Sermon 21: Upon Our Lord’s Sermon On The Mount, Discourse I

466 An Introductory Comment [to Sermons 21-33]

The unifying theme of these next thirteen ‘discourses’ on the Sermon on the Mount, with all their variations and nuancings, is the Christian life understood as the fruit of justifying faith. But given such faith, what follows? Wesley’s answer is given in this extended exposition of the Christian life based on the locus classicus of evangelical ethics, ‘The Sermon on the Mount’ (i.e., Matthew 5-7). Since Tyndale, this ‘sermon’ had been understood as ‘the epitome of God’s laws and promises’ for Christian believers; cf. Clebsch, England’s Earliest Protestants, p. 184; see also William Burkitt, Expository Notes…on the New Testament (eleven editions between 1700 and 1739), Preface to chapter 5: ‘Christ’s famous Sermon on the Mount comprehends the sum and substance of both the Old and New Testaments.’

Taken together, the following sermons are not a thirteen-part essay, tightly organized and argued. Instead, they are separate sermons, drawn from materials running back to 1725, arranged in a triadic pattern that seems to have been original with Wesley. Each is a discourse in its own right; yet the series is designed so that each appears as a part of a whole. This means that the sermons may be read singly or together, but with an eye on their shared aim: ‘to assert and prove every branch of gospel obedience as indispensably necessary to eternal salvation’; cf. Wesley’s open letter (Nov. 17, 1759) to John Downes in reply to the latter’s abusive Methodism Examined and Exposed (1759).

Many of the great and near-great commentators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had devoted their talents to the interpretation of Matthew 5-7 as the principal summary of Christian ethics, or, in Henry Hammond’s phrase, as ‘an abstract of Christian philosophy’; cf. his Practical Catechism (1st edn., c. 1644), II.1, in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (1847), p. 83. Chief among these earlier works, in the order of their influences upon Wesley’s thought, were Bishop Offspring Blackall, ‘Eighty-Seven Practical Discourses Upon Our Saviour’s Sermon on the Mount’, Works, I.1-561; II.609-939; 467John Norris, Practical Discourses; the American, James Blair, Our Saviour’s Divine Sermon on the Mount in IV Volumes (1722; 2nd edn., 1740, with a preface by Daniel Waterland); John Cardinal Bona, Guide to Eternity… (six editions in English between 1672 and 1712); and Henry Hammond, op. cit. Echoes of all these are scattered along the way, together with lesser borrowings from Bengel, Poole, and Henry. This makes it all the more remarkable that Wesley came up with a model of his own, both inform and substance. This series thus reminds us, yet again, of Wesley’s ready appeal to tradition—even while he maintains his own originality and independence.

Benjamin Ingham records in his Journal that ‘during the voyage [to Georgia] Wesley went over our Saviour’s Sermon on the Mount’ with the ship’s company aboard the Simmonds. There are also other records of his preaching, very early on, from one or another text in Matthew 5-7. For example, his second sermon was preached at Binsey (near Oxford), November 21, 1725, on Matt. 6:33. A first draft of the sermon which appears here as ‘Discourse VIII’ seems to have been written out in 1736. Later, it was the example of the Sermon on the Mount that encouraged Wesley to break out of his High Church prejudices in Bristol, April 1, 1739: ‘In the evening (Mr. Whitefield being gone) I begun expounding our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (one pretty remarkable precedent of field preaching, though I suppose there were churches at that time also) to a little society which was accustomed to meet once or twice a week in Nicholas Street;’ cf. Journal entries for this whole story of the unplanned outbreak of the Wesleyan Revival.

The records show that, between 1739 and 1746, Wesley preached more than one hundred sermons from separate texts in the Sermon on the Mount. There is, however, no recorded instance of his having treated that Sermon as a whole anywhere else. Evidently, he was prepared to allow this series, once published, to stand as his sufficient comment on the subject.

In his introduction to ‘Discourse X’, §§1-3, Wesley repeats his explanation (cf. ‘Discourse I’, Proem, §10) of how he had conceived the design of Matthew 5-7, according to its three unfolding themes: (1) ‘the sum of true religion’; (2) ‘rules touching that right intention which we are to preserve in all our outward actions’; and (3) ‘the main hindrances of this religion’. He then adds a clarifying summary: ‘In the fifth chapter [of St. Matthew] our great Teacher…has laid before us those dispositions of the soul which constitute real Christianity…. In the sixth [chapter] he has shown how all our actions…may be made holy, and good, and acceptable to God, by a pure and holy intention…. In 468the former part of [ch. 7] he points out the most common and fatal hindrances of this holiness; in the latter [part] he exhorts us, by various motives, to break through all [such hindrances] and secure that prize of our high calling [of God in Christ Jesus]’ (cf. Phil. 3:14).

The thirteen discourses are divided almost equally over the three chapters of St. Matthew: five for chapter five, four each for six and seven. Of the first five, Discourse I is devoted to the first two Beatitudes; Discourse II to Beatitudes three through five (with a hymn to love based on 1 Cor. 13); Discourse III to the remainder of the Beatitudes; Discourse IV turns to Christianity as ‘a social religion’ in which inward holiness (our love of God) prompts outward holiness (love of neighbour); Discourse V is a balancing of law and gospel. Discourses VI-IX are based on chapter six: VI to the problems of purity and holiness of intention (to the ‘works of piety and of mercy’); VII to fasting; VIII to a denunciation of greed and surplus accumulation; IX to the mutually exclusive services of God and Mammon. Discourses X-XIII turn to various hindrances to holy living and to their avoidance: X to ‘judging’ (contrary to love), ‘intemperate zeal’, ‘neglect of prayer’, ‘neglect of charity’; XI to the noxious influences of ill-example and ill-advice with which the world deludes us; XII to false prophets and unedifying preachers (and yet also our duties to attend church nonetheless and to avail ourselves of all means of grace); XIII is an inevitable comment on the parable of the houses built on sand and rock. Discourse XII was also published separately in the same year that it appeared in SOSO, III (1750), under the title, ‘A Caution Against False Prophets. A Sermon on Matt. vii. 15-20. Particularly recommended to the People Called Methodists’. This went through seven editions during Wesley’s lifetime. For a stemma delineating the publishing history of that sermon (‘collected’ and ‘separate’) and a list of variant readings, see Appendix, ‘Wesley’s Text’, Vol. IV, see also Bibliog, Nos. 130 and 13o.i.

Obviously there is no interest, in any of these sermons, in critical textual problems or in the historical context. Everywhere it is assumed that in St. Matthew’s text we are dealing with divine ipsissima verba—i.e., with a direct address from ὁ ὤν, ‘the self-existent, the Supreme, the God who is over all, blessed for ever’ (§9 below). The Sermon on the Mount, in Wesley’s view, is the only Gospel passage where Christ designed ‘to lay down at once the whole plan of his religion, to give us a full prospect of Christianity’. What matters most in our reading, therefore, is an awareness of Wesley’s sense of the wholeness of the message he is interpreting, of his conviction of the honest integration of an evangel profoundly ethical with an ethic that is also vividly 469evangelical. Maybe more than anywhere else in SOSO this particular bloc displays Wesley’s distinctive concern for integration and balance—between the faith that justifies and the faith that works by love.

Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,
Discourse the First

Matthew 5:1-4

And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying,

Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.

11. Our Lord had now ‘gone about all Galilee’,

Matt. 4:23.

beginning at the time ‘when John was cast into prison’,

Ver. 12.

not only ‘teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom’, but likewise ‘healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease among the people’. It was a natural consequence of this that ‘there followed him great multitudes from Galilee and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and from Judea, and from the region beyond Jordan.’

Ver. 25.

‘And seeing the multitudes’, whom no synagogue could contain, even had there been any at hand, ‘he went up into a mountain’,

Matt. 5:1, etc.

where there was room for all that ‘came unto him from every quarter’. ‘And when he was set’, as the manner of the Jews was, ‘his disciples came unto him. And he opened his mouth’ (an expression denoting the beginning of a solemn discourse) ‘and taught them, saying….’

2 4702. Let us observe who it is that is here speaking, that we may ‘take heed how we hear’.

It is the Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of all, who, as such, has a right to dispose of all his creatures; the Lord our Governor, whose kingdom is from everlasting, and ruleth over all; the great Lawgiver, who can well enforce all his laws, ‘being able to save and to destroy’; yea, to punish with everlasting destruction from his presence and from the glory of his power. It is the eternal Wisdom of the Father, who knoweth whereof we are made, and understands our inmost frame: who knows how we stand related to God, to one another, to every creature which God hath made; and consequently, how to adapt every law he prescribes to all the circumstances wherein he hath placed us. It is he who is ‘loving unto every man, whose mercy is over all his works’: the God of love, who, having emptied himself of his eternal glory, is come forth from his Father to declare his will to the children of men, and then goeth again to the Father; who is sent to God to ‘open the eyes of the blind’, ‘to give light to them that sit in darkness’. It is the great Prophet of the Lord, concerning whom God had solemnly declared long ago, ‘Whosoever will not hearken unto my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him;’

Deut. 18:19.

or, as the Apostle expresses it, ‘Every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people.’

Acts 3:23. [‘The Apostle’ here is St. Peter. Note the direct correlation between the human Jesus and the Second Person of the Trinity: no kenosis here, but more than a hint of Wesley’s practical monophysitism; cf. §9, below.]

33. And what is it which he is teaching? The Son of God, who came from heaven, is here showing us the way to heaven,

to the place which he hath prepared for us, the glory he had before the world began. He is teaching us the true way to life everlasting, the royal way which leads to the kingdom. And the only true way, for there is none besides—all other paths lead to destruction. From the character of the speaker we are well assured that he hath declared the full and perfect will of God. He hath uttered 471not one tittle too much: nothing more than he had received of the Father. Nor too little: he hath not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God. Much less hath he uttered anything wrong, anything contrary to the will of him that sent him. All his words are true and right concerning all things, and shall stand fast for ever and ever.

And we may easily remark that in explaining and confirming these faithful and true sayings he takes care to refute not only the mistakes of the scribes and Pharisees which then were, the false comments whereby the Jewish teachers of that age had perverted the Word of God, but all the practical mistakes that are inconsistent with salvation which should ever arise in the Christian Church; all the comments whereby the Christian teachers (so called) of any age or nation should pervert the Word of God, and teach unwary souls to seek death in the error of their life.

44. And hence we are naturally led to observe whom it is that he is here teaching. Not the apostles alone; if so, he had no need to have gone ‘up into the mountain’. A room in the house of Matthew, or any of his disciples, would have contained the Twelve. Nor does it in any wise appear that the ‘disciples who came unto him’ were the Twelve only. Οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ, without any force put upon the expression, may be understood of all who desired to ‘learn of him’.

But to put this out of all question, to make it undeniably plain that where it is said, ‘He opened his mouth and taught them,’ the word ‘them’ includes all the multitudes who went up with him into the mountain, we need only observe the concluding verses of the seventh chapter: ‘And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the multitudes, οἱ ὄχλοι, were astonished at his doctrine (or teaching). For he taught them (the multitudes) as one having authority, and not as the scribes.’

472Nor was it only those multitudes who were with him on the mount to whom he now taught the way of salvation,

but all the children of men, the whole race of mankind, the children that were yet unborn—all the generations to come even to the end of the world who should ever hear the words of this life.

55. And this all men allow with regard to some parts of the ensuing discourse. No man, for instance, denies that what is said of ‘poverty of spirit’ relates to all mankind. But many have supposed that other parts concerned only the apostles, or the first Christians, or the ministers of Christ; and were never designed for the generality of men,

who consequently have nothing at all to do with them.

But may we not justly inquire who told them this—that some parts of this discourse concerned only the apostles, or the Christians of the apostolic age, or the ministers of Christ? Bare assertions are not a sufficient proof to establish a point of so great importance. Has then our Lord himself taught us that some parts of his discourse do not concern all mankind? Without doubt had it been so he would have told us; he could not have omitted so necessary an information. But has he told us so? Where? In the discourse itself? No: here is not the least intimation of it. Has he said so elsewhere? In any other of his discourses? Not one word so much as glancing this way can we find in anything he ever spoke, either to the multitudes or to his disciples. Has any of the apostles, or other inspired writers, left such an instruction upon record? No such thing. No assertion of this kind is to be found in all the oracles of God. Who then are the men who are so much wiser than God? Wise so far above that [which] is written?

66. Perhaps they will say that the reason of the thing requires such a restriction to be made. If it does, it must be on one of these 473two accounts: because without such a restriction the discourse would either be apparently absurd, or would contradict some other Scripture. But this is not the case. It will plainly appear, when we come to examine the several particulars, that there is no absurdity at all in applying all which our Lord hath here delivered to all mankind. Neither will it infer any contradiction to anything else he has delivered, nor to any other Scripture whatever. Nay, it will farther appear that either all the parts of this discourse are to be applied to men in general or no part; seeing they are all connected together, all joined as the stones in an arch, of which you cannot take one away without destroying the whole fabric.

77. We may, lastly, observe how our Lord teaches here. And surely, as at all times, so particularly at this, he speaks ‘as never man spake’.

Not as the holy men of old; although they also spoke ‘as they were moved by the Holy Ghost’. Not as Peter, or James, or John, or Paul. They were indeed wise masterbuilders in his church. But still in this, in the degrees of heavenly wisdom, the servant is not as his Lord. No, nor even as himself at any other time, or on any other occasion. It does not appear that it was ever his design, at any other time or place, to lay down at once the whole plan of his religion, to give us a full prospect of Christianity, to describe at large the nature of that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Particular branches of this he has indeed described on a thousand different occasions. But never besides here did he give, of set purpose, a general view of the whole. Nay, we have nothing else of this land in all the Bible; unless one should except that short sketch of holiness delivered by God in those ten words or commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. But even here how wide a difference is there between one and the 474other! ‘Even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.’

2 Cor. 3:10.

88. Above all, with what amazing love does the Son of God here reveal his Father’s will to man! He does not bring us again ‘to the mount that […] burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest’.

He does not speak as when he ‘thundered out of heaven, when the highest gave his thunder, hailstones, and coals of fire’. He now addresses us with his still, small voice. ‘Blessed (or happy) are the poor in spirit.’ Happy are the mourners, the meek; those that hunger after righteousness; the merciful, the pure in heart: happy in the end and in the way; happy in this life and in life everlasting! As if he had said, ‘Who is he that lusteth to live, and would fain see good days? Behold, I show you the thing which your soul longeth for; see the way you have so long sought in vain! The way of pleasantness; the path to calm, joyous peace, to heaven below and heaven above!’

99. At the same time with what authority does he teach! Well might they say, ‘not as the scribes’.

Observe the manner (but it cannot be expressed in words), the air with which he speaks! Not as Moses, the servant of God; not as Abraham, his friend; not as any of the prophets; nor as any of the sons of men. It is something more than human; more than can agree to any created being. It speaks the Creator of all—a God, a God appears! Yea, ὁ ὤν, the being of beings, Jehovah, the self-existent, the supreme, the God who is over all, blessed for ever!

1010. This divine discourse, delivered in the most excellent method, every subsequent part illustrating those that precede, is commonly, and not improperly, divided into three principal branches: the first contained in the fifth, the second in the sixth, and the third in the seventh chapter. In the first the sum of all true religion is laid down in eight particulars, which are explained and guarded against the false glosses of man in the following parts of the fifth chapter. In the second are rules for that right intention which we are to preserve in all our outward actions, unmixed with 475worldly desires, or anxious cares for even the necessaries of life. In the third are cautions against the main hindrances of religion, closed with an application of the whole.

1

1I. 1. Our Lord, first, lays down the sum of all true religion in eight particulars, which he explains and guards against the false glosses of men, to the end of the fifth chapter.

Some have supposed that he designed in these to point out the several stages of the Christian course, the steps which a Christian successively takes in his journey to the promised land; others, that all the particulars here set down belong at all times to every Christian. And why may we not allow both the one and the other?

35

Cf. Wesley’s Dialogues between an Antinomian and his Friend, 1745 (Bibliog, Nos. 102, 106, and 226; see Vol. 13 of this edn.).

What inconsistency is there between them? It is undoubtedly true that both ‘poverty of spirit’

36

Cf. Matt. 5:3.

and every other temper which is here mentioned are at all times found in a greater or less degree in every real Christian. And it is equally true that real Christianity always begins in poverty of spirit, and goes on in the order here set down till the ‘man of God’ is made ‘perfect’.

37

2 Tim. 3:17.

We begin at the lowest of these gifts of God; yet so as not to relinquish this when we are called of God to come up higher:

38

Cf. Luke 14:10.

but ‘whereunto we have already attained’

39

Phil. 3:16.

we ‘hold fast’,

40

Heb. 3:6, etc.

while we ‘press on’

41

Cf. Phil. 3:14.

to what is yet before, to the highest blessings of God in Christ Jesus.

22. The foundation of all is ‘poverty of spirit’.

42

A positive transvaluation of William Law; cf. Serious Call, Works, IV.170-80.

Here therefore our Lord begins: ‘Blessed (saith he) are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’

It may not improbably be supposed that our Lord, looking on those who were round about him, and observing that not many rich were there, but rather the poor of the world, took occasion from thence to make a transition from temporal to spiritual things. ‘Blessed’, saith he (or happy: so the word should be rendered both in this and the following verses) ‘are the poor in spirit.’ He does not say they that are poor as to outward circumstances (it being not impossible that some of these maybe as far from happiness as a monarch upon his throne) but ‘the poor in 476spirit’; they who, whatever their outward circumstances are, have that disposition of heart which is the first step to all real, substantial happiness, either in this world or that which is to come.

43

See No. 17, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, I.2.

33. Some have judged that by the ‘poor in spirit’ here are meant those who love poverty; those who are free from covetousness, from the love of money; who fear rather than desire riches. Perhaps they have been induced so to judge by wholly confining their thought to the very term, or by considering that weighty observation of St. Paul, that ‘the love of money is the root of all evil.’

44

1 Tim. 6:10.

And hence many have wholly divested themselves, not only of riches, but of all worldly goods. Hence also the vows of voluntary poverty seem to have arisen in the Romish Church; it being supposed that so eminent a degree of this fundamental grace must be a large step toward the kingdom of heaven.

45

Cf. Blackall, Works, I.7: ‘…the Papists…who do so much magnify voluntary poverty…. And in this sense Maldonate, and divers others of the popish commentators, do expound this passage…. But this interpretation is perfectly groundless and also manifestly false.’ The reference here is to Johannes Maldonatus (1534-83), Spanish exegete and theologian, whose chief work was Commentarii in Quattuor Evangelistas (2 vols., 1596-97, and many later edns., none in English until 1888). It is worth noting that Wesley has already begun to inveigh against surplus accumulation and ‘the danger of riches’; cf. Discourse VIII, below, reflecting as it does the counsels of Richard Lucas and William Law against greed and self-indulgence—and about voluntary poverty as the Christian counterweight to the dangers of riches. This will become a lifelong theme of Wesley’s, and his emphasis on it will increase with the passing years and growing affluence amongst the Methodists.

But these do not seem to have observed, first, that the expression of St. Paul must be understood with some restriction; otherwise it is not true. For the love of money is not ‘the root’—the sole root—‘of all evil’. There are a thousand other roots of evil in the world, as sad experience daily shows. His meaning can only be, it is the root of very many evils; perhaps of more than any single vice besides. Secondly, that this sense of the expression ‘poor in spirit’ will by no means suit our Lord’s present design, which is to lay a general foundation whereon the whole fabric of Christianity may be built; a design which would be in no wise answered by guarding against one particular vice: so that even if this were supposed to be one part of his meaning, it could not possibly be the whole. Thirdly, that it cannot be supposed to be any part of his meaning unless we charge him with 477manifest tautology: seeing if ‘poverty of spirit’ were only freedom from covetousness, from the love of money, or the desire of riches, it would coincide with what he afterwards mentions; it would be only a branch of ‘purity of heart’.

46

Cf. Matt. 5:8.

44. Who then are the ‘poor in spirit’? Without question, the humble;

47

This equivalence of ‘the poor in spirit’ and ‘the humble’ is also Blackall’s line. Wesley compresses his exposition into six duodecimo pages; the bishop’s runs to twenty-two folio pages. See also Hammond, Practical Catechism, p. 85.

they who know themselves, who are convinced of sin; those to whom God hath given that first repentance which is previous to faith in Christ.

48

The notion of self-knowledge as that ‘first repentance which is previous to faith in Christ’ is crucial in Wesley’s doctrine of justification. It is, regularly, a prevenient work of the Holy Spirit, but it involves human ‘re-action’, viz., recognition of one’s alienation from God and acknowledgement of the truth of one’s sinful affections. Cf. John Norris, Practical Discourses, I.4: ‘Poverty of spirit…is not a state of life but a state of mind, and we may take it either in opposition to covetousness or…to pride and highmindedness.’ On p. 16 the phrase is more clearly defined as ‘humility’, although for Norris ‘poverty of spirit’ is more nearly self-abasement than self-knowledge as in Wesley. Norris, p. 28: ‘Humility is the proper foundation of grace and the theatre of all divine operations.’ See Nos. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.1 and n.; and 17, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, I.2 and n.; see also Wesley’s extract from Edward Young (the elder) in the Christian Lib., XLVI.144-45. This notion of humility as a ‘right judgment of ourselves’ (i.e., authentic self-knowledge) is one of William Law’s salient themes. Wesley goes a step further and correlates it with ‘true repentance’.

One of these can no longer say, ‘I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing:’ as now knowing that he is ‘wretched, and poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked’.

49

Rev. 3:17.

He is convinced that he is spiritually poor indeed; having no spiritual good abiding in him. ‘In me (saith he) dwelleth no good thing;’

50

Rom. 7:18.

but whatsoever is evil and abominable. He has a deep sense of the loathsome leprosy of sin, which he brought with him from his mother’s womb, which overspreads his whole soul, and totally corrupts every power and faculty thereof. He sees more and more of the evil tempers which spring from that evil root: the pride and haughtiness of spirit,

51

Cf. No. 14, The Repentance of Believers, I.3 and n.

the constant bias to think of himself more highly than he ought to think;

52

Rom. 12:3.

the vanity, the thirst after the esteem or honour that cometh from men;

53

Cf. No. 14, The Repentance of Believers, I.7 and n.

the hatred or envy, the jealousy or revenge, the anger, malice, or bitterness; the inbred 478enmity both against God and man

54

See Rom. 8:7.

which appears in ten thousand shapes; the love of the world, the self-will, the foolish and hurtful desires

55

1 Tim. 6:9.

which cleave to his inmost soul.

56

Note this impromptu catalogue of the classical ‘deadly sins’.

He is conscious how deeply he has offended by his tongue; if not by profane, immodest, untrue, or unkind words, yet by discourse which was not ‘good to the use of edifying’, not ‘meet to minister grace to the hearers’;

57

Cf. Eph. 4:29.

which consequently was all corrupt in God’s account, and grievous to his Holy Spirit. His evil works are now likewise ever in his sight; if he tell them ‘they are more than he is able to express’.

58

Cf. Ps. 40:7 (BCP).

He may as well think to number the ‘drops of rain, the sands of the sea, or the days of eternity’.

59

Cf. Ecclus. 1:2.

55. His guilt is now also before his face: he knows the punishment he has deserved, were it only on account of his ‘carnal mind’,

60

Rom. 8:7.

the entire, universal corruption of his nature; how much more on account of all his evil desires and thoughts, of all his sinful words and actions! He cannot doubt for a moment but the least of these deserves the damnation of hell, ‘the worm that dieth not’, and ‘the fire that never shall be quenched’.

61

Cf. Mark 9:43, 45.

Above all, the guilt of ‘not believing on the name of the only-begotten Son of God’

62

Cf. John 3:18.

lies heavy upon him ‘How (saith he) shall I escape, who neglect so great salvation!’

63

Cf. Heb. 2:3.

‘He that believeth not is condemned already’, and ‘the wrath of God abideth on him.’

64

John 3:18, 36.

66. But what shall he give in exchange for his soul,

65

See Matt. 16:26.

which is forfeit to the just vengeance of God? ‘Wherewithal shall he come before the Lord?’

66

Cf. Mic. 6:6.

How shall he pay him that he oweth? Were he from this moment to perform the most perfect obedience to every command of God, this would make no amends for a single sin, for any one act of past disobedience: seeing he owes God all the service he is able to perform from this moment to all eternity, could he pay this it would make no manner of amends for what he ought to have done before. He sees himself therefore utterly helpless with regard to atoning for his past sins; utterly unable to make any amends to God, to pay any ransom for his own soul.

But if God would forgive him all that is past,

67

Cf. BCP, Communion, General Confession.

on this one condition, that he should sin no more, that for the time to come he 479should entirely and constantly obey all his commands: he well knows that this would profit him nothing, being a condition he could never perform. He knows and feels that he is not able to obey even the outward commands of God; seeing these cannot be obeyed while his heart remains in its natural sinfulness and corruption—inasmuch as an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit.

68

See Matt. 7:18; Luke 6:43.

But he cannot cleanse a sinful heart: with men this is impossible.

69

Matt. 19:26.

So that he is utterly at a loss even how to begin walking in the path of God’s commandments.

70

See Ps. 119:35.

He knows not how to get one step forward in the way. Encompassed with sin and sorrow and fear, and finding no way to escape, he can only cry out, ‘Lord, save, or I perish!’

71

Cf. Matt. 8:25.

77. ‘Poverty of spirit’

72

Cf. above, I.4 and n.

, then, as it implies the first step we take in running the race which is set before us,

73

See Heb. 12:1.

is a just sense of our inward and outward sins, and of our guilt and helplessness. This some have monstrously styled the ‘virtue of humility’;

74

This phrase had been used almost casually by Law in Christian Perfection (Works, III.67), and before him by John Selden, Table Talk (1689), p. 54: ‘The master thinks the virtue of humility is good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy and the clergy for the laity;’ cf. Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1st edn., 1621; 8th edn., 1676), I.ii.3-14. See also St. Francis de Sales, An Introduction to the Devout Life (1608), Pt. III, iv. For other references to humility in the sermons, cf. below, I.9; and Nos. 17, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, I.2; 65, ‘The Duty of Reproving our Neighbour’, IIΙ.3; 92, ‘On Zeal’, II.1; 108, ‘On Riches’, I.6; 120, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, §22.

thus teaching us to be proud of knowing we deserve damnation. But our Lord’s expression is quite of another kind; conveying no idea to the hearer but that of mere want, of naked sin, of helpless guilt and misery.

88. The great Apostle, where he endeavours to bring sinners to God, speaks in a manner just answerable to this. ‘The wrath of God (saith he) is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men’

Rom. 1:18.

—a charge which he immediately fixes on the heathen world, and thereby proves they were under the wrath of God. He next shows that the Jews were no better than they, and were therefore under the same condemnation: and all this not in order to their attaining ‘the noble virtue of humility’, 480‘but that every mouth might be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God’.

He proceeds to show that they were helpless as well as guilty; which is the plain purport of all those expressions—‘Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified’

—‘But now the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, without the law is manifested’—‘We conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law’—expressions all tending to the same point, even to ‘hide pride from man’; to humble him to the dust, without teaching him to reflect upon his humility as a virtue; to inspire him with that full piercing conviction of his utter sinfulness, guilt, and helplessness, which casts the sinner, stripped of all, lost, and undone, on his strong helper, ‘Jesus Christ the righteous’.

99. One cannot but observe here that Christianity begins just where heathen morality ends: ‘poverty of spirit’, ‘conviction of sin’,

the ‘renouncing ourselves’, the ‘not having our own righteousness’, the very first point in the religion of Jesus Christ, leaving all pagan religion behind. This was ever hid from the wise men of this world; insomuch that the whole Roman language, even with all the improvements of the Augustan age, does not afford so much as a name for humility (the word from whence we borrow this, as is well known, bearing in Latin a quite different meaning): no, nor was one found in all the copious language of Greece till it was made by the great Apostle.

1010. O that we may feel what they were not able to express! Sinner, awake! Know thyself! Know and feel that thou ‘wert shapen in wickedness, and that in sin did thy mother conceive thee’,

and that thou thyself hast been heaping sin upon sin ever since thou couldst discern good from evil. Sink under the mighty 481hand of God, as guilty of death eternal; and cast off, renounce, abhor all imagination of ever being able to help thyself! Be it all thy hope to be washed in his blood and renewed by his almighty Spirit ‘who himself bare all our sins in his own body on the tree’. So shalt thou witness, ‘Happy are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’

1111. This is that kingdom of heaven or of God which is ‘within’ us,

even ‘righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost’. And what is righteousness but the life of God in the soul, the mind which was in Christ Jesus, the image of God stamped upon the heart, now renewed after the likeness of him that created it? What is it but the love of God because he first loved us, and the love of all mankind for his sake?

And what is this peace, the peace of God, but that calm serenity of soul, that sweet repose in the blood of Jesus, which leaves no doubt of our acceptance in him? Which excludes all fear but the loving, filial fear of offending our Father which is in heaven?

This inward kingdom implies also ‘joy in the Holy Ghost’,

who seals upon our hearts ‘the redemption which is in Jesus’, the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us for ‘the remission of the sins that are past’: who giveth us now ‘the earnest of our inheritance’ of the crown which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give at that day. And well may this be termed ‘the kingdom of heaven’; seeing it is heaven already opened in the soul, the first springing up of those rivers of pleasure which flow at God’s right hand for evermore.

12 48212. ‘Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Whosoever thou art to whom God hath given to be ‘poor in spirit’, to feel thyself lost, thou hast a right thereto, through the gracious promise of him who cannot lie.

It is purchased for thee by the blood of the Lamb. It is very nigh: thou art on the brink of heaven. Another step, and thou enterest into the kingdom of righteousness, and peace, and joy. Art thou all sin? ‘Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.’ All unholy? See thy ‘advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous’. Art thou unable to atone for the least of thy sins? ‘He is the propitiation for’ all thy ‘sins.’ Now believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and all thy sins are blotted out. Art thou totally unclean in soul and in body? Here is the ‘fountain for sin and uncleanness’. ‘Arise, […] and wash away thy sins:’ stagger no more at the promise through unbelief. Give glory to God. Dare to believe! Now cry out, from the ground of thy heart:

1313. Then thou learnest of him to be ‘lowly of heart’.

And this is the true, genuine, Christian humility, which flows from a sense of the love of God, reconciled to us in Christ Jesus. ‘Poverty of spirit’, in this meaning of the word, begins where a sense of guilt and of the wrath of God ends; and is a continual sense of our total dependence on him for every good thought or word or work; of our utter inability to all good unless he ‘water us every moment’: and an abhorrence of the praise of men, knowing that all praise is due unto God only. With this is joined a loving shame, a tender humiliation before God, even for the sins which we know he hath forgiven us, and for the sin which still remaineth in our hearts, although we know it is not imputed to our condemnation. Nevertheless the conviction we feel of inbred sin is deeper and deeper every day. The more we grow in grace the more do we see 483of the desperate wickedness of our heart. The more we advance in the knowledge and love of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ (as great a mystery as this may appear to those who know not the power of God unto salvation), the more do we discern of our alienation from God, of the enmity that is in our carnal mind, and the necessity of our being entirely renewed in righteousness and true holiness.

2

1II. 1. It is true, he has scarce any conception of this who now begins to know the inward kingdom of heaven. ‘In his prosperity he saith, I shall never be moved; Thou, Lord, hast made my hill so strong.’

114

Cf. Ps. 30:6 (BCP).

Sin is so utterly bruised beneath his feet that he can scarce believe it remaineth in him. Even temptation is silenced and speaks not again; it cannot approach, but stands afar off. He is borne aloft on the chariots of joy and love; he soars ‘as upon the wings of an eagle’.

115

Cf. Isa. 40:31.

But our Lord well knew that this triumphant state does not often continue long. He therefore presently subjoins, ‘Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.’

116

Matt. 5:4.

22. Not that we can imagine this promise belongs to those who mourn only on some worldly account; who are in sorrow and heaviness merely on account of some worldly trouble or disappointment, such as the loss of their reputation, or friends, or the impairing of their fortune. As little title to it have they who are afflicting themselves, through fear of some temporal evil; or who pine away with anxious care, or that desire of earthly things which ‘maketh the heart sick’.

117

Prov. 13:12.

Let us not think these ‘shall receive any thing from the Lord’:

118

Jas. 1:7.

he is not in all their thoughts.

119

See Ps. 10:4.

Therefore it is that they thus ‘walk in a vain shadow, and disquiet themselves in vain’.

120

Cf. Ps. 39:7 (BCP).

And ‘This shall ye have of mine hand;’ saith the Lord, ‘ye shall lie down in sorrow.’

121

Isa. 50:11.

33. The mourners of whom our Lord here speaks are those that mourn on quite another account: they that mourn after God, after him in whom they did ‘rejoice with joy unspeakable’

122

1 Pet. 1:8.

when he gave them to ‘taste the good’, the pardoning ‘word, and the 484powers of the world to come’.

123

Heb. 6:5.

But he now ‘hides his face, and they are troubled’;

124

Cf. Ps. 104:29.

they cannot see him through the dark cloud. But they see temptation and sin—which they fondly supposed were gone never to return—arising again, following after them amain, and holding them in on every side. It is not strange if their soul is now disquieted within them,

125

See Ps. 42:5, 11; 43:5.

if trouble and heaviness take hold upon them.

126

See below, No. 47, ‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations’. Proem and II.1-3.

Nor will their great enemy fail to improve the occasion; to ask, ‘Where is now thy God?

127

Ps. 42:10.

Where is now the blessedness whereof thou spakest?

128

See Gal. 4:15.

The beginning of the kingdom of heaven? Yea, hath God said, “Thy sins are forgiven thee”?

129

Luke 5:20.

Surely God hath not said it. It was only a dream, a mere delusion, a creature of thy own imagination. If thy sins are forgiven, why art thou thus? Can a pardoned sinner be thus unholy?’ And if then, instead of immediately crying to God, they reason with him that is wiser than they, they will be in heaviness indeed, in sorrow of heart, in anguish not to be expressed. Nay, even when God shines again upon the soul, and takes away all doubt of his past mercy, still he that is ‘weak in faith’

130

Cf. 1 Cor. 8:7-12.

may be tempted and troubled on account of what is to come; especially when inward sin revives, and thrusts sore at him that he may fall. Then may he again cry out:

I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore!

131

John Donne, ‘A Hymn to God the Father’; cf. JWJ, Jan. 24, 1738; see also, AM, 1779, 459-60, where Wesley again quotes this couplet in his extract from Donne’s biography.

—

lest I should make shipwreck of the faith,

132

See 1 Tim. 1:19.

and my last state be worse than the first

133

See Luke 11:26.

—

Lest all my bread of life should fail,

And I sink down unchanged to hell.

134

‘Groaning for Redemption’, Pt. II, ver. 3, last two ll., in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742), p. 106 (Poet. Wks., II.161). Could ‘bread’ here be an uncorrected misprint of ‘breath’?

This equivalence of ‘mourning’ and ‘heaviness of spirit’ is rather different from Blackall’s exegesis of this passage (Works, I.24-31). The bishop takes it to refer both to those who are in ‘trouble, sorrow, or affliction’ and also to those ‘full of sorrow and trouble in their own minds, on account of their sins which lie as a heavy load on them’. But Hammond, Practical Catechism, p. 86, had defined mourning as ‘contrition’ both for our ‘spiritual wants’ and also for our ‘actual sins’. Later, John Heylyn, Theological Lectures, I.65 ff., will follow the same line.

4 4854. Sure it is that this affliction ‘for the present is not joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless afterward it bringeth forth peaceable fruit unto them that are exercised thereby.’

135

Cf. Heb. 12:11.

‘Blessed’ therefore ‘are they that’ thus ‘mourn,’ if they ‘tarry the Lord’s leisure’,

136

Ps. 27:16 (BCP).

and suffer not themselves to be turned out of the way

137

Job 31:7; Heb. 12:13.

by the miserable comforters

138

Job 16:2.

of the world; if they resolutely reject all the comforts of sin, of folly, and vanity; all the idle diversions and amusements of the world, all the pleasures which ‘perish in the using’,

139

Col. 2:22 (cf. Notes).

and which only tend to benumb and stupefy the soul, that it may neither be sensible of itself nor God. Blessed are they who ‘follow on to know the Lord’,

140

Hos. 6:3.

and steadily refuse all other comfort. They shall be comforted by the consolations of his Spirit, by a fresh manifestation of his love: by such a witness of his accepting them in the Beloved

141

See Eph. 1:6.

as shall never more be taken away from them. This ‘full assurance of faith’

142

Heb. 10:22. Cf. No. 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, §15 and n.

swallows up all doubt, as well as all tormenting fear, God now giving them a sure hope of an enduring substance and ‘strong consolation through grace’.

143

Cf. 2 Thess. 2:16.

Without disputing whether it be possible for any of those to ‘fall away’

144

Heb. 6:6.

‘who were once enlightened and […] made partakers of the Holy Ghost’,

145

Heb. 6:4.

it suffices them to say, by the power now resting upon them, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? […] I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, […] nor things present, nor things to come; nor height nor depth…, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!’

Rom. 8:35, 38-39. [The comment here about ‘falling away’ (cf. 2 Thess. 2:3) is related to Wesley’s rejection of the Calvinists’ doctrine of final perseverance, and he returns to it again and again; cf. No. 1, Salvation by Faith, II.4 and n.]

55. This whole process, both of mourning for an absent God

146

Cf. Luther’s notion of Deus absconditus, as well as the mystical idea about ‘the dark night of the soul’.

and recovering the joy of his countenance, seems to be shadowed out in what our Lord spoke to his apostles the night before his 486Passion: ‘Do ye inquire of that I said, a little while and ye shall not see me, and again a little while and ye shall see me? Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament,’ namely, when ye do not see me; ‘but the world shall rejoice,’ shall triumph over you, as though your hope were now come to an end. ‘And ye shall be sorrowful,’ through doubt, through fear, through temptation, through vehement desire; ‘but your sorrow shall be turned into joy,’ by the return of him whom your soul loveth. ‘A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow because her hour is come. But as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now have sorrow:’ ye mourn and cannot be comforted. ‘But I will see you again; and your heart shall rejoice’ with calm, inward joy, ‘and your joy no man taketh from you.’

John 16:19-22.

66. But although this mourning is at an end, is lost in holy joy, by the return of the Comforter, yet is there another, and a blessed mourning it is, which abides in the children of God. They still mourn for the sins and miseries of mankind: they ‘weep with them that weep’.

147

Rom. 12:15.

They weep for them that weep not for themselves, for the sinners against their own souls. They mourn for the weakness and unfaithfulness of those that are in some measure saved from their sins. ‘Who is weak and they are not weak? Who is offended, and they burn not?’

148

Cf. 2 Cor. 11:29.

They are grieved for the dishonour continually done to the Majesty of heaven and earth. At all times they have an awful sense of this, which brings a deep seriousness upon their spirit; a seriousness which is not a little increased since the eyes of their understanding were opened

149

See Eph. 1:18.

by their continually seeing the vast ocean of eternity,

150

Cf. No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §4 and n.

without a bottom or a shore,

151

Ibid., §18 and n.

which has already swallowed up millions of millions of men, and is gaping to devour them that yet remain. They see here the house of God eternal in the heavens; there, hell and destruction without a covering;

152

See Job 26:6.

and thence feel the importance of every moment, which just appears, and is gone for ever.

77. But all this wisdom of God is foolishness with the world.

153

See 1 Cor. 3:19.

The whole affair of ‘mourning’ and ‘poverty of spirit’ is with them [01:487]stupidity and dullness. Nay, ’tis well if they pass so favourable a judgment upon it, if they do not vote it to be mere moping and melancholy, if not downright lunacy and distraction. And it is no wonder at all that this judgment should be passed by those who know not God. Suppose as two persons were walking together one should suddenly stop, and with the strongest signs of fear and amazement cry out: ‘On what a precipice do we stand! See, we are on the point of being dashed in pieces! Another step and we fall into that huge abyss. Stop! I will not go on for all the world.’ When the other, who seemed to himself at least equally sharp-sighted, looked forward and saw nothing of all this, what would he think of his companion but that ‘he was beside himself’,

154

Cf. Mark 3:21.

that his head was out of order, that much religion (if he was not guilty of much learning) had certainly ‘made him mad’?

155

Cf. Acts 26:24.

88. But let not the children of God, ‘the mourners in Zion’,

156

Cf. Isa. 61:3.

be moved by any of these things. Ye whose eyes are enlightened, be not troubled by those who walk on still in darkness. Ye do not walk on in a vain shadow:

157

See Ps. 39:7 (BCP).

God and eternity are real things. Heaven and hell are in very deed open before you: and ye are on the edge of the great gulf. It has already swallowed up more than words can express, nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues,

158

See Rev. 14:6.

and still yawns to devour, whether they see it or no, the giddy, miserable children of men. O cry aloud! Spare not! Lift up your voice

159

See Isa. 58:1.

to him who grasps both time and eternity, both for yourselves and your brethren, that ye may be counted worthy to escape the destruction that cometh as a whirlwind!

160

See Prov. 1:27.

That ye may be brought safe, through all the waves and storms, into the haven where you would be.

161

See Ps. 107:30.

Weep for yourselves, till he wipes away the tears from your eyes.

162

See Rev. 7:17; 21:4.

And even then weep for the miseries that come upon the earth, till the Lord of all shall put a period to misery and sin, shall wipe away the tears from all faces, and ‘the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea.’

163

Cf. Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14. Cf. No. 47, ‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations’, V. 2-4.