Notes:
Sermon 20: The Lord Our Righteousness
The preceding sermon had been written in 1747 or 1748 and for SOSO, II (1748); there it had been followed directly by Wesley’s thirteen-sermon series ‘Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount’. At that time, it seemed natural enough to progress directly from the negative powers of faith (‘not to sin’) to an extended comment on faith’s positive fruits. This present sermon, from a later period, was inserted in this particular place by Wesley in his collected Works (1771), II, and, at first glance, it might seem intrusive. A closer look, however, suggests that in 1771 Wesley could see the need for a clearer soteriological restatement between his sermon on faith’s ‘privileges’ and his series on its ‘duties’. There would be a good reason for this: in the interval between 1748 and 1771 the conflict with the Calvinists had worsened, and there was an obvious need at this particular juncture for a clearer statement of his counterposition on ‘imputation’ and ‘importation’ in justification by faith.
The conflict stretched back to the breach between the Wesleys and George Whitefield, with John’s sermon on Free Grace (1739) and Charles’s thirty-six stanza poem, ‘The Horrible Decree’. Characteristically, Wesley never understood why the Calvinists should have taken offence at his criticisms, and thus continued to repeat his sincere but unrealistic appeals to them for closer fellowship, as in his letter to Henry Venn, June 22, 1763: ‘I desire to have a league offensive and defensive with every soldier of Christ.’ It baffled him that, in response, he got more criticism than cooperation.
The criticism came from such men as Jonathan Warne and John Cennick and was climaxed in 1755 by a three-volume ‘dialogue’ by a former pupil and fellow ‘Oxford Methodist’, James Hervey, since turned Calvinist, and rector of Weston Flavell. Hervey was already well known for his Meditations Among the Tombs. Now, in his long, drawn-out Theron and Aspasio, he had laid out the differences between ‘Theron’ (his eponym for Arminians, generally) and ‘Aspasio’ (i.e., himself as a representative English Calvinist arguing plausibly for ‘the imputed righteousness of Christ’ as the prime reality in justification); needless to 445say, ‘Theron’ comes off rather badly in the ‘dialogue’. Hervey had sent a pre-publication copy of his manuscript to Wesley who, like an old tutor attempting to improve the revision, had dashed off a set of critical annotations for Hervey’s private eyes. The dialogues appeared unrevised and Wesley, somewhat peevishly, proceeded to publish his annotations on them, as ‘A Letter to the Rev. Mr. —’, in his Preservative Against Unsettled Notions in Religion (1758), pp. 211-36.
This unexpected attack wounded the gentle-spirited Hervey and prompted him to reply in a series of long letters to Wesley that he wisely left unposted and unpublished at his death in 1758 (with explicit instructions that they should never be published). However, they fell into the hands of William Cudworth, who promptly put them in print in a form, as Hervey’s brother William complained, ‘so faulty and incorrect that little judgment can be formed from it of the propriety and force of my brother’s answers to Mr. Westley’. Hence, an ‘official’ edition of Eleven Letters from the late Rev. Mr. Hervey to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley; containing an Answer to that Gentleman’s Remarks on Theron and Aspasio (1765). The Lord Our Righteousness was Wesley’s prompt response.
It was preached on Sunday, November 24, 1765, in the chapel in West Street, near Seven Dials (a chapel which belonged to the parish of St. Clement Dane’s; earlier, it had been loaned to the Huguenots and then to the Methodists; its old pulpit is still preserved in the nearby church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields). This sermon represents Wesley in as irenic a mood as the circumstances allowed, viz., given the need for an unmistakable rejection of all one-sided emphases on ‘imputation’.
There was, of course, much more at stake in this affair than an unhappy rift between two former friends. Its central issue was whether Christ’s atoning death is to be understood as the ‘formal’ or the ‘meritorious’ cause of a sinner’s justification. This had divided British theologians since the days of Davenant and Downame; cf. C. F. Allison, The Rise of Moralism (chs. 1-3); but see also Alexander Hamilton’s obscure Cordial for Christians Travelling Heavenward (1696), p. 69. The doctrine of ‘formal cause’ implied some sort of correlated view of predestination and irresistible grace. The idea of ‘meritorious cause’, while still ‘evangelical’, allowed for prevenience, free will, and ‘universal redemption’. To the Calvinists, however, this was merely a subtler form of works-righteousness, indeed of ‘popery’ or something very like it. For his part, Hervey is generous enough to discount the insinuations he had heard, ‘that Mr. Wesley is a Jesuit in disguise’ (p. 122). Yet he felt it proper to suggest that Wesley’s principles halt 446‘between Protestantism and Popery’ (p. 123), that ‘Wesley is pleased to associate with the Papists in ascribing our salvation partly to inherent, partly to imputed, righteousness’ (p. 228), that Wesley’s views are markedly similar to those of Bellarmine (p. 228, n.). Finally, Hervey stresses the contrast between Wesley’s misleading notion that ‘God’s great end is to impart happiness to his creatures’ and the Calvinist vision of man’s chief end as the enhancement of God’s glory (p. 291).
Hervey and his friends had found abundant evidence of Wesley’s synergism, particularly in ‘The Marks of the New Birth’ and ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’ (cf. Eleven Letters, p. 197, ‘Sin remains in us till the Day of Judgment’). In 1771, therefore, when the breach with the Calvinists had become irreparable, it seemed urgent for Wesley to place The Lord Our Righteousness between ‘The Great Privilege…’ and the discourses on the Sermon on the Mount, out of chronological order but in response to a pressing need for clarity on a particular point. He begins with an assertion of the premises of faith alone which is as clear and forceful as any he had ever made before. And yet his conclusions develop quite differently from anything in the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions based on those same premises. It is in this sense, then, that The Lord Our Righteousness may be reckoned as yet another ‘landmark sermon’. It signals the end of Wesley’s efforts to avoid an open rift with the Calvinists; it signals the beginning of that stage in his career that we have labelled ‘the later Wesley’. Moreover, in its own right, it is a revealing sample of Wesley’s earnest, even if largely unavailing, efforts to agree and disagree in matters of ‘theological opinions’ while still holding fast to the Christian unity made possible by shared beliefs in what he understood to be the essentials of Christian doctrine.
The present text is based on that of the first edition of 1766. For a stemma illustrating the textual history of the nine extant editions issued during Wesley’s lifetime and a list of substantive variant readings, see Appendix, ‘Wesley’s Text’, Vol. IV. See also Bibliog, No. 295.
449 The Lord Our RighteousnessJeremiah 23:6
This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.
11. How dreadful and how innumerable are the contests which have arisen about religion! And not only among the children of this world,
Luke 16:8; 20:34. See also No. 4, Scriptural Christianity, II.5 and n., for an equivalent phrase, ‘saints of the world’ (Juán de Valdés’s ‘santos del mundo’).
Cf. Luke 17:21.
Rom. 14:17.
Heb. 12:13.
Cf. Ps. 16:3.
Jer. 13:17.
22. What would not every lover of God and his neighbour do, what would he not suffer, to remedy this sore evil? To remove contention from the children of God? To restore or preserve peace among them? What but a good conscience would he think too dear to part with in order to promote this valuable end? And suppose we cannot ‘make these wars to cease in all the world’,
Cf. Ps. 46:9 (BCP).
See Mark 12:41-44.
Cf. Luke 2:14.
Isa. 9:6.
Cf. Rom. 12:18.
33. It would be a considerable step toward this glorious end if we could bring good men to understand one another. Abundance of disputes arise purely from the want of this, from mere misapprehension. Frequently neither of the contending parties understands what his opponent means; whence it follows that each violently attacks the other while there is no real difference between them.
An echo of John Locke’s account of the motivations for his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (see his ‘Epistle to the Reader’, dated 1689, pp. xlvi-xlvii); viz., that more confusion results from misunderstanding than from actual disagreement. A marginal note in James Tyrrell’s copy of the Essay reports that the whole project was prompted by a discussion amongst Locke’s ‘group of friends’ concerning the issues of ‘morality and revealed religion’. It was Locke’s hope to show that misunderstandings can usually be reduced if the disputants will agree on their terms and eschew their biases.
See Matt. 19:26, etc.
Cf. Eph. 4:21.
44. One very considerable article of this truth is contained in the words above recited, ‘This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness:’ a truth this which enters deep into the nature of Christianity, and in a manner supports the whole frame of it. Of this undoubtedly may be affirmed what Luther affirms of a truth closely connected with it: it is articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae
‘The doctrine on which the church stands or falls’. Wesley’s attribution of this famous aphorism to Luther is an interesting sidelight on the life history of such aphorisms. He is obviously repeating a commonplace which he may have read in John Flavel’s Πλανηλογία, published in Mr. John Flavel’s Remains… (1691), p. 318: ‘The article of justification is deservedly styled by our divines articulus stantis vel cadentis religionis’, or in Michael Harrison, Christ’s Righteousness Imputed… (n.d. but c. 1690), p. 1, where it is attributed to Chemnitz. In WHS, V.51, C. L. Ford has a note which cites ‘Bp. Harold Browne, Article XI’ as having found it in Luther, with a further note by one ‘F. R.’, ‘I have not found it earlier than Luther.’ Franz Hildebrandt, From Luther to Wesley, p. 16n., cites it as from ‘Luther, Art. Smalcaldi, Pt. II, §1’, without noting that its sense is affirmed in the Smalkald Articles (in II, XIII, etc.) but not the literal text.
Wesley will repeat the phrase, without an attribution, JWJ, Dec. 1, 1767; cf. his letter to William Law, Jan. 6, 1756; his Remarks on Hill’s Review and Farrago Double-Distilled.
On the point of Luther’s coining of the aphorism, Friedrich Loofs tried to puzzle it out in a notable essay, ‘Der articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae’ in Theologisches Studien und Kritiken (1917), 90:323-420. Having found its sense in many places throughout the Luther corpus (e.g., his ‘Argument of the Epistle to the Galatians’ [W.A., Vol. 40, Pt. I, p. 49]), he concludes that its verbatim text is not there. Then, following a review of the Lutheran dogmaticians (ignoring Harrison’s attribution, above), Loofs concludes (pp. 344-45) that the phrase as such first appears (and clearly he means in Lutheran circles) in one Valentin E. Löscher, Timotheus Verinus (1712), pp. 1027-28, and, again, in Völlständiger Timotheus Verinus (1718), pp. 342-43. Löscher was involved with Zinzendorf, the Moravians, and the Halle pietists, though not a pietist himself; cf. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (New York, Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1908-12), loc. cit. Would Wesley have heard the aphorism in Herrnhut, associated with Luther?
The ‘Bp. Browne’ noted above was Bishop Harold Browne, whose assertion (without citation) in his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles (1871) illustrates the persistence of the slogan: ‘Luther strongly propounded his doctrine [of sola fide] in its strongest possible form, as the articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae.’ None of this would have troubled Wesley or many of his first readers, although Hervey was speaking for others besides himself in his comment that ‘Mr. Wesley is so unfair in his quotations and so magisterial in his manner that I find it no small difficulty to preserve the decency of the gentleman and the meekness of the Christian in my intended answer’ (cf. Eleven Letters, Pref., p. v.).
Cf. the so-called Athanasian Creed or Quicunque Vult (BCP), and Schaff, Creeds, II.66.
55. Might not one therefore reasonably expect, that however they differed in others, all those who name the name of Christ
See 2 Tim. 2:19.
66. But if the difference be more in opinion than real experience, and more in expression than in opinion, how can it be that even the 452children of God should so vehemently contend with each other on the point? Several reasons may be assigned for this: the chief is their not understanding one another, joined with too keen an attachment to their opinions and particular modes of expression.
In order to remove this, at least in some measure, in order to our understanding one another on this head, I shall by the help of God endeavour to show,
I. What is the righteousness of Christ;
II. When, and in what sense, it is imputed to us;
And conclude with a short and plain application.
1And, I. What is the righteousness of Christ? It is twofold, either his divine or his human righteousness.
11. His divine righteousness belongs to his divine nature, as he is ὁ ὤν, ‘He that existeth, over all, God, blessed for ever:’
Cf. Rom. 9:5.
Cf. the Athanasian Creed, §33 (Schaff, Creeds, II.69); but see also the significantly different affirmation in the Definition of Chalcedon, viz., that the Son is ‘of the same οὐσία as the Father touching his godhead, and of the same οὐσία as we ourselves, touching his manhood’ (Schaff, ibid., II.62).
Cf. John 10:30.
But I do not apprehend that the divine righteousness of Christ is immediately concerned in the present question. I believe few, if any, do now contend for the imputation of this righteousness to us. Whoever believes the doctrine of imputation understands it chiefly, if not solely, of his human righteousness.
22. The human righteousness of Christ belongs to him in his human nature, as he is ‘the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus’.
Cf. 1 Tim. 2:5. See No. 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’, §4 and n.
Gen. 1:27; 9:6; 2 Cor. 4:4. See No. 1, Salvation by Faith, §1 and n.
33. It was the least part of his external righteousness that he did nothing amiss; that he knew no outward sin of any kind, ‘neither was guile found in his mouth’;
1 Pet. 2:22.
Cf. Mark 7:37.
Cf. John 4:34; 6:38.
An echo of the Lord’s Prayer, Matt. 6:10.
Cf. Matt. 3:15.
44. But his obedience implied more than all this. It implied not only doing, but suffering: suffering the whole will of God from the time he came into the world till ‘he bore our sins in his own body upon the tree;’
Cf. 1 Pet. 2:24.
John 19:30.
A popular restatement of a controversial issue between the Lutherans and Calvinists, on the one side, and the Anglicans on the other—viz., ‘the active and passive obedience of Christ’ and its import for soteriology. The former stressed Christ’s passive obedience (his vicarious satisfaction of God’s just judgment against sinful mankind) as the sole ground of our salvation (cf. Schmid, Doctrinal Theology, pp. 355-70, 449; see also Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, ch. xviii). The Anglicans sought to avoid any separation between Christ’s active obedience (Wesley: Christ’s ‘external righteousness’) and his ‘passive righteousness’ (I.3-4); cf. More and Cross, Anglicanism, pp. 283-316. Puritans like William Perkins had maintained a strong Anselmian doctrine of ‘substitutionary atonement’; Richard Baxter and John Goodwin, even more (cf. Imputatio Fidei), sound almost like Anglicans on this point (cf. Goodwin’s ‘Preface’, pp. 22-23, and Pts. I. 36-37, and II. 230). The point here is that Wesley is well aware that he is having to thread a careful way through a soteriological minefield.
II. But when is it that any of us may truly say, ‘the Lord our righteousness’? In other words, when is it that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, and in what sense is it imputed?
1 4541. Look through all the world, and all the men therein are either believers or unbelievers. The first thing then which admits of no dispute among reasonable men is this: to all believers the righteousness of Christ is imputed; to unbelievers it is not.
‘But when is it imputed?’ When they believe. In that very hour the righteousness of Christ is theirs. It is imputed to every one that believes, as soon as he believes: faith and the righteousness of Christ are inseparable. For if he believes according to Scripture, he believes in the righteousness of Christ. There is no true faith, that is, justifying faith, which hath not the righteousness of Christ for its object.
22. It is true believers may not all speak alike; they may not all use the same language. It is not to be expected that they should; we cannot reasonably require it of them. A thousand circumstances may cause them to vary from each other in the manner of expressing themselves. But a difference of expression does not necessarily imply a difference of sentiment. Different persons may use different expressions, and yet mean the same thing. Nothing is more common than this, although we seldom make sufficient allowance for it. Nay, it is not easy for the same persons, when they speak of the same thing at a considerable distance of time, to use exactly the same expressions, even though they retain the same sentiments. How then can we be rigorous in requiring others to use just the same expressions with us?
33. We may go a step farther yet. Men may differ from us in their opinions as well as their expressions, and nevertheless be partakers with us of the same precious faith. ’Tis possible they may not have a distinct apprehension of the very blessing which they enjoy. Their ideas may not be so clear, and yet their experience maybe as sound as ours. There is a wide difference between the natural faculties of men, their understandings in particular. And that difference is exceedingly increased by the manner of their education. Indeed, this alone may occasion an inconceivable difference in their opinions of various kinds. And why not upon this head as well as on any other? But still, though their opinions as well as expressions may be confused and inaccurate, their hearts may cleave to God through the Son of his love, and be truly interested in his righteousness.
In part, this is a sample of Wesley’s understanding of what ‘catholic spirit’ means in theological dialogue (see No. 39, ‘Catholic Spirit’; cf. also No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, I.6 and n.). But it also reflects his ideas about the radical ambiguity of religious language: no single form of words, in Wesley’s view, could ever suffice to exhaust, or even accurately express, the full meaning of an authentic religious truth, to the exclusion of other equally valid statements.
4 4554. Let us then make all that allowance to others which, were we in their place, we would desire for ourselves. Who is ignorant (to touch again on that circumstance only) of the amazing power of education? And who that knows it can expect, suppose, a member of the Church of Rome either to think or speak clearly on this subject? And yet if we had heard even dying Bellarmine cry out, when he was asked, ‘Unto which of the saints wilt thou turn?’
Cf. Job 5:1.
None of Bellarmine’s biographers records these as his ‘dying words’; cf. Edward Coffin, S. J.,A True Relation of the Last Sickness and Death of Cardinal Bellarmine. Who dyed in Rome the seavententh day of September 1621. And of such things as happened in, or since, his Buriall (1623). But the story had become folklore at least by the time of Christopher Nesse; cf. A Protestant Antidote Against the Poyson of Popery… (1679), ch. 3, pp. 80-81: ‘…such as those though they live papists, yet they dye protestants, to wit, to the principal foundation of our faith. This Bellarmine himself (their great champion) was driven to for succour when the terrors of death were upon him…’. Nesse’s reference here is to Bellarmine, De Justificatione, lib. 5, cap. 7; but the only relevant passage in that chapter (or elsewhere in the essay) reads: ‘Sit tertia propositio: “Propter incertitudinem propriae justitiae, et periculum inanis gloriae tutissimum est, fiduciam totam in sola Dei misericordia et benignitate reponere”’ (‘A third proposition: “Because of the uncertainty of our own true righteousness and the danger of our ‘glory’ turning out to be empty, our safest course by far is to rest our entire trust solely in the mercy of God and in his lovingkindness”’); see Bellarmine, Works (1873), 6:359.
55. ‘But in what sense is this righteousness imputed to believers?’ In this: all believers are forgiven and accepted, not for the sake of anything in them, or of anything that ever was, that is, or ever can be done by them, but wholly and solely for the sake of what Christ hath done and suffered for them. I say again, not for the sake of anything in them or done by them, of their own righteousness or works. ‘Not for works of righteousness which we have done, but of his own mercy he saved us.’
Cf. Titus 3:5.
Eph. 2:8-9.
Cf. Rom. 3:24.
Heb. 10:20.
66. And this is the doctrine which I have constantly believed and taught for near eight and twenty years.
Note Wesley’s insistence on his unswerving fidelity to the doctrine of justification by faith since 1738, despite all Calvinist charges to the contrary. But note also his grounding of that doctrine, yet once again, in the Anglican standards of doctrine.
Cf. The Doctrine of Salvation, Faith, and Good Works, I.5. See the original text in the homily ‘Of the Salvation of All Mankind’, Pt. I, in Homilies, pp. 19-20. At least fifteen edns. of Wesley’s abridgement were extant when this sermon was preached.
Ibid., I.7.
77. The hymns published a year or two after this, and since republished several times (a clear testimony that my judgment was still the same) speak full to the same purpose. To cite all the passages to this effect would be to transcribe a great part of the volumes. Take one for all, which was reprinted seven years ago, five years ago, two years ago, and some months since:
John Wesley, ‘The Believer’s Triumph’, st. 1 (tr. from Zinzendorf’s German), in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740), p. 177 (Poet. Wks., I.346).
The whole expresses the same sentiment from the beginning to the end.
8 4578. In the sermon on justification published nineteen, and again seven or eight years ago, I express the same thing in these words:
“In consideration of this, that the Son of God hath ‘tasted death for every man’,Cf. Heb. 2:9.
Cf. 2 Cor. 5:19.
p. 87 [Sermons on Several Occasions I (1746); cf. No. 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, I.8; 2nd edn., by W. Bowyer, 1754).
99. This is more largely and particularly expressed in the Treatise on Justification which I published last year:
“If we take the phrase of ‘imputing Christ’s righteousness’ for the bestowing (as it were) the righteousness of Christ, including his obedience, as well passive as active, in the return of it—that is, in the privileges, blessings, and benefits purchased by it—so a believer may be said to be justified by the righteousness of Christ imputed. The meaning is, God justifies the believer for the sake of Christ’s righteousness, and not for any righteousness of his own. […] So Calvin: ‘Christ by his obedience procured and merited for us grace or favour with God the Father.’Institutes [Vol. I], II.xvii. [3; cf. LCC, Vol. XX.530-31].
Institutes, III. xiv. 17 (LCC, Vol. XX.784). But note Calvin’s full text: ‘Surely the material cause [of justification] is Christ, with his [passive] obedience, through which he acquired righteousness for us. What shall we say is the formal or instrumental cause but faith?’ It is this thesis that Wesley is here rejecting.
Wesley’s translation of Calvin’s commentary on Gal. 3:6; cf. William Pringle’s translation, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians (1849), p. 85. See also Goodwin’s translation of the same passage, p. 9.
Wesley has here altered Goodwin to his own purpose. Goodwin reads: ‘the righteousness of Christ, meaning chiefly his passive obedience or righteousness, is the meritorious cause….’ But Wesley is concerned to include ‘both his active and passive righteousness as the meritorious cause…’. In this way he reasserts his Anglican ‘both/and’ and also rejects Calvin’s thesis about ‘formal or instrumental cause’ which, in Wesley’s view, carried predestination as a necessary implication.
p. 5. [Not Wesley’s own work but an abridgement of John Goodwin’s Imputatio Fidei (1642); cf. Bibliog, No. 266. Wesley’s unusually long Preface registers his basic agreement with Goodwin against his detractors—and ignores Toplady’s reference to ‘that Arminian Ranter and Fifth Monarchy Man’ (see Augustus M. Toplady, Works, II.342-43). Wesley’s quotation here is further abridgement from his original extract; its locus in Goodwin is pp. 8-10.]
10 45810. But perhaps some will object, ‘Nay, but you affirm that “faith is imputed to us for righteousness.”’
Cf. Rom. 4:22.
See Gal. 2:16.
1111. ‘But is not a believer invested or clothed with the righteousness of Christ?’ Undoubtedly he is. And accordingly the words above-recited are the language of every believing heart:
See above, II.7 and n.
That is, for the sake of thy active and passive righteousness I am forgiven and accepted of God.
‘But must not we put off the filthy rags of our own righteousness
See Isa. 64:6. See also No. 127, ‘On the Wedding Garment’.
Mark 1:15.
Cf. 2 Cor. 1:9.
1212. ‘But do not you believe inherent righteousness?’ Yes, in its proper place; not as the ground of our acceptance with God, but as the fruit of it; not in the place of imputed righteousness, but as consequent upon it. That is, I believe God implants righteousness in every one to whom he has imputed it. I believe ‘Jesus Christ is 459made of God unto us sanctification’
Cf. 1 Cor. 1:30.
Cf. Eph. 4:24.
1313. ‘But do not you put faith in the room of Christ, or of his righteousness?’ By no means. I take particular care to put each of these in its proper place. The righteousness of Christ is the whole and sole foundation of all our hope. It is by faith that the Holy Ghost enables us to build upon this foundation. God gives this faith. In that moment we are accepted of God; and yet not for the sake of that faith, but of what Christ has done and suffered for us. You see, each of these has its proper place, and neither clashes with the other: we believe, we love; we endeavour to walk in all the commandments of the Lord blameless.
See Luke 1:6.
Charles Wesley, ‘Hymns for Christian Friends’, No. 14, st. 4, in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), II.281 (Poet. Wks., V.424). Orig., ‘Thus while we bestow’, and ‘The foundation’.
1414. I therefore no more deny the righteousness of Christ than I deny the godhead of Christ. And a man may full as justly charge me with denying the one as the other. Neither do I deny imputed righteousness: this is another unkind and unjust accusation. I always did, and do still continually affirm, that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to every believer. But who do deny it? Why, all infidels, whether baptized or unbaptized; all who affirm the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ
See 2 Cor. 4:4. Here again is Wesley’s prime thesis: that ‘imputation’ is normally followed by ‘implantation’. Thus the typical fruit of imputed righteousness (i.e., pardon) is a ‘renewal [of the soul] in the image of God’ (i.e., holy living).
See 2 Pet. 1:16.
The followers of Lelio (1525-67) and Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), who had rejected trinitarian orthodoxy and had expounded a unitarian Christology and a moralistic soteriology; they were dubbed ‘Arians’ by their orthodox critics, although they themselves rejected the label. Their views are best summarized in the Racovian Catechism (1605, 1608, 1609); cf. Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1945), chs. xxix-xxxii. John Biddle (1615-62) is reckoned as ‘the father of English Unitarianism’; in Wesley’s time its most prominent spokesmen were John Taylor of Norwich and Joseph Priestley (see below, II.16, and n. 65).
1515. The human righteousness of Christ, at least the imputation of it as the whole and sole meritorious cause of the justification of a sinner before God, is likewise denied by the members of the Church of Rome—by all of them who are true to the principles of their own church.
How Wesley got this from the canons of Trent (Session Six, ch. vii) is not clear. That text reads: ‘Justification is not merely the remission of sins but also the renewal of the inward man [Wesley’s point about ‘the renewed image’]…. Its meritorious cause is God’s most beloved, only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, when we were enemies…merited justification for us by his most holy passion on the wood of the cross and made satisfaction for us unto God his Father….’ Is Wesley’s complaint here more than that Trent had declined the absolute designation, ‘whole and sole’?
Cf. Rom. 10:10.
1616. With these we may rank those even in the Reformed Churches who are usually termed mystics. One of the chief of these in the present century (at least in England) was Mr. Law.
William Law had just recently died (1761). As early as 1739, he had turned against ‘faith alone’ in The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration. Then, as he grew older, he had been drawn more and more into the orbit of Jacob Boehme. The books that Wesley has here in mind are The Spirit of Prayer and The Spirit of Love (1752, 1754), Works, VIII.3-133, where Law stresses ‘the indwelling Christ in the soul’ to the exclusion of the doctrine of justification by faith.
It is well known that Robert Barclay rejected ‘imputed righteousness’ out of hand (cf. his Apology, I.141-44, 188-90; III.360-74, 410-22); in his Works (1718),I.142,there is a marginal rubric: ‘Imputed righteousness a cloak for wickedness.’ But Professors Hugh Barbour and Elton Trueblood, both Barclay specialists, agree that Wesley’s quotation is not in Barclay’s text nor even in Barclay’s style.
‘Anabaptists’: a blanket term for radical Protestants of various sorts who rejected the official churches and coercive social institutions; cf. Williams, The Radical Reformation, ch. 33; and Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History (Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1972). They had flourished in England during the tumults of the Civil War and had survived into Wesley’s time as Baptists, Congregationalists, Familists, etc. The ‘Strict and Particular Baptists’ taught a rigorous doctrine of election and imputation while the ‘General Baptists’ allowed for universal redemption as a possibility by Christ’s atonement. Cf. A. C. Underwood, History of the English Baptists (London, Kingsgate Press, 1947).
Dr. John Taylor of Norwich, a leader in the development of eighteenth-century Dissent from orthodoxy to the sort of unitarianism that one may see full blown in Joseph Priestley, Richard Price, et al.; cf. Gerald R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason (1648-1789), (Baltimore, Md., Penguin Books, 1960). Taylor and Wesley had dueled over their contrary views of original sin; see above, II.14, and n. 59.
Cf. Eph. 2:12.
1717. But, blessed be God, we are not among those who are so dark in their conceptions and expressions. We no more deny the phrase than the thing; but we are unwilling to obtrude it on other men. Let them use either this or such other expressions as they judge to be more exactly scriptural, provided their heart rests only on what Christ hath done and suffered for pardon, grace, and glory. I cannot express this better than in Mr. Hervey’s words, worthy to be wrote in letters of gold: ‘We are not solicitous as to 462any particular set of phrases. Only let men be humbled as repenting criminals at Christ’s feet, let them rely as devoted pensioners on his merits, and they are undoubtedly in the way to a blessed immortality.’
Cf. James Hervey, Theron and Aspasio, Dial. II (4th edn., 1761, I.55); this is clearly an olive branch to Hervey’s memory, a reconciling gesture to his friends.
1818. Is there any need, is there any possibility of saying more? Let us only abide by this declaration, and all the contention about this or that ‘particular phrase’ is torn up by the roots. Keep to this: ‘All who are humbled as repenting criminals at Christ’s feet and rely as devoted pensioners on his merits are in the way to a blessed immortality.’ And what room for dispute? Who denies this? Do we not all meet on this ground? What then shall we wrangle about? A man of peace here proposes terms of accommodation to all the contending parties. We desire no better. We accept of the terms. We subscribe to them with heart and hand. Whoever refuses so to do, set a mark upon that man! He is an enemy of peace, and a troubler of Israel,
1 Chr. 2:7.
An echo of Canon II of the Dedication Council of Antioch, A.D. 341 (In Encaeniis); cf. No. 27, ‘Sermon an the Mount, VII’, III.7 and n.
1919. In the meantime what we are afraid of is this: lest any should use the phrase, ‘the righteousness of Christ’, or, ‘the righteousness of Christ is “imputed to me”,’ as a cover for his unrighteousness. We have known this done a thousand times. A man has been reproved, suppose, for drunkenness. ‘Oh, said he, I pretend to no righteousness of my own: Christ is my righteousness.’ Another has been told that ‘the extortioner, the unjust, shall not inherit the kingdom of God.’
Cf. 1 Cor. 6:9-10.
See Phil. 2:5.
Cf. 2 Pet. 1:1.
2020. It is the seeing so many deplorable instances of this kind which makes us sparing in the use of these expressions. And I cannot but call upon all of you who use them frequently, and 463beseech you in the name of God our Saviour, whose you are and whom you serve,
See Acts 27:23.
Cf. Rom. 6:1.
Gal. 2:17.
Cf. Heb. 12:14.
Rom. 8:4. Cf. Nos. 34, ‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law’; and 35 and 36, ‘The Law Established through Faith’, Discourses I and II.
Titus 2:12.
It remains only to make a short and plain application.
Cf. No. 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, IV.9 and n.
Cf. the memorandum of Jan. 25, 1738, noted in JWJ. See also Echard, Eccles. Hist., III.vi.426: ‘He bent the stick too much the contrary way.’
This aphorism on ‘use and abuse’ is a favourite of Wesley’s; cf., e.g., Nos. 24, ‘Sermon on the Mount, IV’, III.6; 33, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XIII’, II.2; 42, ‘Satan’s Devices’, II.8; 78, ‘Spiritual Idolatry’, I.14; 108, ‘On Riches’, II.12. It appears often in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature. Cf. George Chapman’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey (Bk. xxiv), p. 526:
Cf. also Richard Graves, Spiritual Quixote (1772), Vol. II, ch. 2 (see 1820 edn., II.7): ‘Our master does not deny us the use but only the abuse of his good creatures.’
I would, secondly, add a few words to you who are fond of these expressions. And permit me to ask, Do not I allow enough? What can any reasonable man desire more? I allow the whole sense which you contend for: that we have every blessing ‘through the righteousness of God our Saviour’.
Cf. 2 Pet. 1:1.
Cf. JWJ, Mar. 25, 1743; see also The Old Whig: Or, the Consistent Protestant (1739), No. 4, in Vol. I, pp. 32-33.
Cf. Wesley’s letter to John Erskine, Apr. 24, 1765; see also his Remarks on A Defence of…Aspasio Vindicated.
Gal. 6:2.
See Acts 7:60.
Cf. 1 Cor. 3:11.
Cf. No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, I.6 and n.
See 2 Sam. 12:14.
See 2 Cor. 11:12.
Cf. Eph. 4:4-5.
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Entry Title: Sermon 20: The Lord Our Righteousness