Notes:
Sermon 31: Upon Our Lord’s Sermon On The Mount, Discourse XI
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.
01:664 Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,Discourse the Eleventh
Matthew 7:13-14
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, which leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
11. Our Lord, having warned us of the dangers which easily beset us at our first entrance upon real religion, the hindrances which naturally arise from within, from the wickedness of our own hearts, now proceeds to apprise us of the hindrances from without, particularly ill example and ill advice. By one or the other of these, thousands who once ran well have drawn back unto perdition; yea, many of those who were not novices in religion, who had made some progress in righteousness. His caution therefore against these he presses upon us with all possible earnestness, and repeats again and again, in variety of expressions, lest by any means we should let it slip. Thus, effectually to guard us against the former, ‘Enter ye in’, saith he, ‘at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’ To secure us from the latter, ‘Beware’, saith he, ‘of false prophets.’
Matt. 7:15.
22. ‘Enter ye in’, saith our blessed Lord, ‘at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’
33. In these words we may observe, first, the inseparable 01:665properties of the way to hell: ‘Wide is the gate, broad the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat;’ secondly, the inseparable properties of the way to heaven: ‘Strait is that gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it;’ thirdly, a serious exhortation grounded thereon: ‘Enter ye in at the strait gate.’
11I. 1. We may observe, first, the inseparable properties of the way to hell: ‘Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat.’
22. Wide indeed is the gate, and broad the way, that leadeth to destruction. For sin is the gate of hell, and wickedness the way to destruction. And how wide a gate is that of sin! How broad is the way of wickedness! The ‘commandment’ of God ‘is exceeding broad’,
Ps. 119:96.
33. To consider this a little more particularly. How wide do those parent sins
Cf. No. 25, ‘Sermon on the Mount, V’, III.2 and n.
Cf. Rom. 8:7.
See Heb. 12:15.
Ps. 74:21 (BCP).
401:6664. O who is able to reckon up their accursed fruits! To count all the sins, whether against God or our neighbour, not which imagination might paint, but which may be matter of daily, melancholy experience! Nor need we range over all the earth to find them. Survey any one kingdom, any single country, or city, or town, and how plenteous is this harvest! And let it not be one of those which are still overspread with Mahometan or pagan darkness, but of those which name the name of Christ, which profess to see the light of his glorious gospel.
See 2 Cor. 4:4. For Wesley’s scorn of nominal Christianity in so-called Christian countries or Christian churches, cf. Nos. 49, ‘The Cure of Evil-speaking’, III.4; 61, ‘The Mystery of Iniquity’, §25; 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’, §§1-2; 64, ‘The New Creation’, §§1-2; 69, ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge’, II.8-9; 122, ‘Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity’, §6. Cf. also A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, III.8, and A Farther Appeal, Pt. II, II.28 (11:239-40 of this edn.).
The ‘kingdom’, of course, is England; ‘the city’, London.
Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14.
55. ‘And many there be who go in at’ that gate, many who walk in that way—almost as many as go in at the gate of death, as sink into the chambers of the grave.
See Prov. 7:27.
Cf. Rudé, in Hanoverian London, ch. 5 (‘The “Other” London’) and ch. 10 (‘Social Protest “From Below”’). Wesley makes no mention of having seen William Hogarth’s famous engravings on ‘modern moral subjects’ (from ‘A Harlot’s Progress’ [1732], to ‘Gin Lane’ [1751]); but they were famous, and Wesley was interested in such things. More importantly, he himself had seen what Hogarth saw and reacts to it here with words instead of pictures.
Cf. No. 13, On Sin in Believers, intro., III.1-9, and n.
Cf. Rev. 3:1.
See Rom. 6:11.
See Matt. 23:27.
See 2 Tim. 3:2-4.
Cf. No. 4, Scriptural Christianity, II.5 and n.
See 2 Tim. 3:5.
Cf. Rom. 10:3.
66. Nor does this only concern the vulgar herd, the poor, base, stupid part of mankind.
Cf. Horace, Odes, III.1 (odi profanum vulgus), and Abraham Cowley’s ‘imitation’ in Works (11th edn., 1710), II.751. These epithets were commonplace in eighteenth-century English middle- and upper-class language; cf. The Tatler, No. 81 (Oct. 13-15, 1709), and The Spectator, No. 114 (July 11, 1711), and No. 472 (Sept. 1, 1712), three samples from hundreds. It is interesting that Wesley slips into them from time to time, despite his self-conscious identification with ‘Christ’s poor’ (cf. No. 47, ‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations’, III.3; JWJ, Sept. 28, 1765, and Apr. 5, 1782; his letter to Dorothy Furly, Sept. 25, 1757, to Brian Bury Collins, June 14, 1780, and to Freeborn Garrettson, Sept. 30, 1786).
Cf. II.6, 10; III.5, below; also Nos. 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’, §3; 108, ‘On Riches’, II.1; and 125, ‘On a Single Eye’, II.5. Cf. also his Pref. to the Christian Lib., §5. For Wesley’s use of ‘beasts of the people’ see No. 52, The Reformation of Manners, I.5 and n.
1 Cor. 1:26.
BCP, Litany.
For later and more distanced views of England in the 1740s, see Williams, The Whig Supremacy, chs. ii, v, and Robertson, England Under the Hanoverians, chs. ii, iv. For vivid contemporary accounts to the same effect, cf. Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (1749); Daniel Defoe, The Fortune and Misfortune of the Famous Moll Flanders (1722); and Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or. The History of a Young Lady (1747-48).
1II. 1. And the very reason why many of these go on so securely in the ‘broad way’ is because it is broad; not considering that this is the inseparable property of the way to destruction. ‘Many there be’, saith our Lord, ‘who go in thereat’—for the very reason why they should flee from it, even ‘because strait is the gate and narrow the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’
22. This is an inseparable property of the way to heaven. So narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, unto life everlasting, so strait the gate, that nothing unclean, nothing unholy, can enter. No sinner can pass through that gate until he is saved from all his sins. Not only from his outward sins, from his evil ‘conversation, received by tradition from his fathers’.
Cf. 1 Pet. 1:18.
Cf. Isa. 1:16, 17.
See Eph. 4:23.
33. For ‘narrow is the way that leadeth unto life’—the way of universal holiness. Narrow indeed is the way of poverty of spirit, the way of holy mourning, the way of meekness, and that of hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
See Matt. 5:3-6.
See Matt. 5:7-8, 10.
44. ‘And few there be that find it.’ Alas, how few find even the way of heathen honesty!
For other uses of this phrase as synonymous with natural morality, cf. Nos. 1, Salvation by Faith, I.1, 2, 4; 2, The Almost Christian, I. (ii.)4; 50, ‘The Use of Money’, II.2; 55, On the Trinity, §11. Cf. also the letter to a clergyman, June 18, 1787; and JWJ, Feb. 8, 1753. See also Lucas, Enquiry After Happiness, I.101.
See Matt. 7:12.
Cf. Ecclus. 19:16.
See Job 42:6.
Cf. 1 Pet. 1:17.
Cf. Rom. 12:21.
See Ps. 42:1-2 (AV).
See Ps. 73:25.
See Gal. 6:10.
55. But while so few are found in the way of life, and so many in the way of destruction, there is great danger lest the torrent of example
An echo, here and elsewhere, of Francis Bacon’s insight that human thought is more often warped by ingrained prejudices than it is guided by reason or good example; e.g., Bacon’s famous ‘four idols’ of the ‘tribe’, the ‘cave’, the ‘market-place’, and the ‘theatre’, as in Novum Organum (1620), I, Aphorisms 38-69. For other instances of the phrase, ‘torrents of custom’, cf. No. 25, ‘Sermon on the Mount, V’, IV.3 and n.
Cf. Jas. 1:27.
66. What heightens the difficulty still more is that they are not the rude and senseless part of mankind,
Cf. above, I.6 and n.
Milton, Paradise Lost, ii.112-13: ‘His tongue dropt manna, and could make the worse appear the better reason.’
See Exod. 23:2.
77. O how can unlearned and ignorant men maintain their cause against such opponents! And yet these are not all with whom they must contend, however unequal to the task; for there are many mighty and noble and powerful men, as well as wise, in the road that leadeth to destruction. And these have a shorter way of confuting than that of reason and argument. They usually apply, not to the understanding, but to the fears of any that oppose them—a method that seldom fails of success, even where argument profits nothing, as lying level to the capacities of all men: for all can fear, whether they can reason or no. And all who have not a firm trust in God, a sure reliance both on his power and love, cannot but fear to give any disgust
I.e., an offence; a then contemporary usage which may be seen in both Johnson’s Dictionary and the OED.
801:6718. Many rich are likewise in the broad way. And these apply to the hopes of men, and to all their foolish desires, as strongly and effectually as the mighty and noble to their fears. So that hardly can you hold on in the way of the kingdom unless you are dead to all below, unless you are crucified to the world and the world crucified to you,
See Gal. 6:14.
99. For how dark, how uncomfortable, how forbidding is the prospect on the opposite side! A strait gate! A narrow way! And few finding that gate! Few walking in the way. Besides, even those few are not wise men, not men of learning or eloquence. They are not able to reason either strongly or clearly; they cannot propose an argument to any advantage. They know not how to prove what they profess to believe; or to explain even what they say they experience. Surely such advocates as these will never recommend, but rather discredit the cause they have espoused.
1010. Add to this that they are not noble, not honourable men: if they were, you might bear with their folly. They are men of no interest, no authority, of no account in the world. They are mean and base, low in life;
Cf. above, I.6 and n.
Acts 3:6.
See 1 Cor. 4:13.
1III. 1. Therefore it is that our Lord so earnestly exhorts, ‘Enter ye in at the strait gate.’ Or (as the same exhortation is elsewhere expressed) ‘Strive to enter in’: ἀγωνίζεσθε εἰσελθεῖν, strive as in an agony. ‘For many’, saith our Lord, ‘shall seek to enter in’—indolently strive—‘and shall not be able.’
Luke 13:24. Cf. Notes, III.5, and No. 17, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, II.7 and n.
201:6722. ’Tis true he intimates what may seem another reason for
this, for their ‘not being able to enter in’, in the words which immediately
follow these. For after he had said, ‘Many, I say unto you, will seek to enter
in, and shall not be able,’ he subjoins: ‘When once the master of the house is
risen up and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without’ (ἄρξησθε ἔξω
ἑστάναι: rather, ‘ye stand without’, for ἄρξησθε seems to be only an elegant
expletive) ‘and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; he shall
answer and say unto you, I know you not. Depart from me, all ye workers of
iniquity.’
Luke 13:24-27.
33. It may appear, upon a transient view of these words, that their delaying to seek at all, rather than their manner of seeking, was the reason why they were not able to enter in. But it comes in effect to the same thing. They were therefore commanded to depart, because they had been ‘workers of iniquity’, because they had walked in the broad road; in other words, because they had not agonized to enter in at the strait gate. Probably they did seek, before the door was shut; but that did not suffice. And they did strive, after the door was shut; but then it was too late.
44. Therefore ‘strive’ ye now, in this your day, ‘to enter in at the strait gate’. And in order hereto, settle it in your heart, and let it be ever uppermost in your thoughts, that if you are in a broad way, you are in the way that leadeth to destruction. If many go with you, as sure as God is true, both they and you are going to hell. If you are walking as the generality of men walk, you are walking to the bottomless pit. Are many wise, many rich, many mighty or noble
See 1 Cor. 1:26.
One of Wesley’s aims was to raise up men and women in his societies who could stand in their own dignity against the ‘torrents of example’ and ‘custom’ (cf. No. 25, ‘Sermon on the Mount, V’, IV.3 and n.); hence his ‘infallible rule’ of singularity. Cf. Nos. 14, The Repentance of Believers, I.7; 32, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XII’, I.3; 52, The Reformation of Manners, V.7; 66, ‘The Signs of the Times’, II.5; 125, ‘On a Single Eye’ (on Matt. 6:22-23); and 148, ‘A Single Intention’ (on the same text). Cf. also his letters to his father, June 13, 1733, and Dec. 10, 1734; to ‘John Smith’, 1745; and to Miss March, Sept 16, 1774. Cf. also William Tilly, Sermon XVI, Sermons, p. 463; and John Norris, Discourse III, ‘Concerning Singularity’, Practical Discourses, II.45-70, and Discourse V, ‘Of Walking by Faith’, IV.125-71.
Johnson’s Dictionary cites Robert South for an illustration of ‘singularly’: ‘Solitude and singularity can neither daunt nor disgrace him, unless we could suppose it a disgrace to be singularly good.’ For an opposite viewpoint, cf. Ben Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac (1757): ‘Singularity…hath ruined many; happy those who are convinced of the general opinion.’
Luke 18:11.
Cf. No. 32, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XII’, I.7 and n.
See Heb. 12:1.
Heb. 12:22-23.
55. Now, then, ‘strive to enter in at the strait gate,’ being penetrated with the deepest sense of the inexpressible danger your soul is in so long as you are in a broad way, so long as you are void of poverty of spirit and all that inward religion which the many, the rich, the wise, account madness. ‘Strive to enter in,’ being pierced with sorrow and shame for having so long run on with the unthinking crowd,
Cf. above, I.6 and n.
Heb. 12:14.
Cf. Heb. 4:1. Cf. No. 17, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, II.7 and n. See also III.1, above, and III.6, below.
Cf. Heb. 4:9.
Heb. 4:1.
Rom. 8:26.
See 1 Thess. 5:17.
Cf. Ps. 17:16 (BCP).
66. To conclude: ‘Strive to enter in at the strait gate,’ not only by this agony of soul, of conviction, of sorrow, of shame, of desire, of 01:674fear, of unceasing prayer, but likewise by ‘ordering thy conversation aright’,
Cf. Ps. 50:23,
1 Thess. 5:22.
See Gal. 6:10.
See Luke 9:23.
See Matt. 5:29; 18:9.
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Entry Title: Sermon 31: Upon Our Lord’s Sermon On The Mount, Discourse XI