Sermon 4: Scriptural Christianity

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).

1

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.

2

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.

3

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.

4

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.

5

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;

6

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’).

7

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.

8

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…’.

9

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

10

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’.

11

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.

12

‘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;

13

‘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.’

14

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;

15

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

16

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….

17

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.’

18

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.

19

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.

20

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,

21

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.

22

§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.

159 Scriptural Christianity A Sermon preached at St. Mary's, Oxford,
before the University,
August 24, 1744

1

Half-title reproduced from Sermons, 1746. The drop-title prefixed to the individual editions of the sermon was simply ‘Acts iv.31’.

To the Reader.

It was not my design when I wrote ever to print the latter part of the following sermon. But the false and scurrilous accounts

2

See above, ‘Intro. Com.’, pp. 113-15.

of it which have been published almost in every corner of the nation constrain me to publish the whole, just as it was preached, that men of reason may judge for themselves.
October 20, 1744
John Wesley

3

This foreword was omitted from the collected editions of SOSO.

Acts 4:31

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

11. The same expression occurs in the second chapter, where we read, ‘When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all’ (the apostles, with the women, and the mother of Jesus, and his brethren) ‘with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind…. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’

Acts 2:1-4.

One immediate effect whereof was, they ‘began to speak with other tongues’;

Ver. 4.

insomuch that both the ‘Parthians, Medes, 160Elamites’, and the other strangers who ‘came together’ ‘when this was noised abroad’, ‘heard them speak’ in their several ‘tongues, the wonderful works of God.’

Ver. 6 [9, 11].

22. In this chapter we read that when the apostles and brethren had been praying and praising God, ‘the place was shaken where they were assembled together, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’

Not that we find any visible appearance here, such as had been in the former instance: nor are we informed that the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost were then given to all or any of them, such as ‘the gifts of healing, of working other miracles, of prophecy, of discerning spirits’, the speaking with ‘divers kinds of tongues’, and ‘the interpretation of tongues’.

1 Cor. 12:9-10.

33. Whether these gifts of the Holy Ghost were designed to remain in the church throughout all ages, and whether or not they will be restored at the nearer approach of the ‘restitution of all things’,

are questions which it is not needful to decide. But it is needful to observe this, that even in the infancy of the church God divided them with a sparing hand. ‘Were all’ even then ‘prophets?’ Were ‘all workers of miracles? Had all the gifts of healing? Did all speak with tongues?’ No, in no wise. Perhaps not one in a thousand. Probably none but the teachers in the church, and only some of them.

1 Cor. 12:28-30.

It was therefore for a more excellent purpose than this that ‘they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’

44. It was to give them (what none can deny to be essential to all Christians in all ages)

‘the mind which was in Christ’, those holy ‘fruits of the Spirit’ which whosoever hath not ‘is none of his’; to fill them with ‘love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness’; to endue them with ‘faith’ (perhaps it might be rendered ‘fidelity’), with ‘meekness and temperance’; to enable them to ‘crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts’,

Gal. 5:22-24.

its passions and desires; and, in consequence of that inward change, 161to fulfil all outward righteousness, ‘to walk as Christ also walked’, in the ‘work of faith, the patience of hope, the labour of love’.

1 Thess. 1:3.

55. Without busying ourselves then in curious, needless inquiries touching those extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, let us take a nearer view of these his ordinary fruits, which we are assured will remain throughout all ages: of that great work of God among the children of men which we are used to express by one word, ‘Christianity’; not as it implies a set of opinions, a system of doctrines, but as it refers to men’s hearts and lives. And this Christianity it may be useful to consider under three distinct views:

I. As beginning to exist in individuals.

II. As spreading from one to another.

III. As covering the earth.

I design to close these considerations with a plain practical application.

1

I. And first, let us consider Christianity in its rise, as beginning to exist in individuals.

1[1.] Suppose then one of those who heard the Apostle Peter preaching ‘repentance and remission of sins’

10

Luke 24:47.

was ‘pricked to the heart’,

11

Cf. Acts 2:37.

was convinced of sin, repented, and then ‘believed in Jesus’.

12

Gal. 2:16.

By this ‘faith of the operation of God’,

13

Col. 2:12.

which was the very ‘substance’, or subsistence, ‘of things hoped for’, the demonstrative ‘evidence of invisible things’,

Heb. 11:1.

he instantly ‘received the Spirit of adoption, whereby he (now) cried Abba, Father.’

Rom. 8:15.

Now first it was that he could ‘call Jesus Lord, by the Holy Ghost’,

1 Cor. 12:3.

‘the Spirit itself bearing witness with his spirit that he was a child of God’.

Rom. 8:16.

Now it was that he could truly say, ‘I live not, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’

[Cf.] Gal. 2:20.

22. This then was the very essence of his faith, a divine ἔλεγχος

Evidence or conviction. [See Heb. 11:1; cf. No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Steepest’, I.11 and n.].

of the love of God the Father, through the Son of his love, to him 162a sinner, now ‘accepted in the beloved’. And ‘being justified by faith, he had peace with God’,

Rom. 5:1.

yea, ‘the peace of God ruling in his heart’; a peace ‘which, passing all understanding’ (πάντα νοῦν, all barely rational conception), ‘kept his heart and mind’ from all doubt and fear, through the ‘knowledge of him in whom he had believed’. He could not therefore ‘be afraid of any evil tidings’; for his ‘heart stood fast, believing in the Lord’. He feared not what man could do unto him, knowing ‘the very hairs of his head were all numbered’. He feared not all the powers of darkness, whom God was daily ‘bruising under his feet’. Least of all was he afraid to die; nay, he ‘desired to depart and be with Christ’;

Phil. 1:23.

who ‘through death had destroyed him that had the power of death, even the devil, and delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime’, till then, ‘subject to bondage’.

Heb. 2:14-15.

33. ‘His soul’ therefore ‘magnified the Lord, and his spirit rejoiced in God his Saviour.’

He rejoiced in him ‘with joy unspeakable’, who ‘had reconciled him to God, even the Father’; ‘in whom he had redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.’ He rejoiced in that ‘witness of God’s Spirit with his spirit that he was a child of God’; and more abundantly ‘in hope of the glory of God’; in hope of the glorious image of God, the full ‘renewal of his soul in righteousness and true holiness’; and in hope of that ‘crown of glory’, that ‘inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away’.

44. ‘The love of God’ was also ‘shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost which was given unto him.’

‘Because he was a son, 163God had sent forth the Spirit of his Son into his heart, crying Abba, Father!’

Gal. 4:6.

And that filial love of God was continually increased by the ‘witness he had in himself’

1 John 5:10.

of God’s pardoning love to him, by ‘beholding what manner of love it was which the Father had bestowed upon him, that he should be called a child of God’.

1 John 3:1.

So that God was the desire of his eyes, and the joy of his heart; his portion in time and in eternity.

55. He that thus ‘loved God’ could not but ‘love his brother also’;

and ‘not in word only, but in deed and in truth’. ‘If God’, said he, ‘so loved us, we ought also to love one another;’

1 John 4:11.

yea, every soul of man, as the ‘mercy’ of God ‘is over all his works’.

Ps. 145:9.

Agreeably hereto, the affection of this lover of God embraced all mankind for his sake; not excepting those whom he had never seen in the flesh, or those of whom he knew nothing more than that they were ‘the offspring of God’, for whose souls his Son had died; not excepting the evil and unthankful, and least of all his enemies, those who ‘hated, or persecuted, or despitefully used’ him for his Master’s sake. These had a peculiar place both in his heart and his prayers. He loved them ‘even as Christ loved us’.

66. And ‘love is not puffed up’.

It abases to the dust every soul wherein it dwells. Accordingly he was ‘lowly of heart’, little and mean and vile in his own eyes. He neither sought nor received the ‘praise of men’, ‘but that which cometh of God only’. He was meek and long-suffering, gentle to all, and easy to be entreated. Faithfulness and truth never forsook him; they were ‘bound about his neck, and wrote on the table of his heart’. By the same Spirit he was enabled to be ‘temperate in all things’, ‘refraining his soul even as a weaned child’. He was ‘crucified to the world, and the world crucified to him’—superior to ‘the desire of the flesh, the 164desire of the eye, and the pride of life.’ By the same almighty love was he saved both from passion and pride, from lust and vanity, from ambition and covetousness, and from every temper which was not in Christ.

77. It may be easily believed, he who had this love in his heart would ‘work no evil to his neighbour’.

It was impossible for him knowingly and designedly to do harm to any man. He was at the greatest distance from cruelty and wrong, from any unjust or unkind action. With the same care did he ‘set a watch before his mouth, and keep the door of his lips’, lest he should offend in tongue either against justice, or against mercy or truth. He ‘put away all lying’, falsehood, and fraud; ‘neither was guile found in his mouth’. He ‘spake evil of no man’; nor did an unkind word ever come out of his lips.

88. And as he was deeply sensible of the truth of that word, ‘without me ye can do nothing’,

and consequently of the need he had to be ‘watered’ of God ‘every moment’; so he ‘continued daily’ in all the ordinances of God, the stated channels of his grace to man: ‘in the apostles’ doctrine’ or teaching, receiving that food of the soul with all readiness of heart; ‘in the breaking of bread’, which he found to be ‘the communion of the body of Christ’; and ‘in the prayers’ and praises offered up by the great congregation. And thus he daily ‘grew in grace’, increasing in strength, in the knowledge and love of God.

99. But it did not satisfy him barely to abstain from doing evil. His soul was athirst to do good. The language of his heart continually was, ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’

My Lord ‘went about doing good’; and shall not I ‘tread in his steps’? ‘As he had opportunity’, therefore, if he could do no good of a higher kind, he fed the hungry, clothed the naked, helped the fatherless or stranger, visited and assisted them that were sick or in prison. He ‘gave all his goods to feed the poor’. He rejoiced to labour or to suffer for them; and whereinsoever he might profit another, there especially to ‘deny himself’. He 165counted nothing too dear to part with for them, as well remembering the word of his Lord, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’

Matt. 25:40.

1010. Such was Christianity in its rise.

Such was a Christian in ancient days. Such was every one of those who, ‘when they heard’ the threatenings of ‘the chief priests and elders’, ‘lifted up their voice to God with one accord, …and were all filled with the Holy Ghost…. The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul’ (so did the love of him in whom they had believed constrain them to love one another). ‘Neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.’ So fully were they crucified to the world and the world crucified to them. ‘And they continued steadfastly…’ ‘with one accord…’ ‘in the apostles’ doctrine, and in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.’ ‘And great grace was upon them all; neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.’

Acts 4:31-5.

2

1II. 1. Let us take a view, in the second place, of this Christianity as spreading from one to another, and so gradually making its way into the world. For such was the will of God concerning it, who ‘did not light a candle to put it under a bushel, but that it might give light to all that were in the house’. And this our Lord had declared to his first disciples, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth, …the light of the world,’ at the same time that he gave that general command, ‘Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’

Matt. 5:13-16.

22. And, indeed, supposing a few of these lovers of mankind to see ‘the whole world lying in wickedness’,

can we believe they 166would be unconcerned at the sight? At the misery of those for whom their Lord died? Would not their bowels yearn over them, and their hearts ‘melt away for very trouble’? Could they then stand idle all the day long? Even were there no command from him whom they loved? Rather, would they not labour, by all possible means, to ‘pluck some of these brands out of the burning’? Undoubtedly they would: they would spare no pains to bring back whomsoever they could of those poor ‘sheep that had gone astray’ ‘to the great Shepherd and Bishop of their souls.’

1 Pet. 2:25.

33. So the Christians of old did. They laboured, having opportunity, to ‘do good unto all men’,

warning them to ‘flee from the wrath to come’; now, now, to ‘escape the damnation of hell’. They declared, ‘The times of ignorance God winked at; but now he calleth all men everywhere to repent.’

Acts 17:30. [‘Winked at’ is the AV rendering; Wesley’s text for his Notes has it ‘overlooked’.]

They cried aloud, ‘Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways;’ ‘so iniquity shall not be your ruin’.

Ezek. 18:30.

They ‘reasoned’ with them ‘of temperance and righteousness’, or justice, of the virtues opposite to their reigning sins, and ‘of judgment to come’,

Acts 24:25.

of the wrath of God which would surely be executed on evil-doers in that day when he should judge the world.

44. They endeavoured herein to speak to every man severally as he had need. To the careless, to those who lay unconcerned in darkness and in the shadow of death,

they thundered, ‘Awake, thou that sleepest; …arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.’ But to those who were already awakened out of sleep, and groaning under a sense of the wrath of God, their language was, ‘We have an advocate with the Father; …he is the 167propitiation for our sins.’ Meantime those who had believed they ‘provoked to love and to good works’; to ‘patient continuance in well-doing’; and to ‘abound more and more’ in that ‘holiness, without which no man can see the Lord’.

Heb. 12:14.

55. And their labour was not in vain in the Lord.

His ‘word ran and was glorified’. It ‘grew mightily and prevailed’. But so much the more did offences prevail also. The world in general were offended, ‘because they testified of it that the works thereof were evil’.

John 7:7.

The men of pleasure were offended, not only because these men were ‘made’, as it were, ‘to reprove their thoughts’ (‘He professeth’, said they, ‘to have the knowledge of God; he calleth himself the child of the Lord;’ ‘his life is not like other men’s; his ways are of another fashion; he abstaineth from our ways, as from filthiness; he maketh his boast that God is his Father’);

Wisd. 2:13-16.

but much more because so many of their companions were taken away and would no more ‘run with them to the same excess of riot’.

1 Pet. 4:4.

The men of reputation were offended, because as the gospel spread they declined in the esteem of the people; and because many no longer dared to ‘give them flattering titles’, or to pay man the homage due to God only. The men of trade called one another together and said, ‘Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. But ye see and hear that these men have persuaded and turned away much people; …so that this our craft is in danger to be set at nought.’

Acts 19:25-27.

Above all the men of religion, so called—the men of outside religion, ‘the saints of the world’—were offended, 168and ready at every opportunity to cry out, ‘Men of Israel, help!’

Acts 21:28.

‘We have found these men pestilent fellows, movers of sedition throughout the world.’

Acts 24:5.

‘These are the men that teach all men everywhere against the people and against the law.’

Acts 21:28.

66. Thus it was that the heavens grew black with clouds, and the storm gathered amain. For the more Christianity spread, ‘the more hurt was done’, in the account of those who received it not; and the number increased of those who were more and more enraged at these ‘men who (thus) turned the world upside down’;

insomuch that they more and more cried out, ‘Away with such fellows from the earth; it is not fit that they should live;’ yea, and sincerely believed that ‘whosoever’ should ‘kill them would do God service’.

77. Meanwhile they did not fail to ‘cast out their name as evil’;

so that this ‘sect was everywhere spoken against’.

Acts 28:22.

‘Men said all manner of evil of them’, even as had been done of ‘the prophets that were before them’.

Matt. 5:11, 12.

And whatever any would affirm, others would believe; so that offences grew as the stars of heaven for multitude. And hence arose, at the time foreordained of the Father, persecution in all its forms. Some, for a season, suffered only shame and reproach; some, ‘the spoiling of their goods’;

Heb. 10:34.

some ‘had trial of mocking and scourging’; some ‘of bonds and imprisonment’;

Heb. 11:36.

and others ‘resisted unto blood’.

88. Now it was that the pillars of hell were shaken, and the kingdom of God spread more and more. Sinners were everywhere ‘turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God’.

He gave his children ‘such a mouth, and such wisdom, as all their adversaries could not resist’. And their lives were of equal force with their words. But above all, their sufferings spake to all the world. They ‘approved themselves’ the servants of God ‘in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses; in 169stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours’;

2 Cor. 6:4-5.

‘in perils in the sea, in perils in the wilderness; in weariness and painfulness, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness’. And when, having ‘fought the good fight’, they were ‘led as…sheep to the slaughter’, and ‘offered upon the sacrifice and service of their faith’, then the blood of each found a voice, and the heathen owned, ‘He being dead, yet speaketh.’

99. Thus did Christianity spread itself in the earth. But how soon did the tares appear with the wheat!

And ‘the mystery of iniquity’ work as well as ‘the mystery of godliness’! How soon did Satan find a seat, even ‘in the temple of God’! Till ‘the woman fled into the wilderness’, and ‘the faithful were (again) minished from the children of men.’ Here we tread a beaten path: the still increasing corruptions of the succeeding generations have been largely described from time to time, by those witnesses God raised up, to show that he had ‘built his church upon a rock, and the gates of hell should not’ wholly ‘prevail against her.’

Matt. 16:18.

3

1III. 1. But shall we not see greater things than these?

103

For a fuller summary of Wesley’s eschatology, cf. No. 15, The Great Assize.

Yea, greater than have been yet from the beginning of the world? Can Satan cause the truth of God to fail? Or his promises to be of none effect? If not, the time will come when Christianity will prevail over all, and cover the earth. Let us stand a little, and survey (the third thing which was proposed) this strange sight, a Christian world. ‘Of this the prophets of old inquired and searched. diligently:’ of this ‘the Spirit which was in them testified’:

1 Pet. 1:10, 11, etc.

‘It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it…. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.’

Isa. 2:2, 4.

‘In that day there 170shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people. To it shall the Gentiles seek, and his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again to recover the remnant of his people; …and he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah, from the four corners of the earth.’

Isa. 11:10-12.

‘The wolf shall (then) dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the fading together; and a little child shall lead them…. They shall not hurt nor destroy (saith the Lord) in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’

Isa. 11:6, 9.

22. To the same effect are the words of the great Apostle, which it is evident have never yet been fulfilled: ‘Hath God cast away his people? God forbid…. But through their fall, salvation is come to the Gentiles. And if the diminishing of them be the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fullness?… For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery; …that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in: and so all Israel shall be saved.’

Rom. 11:1, 11-12, 25-6.

33. Suppose now the fullness of time to be come, and the prophecies to be accomplished—what a prospect is this! All is ‘peace, quietness, and assurance forever’.

Here is no din of arms, no ‘confused noise’, no ‘garments rolled in blood’. ‘Destructions are come to a perpetual end:’ wars are ceased from the earth. Neither is there any intestine jar remaining: no brother rising up against brother; no country or city divided against itself, and tearing out its own bowels. Civil discord is at an end for evermore, and none is left either to destroy or hurt his neighbour. Here is no oppression to ‘make (even) the wise man mad’; no extortion to ‘grind the face of the poor’; no robbery or wrong; no rapine or injustice; for all are ‘content with such 171things as they possess’. Thus ‘righteousness and peace have kissed each other’;

Ps. 85:10.

they have ‘taken root and filled the land’; righteousness flourishing out of the earth, and ‘peace looking down from heaven’.

44. And with righteousness or justice, mercy is also found. The earth is no longer ‘full of cruel habitations’.

‘The Lord hath destroyed both the bloodthirsty’ and malicious, the envious and revengeful man. Were there any provocation, there is none that now knoweth to ‘return evil for evil’: but indeed there is none doth evil, no not one; for all are ‘harmless as doves’; and being ‘filled with peace and joy in believing’, and united in one body, by one Spirit, they all ‘love as brethren’; they are all ‘of one heart, and of one soul, neither saith any of them that ought of the things which he possesseth is his own’. There is none among them that lacketh; for every man loveth his neighbour as himself. And all walk by one rule: ‘Whatever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them.’

55. It follows that no unkind word can ever be heard among them—no ‘strife of tongues’,

no contention of any kind, no railing, or evil speaking—but everyone ‘opens his mouth with wisdom, and in his tongue there is the law of kindness’. Equally incapable are they of fraud or guile: their ‘love is without dissimulation’; their words are always the just expression of their thoughts, opening a window into their breast, that whosoever desires may look into their hearts and see that only love and God are there.

6 1726. Thus, where ‘the Lord God omnipotent taketh to himself his mighty power, and reigneth’,

doth he ‘subdue all things to himself, cause every heart to overflow with love, and fill every mouth with praise. ‘Happy are the people that are in such a case; yea, blessed are the people who have the Lord for their God.’

Ps. 144:15 [BCP].

‘Arise, shine (saith the Lord), for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee…. Thou hast known that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty God of Jacob…. I have made thy officers peace, and thy exactors righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls “Salvation”, and thy gates “Praise”…. Thy people are all righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified.’

Isa. 60:1, 16-18[, 21].

‘The sun shall no more be thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.’

Isa. 60:19.

4

IV. Having thus briefly considered Christianity as beginning, as going on, and as covering the earth, it remains only that I should close the whole with a plain practical application.

11. And first I would ask, Where does this Christianity now exist? Where, I pray, do the Christians live?

128

Wesley’s lifelong interest in primitive Christianity and its restoration is well analysed by Schmidt, Wesley, passim. Wesley had been deeply impressed by Johannes Arndt’s True Christianity (Eng. tr., 1712, 1714) and its pietistic visions of renewal; there are echoes of the theme in Charles Wesley’s hymn, ‘Primitive Christianity’, first published in An Earnest Appeal, 1743 (11:90-94 of this edn.). Wesley had read Antoinette Bourignon’s Light of the World (Eng. tr. 1696); cf. her childhood queries and pleas: ‘Where are the Christians? Let us go to the country where the Christians live’ (Intro., xvi). Cf. Wesley’s reply to the Duke of Weimar (?) to a query as to the purposes of his journey to Herrnhut: ‘I answered, “To see the place where the Christians live”’ (JWJ, July 22, 1738; cf. also Curnock’s n., II.15). One of Wesley’s favourite church histories was Claude Fleury, An Historical Account of the Manners and Behaviour of the Christians… (1698); indeed, he would presently edit and publish an abridged translation of it (The Manners of the Ancient Christians) in 1749; see Bibliog, No. 157.

This primitivist orientation goes with Wesley’s conviction that the Constantinian emancipation of Christianity was a sort of fall of the church; see No. 61, ‘The Mystery of Iniquity’, §27 and n.

Which is the 173country, the inhabitants whereof are ‘all (thus) filled with the Holy Ghost’?

129

Acts 2:4.

Are all ‘of one heart and of one soul’?

130

Acts 4:32. Cf. also Charles Wesley, ‘Primitive Christianity’, Pt. I, ll. 15-16:

They all were of one heart and soul,

And only love inspired the whole.

Cf. also No. 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’, §20.

Cannot suffer one among them to ‘lack anything’, but continually give ‘to every man as he hath need’?

131

Cf. Acts 4:34-35.

Who one and all have the love of God filling their hearts, and constraining them to love their neighbour as themselves? Who have all ‘put on bowels of mercies, humbleness of mind, gentleness, long-suffering’?

132

Cf. Col. 3:12.

Who offend not in any kind, either by word or deed, against justice, mercy, or truth, but in every point do unto all men as they would these should do unto them?

133

See Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31.

With what propriety can we term any a Christian country which does not answer this description? Why then, let us confess we have never yet seen a Christian country upon earth.

22. I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, if ye do account me a madman or a fool,

134

The Oxford Methodists had already been labelled with this commonplace eighteenth-century epithet in Fog’s Weekly Journal, Nov. 5, 1732. John Hutchinson would apply it to England’s most distinguished scientist, Isaac Newton, in Works (3rd edn. 1748-49), V.142. William Law had used it (though not of the Methodists) in A Practical Treatise Upon Christian Perfection (1726), Works (1762), III.99: ‘A good man who enjoys the use of his reason is offended at madmen and fools because they both act contrary to the reason of things. The madman fancies himself, and everything about him, to be different from what they are; the fool knows nothing of the value of things, is ridiculous in his choices and prefers a shell before the most useful things in life;’ see also ibid., III.245. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), ch. xi, §§12-13, had distinguished between madmen (men who ‘reason right from…wrong propositions’) and fools (who ‘reason scarce at all’). The Tatter, No. 127 (Jan. 28-31, 1709), quotes Terence, Hic homines ex stultis facit insanos (‘This fellow has the art of converting fools into madmen’).

Wesley made his peace with this epithet as with the others; cf. A Collection of Hymns (1780), Hymn 388, l. 25: ‘Fools and madmen let us be’; see also Sermons 84, The Important Question, III.14; and 125, ‘On a Single Eye’, III.5. But in No. 11, The Witness of the Spirit, II, IV.2, Wesley himself speaks of the ‘French prophets [i.e., the Camisards] and enthusiasts’ as ‘madmen’.

yet ‘as a fool bear with me.’

135

Cf. 2 Cor. 11:16.

It 174is utterly needful that someone should use great plainness of speech toward you. It is more especially needful at this time; for who knoweth but it is the last? Who knoweth how soon the righteous judge may say, ‘I will no more be entreated for this people’?

136

Cf. Exod. 8:8, 9, 29-31; Jer. 7:16, etc.; and Ps. 77:7 (BCP).

‘Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in this land, they should but deliver their own souls.’

137

Cf. Ezek. 14:20.

And who will use this plainness if I do not? Therefore I, even I, will speak. And I adjure you, by the living God, that ye steel not your breasts against receiving a blessing at my hands. Do not say in your heart, Non persuadebis, etiamsi persuaseris;

138

‘You cannot persuade me, even though you have been persuasive.’ This aphorism appears, in Greek, in Aristophanes, Plutus (which Wesley had read), l. 600. By Wesley’s time it had been turned into a sort of Latin proverb; cf. South, Sermons (1823), I.170: ‘Where the heart is bent upon…a vicious cause [even a miracle] would end in a non persuadebit etiamsi persuaseris….’ See also Sanderson, Sermons, II.188. Joseph Addison (one of Wesley’s favourite essayists) had used it in The Freeholder, No. 32 (Apr. 9, 1712): ‘“Make us believe that if you can”, which is in Latin, if I may be allowed the pedantry, Non persuadebis etiamsi persuaseris.’ For a later usage (1773), cf. Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, III.i.

It reappears in Wesley in a letter to Francis Okeley, Oct. 4, 1758; in English it turns up in the Preface to the Journal, Pt. III. In Nos. 83, ‘On Patience’, §11; and 88, ‘On Dress’, §8, it appears as a somewhat incongruous paraphrase of Agrippa’s comment to St. Paul in Acts 26:28 (the text of No. 2, The Almost Christian).

or, in other words, Lord, thou shalt not ‘send by whom thou wilt send’!

139

Cf. Exod. 4:13; John 3:34; 5:38; 6:29; 7:28; 14:26; 17:3, all of which served as warrants for Wesley’s self-understanding of his own ‘extraordinary ministry’ and that of his preachers. The theme reappears in Nos. 38, ‘A Caution against Bigotry’, I.14; 104, ‘On Attending the Church Service’, §21; 107, ‘On God’s Vineyard’, V.5; 121, ‘Prophets and Priests’, §3. See also Charles Wesley’s Hymns on the Four Gospels, No. 1705 (on John 4:39), st. 1, l. 6: ‘The Almighty sends by whom he will’ (cf. Poet. Wks., XI.361).

Let me rather perish in my blood than be saved by this man!

33. ‘Brethren, I am persuaded better things of you, though I thus speak.’

140

Cf. Heb. 6:9.

Let me ask you, then, in tender love, and in the spirit of meekness, Is this city a Christian city? Is Christianity, scriptural Christianity, found here? Are we, considered as a community of men, so ‘filled with the Holy Ghost’

141

Acts 2:4; 4:31.

as to enjoy in our hearts, and show forth in our lives, the genuine fruits of that Spirit? Are all the magistrates, all heads and governors of colleges and halls, and their respective societies (not to speak of the inhabitants of the town), ‘of one heart and of one soul’?

142

Cf. Acts 4:32.

Is ‘the love of God shed abroad in our hearts’?

143

Cf. Rom. 5:5.

Are our tempers the same that were 175in him? And are our lives agreeable thereto? Are we ‘holy as he which hath called us is holy, in all manner of conversation’?

144

Cf. 1 Pet. 1:15.

44. I entreat you to observe that here are no peculiar notions now under consideration; that the question moved is not concerning doubtful opinions of one kind or another; but concerning the undoubted, fundamental branches (if there be any such) of our common Christianity. And for the decision thereof I appeal to your own conscience, guided by the Word of God. He therefore that is not condemned by his own heart, let him go free.

55. In the fear, then, and in the presence of the great God before whom both you and I shall shortly appear, I pray you that are in authority over us, whom I reverence for your office’ sake, to consider (and not after the manner of dissemblers with God), are you ‘filled with the Holy Ghost’?

145

Acts 2:4; 4:31.

Are ye lively portraitures of him whom ye are appointed to represent among men? ‘I have said, Ye are gods,’

146

Ps. 82:6; cf. John 10:34.

ye magistrates and rulers; ye are by office so nearly allied to the God of heaven! In your several stations and degrees ye are to show forth unto us ‘the Lord our Governor’.

147

Cf. Ps. 8:1 (BCP).

Are all the thoughts of your hearts, all your tempers and desires, suitable to your high calling? Are all your words like unto those which come out of the mouth of God? Is there in all your actions dignity and love? A greatness which words cannot express, which can flow only from an heart full of God—and yet consistent with the character of ‘man that is a worm, and the son of man that is a worm’!

148

Cf. Job 25:6.

66. Ye venerable men who are more especially called to form the tender minds of youth, to dispel thence the shades of ignorance and error, and train them up to be wise unto salvation, are you ‘filled with the Holy Ghost’? With all those ‘fruits of the Spirit’

149

Cf. Gal. 5:22.

which your important office so indispensably requires? Is your heart whole with God? Full of love and zeal to set up his kingdom on earth? Do you continually remind those under your care that the one rational end of all our studies is to know, love, and serve ‘the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent’?

150

John 17:3.

Do you inculcate upon them day by day that ‘love alone never faileth’? Whereas, ‘whether there be tongues, they shall fail’, or 176philosophical ‘knowledge, it shall vanish away’;

151

1 Cor. 13:8.

and that without love all learning is but splendid ignorance,

152

In his earlier university sermon on Luke 10:42 (1734), No. 146, ‘The One Thing Needful’, III.1, Wesley had described learning as ‘that fairest earthly fruit’.

pompous folly, vexation of spirit. Has all you teach an actual tendency to the love of God, and of all mankind for his sake? Have you an eye to this end in whatever you prescribe touching the kind, the manner, and the measure of their studies; desiring and labouring that wherever the lot of these young soldiers of Christ is cast they may be so many ‘burning and shining lights’,

153

Cf. John 5:35.

‘adorning the gospel of Christ in all things’?

154

Cf. Titus 2:10.

And permit me to ask, Do you put forth all your strength in the vast work you have undertaken? Do you labour herein with all your might? Exerting every faculty of your soul? Using every talent which God hath lent you, and that to the uttermost of your power?

155

Cf. these questions with those that had been put to Wesley himself on Feb. 8, 1736, by the Moravian leader, A. G. Spangenberg (see JWJ for the reported conversation): ‘Do you know yourself? Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?’ Wesley records that he ‘was surprised and knew not what to answer’.

77. Let it not be said that I speak here as if all under your care were intended to be clergymen. Not so; I only speak as if they were all intended to be Christians. But what example is set them by us who enjoy the beneficence of our forefathers; by fellows, students, scholars; more especially those who are of some rank and eminence? Do ye, brethren, abound in the fruits of the Spirit, in lowliness of mind, in self-denial and mortification, in seriousness and composure of spirit, in patience, meekness, sobriety, temperance, and in unwearied, restless endeavours to do good in every kind unto all men, to relieve their outward wants, and to bring their souls to the true knowledge and love of God?

156

A list clearly reminiscent of the goals of the earlier Holy Club.

Is this the general character of fellows of colleges? I fear it is not. Rather, have not pride and haughtiness of spirit, impatience and peevishness, sloth and indolence, gluttony and sensuality, and even a proverbial uselessness, been objected to us, perhaps not always by our enemies, nor wholly without ground? O that God would roll away this reproach from us,

157

See Josh. 5:9.

that the very memory of it might perish for ever!

8 1778. Many of us are more immediately consecrated to God, called to ‘minister in holy things’.

158

Cf. 1 Cor. 9:13.

Are we then patterns to the rest, ‘in word, in conversation, in charity; in spirit, in faith, in purity’?

1 Tim. 4:12.

Is there written on our forehead and on our heart, ‘Holiness to the Lord’?

159

Cf. Exod. 28:36.

From what motives did we enter upon this office? Was it indeed with a single eye ‘to serve God, trusting that we were inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon us this ministration, for the promoting of his glory, and the edifying of his people’?

160

Cf. BCP, Ordering of Deacons, Bishop’s examination, Q. 1 (511).

And have we ‘clearly determined, by God’s grace, to give ourselves wholly to this office? Do we forsake and set aside, as much as in us lies, all worldly cares and studies? Do we apply ourselves wholly to this one thing, and draw all our cares and studies this way’?

161

BCP, Ordering of Priests, Bishop’s exhortation (532).

Are we ‘apt to teach’?

162

2 Tim. 2:24.

Are we ‘taught of God’,

163

John 6:45.

that we may be able to teach others also? Do we know God? Do we know Jesus Christ? Hath God ‘revealed his Son in us’?

164

Cf. Gal. 1:16.

And hath he ‘made us able ministers of the new covenant’?

165

Cf. 2 Cor. 3:6.

Where then are ‘the seals of our apostleship’?

166

Cf. 1 Cor. 9:2.

Who that ‘were dead in trespasses and sins’

167

Eph. 2:1.

have been quickened by our word? Have we a burning zeal to save souls from death,

168

Cf. Jas. 5:20.

so that for their sake we often forget even to eat our bread?

169

Cf. Ps. 102:4.

Do we speak plain, ‘by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God’?

2 Cor. 4:2.

Are we dead to the world and the things of the world, ‘laying up all our treasure in heaven’?

170

Cf. Matt. 6:20.

‘Do we lord it over God’s heritage’?

171

Cf. 1 Pet. 5:3.

Or are we the least, the ‘servants of all’?

172

Cf. Mark 9:35.

When we bear the reproach of Christ,

173

Heb. 11:26.

does it sit heavy upon us, or do we rejoice therein? When we are ‘smitten on the one cheek’, do we resent it? Are we impatient of affronts? Or do we ‘turn the other also’; ‘not resisting the evil’,

174

Cf. Matt. 5:39.

but ‘overcoming evil with good’?

175

Cf. Rom. 12:21.

Have we a bitter zeal, inciting us to strive sharply and passionately 178with them ‘that are out of the way’?

176

Heb. 5:2.

Or is our zeal the flame of love? So as to direct all our words with sweetness, lowliness, and meekness of wisdom?

99. Once more: what shall we say concerning the youth of this place? Have you either the form or the power of Christian godliness? Are you humble, teachable, advisable; or stubborn, self-willed, heady, and high-minded? Are you obedient to your superiors as to parents; or do you despise those to whom you owe the tenderest reverence? Are you diligent in your easy business, pursuing your studies with all your strength? Do you ‘redeem the time’,

177

Cf. Eph. 5:16; Col. 4:5; see also No. 93, ‘On Redeeming the Time’.

crowding as much work into every day as it can contain? Rather, are ye not conscious to yourselves that you waste away day after day, either in reading what has no tendency to Christianity, or in gaming, or in—you know not what?

178

The background here would have been the Statutes of the University, Parecbolae sive Excerpta è Corpore Statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis… (1729). See also G. R. M. Ward, tr., Oxford University Statutes, Vol. I: Containing the Caroline Code or Laudian Statutes, Promulgated, A.D. 1636. Titulus XV, De Moribus Conformandis (‘Concerning Appropriate Behaviour’), spells out prohibited behaviour in detail: e.g., §4, De Domibus Oppidanorum non frequentandis (‘Concerning Types of Houses in the City Not to be Frequented’); §5, De Oenopolis, sive Taberniis Vinariis, Popinis, et Diversionis non frequentandis (‘Concerning Wine-Shops or Taverns, Eating Houses and Diversions Not to be Frequented’); §6, De Nocturna Vagatione reprimenda (‘Concerning the Restraint of Nocturnal Excursions’); §7, De Ludis Prohibitis (‘Concerning Prohibited Amusements’); §8, De famosis Libellis cohibendis (‘Concerning the Repression of Scandalous Books’), etc. See Nos. 150, 151, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’.

Are you better managers of your fortune than of your time? Do you, out of principle, take care to ‘owe no man anything’?

179

Rom. 13:8.

Do you ‘remember the sabbath day to keep it holy’;

180

Exod. 20:8.

to spend it in the more immediate worship of God? When you are in his house do you consider that God is there? Do you behave ‘as seeing him that is invisible’?

181

Heb. 11:27.

Do you know how to ‘possess your bodies in sanctification and honour’?

182

Cf. 1 Thess. 4:4.

Are not drunkenness and uncleanness found among you? Yea, are there not of you who ‘glory in their shame’?

183

Phil. 3:19.

Do not many of you ‘take the name of God in vain’,

184

Exod. 20:7.

perhaps habitually, without either remorse or fear? Yea, are there not a multitude of you that are forsworn? I fear, a swiftly increasing multitude. Be not surprised, brethren: before God and this congregation I own myself to have been of that number; solemnly swearing to ‘observe all those customs’ which I then 179knew nothing of, ‘and those statutes’ which I did not so much as read over, either then, or for some years after.

185

Not till Nov. 1726 (as the early diaries show), after his graduation as AB and his election as Fellow of Lincoln (Mar. 17, 1726).

What is perjury, if this is not? But if it be, O what a weight of sin, yea, sin of no common dye, lieth upon us! And doth not ‘the Most High regard it’?

186

Cf. Ps. 73:11; 94:7.

1010. May it not be one of the consequences of this that so many of you are a generation of triflers; triflers with God, with one another, and with your own souls? For how few of you spend, from one week to another, a single hour in private prayer? How few have any thought of God in the general tenor of your conversation? Who of you is in any degree acquainted with the work of his Spirit? His supernatural work in the souls of men? Can you bear, unless now and then in a church, any talk of the Holy Ghost? Would you not take it for granted if one began such a conversation that it was either ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘enthusiasm’? In the name of the Lord God Almighty I ask, What religion are you of? Even the talk of Christianity ye cannot, will not, bear! O my brethren! What a Christian city is this? ‘It is time for thee, Lord, to lay to thine hand!<note place="foot" n="’184">Ps. 119:126 (BCP). Wesley’s own answer here had already been given (in No. 150, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’): ‘How has this city become an harlot!’ (Isa. 1:21).

1111. For indeed what probability—what possibility rather (speaking after the manner of men)—is there that Christianity, scriptural Christianity, should be again the religion of this place? That all orders of men among us should speak and live as men ‘filled with the Holy Ghost’? By whom should this Christianity be restored? By those of you that are in authority? Are you convinced then that this is scriptural Christianity? Are you desirous it should be restored? And do ye not count your fortune, liberty, life, dear unto yourselves, so ye may be instrumental in the restoring it? But suppose ye have this desire, who hath any power proportioned to the effect? Perhaps some of you have made a few faint attempts, but with how small success! Shall Christianity then be restored by young, unknown, inconsiderable men? I know not whether ye yourselves could suffer it. Would not some of you cry out, ‘Young man, in so doing thou reproachest us!’ But there is no danger of your being put to the proof, so hath ‘iniquity overspread us like a flood’.

187

Cf. Ps. 69:2; see also No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’, III.10 and n.

Whom then shall God send? The famine, the pestilence 180(the last messengers of God to a guilty land), or the sword?

188

Cf. Jer. 14:12, etc.; Ezek. 6:11, etc.

‘The armies of the’ Romish ‘aliens’,

189

Cf. Heb. 11:34; the ‘Romish aliens’ were, of course, the French. Britain was already deeply involved in the anti-Bourbon coalition led by Frederick II, and had already celebrated the victory of Dettingen the year before. But after the naval defeat at Toulon and the appearance of a French fleet off Dungeness (both in Feb. 1744), fears of a French invasion had aroused the country. War had been declared, officially, in March. A year later came ‘the Rising of ’45’ under ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ (Stuart), aided by the French.

to reform us into our first love? Nay, rather ‘let us fall into thy hand, O Lord, and let us not fall into the hand of man.’

190

Cf. 2 Sam. 24:14.

Lord, save, or we perish!

191

See Matt. 8:25.

Take us out of the mire, that we sink not! O help us against these enemies! For vain is the help of man. Unto thee all things are possible.

192

See Mark 14:36.

According to the greatness of thy power, preserve thou those that are appointed to die. And preserve us in the manner that seemest thee good; not as we will, but as thou wilt!

193

See Matt. 26:39.