Notes:
Sermon 41: Wandering Thoughts
In the conclusion of Christian Perfection (II.28), Wesley had boldly stated ‘that Christians are saved in this world from all sin’, that ‘they are now in such a sense perfect as not to commit sin and to be freed from evil thoughts and evil tempers.’ Taken literally, this flew in the face of obvious experience and of Wesley’s own previous qualifications. And, of course, it was taken literally, thus provoking easy misinterpretations which could not then be easily refuted. Wesley was more willing to qualify such overstatements than to acknowledge them as such, or to seem to contradict himself. Thus, at least as early as March 1757, he had begun to explain that ‘wandering thoughts’, properly understood, were not to be included in that class of sins that are properly so called. He did this again on November 30, 1760 (in Spitalfields) and January 1, 1761 (at the West Street Chapel). Professor Frank Baker has reviewed the complicated bibliographic evidence and finds no support for Sugden’s conjecture of a published version of Wandering Thoughts as early as 1761; that comes a year later, printed in Bristol by Elizabeth Farley. It was also reprinted, line for line, in York in 1763. Also in 1763, a second edition of the separate sermon was printed (also in Bristol) by William Pine, who was printing an undated second edition of SOSO, III, with Wandering Thoughts quietly inserted after Christian Perfection, as an obvious addendum, and before ‘Satan’s Devices’ (the original sequel to Christian Perfection in 1750). For further details of this publishing history, along with a list of variant readings in the twelve extant editions from Wesley’s lifetime, see Appendix, Vol. 4.
What this means, however, is that the prime function of Wandering Thoughts was to deny what Wesley had never really intended to affirm, and to do this with a new sermon that was, in effect, an extended annotation of II.28 of Christian Perfection. It also means that Wandering Thoughts was probably contained in that edition of ‘the four volumes of sermons’ stipulated in the Model Deed of 1763 as a doctrinal standard for Methodist trustees and preachers. In any case the 02:126idea was clearly in Wesley’s mind. The question of the sermon as ‘a standard’ is far less important, however, than its link with On Sin in Believers and The Repentance of Believers as a trio of needed qualifiers of Christian Perfection—of both the general idea and of the sermon of 1741.
Wandering Thoughts2 Corinthians 10:4
Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
11. But will God so ‘bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ’ that no wandering thought will find a place in the mind, even while we remain in the body? So some have vehemently maintained; yea, have affirmed that none are perfected in love unless they are so far perfected in understanding that all wandering thoughts are done away; unless not only every affection and temper be holy, and just, and good,
See Rom. 7:12.
22. This is a question of no small importance. For how many of those who fear God, yea, and love him, perhaps with all their heart, have been greatly distressed on this account! How many, by not understanding it right, have not only been distressed, but greatly hurt in their souls! Cast into unprofitable, yea, mischievous reasonings, such as slackened their motion towards God, and weakened them in running the race set before them.
See Heb. 12:1.
See Eph. 4:30.
33. How is it, then, that amidst the abundance of books which have been lately published almost on all subjects, we should have 02:127none upon ‘wandering thoughts’?
This sense of ‘wandering thoughts’ as meaning ‘random’ or ‘undirected by reason’ is cited by OED from as early as the fifteenth century.
I. What are the several sorts of wandering thoughts?
II. What are the general occasions of them?
IIΙ. Which of them are sinful, and which not?
IV. Which of them we may expect and pray to be delivered from?
11I. 1. I purpose to inquire, first, What are the several sorts of wandering thoughts? The particular sorts are innumerable; but in general they are of two sorts—thoughts that wander from God, and thoughts that wander from the particular point we have in hand.
22. With regard to the former, all our thoughts are naturally of this kind. For they are continually wandering from God: we think nothing about him. God is not in all our thoughts: we are one and all, as the Apostle observes, ‘without God in the world’.
Eph. 2:12.
See Matt. 6:25.
33. But many times we are not only ‘without God in the world’, but also ‘fighting against him’,
Cf. Acts 5:39.
Cf. Rom. 8:7.
Ps. 14:1.
A conflation of Luke 1:51 and Rom. 1:21.
44. Widely different from these are the other sort of wandering thoughts, in which the heart does not wander from God, but the understanding wanders from the particular point it had then in view. For instance: I sit down to consider those words in the verse preceding the text, ‘The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God.’
2 Cor. 10:4.
A couplet from Charles Wesley’s ‘For Peace’, in Hymns of Intercession for All Mankind (1758), p. 4 (Poet. Wks., VI.112). In 1758 Britain was in the midst of what came to be called ‘The Seven Years’ War’ (1756-63); cf. Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 1714-1760, pp. 330-50. It was a sort of world war involving most of Europe, together with India and Canada.
See how these Christians love one another.
Cf. No. 22, ‘Sermon on the Mount, II’, IIΙ.8 and n.
II. Such is the nature, such are the sorts (to speak rather usefully than philosophically) of wandering thoughts. But what 02:129are the general occasions of them? This we are in the second place to consider.
11. And it is easy to observe that the occasion of the former sort of thoughts which oppose or wander from God are, in general, sinful tempers. For instance: why ‘is not God in all the thoughts’,
Cf. Ps. 10:4.
See Jas. 2:19.
22. The case is the same in other instances: pride, anger, revenge, vanity, lust, covetousness—every one of them occasion[s] thoughts suitable to their own nature. And so does every sinful temper of which the human kind is capable. The particulars it is hardly possible, nor is it needful, to enumerate. It suffices to observe that as many evil tempers
Cf. No. 40, Christian Perfection, II.28.
33. The occasions of the latter kind of wandering thoughts are exceeding various. Multitudes of them are occasioned by the natural union between the soul and body. How immediately and how deeply is the understanding affected by a diseased body! Let but the blood move irregularly in the brain, and all regular thinking is at an end. Raging madness ensues, and then farewell to all evenness of thought. Yea, let only the spirits be hurried or agitated to a certain degree, and a temporary madness, a delirium, prevents all settled thought. And is not the same irregularity of thought in a measure occasioned by every nervous disorder?
Note the presupposed psychophysical parallelism here; see below, III.4 and n.
Cf. Wisd. 9:15; see also IV.4, below. Note how casually Wesley resorts to an apocryphal text; the line between canonical and apocryphal Scripture is by no means absolute. Actually, the Wisdom of Solomon is his favourite apocryphal writing, and he quotes 9:15 at least eight other times in his sermons over sixty years, from 1730 (No. 141, ‘The Image of God’, II.1) to 1790 (No. 129, ‘Heavenly Treasure in Earthen Vessels’, II.1, 3); there are also frequent references in his letters. For an Anglican bishop’s views on the Christian use of ‘Wisdom literature’, cf. John Wilkins, Sermons (2nd edn., 1680), and his Ecclesiastes (1679).
44. But does it only cause this in the time of sickness or preternatural disorder? Nay, but more or less at all times, even in a state of perfect health. Let a man be ever so healthy, he will be more or less delirious every four and twenty hours. For does he not sleep? And while he sleeps is he not liable to dream? And who then is master of his own thoughts, or able to preserve the order and consistency of them? Who can then keep them fixed to any one point, or prevent their wandering from pole to pole?
Cf. Nos. 93, ‘On Redeeming the Time’, passim.; and 24, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §4 and n. Wesley, like Law before him, regarded sleep as a begrudged necessity; cf. also, below, III.7.
55. But suppose we are awake, are we always so awake that we can steadily govern our thoughts? Are we not unavoidably exposed to contrary extremes by the very nature of this machine, the body? Sometimes we are too heavy, too dull and languid, to pursue any chain of thought. Sometimes, on the other hand, we are too lively. The imagination, without leave, starts to and fro, and carries us away, hither and thither, whether we will or no; and all this from the merely natural motion of the spirits, or vibration of the nerves.
An echo of David Hartley’s Observations on Man (1749), with its doctrine of ‘association’ and ‘vibrations’. Hartley expanded Locke’s theories of the association of ideas far past Locke’s original horizon, and added an explanation of human behaviour on his hypothesis of impalpable nervous vibrations (‘vibratiuncles’). Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his Religious Musing, spoke of ‘Hartley, of mortal kind the wisest…’. Wesley’s summary of the doctrine, in his ‘A Thought on Necessity’ (AM, 1780, III.485-92), concluded that it was necessitarian. See also his earlier (1774) summary of Hartley’s theory in Thoughts upon Necessity, I.4: ‘all our thoughts depend upon the vibrations of the fibres of the brain; and, of consequence, …unavoidably follow those vibrations;’ cf. also IV.2-3.
66. Farther: how many wanderings of thought may arise from those various associations of our ideas
A central notion in the reigning psychology of Wesley’s time, rooted in Locke and John Gay (1699-1745), Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principles of Virtue and Morality (1731), but given a radically new twist by David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1738-40)—which Wesley may never have read. His knowledge of associationist theory came mainly from Hartley’s more recent Observations, where the attempt had been made to explain the emergence and development of all knowledge and value judgments from ‘the association of ideas’. It was, in effect, a determinist view, though Hartley had hoped to avoid any such conclusion. Cf. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. V (see index for ‘association of ideas’).
I.e., a fuse, as of gunpowder.
77. Once more: let us fix our attention as studiously as we are able on any subject, yet let either pleasure or pain arise, especially if it be intense, and it will demand our immediate attention, and attach our thought to itself. It will interrupt the steadiest contemplation, and divert the mind from its favourite subject.
88. These occasions of wandering thoughts lie within, are wrought into our very nature. But they will likewise naturally and necessarily arise from the various impulse[s] of outward objects. Whatever strikes upon the organ of sense, the eye or ear, will raise a perception in the mind. And accordingly, whatever we see or hear will break in upon our former train of thought. Every man, therefore, that does anything in our sight, or speaks anything in our hearing, occasions our mind to wander more or less from the point it was thinking of before.
99. And there is no question but those evil spirits who are continually ‘seeking whom they may devour’
Cf. 1 Pet. 5:8.
All edns. before 1787 read ‘admire’, in its root meaning (admiror) of ‘be surprised’. OED notes that this usage was, however, already obsolescent in the late eighteenth century.
1III. 1. What kind of wandering thoughts are sinful, and what not, is the third thing to be inquired into. And, first, all those thoughts which wander from God, which leave him no room in our minds, are undoubtedly sinful. For all these imply practical atheism,
Cf. No. 23, ‘Sermon on the Mount, III’, I.11 and n.
Cf. Matt. 10:29-30.
For more on Wesley’s rejection of this distinction, see below, No. 67, ‘On Divine Providence’, §23 and n.
22. Again: all thoughts which spring from sinful tempers are undoubtedly sinful. Such, for instance are those that spring from a revengeful temper, from pride, or lust, or vanity. ‘An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit;’
Cf. Matt. 7:17, 18.
See Matt. 12:33.
33. And so must those be which either produce or feed any sinful temper; those which either give rise to pride or vanity, to anger or love of the world, or confirm and increase these or any other unholy temper, passion, or affection. For not only whatever flows from evil is evil, but also whatever leads to it; whatever tends to alienate the soul from God, and to make or keep it ‘earthly, sensual, and devilish’.
Cf. Jas. 3:15. It should be noted that while only the first edition uses ‘earthy’ instead of the AV’s ‘earthly’ (the latter supported also by Wesley’s Notes), yet in the echo of the same text in I.3 all editions use ‘earthy’.
402:1334. Hence even those thoughts which are occasioned by weakness or disease, by the natural mechanism of the body, or by the laws of vital union, however innocent they may be in themselves, do nevertheless become sinful when they either produce or cherish and increase in us any sinful temper—suppose the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life.
See 1 John 2:16; see No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.2 and n.
Cf. No. 25, ‘Sermon on the Mount, V’, IIΙ.3, where Wesley uses ‘commence’ in this same sense of graduation, of entering into a new state or phase.
55. But abstracting from
I.e., ‘leaving out of account’, a familiar eighteenth-century usage.
Note Wesley’s effort here to concede as much as possible to the ‘associations’ and their body-mind monism. He himself was, of course, a thoroughgoing body-mind dualist, as may be seen in Nos. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Steepest’, I.9; 51, The Good Steward, I.4; 82, ‘On Temptation’, I.1-2; 86, A Call to Backsliders, II.2; 99, The Reward of Righteousness, II.1-6; 116, ‘What is Man? Ps. 8:4’, §12; 129, ‘Heavenly Treasure in Earthen Vessels’, II.1; 140, ‘The Promise of Understanding’, I.2. See also the Survey, V.67, 254; and Notes on Mark 4:26.
In this Wesley was following an ancient dualist tradition back to Descartes and Plato but reasserted in his time by men like Malebranche, Treatise Concerning the Search After Truth, tr. by T. Taylor (1694); James Keill, Essays on Several Parts of the Animal Economy (1717), p. vii; Samuel Pike, Philosophia Sacra: Or, the Principles of Natural Philosophy Extracted From Divine Revelation (1753), p. 7; Robert Bolton, On the Employment of Time (1750), pp. 8 ff.; all of whom Wesley had read with some attention.
66. If our thoughts wander from the point we had in view by means of other men variously affecting our senses, they are equally innocent still: for it is no more a sin to understand what I see and hear, and in many cases cannot help seeing, hearing, and understanding, than it is to have eyes and ears. ‘But if the devil injects wandering thoughts, are not those thoughts evil?’ They are troublesome, and in that sense evil; but they are not sinful.
Cf. No. 13, On Sin in Believers, intro., III. 1-9, and n.
Matt. 4:9.
1 John 3:5.
77. It follows that none of these wandering thoughts (whatever unwary persons have affirmed, thereby grieving whom the Lord had not grieved) are inconsistent with perfect love. Indeed if they were, then not only sharp pain, but sleep itself would be inconsistent with it. Sharp pain; for whenever this supervenes, whatever we were before thinking of, it will interrupt our thinking, and of course draw our thoughts into another channel. Yea, and sleep itself, as it is a state of insensibility and stupidity; and such as is generally mixed with thoughts wandering over the earth, loose, wild, and incoherent.
Cf., above, II.4 and n.
1IV. 1. From what has been observed it is easy to give a clear answer to the last question—what kind of wandering thoughts we may expect and pray to be delivered from.
From the former sort of wandering thoughts, those wherein the heart wanders from God; from all that are contrary to his will, 02:135or that leave us without God in the world, everyone that is perfected in love is unquestionably delivered.
No. 40, Christian Perfection, II.28, more amplified than qualified—and reasserted.
22. With regard to the latter sort of wandering thoughts the case is widely different. Till the cause is removed we cannot in reason expect the effect should cease. But the causes or occasions of these will remain as long as we remain in the body. So long therefore we have all reason to believe the effects will remain also.
33. To be more particular. Suppose a soul, however holy, to dwell in a distempered body; suppose the brain be so throughly disordered as that raging madness follows; will not all the thoughts be wild and unconnected, as long as that disorder continues? Suppose a fever occasions that temporary madness which we term a delirium, can there be any just connection of thought till that delirium is removed? Yea, suppose what is called a nervous disorder to rise to so high a degree as occasions at least a partial madness, will there not be a thousand wandering thoughts? And must not these irregular thoughts continue as long as the disorder which occasions them?
44. Will not the case be the same with regard to those thoughts that necessarily arise from violent pain? They will more or less continue while that pain continues, by the inviolable order of nature. This order likewise will obtain where the thoughts are disturbed, broken, or interrupted, by any defect of the apprehension, judgment, or imagination, flowing from the natural constitution of the body. And how many interruptions may spring from the unaccountable and involuntary associations of our ideas! Now all these are directly or indirectly caused by the corruptible body pressing down the mind.
See Wisd. 9:15. See above, II.3 and n.
1 Cor. 15:54.
502:1365. And then only, when we lie down in the dust, shall we be delivered from those wandering thoughts which are occasioned by what we see and hear among those by whom we are now surrounded. To avoid these we must go out of the world.
See 1 Cor. 5:10.
Deut. 29:4.
66. And as long as evil spirits roam to and fro in a miserable, disordered world, so long they will assault (whether they can prevail or no) every inhabitant of flesh and blood. They will trouble even those whom they cannot destroy: they will attack, if they cannot conquer. And from these attacks of our restless, unwearied enemies, we must not look for an entire deliverance till we are lodged ‘where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest’.
Cf. Job 3:17.
77. To sum up the whole: to expect deliverance from those wandering thoughts which are occasioned by evil spirits is to expect that the devil should die or fall asleep; or at least should no more go about as a roaring lion.
1 Pet. 5:8.
See 1 Cor. 13:10; 15:53, 54.
88. Rather let us pray, both with the spirit and with the understanding, that ‘all’ these ‘things may work together for our good’;
Cf. Rom. 8:28.
Rom. 8:37.
Cf. 2 Cor. 7:1.
Cf. Mark 12:30.
Cf. Gal. 5:22-23; see also Notes.
Cf. 2 Pet. 1:8.
2 Pet. 1:11.
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Entry Title: Sermon 41: Wandering Thoughts