Notes:
Sermon 6: The Righteousness of Faith
John Wesley was not as ebullient an orator as George Whitefield or even his brother Charles. And yet his preaching in the years just after 1738 seems to have been attended with more hysterical responses from his hearers. In the Journal, June 12, 1742, he records preaching on ‘the righteousness of faith ‘from his father’s tombstone at Epworth.’ While I was speaking several dropped down as dead; and among the rest such a cry was heard of sinners groaning for the righteousness of faith as almost drowned my voice.’ An even more tumultuous scene in Wapping is recounted in the Journal, June 15, 1739. Hysterical phenomena, as side effects of his preaching, receive an occasional mention in the Journal from 1739 through 1744. They seem to have tapered off thereafter.
A credible hypothesis concerning these phenomena—and the contrast between the effects of John Wesley’s preaching in this period and that of other evangelicals—has been offered by Bernard Holland, ‘“A Species of Madness”: The Effect of John Wesley’s Early Preaching’, WHS, XXXIX.77-85, and this is confirmed in large part in this sermon on ‘the righteousness of faith’. Holland’s point is that whereas Whitefield and Charles Wesley sought consciously (and fervently) to drive their hearers to a ‘conviction of sin’, they spared them the extremes of despair by suggesting that once penitents began to ‘groan’ for faith, this was in itself a proleptic sign of their acceptance even before their conscious sense of assurance of forgiveness. Robert Philip, in his Life and Times of…Whitefield (1837), pp. 580-83, stresses this distinction, and Melville Horne, John Fletcher’s curate at Madeley, who had heard Whitefield and both the Wesleys, reached much the same conclusion: ‘[Charles Wesley, rather than] denouncing wrath on sincere penitents…comforted them by insinuating that they were in a salvable state…. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. John Wesley did not admit this distinction into his pulpit;’ cf. An Investigation…of Justifying Faith, pp. 28 ff.
Holland, op. cit., p. 81, suggests that it was on principle that John drove his penitent and half-penitent hearers out of any refuge of hope to real despair: ‘In spite of their longing to be reconciled to God, they were 201nevertheless still damned until faith was given them. It was this that so intensified the feeling of helplessness and anxiety…that some fell down, or cried out or became delirious.’ Cf. William Sargant, Battle for the Mind (New York, Doubleday, 1957), p.78, for a psychiatric comment on John Wesley’s impact on guilt-ridden audiences in this period; but see also Ian Ramage, Battle for the Free Mind (London, Allen and Unwin, 1967), pp. 238-59, for a useful critique of Sargant. It is in this sense that we can understand Wesley’s candid admission in A Farther Appeal that ‘it is my endeavour to drive all I can into what you may term another species of “madness”, …which I term “repentance” or “conviction”’ as preparatory to the gift of faith (see Pt. I, VII.12; also VII.11, 13-15, in Vol. 11, pp. 196-99 of this edn.). Later, the starkness of this demand for despair was softened, and with it came a proportional decrease in hysterical concomitants. In 1746 it is asked in Conference, ‘But can it be conceived that God has any regard to the sincerity of an unbeliever?’ The answer, now, is different from earlier ones: ‘Yes; so much that if he persevere therein, God will infallibly give him faith;’ cf. MS Minutes, 1746, §20.
The following year the efficacy of sincerity in repentance is actually emphasized; ibid., June 16, 1747. In 1767, in light of his experiences in the Revival and in reaction to the polemics of the Calvinists, Wesley came round to what amounts to an abandonment of his insistences of 1739-44: ‘It is high time for us…to return to the plain word, “He that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him”’ (JWJ, Dec. 30, 1767). And in a very late sermon (1791) he actually deplores deliberate efforts to drive persons to despair as a means of bringing them to faith (see No.106, ‘On Faith, Heb.11:6’, I.11-12; see also No. 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, §§11-15).
This present sermon, however, is focused on a radical contrast between ‘the righteousness of the law’ and ‘the righteousness of faith’, between the two covenants of works and of grace. The righteousness of the law, with its corresponding covenant of works, demands absolute and perfected perfection; nothing short of this is worth anything at all. The unmistakable inference is that since Adam’s sin this righteousness is utterly unattainable; hence, despair. The righteousness of faith, on the other hand, is God’s mercy freely given. It is God’s pardon warranted by Christ’s atonement, and therefore both just and justifying. It is worth noticing how relentlessly Wesley builds up the demands of the law, reducing the moralist to despair, and how thoroughly he refutes all objections to a repentant sinner’s eager acceptance of God’s sheer, unmerited mercy (cf. Charlotte Elliott’s later hymn [1834]: ‘Just as I 202am, without one plea’). Here, then, sola fide is once again unnuanced. Yet also, the residues of Wesley’s holy living tradition reassert themselves and remind us of his constant search for an alternative to any of the traditional polarities.
Wesley preached on the passage in Rom. 10:5-8 at least seven times between 1740 and 1789, twice before this present sermon which was, apparently, written expressly for SOSO. For a list of variant readings in the editions published in Wesley’s lifetime, see Appendix, Vol. 4, ‘Wesley’s Text’.
Justification by FaithRomans 10:5-8
Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by them.
But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise: Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above;)
Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring Christ again from the dead.)
But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach.
Matthew Henry had recognized the echoes here of Isa. 59:21, ‘…in thy mouth’, and Jer. 31:33, ‘…in thy heart’; Poole and Wesley (in his Notes) ignore these texts. All ignore the remarkable parallel in the Septuagint translation of Deut. 30:11-14, which St. Paul would have known as a matter of course and would have taken as a reference to Torah: ‘For this Torah which I give thee this day is not too great nor too far from thee. It is not in heaven saying, “Who shall go up for us to heaven and take it for us?” … Nor is it beyond the sea saying, “Who will cross beyond the sea for us and receive it for us?” … But the word [i.e., God’s Torah] is near to thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart and in thy hands, to do it [i.e., obey it].’ In Baruch 3:29 and 4 Esd. 4:7-9, it is denied that wisdom is so accessible to human grasp; see R. H. Charles, Pseudepigrapha (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1913), II.564-65. The parallel, cited by Sugden, I.132, to Jubilees 24:32, is merely verbal. The point here for Wesley is that St. Paul had then set the ‘righteousness of the law’ and the ‘righteousness of faith’ in antithesis as the contrast between the Adamic ‘covenant of works’ and the ‘covenant of grace which God through Christ hath established with men in all ages’. It is this contrast Wesley intends to stress here.
11. The Apostle does not here oppose the covenant given by Moses to the
covenant given by Christ. If we ever imagined this it was for want of observing
that the latter as well as the former part of these words were spoken by Moses
himself to the people of Israel, and that concerning the covenant which then
was.
Deut. 30:11, 12, 14.
This dialectic between the two covenants of works and grace had not been central in Latin or Lutheran theologies, but had been for Reformed dogmatics in general (see Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, ch. xvi, pp. 371-409); Wesley would have come by it through the Puritans (Ames and Perkins, and espec. the Westminster Confession, VII.2 ff.). A classical statement of ‘covenant soteriology’ was in Cocceius, Summa doctrinae (1648); see above, p. 81. For Wesley’s interest in this idea see in his selections in the Christian Lib., especially John Preston, ‘The New Covenant or the Saints’ Portion’ (1629), x.81-84; Isaac Ambrose, ‘Looking Unto Jesus’ (1658), Bk. II, ch. ii, Sect. II, in XIV.85-99;Jeremy Taylor, Holy Dying (ch. v, Sect. iv, XVI.200-3; William Beveridge, ‘Thoughts on Religion’, Arts. IX, X, XLVII.61-78. Wesley’s own variations on this theme may be seen in Nos. 12, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, §20; 35, ‘The Law Established through Faith, I’, II.3-4; 127, ‘On the Wedding Garment’, §19. Cf. also Minutes, May 13, 1746, and Notes on Heb. 8:8.
22. Of these it was that he so affectionately speaks in the beginning of this chapter. ‘My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they may be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness’ (of the justification that flows from his mere grace and mercy, freely forgiving our sins through the Son of his love, through the redemption which is in Jesus),
See Rom. 3:24.
Rom. 4:5.
Cf. Rom. 10:1-3.
See Wisd. 1:12. For Wesley’s other uses of this text from an Apocryphal book, cf. Nos. 21, ‘Sermon on the Mount, I’, §3; 40, Christian Perfection, I.4; 65, ‘The Duty of Reproving our Neighbour’, II.3; 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, III.2; and 127, ‘On the Wedding Garment’, §11.
33. They were ignorant that ‘Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth;’
Rom. 10:4.
BCP, Communion, Prayer of Consecration.
Cf. Gen. 42:18 ; Luke 10:28. In the Colman Collection Vol. XX, there is a MS in Wesley’s hand entitled, ‘The Duty of Receiving the Lord’s Supper’, extracted (in part) from Robert Nelson, The Great Duty of Frequenting the Christian Sacrifice (1711), but with additions from Wesley himself and other authors. The ‘covenant’ idea does not appear in Nelson but does in Wesley’s MS, fol. 18-23; see espec. fol. 18-19, where he has ‘Try to do this, and live.’ See Bibliog, No. 412, and Vol. 8 of this edn.
Cf. Acts 16:31.
44. And how many are equally ignorant now, even among those who are called by the name of Christ? How many who have now a ‘zeal for God’, yet have it not ‘according to knowledge’, but are still ‘seeking to establish their own righteousness’ as the ground of their pardon and acceptance, and therefore vehemently refuse to ‘submit themselves unto the righteousness of God’?
Cf. Rom. 10:2-3.
See Rom. 10:1.
1I. 1. And, first, ‘The righteousness which is of the law saith, The man which doth these things shall live by them.’ Constantly and perfectly observe all these things, to do them, and then thou shalt live for ever.
Cf. this text expounded literally in Wesley’s sermon on Gen. 1:27, No. 141, ‘The Image of God’, II.1.
22. It required that man should fulfil all righteousness, inward and outward, negative and positive: that he should not only abstain from every idle word, and avoid every evil work, but 205should keep every affection, every desire, every thought, in obedience to the will of God; that he should continue holy, as he which had created him was holy, both in heart and in all manner of conversation; that he should continue holy, as he which had created him was holy, both in heart and in all manner of conversation; that he should be pure in heart, even as God is pure, perfect as his Father in heaven was perfect;
See Matt. 5:48.
See Matt. 22:37, etc.
Cf. 1 John 4:16.
33. These were the things which the righteousness of the law required, that he who did them might live thereby. But it farther required that this entire obedience to God, this inward and outward holiness, this conformity both of heart and life to his will, should be perfect in degree. No abatement, no allowance could possibly be made for falling short in any degree as to any jot or tittle either of the outward or the inward law. If every commandment relating to outward things was obeyed, yet that was not sufficient unless every one was obeyed with all the strength, in the highest measure and most perfect manner. Nor did it answer the demand of this covenant to love God with every power and faculty, unless he were loved with the full capacity of each, with the whole possibility of the soul.
44. One thing more was indispensably required by the righteousness of the law, namely that this universal obedience, this perfect holiness both of heart and life, should be perfectly uninterrupted also, should continue without any intermission from the moment wherein God created man, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, until the days of his trial should be ended, and he should be confirmed in life everlasting.
55. The righteousness, then, which is of the law speaketh on this wise. ‘Thou, O man of God, stand fast in love, in the image of God wherein thou art made. If thou wilt remain in life, keep the commandments which are now written in thy heart. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. Love as thyself every soul that he hath made. Desire nothing but God. Aim at God in every thought, in every word and work. Swerve not in one motion of 206body or soul from him, thy mark, and the prize of thy high calling.
See Phil. 3:14.
See Ps. 103:1.
Luke 10:28. Cf. Ezek. 18:19, 22; 33:13.
Wesley belabours this demand for absolute perfection to underscore the glaring contrast between human aspirations and the human actuality. But he also believed that since the ideal had been actual in Adam (see Nos. 141, ‘The Image of God’; and 76, ‘On Perfection’, I.1 ff.), we may look forward to its restoration as the ‘fullness of salvation’. This notion of salvation as the recovery of the imago Dei is a basic Wesleyan theme; cf. No. 1, Salvation by Faith, §1 and n.
66. ‘But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise: Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring down Christ from above’ (as though it were some impossible task which God required thee previously to perform in order to thine acceptance); ‘or, Who shall descend into the deep? that is, to bring up Christ from the dead’ (as though that were still remaining to be done for the sake of which thou wert to be accepted). ‘But what saith it? The word’ (according to the tenor of which thou mayest now be accepted as an heir of life eternal) ‘is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach,’ the new covenant which God hath now established with sinful man through Christ Jesus.
Cf. Heb. 8:8, 13; 12:24. See also Jer. 31:31; 32:40.
77. By ‘the righteousness which is of faith’ is meant that condition of justification (and in consequence of present and final salvation, if we endure therein unto the end)
I.e., double justification. See above, No. 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, II.5 and n.; see also Wesley’s letters to Thomas Church, Feb. 2, 1745, and June 17, 1746, and his Letter to a Gentleman at Bristol, Jan. 6, 1758. Cf. his Remarks on Mr. Hill’s Review and Remarks on Mr. Hill’s Farrago Double-Distilled (Bibliog, Nos. 341, 345, both in Vol. 13 of this edn.)
For some of Wesley’s sources here, cf. Richard Baxter, Confession (1655), pp. 297, 344 ff., 362-63; John Goodwin, Imputatio Fidei, ch. 3 (1); Common Places of Martin Bucer, tr. and ed. by D. F. Wright, in The Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics (Appleford, Abingdon, Berks., England, The Sutton Courtenay Press, 1972), IV.162.
Gen. 3:15.
Gen. 22:16, 18.
2 Tim. 1:10.
88. Now this covenant saith not to sinful man, ‘Perform unsinning obedience and live.’ If this were the term, he would have no more benefit by all which Christ hath done and suffered for him than if he was required, in order to life,
‘Life’ rather than an expected ‘live’ appears in all edns. Wesley is evidently here balancing the noun ‘life’, as a state of being against its antonym, ‘the dead’.
Cf. Rom. 4:5.
Gen. 15:6.
Rom. 4:11.
Rom. 4:23-25.
π; The same point, in nearly these words, is made by John Goodwin, Imputatio Fidei, pp. 15-18.
99. What saith then the covenant of forgiveness, of unmerited love, of pardoning mercy? ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’
Acts 16:31.
1010. Now ‘this word is nigh thee’. This condition of life is plain, easy, always at hand. ‘It is in thy mouth and in thy heart’ through the operation of the Spirit of God. The moment ‘thou believest in thine heart in him whom God hath raised from the dead, and confessest with thy mouth the Lord Jesus as thy Lord and thy God, thou shalt be saved’
Cf. Rom. 10:8-9.
1111. What is the difference then between the ‘righteousness which is of the law’ and the ‘righteousness which is of faith’? Between the first covenant, or the covenant of works, and the second, the covenant of grace? The essential, unchangeable difference is this: the one supposes him to whom it is given to be already holy and happy,
Cf. No. 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, I.4 and n.
See John 3:36.
1212. Again, the covenant of works, in order to man’s continuance in the favour of God, in his knowledge and love, in holiness and happiness, required of perfect man a perfect and uninterrupted obedience to every point of the law of God; whereas the covenant of grace, in order to man’s recovery of the favour and life of God, requires only faith—living faith in him who through God justifies him that obeyed not.
1313. Yet again: the covenant of works required of Adam and all his children to pay the price themselves, in consideration of which they were to receive all the future blessings of God. But in the covenant of grace, seeing we have nothing to pay, God ‘frankly forgives us all’;
Cf. Luke 7:42.
1 John 2:2.
1414. Thus the first covenant required what is now afar off from all the children of men, namely, unsinning obedience, which is far from those who are ‘conceived and born in sin’;
Cf. Ps. 51:5. See also BCP, Baptism, Exhortation. This phrase, borrowed by Cranmer from Archbishop Herman von Wied, remains in the Church of England text. The idea in altered forms is retained in the Scottish and South African rites; the phrase was dropped from the American Episcopal Prayer Book in 1928.
Cf. Rom. 4:5.
1II. 1. These things considered, it will be easy to show, as I proposed to do in the second place, the folly of trusting in the ‘righteousness which is of the law’, and the wisdom of ‘submitting to the righteousness which is of faith’.210
The folly of those who still trust in the ‘righteousness which is of the law’, the terms of which are, ‘Do this and live,’ may abundantly appear from hence.
Orig. (1746 and 1754), ‘thence’, altered in Wesley’s hand in Vol. 1 of his Works, and in the printed errata to that volume; in this instance the revision had also been made in 1769 (followed by 1787), while the Works followed the text of 1754.
See Matt. 7:26-27.
Eph. 2:1.
2 Cor. 5:21; cf. 1 Pet. 1:16.
Note how the covenant of works is reinstated here, by implication, for those who have been justified (who have thus recovered ‘the favour and life of God once lost’) and have thus been started on their way to sanctification. Cf. Nos. 27, ‘Sermon on the Mount, VII’, §2; 35, ‘The Law Established through Faith, I’, II.6; and 45, ‘The New Birth’, III.1. Cf. also JWJ, Jan. 11, 1744, and Notes for Jas. 2:22.
22. Neither do they consider, who are thus ‘seeking to establish their own righteousness which is of the law’, what manner of obedience or righteousness that is which the law indispensably requires. It must be perfect and entire in every point, or it answers not the demand of the law. But which of you is able to perform such obedience? Or, consequently, to live thereby? Who among you fulfils every jot and tittle even of the outward commandments of God? Doing nothing, great or small, which God forbids? Leaving nothing undone which he enjoins? Speaking no ‘idle word’?
Matt. 12:36.
Cf. Eph. 4:29.
Cf. 1 Cor. 10:31.
Cf. Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37, etc.
1 Thess. 5:17-18.
33. You should farther consider that the righteousness of the law requires, not only the obeying every command of God, negative and positive, internal and external, but likewise in the perfect degree. In every instance whatever the voice of the law is, ‘Thou shalt serve the Lord thy God with all thy strength.’
Cf. Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27.
This, of course, was the point at issue in Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, which Wesley not only knew but annotated; cf. IV. i. 179-82:
See also Jas. 2:13.
44. Who then can appear before such a Judge, who is ‘extreme to mark what is done amiss’?
Ps. 130:3 (BCP).
Cf. Ps. 143:2; Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16.
Cf. Heb. 10:26-27.
55. Is it not then the very foolishness of folly
Cf. Prov. 14:24; 15:2, 14.
Ps. 51:5 (BCP).
Jas. 3:15.
Cf. Ps. 53:1 (AV).
Rom. 7:18.
66. Now whatsoever considerations prove the folly of trusting in the ‘righteousness which is of the law’ prove equally the wisdom of submitting to ‘the righteousness which is of God by faith’.
Phil. 3:9.
I.e., repentance; cf. No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.1 and n.
See 2 Tim. 3:4.
Deut. 1:10; 10:22; 28:62.
See Hab. 1:13.
See Rom. 6:23.
Cf. 2 Pet. 2:1.
77. The wisdom of submitting to ‘the righteousness of faith’ appears farther from this consideration, that it is ‘the righteousness of God’. I mean here, it is that method of reconciliation with God which hath been chosen and established by God himself, not only as he is the God of wisdom, but as he is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, and of every creature which he hath made. Now as it is not meet for man to say unto God, ‘What dost thou?’—as none who is not utterly void of understanding will contend with one that is mightier than he, with him whose kingdom ruleth over all—so it is true wisdom, it is a mark of a sound understanding, to acquiesce in whatever he hath chosen, to say in this as in all things, ‘It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good.’
1 Sam. 3:18.
88. It may be farther considered that it was of mere grace, of free love, of undeserved mercy, that God hath vouchsafed to sinful man any way of reconciliation with himself; that we were not cut away from his hand, and utterly blotted out of his remembrance. Therefore whatever method he is pleased to appoint, of his tender mercy, of his unmerited goodness, whereby his enemies, who have so deeply revolted from him, so long and obstinately rebelled against him, may still find favour in his sight, it is doubtless our wisdom to accept it with all thankfulness.
99. To mention but one consideration more. It is wisdom to aim at the best end by the best means.
Cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, II. ii, Q. 45.
Here Wesley’s eudaemonism is explicitly stated and linked to its premise ‘in God’ (μετουσία θεοῦ). This, too, is one of Wesley’s favourite themes. Cf. Nos. 17, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, I.12; 77, ‘Spiritual Worship’, III.6, 7; 87, ‘The Danger of Riches’, I.12 (for a negative statement); and 149, ‘On Love’, III.4. See also Wesley’s letters to Frances Godfrey, Aug. 2, 1789, and to Thomas Broadbent, Jan. 29, 1791.
Susanna Wesley held the same view. In a letter to her brother, Samuel Annesley, Jan. 20, 1722, she had written: ‘Unspeakable are the blessings of privacy and leisure when the mind emerges from the corrupt animality to which she is united, and by a flight peculiar to her nature, soars beyond the bounds of time and place, in contemplation of the Invisible Supreme, whom she perceives to be her only happiness, her proper centre!’ (Moore, I.328). Cf. also John Norris, ‘Contemplation and Love’, in A Collection of Miscellanies (1723), pp. 238-39, and Bishop Francis Gastrell, The Certainty of Necessity of Religion in General (1697), 315, 317, 336. See also No. 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, I.4 and n.
A distinctive emphasis here on justification as the recovery of the favour of God (the standard Protestant emphasis) but also the restoration of the lost image of God (the standard catholic emphasis); cf. above, No. 1, Salvation by Faith, §1 and n.
See John 3:18.
1III. 1. Whosoever therefore thou art who desirest to be forgiven and reconciled to the favour of God, do not say in thy heart, ‘I must first do this: I must first conquer every sin, break off every evil word and work, and do all good to all men; or I must first go to Church, receive the Lord’s Supper, hear more sermons, and say more prayers.’
Cf. Wesley’s controversy with Philip Molther in JWJ, Dec. 31, 1739, over ‘the way to faith’, where Wesley takes a different line: ‘I believe [by contrast with Molther and the Moravians] it right for him who knows he has not faith…to go to church, to communicate, to fast’, etc. Here, then, is an illustration of Wesley’s way of shifting ground according to his opposition. Moravian antinomianism provoked him to defend ‘the means of grace’; Anglican over-confidence in the means of grace calls for a rebuke against any false reliance on them as necessary conditions of justification.
Cf. Rom. 10:3.
See 1 John 2:2; 4:10.
See Mark 7:37.
22. Neither say in thy heart, ‘I can’t be accepted yet because I am not good enough.’ Who is good enough, who ever was, to merit acceptance at God’s hands? Was ever any child of Adam good enough for this? Or will any, till the consummation of all things? And as for thee, thou art not good at all; there dwelleth in thee no 215good thing.
See Rom. 7:18.
See Rom. 6:1, and Nos. 35, 36, ‘The Law Established through Faith’, Discourses I and II.
Acts 22:16.
Cf. Ps. 51:7.
33. Do not say, ‘But I am not contrite enough: I am not sensible enough of my sins.’ I know it. I would to God thou wert more sensible of them, more contrite a thousandfold than thou art. But do not stay for this. It may be God will make thee so, not before thou believest, but by believing. It may be thou wilt not weep much till thou lovest much,
See Luke 7:47-48.
See Heb. 12:2.
See John 11:36.
Samuel Wesley, Sen. (1662-1735) closes ‘On the Crucifixion’ with these two lines. The poem was a favourite of the Wesleys, first published in John Wesley’s Collection of Psalms and Hymns (Charleston, 1737)—where his father’s authorship is not credited—and frequently reprinted thereafter. Adam Clarke first identified the author and entitled the poem, ‘A Hymn on the Passion’. Sugden says that the MS of it was found in the Epworth Rectory garden after the fire of 1709. Cf. Wesley’s letter to Lady Maxwell, July 10, 1764.
Look steadily upon him till he looks on thee, and breaks thy hard heart. Then shall thy ‘head be waters, and thy eyes fountains of tears’.
Cf. Jer. 9:1.
44. Nor yet do thou say, ‘I must do something more before I come to Christ.’ I grant, supposing thy Lord should delay his coming, it were meet and right to wait
Another characteristic usage. ‘To wait’, for Wesley, was not at all a passive stance; he speaks of ‘waiting’ as active obedience to God’s commands and rejects ‘quietism’ on principle. Even so, good works done while ‘waiting’ are not ‘meritorious’; thus he rejects moralism with equal consistency. Cf. MS Minutes for Aug. 2, 1745 (§50): ‘Q. 11. How shall we wait for the fulfilling of this promise [of sanctification]? A. In universal obedience; in keeping all the commandments; in denying ourselves, and taking up our cross daily; [with] prayer, searching the Scripture, communicating, and fasting.’ Cf. also No. 16, ‘The ‘Means of Grace’, III.1.
Luke 1:78.
5. And to what end wouldst thou wait for more sincerity
‘Sincerity’ was a much discussed virtue, valued more highly by the pietists than the moralists. Cf. above, No. 2, The Almost Christian, I.9 and n.
Lam. 3:22.
Again, if there be anything good in sincerity, why dost thou expect it before thou hast faith?—seeing faith itself is the only root of whatever is really good and holy.
Above all, how long wilt thou forget that whatsoever thou dost, or whatsoever thou hast, before thy sins are forgiven thee, it avails nothing with God toward the procuring of thy forgiveness? Yea, and that it must all be cast behind thy back, trampled under foot, made no account of, or thou wilt never find favour in God’s sight? Because until then thou canst not ask it as a mere sinner, guilty, lost, undone, having nothing to plead, nothing to offer to God but only the merits of his well-beloved Son, ‘who loved thee, and gave himself for thee’.
Cf. Gal. 2:20.
66. To conclude. Whosoever thou art, O man, who hast the sentence of death in thyself, who feelest thyself a condemned sinner, and hast the wrath of God abiding on thee:
See John 3:36.
Acts 16:31; cf. Rom. 10:9.
Mark 1:15.
Cf. Heb. 8:12.
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Entry Title: Sermon 6: The Righteousness of Faith