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Sermon 3: ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon003

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.

142 ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’ Sermon preached on Sunday, April 4, 1742,
before the University of Oxford.
By Charles Wesley, M.A.,
Student of Christ Church.

Half-title reproduced from SOSO, I (1746). The drop-title prefixed to the individual editions of the sermon was simply ‘Ephes. v. 14’; some variant of this continued in all subsequent editions until 1795, when its present full title, ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’, appeared for the first time. See ‘Intro. Com.’, pp. 111-12 above.

Ephesians 5:14

Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

In discoursing on these words I shall, with the help of God,

First, describe the sleepers to whom they are spoken;

Secondly, enforce the exhortation, ‘Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;’ and,

Thirdly, explain the promise made to such as do awake and arise—‘Christ shall give thee light.’

1I. 1. And first, as to the sleepers here spoken to. By sleep is signified the natural state of man:

An allegorical interpretation following a line established by St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms (NPNF, I, VIII.7, 159, 175, 259), and echoed in Poole, Annotations, loc. cit. The source of the quotation is unknown; it may have come from a then familiar Christian liturgical passage. In Notes Wesley shies away from allegory and comes nearer to Matthew Henry’s comment in Exposition, loc. cit.: ‘God calls upon sinners…that they would break off their sins by repentance and enter on a course of holy obedience, and he encourages them to essay and do their utmost that way.’

that deep sleep of the soul into which the sin of Adam hath cast all who spring from his loins; that supineness, indolence, and stupidity, that insensibility of his real condition, wherein every man comes into the world, and continues till the voice of God awakes him.

22. Now ‘they that sleep, sleep in the night.’

1 Thess. 5:7.

The state of nature is a state of utter darkness, a state wherein ‘darkness covers the 143earth, and gross darkness the people.’

Cf. Isa. 60:2.

The poor unawakened sinner, how much knowledge soever he may have as to other things, has no knowledge of himself. In this respect ‘he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.’

1 Cor. 8:2.

He knows not that he is a fallen spirit, whose only business in the present world is to recover from his fall, to regain that image of God

Cf. No. 1, Salvation by Faith, §1 and n.

wherein he was created. He sees no necessity for ‘the one thing needful’,

Cf. Luke 10:42. This is the famous unum necessarium, the interpretation of which had exercised Anglicans and Puritans alike. See Jeremy Taylor’s treatise with this title, Works, II.419-646; also the Christian Lib., XXIII.57-58. It was a favourite text for Charles and John Wesley; John Wesley records that he preached from it at least fifty times during his ministry. Cf. his early sermon (May 1734) on this text, No. 146.

even that inward universal change, that ‘birth from above’

Cf. John 3:3; ἄνωθεν here would seem to imply ‘anew’, i.e., a new birth (‘from above’, of course). There is an old puzzle as to the ambiguous meaning of ἄνωθεν continuing still as between Bultmann, Schnackenburg, Brown, and others. In Greek it has a double usage: ‘from above’ (as of place) and ‘anew’ (as in time). This ambiguity is absent from all its Aramaic and Hebrew equivalents. In John 19:23 it clearly means ‘from the top’. Cf. Nos. 43, The Scripture Way of Salvation, I.4; and 45, ‘The New Birth’, II.3.

(figured out by baptism) which is the beginning of that total renovation, that sanctification of spirit, soul, and body, ‘without which no man shall see the Lord’.

Heb. 12:14.

33. Full of all diseases as he is, he fancies himself in perfect health. Fast bound in misery and iron, he dreams that he is happy and at liberty. He says, ‘Peace, peace,’

Jer. 6:14; 8:11.

while the devil as ‘a strong man armed’

Luke 11:21.

is in full possession of his soul. He sleeps on still, and takes his rest, though hell is moved from beneath to meet him;

See Isa. 14:9.

though the pit, from whence there is no return,

See Job 10:21; 16:22.

hath opened its mouth to swallow him up.

See Num. 16:30.

A fire is kindled around him, yet he knoweth it not; yea, it burns him, yet he lays it not to heart.

44. By one who sleeps we are therefore to understand (and would to God we might all understand it!) a sinner satisfied in his sins, contented to remain in his fallen state, to live and die without the image of God; one who is ignorant both of his disease and of the only remedy for it; one who never was warned, or never regarded the warning voice of God ‘to flee from the wrath to come’;

Matt. 3:7.

one that never yet saw he was in danger of hell-fire, or 144cried out in the earnestness of his soul, ‘What must I do to be saved?’

Acts 16:30.

55. If this sleeper be not outwardly vicious, his sleep is usually the deepest of all: whether he be of the Laodicean spirit, ‘neither cold nor hot’,

Rev. 3:15.

but a quiet, rational, inoffensive, good-natured professor of the religion of his fathers; or whether he be zealous and orthodox, and ‘after the most straitest sect of our religion lives a Pharisee’;

Cf. Acts 26:5.

that is, according to the scriptural account, one that justifies himself, one that labours ‘to establish his own righteousness’

Cf. Rom. 10:3.

as the ground of his acceptance with God.

66. This is he who ‘having a form of godliness, denies the power thereof’;

Cf. 2 Tim. 3:5; see above, No. 2, The Almost Christian, I.4 and n.

yea, and probably reviles it, wheresoever it is found, as mere extravagance and delusion. Meanwhile the wretched self-deceiver thanks God that he ‘is not as other men are, adulterers, unjust, extortioners’.

Cf. Luke 18:11.

No, he doth no wrong to any man. He ‘fasts twice in the week’,

Cf. Luke 18:12.

uses all the means of grace, is constant at church and sacrament; yea, and ‘gives tithes of all that he has’,

Ibid.

does all the good that he can. ‘Touching the righteousness of the law’, he is ‘blameless’:

Cf. Phil. 3:6.

he wants nothing of godliness but the power; nothing of religion but the spirit; nothing of Christianity but the truth and the life.

77. But know ye not that however highly esteemed among men such a Christian as this may be, he is an abomination in the sight of God,

Cf. Luke 16:15, and note Charles Wesley’s agreement with his brother in the early years of the Revival that even the best of the ‘almost Christians’ are ‘abominations in the sight of God’. For later assuagements of this harsh judgment see III.6 and n. 179.

and an heir of every woe which the Son of God yesterday, today, and for ever denounces against ‘scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites’?

Matt. 23:13.

He hath ‘made clean the outside of the cup and the platter’,

Cf. Matt. 23:25.

but within is full of all filthiness. ‘An evil disease cleaveth’ still ‘unto him,’

Cf. Ps. 41:8.

so that ‘his inward parts are very wickedness’.

Cf. Ps. 5:9.

Our Lord fitly compares him to a ‘painted sepulchre’, which ‘appears beautiful without’, but nevertheless is ‘full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness’.

Cf. Matt. 23:27; Wesley is here following Wycliffe, Tyndale, and the ‘Great Bible’ in translating κεκονιαμένοις (lit., ‘whitewashed’) as ‘painted’. See III.11.

The bones 145indeed are no longer dry; ‘the sinews and flesh are come up upon them, and the skin covers them above: but there is no breath in them,’

Cf. Ezek. 37:8.

no Spirit of the living God. And ‘if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.’

Rom. 8:9.

‘Ye are Christ’s’

1 Cor. 3:23.

‘if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.’

Rom. 8:9.

But if not, God knoweth that ye abide in death, even until now.

88. This is another character of the sleeper here spoken to. He abides in death, though he knows it not. He is dead unto God, ‘dead in trespasses and sins’.

Eph. 2:1.

‘For to be carnally minded is death.’

Rom. 8:6.

Even as it is written, ‘By one man sin entered into the w world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men’

Rom. 5:12.

—not only temporal death, but likewise spiritual and eternal. ‘In the day thou eatest (said God to Adam) thou shalt surely die.’

Cf. Gen. 2:17.

Not bodily (unless as he then became mortal) but spiritually: thou shalt lose the life of thy soul; thou shalt die to God, shalt be separated from him, thy essential life and happiness.

99. Thus first was dissolved the vital union of our soul with God,

Both Wesleys were body-soul dualists, and the notion of the Fall as a radical disruption of the aboriginal body-soul equilibrium goes back at least to Wesley’s early MS sermon on Gen. 1:27; see Nos. 141, ‘The Image of God’; and 41, Wandering Thoughts, III.5 and n.

insomuch that ‘in the midst of’ natural ‘life we are’ now ‘in’ spiritual ‘death’.

An echo from the committal service in the BCP, Burial.

And herein we remain till the Second Adam becomes a quickening spirit to us, till he raises the dead, the dead in sin, in pleasure, riches, or honours. But before any dead soul can live, he ‘hears (hearkens to) the voice of the Son of God’:

Cf. John 5:25.

he is made sensible of his lost estate, and receives the sentence of death in himself. He knows himself to be ‘dead while he liveth’,

Cf. 1 Tim. 5:6.

dead to God and all the things of God; having no more power to perform the actions of a living Christian than a dead body to perform the functions of a living man.

1010. And most certain it is that one dead in sin has not ‘senses exercised to discern’ spiritual ‘good and evil’.

Cf. Heb. 5:14.

‘Having eyes, he sees not; he hath ears, and hears not.’

Cf. Mark 8:18.

He doth not ‘taste and see that the Lord is gracious’.

Ps. 34:8 (BCP).

He ‘hath not seen God at any time’,

John 1:18; 1 John 4:12.

nor ‘heard his voice’,

John 5:37.

nor ‘handled the Word of life’.

1 John 1:1.

In vain is 146the name of Jesus ‘like ointment poured forth’,

S. of S. 1:3.

and ‘all his garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia’.

Cf. Ps. 45:8.

The soul that sleepeth in death hath no perception of any objects of this kind. His heart is ‘past feeling’,

Eph. 4:19.

and understandeth none of these things.

1111. And hence, having no spiritual senses, no inlets of spiritual knowledge,

An especial emphasis in the Wesleys’ theory of religious knowledge derived from Descartes and Malebranche through John Norris. The human spirit is a ‘spiritual sensorium’, analogous to our physical senses, and thus the capacity for intuitions of spiritual reality is comparable to sight and sound. Cf. No. 10, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’, I.12 and n. Sin (‘sleep’, ‘death’) deadens all spiritual stimuli (‘inlets of spiritual knowledge’). Thus, conversion or awakening is, by analogy, the discovery of a new world.

the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; nay, he is so far from receiving them that whatsoever is spiritually discerned is mere foolishness unto him. He is not content with being utterly ignorant of spiritual things, but he denies the very existence of them. And spiritual sensation itself is to him the foolishness of folly.

See Prov. 14:24.

‘How’, saith he, ‘can these things be?’

John 3:9.

How can any man know that he is alive to God? Even as you know that your body is now alive. Faith is the life of the soul: and if ye have this life abiding in you, ye want no marks to evidence it to yourself, but that ἔλεγχος Πνεύματος,

Cf. Heb. 11:1. Where had Charles come across this reading? The Textus Receptus here reads πραγμάτων ἔλεγχος, and this agrees with all the critical editions. For the translation ‘evidence and conviction’, cf. John’s note in Notes; for John’s repeated use of ‘divine consciousness’, see Nos. 4, Scriptural Christianity, I.2; 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, IV.2; 12, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, §8; 17, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, I.7; 43, The Scripture Way of Salvation, II.1; 46, ‘The Wilderness State’, I.1; 70, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, II.1; 106, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:6’, §1; 108, ‘On Riches’, I.1; 119, ‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith’, §10; 132, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:1’, §1. Cf. also An Earnest Appeal, §§6-7, and A Farther Appeal, Pt. I, I.4 (11:46, 106-7 of this edn.). J. Clifford Hindley has studied the Wesleys’ religious epistemology in his ‘Philosophy of Enthusiasm…’ in The London Quarterly and Holborn Review, Vol. 182, Nos. 2 and 3 (April and July 1957), pp. 99-109, 199-210; see also Umphrey Lee, The Historical Backgrounds of Early Methodist Enthusiasm (New York, Columbia University Press, 1931).

that divine consciousness, that ‘witness of God’,

1 John 5:9.

which is more and greater than ten thousand human witnesses.

1212. If he doth not now bear witness with thy spirit that thou art a child of God,

See Rom. 8:16.

O that he might convince thee, thou poor unawakened sinner, by his demonstration and power, that thou art a child of the devil! O that as I prophesy there might now be ‘a 147noise and a shaking’, and may ‘the bones come together, bone to his bone’.

Cf. Ezek. 37:7.

Then ‘come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they may live!’

Ezek. 37:9.

And do not ye harden your hearts and resist the Holy Ghost, who even now is come to ‘convince you of sin’,

Cf. John 8:46.

‘because you believe not on the name of the only-begotten Son of God’.

Cf. John 3:18.

1II. 1. Wherefore, ‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead.’ God calleth thee now by my mouth; and bids thee know thyself,

For this Wesleyan correlation of self-knowledge and repentance, see No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.1 and n.

thou fallen spirit, thy true state and only concern below: ‘What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise! Call upon thy God, if so be thy God will think upon thee, that thou perish not.’

Cf. Jonah 1:6.

A mighty tempest is stirred up round about thee, and thou art sinking into the depths of perdition, the gulf of God’s judgments. If thou wouldst escape them, cast thyself into them. ‘Judge thyself’, and thou shalt ‘not be judged of the Lord.’

Cf. 1 Cor. 11:31.

22. Awake, awake! Stand up this moment, lest thou ‘drink at the Lord’s hand the cup of his fury’.

Cf. Isa. 51:17.

Stir up thyself ‘to lay hold on the Lord’,

Cf. 2 Chr. 7:22.

‘the Lord thy righteousness, mighty to save!’

Cf. Jer. 23:6; Isa. 63:1.

‘Shake thyself from the dust.’

Isa. 52:2.

At least, let the earthquake of God’s threatenings shake thee. Awake and cry out with the trembling gaoler, ‘What must I do to be saved?’

Acts 16:30.

And never rest till thou believest on the Lord Jesus, with a faith which is his gift, by the operation of his Spirit.

33. If I speak to any one of you more than to another it is to thee who thinkest thyself unconcerned in this exhortation. ‘I have a message from God unto thee.’

Judg. 3:20.

In his name I ‘warn thee to flee from the wrath to come’.

Cf. Matt. 3:7.

Thou unholy soul, see thy picture in condemned Peter, lying in the dark dungeon between the soldiers, bound with two chains, the keepers before the door keeping the prison.

See Acts 12:6.

The night is far spent, the morning is at hand

See Rom. 13:12.

when thou art to be brought forth to execution. And in these dreadful circumstances thou art fast asleep; thou art fast asleep in the devil’s arms, on the brink of the pit, in the jaws of everlasting destruction.

2 Thess. 1:9.

4 1484. O may ‘the angel of the Lord come upon thee, and the light shine into thy prison’!

Cf. Acts 12:7.

And mayst thou feel the stroke of an almighty hand raising thee with, ‘Arise up quickly, gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals, cast thy garment about thee, and follow me.’

Cf. Acts 12:7-8.

55. Awake, thou everlasting spirit, out of thy dream of worldly happiness. Did not God create thee for himself? Then thou canst not rest till thou restest in him.

See Augustine, Confessions, I.1: ‘Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te’ (‘Thou hast made us for thyself, and restless is our heart till it comes to rest in thee’). Cf. also Nos. 22, ‘ Sermon on the Mount, II’, II.4; 33, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XIII’, II.2; 73, ‘Of Hell’, I.4; 77, ‘Spiritual Worship’, III.1; 78, ‘Spiritual Idolatry’, II.2; 84, The Important Question, III.3. For a quotation of the Latin, and the translation, cf. No. 120, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, §9. Cf. also Charles Wesley’s hymn in A Collection of Hymns, No. 335, ll. 5-6:

My heart is pained, nor can it be

At rest, till it finds rest in thee.

Return, thou wanderer. Fly back to thy ark.

See Gen. 8:9.

‘This is not thy home.’

Charles Wesley uses a similar phrase at least three different times. Cf. ‘After the Death of a Friend’, ver. 7, l. 2: ‘This earth, I know, is not my place.’ The same line also occurs in ‘Desiring to be Dissolved’, ver. 5. Both poems were printed in John Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744, Bibliog, No. 78), III.266, 270. Cf. also Charles Wesley’s Hymn No. 41, ‘The Traveller’, st. 2, l. 2, in Hymns for Those That Seek and Those That Have Redemption (1747), p. 51: ‘This earth, we know, is not our place.’ John Wesley closes his correspondence with ‘John Smith’, Mar. 22, 1748, by quoting the entire stanza:

Strangers and pilgrims here below,

This earth, we know, is not our place:

And hasten through the vale of woe,

And restless to behold thy face,

Swift to our heavenly country move,

Our everlasting home above.

Cf. also Nos. 15, The Great Assize, IV.4; and 108, ‘On Riches’, II.12.

Think not of building tabernacles here. Thou art but ‘a stranger, a sojourner upon earth’;

1 Chr. 29:15.

a creature of a day,

Note the echoes here of a familiar theme in Augustan literature, oft-repeated by both Wesleys; cf. Pindar, Pythian Odes, viii.95-96 (‘Creatures of a day…man is but a dream’); see also No. 124, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §2 and n.

but just launching out into an unchangeable state. Make haste; eternity is at hand. Eternity depends on this moment: an eternity of happiness, or an eternity of misery!

66. In what state is thy soul? Was God, while I am yet speaking, to require it of thee, art thou ready to meet death and judgment? Canst thou stand in his sight, ‘who is of purer eyes than to behold 149iniquity’?

Cf. Hab. 1:13.

Art thou ‘meet to be partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light’?

Col. 1:12.

Hast thou ‘fought a good fight and kept the faith’?

Cf. 2 Tim. 4:7.

Hast thou secured ‘the one thing needful’?

Cf. Luke 10:42.

Hast thou recovered the image of God, even ‘righteousness and true holiness’?

Eph. 4:24.

Hast thou ‘put off the old man and put on the new’?

Cf. Eph. 4:22, 24; Col. 3:9, 10.

Art thou ‘clothed upon with Christ’?

Cf. 2 Cor. 5:2.

77. Hast thou oil in thy lamp?

See Matt. 25:4.

Grace in thy heart? Dost thou ‘love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength’?

Cf. Mark 12:30.

Is ‘that mind in thee which was also in Christ Jesus’?

Cf. Phil. 2:5.

Art thou a Christian indeed? That is, a new creature? Are ‘old things passed away, and all things become new’?

Cf. 2 Cor. 5:17.

88. Art thou ‘partaker of the divine nature’?

Cf. 2 Pet. 1:4.

‘Knowest thou not that Christ is in thee, except thou be reprobate?’

Cf. 2 Cor. 13:5.

Knowest thou that ‘God dwelleth in thee, and thou in God, by his Spirit which he hath given thee’?

Cf. 1 John 3:24; 4:12, 13.

Knowest thou not that ‘thy body is a temple of the Holy Ghost, which thou hast of God’?

Cf. 1 Cor. 6:19.

Hast thou ‘the witness in thyself’,

1 John 5:10.

‘the earnest of thine inheritance’?

Cf. Eph. 1:14.

Art thou ‘sealed by that Spirit of promise unto the day of redemption’?

Cf. Eph. 1:13; 4:30.

‘Hast thou received the Holy Ghost?’ Or dost thou start at the question, not knowing whether there be any Holy Ghost?

100

Acts 19:2.

99. If it offends thee, be thou assured that thou neither art a Christian nor desirest to be one. Nay, thy ‘very prayer is turned into sin’;

101

Cf. Ps. 109:6 (BCP).

and thou hast solemnly mocked God this very day by praying for ‘the inspiration of his Holy Spirit’,

102

Cf. the first collect in The Order for Holy Communion, BCP: ‘Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open…’; note the assumption here that most in the audience had already shared in a eucharistic liturgy.

when thou didst not believe there was any such thing to be received.

1010. Yet on the authority of God’s Word and our own Church I must repeat the question, ‘Hast thou received the Holy Ghost?’ If thou hast not thou art not yet a Christian; for a Christian is a man that is ‘anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power’.

103

Acts 10:38.

Thou art not yet made a partaker of pure religion and undefiled.

104

Jas. 1:27.

Dost 150thou know what religion is? That it is a participation of the divine nature, the life of God in the soul of man:

105

Cf. 2 Pet. 1:4: ἵνα διὰ τούτων γένησθε θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως, a phrase which sums up the catholic tradition of human participation in ‘the divine nature’. Cf. St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, III.xi.1, xix.6; IV.xxv.3-4; and also J. T. Nielsen, Adam and Christ in the Theology of Irenaeus of Lyons (Assen, Van Gorcum, 1968); see also Origen’s De Principiis, I.i.8-9; III.vi.1; IV.iv.9-10; and Hal Koch, Pronoia und Paideusis… (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1932), ch.iii. See also, espec., Balas, Metousia Theou: (pp. 72-73 above). This theme had come to the Wesleys through such favourite sources in the Epworth rectory as Lorenzo Scupoli, Pugna Spiritualis… (1589), reckoned by both Susanna and John to have been the work of Juan de Castañiza; cf. Richard Lucas’s English translation, The Spiritual Combat (1698), and many translations thereafter; see No. 107, ‘On God’s Vineyard’, I.5 and n.; and Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man (cf. Wesley’s abridgement in 1744; see also Winthrop S. Hudson’s edn. [Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1948]). Other crucial sources in their Oxford days included Jeremy Taylor, Thomas à Kempis, William Law (cf. Wesley’s references in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, §4), and Richard Lucas (Wesley read his Enquiry After Happiness in Mar. 1730, and other works in 1733).

It is not incidental that John Wesley’s carefully crafted account of his Aldersgate experience (JWJ, May 24, 1738) begins with the opening of his New Testament to 2 Pet. 1:4 (the longest Greek quotation in the Journal). He condenses both the original text and his translation of it so as to emphasize ‘the exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of the divine nature’ (cf. this with the AV and with the translation in the Notes). For further discussion, cf. Reginald Kissack, ‘Wesley’s Conversion’, WHS, XXII.1-6.

For other references to the participation theme in the Wesley corpus, cf. Nos. 24, ‘Sermon on the Mount, IV’, III.1; 43, The Scripture Way of Salvation, I.4; 135, ‘On Guardian Angels’, II.2; 146, ‘The One Thing Needful’, III.1. Cf. also, in Wesley’s Notes, his commentaries on Matt. 7:12; John 20:17; Rom. 3:23, 5:21; 1 John 2:5, 4:21. See also his letter to Richard Morgan, Jan. 14, 1734; to ‘John Smith’, June 25, 1746; and to William Dodd, Mar. 12, 1756. Wesley emphasized this theme in his selections for the Christian Lib., e.g., XIX.193-97, 269-72; XXXIX.44-61; L.369-73. He even took care to preserve a MS sermon of John Gambold’s among his own papers, from 1738 until his death, on ‘The Holy Spirit’ (see below, Vol. 4, Appendix B). Its dominant theme is participation.

‘Christ formed in the heart’,

106

Cf. Gal. 4:19.

‘Christ in thee, the hope of glory’;

107

Cf. Col. 1:27.

happiness and holiness; heaven begun upon earth;

108

A line which appears frequently in Charles Wesley’s hymns. Cf., e.g., his hymn on Ps. 65, st. 4, ll. 7-8 (Poet. Wks., VIII.142):

Heaven begun on earth we feel,

The heaven of Jesu’s love.

Cf. also the hymn on Ps. 31, Pt. II, st. 12, ll. 7-8 (Poet. Wks., VIII.64):

Enjoy a paradise of love

A heaven on earth begun.

Cf. also J. Wakelin, Christ and Nicodemus, ver. xxx, l. 1 (2nd edn., 1760, p. 19): ‘A little heav’n begun on earth.’

‘a kingdom of God within thee’,

109

Cf. Luke 17:21.

‘not meat and drink’, no outward thing, ‘but righteousness 151and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost’;

110

Rom. 14:17.

an everlasting kingdom brought into thy soul, a ‘peace of God that passeth all understanding’;

111

Cf. Phil. 4:7.

a ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’?

112

Cf. 1 Pet. 1:8.

1111. Knowest thou that ‘in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith that worketh by love;’

113

Gal. 5:6.

but a new creation?

114

Gal. 6:15.

Seest thou the necessity of that inward change, that spiritual birth, that life from the dead, that holiness? And art thou thoroughly convinced that ‘without it no man shall see the Lord’?

115

Cf. Heb. 12:14.

Art thou labouring after it? ‘Giving all diligence to make thy calling and election sure’?

116

Cf. 2 Pet. 1:10.

‘Working out thy salvation with fear and trembling’?

117

Cf. Phil. 2:12.

‘Agonizing to enter in at the strait gate’?

118

Cf. Luke 13:24.

Art thou in earnest about thy soul? And canst thou tell the Searcher of hearts, ‘Thou, O God, art the thing that I long for!’

119

Cf. Job 6:8.

‘Lord, thou knowest all things! Thou knowest that I would love thee!’

120

Cf. John 21:17.

1212. Thou hopest to be saved. But what reason hast thou to give of the hope that is in thee?

121

See 1 Pet. 3:15.

Is it because thou hast done no harm? Or because thou hast done much good? Or because thou art not like other men,

122

See Luke 18:11.

but wise, or learned, or honest, and morally good? Esteemed of men, and of a fair reputation? Alas, all this will never bring thee to God. It is in his account lighter than vanity.

123

Ps. 62:9.

Dost thou ‘know Jesus Christ whom he hath sent’?

124

Cf. John 17:3.

Hath he taught thee that ‘by grace we are saved through faith? And that not of ourselves: it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast’?

125

Cf. Eph. 2:8, 9.

Hast thou received the faithful saying as the whole foundation of thy hope, that ‘Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners’?

126

Cf. 1 Tim. 1:15.

Hast thou learned what that meaneth, ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’?

127

Mark 2:17.

‘I am not sent but to the lost sheep’?

128

Matt. 15:24; note Charles Wesley’s omission of the concluding phrase, ‘of the house of Israel’.

Art thou (he that heareth, let him understand!) lost, dead, damned already? Dost thou know thy deserts? Dost thou feel thy wants? Art thou ‘poor in spirit’?

129

Matt. 5:3.

Mourning for God and refusing to be comforted?

130

See Matt. 5:4.

Is the prodigal ‘come to himself’,

131

Cf. Luke 15:17.

and well content to be therefore 152thought ‘beside himself’

132

Mark 3:21.

by those who are still feeding upon the husks which he hath left?

133

Cf. Luke 15:16-17.

Art thou willing to ‘live godly in Christ Jesus’? And dost thou therefore ‘suffer persecution’?

134

2 Tim. 3:12.

Do ‘men say all manner of evil against thee falsely, for the Son of man’s sake’?

135

Cf. Matt. 5:11.

1313. O that in all these questions ye may hear the voice that wakes the dead, and feel that hammer of the Word which ‘breaketh the rock in pieces’!

136

Jer. 23:29.

‘If ye will hear his voice today, while it is called today, harden not your hearts.’

137

Cf. Heb. 3:8, 15, etc.

Now ‘awake, thou that sleepest’ in spiritual death, that thou sleep not in death eternal! Feel thy lost estate, and ‘arise from the dead.’ Leave thine old companions in sin and death. Follow thou Jesus, and ‘let the dead bury their dead.’

138

Matt. 8:22.

‘Save thyself from this untoward generation.’

139

Acts 2:40.

‘Come out from among them, and be thou separate, and touch not the unclean thing; and the Lord shall receive thee.’

140

Cf. 2 Cor. 6:17.

‘Christ shall give thee light.’

141

Eph. 5:14.

1III. 1. This promise I come, lastly, to explain. And how encouraging a consideration is this, that whosoever thou art who obeyest his call, thou canst not seek his face in vain. If thou even now ‘awakest and arisest from the dead’, he hath bound himself to ‘give thee light’. ‘The Lord shall give thee grace and glory;’

142

Cf. Ps. 84:11 (AV).

the light of his grace here, and the light of his glory when thou receivest the ‘crown that fadeth not away.’

143

Cf. 1 Pet. 5:4.

‘Thy light shall break forth as the morning,’

144

Cf. Isa. 58:8.Cf. Isa. 58:8.

and thy darkness be as the noonday.

145

Isa. 58:10.

‘God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness’, shall ‘shine in thy heart, to give the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’

146

Cf. 2 Cor. 4:6.

‘On them that fear the Lord shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.’

147

Cf. Mal. 4:2.

And ‘in that day it shall be said unto thee’,

148

Cf. Zeph. 3:16.

‘Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.’

149

Isa. 60:1.

For Christ shall reveal himself in thee. And he is ‘the true light’.

150

John 1:9; 1 John 2:8.

22. God is light,

151

1 John 1:5.

and will give himself to every awakened sinner that waiteth for him. And thou shalt then be a temple of the living God,

152

2 Cor. 6:16.

and Christ shall ‘dwell in thy heart by faith’. And, 153‘being rooted and grounded in love’, thou shalt ‘be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height’ of that ‘love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that thou mayest be filled with all the fullness of God.’

153

Cf. Eph. 3:17-19.

33. Ye see your calling, brethren. We are called to be ‘an habitation of God through his Spirit’;

154

Cf. Eph. 2:22.

and through his Spirit dwelling in us ‘to be saints’

155

Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2.

here, ‘and partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light’.

156

Col. 1:12.

So ‘exceeding great are the promises which are given unto us’,

157

Cf. 2 Pet. 1:4.

actually given unto us who believe. For by faith ‘we receive, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God’—the sum of all the promises—‘that we may know the things that are freely given to us of God.’

158

Cf. 1 Cor. 2:12.

44. The Spirit of Christ is that great gift of God which at sundry times and in divers manners

159

Heb. 1:1.

he hath promised to man, and hath fully bestowed since the time that Christ was glorified. Those promises before made to the fathers he hath thus fulfilled: ‘I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes.’

Ezek. 36:27.

‘I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.’

Isa. 44:3.

55. Ye may all be living witnesses of these things, of remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost.

160

Cf. Acts 2:38; 10:43; note the implied rejection here of the patristic notion of ‘the seal of the Spirit’ in baptism (cf. 2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13; 4:30).

‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’

161

Mark 9:23.

‘Who among you is there that feareth the Lord’, and yet ‘walketh on in darkness, and hath no light?’

162

Cf. Isa. 50:10.

I ask thee in the name of Jesus, believest thou that ‘his arm is not shortened at all’?

163

Cf. Isa. 50:2; 59:1.

That he is still ‘mighty to save’?

164

Isa. 63:1.

That he is ‘the same yesterday, today, and for ever’?

165

Heb. 13:8.

That ‘he hath now power on earth to forgive sins’?

166

Cf. Matt. 9:6, etc.

‘Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven.’

167

Cf. Matt. 9:2.

God, for Christ’s sake, hath 154forgiven thee. Receive this, ‘not as the word of man; but as it is, indeed, the word of God’;

168

Cf. 1 Thess. 2:13.

and thou art ‘justified freely through faith’.

169

Cf. Rom. 3:24.

Thou shalt be sanctified also through faith which is in Jesus,

170

See Acts 26:18.

and shalt set to thy seal,

171

See John 3:33.

even thine, ‘that God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son’.

172

Cf.1 John 5:11.

66. Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you,

173

Acts 2:29.

and ‘suffer ye the word of exhortation’,

174

Cf. Heb. 13:22.

even from one the least esteemed in the church. Your conscience beareth you witness in the HolyGhost

175

See Rom. 9:1.

that these things are so, ‘if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious’.

176

1 Pet. 2:3.

‘This is eternal life, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent.’

177

Cf. John 17:3.

This experimental knowledge,

178

Viz., ‘personal’, ‘existential’. Cf. Bishop Joseph Hall, Epistle VII, ‘To Mr. William Bedell’, in Select Works (London, 1811), IV.138; and Bishop Laurence Womock, The Examination of Tilenus (1661),p. 85. This distinction between ‘speculative’ and ‘practical’ religion is pervasive in the writings of both Wesley brothers. Note the implied either/or here; this, too, will soften as the Revival matures.

and this alone, is true Christianity. He is a Christian who hath received the Spirit of Christ. He is not a Christian who hath not received him. Neither is it possible to have received him and not know it. For ‘at that day’ (when he cometh, saith the Lord) ‘ye shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.’

John 14:20.

This is that ‘Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.’

179

John 14:17. Note the radical either/or here: either a clear and full assurance of justifying faith or none at all. Southey, I.150-53, observes that it was this stark disjunction between full assurance and none at all that prompted many of the hysterical symptoms reported in the early years of the Revival. Bernard G. Holland confirms this thesis and extends it in ‘The Conversions of John and Charles Wesley’, WHS, XXIII.53, 65-71, but also points to the fact that both brothers rather quickly modified this all-or-nothing emphasis by allowing for degrees of assurance. This softening may be seen in John Wesley’s letter to Dr. Rutherford, Mar. 28, 1768; and in Nos. 89, ‘The More Excellent Way’, §§7, 8; and 106, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:6’, I.11 (and for John’s numerous references to the plerophory or ‘full assurance of faith’ cf. No. 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, §15 and n.).

Melville Horne, once an active Methodist itinerant, reports a ‘final’ word from John Wesley on this subject (either from a letter or a conversation that must be dated somewhere close to 1789): ‘When fifty years ago my brother Charles and I, in the simplicity of our hearts, told the good people of England that unless they knew their sins were forgiven, they were under the wrath and curse of God, I marvel, Melville, they did not stone us!’; cf. Melville Horne, An Investigation of the Definition of Justifying Faith… (1809), p. 3; and Thomas Coke’s reply to it in A Series of Letters Addressed to the Methodist Connexion… (1810). See also Southey, I.216-17; and Semmel, Methodist Revolution, p. 100.

7 1557. The world cannot receive him, but utterly rejecteth the promise of the Father, contradicting and blaspheming. But every spirit which confesseth not this is not of God. Yea, ‘this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come into the world; and even now it is in the world.’

180

Cf. 1 John 4:3.

He is antichrist whosoever denies the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, or that the indwelling Spirit of God is the common privilege of all believers, the blessing of the gospel, the unspeakable gift, the universal promise, the criterion of a real Christian.

181

For a careful statement of the general teaching about the gifts of the Holy Spirit as extraordinary and exceptional, cf. Arthur Bedford, The Doctrine of Assurance… (1738). For another claim that such gifts are the common privilege of all believers, cf. Moore, I.269, reporting a conversation between John Wesley and Joseph Butler in Bristol, Aug. 18, 1739, about faith and assurance. The bishop’s complaint was candid: ‘Sir, the pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.’ Wesley’s reply was meant to be disarming: ‘My lord, …I pretend to no extraordinary revelations or gifts of the Holy Ghost—none but what every Christian may receive, and ought to expect and pray for….’ See p. 13, n. 47 above; see also No. 4, Scriptural Christianity, §4.

88. It nothing helps them to say, ‘We do not deny the assistance of God’s Spirit, but only this inspiration,

182

Moore also prints (II.277-322) a twelve-letter exchange between Wesley and a pseudonymous ‘John Smith’. (See Letters II, Vol. 26 of this edn.) Though an acute theologian, ‘Smith’ almost certainly was not Thomas Seeker as Tyerman (JW), (I.409-10); Sugden (I.82); and Telford (Letters, II.42) have suggested. Wesley’s letter of Mar. 22, 1748, to ‘Smith’ indicates that he was a pastor of a parish (‘If a single parish takes up your whole time and care, and you spend and are spent upon it, well’). ‘Smith’ was deeply disturbed by what he took to be a Wesleyan doctrine of assurance as ‘perceptible inspiration’ (cf. Letter III, Nov. 27, 1745, and Letter V, Feb. 26, 1746). Wesley’s reply (Letter VI, June 25, 1746) rehearses once again the claim that the gifts of the Spirit are meant for all truly converted Christians. See also, below, Nos. 10 and 11, ‘The Witness of the Spirit’, Discourses I and II.

this “receiving the Holy Ghost” and being sensible of it. It is only this feeling of the Spirit, this being moved by the Spirit, or filled with it, which we deny to have any place in sound religion.’ But in ‘only’ denying this you deny the whole Scriptures, the whole truth and promise and testimony of God.

99. Our own excellent Church knows nothing of this devilish distinction; but speaks plainly of ‘feeling the Spirit of Christ’;

Article 17 [‘Of Predestination and Election’: ‘…and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ…’].

of 156being ‘moved by the Holy Ghost’,

Office of consecrating Priests [BCP, The Ordering of Deacons].

and knowing and ‘feeling there is no other name than that of Jesus whereby we can receive any salvation’.

Visitation of the Sick [ibid., Of the Sick].

She teaches us also to pray for the ‘inspiration of the Holy Spirit’,

Collect before the Holy Communion [ibid. ].

yea, that we may be ‘filled with the Holy Ghost’.

Order of Confirmation [ibid. However, the words do not occur there but in Collects, St. Stephen’s Day].

Nay, and every presbyter of hers professes to ‘receive the Holy Ghost by the imposition of hands’.

183

Cf. BCP, Ordering of Priests.

Therefore to deny any of these is in effect to renounce the Church of England, as well as the whole Christian revelation.

1010. But ‘the wisdom of God’ was always ‘foolishness with men’.

184

Cf. 1 Cor. 1:21-25.

No marvel, then, that the great mystery of the gospel should be now also ‘hid from the wise and prudent’,

185

Matt. 11:25.

as well as in the days of old; that it should be almost universally denied, ridiculed, and exploded as mere frenzy, and all who dare avow it still branded with the names of madmen and enthusiasts.

186

For samplings of eighteenth-century denunciations of enthusiasm, cf. Lee, Early Methodist Enthusiasm, chs. 2-3.

This is that ‘falling away’

187

2 Thess. 2:3.

which was to come—that general apostasy of all orders and degrees of men which we even now find to have overspread the earth. ‘Run to and fro in the streets of Jerusalem, and see if you can find a man,’

188

Cf. Jer. 5:1.

a man that loveth the Lord his God with all his heart, and serveth him with all his strength. How does our own land mourn (that we look no farther) under the overflowings of ungodliness!

189

Ps. 18:4 (BCP).

What villainies of every kind are committed day by day; yea, too often with impunity by those who sin with a high hand, and glory in their shame!

190

Phil. 3:19.

Who can reckon up the oaths, curses, profaneness, blasphemies; the lying, slandering, evil speaking; the sabbath-breaking, gluttony, drunkenness, revenge; the whoredoms, adulteries, and various uncleanness; the frauds, injustice, oppression, extortion, which overspread our land as a flood?

191

See Ps. 69:2, and No. 4, Scriptural Christianity, IV.11. See also Rom. 1:18-32.

1111. And even among those who have kept themselves pure from those grosser abominations, how much anger and pride, 157how much sloth and idleness, how much softness and effeminacy, how much luxury and self-indulgence, how much covetousness and ambition, how much thirst of praise,

192

For John Wesley’s references to the common thirst for fame and glory (gloria sitis), see No. 14, The Repentance of Believers, I.7 and n.

how much love of the world, how much fear of man is to be found! Meanwhile, how little of true religion! For where is he that loveth either God or his neighbour, as he hath given us commandment? On the one hand are those who have not so much as the form of godliness; on the other, those who have the form only:

193

Cf. 2 Tim. 3:5, and No. 2, The Almost Christian, I.4 and n.

there stands the open, there the painted sepulchre.

194

Cf. Matt. 23:27, and I.7 and n., above.

So that, in very deed, whosoever were earnestly to behold any public gathering together of the people (I fear those in our churches are not to be excepted) might easily perceive ‘that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees’:

195

Acts 23:6.

the one having almost as little concern about religion as if there were ‘no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit’;

196

Acts 23:8.

and the other making it a mere lifeless form, a dull round of external performances without either true faith, or the love of God, or joy in the Holy Ghost.

197

Rom. 14:17.

1212. Would to God I could except us of this place. ‘Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for you is that ye may be saved’

198

Cf. Rom. 10:1.

from this overflowing of ungodliness,

199

Ps. 18:4 (BCP).

and that here may its proud waves be stayed!

200

See Job 38:11.

But is it so indeed? God knoweth, yea, and our own conscience, it is not. We have not kept ourselves pure.

201

See 1 Tim. 5:22.

Corrupt are we also and abominable; and few are there that understand any more, few that worship God in spirit and in truth.

202

John 4:24.

We too are ‘a generation that set not our hearts aright, and whose spirit cleaveth not steadfastly unto God’.

203

Cf. Ps. 78:9 (BCP).

He hath appointed us indeed to be ‘the salt of the earth. But if the salt have lost its savour, it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.’

204

Matt. 5:13.

1313. And ‘shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?’

205

Jer. 5:9, 29.

Yea, we know not how soon he may say to the sword, ‘Sword, go through this land!’

206

Cf. Ezek. 14:17.

He hath given us long space to repent. He lets us alone this year also. But he warns and awakens us by thunder. His 158judgments are abroad in the earth.

207

Cf. Ps. 105:7 (AV). III.13-15 are echoes of the compound crises in Europe in general and England in particular; Charles Wesley could expect most of his hearers to share his alarm, even if for different reasons. Sir Robert Walpole’s cynical reign had ended only two months before, and a dangerous new future loomed ahead with the War of the Austrian Succession (1739-48) which had pageengulfed an ineptly led Britain; Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) was waiting in the wings. In 1745-46 England and, much more tragically, Scotland became ‘a field of blood’ (as at Culloden, Apr. 15, 1746). Cf. Robertson, England Under the Hanoverians, pp. 80-111; and Williams, The Whig Supremacy, pp. 220-51.

And we have all reason to expect that heaviest of all, even ‘that he should come unto us quickly, and remove our candlestick out of its place, except we repent and do the first works’;

208

Cf. Rev. 2:5.

unless we return to the principles of the Reformation, the truth and simplicity of the gospel. Perhaps we are now resisting the last effort of divine grace to save us. Perhaps we have wellnigh ‘filled up the measure of our iniquities’

209

Cf. Matt. 23:32.

by rejecting the counsel of God against ourselves, and casting out his messengers.

1414. O God, ‘in the midst of wrath remember mercy’!

210

Hab. 3:2.

Be glorified in our reformation, not in our destruction. Let us ‘hear the rod, and him that appointed it’.

211

Cf. Mic. 6:9.

Now that ‘thy judgments are abroad in the earth’,

212

Cf. 1 Chr. 16:14; Ps.105:7.

let ‘the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness’.

213

Isa. 26:9.

1515. My brethren, it is high time for us to awake out of sleep; before ‘the great trumpet of the Lord be blown’,

214

Isa. 27:13.

and our land become a field of blood.

215

Matt. 27:8.

O may we speedily see the things that make for our peace, before they are hid from our eyes!

216

See Luke 19:42.

‘Turn thou us, O good Lord, and let thine anger cease from us.’

217

Cf. Ps. 85:4 (BCP).

‘O Lord, look down from heaven, behold and visit this vine’;

218

Cf. Ps. 80:14.

and cause us to know the time of our visitation.

219

See Jer. 8:12, etc.

‘Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name; O deliver us, and be merciful to our sins, for thy name’s sake.’

220

Ps. 79:9 (BCP).

‘And so will we not go back from thee: O let us live, and we shall call upon thy name. Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, show the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole.’

221

Ps. 80:18-19 (BCP).

‘Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.’

222

Eph. 3:20-21.

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Entry Title: Sermon 3: ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’

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