Notes:
Sermon 15: The Great Assize
The Journal entry for February 27, 1758, identifies the origins of this sermon: ‘Having a sermon to write against the Assizes at Bedford, I retired for a few days to Lewisham’—i.e., to the home of his friend and benefactor, Ebenezer Blackwell. There he wrote his only published sermon ad magistratum (to a civil court) and also the only one in what may fairly be labelled an ornate style. The occasion had been arranged by the High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, William Cole, and the sermon itself was preached in Bedford’s finest church, St. Paul’s, on Friday, March 10, before the presiding Judge of Common Pleas, Sir Edward Clive (1704-71). Mr. Justice Clive, incidentally, appears in William Hogarth’s scornful caricature, ‘The Bench’, 1758; cf. Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1965), Vol. I, No. 205; Vol. II, Nos. 226-27; note that Paulson and Sugden have different identifications of Hogarth’s characters (see Sugden, II.399). Of the service itself, Wesley reports (JWJ): ‘The congregation at St. Paul’s was very large and attentive. The Judge, immediately after sermon, sent me an invitation to dine with him; but having no time [since he was already late for an appointment the next day in Epworth, some ninety miles away], I was obliged to send my excuse, and set out between one and two….’ The sermon was published, by request, in the summer of 1758 and then inserted into the 1771 edn. of SOSO, I. Twenty years later (JWJ, Sept. 1, 1778), Wesley remembered the sermon with some satisfaction, avowing that even then he could not ‘write a better sermon on the Great Assize than I did [in 1758]’.
The most striking feature of this sermon is the ease with which Wesley has accommodated his carefully cultivated ‘plain style’ to a new and special occasion; very little of the revival preacher appears here. There are no hymn-quotations, and, save for the controlling analogy between an earthly court in Bedford and God’s Final Judgment, there is scant recourse to any evangelical emphasis. There are no polemics, no reference to Methodism, and only a passing hat-tipping to ‘faith alone’ (II.11). Virgil and Ovid are quoted once apiece, and the then widely popular Edward Young is quoted twice. The analogy between earthly assizes and 355‘the Great Assize’ was at least as old in English preaching as The Pricke of Conscience, line 5514, formerly attributed to Richard Rolle of Hampole (c. 1300-1349). The rhetoric of the introduction and conclusion is frankly exalted, and an earthly commonplace becomes the analogue for the cosmic climax of human destiny and the occasion for Wesley’s most explicit exposition of his eschatology.
This, of course, is the central concern of the sermon: Wesley’s vivid sense of the Christian life as lived under God’s constant judgment and oriented toward his Final Judgment. The dominant metaphors are all forensic, and Wesley’s depiction of the end-time is as stark and decisive as he could make it. The reader must judge as to the consonance of Wesley’s views of ‘The Last Day ’ with New Testament and traditional Christian eschatologies as they have evolved. But it would be well to recognize the influence of Joseph Mede and J. A. Bengel, his main sources for eschatology besides the Scriptures. ‘The Great Assize’ may better be appraised as an implicit statement about the Christian ordo salutis rather than a speculation reaching out beyond faith’s basic surety that God’s final purposes for his human creation are already validly revealed in Jesus Christ.
The edited text here is based on the first edition of 1758. For a stemma showing its textual history, together with a list of variant readings in the nine editions published in Wesley’s lifetime, see Vol. IV, Appendix, ‘Wesley’s Text’. For bibliographical details, see Bibliog, No. 224.
The Great AssizeRomans 14:10
We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
11. How many circumstances concur to raise the awfulness of the present solemnity! The general concourse of people of every age, sex, rank, and condition of life, willingly or unwillingly gathered together, not only from the neighbouring, but from distant parts: criminals, speedily to be brought forth, and having no way to escape; officers, waiting in their various posts to execute the orders which shall be given; and the representative of our 356gracious Sovereign, whom we so highly reverence and honour.
This is more than the nominal profession of a lifelong Tory. Wesley had special reasons for gratitude to the aging George II, who would die two years later in 1760, aged seventy-eight. Much earlier, in 1741, George II had ordered the Middlesex magistrates to protect the Methodists from persecuting mobs and had declared, in Council, that there would be no persecution in his dominions on account of religion while he sat on the throne (cf. Moore, II.2-3). During the agitations preceding the Stuart ‘Rising of ’45’, the loyalties of the Methodists were suspect and Wesley composed an ‘Humble Address’ to the King, avowing his own loyalty and that of the Methodist people to both Crown and Church (JWJ, Mar. 5, 1744); Charles persuaded him that such a letter might have the unintended effect of setting the Methodists apart more separately from the Church of England than they actually were and so the address was never sent. When George died, Wesley recorded a pathetic valedictory (JWJ, Oct. 25, 1760): ‘King George was gathered to his fathers. When will England have a better Prince?’ A strange question about the man whose private life was less than exemplary and who had abetted Robert Walpole’s venalities. Cf. Nos. 107, ‘On God’s Vineyard’, IV.2; and 127, ‘On the Wedding Garment’, §14.
22. But as awful as this solemnity is, one far more awful is at hand. For yet a little while and ‘we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.’ And in that day ‘every one of us shall give account of himself to God.’
Rom. 14:10-12.
33. Had all men a deep sense of this, how effectually would it secure the interests of society! For what more forcible motive can be conceived to the practice of genuine morality? To a steady pursuit of solid virtue, an uniform walking in justice, mercy, and truth? What could strengthen our hands in all that is good, and deter us from all evil, like a strong conviction of this—‘The judge standeth at the door,’
Cf. Jas. 5:9.
44. It may not therefore be improper, or unsuitable to the design of the present assembly, to consider,
357I. The chief circumstances which will precede our standing before the judgment seat of Christ.
II. The judgment itself, and
III. A few of the circumstances which will follow it.
1I. Let us, in the first place, consider the chief circumstances which will precede our standing before the judgment seat of Christ.
1And first, 1. ‘God will show signs in the earth beneath:’
Acts
2:19.
Isa. 2:19.
Isa. 24:20.
Luke 21:11. [The suggestion here that κατὰ τόπους means ‘in all places’ is eccentric; in the Notes Wesley translates it literally, ‘in divers places’.]
Cf. Rev. 16:18. The eighteenth century’s interest in earthquakes was intense; there had been major quakes in Sicily and Jamaica in 1692; one in Lima, Peru, on Oct. 28, 1746; two in London in 1750 (Feb. 8 and Mar. 8); and another in Lisbon, Nov. 1, 1755. Cf. Burnet, History of His Own Times, II.101; and John Ray, Three Physico-Theological Discourses (1693). In 1750 Charles Wesley had written a sermon on ‘The Cause and Cure of Earthquakes’ upon the occasion of the London shocks. That John shared Charles’s interest and views in this matter may be seen in his Serious Thoughts Occasioned by the Late Earthquake at Lisbon (1755); cf. Bibliog, No. 213 and Vol. 15 of this edn. There are obvious parallels between the essay and the sermon. Another stimulus to this preoccupation with earthquakes came from the infant science of geology and theological reactions to it, as in Whiston’s A New Theory of the Earth and Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth and the controversies engendered by them. (Burnet had been Master of Charterhouse during Wesley’s time there).
Rev. 16:20.
An eighteenth-century cliché and a favourite of Wesley’s; see below, III.3; and Nos. 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, I.8, 10; 69, ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge’, I.8; 103, ‘What is Man? Ps. 8:3-4’, I.2. Also, Wesley’s Survey, III.3; IV.55.
Luke 21:25.
Gen. 7:11.
Cf. 2 Pet. 3:5.
Joel 2:30 [cf. Acts 2:19].
Luke 21:25, 26.
Joel 2:31.
Joel 3:15.
Matt. 24:29.
1 Thess. 4:16.
Dan. 12:2.
See Ezek. 37:12-13; Matt. 27:52-53.
Rev. 20:13.
1 Cor. 15:53.
Rev. 20:13.
22. At the same time ‘the Son of man shall send forth his angels’ over all
the earth, ‘and they shall gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of
heaven to the other.’
Matt. 24:31.
Cf. Matt. 24:30, etc.
Cf. Luke 9:26.
Jude 14.
Cf. Heb. 12:22.
Matt. 25:31-33.
Rev. 20:12.
II. These are the chief circumstances which are recorded in the oracles of God as preceding the general judgment. We are, secondly, to consider the judgment itself, so far as it hath pleased God to reveal it.
11. The person by whom God ‘will judge the world’
Cf. Rom. 3:6; 1 Cor. 6:2.
Cf. Mic. 5:2.
Cf. Rom. 9:5.
Heb. 1:3 [This translation of ἀπαύγασμα as ‘out-beaming’ appealed to Wesley. Although he does not use it in his Notes, it appears in Nos. 24, ‘Sermon on the Mount, IV’, §1; and 34, ‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law’, II.3. Cf. Poole’s Annotations, loc. cit.].
John 5:22, 27.
Phil. 2:6-7.
Cf. Phil. 2:8-9.
Cf. Acts 17:31.
Cf. 1 Pet. 4:5.
Cf. Judg. 2:10.
22. The time termed by the prophet ‘the great and the terrible day’
Joel 2:31.
Joel 1:15, etc.
2 Pet. 3:8.
Matt. 10:15, etc.
As in the ‘Epistle of Barnabas’ (xv), Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, 1xx), Melito of Sardis (in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, xxiv. 5), Papias (in Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V.xxxiii, and Eusebius, op. cit., III.xxxix), Irenaeus (Against Heresies, V.xxxii), Methodius of Olympus (Symposium, Disc. 9 and 10), Lactantius (Epitome of the Divine Institutes, LXXI-LXXII). Origen had criticized these chiliastic interpretations of Rev. 20:1-15, and St. Augustine, having championed such a view (as in De Civ. Dei, xx.7), abandoned it in Sermon CCLIX (Migne, PL, XXXVIII.1197). Apocalyptic visions continued throughout the Middle Ages, but chiliasm proper had few explicit champions. It was, however, renewed in the ‘radical reformation’ (Hoffman and the Munsterites in Cromwell’s England and thereafter (Jane Leade), and in the writings of Joseph Mede and J. A. Bengel; for Bengel’s influence on Wesley, cf. Notes, Preface, §7, and Rev. 20:1-15.
Wesley’s reticence here is as significant as his proposed revision of chiliastic thought, since he knew the history of millenarianism and had a sympathetic interest in Montanus; cf. Nos. 61, ‘The Mystery of Iniquity’, §24; and 68, ‘The Wisdom of God’s Counsels’, §9; see also ‘The Real Character of Montanus’ (Vol. 12 of this edn.). His reaction to Jurieu and ‘the French Prophets’ was cautious. He also knew, but chose to ignore, William Whiston’s prediction that the ‘Last Day’ was scheduled in the year 1720, as in his essay on the Revelation of St. John (1706). He had already used in his Notes (1755) Bengel’s Erklärte Offenbarung Johannis… (1740; Eng. tr., 1757), with its predicted date for the millennium as 1836, and indeed reproduced Bengel’s chronological appendix in his own work.
33. With regard to the place where mankind will be judged we have no explicit account in Scripture. An eminent writer
Cf. Boston, State IV, Head IV; and Bengel, Gnomon (on Rev. 20), §§3-11; see also Joseph Mede, Works, III.430-32, and espec. his chart, pp. 431-32 (‘ΒΙΒΛΑΡΙΔΙΟΝ’).
Young, Last Day, ii.19-20; orig. ‘th’ unbounded space’; cf. Wesley, Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), II.76.
But perhaps it is more agreeable to our Lord’s own account of his ‘coming in the clouds’
Matt. 24:30; Mark 13:26.
Young, Last Day, ii.274; cf. Wesley, Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems, II.82.
1 Thess. 4:16-17.
Rev. 20:11.
44. The persons to be judged who can count, any more than the drops of rain or the sands of the sea? I beheld, saith St. John, ‘a great multitude which no man can number, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands’.
Cf. Rev. 7:9.
Ibid.
Wesley had found this ‘common supposition’ in Brerewood’s Enquiries, pp. 120-45. It would be repeated by Richard Price, in a letter to Benjamin Franklin published in Philosophical Transactions (of the Royal Society) in 1768. Current estimates of the world’s population in 1750 are based largely on the work of A. M. Carr-Saunders, World Population (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1936), p. 42; W. S. Thompson, Population and Progress in the Far East (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 12; and W. F. Willcox, Studies in American Demography (Ithaca, N. Y., Cornell University Press, 1940), p. 45. The average of their estimates would put the round figure of world population in 1750 at seven hundred millions. Cf. W. D. Borrie, The Growth and Control of World Population (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), pp. 6-7; Gerhard and Jean Lenski, Human Societies (New York, McGraw Hill, 1974), p. 319; and Annabelle Desmond, ‘How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?’ in Population Bulletin, 18:1 (Feb. 1962), pp. 1-19. For some of Wesley’s other references to population, cf. Nos. 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’, §1; 69, ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge’, II.8; 103, ‘What is Man? Ps. 8:3-4’, I.2; 122, ‘Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity’, §3. Cf. also, The Doctrine of Original Sin, II.1; Some Observations on Liberty, §11; his letter to the Bishop of Gloucester, Nov. 26, 1762; and JWJ, Sept. 9, 1776.
Young, Last Day, ii.189, 194-96; orig., ‘Their millions swell’ and ‘Lost as a billow in th’ unbounded main’. Cf. Wesley, Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems, II.80. See also No. 103, ‘What is Man? Ps. 8:3-4’, I.1, where Wesley uses this last line again.
Every man, every woman, every infant of days that ever breathed the vital air will then hear the voice of the Son of God, and start into life, and appear before him. And this seems to be the natural import of that expression, ‘the dead, small and great’:
Rev. 20:12.
The grave as a great ‘leveller’ was a commonplace theme in poetry and preaching, as in Thomas Gray’s contemporary Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard just seven years previously.
55. And every man shall there ‘give an account of his own works’,
Cf. Luke 16:2; Rom. 14:12; Rev. 20:12.
Virgil, Aeneid, vi.567-69; Wesley offers no translation, but in the ‘Explanation of the Latin Sentences’ added to Vol. 32 of his Works (1774) Wesley prefixed the preceding line, ‘Haec Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna’, and furnished his own translation of the quatrain:
See above, Intro., pp. 71-72, for evidence that Wesley continued to read Virgil ‘for pleasure’, even into his old age. Thus, he may have had a copy of the Aeneid at hand, which would explain this rare verbatim quotation.
Nor will all the actions alone of every child of man be then brought to open
view, but all their words, seeing ‘every idle word 363which men shall
speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.’ So that, ‘By thy
words’ (as well as works) ‘thou shalt be justified; or by thy words thou shalt
be condemned’.
Matt. 12:36-37.
Ps. 139:2 (BCP).
An interesting conflation of Ps. 139:11-12: ver. 11 is from the BCP; ver. 12 is AV.
66. Yea, he ‘will bring to light’ not ‘the hidden works of darkness’
Cf. 1 Cor. 4:5.
Heb. 4:12.
Rev. 2:23.
Cf. Ps. 139:2 (AV).
Cf. Heb. 4:13.
Cf. Prov. 15:11.
77. And in that day shall be discovered every inward working of every human soul: every appetite, passion, inclination, affection, with the various combinations of them, with every temper and disposition that constitute the whole complex character of each individual. So shall it be clearly and infallibly seen who was righteous, and who unrighteous; and in what degree every action or person or character was either good or evil.
88. ‘Then the king will say to them upon his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father. For I was hungry and ye gave me meat; thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked and ye clothed me.’
Cf. Matt. 25:34-36.
Col. 3:17.
Cf. Isa. 30:8.
2 Tim. 4:8.
2 Cor. 4:17.
99. But will their evil deeds too—since if we take in his whole life ‘there is not a man on earth that liveth and sinneth not’
Cf. Eccles. 7:20.
Ezek. 18:21-22.
Jer. 31:34.
Heb. 8:12 [cf. Boston, State IV, Head V, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’].
1010. It may be answered, it is apparently and absolutely necessary, for the full display of the glory of God, for the clear and perfect manifestation of his wisdom, justice, power, and mercy toward the heirs of salvation,
Heb. 1:14.
Heb. 4:12.
Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 26. Cf. also Nos. 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, II.3; 57, ‘On the Fall of Man’, §2; and 140, ‘The Promise of Understanding’, I.1. See also Wesley’s letter to Elizabeth Ritchie, Jan. 17, 1775.
Matt. 10:26.
1 Cor. 4:5.
A paraphrase of Job 22:12-14, espec. ver. 13.
Eph. 1:11.
Cf. George Herbert, The Temple, ‘Providence’, ll. 1-2 and, espec., 29-32:
Cf. also Kempis, IV.i.8: ‘How sweetly and graciously dost thou dispose of all things with thine elect, … This strongly draweth the hearts of the devout…’. See Nos. 118, ‘On the Omnipresence of God’, II.2, where Wesley again pairs ‘strongly and sweetly’ in speaking of God’s influencing his creatures without destroying their liberty; and 66, ‘The Signs of the Times’, II.9, where he speaks of the grace of God, ‘strongly and sweetly working on every side’.
and wrought all into one connected chain of justice, mercy, and truth.1111. And in the discovery of the divine perfections the righteous will rejoice with joy unspeakable; far from feeling any painful sorrow or shame for any of those past transgressions which were long since blotted out as a cloud,
See Isa. 44:22.
Rev. 12:11.
Cf. Ezek. 18:22.
Cf. Heb. 8:12; 10:17.
12 36612. After the righteous are judged, the king will turn to them upon his left hand, and they shall also be judged, every man ‘according to his works’.
Matt. 16:27.
1III. 1. We may, in the third place, consider a few of the circumstances which will follow the general judgment. And the first is the execution of the sentence pronounced on the evil and on the good. ‘These shall go away into eternal punishment, and the righteous into life eternal.’
Cf. Matt. 25:46.
Wesley’s doctrine of ‘a middle state’ for souls after death but before the Final Judgment (as in No. 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, I.3 and n.) did not allow for further amelioration of the state of those who died in unrepented (‘mortal’) sins; human destinies are, therefore, predetermined at death and thus before ‘The Great Assize’.
Matt. 13:43.
Cf. Pss. 16:11; 36:8.
2 Cor. 12:2.
2 Cor. 12:4 (cf. Notes).
‘The wicked’, meantime, ‘shall be turned into hell,’ even ‘all the people that forget God’.
Cf. Ps. 9:17 (BCP).
2 Thess. 1:9.
Cf. Rev. 19:20.
Matt. 25:41.
Rev. 16:10.
Cf. Isa. 8:21.
An odd metaphor, as if Wesley had confused the three heads of Cerberus (cf. Homer, Iliad viii. 367; Euripides, Hercules Furens, 611; and Virgil, Aeneid, vi. 417-22) with three dogs. In any case, there is no correlation between the roles of Cerberus and of the ‘worms’ (cf. Isa. 66:24; Judith 16:17; and Mark 9:44-49). In his Notes on Mark 9:44 Wesley had recently written of the ‘worm’ (of conscience) ‘that gnaweth the soul (pride, self-will, desire, malice, envy, shame, sorrow, despair)’. For a classic text on the eternity of divine punishments, see St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xxi. chs. 9-14. Cf. Nos. 73, ‘Of Hell’, II.2; and 84, The Important Question, III. 10; also Advice to a Soldier, §4, Bibliog, No. 72 (Vol. 14 of this edn.). See also Milton, Paradise Lost, x.616, and Henry Brooke, Gustavus Vasa, Act IV, sc. 2.
Cf. No. 14, The Repentance of Believers, I.3 and n.
Cf. Rev. 14:11.
Cf. Mark 9:44; cf. also No. 73, ‘Of Hell’, III.3, where endless torment is also affirmed.
22. Then the heavens will be shrivelled up ‘as a parchment scroll’,
Cf. Rev. 6:14.
2 Pet. 3:10.
[Cf.] Rev. 20:11.
2 Pet. 3:12.
2 Pet. 3:10.
Gen. 49:26.
33. It has indeed been imagined by some great and good men that as it requires that same almighty power to annihilate things as to create, to speak into nothing or out of nothing; so no part of, no 368atom in the universe will be totally or finally destroyed.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientists were agreed on the principle of ‘the conservation of matter’; cf. Chambers’s Cyclopaedia on ‘Matter’, and Singer, Scientific Ideas, pp. 332-33 (for citations of Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and Sir Isaac Newton); see also pp. 271-72. Wesley returns frequently to the point, as in Nos. 26, ‘Sermon on the Mount, VI’, III.7; 60, ‘The General Deliverance’, I.1; 68, ‘The Wisdom of God’s Counsels’, §4; 70, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, II.2; 77, ‘Spiritual Worship’, I.5; 118, ‘On the Omnipresence of God’, II.3. See also ‘Some Thoughts on an Expression of St. Paul in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians…’, AM, 1786, 543-44; Notes on Act 17:18 (‘The stoics held that matter was eternal…’), and Survey, I.178.
But cf. Laurence Echard, A General Ecclesiastical History (5th edn., 1719), III. iii. 345, for a reminder that when Hermogenes (c. A.D. 178) first proposed the idea as valid for a Christian doctrine of creation, he was denounced (by Tertullian and others) as an ‘heresiarch’. Indeed, the obvious conflict between the doctrines of the eternity of matter, on the one side, and of the ‘creation from nothing’, on the other, has been a long-standing problem for Christian theologians.
[Rev.] 4:6. [But see also Rev. 15:2 and Wesley’s Notes on these two verses. For a further reference to Jacob Behmen (Wesley’s preferred spelling for Jakob Boehme) and his apocalyptic vision based on these verses, see No. 64, ‘The New Creation’, §13 and n. See also Wesley’s letter to William Law, Jan. 6, 1756, in which he had criticized Law’s dependence on Boehme and had denounced his ‘superfluous, uncertain, dangerous, irrational, unscriptural philosophy’.]
44. If it be inquired by the scoffers, the minute philosophers:
Cf. Cicero, De Senectute (On Old Age), xxiii. 85: ‘quidam minuti philosophi’ (‘certain petty philosophers’). See also Berkeley’s description and appraisal of these narrow-visioned thinkers in Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1732; in the 3rd edn. [1752], Dial. I.ii, he says of them, ‘They are, amongst the great thinkers, as the Dutch painters are amongst the men of the grand style’). Wesley mentions them again in No. 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, II.1; A Farther Appeal, Pt. II, II.14 (11:226-27 of this edn.); and Thoughts Upon Necessity, Bibliog, No. 351 (Vol. 12 of this edn.).
The primeval element of fire had, in Wesley’s time, come to be often identified as ‘ethereal fire’; cf. William Jones, An Essay on the First Principles of Natural Philosophy (1762), p. 210, where Zoroaster is cited as the source of the idea. See also Shakespeare, Othello, V.ii.280, ‘steep-down gulfs of liquid fire’. Wesley was much interested in such popular scientific notions as ‘ethereal fire’ and the newly discovered phenomena of ‘electric fire’ and electricity; cf. Nos. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §7; 55, On the Trinity, §9; 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, I.8; 57, ‘On the Fall of Man’, II.1; 64, ‘The New Creation’, §10; 69, ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge’, I.7; 77, ‘Spiritual Worship’, I.5; 116, ‘What is Man? Ps. 8:4’, §§2, 8; 124, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §7. See also Wesley’s Survey, III.186, 246; ‘Some Thoughts’ on 1 Thess. (AM, 1786, 543); ‘Thought on Nervous Disorders’, ibid., 54; Survey, V.235-55.
Cf. above, I.1 and n.
Wesley’s spelling: ‘unbigotted’; but cf. OED for spelling variations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, i. 256-58: ‘He remembered also that ’twas in the fates that a time would come when sea and land, the unkindled palace of the sky, and the beleaguered structure of the universe, should be destroyed by fire.’
But, secondly, it is easy to answer, even from our slight and superficial acquaintance with natural things, that there are abundant magazines of fire ready prepared, and treasured up against the day of the Lord. How soon may a comet, commissioned by him, travel down from the most distant parts of the universe? And were it to fix upon the earth in its return from the sun, when it is some thousand times hotter than a red-hot cannon-ball,
Cf. Notes on 2 Pet. 3:10, where Wesley uses almost the same words as here in this paragraph. Cf. also No. 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, I.10 and n.
Ps. 97:4 (BCP).
Wesley’s ‘favourite’ volcanoes. The phrase, ‘burning mountains’, goes back to Pliny the Elder, Natural History, II.106-7, and to Macarius, Spiritual Homilies, XIV.212. It occurs in Goldsmith’s History of the Earth and Animated Nature (1774), I.291 (where Buffon is cited). Cf. the long passage on ‘burning mountains’ in Wesley’s Survey, III.107-52, where the ‘fire in caverns of the earth’ (p. 131) is correlated with the phenomena of volcanoes. Isaac Watts also used the term in his Ruin and Recovery of Mankind (p. 15), which Wesley quoted in his Doctrine of Original Sin. Cf. also Nos. 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, I.3; 64, ‘The New Creation’, §15; and 69, ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge’, I.8.
55. There is one circumstance more which will follow the judgment that
deserves our serious consideration. ‘We look’, says the Apostle, ‘according to
his promise, for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness.’
[2 Pet.] 3:13. [Isa.] 65:17. Rev. 21:1.
Cf. 2 Pet. 3:13.
Ver. 3.
Ver. 4.
[Rev.] 22:3, 4.
Rev. 22:4.
Rev. 22:5.
IV. It remains only to apply the preceding considerations to all who are here before God. And are we not directly led so to do by the present solemnity, which so naturally points us to that day when the Lord ‘will judge the world in righteousness’?
Cf. Ps. 9:8.
11. And, first, ‘how beautiful are the feet’
Isa. 52:7.
Cf. Rom. 13:4.
Ps. 94:2.
Cf. Rev. 19:16.
Ps. 77:10.
See 1 Pet. 1:15-16.
Wisd. 9:4.
Prov. 24:12; Matt. 16:27.
Jas. 5:11.
Cf. Rom. 13:4.
Prov. 25:5.
2 3722. Ye truly honourable men, whom God and the King have commissioned in a lower degree to administer justice, may not ye be compared to those ministering spirits who will attend the Judge coming in the clouds? May you, like them, burn with love to God and man! May you love righteousness and hate iniquity!
See Heb. 1:9.
See Heb. 1:14.
33. You whose office it is to execute what is given you in charge by him before whom you stand, how nearly are you concerned to resemble those that stand before the face of the Son of man! Those ‘servants of his that do his pleasure’,
Ps. 103:21 (BCP).
Ps. 103:20 (BCP).
Mic. 6:8.
See Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31.
Cf. Matt. 25:21, 23.
44. Suffer me to add a few words to all of you who are this day present before the Lord. Should not you bear it in your minds all the day long that a more awful day is coming? A large assembly this! But what is it to that which every eye will then behold—the general assembly of all the children of men that ever lived on the face of the whole earth!
Cf. Tertullian, De spectaculis, xxx.
Cf. Rom. 14:10.
Cf. No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Steepest’, II.5 and n.
2 Pet. 2:4.
An already obsolescent synonym for ‘acts’ or ‘deeds’; cf. OED and Johnson’s Dictionary.
Cf. John Dyer, ‘Grongar Hill’ (1726), line 89.
See Heb. 4:12.
Luke 16:2.
Cf. Zech. 4:10.
Cf. Quintillian, Institui. Oratoriae, V. xi. 41 (quoting a proverb): ‘Conscientiam mille testes’ (‘conscience is a thousand witnesses’). Cf. Robert Greene, Philomela (1592), and Thomas Fuller, The Holy State of Recreations (1642), ‘He that sinnes against his conscience sinnes with a witness.’ There was an old Latin tag, ‘in foro conscientiae’ (‘in conscience’s court’); see also No. 105, ‘On Conscience’, espec. I.7 and n.
Cf. Titus 2:13.
See, see! He cometh! He maketh the clouds his chariots. He rideth upon the wings of the wind! A devouring fire goeth before him, and after him a flame burneth! See, he sitteth upon his throne, clothed with light as with a garment, arrayed with majesty and honour!
See Ps. 104:1-3.
See Rev. 1:14-15.
How will ye escape? Will ye call to the mountains to fall on you, the rocks to cover you?
See Rev. 6:16.
See Prov. 6:31; S. of S. 8:7.
Orig., ‘and more naked’ (as also the text of 1771), altered in the separate edns. of 1782 and thereafter to ‘shalt go’. But it seems likely that the printer had omitted ‘shalt’ in error, that ‘move’ was then misprinted as ‘more’, and this then had gone unnoticed by Wesley.
See Job 1:21.
Matt. 25:34.
Matt. 25:41.
Cf. Isa. 14:9.
See Ps. 24:7, 9.
55. ‘What manner of persons (then) ought we to be, in all holy conversation and godliness?’
Cf. 2 Pet. 3:11.
Cf. 1 Thess. 4:16.
Cf. Luke 16:2; Rev. 20:12.
2 Pet. 3:14.
Heb. 10:37.
Cf. 2 Pet. 3:14.
Cf. 2 Pet. 3:9.
Heb. 12:23.
1 Tim. 4:10.
See Acts 20:28.
John 3:16.
Job 26:14.
Cf. Acts 17:27.
Cf. John 3:17.
See Rev. 3:20.
See Luke 19:42.
Cf. Gal. 2:20.
See Matt. 2:10.
See Matt. 24:30, etc.
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Entry Title: Sermon 15: The Great Assize