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Sermon 2: The Almost Christian

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon002

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.

131 The Almost Christian Sermon preached at St. Mary’s, Oxford,
before the University,
on July 25, 1741

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.

Acts 26:28

Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.

And many there are who go thus far: ever since the Christian religion was in the world there have been many in every age and nation who were ‘almost persuaded to be Christians’. But seeing it avails nothing before God to go only thus far, it highly imports us to consider,

First, what is implied in being almost,

Secondly, what in being altogether a Christian.

See ‘Intro. Com.’, p. 111 above; half-title from SOSO, I (1746). The distinction between ‘almost’ and ‘altogether’ Christians was by now a commonplace. Cf. The Sermons of Mr. Henry Smith, Gathered into One Volume (1657), pp.420-23; William Sheppard, Sincerity and Hypocrisy; or, the Sincere Christian and Hypocrite in their Lively Colours, Standing One by the Other (1658); William Allen, ‘Dedicatory Epistle’, The Glass of Justification, p. 20, speaks of a ‘negative Christian’; in 1661 Matthew Mead preached a series of seven sermons at St. Sepulchre’s, Holborn, on The Almost Christian Discovered; John Cardinal Bona, Precepts and Practical Rules for a Truly Christian Life (1678), p.2; John Norris has extended references to ‘those who serve God by halves, … the almost Christians’, in Christian Prudence (1710), pp. 16-20, and in Practical Discourses, IV (1728), ‘Concerning Practical Atheism’, pp. 100-24; James Knight, Eight Sermons (1721), p.274, speaks of ‘lukewarm spirits’; and William Bates, Sermon X, in Sermons, p.383. Throughout the Wesley corpus one finds references to ‘the almost Christian’, ‘half-Christians’, ‘the good sort of men’, ‘saints of the world’ (cf. No. 4, Scriptural Christianity, II.5 and n.).

1 1

1I. (I). 1. Now in the being ‘almost a Christian’ is implied, first, heathen honesty.

Wesley here understands ‘honesty’, as his audience would have, in its classical Latin sense of honour (as in Plautus, Cicero, Quintilian) denoting that form of self-disciplined conduct approved of by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics (I.5; III.8; IV.3), a shared source which Wesley knew very well.

No one, I suppose, will make any question of this, especially since by heathen honesty here I mean, not that which is recommended in the writings of their philosophers only, 132but such as the common heathens expected of one another, and many of them actually practised. By the rules of this they were taught that they ought not to be unjust; not to take away their neighbour’s goods, either by robbery or theft; not to oppress the poor, neither to use extortion toward any; not to cheat or overreach either the poor or rich in whatsoever commerce they had with them; to defraud no man of his right, and if it were possible to owe no man anything.

22. Again, the common heathens allowed that some regard was to be paid to truth as well as to justice. And accordingly they not only had him in abomination who was forsworn, who called God to witness to a lie, but him also who was known to be a slanderer of his neighbour, who falsely accused any man. And indeed little better did they esteem wilful liars of any sort, accounting them the disgrace of humankind, and the pests of society.

33. Yet again, there was a sort of love and assistance which they expected one from another. They expected whatever assistance anyone could give another without prejudice to himself. And this they extended, not only to those little offices of humanity which are performed without any expense or labour, but likewise to the feeding the hungry if they had food to spare, the clothing the naked with their own superfluous raiment, and in general the giving to any that needed such things as they needed not themselves. Thus far (in the lowest account of it) heathen honesty went, the first thing implied in the being ‘almost a Christian’.

4(II). 4. A second thing implied in the being ‘almost a Christian’ is the having a form of godliness,

2 Tim. 3:5. For references to Wesley’s distinction between the ‘form’ and the ‘power’ of godliness, see the General Rules (in The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies, 1743, Bibliog, No. 73, Vol. 9 of this edn.), §2; Nos. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’, III.11; and 150, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’, II.2; The Doctrine of Original Sin, 1757, pp. 229-30; see also Notes, Matt. 13:28.

of that godliness which is prescribed in the gospel of Christ—the having the outside of a real Christian. Accordingly the ‘almost Christian’ does nothing which the gospel forbids. He taketh not the name of God in vain,

See Exod. 20:7.

he blesseth and curseth not,

See Rom. 12:14.

he sweareth not at all, but his communication is ‘Yea, yea,’ ‘nay, nay.’

Cf. Matt. 5:34, 37.

He profanes not the day of the Lord, nor suffers it to be profaned, even by the stranger that is within his gates.

See Exod. 20:10.

He not only avoids all actual adultery, 133fornication, and uncleanness, but every word or look that either directly or indirectly tends thereto: nay, and all idle words, abstaining both from all detraction, backbiting, talebearing, evil-speaking, and from ‘all foolish talking and jesting’ (εὐτραπελία), a kind of virtue in the heathen moralist’s account.

Wesley’s translation of εὐτραπελία follows the AV of Eph. 5:4, where εὐτραπελία is disparaged. For the ‘heathen moralist’, however, cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II.7 (1108a), who had indeed reckoned it as a virtue: ‘In the matter of “pleasantness” (παιδία) the mean is “wit” and the middle way is “wittiness” (εὐτραπελία); excess here is buffoonery…and its deficiency is boorishness.’ Wesley could presume that his audience understood this discrepancy between the κοινή of the New Testament and the classical usage of ‘the heathen moralist’. Cf. Irène Simon, Three Restoration Divines, I. 316.

Briefly, from all conversation that is not ‘good to the use of edifying’, and that consequently ‘grieves the Holy Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption’.

Cf. Eph. 4:29-30.

55. He abstains from ‘wine wherein is excess’,

Eph. 5:18.

from revellings and gluttony. He avoids, as much as in him lies, all strife and contention, continually endeavouring to live peaceably with all men.’

See Rom. 12:18.

And if he suffer wrong, he avengeth not himself, neither returns evil for evil. He is no railer, no brawler, no scoffer, either at the faults or infirmities of his neighbour. He does not willingly wrong, hurt, or grieve any man; but in all things acts and speaks by that plain rule, ‘Whatsoever thou wouldst not he should do unto thee, that do not thou to another.’

This particular form of the Golden Rule is ascribed in the Talmud (Sabb. xxxi.1) to Hillel: ‘What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbour; that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it.’ See also Tobit 4:15: ‘And what thou hatest, do to no man.’ Cf. Nos. 30, ‘Sermon on the Mount, X’, §§22, 24; and 150, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’, I.10. It is not clear how Wesley had come by this form of the ‘Rule’.

66. And in doing good he does not confine himself to cheap and easy offices of kindness, but labours and suffers for the profit of many, that by all means he may help some. In spite of toil or pain, ‘whatsoever his hand findeth to do, he doth it with his might,’

Cf. Eccles. 9:10.

whether it be for his friends or for his enemies, for the evil or for the good. For, being ‘not slothful in’ this or in any ‘business’,

Rom. 12:11.

‘as he hath opportunity he doth good’, all manner of good, ‘to all men’,

Cf. Gal. 6:10. Note the similarity here with the second of Wesley’s General Rules.

and to their souls as well as their bodies. He reproves the wicked, instructs the ignorant, confirms the wavering, quickens the good, and comforts the afflicted. He labours to awaken those that sleep,

See No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Steepest’.

to lead those whom God hath already awakened to 134the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, that they may wash therein and be clean; and to stir up those who are saved through faith to adorn the gospel of Christ in all things.

77. He that hath the form of godliness uses also the means of grace; yea, all of them, and at all opportunities. He constantly frequents the house of God; and that not as the manner of some is, who come into the presence of the Most High either loaded with gold and costly apparel, or in all the gaudy vanity of dress, and either by their unseasonable civilities to each other or the impertinent gaiety of their behaviour disclaim all pretensions to the form as well as to the power of godliness. Would to God there were none, even among ourselves, who fall under the same condemnation: who come into his house, it may be, gazing about, or with all the signs of the most listless, careless indifference, though sometimes they may seem to use a prayer to God for his blessing on what they are entering upon; who during that awful service are either asleep or reclined in the most convenient posture for it; or, as though they supposed God was asleep, talking with one another, or looking round, as utterly void of employment.

An echo of frequent criticisms in the Spectator and other newspapers of indecorous behaviour in churches. E.g., in No. 460, Aug. 18, 1712, Richard Steele comments on ‘the ceremonies, bows, curtsies, whisperings, smiles, winks, nods, with other familiar arts of salutation, which take up in our churches so much time that might be better employed’; he goes on to speak of gossips who could ‘give a particular account how two or three hundred people were dressed’ but no inkling of the sermon. Cf. also The Tatler, No. 140, May 2, 1710.

Neither let these be accused of the form of godliness. No: he who has even this behaves with seriousness and attention in every part of that solemn service. More especially when he approaches the table of the Lord it is not with a light or careless behaviour, but with an air, gesture, and deportment which speaks nothing else but ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner!’

Luke 18:13.

88. To this if we add the constant use of family prayer by those who are masters of families, and the setting times apart for private addresses to God, with a daily seriousness of behaviour—he who uniformly practises this outward religion has the form of godliness. There needs but one thing more in order to his being ‘almost a Christian’, and that is, sincerity.

9(III).9. By sincerity I mean a real, inward principle of religion from whence these outward actions flow.

‘Sincerity’ was a shibboleth in eighteenth-century religion, especially among the latitudinarians. C. F. Allison, The Rise of Moralism, p. 144, believes that Edward Fowler (1632-1714), Bishop of Gloucester, was the first to make sincerity a prerequisite to justification, in his The Design of Christianity (1671). Samuel Johnson, in the Dictionary (1755), defined sincerity as ‘honesty of intention’ and quotes John Rogers (1679-1729), The Necessity of Divine Revelation and the Truth of the Christian Religion (1727): ‘Jesus Christ has purchased for us terms of reconciliation, who will accept of sincerity instead of perfection; but then this sincerity implies our honest endeavours to do our utmost.’ Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, I.312-13, cites Benjamin Hoadly (1676-1761) as affirming that ‘sincerity is the one necessary requirement for the Christian profession.’ See also William Bates, Whole Works (1st edn., 1700; 1815), II.63; and William Reeves, Fourteen Sermons Preached on Several Occasions (1729), p. 251.

The early Wesley had commented on the prime importance of sincerity in a letter to his mother, July 29, 1725, and to Ann Granville, Oct. 3, 1731; the late Wesley makes almost the same point in a letter to Arthur Keene, Dec. 25, 1787. In between, see the references in the Minutes of 1746 (May 13), and in the following sermons: Nos. 6, ‘The Righteousness of Faith’, III.5; 9, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, IV.1; 12, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, §11; 18, ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, II.2; 19, ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’, II.10; 30, ‘Sermon on the Mount, X’, §9; 137, ‘On Corrupting the Word of God’, proem.

And indeed if we have 135not this we have not heathen honesty; no, not so much of it as will answer the demand of a heathen, Epicurean poet. Even this poor wretch, in his sober intervals, is able to testify:

Oderunt peccare boni virtutis amore;

Oderunt peccare mali formidine poenae.

Good men avoid sin from the love of virtue; wicked men avoid sin from the fear of punishment. [Cf. Horace, Epistles, I.xvi.52-53:

Oderunt peccare boni virtutis amore; Tu nihil admittes in te formidine poenae.

Here Wesley has garbled the second line for the sake of the contrast between oderunt peccare boni and oderunt peccare mali. The notion that Horace was an Epicurean was an eighteenth-century commonplace, and found support in Horace’s jesting reference to himself as an Epicurean in Epistles, I.iv.16. There are frequent quotations from Horace in Wesley’s sermons, usually prefaced by epithets as, e.g., ‘the poor heathen’ (Nos. 28, ‘Sermon on the Mount, VIII’, §18); ‘your brother heathen’ (56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, II.1); ‘the old Roman’ (78, ‘Spiritual Idolatry’, I.4); ‘the old heathen poet’ (102, ‘Of Former Times’, §8); ‘the heathen poet’ (129, ‘Heavenly Treasure in Earthen Vessels’, II.1).]

So that if a man only abstains from doing evil in order to avoid punishment,

Non pasces in cruce corvos

Thou shalt not be hanged [Horace, Epistles, I.xvi.48].

saith the pagan—there, ‘thou hast thy reward’.

Horace, Epistles, I.xvi.47: ‘habes pretium, loris non ureris’ (‘You have your reward; you are not being flogged’). Cf. Matt. 6:2, 5, 16.

But even he will not allow such a harmless man as this to be so much as a good 136 heathen. If then any man from the same motive (viz. to avoid punishment, to avoid the loss of his friends, or his gain, or his reputation) should not only abstain from doing evil but also do ever so much good—yea, and use all the means of grace—yet we could not with any propriety say, this man is even ‘almost a Christian’. If he has no better principle in his heart he is only a hypocrite altogether.

1010. Sincerity therefore is necessarily implied in the being ‘almost a Christian’: a real design to serve God, a hearty desire to do his will. It is necessarily implied that a man have a sincere view of pleasing God in all things: in all his conversation, in all his actions; in all he does or leaves undone. This design, if any man be ‘almost a Christian’, runs through the whole tenor of his life. This is the moving principle both in his doing good, his abstaining from evil, and his using the ordinances of God.

Note that, on this basis, a person obeying Wesley’s General Rules would be no better than an ‘almost Christian’.

1111. But here it will probably be inquired, Is it possible that any man living should go so far as this and nevertheless be only ‘almost a Christian’? What more than this can be implied in the being ‘a Christian altogether’? I answer, first, that it is possible to go thus 20 far, and yet be but ‘almost a Christian’, I learn not only from the oracles of God, but also from the sure testimony of experience.

1212. Brethren, ‘great is my boldness toward you in this behalf.’

Cf. 2 Cor. 7:4.

And ‘forgive me this wrong’

2 Cor. 12:13.

if I declare my own folly upon the housetop, for yours and the gospel’s sake. Suffer me then to speak freely of myself, even as of another man. I am content to be abased so ye may be exalted,

See 2 Cor. 11:7.

and to be yet more vile for the glory of my Lord.

See 2 Sam. 6:21-22. See also JWJ, Apr. 2, 1739: ‘I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation….’

1313. I did go thus far for many years, as many of this place can testify: using diligence to eschew all evil, and to have a conscience void of offence;

Acts 24:16.

redeeming the time,

Col. 4:5.

buying up every opportunity of doing all good to all men;

Gal. 6:10.

constantly and carefully using all the public and all the private means of grace; endeavouring after a steady seriousness of behaviour at all times and in all places. And God is my record, before whom I stand, doing all this in sincerity; having a real design to serve God, a hearty desire to do his will in all things, to please him who had 137called me to ‘fight the good fight’, and to ‘lay hold of eternal life’.

1 Tim. 6:12.

Yet my own conscience beareth me witness in the Holy Ghost that all this time I was but ‘almost a Christian’.

Cf. No. 81, ‘In What Sense we are to Leave the World‘, §23, where Wesley (in 1784) recalls that it had ‘pleased God’ to convert him from an ‘almost’ to an ‘altogether Christian’ in 1725. But see also JWJ, Jan. 4, 1739, and his letter to brother Charles, June 27, 1766, and cf. Benham, pp. 34-40. Note also that all editions of Wesley’s Plain Account of Christian Perfection refer to 1725 as the beginning of his conscious quest for perfection. The fact is that Wesley wavered from time to time about what it means to confess oneself ‘a Christian’.

II. If it be inquired, ‘What more than this is implied in the being “altogether a Christian”?’ I answer:

1(I). 1. First, the love of God. For thus saith his Word: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.’

Mark 12:30.

Such a love of God is this as engrosses the whole heart, as takes up all the affections, as fills the entire capacity of the soul, and employs the utmost extent of all its faculties. He that thus loves the Lord his God, his spirit continually ‘rejoiceth in God his Saviour’.

Cf. Luke 1:47.

‘His delight is in the Lord,’

Cf. Ps. 1:2.

his Lord and his all, to whom ‘in everything he giveth thanks’.

Cf. 1 Thess. 5:18.

All his ‘desire is unto God, and to the remembrance of his name’.

Cf. Isa. 26:8.

His heart is ever crying out, ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.’

Ps. 73:25.

Indeed, what can he desire beside God? Not the world, or the things of the world. For he is ‘crucified to the world, and the world crucified to him’.

Cf. Gal. 6:14.

He is crucified to the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life.

I.e., to all sin (see 1 John 2:16), since Wesley had long since agreed with Augustine that autem tria genera vitiorium…OMNIA peccata concludunt (‘indeed, all sins may be included within these three classes of vice’); cf. Enarratio in Psalmum, VIII.13, in Migne, PL, Vol. 36, col. 115. He would reiterate this tirelessly; see No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.2 and n.

Yea, he is dead to pride of every kind: for love ‘is not puffed up’,

1 Cor. 13:4.

but he that dwelling in love ‘dwelleth in God, and God in him’, is less than nothing in his own eyes.

2(II). 2. The second thing implied in the being ‘altogether a Christian’ is the love of our neighbour. For thus said our Lord in the following words: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’

Matt. 22:39, etc.

If any man ask, ‘Who is my neighbour?’

Luke 10:29.

we reply, ‘Every man in 138the world; every child of his who is “the Father of the spirits of all flesh”.’

Cf. Heb. 12:9; also No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, I.8 and n.

Nor may we in any wise except our enemies, or the enemies of God and their own souls. But every Christian loveth these also as himself; yea, ‘as Christ loved us’.

Cf. Eph. 5:2.

He that would more fully understand what manner of love this is may consider St. Paul’s description of it. It is ‘long-suffering and kind. It envieth not. It is not rash or hasty in judging. It is not puffed up,’

Cf. 1 Cor. 13:4.

but maketh him that loves, the least, the servant of all. Love ‘doth not behave itself unseemly’,

Cf. 1 Cor. 13:5.

but ‘becometh all things to all men’.

Cf. 1 Cor. 9:22.

She ‘seeketh not her own’, but only the good of others, that they may be saved. Love ‘is not provoked’.

Cf. 1 Cor. 13:5.

It casteth out wrath, which he who hath is wanting in love. It ‘thinketh no evil’. It ‘rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth’. It ‘covereth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things’.

Cf. 1 Cor. 13:5-7.

3(III). 3. There is yet one thing more that may be separately considered, though it cannot actually be separate from the preceding, which is implied in the being ‘altogether a Christian’, and that is the ground of all, even faith. Very excellent things are spoken of this throughout the oracles of God. ‘Everyone’, saith the beloved disciple, ‘that believeth, is born of God.’

Cf. 1 John 5:1.

‘To as many as received him gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.’

Cf. John 1:12.

And, ‘This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.’

1 John 5:4.

Yea, our Lord himself declares, ‘He that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life;’

John 3:36.

and ‘cometh not into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life’.

John 5:24.

44. But here let no man deceive his own soul. It is diligently to be noted, the ‘faith which bringeth not forth repentance’ and love, and all good works, is not that ‘right living faith’ which is here spoken of, ‘but a dead and devilish one…. For even the devils believe that Christ was born of a virgin, that he wrought all kind of miracles, declaring himself very God; that for our sakes he suffered a most painful death, to redeem us from death everlasting; that he rose again the third day; that he ascended into 139heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, and at the end of the world shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. These articles of our faith the devils believe, and so they believe all that is written in the Old and New Testament. And yet for all this faith, they be but devils. They remain still in their 5 damnable estate, lacking the very true Christian faith.’

Homily on the Salvation of Man [Pt. III, in a slight revision of Wesley’s own earlier extract therefrom in The Doctrine of Salvation, Faith, and Good Works, §13, for which see Vol. 12 of this edn.]

55. ‘The right and true Christian faith is’ (to go on in the words of our own Church) ‘not only to believe that Holy Scripture and the articles of our faith are true, but also to have a sure trust and confidence to be saved from everlasting damnation by Christ’—it is a ‘sure trust and confidence’ which a man hath in God ‘that by the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he reconciled to the favour of God’—‘whereof doth follow a loving heart to obey his commandments.’

Cf. Wesley, The Doctrine of Salvation, Faith, and Good Works, §14; cf. also the Homily on the Salvation of Man, Pt. III.

66. Now whosoever has this faith which ‘purifies the heart’,

Cf. Acts 15:9; Jas. 4:8.

by the power of God who dwelleth therein, from pride, anger, desire, ‘from all unrighteousness’,

1 John 1:9.

‘from all filthiness of flesh and spirit’;

Cf. 2 Cor. 7:1.

which fills it with love stronger than death both to God and to all mankind—love that doth the works of God, glorying to spend and to be spent for all men, and that endureth with joy, not only the reproach of Christ, the being mocked, despised, and hated of all men, but whatsoever the wisdom of God permits the malice of men or devils to inflict; whosoever has this faith, thus ‘working by love’,

Cf. Gal. 5:6, Wesley’s favourite text for his teachings on faith and good works (fides caritatem formata), the linch-pin by which he joined his double doctrine of ‘faith alone’ and ‘holy living’. Cf. Nos. 8, ‘The First-fruits of the Spirit’, III.3; 10, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I‘, I.8; 19, ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’, III.1; 25, ‘Sermon on the Mount, V’, III.9; 35, ‘The Law Established through Faith, I’, II.3; 39, ‘Catholic Spirit’, I.14; 47, ‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations’, II.3, IV.5; 62, ‘The End of Christ’s Coming’, III.6; 65, ‘The Duty of Reproving our Neighbour’, III.14; 66, ‘The Signs of the Times’, II.8; 79, ‘On Dissipation’, §16; 90, ‘An Israelite Indeed’, II.4, II.11; 91, ‘On Charity’, III.11; 106, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:6’, II.3; 107, ‘On God‘s Vineyard’, II.8; 109, ‘The Trouble and Rest of Good Men’, I.3; 114, On the Death of John Fletcher, I.3; 146, ‘The One Thing Needful‘, III.3. Wesley records having preached from this text fifteen times: twice in 1741, once in 1742 and 1747, twice in 1750, once in 1755, four times in 1760, three times in 1761, and once in 1787.

Cf. Jeremy Taylor, ‘Fides Formata; Or, Faith Working by Love’, in Works (1844), II.19-28. For Luther’s denunciation of the distinction between ‘formed’ and ‘unformed’ faith, see his Commentary on Galatians, 3:11. See also W. P. Stephens, The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Martin Bucer (London, Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 51-68, for an analysis of the issues between iustitia simplex, iustitia duplex, etc.

is not almost only, but altogether a Christian.

7 1407. But who are the living witnesses of these things? I beseech you, brethren, as in the presence of that God before whom ‘hell and destruction are without a covering: how much more the hearts of the children of men!’

Cf. Prov. 15:11.

—that each of you would ask his own heart, ‘Am I of that number? Do I so far practise justice, mercy, and truth, as even the rules of heathen honesty require? If so, have I the very outside of a Christian? The form of godliness? Do I abstain from evil, from whatsoever is forbidden in the written Word of God? Do I, whatever good my hand findeth to do, do it with my might?

Eccles. 9:10.

Do I seriously use all the ordinances of God at all opportunities? And is all this done with a sincere design and desire to please God in all things?’

88. Are not many of you conscious that you never came thus far? That you have not been even ‘almost a Christian’? That you have not come up to the standard of heathen honesty? At least, not to the form of Christian godliness? Much less hath God seen sincerity in you, a real design of pleasing him in all things. You never so much as intended to devote all your words and works, your business, studies, diversions to his glory. You never even designed or desired that whatsoever you did should be done ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus’,

Col. 3:17.

and as such should be a ‘spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to God through Christ.’

Cf. 1 Pet. 2:5.

99. But supposing you had, do good designs and good desires make a Christian? By no means, unless they are brought to good effect. ‘Hell is paved’, saith one, ‘with good intentions.’

This proverb was, of course, a commonplace in Wesley’s time; cf. Richard Whitlock, Ζωοτορία (1654); George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651); and John Ray, English Proverbs (1670); it has a blurred history. St. Francis de Sales attributes it to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in a letter to the Barrone de Chantal (Nov. 21, 1604) and in another letter to the Mother Superior of the Visitations in Lyons (Apr. 17, 1616); cf. Elisabeth Stopp, tr., St. Francis de Sales; Selected Letters (London, Faber and Faber, 1960), Letters 8, 92. The proverb itself has not yet been located in St. Bernard’s published works. Cf. JWJ, July10, 1736. See also No. 125, ‘On a Single Eye’, III.5, where Wesley cites St. Chrysostom as saying that ‘Hell is paved with the skulls of Christian priests.’

The great question of all, then, still remains. Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart? Can you cry out, ‘My God and my all’? Do 141you desire nothing but him? Are you happy in God? Is he your glory, your delight, your crown of rejoicing? And is this commandment written in your heart, ‘that he who loveth God love his brother also’?

1 John 4:21.

Do you then love your neighbour as yourself? Do you love every man, even your enemies, even the enemies of God, as your own soul? As Christ loved you? Yea, dost thou believe that Christ loved thee, and gave himself for thee? Hast thou faith in his blood? Believest thou the Lamb of God hath taken away thy sins,

See John 1:29.

and cast them as a stone into the depth of the sea? That he hath blotted out the handwriting that was against thee, taking it out of the way, nailing it to his cross? Hast thou indeed redemption through his blood, even the remission of thy sins?

See Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14.

And doth his Spirit bear witness with thy spirit, that thou art a child of God?

See Rom. 8:16.

1010. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who now standeth in the midst of us, knoweth that if any man die without this faith and this love, good it were for him that he had never been born.

Cf. Mark 14:21.

Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and call upon thy God: call in the day when he may be found. Let him not rest till he ‘make his goodness to pass before thee, till he proclaim unto thee the name of the Lord’

Cf. Exod. 33:19.

—‘the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin.’

Exod. 34:6-7.

Let no man persuade thee by vain words to rest short of this prize of thy high calling.

Phil. 3:14.

But cry unto him day and night who ‘while we were without strength died for the ungodly’,

Rom. 5:6.

until thou knowest in whom thou hast believed, and canst say, ‘My Lord and my God.’

John 20:28.

Remember ‘always to pray and not to faint’,

Luke 18:1.

till thou also canst lift up thy hand unto heaven and declare to him that liveth for ever and ever, ‘Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.’

John 21:17.

1111. May we all thus experience what it is to be not almost only, but altogether Christians! Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus, knowing we have peace with God through Jesus Christ, rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, and having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us!

See Rom. 5:1, 2, 5.

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