Wesley have a stronger base in Oxford than would appear from the record? There is no indication that he had claimed his turn as by right, but it would never have crossed his mind to avoid it. Thus, the stage was set for a confrontation—and another valedictory.

Parts I-III of Scriptural Christianity constitute a positive account of Wesley’s conception of the ‘order of salvation’ (Part I), an interesting missiological perspective (Part II), and an early statement of Wesley’s eschatological ideas (Part III)—the sum of these parts is evangelical and Anglican. The mood changes in Part IV where he comes to his ‘plain and practical application’. Here the judgment is passed, with scant charity, that Oxford’s hypocrisies are an intolerable offence to God and a general hindrance to the Christian mission. Kennicott’s uncharitable suspicion was that this final salvo ‘was what [Wesley] had been preparing for all along…’:

“[In the conclusion] he fired his address with so much zeal and unbounded satire as quite spoiled what otherwise might have been turned to great advantage…. I liked some of his freedom: such as calling the generality of young townsmen ‘a generation of triflers’…. But considering how many shining lights are here that are the glory of the Christian cause, his sacred censure was much too flaming and strong and his charity much too weak…. Having summed up the measure of our iniquities, he concluded with a lifted up eye in this most solemn form, ‘It is time for thee, Lord, to lay to thine hand’—words full of such presumption and seeming imprecation that they gave an universal shock…. Had these things been omitted and his censures moderated, I think his discourse, as to style and delivery, would have been uncommonly pleasing to others as well as to myself. He is allowed to be a man of great parts, and that by the excellent Dean 114of Christ Church;

John Conybeare, who succeeded Joseph Butler as Bishop of Bristol, and author of Defence of Revealed Religion… (1732), one of the eighteenth century’s more famous replies to Tindal and other deists.

for the day he preached the dean generously said of him, ‘John Wesley will always be thought a man of sound sense, though an enthusiast!’ However, the Vice-Chancellor

Walter Hodges, Provost of Oriel.

sent for the sermon, and I hear that the heads of college intend to shew their resentment.”

Another eyewitness report of the same event was recorded by William Blackstone, already a Fellow of All Souls and on his way to the fame he would earn as author of his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69). In a letter to a family friend (Aug. 28) the young Blackstone reports on Wesley’s sermon, which seems to have become the talk of the town:

“We were last Friday [Aug. 24] entertained at St. Mary’s by a curious sermon from Wesley the Methodist. Among other equally modest particulars, he informed us, 1st, that there was not one Christian among all the Heads of Houses; 2ndly, that pride, gluttony, avarice, luxury, sensuality and drunkenness were general characteristics of all Fellows of Colleges, who were useless to a proverbial uselessness. Lastly, that the younger part of the University were a generation of triflers, all of them perjured and none of them of any religion at all. His notes were demanded by the Vice-Chancellor, but on mature deliberation it has been thought proper to punish him by a mortifying neglect….

Cf. the facsimile of the letter in John Fletcher Hurst, The History of Methodism, II.604-5.

”

That ‘mortifying neglect’ began at once. Charles Wesley records that ‘we [John Wesley, Charles Wesley, Messrs. Piers and Meriton] walked back in form, the little band of us four; for of the rest durst none join himself to us.’

Cf. CWJ, Aug. 24, 1744.

Methodists, then and later, could see no proper warrant for anyone to have taken offence at such a sermon; after all, Wesley had simply preached the gospel and applied it ‘close and home’. Thomas Jackson’s later comment on it is typical:

“ Scriptural Christianity contains a beautiful and forcible description of spiritual religion, with the manner by which it is acquired by individuals and then spreads from one to another until it shall cover the earth. The concluding application to the heads of colleges and halls, to the fellows and tutors and to the body of undergraduates, assumes their general and wide departure from the true Christian character, and [their] abandonment to formality, worldliness, levity, and sloth. It contains nothing sarcastic and irritating, nothing that was designed to give unnecessary pain or offence; but is marked throughout by seriousness, fidelity, and tender affection.

The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley (1841), I.403.

”

115John Wesley himself was much more of a realist and also more aware of his own intention:

“I preached, I suppose the last time, at St. Mary’s. Be it so. I am now clear of the blood of these men. I have fully delivered my own soul.” “The Beadle came to me afterwards and told me the Vice-Chancellor had sent him for my notes. I sent them without delay, not without admiring the wise providence of God. Perhaps few men of note would have given a sermon of mine the reading if I had put it into their hands; but by this means it came to be read, probably more than once, by every man of eminence in the University.

JWJ, Aug. 24, 1744.

”

That he never regretted the affair or its consequences would appear from a complacent recollection of it in 1781 in ‘A Short History of the People called Methodists’:

“Friday, August 24, St. Bartholomew’s Day, I preached for the last time before the University of Oxford. I am now clear of the blood of these men. I have fully delivered my own soul. And I am well pleased that it should be the very day on which, in the last century,

Viz., the Great Ejectment in 1662.

near two thousand burning and shining lights were put out at one stroke. Yet what a wide difference is there between their case and mine! They were turned out of house and home, and all that they had; whereas I am only hindered from preaching, without any other loss; and that in a kind of honourable manner; it being determined that when my next turn to preach came they would pay another person to preach for me. And so they did twice or thrice, even to the time that I resigned my fellowship.

§30. See Vol. 9 of this edn. and Bibliog, No. 420.

”

What would have been most obvious to his Methodist readers was the heroic stature of their leader who had preached ‘plain truth’ to academic people to their face and at the cost of rejection by them. What clearer proof could there be of his fidelity to the gospel under all circumstances and of his total commitment in his ministry among them? It was no small matter for a tenured don to have forsaken his privileged status in a class-conscious English society in exchange for ‘The Foundery’, ‘The New Room’, and a career among the masses. They knew, all too well, how rudely the Methodists had been treated, to the point of savage persecution, condoned by magistrates and clergy alike in the years between 1739 and 1746; they could still foresee dangerous days ahead. Scriptural Christianity as published was an evangelical proclamation; it was also an act of defiance.

These ‘prefixed’ sermons, therefore, serve a particular junction in SOSO as a bloc: they proclaim the Wesleyan message in prophetic terms, and they signify Wesley’s transference of his allegiance from the 116Academy to his new vocation as a preacher of ‘plain truth for plain people’. Together they dispel any impression of inconsistency. His message in St. Mary’s had been the same as it was now in Moorfields. Thus, these sermons could serve as a multifaceted introductory quartet to the larger endeavour of Sermons on Several Occasions.

The edited text of Salvation by Faith is based upon the first edition of 1738. For a stemma illustrating its publishing history through its thirty-one editions in Wesley’s lifetime, together with substantive variant readings, see Vol. IV, Appendix. See also Bibliog, No. 10.

The text for The Almost Christian is based upon its first edition, 1741. For a stemma and table of variant readings through the twenty-eight extant editions during Wesley’s lifetime, see Vol. IV, Appendix. See also Bibliog, No. 50.

The first edition of ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’ followed here, was published shortly after the sermon itself was preached in 1742. For a stemma and variant readings from the fifty-two extant editions in Charles Wesley’s lifetime, see Vol. IV, Appendix. See also Bibliog, No. 59.

Scriptural Christianity was also published shortly after its delivery in 1744 and ran through at least fifteen editions in Wesley’s lifetime. For a stemma of these editions and a list of variant readings, see Vol. IV, Appendix. See also Bibliog, No. 92.

Salvation by Faith Sermon preached at St. Mary’s, Oxford,
before the University,
on June 11, 1738

The half-title in the first edition of SOSO, Vol. I (1746), and a footnote in Works I.15, record the date as June 18, 1738—an obvious misremembrance, since Wesley was in Germany then; cf. JWJ.

Ephesians 2:8

By grace ye are saved through faith.

One of Wesley’s favourite texts. In No. 16, ‘The Means of Grace’, II.6, he speaks of its theme as ‘that great foundation of the whole Christian building’; cf. John Telford, The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley (London, Wesleyan Methodist Book Room, 1900), pp. 76, 79-80, and also John Hampson’s comment (Memoirs, I.199) that Wesley’s definition of faith here, based upon the Homilies, remained constant thereafter.

11. All the blessings which God hath bestowed upon man are of his mere grace, bounty, or favour: his free, undeserved favour, favour altogether undeserved, man having no claim to the least of his mercies.

See Gen 32:10.

It was free grace that ‘formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him a living soul’,

Cf. Gen. 2:7.

and stamped on that soul the image of God,

This metaphor from Gen. 1:27 is the basic one in Wesley’s anthropology; it first appears in the MS sermon on the Genesis text (see below, No. 141, ‘The Image of God’, dated 1730) and is often repeated throughout the corpus. Cf. Nos. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’, I.2; 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, I.1-2; 6, ‘The Righteousness of Faith’, II.9; 12, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, §16; 14, The Repentance of Believers, III.2; 20, The Lord Our Righteousness, I.2; 22, ‘Sermon on the Mount, II’, II.6; 44, Original Sin, III.5; 45, ‘The New Birth’, I.1; 57, ‘On the Fall of Man’, II.6; 60, ‘The General Deliverance’, I.1, 2, III.11, 12; 62, ‘The End of Christ’s Coming’, I.7; 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’, II.1; 128, ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’, I.2; 129, ‘Heavenly Treasure in Earthen Vessels’, §2, I.1; 135, ‘On Guardian Angels’, II.2; 139, ‘On the Sabbath’, I.2; 146, ‘The One Thing Needful’, I.2, III.1; cf. also his letter to Richard Morgan, Jan. 15, 1734, and to William Dodd, Mar. 12, 1756. See also Survey (1784), IV. 54-55.

The phrase denotes for Wesley the human capacity for knowing and responding to God’s prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying activities and, in this respect, is equivalent to his other phrase about our ‘spiritual sensorium’ (cf. No. 10, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’, I.12 and n.). The restoration of our corrupted and disabled ‘image’ to its pristine capacity is, indeed, the goal of Wesley’s ordo salutis.

and ‘put all things under 118his feet’.

Ps. 8:6; a rare quotation of a psalm from the AV. See also 1 Cor. 15:27; Eph. 1:22.

The same free grace continues to us, at this day, life, and breath, and all things.

Acts 17:25.

For there is nothing we are, or have, or do, which can deserve the least thing at God’s hand. ‘All our works thou, O God, hast wrought in us.’

Cf. Isa. 26:12.

These therefore are so many more instances of free mercy: and whatever righteousness may be found in man, this also is the gift of God.

22. Wherewithal then shall a sinful man atone for any the least of his sins? With his own works? No. Were they ever so many or holy, they are not his own, but God’s. But indeed they are all unholy and sinful themselves, so that every one of them needs a fresh atonement. Only corrupt fruit grows on a corrupt tree.

See Matt. 7:17, 18; 12:33.

And his heart is altogether corrupt and abominable, being ‘come short of the glory of God’,

Rom. 3:23.

the glorious righteousness at first impressed on his soul, after the image of his great Creator. Therefore having nothing, neither righteousness nor works, to plead, his ‘mouth is utterly stopped before God’.

Cf. Rom. 3:19.

33. If then sinful man find favour with God, it is ‘grace upon grace’ (χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος).

John 1:16. Orig. Χάρις ἀντι Χάριτος, in the early editions; the Greek parenthesis was omitted from later separate editions (beginning in 1743), and from all the collected editions of the sermons.

If God vouchsafe still to pour fresh blessings upon us—yea, the greatest of all blessings, salvation—what can we say to these things but ‘Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift!’

2 Cor. 9:15.

And thus it is. Herein ‘God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died’

Rom. 5:8.

to save us. ‘By grace’, then, ‘are ye saved through faith.’

Cf. Eph. 2:8.

Grace is the source, faith the condition, of salvation.

Now, that we fall not short of the grace of God, it concerns us carefully to inquire:

I. What faith it is through which we are saved.

II. What is the salvation which is through faith.

III. How we may answer some objections.

119I. What faith it is through which we are saved.

11. And, first, it is not barely the faith of a heathen. Now God requireth of a heathen to believe ‘that God is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him’;

Cf. Heb. 11:6.

and that he is to be sought by ‘glorifying him as God by giving him thanks for all things’,

Cf. Luke 2:20.

and by a careful practice of moral virtue, of justice, mercy, and truth, toward their fellow-creatures. A Greek or Roman, therefore, yea, a Scythian or Indian, was without excuse if he did not believe thus much: the being and attributes of God, a future state of reward and punishment, and the obligatory nature of moral virtue. For this is barely the faith of a heathen.

For other uses of this phrase and for Wesley‘s denials of the efficacy of natural religion, see Nos. 2, The Almost Christian; 9, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’; 54, ‘On Eternity’, §17; 69, ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge’, III.2; 74, ‘Of the Church’, §11; 106, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:6’, I.3, II.2. See also his Notes on Acts 17:28, and Survey II.276. For Susanna Wesley’s comments on this topic, see John Newton, Susanna Wesley and the Puritan Tradition in Methodism (London, Epworth Press, 1968), p. 149. Cf. also South, Sermon XIX, on Rom. 1:20, ‘Sinners Inexcusable from Natural Religion Only’, §IV, in Sermons, I.313 ff.

22. Nor, secondly, is it the faith of a devil,

This phrase was familiar from the Homily ‘Of Salvation’, Pt. III, Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches… (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1840),p. 26 (hereafter cited as Homilies). For other instances of Wesley’s insistence that orthodoxy may be no better than ‘the faith of a devil’, cf. Nos. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, I.6; and 150, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’, I.9; see also his letter to Richard Tompson, July 25, 1755.

though this goes much farther than that of a heathen. For the devil believes, not only that there is a wise and powerful God, gracious to reward and just to punish, but also that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, the Saviour of the world. So we find him declaring in express terms: ‘I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.’

Luke 4:34.

Nor can we doubt but that unhappy spirit believes all those words which came out of the mouth of the Holy One; yea, and whatsoever else was written by those holy men of old, of two of whom he was compelled to give that glorious testimony, ‘These men are the servants of the most high God, who show unto you the way of salvation.’

Cf. Acts 16:17.

Thus much then the great enemy of God and man believes, and trembles in believing, that ‘God was made manifest in the flesh;’

Cf. 1 Tim. 3:16.

that he will ‘tread all enemies under his feet’;

Cf. 1 Cor. 15:25.

and 120that ‘all Scripture was given by inspiration of God.’

Cf. 2 Tim. 3:16.

Thus far goeth the faith of a devil.

33. Thirdly, the faith through which we are saved, in that sense of the word which will hereafter be explained, is not barely that which the apostles themselves had while Christ was yet upon earth;

An allusion to the doctrines of Robert Sandeman and John Glas, that faith in the apostolic kerygma in itself was salvific. Cf. No. 43, The Scripture Way of Salvation, II.3.

though they so believed on him as to ‘leave all and follow him’;

Cf. Mark 10:28, etc.

although they had then power to work miracles, ‘to heal all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease’;

Matt. 10:1.

yea, they had then ‘power and authority over all devils’:

Luke 9:1.

and which is beyond all this, were sent by their Master to ‘preach the kingdom of God’.

Luke 9:2; the text of 1746 ends here.

Yet after their return from doing all these mighty works their Lord himself terms them, ‘a faithless generation’.

Luke 9:41.

He tells them ‘they could not cast out a devil, because of their unbelief.’

Cf. Luke 9:40; Mark 6:6.

And when long after, supposing they had some already, they said unto him, ‘Increase our faith,’ he tells them plainly that of this faith they had none at all, no, not as a grain of mustard seed: ‘The Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the roots, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.’

Luke 17:5-6.

44. What faith is it then through which we are saved? It may be answered: first, in general, it is a faith in Christ—Christ, and God through Christ, are the proper object

In the text of 1771 (and several later edns., but not that of 1787) ‘object’ is altered to ‘objects’. The 1771 edition is notorious for its careless printing and, in any case, it would have seemed natural to a printer to use a plural object after a plural verb. It is scarcely probable that Wesley would have meant ‘objects’ in this context since the theological connotation would have been di-theistic. ‘Object’, then, is more probably Wesley’s own usage.

of it. Herein therefore it is sufficiently, absolutely, distinguished from the faith either of ancient or modern heathens. And from the faith of a devil it is fully distinguished by this—it is not barely a speculative, rational thing, a cold, lifeless assent, a train of ideas in the head; but also a disposition of the heart. For thus saith the Scripture, ‘With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.’ And, ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe with thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’

Rom. 10:9, 10.

5 1215. And herein does it differ from that faith which the apostles themselves had while our Lord was on earth, that it acknowledges the necessity and merit of his death, and the power of his resurrection. It acknowledges his death as the only sufficient means of redeeming man from death eternal, and his resurrection as the restoration of us all to life and immortality; inasmuch as he ‘was delivered for our sins, and rose again for our justification’.

Cf. Rom. 4:25.

Christian faith is then not only an assent to the whole gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance on the blood of Christ, a trust in the merits of his life, death, and resurrection;

This is close to the definition of ‘lively faith’ in the Homily ‘Of Faith’, Pt. I (Homilies, p. 30). The crucial distinction, in both places, is between faith as ‘assent’ and faith as ‘trust’. See also An Earnest Appeal, §59 (11: 68-69 of this edn.).

a recumbency upon him as our atonement and our life, as given for us, and living in us. It is a sure confidence which a man hath in God, that through the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he reconciled to the favour of God; and in consequence hereof

The first edition here reads: ‘It is a confidence in the goodness of God, through the Son of his love, living, dying, and interceding for us. It is an acceptance of him in all his offices, as our Prophet, our Priest, and our King.’ No copy of the 2nd edition survives, but the 3rd (1740) turns back again to the language of the Homily ‘Of Salvation’, Pt. III (Homilies, pp. 26-27).

a closing with him

‘Closing with Christ’ was a favourite Puritan metaphor. Cf. Ralph Erskine, Law-Death, Gospel-Life: Or, the Death of Legal Righteousness, the Life of Gospel-Holiness (Edinburgh, 1724); also Matthew Mead, Ἐν ὀλίγῳ Χριστιανός, the Almost Christian Discovered (1661). Similar usages may be seen in William Allen, The Glass of Justification (1658), p. 26; Richard Alleine, Vindiciae Pietatis (1676), p. 176; William Guthrie, The Christian’s Great Interest (1766), pp. 103, 118-19; Thomas Ridgeley, A Body of Divinity (1733), p. 551. See also George Whitefield’s letter to Dr. Doddridge in Seymour, I.202.

and cleaving to him as our ‘wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption’

1 Cor. 1:30. The edition of 1771 omits the phrase following the scriptural quotation.

or, in one word, our salvation.

II. What salvation it is which is through this faith is the second thing to be considered.

11. And, first, whatsoever else it imply, it is a present salvation. It is something attainable, yea, actually attained on earth, by those who are partakers of this faith. For thus saith the Apostle to the believers at Ephesus, and in them to the believers of all ages, not, ‘Ye shall be’ (though that also is true), but ‘Ye are saved through faith.’

Cf. Eph. 2:8.

22. Ye are saved (to comprise all in one word) from sin. This is 122the salvation which is through faith. This is that great salvation foretold by the angel before God brought his first-begotten into the world: ‘Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.’

Matt. 1:21.

And neither here nor in other parts of Holy Writ is there any limitation or restriction. All his people, or as it is elsewhere expressed, all that believe in him, he will save from all their sins:

See Acts 10:43, etc.

from original and actual, past and present sin, of the flesh and of the spirit. Through faith that is in him they are saved both from the guilt and from the power of it.

33. First, from the guilt of all past sin. For whereas ‘all the world is guilty before God’;

Cf. Rom. 3:19.

insomuch that should he ‘be extreme to mark what is done amiss, there is none that could abide it’;

Ps. 130:3 (BCP).

and whereas ‘by the law is only the knowledge of sin’, but no deliverance from it, so that ‘by fulfilling the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified in his sight’; now ‘the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ‘, ‘is manifested unto all that believe’. Now they are ‘justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. Him God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for (or by) the remission of the sins that are past.‘

Cf. Rom. 3:20-25.

Now hath Christ ‘taken away the curse of the law, being made a curse for us‘.

Cf. Gal. 3:13.

He hath ‘blotted out the handwriting that was against us, taking it out of the way, nailing it to his cross’.

Cf. Col. 2:14.

‘There is therefore no condemnation now to them which believe in Christ Jesus.’

Cf. Rom. 8:1.

44. And being saved from guilt, they are saved from fear. Not indeed from a filial fear of offending, but from all servile fear, from that ‘fear which hath torment’,

Cf. 1 John 4:18.

from fear of punishment, from fear of the wrath of God, whom they now no longer regard as a severe master, but as an indulgent Father. ‘They have not received again the spirit of bondage, but the Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, Abba, Father: the Spirit itself also bearing witness with their spirit, that they are the children of God.’

Cf. Rom. 8:15-16.

They are also saved from the fear, though not from the possibility, of falling away

Cf. 2 Thess. 2:3. In opposition to all notions of final perseverance Wesley stresses the risks of faith and the dangers of lapsing, even from peak experiences of faith. Cf. Nos. 21, ‘Sermon on the Mount, I’, II.4; 24, ‘Sermon on the Mount, IV’, I.9; 61, ‘The Mystery of Iniquity’, §30; 76, ‘On Perfection’, proem; 86, A Call to Backsliders, I.2(3). For the earliest instances of its use see Nos. 133, ‘Death and Deliverance’ (Oct 1, 1725), ¶16; and 149, ‘On Love’ (Feb. 20, 1737), §1.See also Predestination Calmly Considered, §74; Serious Thoughts Upon the Perseverance of the Saints (Bibliog, No. 192, Vol. 12 of this edn.); JWJ, May 6, 1742; May 6, 1785; and Wesley’s Notes on this text as well as on Heb. 6:6.

from the grace of God, and coming short of the 123great and precious promises. They are ‘sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of their inheritance’.

Eph. 1:13. This sentence is omitted from the edition of 1771.

Thus have they ‘peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…. They rejoice in hope of the glory of God…. And the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts through the Holy Ghost which is given unto them.’

Cf. Rom. 5:1, 2, 5.

And hereby they are ‘persuaded’ (though perhaps not all at all times, nor with the same fullness of persuasion) ‘that neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate them from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

Cf. Rom. 8:38-39.

55. Again, through this faith they are saved from the power of sin as well as from the guilt of it.

In most separate editions the following passage is added: ‘Indeed “the infection of nature doth remain: which hath in itself the nature of sin” [cf. Art. IX, ‘Of Original or Birth Sin’ in The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion; for minor variants, see Appendix, ‘Wesley’s Text’, Vol. IV]. For it is “a coming short of the glory of God” [cf. Rom. 3:23]. And St. John accordingly declares, not only that “if a man say he hath not sinned he maketh God a liar” [cf. 1 John 1:10], but also, “If we say we have no sin” now remaining “we deceive ourselves” [1 John 1:8]. Many infirmities likewise do remain, whereby we are daily subject to what are called sins of infirmity. And doubtless they are in some sense sins, as being “transgressions of the perfect law” [cf. 1 John 3:4]. And with regard to these it may be said of us all our lives that “in many things we offend all” [Jas. 3:2]. But this notwithstanding, the same Apostle declares….’

So the Apostle declares, ‘Ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not.’

[1 John] chap. 3, ver. 5-6.

Again, ‘Little children, let no man deceive you…. He that committeth sin is of the devil.’

1 John 3:7-8.

‘Whosoever believeth is born of God.’

1 John 5:1.

And, ‘Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.’

1 John 3:9.

Once more, ‘We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.’

Chap. 5, ver. 18.

6 1246. He that is by faith born of God sinneth not,

I.e., ‘sinneth not’, deliberately or intentionally. It is a crucial point for Wesley to distinguish between ‘sins properly so called’ (intentional violations of known laws of God) and indeliberate ‘sins’ of various sorts. Cf. below, No. 13, On Sin in Believers (intro.).

(1), by any habitual sin, for all habitual sin is sin reigning; but sin cannot reign in any that believeth.

For other references to ‘sin remaining but not reigning’, cf. No. 13, On Sin in Believers, I.6 and n.

Nor, (2), by any wilful sin; for his will, while he abideth in the faith, is utterly set against all sin, and abhorreth it as deadly poison. Nor, (3), by any sinful desire; for he continually desireth the holy and perfect will of God;

Rom. 12:2.

and any unholy desire

All editions except Works (1771) read, ‘and any tendency to an unholy desire’.

he by the grace of God stifleth in the birth. Nor, (4), doth he sin by infirmities, whether in act, word, or thought; for his infirmities have no concurrence of his will; and without this they are not properly sins. Thus, ‘He that is born of God doth not commit sin.’

1 John 3:9. The Sermons (1746) and the editions stemming from it omit here a passage present in most single editions: ‘hath sin in him, but’.

And though he cannot say he hath not sinned, yet now ‘he sinneth not’.

Cf. 1 John 5:18.

77. This then is the salvation which is through faith, even in the present world: a salvation from sin and the consequences of sin, both often expressed in the word ‘justification’, which, taken in the largest sense, implies a deliverance from guilt and punishment, by the atonement of Christ actually applied to the soul of the sinner now believing on him, and a deliverance from the power of sin,

Works (1771) alters ‘the whole body of sin’ to ‘the power of sin’.

through Christ ‘formed in his heart’.

Cf. Gal. 4:19; the first and other early editions have ‘Christ gradually “formed in the heart”’.

So that he who is thus justified or saved by faith is indeed ‘born again’. He is ‘born again of the Spirit’

Cf. John 3:3, 5, etc. See also Nos. 14, The Repentance of Believers, III.2 and n.; and 45, ‘The New Birth’.

unto a new ‘life which is hid with Christ in God’.

Cf. Col. 3:3. All editions except the Works (1771) add here: ‘He is a new creature: old things are passed away; all things in him are become new’ (2 Cor. 5:17).

And as a ‘newborn babe he gladly receives the ἄδολον, the sincere milk of the word, and grows thereby’;

Cf. 1 Pet. 2:2.

‘going on in the might of the Lord his God’,

Cf. Eph. 6:10.

‘from faith to faith’,

Rom. 1:17.

‘from grace to grace’,

Cf. John 1:16.

‘until at length he comes unto a 125perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’.

Cf. Eph. 4:13.

III. The first usual objection to this is,

11. That to preach salvation or justification by faith only is to preach against holiness and good works. To which a short answer might be given: it would be so if we spake, as some do, of a faith which was separate from these. But we speak of a faith which is not so, but necessarily productive of all good works and all holiness.

The first edition reads: ‘But we speak of a faith which is necessarily inclusive of all good works and all holiness.’ See Appendix ‘Wesley’s Text’, Vol. IV, for full details of variants. Notice the emphatic correlation here between ‘faith alone’ and ‘good works’, and this within days after ‘Aldersgate’.

22. But it may be of use to consider it more at large: especially since it is no new objection, but as old as St. Paul’s time, for even then it was asked, ‘Do we not make void the law through faith?’

Cf. Rom. 3:31. See also the later sermons (Nos. 35, 36) on ‘The Law Established through Faith’, Discourses I and II, both on this text and, together, expounding the same conjunction of saving faith and good works as its fruitage.

We answer, first, all who preach not faith do manifestly make void the law, either directly and grossly, by limitations and comments that eat out all the spirit of the text; or indirectly, by not pointing out the only means whereby it is possible to perform it. Whereas, secondly, ‘We establish the law’, both by showing its full extent and spiritual meaning, and by calling all to that living way whereby ‘the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in them’.

Cf. Rom.8:4.

These, while they trust in the blood of Christ alone, use all the ordinances which he hath appointed, do all the ‘good works which he had before prepared that they should walk therein’,

Cf. Eph. 2:10.

and enjoy and manifest all holy and heavenly tempers, even the same ‘mind that was in Christ Jesus’.

Cf. Phil. 2:5.

33. But does not preaching this faith lead men into pride? We answer, accidentally it may. Therefore ought every believer to be earnestly cautioned (in the words of the great Apostle): ‘Because of unbelief the first branches were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear. If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his 126goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.’

100

Cf. Rom. 11:20-22.

And while he continues therein, he will remember those words of St. Paul, foreseeing and answering this very objection: ‘Where is boasting, then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay; but by the law of faith.’

Rom. 3:27.

If a man were justified by his works, he would have whereof to glory. But there is no glorying for him ‘that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly’.

Rom. 4:5.

To the same effect are the words both preceding and following the text: ‘God, who is rich in mercy, …even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved), …that he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace ye are saved through faith: and that not of yourselves.’

Eph. 2:4-5, 7-8.

Of yourselves cometh neither your faith nor your salvation. ‘It is the gift of God,’

101

Eph. 2:8.

the free, undeserved gift—the faith through which ye are saved, as well as the salvation which he of his own good pleasure, his mere favour, annexes thereto. That ye believe is one instance of his grace; that believing, ye are saved, another. ‘Not of works, lest any man should boast.’

102

Eph. 2:9.

For all our works, all our righteousness, which were before our believing, merited nothing of God but condemnation, so far were they from deserving faith, which therefore, whenever given, is not ‘of works’. Neither is salvation of the works we do when we believe. For ‘it is’ then ‘God that worketh in us’.

103

Cf. 1 Cor. 12:6; Eph. 3:20; Phil. 2:13.

And, therefore, that he giveth us a reward for what he himself worketh only commendeth the riches of his mercy, but leaveth us nothing whereof to glory.

104

Cf. No. 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’, I.1-4, III.6-7, where the identical point is made once again, much later (1785). For Wesley’s other uses of the in se est theme, cf. above, Intro., pp. 72-73.

44. However, may not the speaking thus of the mercy of God, as saving or justifying freely by faith only, encourage men in sin? Indeed it may and will; many will ‘continue in sin, that grace may abound’.

105

Rom. 6:1.

But their blood is upon their own head. The goodness of God ought to lead them to repentance,

106

See Rom. 2:4.

and so it will those 127who are sincere of heart. When they know there is yet forgiveness with him, they will cry aloud that he would blot out their sins also through faith which is in Jesus. And if they earnestly cry and faint not, if they seek him in all the means he hath appointed, if they refuse to be comforted till he come, he ‘will come, and will not tarry’.

107

Heb. 10:37.

And he can do much work in a short time. Many are the examples in the Acts of the Apostles of God’s working this faith in men’s hearts as quick as lightning falling from heaven. So in the same hour that Paul and Silas began to preach the gaoler repented, believed, and was baptized

108

Cf. Acts 16:30-34.

—as were three thousand by St. Peter on the day of Pentecost, who all repented and believed at his first preaching.

109

See Acts 2:37-41.

And, blessed be God, there are now many living proofs that he is still thus ‘mighty to save’.

110

Isa. 63:1.

55. Yet to the same truth, placed in another view, a quite contrary objection is made: ‘If a man cannot be saved by all that he can do, this will drive men to despair.’ True, to despair of being saved by their own works, their own merits or righteousness. And so it ought; for none can trust in the merits of Christ till he has utterly renounced his own. He that ‘goeth about to establish his own righteousness’

111

Cf. Rom. 10:3.

cannot receive the righteousness of God. The righteousness which is of faith cannot be given him while he trusteth in that which is of the law.

66. But this, it is said, is an uncomfortable doctrine. The devil spoke like himself, that is, without either truth or shame, when he dared to suggest to men that it is such. ‘Tis the only comfortable one, ‘tis ‘very full of comfort’,

112

Cf. 2 Cor. 7:4. Cf. Art. XI, ‘that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort’, in Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. See also the Homily ‘Of Faith’, Pt. III, in Homilies, pp. 37-40.

to all self-destroyed, self-condemned sinners. That ‘whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed’;

113

Rom. 9:33.

that ‘the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him’

114

Rom. 10:12.

—here is comfort, high as heaven, stronger than death! What! Mercy for all? For Zaccheus, a public robber? For Mary Magdalene, a common harlot? Methinks I hear one say, ‘Then I, even I, may hope for mercy!’ And so thou mayst, thou afflicted one, whom none hath comforted! God will not cast out thy prayer. Nay, perhaps he may say the next hour, ‘Be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee;’

115

Matt. 9:2.

so forgiven that they shall 128reign over thee no more; yea, and that ‘the Holy Spirit shall bear witness with thy spirit that thou art a child of God.’

116

Cf. Rom. 8:16.

O glad tidings! Tidings of great joy, which are sent unto all people.

117

See Luke 2:10.

‘Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; come ye and buy without money, and without price.’

118

Cf. Isa. 55:1.

Whatsoever your sins be, ‘though red, like crimson’,

119

Cf. Isa. 1:18.

though ‘more than the hairs of your head’,

120

Cf. Ps. 40:12.

‘return ye unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon you, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.’

121

Cf. Isa. 55:7.

77. When no more objections occur, then we are simply told that salvation by faith only ought not to be preached as the first doctrine, or at least not to be preached to all. But what saith the Holy Ghost? ‘Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, even Jesus Christ.’

122

Cf. 1 Cor. 3:11.

So, then, ‘that whosoever believeth on him shall be saved’

123

Cf. John 3:16; Mark 16:16.

is and must be the foundation of all our preaching; that is, must be preached first. ‘Well, but not to all.’ To whom then are we not to preach it? Whom shall we except? The poor? Nay, they have a peculiar right to have the gospel preached unto them.

124

See Matt. 11:5; Luke 7:22.

The unlearned? No. God hath revealed these tidings unto unlearned and ignorant men

125

Acts 4:13.

from the beginning. The young? By no means. ‘Suffer these’ in any wise ‘to come unto Christ, and forbid them not.’

126

Cf. Mark 10:14.

The sinners? Least of all. He ‘came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’.

127

Mark 2:17.

Why then, if any, we are to except the rich, the learned, the reputable, the moral men. And ‘tis true, they too often except themselves from hearing; yet we must speak the words of our Lord. For thus the tenor of our commission runs: ‘Go and preach the gospel to every creature.’

128

Mark 16:15.

If any man wrest it or any part of it to his destruction, he must bear his own burden.

129

See Gal. 6:5.

But still, ‘as the Lord liveth, whatsoever the Lord saith unto us, that we will speak.’

130

Cf. 1 Kgs. 22:14.

88. At this time more especially will we speak, that ‘by grace ye are saved through faith:’

131

Cf. Eph. 2:8.

because never was the maintaining this doctrine more seasonable than it is at this day. Nothing but this can effectually prevent the increase of the Romish delusion among us. ‘Tis endless to attack one by one all the errors of that 129Church.

132

Orig., ‘that apostate Church’, revised in Sermons (1746) and Works (1771).

But salvation by faith strikes at the root, and all fall at once where this is established. It was this doctrine (which our Church justly calls ‘the strong rock and foundation of the Christian religion’

133

Cf. ‘Of Salvation’, Pt. II, in Homilies, p. 22.

) that first drove popery out of these kingdoms, and ‘tis this alone can keep it out. Nothing but this can give a check to that immorality which hath overspread the land as a flood. Can you empty the great deep drop by drop? Then you may reform us by dissuasives from particular vices. But let ‘the righteousness which is of God by faith’

134

Phil. 3:9.

be brought in, and so shall its proud waves be stayed.

135

See Job 38:11.

Nothing but this can stop the mouths of those who ‘glory in their shame’,

136

Cf. Phil. 3:19.

‘and openly deny the Lord that bought them’.

137

Cf. 2 Pet. 2:1.

They can talk as sublimely of the law as he that hath it written by God in his heart. To hear them speak on this head might incline one to think they were not far from the kingdom of God. But take them out of the law into the gospel; begin with the righteousness of faith, with ‘Christ, the end of the law to everyone that believeth’,

138

Cf. Rom. 10:4.

and those who but now appeared almost if not altogether Christians

139

See No. 2, The Almost Christian.

stand confessed the sons of perdition,

140

See John 17:12; 2 Thess. 2:3.

as far from life and salvation (God be merciful unto them!) as the depth of hell from the height of heaven.

99. For this reason the adversary so rages whenever ‘salvation by faith’ is declared to the world. For this reason did he stir up earth and hell to destroy those who first preached it. And for the same reason, knowing that faith alone could overturn the foundations of his kingdom, did he call forth all his forces, and employ all his arts of lies and calumny, to affright that glorious champion of the Lord of Hosts, Martin Luther, from reviving it.

141

‘that glorious champion of the Lord of Hosts…’ was dropped from the text in SOSO, I (1746). For an earlier evaluation of Luther, cf. JWJ, June 15-16, 1741; see also No. 14, The Repentance of Believers, I.9 and n. for other references to Luther.

Nor can we wonder thereat. For as that man of God observes, ‘How would it enrage a proud strong man armed to be stopped and set at nought by a little child, coming against him with a reed in his hand!’

142

Not yet located in Luther’s own words. But cf. Samuel Clarke, The Marrow of Ecclesiastical Historie (1650), p. 97, which Wesley had read.

—especially when he knew that little child would surely overthrow him and tread him under foot. ‘Even so, Lord Jesus!’

143

Cf. Rev. 22:20.

Thus hath thy strength been ever ‘made perfect in weakness’!

144

2 Cor. 12:9.

130Go forth then, thou little child that believest in him, and his ‘right hand shall teach thee terrible things’!

145

Ps. 45:4.

Though thou art helpless and weak as an infant of days, the strong man shall not be able to stand before thee. Thou shalt prevail over him, and subdue him, and overthrow him, and trample him under thy feet. Thou shalt march on under the great Captain of thy salvation,

146

See Heb. 2:10.

‘conquering and to conquer’,

147

Rev. 6:2.

until all thine enemies are destroyed, and ‘death is swallowed up in victory’.

148

1 Cor. 15:54.

Now thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,

149

1 Cor. 15:57.

to whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be blessing and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, for ever and ever. Amen.

150

Rev.7:12. This use of a concluding ascription would seem conventional enough, especially in such a sermon, ad aulam. It is, however, quite rare for Wesley: only nine of his collected sermons carry such ascriptions: Nos. 1, Salvation by Faith; 9, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’; 12, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’; 29, ‘Sermon on the Mount, IX’; 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’; 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’; 71, ‘Of Good Angels’ (a collect); 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’ (where the benediction serves as an ascription); 107, ‘On God’s Vineyard’ (where Wesley uses the Preface to the Sanctus as an ascription). Note that neither No. 2, The Almost Christian, nor No. 4, Scriptural Christianity, appears in this list. Nine of the early ‘uncollected’ sermons have formal ascriptions: Nos. 133, ‘Death and Deliverance’; 134, ‘Seek First the Kingdom’; 135, ‘On Guardian Angels’; 136, ‘On Mourning for the Dead’; 137, ‘On Corrupting the Word of God‘; 140, ‘The Promise of Understanding’; 141, ‘The Image of God’; 146, ‘The One Thing Needful’; and 150, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’.

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