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Sermon 29: Upon Our Lord’s Sermon On The Mount, Discourse IX

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon029

01:466 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; 01:467John 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 01:468the 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 01:469evangelical. 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.

01:632 Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,
Discourse the Ninth

Matthew 6:24-34

No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek); for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

But first seek ye the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

01:633

11. It is recorded of the nations whom the King of Assyria, after he had carried Israel away into captivity, placed in the cities of Samaria: ‘They feared the Lord, and served their own gods.’ ‘These nations’, saith the inspired writer, ‘feared the Lord,’ performed an outward service to him (a plain proof that they had a fear of God, though not according to knowledge)

See Rom. 10:2.

‘and served their graven images, both their children, and their children’s children; as did their fathers, so did they unto this day.’

2 Kgs. 17:33, 41.

How nearly does the practice of most modern Christians resemble this of the ancient heathens! ‘They fear the Lord’: they also perform an outward service to him, and hereby show they have some fear of God; but they likewise ‘serve their own gods’. There are those who ‘teach them’ (as there were who taught the Assyrians) ‘the manner of the God of the land’;

2 Kgs. 17:27.

the God whose name the country bears to this day, and who was once worshipped there with an holy worship. ‘Howbeit’, they do not serve him alone; they do not fear him enough for this; but ‘every nation maketh gods of their own, every nation in the cities wherein they dwell.’

Cf. 2 Kgs. 17:29.

‘These nations fear the Lord’, they have not laid aside the outward form of worshipping him. But ‘they serve their graven images,’ silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. Money, pleasure, and praise, the gods of this world, more than divide their service with the God of Israel. This is the manner both of ‘their children and their children’s children; as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.’

22. But although, speaking in a loose way, after the common manner of men, those poor heathens were said to ‘fear the Lord’, yet we may observe the Holy Ghost immediately adds, speaking according to the truth and real nature of things: ‘They fear not the Lord, neither do after the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob. With whom the Lord made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other gods nor serve them…. But the Lord your God ye shall fear, and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.’

2 Kgs. 17:34, 35, 39.

The same judgment is passed by the unerring Spirit of God, and indeed by all, the eyes of whose understanding he hath opened

See Eph. 1:18.

to discern the things of God, upon these poor Christians, 01:634commonly so called. If we speak according to the truth and real nature of things, ‘they fear not the Lord, neither do they serve him.’ For they do not ‘after the covenant the Lord hath made with them, neither after the law and commandment which he hath commanded them’, saying, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

Luke 4:8.

‘They serve other gods’

Deut. 7:4.

unto this day. And ‘no man can serve two masters.’

Matt. 6:24.

33. How vain is it for any man to aim at this—to attempt the serving of two masters! Is it not easy to foresee what must be the unavoidable consequence of such an attempt? ‘Either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.’

Ibid.

The two parts of this sentence, although separately proposed, are to be understood in connection with each other; for the latter part is a consequence of the former. He will naturally ‘hold to’ him whom he loves. He will so cleave to him as to perform to him a willing, faithful, and diligent service. And in the meantime he will so far at least ‘despise’ the master he hates as to have little regard to his commands, and to obey them, if at all, in a slight and careless manner. Therefore, whatsoever the wise men of the world may suppose, ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’

44. Mammon was the name of one of the heathen gods, who was supposed to preside over riches.

It was Milton who fixed the tradition that Mammon (Mamon) was the name of a Syrian god; cf. Paradise Lost, i. 678-751, ii. 228-83; and see also The Jewish Encyclopedia. Blackall, Works,II. 660-61, repeats this bit of lore: ‘And ’tis agreed, I think, by all that the word Mammon is a Syriac word signifying riches or treasure,’ but in this place, ‘signifies not a thing but a person; Mammon is here plainly spoken of as a God, i.e., as an idol or false god’ and ‘was accounted by the ancient heathens the god of money.’

The Greek μαμωνᾶ is more probably a transcription of the Aramaic māmônā, meaning ‘gain’ or ‘riches’; cf. Sirach 31:8 and Enoch 63:10; see also Pirke Aboth 2:12. St. Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount (II.xiv.47), comments that its Punic equivalent is ‘lucre’. Cf. Nos. 28, ‘Sermon on the Mount, VIII’, §26; 50, ‘The Use of Money’, §1; and 122, ‘Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity’, §8.

It is here understood of riches themselves, gold and silver, or in general, money; and by a common figure of speech, of all that may be purchased thereby, such as ease, honour, and sensual pleasure.

But what are we here to understand by ‘serving God’; and what by ‘serving mammon’?

We cannot ‘serve God’ unless we believe in him. This is the only true foundation of serving him. Therefore believing in God 01:635as ‘reconciling the world to himself

2 Cor. 5:19.

through Christ Jesus, the believing in him as a loving, pardoning God, is the first great branch of his service.

And thus to believe in God implies to trust in him as our strength, without whom we can do nothing,

See John 15:5.

who every moment endues us with power from on high, without which it is impossible to please him; as our help, our only help in time of trouble, who compasseth us about with songs of deliverance;

See Ps. 32:7 (AV).

as our shield, our defender, and the lifter up of our head above all our enemies that are round about us.

See Ps. 27:6.

It implies to trust in God as our happiness; as the centre of spirits, the only rest of our souls; the only good who is adequate to all our capacities, and sufficient to satisfy all the desires he hath given us.

It implies (what is nearly allied to the other) to trust in God as our end; to have an eye to him in all things; to use all things only as means of enjoying him; wheresoever we are, or whatsoever we do, to see him that is invisible looking on us well-pleased, and to refer all things to him in Christ Jesus.

55. Thus to believe is the first thing we are to understand by ‘serving God’. The second is, to love him.

Now, to love God in the manner the Scripture describes, in the manner God himself requires of us, and by requiring engages to work in us, is to love him as the one God; that is, ‘with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength’.

Cf. Mark 12:30.

It is to desire God alone for his own sake, and nothing else but with reference to him; to rejoice in God; to delight in the Lord; not only to seek, but find happiness in him; to enjoy God as the chiefest among ten thousand;

S. of S. 5:10.

to rest in him as our God and our all—in a word, to have such a possession of God as makes us always happy.

66. A third thing we are to understand by ‘serving God’ is to resemble or imitate him.

So the ancient Father: Optimus Dei cultus, imitari quem colis

Is this Wesley’s memory of St. Augustine, De civ. Dei, viii.17, ‘religionis summa sit imitari quem colis’? If not, ‘the ancient father’ remains unidentified. In his abridged edn. of Arndt’s True Christianity, Wesley includes the aphorism: ‘The whole of religion…is to imitate whom thou dost worship…. This was well understood by Plato, in whose school was the maxim, “The perfection of man consisteth in the imitation of God.”’ (Christian Lib., I.228-29). Wesley may also have remembered Tillotson’s comment that ‘Deus optimus maximus was the constant title of God, both among the Greeks and Romans’, and his added quotation from Seneca, primus deorum cultus est deos credere, etc. (Works, I.678). The idea is found in St. Cyprian (Migne, PL, IV.215) but not Wesley’s actual phrase. See also Wesley’s Earnest Appeal, §28 (11:55 of this edn.).

—‘It is the best worship or service of God, to imitate him you worship.’01:636

We here speak of imitating or resembling him in the spirit of our minds.

See Eph. 4:23.

For here the true Christian imitation of God begins. God is a Spirit; and they that imitate or resemble him must do it in spirit and in truth.

See John 4:24.

Now God is love;

1 John 4:8, 16.

therefore they who resemble him in the spirit of their minds are transformed into the same image. They are merciful even as he is merciful.

See Luke 6:36.

Their soul is all love. They are kind, benevolent, compassionate, tender-hearted; and that not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. Yea, they are, like him, loving unto every man,

Ps. 145:9 (BCP).

and their mercy extends to all his works.

77. One thing more we are to understand by ‘serving God’, and that is, the obeying him; the glorifying him with our bodies as well as with our spirits;

See 1 Cor. 6:20.

the keeping his outward commandments; the zealously doing whatever he hath enjoined; the carefully avoiding whatever he hath forbidden; the performing all the ordinary actions of life with a single eye and a pure heart—offering them all in holy, fervent love, as sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ.

88. Let us consider now what we are to understand, on the other hand, by ‘serving mammon’. And first, it implies the trusting in riches, in money, or the things purchasable thereby, as our strength, the means whereby we shall perform whatever cause we have in hand; the trusting in them as our help, by which we look to be comforted in or delivered out of trouble.

It implies the trusting in the world for happiness; the supposing that ‘a man’s life consisteth’ (the comfort of his life) ‘in the abundance of the things which he possesseth;’

Cf. Luke 12:15.

the looking for rest in the things that are seen; for content, in outward plenty; the expecting that satisfaction in the things of the world which can never be found out of God.

And if we do this we cannot but make the world our end; the ultimate end, if not of all, at least of many of our undertakings, 01:637many of our actions and designs—in which we shall aim only at an increase of wealth; at the obtaining pleasure or praise; at the gaining a larger measure of temporal things, without any reference to things eternal.

99. The ‘serving mammon’ implies, secondly, loving the world; desiring it for its own sake; the placing our joy in the things thereof, and setting our hearts upon them; the seeking (what indeed it is impossible we should find) our happiness therein; the resting with the whole weight of our souls upon the staff of this broken reed, although daily experience shows it cannot support, but will only ‘enter into our hand and pierce it’.

Isa. 36:6.

1010. To resemble, to be conformed to the world, is the third thing we are to understand by ‘serving mammon’; to have not only designs, but desires, tempers, affections suitable to those of the world; to be of an earthly, sensual mind, chained down to the things of earth; to be self-willed, inordinate lovers of ourselves; to think highly of our own attainments; to desire and delight in the praise of men; to fear, shun, and abhor reproach; to be impatient of reproof, easy to be provoked, and swift to return evil for evil.

1111. To ‘serve mammon’ is, lastly, to obey the world, by outwardly conforming to its maxims and customs; to walk as other men walk, in the common road, in the broad, smooth, beaten path; to be in the fashion; to follow a multitude; to do like the rest of our neighbours; that is, to do the will of the flesh and the mind, to gratify our appetites and inclinations—to sacrifice to ourselves, to aim at our own ease and pleasure in the general course both of our words and actions.

Now what can be more undeniably clear than that we ‘cannot’ thus ‘serve God and mammon’?

1212. Does not every man see that he cannot comfortably serve both? That to trim between God and the world

Johnson’s definition of ‘trim’ is ‘to balance; to fluctuate between two parties’, and he gives a sample usage from South’s Sermons: ‘For men to pretend that their will obeys the law, while all besides their will serves the faction; what is this but a gross, fulsome juggling with their duty, and a kind of trimming it between God and the devil.’

is the sure way to be disappointed in both, and to have no rest either in one or the other? How uncomfortable a condition must he be in, who, having the fear but not the love of God, who, serving him, but not with all his heart, has only the toils and not the joys of religion! He has religion enough to make him miserable, but not enough to 01:638make him happy: his religion will not let him enjoy the world, and the world will not let him enjoy God. So that by halting between both he loses both, and has no peace either in God or the world.

1313. Does not every man see that he cannot serve both consistently with himself? What more glaring inconsistency can be conceived than must continually appear in his whole behaviour who is endeavouring to obey both these masters, striving to ‘serve God and mammon’! He is indeed a ‘sinner that goeth two ways’

Ecclus. 2:12.

—one step forward and another backward. He is continually building up with one hand and pulling down with the other. He loves sin, and he hates it: he is always seeking, and yet always fleeing from God. He would, and he would not. He is not the same man for one day, no, not for an hour together. He is a motley mixture of all sorts of contrarieties; a heap of contradictions jumbled in one. Oh, be consistent with thyself, one way or the other. Turn to the right hand or to the left.

Gen. 24:49, etc.

If ‘mammon’ be God, serve thou him; if the Lord, then serve him.

See 1 Kgs. 18:21.

But never think of serving either at all unless it be with thy whole heart.

1414. Does not every reasonable, every thinking man see that he cannot possibly ‘serve God and mammon’? Because there is the most absolute contrariety, the most irreconcilable enmity, between them. The contrariety between the most opposite things on earth, between fire and water, darkness and light, vanishes into nothing when compared to the contrariety between God and mammon. So that in whatsoever respect you serve the one, you necessarily renounce the other. Do you believe in God through Christ? Do you trust in him as your strength, your help, your shield, and your exceeding great reward?

See Gen. 15:1.

As your happiness? Your end in all, above all things? Then you cannot trust in riches. It is absolutely impossible you should, so long as you have this faith in God. Do you thus ‘trust in riches’?

Mark 10:24.

Then you have denied the faith.

1 Tim. 5:8.

You do not trust in the living God.

1 Tim. 4:10; 6:17.

Do you love God? Do you seek and find happiness in him? Then you cannot love the world, neither the things of the world. You are crucified to the world and the world crucified to you.

See Gal. 6:14.

Do you ‘love the 01:639world’?

1 John 2:15.

Are your affections set on things beneath?

See Col. 3:2.

Do you seek happiness in earthly things? Then it is impossible you should love God. Then the love of the Father is not in you. Do you resemble God? Are you merciful, as your Father is merciful?

See Luke 6:36.

Are you transformed by the renewal of your mind

See Rom. 12:2.

into the image of him that created you? Then you cannot be conformed to the present world.

Ibid.

You have renounced all its affections and lusts. Are you conformed to the world? Does your soul still bear the image of the earthly?

See 1 Cor. 15:49.

Then you are not renewed in the spirit of your mind.

Eph. 4:23.

You do not bear the image of the heavenly.

See 1 Cor. 15:49.

Do you obey God? Are you zealous to do his will on earth as the angels do in heaven? Then it is impossible you should obey mammon. Then you set the world at open defiance. You trample its customs and maxims under foot, and will neither follow nor be led by them. Do you follow the world? Do you live like other men? Do you please men? Do you please yourself? Then you cannot be a servant of God. You are of your master and father, the devil.

See John 8:44.

1515. Therefore thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

Luke 4:8.

Thou shalt lay aside all thoughts of obeying two masters, of serving God and mammon. Thou shalt propose to thyself no end, no help, no happiness, but God. Thou shalt seek nothing in earth or heaven but him; thou shalt aim at nothing but to know, to love, and enjoy him. And because this is all your business below, the only view you can reasonably have, the one design you are to pursue in all things, ‘Therefore I say unto you’ (as our Lord continues his discourse) ‘Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.’

Matt. 6:25.

A deep and weighty direction, which it imports us well to consider and throughly to understand.

1616. Our Lord does not here require that we should be utterly without thought, even touching the concerns of this life. A giddy, careless temper is at the farthest remove from the whole religion of Jesus Christ. Neither does he require us to be ‘slothful in business’,

Rom. 12:11.

to be slack and dilatory therein. This likewise is contrary to the whole spirit and genius of his religion. A Christian abhors sloth as much as drunkenness, and flees from idleness as he does from adultery. He well knows that there is one kind of 01:640thought and care with which God is well-pleased; which is absolutely needful for the due performance of those outward works unto which the providence of God has called him.

It is the will of God that every man should labour to ‘eat his own bread’;

2 Thess. 3:12.

yea, and that every man should provide for his own, for them of his own household. It is likewise his will that we should ‘owe no man anything’,

Rom. 13:8.

but ‘provide things honest in the sight of all men’.

Rom. 12:17.

But this cannot be done without taking some thought, without having some care upon our minds; yea, often not without long and serious thought, not without much and earnest care. Consequently this care to provide for ourselves and our household, this thought how to render to all their dues, our blessed Lord does not condemn. Yea, it is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour.

1 Tim. 2:3.

It is good and acceptable to God that we should so take thought concerning whatever we have in hand as to have a clear comprehension of what we are about to do, and to plan our business before we enter upon it. And it is right that we should carefully consider from time to time what steps we are to take therein; as well as that we should prepare all things beforehand for the carrying it on in the most effectual manner. This care, termed by some, ‘the care of the head’, ^π; it was by no means our Lord’s design to condemn.

1717. What he here condemns is ‘the care of the heart’: the anxious, uneasy care; the care that hath torment; all such care as does hurt, either to the soul or body. What he forbids is that care which sad experience shows wastes the blood and drinks up the spirits;

Cf. Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, on ‘Humours’; see also the poetic tradition on ‘care’, as in Spenser’s Mother Hubbard’s Tale, ll. 903-4, and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, II.i.231-32 (‘fantasies which busy care draws in the brains of men’).

which anticipates all the misery it fears, and comes to torment us before the time. He forbids only that care which poisons the blessings of today by fear of what may be tomorrow; which cannot enjoy the present plenty through apprehensions of future want. This care is not only a sore disease, a grievous sickness of soul, but also an heinous offence against God, a sin of the deepest dye. It is an high affront to the gracious Governor and wise Disposer of all things; necessarily implying that the great 01:641Judge does not do right,

See Gen. 18:25.

that he does not order all things well.

See Mark 7:37.

It plainly implies that he is wanting either in wisdom, if he does not know what things we stand in need of, or in goodness, if he does not provide those things for all who put their trust in him. Beware, therefore, that you take not thought in this sense: be ye anxiously careful for nothing.

See Phil 4:6.

Take no uneasy thought. This is a plain, sure rule—uneasy care is unlawful care. With a single eye to God, do all that in you lies to provide things honest in the sight of all men.

Rom. 12:17. For Wesley’s use of the in se est theme, see above, pp. 72-73.

And then give up all into better hands: leave the whole event to God.

1818. ‘Take no thought’ of this kind, no uneasy thought, even ‘for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?’ If then God gave you life, the greater gift, will he not give you food to sustain it? If he hath given you the body, how can ye doubt but he will give you raiment to cover it? More especially if you give yourselves up to him, and serve him with your whole heart. ‘Behold’, see before your eyes, ‘the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns;’ and yet they lack nothing, ‘yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?’ Ye that are creatures capable of God? Are ye not of more account in the eyes of God? Of a higher rank in the scale of beings?

Cf. No. 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, I.14 and n.

‘And which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?’

Matt. 6:27. In both Johnson’s Dictionary and OED ‘cubit’ is defined as a measure of space, the sense in which Wesley uses it here. Cf., however, his Notes, where he uses it as a measure of time: ‘And which of you, if you are ever so careful, can even add a moment to your own life thereby? This seems by far the most easy and natural sense of the words.’

What profit have you then from this anxious thought? It is every way fruitless and unavailing.

‘And why take ye thought for raiment?’ Have ye not a daily reproof wherever you turn your eyes? ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven’, is cut down, burnt up, and seen no more, ‘shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?’ You, whom he made to endure for 01:642ever and ever, to be pictures of his own eternity!

Wisd. 2:23.

Ye are indeed of little faith. Otherwise ye could not doubt of his love and care; no, not for a moment.

1919. ‘Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat,’ if we lay up no treasure upon earth? ‘What shall we drink,’ if we serve God with all our strength, if our eye be singly fixed on him? ‘Wherewithal shall we be clothed,’ if we are not conformed to the world, if we disoblige those by whom we might be profited? ‘For after all these things do the Gentiles seek,’ the heathens who know not God. But ye are sensible, ‘your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.’ And he hath pointed out to you an infallible way of being constantly supplied therewith. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’

Matt. 6:31-33.

2020. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God.’ Before ye give place to any other thought or care let it be your concern that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who ‘gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that believing in him ye might not perish, but have everlasting life’,

Cf. John 3:16.

may reign in your heart, may manifest himself in your soul, and dwell and rule there: ‘that he may cast down every high thing which exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.’

Cf. 2 Cor. 10:5.

Let God have the sole dominion over you. Let him reign without a rival. Let him possess all your heart, and rule alone. Let him be your one desire, your joy, your love; so that all that is within you may continually cry out, ‘The Lord God omnipotent reigneth.’

Rev. 19:6.

‘Seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness.’ Righteous-ness is the fruit of God’s reigning in the heart. And what is righteousness but love?

Cf. No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, I.7 and n.

The love of God and of all mankind, flowing from faith in Jesus Christ, and producing humbleness of mind, meekness, gentleness, long-suffering, patience, deadness to the world;

See Col. 3:12; see also Gal. 5:22-23.

and every right disposition of heart toward God and toward man. And by these it produces all holy actions, whatsoever are lovely or of good report;

See Phil. 4:8.

whatsoever works of 01:643faith and labour of love

See 1 Thess. 1:3.

are acceptable to God and profitable to man.

‘His righteousness.’ This is all his righteousness still: it is his own free gift to us, for the sake of Jesus Christ the righteous,

1 John 2:1.

through whom alone it is purchased for us. And it is his work: it is he alone that worketh it in us by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit.

2121. Perhaps the well observing this may give light to some other Scriptures which we have not always so clearly understood. St. Paul, speaking in his Epistle to the Romans concerning the unbelieving Jews, saith, ‘They, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.’

Rom. 10:3.

I believe this may be one sense of the words:

This sentence is inserted only in the Works, 1771.

they were ‘ignorant of God’s righteousness’, not only of the righteousness of Christ, imputed to every believer,

Note Wesley’s nearly casual use of this phrase, destined to become a bone of contention between him and the Calvinists; cf. Nos. 20, The Lord Our Righteousness (intro., pp. 444-46); and 21, ‘Sermon on the Mount, I’, I.11. See also Wesley’s Remarks on Mr. Hill’s Review, espec. 12:III, where Wesley weighs and balances the pros and cons of what he calls ‘that ambiguous, unscriptural phrase, so liable to be misinterpreted’ (‘the imputed righteousness of Christ’). His conclusion (§44): ‘With regard to [the doctrine] that we are justified merely for the sake of what Christ has done and suffered, I have constantly and earnestly maintained [that] above four and thirty years. And I have frequently used the phrase [viz., ‘the imputed righteousness of Christ’], hoping thereby to please others…. But it has had a contrary effect…. Therefore I will use it no more, unless it occur in an hymn, or steal upon me unawares….’

whereby all his sins are blotted out, and he is reconciled to the favour of God; but (which seems here to be more immediately understood) they were ignorant of that inward righteousness, of that holiness of heart, which is with the utmost propriety termed ‘God’s righteousness’, as being both his own free gift through Christ, and his own work, by his almighty Spirit.

In this implied rejection of self-righteousness Wesley manages an indirect assertion of the sola fide and yet yoked, as always, with holiness of heart; cf. No. 21, ‘Sermon on the Mount, I’, I.11.

And because they were ignorant of this they ‘went about to establish their own righteousness’. They laboured to establish that outside righteousness which might very properly be termed ‘their own’; for neither was it wrought by the Spirit of God nor was it owned or accepted of him. They might work this themselves, by their own natural strength; and when they had done, it was a stink in his nostrils. And yet, trusting in 01:644this, they would ‘not submit themselves unto the righteousness of God’. Yea, they hardened themselves against that faith whereby alone it was possible to attain it. ‘For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth.’

Rom. 10:4.

Christ, when he said, ‘It is finished,’

John 19:30.

put an end to that law—to the law of external rites and ceremonies—that he might ‘bring in a better righteousness’

Cf. Heb. 7:19.

through his blood, by that one oblation of himself once offered,

BCP, Communion, Prayer of Consecration.

even the image of God, into the inmost soul of ‘everyone that believeth’.

2222. Nearly related to these are those words of the Apostle in his Epistle to the Philippians: ‘I count all things but dung that I may win Christ,’ an entrance into his everlasting kingdom, ‘and be found in him’, believing in him, ‘not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith’

Phil. 3:8-9.

—‘not having my own righteousness, which is of the law’, a barely external righteousness, the outside religion I formerly had when I hoped to be accepted of God because I was, ‘touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless’

Phil. 3:6.

—‘but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:’ that holiness of heart, that renewal of the soul in all its desires, tempers, and affections, ‘which is of God’. It is the work of God and not of man, ‘by faith’; through the faith of Christ, through the revelation of Jesus Christ

Gal. 1:12.

in us, and by faith in his blood;

Rom. 3:25.

whereby alone we obtain the remission of our sins, and an inheritance among those that are sanctified.

See Acts 20:32.

2323. ‘Seek ye first’ this ‘kingdom of God’ in your hearts, this ‘righteousness’, which is the gift and work of God, the image of God renewed in your souls—‘and all these things’ shall be added unto you: all things needful for the body; such a measure of all as God sees most for the advancement of his kingdom. These ‘shall be added’, they shall be thrown in, over and above. In seeking the peace and the love of God you shall not only find what you more immediately seek, even the kingdom that cannot be moved; but also what you seek not, not at all for its own sake, but only in reference to the other. You shall find in your way to the kingdom all outward things, so far as they are expedient for you. This care 645God hath taken upon himself: cast you all your care upon him.

See 1 Pet. 5:7.

He knoweth your wants; and whatsoever is lacking he will not fail to supply.

2424. ‘Therefore take no thought for the morrow.’

Cf. Matt. 6:34.

Not only, take ye no thought how to lay up treasures on earth, how to increase in worldly substance; take no thought how to procure more food than you can eat, or more raiment than you can put on; or more money than is required from day to day for the plain, reasonable purposes of life: but take no uneasy thought even concerning those things which are absolutely needful for the body. Do not trouble yourself now with thinking what you shall do at a season which is yet afar off. Perhaps that season will never come; or it will be no concern of yours—before then you will have passed through all the waves, and be landed in eternity. All those distant views do not belong to you, who are but a creature of a day.

Pindar, Pythian Odes, viii. 95. Cf. Wesley’s Pref., §5 and n.

Nay, what have you to do with ‘the morrow’, more strictly speaking? Why should you perplex yourself without need? God provides for you today what is needful to sustain the life which he hath given you. It is enough. Give yourself up into his hands. If you live another day he will provide for that also.

2525. Above all, do not make the care of future things a pretence for neglecting present duty. This is the most fatal way of ‘taking thought for the morrow’. And how common is it among men! Many, if we exhort them to keep a conscience void of offence,

Acts 24:16.

to abstain from what they are convinced is evil, do not scruple to reply: ‘How then must we live? Must we not take care of ourselves and of our families?’ And this they imagine to be a sufficient reason for continuing in known, wilful sin. They say, and perhaps think, they would serve God now were it not that they should by and by lose their bread. They would prepare for eternity; but they are afraid of wanting the necessaries of life. So they serve the devil for a morsel of bread; they rush into hell for fear of want; they throw away their poor souls lest they should some time or other fall short of what is needful for their bodies.

It is not strange that they who thus take the matter out of God’s hand should be so often disappointed of the very things they seek; that while they throw away heaven to secure the things of earth 01:646they lose the one, but do not gain the other. The jealous God, in the wise course of his providence, frequently suffers this. So that they who will not cast their care on God, who, taking thought for temporal things, have little concern for things eternal, lose the very portion which they have chosen. There is a visible blast on all their undertakings: whatsoever they do it doth not prosper. Insomuch that after they have forsaken God for the world they lose what they sought, as well as what they sought not. They fall short of the kingdom of God and his righteousness; nor yet are other things added unto them.

2626. There is another way of ‘taking thought for the morrow’, which is equally forbidden in these words. It is possible to take thought in a wrong manner, even with regard to spiritual things; to be so careful about what may be by and by as to neglect what is now required at our hands. How insensibly do we slide into this if we are not continually watching unto prayer!

See 1 Pet. 4:7.

How easily are we carried away in a kind of waking dream,

Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, V.18 (Loeb, 184:460-61), where Aristotle is said to have spoken of hope as ‘a kind of waking dream’.

projecting distant schemes, and drawing fine scenes in our own imagination! We think what good we will do when we are in such a place, or when such a time is come! How useful we will be, how plenteous in good works, when we are easier in our circumstances! How earnestly we will serve God when once such an hindrance is out of the way!

Or, perhaps, you are now in heaviness of soul:

Johnson’s Dictionary and the OED both define ‘heaviness’ as a ‘dejection or dejectedness of mind’. Johnson adds ‘depression of spirit’. Cf. Nos. 46 and 47: ‘The Wilderness State’ and ‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations’.

God as it were hides his face from you. You see little of the light of his countenance; you cannot taste his redeeming love. In such a temper of mind how natural is it to say, ‘O how I will praise God when the light of his countenance shall be again lifted up upon my soul!

See Num. 6:26.

How will I exhort others to praise him when his love is again shed abroad in my heart!

See Rom. 5:5.

Then I will do thus and thus: I will speak for God in all places; I will not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

See Rom. 1:16.

Then I will redeem the time,

See Eph. 5:16.

I will use to the uttermost every talent I have received.’ Do not believe thyself. Thou wilt not do it then unless thou dost it now. ‘He that is 01:647faithful in that which is little’, of whatsoever kind it be, whether it be worldly substance or the fear or love of God, ‘will be faithful in that which is much.’

Cf. Luke 16:10.

But if thou now hidest one talent in the earth, thou wilt then hide five.

See Matt. 25:18.

That is, if ever they are given; but there is small reason to expect they ever will. Indeed ‘unto him that hath’, that is, uses what he hath, ‘shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly. But from him that hath not’, that is, uses not the grace which he hath already received, whether in a larger or smaller degree, ‘shall be taken away even that which he hath.’

Cf. Matt. 13:12. Both Poole (Annotations) and Henry (Exposition) explain this paradox in terms of election; cf. Poole’s distinction between those who have ‘the seed of God’ or ‘the root of grace’ in them and those who do not. Henry reminds us ‘that God is debtor to no man. His grace is his own; he gives or withholds it at pleasure. The difference must be resolved into God’s sovereignty.’ For Wesley’s very different interpretation, cf. No. 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’, III.4-6: ‘No man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace which he hath…. Stir up the spark of grace which is now in you and he will give you more grace.’

2727. And ‘take no thought’ for the temptations of tomorrow. This also is a dangerous snare. Think not, ‘When such a temptation comes, what shall I do, how shall I stand? I feel I have not power to resist: I am not able to conquer that enemy.’ Most true: you have not now the power which you do not now stand in need of. You are not able at this time to conquer that enemy; and at this time he does not assault you. With the grace you have now you could not withstand the temptations which you have not. But when the temptation comes the grace will come. In greater trials you will have greater strength. When sufferings abound, the consolations of God will in the same proportion abound also. So that in every situation the grace of God will be sufficient for you.

See 2 Cor. 12:9.

He doth not suffer you ‘to be tempted’ today ‘above that ye are able to bear. And in every temptation he will make a way to escape.’

Cf. 1 Cor. 10:13.

‘As thy day, so thy strength shall be.’

Cf. Deut. 33:25.

2828. ‘Let the morrow’ therefore ‘take thought for the things of itself.’ That is, when the morrow comes, then think of it. Live thou today. Be it thy earnest care to improve the present hour. This is your own, and it is your all. The past is as nothing, as though it had never been. The future is nothing to you. It is not yours; perhaps it never will be. There is no depending on what is yet to come; for you ‘know not what a day may bring forth’.

Cf. Prov. 27:1.

01:648Therefore live today: lose not an hour; use this moment; for it is your portion. ‘Who knoweth the things which have been before him,’

100

Cf. Ecclus. 23:20; Sus. 42.

‘or which shall be after him under the sun?’

101

Cf. Eccles. 6:12.

The generations that were from the beginning of the world, where are they now? Fled away, forgotten. They were: they lived their day; they were shook off of the earth, as leaves off of their trees.

102

Cf. Homer, Iliad, vi. 146. See No. 70, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, II.2 and n.

They mouldered away into common dust. Another and another race succeeded; then they ‘followed the generation of their fathers, and shall never’ more ‘see the light.’

103

Cf. Ps. 49:19 (BCP).

Now is thy turn upon the earth. ‘Rejoice, O young man, in the days of thy youth.’

104

Eccles. 11:9.

Enjoy the very, very now;

105

Cf. St. Augustine’s analysis of time (past, future, and present) in Confessions, XI.xi-xxxi, where times past and future signify determinate actions registered in either memoria or expectatio, but where time present is grasped by ‘contuition’ in that ‘moment’ which eludes clock-time and is the ‘truly, truly now’, the time of human freedom. Cf. John Byrom, ‘Time Past, Future, and Present’, in The Poems of John Byrom, ed. A. W. Ward (Manchester, printed for the Chetham Society, 1894), Vol. I, Pt. II, p. 567:

Time present only is within thy pow’r:

Now, now improve, then whilst thou can’st, the hour!

Cf. Nos. 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, IV.2 and n.; and 33, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XIII’, III.7.

by enjoying him ‘whose years fail not’.

106

Cf. Heb. 1:12.

Now let thine eye be singly fixed on him, in ‘whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning’.

107

Jas. 1:17.

Now give him thy heart; now stay thyself on him; now be thou holy as he is holy.

108

See 1 Pet. 1:15, 16.

Now lay hold of the blessed opportunity of doing his acceptable and perfect will.

109

See Rom. 12:2.

Now ‘rejoice to suffer the loss of all things, so thou mayst win Christ.’

110

Cf. Phil. 3:8.

2929. Gladly suffer today, for his name’s sake, whatsoever he permits this day to come upon thee. But look not at the sufferings of tomorrow. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’

111

Matt. 6:34.

Evil it is, speaking after the manner of men; whether it be reproach or want, pain or sickness. But in the language of God, all is blessing: ‘It is a precious balm,’

112

Cf. Ps. 141:6 (BCP).

prepared by the wisdom of God, and 01:649variously dispensed among his children according to the various sicknesses of their souls. And he gives in one day sufficient for that day, proportioned to the want and strength of the patient. If therefore thou snatchest today what belongs to the morrow, if thou addest this to what is given thee already, it will be more than thou canst bear: this is the way, not to heal, but to destroy thy own soul. Take therefore just as much as he gives thee today: today do and suffer his will. Today give up thyself, thy body, soul, and spirit, to God, through Christ Jesus; desiring nothing but that God may be glorified in all thou art, all thou dost, all thou sufferest; seeking nothing but to know God, and his Son Jesus Christ, through the Eternal Spirit; pursuing nothing but to love him, to serve him, and to enjoy him, at this hour, and to all eternity!

Now unto God the Father, who hath made me and all the world; unto God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind; unto God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me and all the elect people of God: be honour, and praise, majesty, and dominion, for ever and ever! Amen.

113

A rare instance of a formal ascription (cf. No. 1, Salvation by Faith, III.9 and n.); it is a conflation of fragments from ‘A Catechism’ in the BCP.

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Entry Title: Sermon 29: Upon Our Lord’s Sermon On The Mount, Discourse IX

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