Notes:
Sermon 47: Heaviness through Manifold Temptations
An Introductory Comment [to Sermons 46-47]
Like that of true love, the course of true faith never did run smooth (cf. Thomas Goodwin, A Child of Light Walking in Darkness (1636); abridged by Wesley in the Christian Library (1751), Vol. XI; and Hugh Binning, Fellowship With God, especially Sermon XIV). There is, therefore, a natural progress in following a sermon on conversion with two further comments on the peaks and valleys in a Christian pilgrim’s progress. That is the point to this particular pair of sermons, Nos. 46, ‘The Wilderness State’, and 47, ‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations’. By 1760 Wesley knew, from long experience, how regularly any stress on the necessity of assurance would raise the levels of religious anxiety amongst his hearers and disciples. Even earlier, he had pondered Thomas à Kempis’s generalization (Imitation, II. ix. 7): ‘I never found anyone so religious and devout that he had not sometimes a withdrawing of grace or felt not some decrease of zeal.’ He also remembered how quickly the euphoria of his own Aldersgate experience had passed (cf. JWJ, May 26, 1738, ‘My soul continued in peace, but yet in heaviness because of manifold temptations,’ and May 28, ‘I waked in peace, but not in joy’).
Thus, wary though he was of allegorizing, he found himself turning to the Old Testament story of the sojourn of the Children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai as a metaphor for the anxieties and depressions that follow upon ‘the new birth’. This allegory was already a familiar one among the Puritans. There was, e.g., Samuel Mather’s Figures or Types of the Old Testament (Dublin, 1683); Mather had understood ‘wilderness’ to mean ‘the wilderness of this world’ through which ‘Christ directs and conducts his people in their travels…to the true Canaan’ (p. 170; cf. p. 192). Thus it was clear to him that just ‘as the Ark of God had led [the Israelites] through the Wilderness, so we are to follow the guidance of Christ through the world’ (p. 510). Mather had also cited (pp. 200-201) a quite different interpretation in Jeremiah Burroughs (whom Wesley also knew) in The Excellency of 02:203Holy Courage in Evil Times (1661), where ‘the wilderness state’ is understood as ‘an unregenerate condition’ before conversion (cf. chs. 25-26 and Burroughs’s comments on Heb. 11:27). In Robert Gell’s Remaines, I.16, the reference had been transferred from the wilderness of Sinai to Jesus’ experience of ‘forty days and nights’ in the wilderness of Judea. Wesley had followed Gell in this, at least once, in Bristol (cf. JWJ, March 28, 1740): ‘From these words, “Then was Jesus led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil,” I took occasion to describe that wilderness state, that state of doubts and fears and strong temptations which so many go through, though in different degrees, after they have received remission of sins.’
From none of these sources, however, could one have anticipated Wesley’s uncommonly sharp distinction, now in 1760, between ‘the wilderness state’ as ‘darkness’ (i.e., an actual ‘loss of faith’ and ‘a total loss of joy’; in effect, a relapse from faith into unfaith that simply reverses the positive processes of salvation) and ‘heaviness’ (religious depression) which is more or less normal, and thus not a valid ground for prolonged anxiety or despair. But this is the distinction which is expounded, along with its psychological implications, in the two sermons here (and also, presumably, in his thirty-five oral sermons on John 16:22). It had been summarized in the manuscript Minutes of 1744 (Q. and A. 10) and then commented on in Wesley’s Notes: ‘This [John 16:22] gives us no manner of authority to assert that all believers must come into a state of darkness. They never need lose either their peace or their love, or the witness that they are the children of God. They can never lose these, but either through sin, or ignorance, or vehement temptation, or bodily disorders.’ This same idea will be repeated in letters to Mrs. Marston, August 11, 1770, and to Rebecca Yeoman, February 5, 1772 (who is urged to read ‘The Wilderness State’ in ‘the fourth volume, and examine yourself thereby’). Charles Wesley, however, had understood ‘the wilderness state’ rather as Gell had done: ‘that [condition] into which the believer is generally led by the Spirit to be tempted as soon as he is baptized by the Holy Ghost’ (CWJ, August 26, 1739).
It would be interesting to know how John Wesley understood his own episodes of acute religious anxiety. By 1780 he could ‘not remember to have felt lowness of spirits for one quarter of an hour since I was born’ (see No. 77, ‘Spiritual Worship’, III.2). Actually, though, he has been through many such episodes both early and late (as in his letter to ‘Varanese’, February 6, 1736; or, in JWJ, January 4, 1739; or, again, in a letter to Elizabeth Hardy, May 1758: ‘I felt the wrath of God abiding on me. I was afraid of dropping into hell;’ and another to Mrs. 02:204Ryan, November 4, 1758). The most remarkable of these is mirrored in an outburst to his brother Charles, June 26, 1766: ‘In one of [[my]] last [letters] [[I]] was saying, [[I]] do not feel the wrath of God abiding on [[me]]…. [[I do not love God. I never did]]…. [[I have no]] direct witness… [[I]] have no more fear than love. Or if [[I have any fear, it is not that of falling]] into hell, but of falling into nothing.’ (The words within double brackets are transcribed from shorthand.) Was this a case of ‘heaviness’ or ‘darkness’, or what?
‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations’ is the linked sequel to ‘The Wilderness State’, designed to help believers avoid any further slide from depression into ‘darkness’ or sinful despair. Thus, it seeks to lay out ‘the wide and essential difference between “darkness” and “heaviness”’. He had already done this in sixteen oral sermons on 1 Pet. 1:6 between 1754 and 1757, which suggests that the problem of religious anxiety had become more widespread and urgent in and after the upswing in ‘professors of perfection’ in 1755. At any rate, this particular pair of sermons seems to have been written expressly for SOSO, IV (1760). They were reprinted in Works (1771), IV, and again in SOSO, IV (1787), but were not otherwise printed separately.
02:222 Heaviness through Manifold Temptations1 Peter 1:6
Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.
111. In the preceding discourse I have particularly spoken of that darkness of mind into which those are often observed to fall who once walked in the light of God’s countenance. Nearly related to this is the heaviness of soul which is still more common, even among believers; indeed almost all the children of God experience this in an higher or lower degree. And so great is the resemblance between one and the other that they are frequently confounded together; and we are apt to say indifferently, ‘Such an one is in darkness, or such an one is in heaviness,’ as if they were equivalent terms, one of which implied no more than the other.
Matthew Poole had not confounded the two notions; his point was that ‘darkness’ has two different meanings that ought to be distinguished by context: ‘Walking in darkness is [sometimes] put for living in wickedness (John 1:6); [the other sense] is being in misery, which also frequently cometh under the name of “darkness”: that liveth in a most disconsolate and calamitous condition, together with great despondency or dejection of spirit’ (Annotations on Isa. 50:10). But this is an episode from which the steadfast believer can hope to be delivered, ‘especially in the free grace, mercy, and faithfulness of the Lord…’.
Cf. Wesley’s letter to Mary Bishop, Sept. 13, 1774: ‘The difference between heaviness and darkness of soul (the wilderness state) should never be forgotten. Darkness…seldom comes on us but by our own fault…. Heaviness…may be occasioned by a thousand circumstances, such as frequently neither our wisdom can foresee nor our power prevent? Cf. below, V.1.
I. What manner of persons those were to whom the Apostle says, ‘Ye are in heaviness.’
II. What kind of ‘heaviness’ they were in.
III. What were the causes, and
IV. What were the ends of it.
I shall conclude with some inferences.
1102:223I. 1. I am in the first place to show what manner of persons those were to whom the Apostle says, ‘Ye are in heaviness.’ And, first, it is beyond all dispute that they were believers at the time the Apostle thus addressed them. For so he expressly says, verse five: Ye ‘who are kept through the power of God by faith unto salvation’. Again, verse seven, he mentions ‘the trial of their faith, much more precious than that of gold which perisheth’. And yet again, verse nine, he speaks of their ‘receiving the end of their faith, the salvation of their souls’. At the same time, therefore, that they were ‘in heaviness’, they were possessed of living faith. Their heaviness did not destroy their faith; they still ‘endured, [as] seeing him that is invisible’.
Heb. 11:27.
22. Neither did their heaviness destroy their peace, the peace that passeth all understanding,
See Phil. 4:7.
33. The persons to whom the Apostle here speaks were also full of a living hope. For thus he speaks, verse three: ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again’—me and you, all of us who are ‘sanctified by the Spirit’, and enjoy the ‘sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ’—‘unto a living hope, unto an inheritance’, that is, unto a living hope of an inheritance, ‘incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.’
Cf. 1 Pet. 1:2-4.
44. And they still ‘rejoiced in hope of the glory of God’.
Cf. Rom. 5:2.
The AV of 1 Pet. 1:7 reads, ‘the appearing of Jesus Christ’. Wesley changes this in his translation in the Notes (as also in the tr. of James Moffatt and the RSV). But in the text of SOSO (1787) the term, ‘revelation’, has been altered to ‘redemption’, which must have been a printer’s error since no Greek scholar would have derived the English ‘redemption’ from the original ἀποκαλύψει.
55. In the midst of their heaviness they likewise still enjoyed the love of God which had been shed abroad in their hearts.
See Rom. 5:5.
1 Pet. 1:8.
Cf. Prov. 23:26.
Gen. 15:1.
Cf. Ps. 37:4 (BCP).
66. Once more. Though they were heavy, yet were they holy. They retained the same power over sin. They were still ‘kept’ from this ‘by the power of God’. They were ‘obedient children, not fashioned according to their former desires’, but ‘as he that had called them is holy’, so were they ‘holy in all manner of conversation…. Knowing they were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, a Lamb without spot and without blemish’, they had, through the ‘faith and hope which they had in God’, ‘purified their souls by the Spirit’.
Cf. 1 Pet. 1:14-15, 19, 21-22.
1 Pet. 1:2.
1II. 1. Hence we may easily learn what kind of heaviness they were in—the second thing which I shall endeavour to show. The word in the original is λυπηθέντες, ‘made sorry’, ‘grieved’, from λύπη, ‘grief’ or ‘sorrow’. This is the constant, literal meaning of the word: and this being observed, there is no ambiguity in the expression, nor any difficulty in understanding it. The persons 02:225spoken of here were grieved: the heaviness they were in was neither more nor less than sorrow or grief—a passion which every child of man is well acquainted with.
22. It is probable our translators rendered it ‘heaviness’ (though a less common word) to denote two things: first, the degree; and next, the continuance of it. It does indeed seem that it is not a slight or inconsiderable degree of grief which is here spoken of, but such as makes a strong impression upon and sinks deep into the soul. Neither does this appear to be a transient sorrow, such as passes away in an hour; but rather such as having taken fast hold of the heart is not presently shaken off, but continues for some time, as a settled temper, rather than a passion—even in them that have living faith in Christ, and the genuine love of God in their hearts.
33. Even in these this heaviness may sometimes be so deep as to overshadow the whole soul, to give a colour, as it were, to all the affections, such as will appear in the whole behaviour. It may likewise have an influence over the body; particularly in those that are either of a naturally weak constitution, or weakened by some accidental disorder, especially of the nervous kind. In many cases we find ‘the corruptible body presses down the soul.’
Cf. Wisd. 9:15. Cf. also No. 41, Wandering Thoughts, II.3 and n.
Gal. 5:6. Cf. below, IV.5; and No. 2, The Almost Christian, II.6 and n.
44. This may well be termed a ‘fiery trial’:
1 Pet. 4:12.
1 Pet. 4:14.
2 Cor. 6:10.
102:226III. 1. But to proceed to the third point. What are the causes of such sorrow or heaviness in a true believer? The Apostle tells us clearly: ‘Ye are in heaviness’, says he, ‘through manifold temptations’—ποικίλοις, ‘manifold’; not only many in number, but of many kinds. They may be varied and diversified a thousand ways by the change or addition of numberless circumstances. And this very diversity and variety makes it more difficult to guard against them. Among these we may rank all bodily disorders; particularly acute diseases, and violent pain of every kind, whether affecting the whole body or the smallest part of it. It is true, some who have enjoyed uninterrupted health, and have felt none of these, may make light of them, and wonder that sickness or pain of body should bring heaviness upon the mind. And perhaps one in a thousand is of so peculiar a constitution as not to feel pain like other men. So hath it pleased God to show his almighty power by producing some of these prodigies of nature who have seemed not to regard pain at all, though of the severest kind; if that contempt of pain was not owing partly to the force of education, partly to a preternatural cause—to the power either of good or evil spirits who raised those men above the state of mere nature. But abstracting from
Cf. the earlier usage of this phrase as meaning ‘disregarding’ in No. 44, Original Sin, I.5 and n.
Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, vi.462-64:
And even where this is prevented by the grace of God, where men do ‘possess their souls in patience’,
Cf. Luke 21:19.
22. All diseases of long continuance, though less painful, are apt to produce the same effect. When God ‘appoints over us r consumption’ or ‘the chilling and burning ague’, if it be not speedily removed it will not only ‘consume the eyes’, but ‘cause sorrow of heart’
Cf. Lev. 26:16.
Cf. Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, on ‘Hysteric Affections’; he has no entry for ‘nervous disorders’. Johnson, Dictionary, defines ‘nervous’ in the medical terms as, ‘Having weak or diseased nerves’, and quotes Cheyne: ‘Poor, weak, nervous creatures’. Cf. also Wesley’s ‘Thoughts on Nervous Disorders; particularly that which is usually termed Lowness of Spirits’, in AM (1786), IX.52-54, 94-97; as well as his entry No. 162, ‘Nervous Disorders’, in Primitive Physick (15th edn., 1772), pp. 105-6.
33. Again, when ‘calamity cometh as a whirlwind,’
Cf. Prov. 1:26-27.
Prov. 24:34.
Cf. Luke 10:31, 32.
Cf. 1 Tim. 6:8. Cf. Wesley’s comment in his Notes: ‘That is, raiment and a house to cover us’. This is an overblown inference from any of the noun and verb forms of σκεπάζω, the participial forms of which can be stretched to connote ‘shelter’ or even ‘protection’, but not ‘lodging’; see Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon.
Job 24:8.
Cf. Juvenal, Satires, iii.152-53: ‘Poverty brings no unhappiness worse than this: it exposes men to ridicule’ (cf. Loeb 91:42).
Has poverty nothing worse in it than this, that it ‘makes men liable to be laughed at’? ’Tis a sign this idle poet talked by rote of the things which he knew not. Is not want of food something worse than this? God pronounced it as a curse upon man that he should earn it by ‘the sweat of his brow’.
Cf. Gen. 3:19.
Job 2:9.
Amos 4:6.
Another example (rare in his time) of Wesley’s conscious identification with ‘Christ’s poor’. See No. 31, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XI’, I.6 and n.
44. Perhaps next to this we may place the death of those who were near and dear unto us; of a tender parent, and one not much declined into the vale of years;
Cf. Shakespeare, Othello, III.iii.264-65: ‘I am declin’d into a vale of years.’
See 1 Sam. 18:1, 3; 20:17; cf. No. 73, ‘Of Hell’, I.2.
Cf. Samuel Wesley, Jun., ‘The Parish Priest’, ll. 5-6, Poems on Several Occasions (1736), p. 65.
There may be sorrow without sin.
55. A still deeper sorrow we may feel for those who are dead while they live, on account of the unkindness, ingratitude, apostasy of those who were united to us in the closest ties. Who can express what a lover of souls may feel for a friend, a brother dead to God? For an husband, a wife, a parent, a child, rushing 02:229 into sin as an horse into the battle,
See Jer. 8:6.
66. In all these circumstances we may be assured our great adversary will not be wanting to improve his opportunity. He who is always ‘walking about seeking whom he may devour’
Cf. 1 Pet. 5:8.
Eph. 6:16.
77. It has been frequently supposed that there is another cause (if not of darkness, at least) of heaviness, namely, God’s withdrawing himself from the soul because it is his sovereign will. Certainly he will do this if we grieve his Holy Spirit, either by outward or inward sin; either by doing evil or neglecting to do good; by giving way either to pride or anger, to spiritual sloth, to foolish desire or inordinate affection.
Col. 3:5.
Note this flat rejection of what Wesley understood of the Lutheran doctrine of ‘the hiddenness of God’ (Deus absconditus).
I.e., to play a tantalizing game; cf. OED for a variety of instances of the phrase, espec. in Daniel Defoe’s denunciation of ‘men…that…do nothing but play at bo-peep with God Almighty’, in Enquiry Into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters (1697).
88. One more cause of heaviness is mentioned by many of those who are termed mystic authors. And the notion has crept in, I know not how, even among plain people who have no acquaintance with them. I cannot better explain this than in the words of a late writer, who relates this as her own experience: ‘I continued so happy in my Beloved, that although I should have been forced to live a vagabond in a desert, I should have found no difficulty in it. This state had not lasted long when in effect I found myself led into a desert…. I found myself in a forlorn condition, altogether poor, wretched, and miserable…. The proper source of this grief is the knowledge of ourselves, by which we find that there is an extreme unlikeness between God and us. We see ourselves most opposite to him, and that our inmost soul is entirely corrupted, depraved and full of all kind of evil and malignity, of the world and the flesh and all sorts of abominations.’
π;
99. But upon this I would observe, (1). In the preceding paragraph this writer says, ‘Hearing I had not a true faith in Christ, I offered myself up to God, and immediately felt his love.’ It may be so; and yet it does not appear that this was justification. ’Tis more probable it was no more than what are usually termed the ‘drawings of the Father’.
Cf. OED, ‘draw’, II.26-28; and letter to Charles Wesley, Apr. 4, 1748: ‘So loving a people have I scarce ever seen, nor so strong and general drawings from above’ (26:302 in this edn., l. 33).
Another explicit reference to the ‘remains of sin’ after justification; see No. 13, On Sin in Believers, intro., I.6, and III.8. Note here the phrase ‘inbred sin’ as synonymous with ‘in-being’ and ‘original’ sin in No. 44, Original Sin, intro.
1 Pet. 1:6.
Col. 1:12.
A proportionality between repentance after justification (our self-knowledge) and faith (our knowledge of God and of his grace).
See III.8, above.
John 4:14.
1IV. 1. For what ends, then (which was the fourth thing to be considered),
does God permit heaviness to befall so many of his children? The Apostle gives
us a plain and direct answer to this important question: ‘That the trial of
their faith, which is much more precious than gold that perisheth though it be
tried by fire, may be found unto praise and honour and glory, at the revelation
of Jesus Christ.’
[1 Pet. 1:] ver. 7. Ver. 12,
etc.
22. Hence we learn that the first and great end of God’s permitting the temptations which bring heaviness on his children is the trial of their faith, which is tried by these, even as gold by the 02:232fire. Now we know gold tried in the fire is purified thereby, is separated from its dross. And so is faith in the fire of temptation; the more it is tried, the more it is purified. Yea, and not only purified, but also strengthened, confirmed, increased abundantly, by so many more proofs of the wisdom and power, the love and faithfulness of God. This then—to increase our faith—is one gracious end of God’s permitting those manifold temptations.
33. They serve to try, to purify, to confirm and increase that living hope also, whereunto ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ hath begotten us again of his abundant mercy’.
Cf. 1 Pet. 1:3.
Rom. 8:18.
Wisd. 3:4.
Cf. 1 Pet. 4:13-14.
1 Pet. 1:8.
44. They rejoice the more because the trials which increase their faith and hope increase their love also; both their gratitude to God for all his mercies, and their goodwill to all mankind. Accordingly the more deeply sensible they are of the loving-kindness of God their Saviour, the more is their heart inflamed with love to him who ‘first loved us’.
1 John 4:19.
2 Cor. 1:22.
55. Yet another is their advance in holiness, holiness of heart and holiness of conversation; the latter naturally resulting from the former; for a good tree will bring forth good fruit.
See Matt. 7:17.
See Gal. 5:6. Cf. above, II.3; and No. 2, The Almost Christian, II.6 and n.
1 Tim. 6:9.
A rare usage; cf. OED and also Charles Wes ley’s hymn on Matt. 5:5, l. 1: ‘Meeken my soul, Thou heavenly Lamb’, in Short Hymns on Select Passages of Holy Scripture, 1762 (Poet. Wks., X.162).
66. And all these terminate in that great end, that our faith, hope, love, and holiness, ‘may be found’ (if it doth not yet appear) ‘unto praise’ from God himself, ‘and honour’ from men and angels, ‘and glory’
1 Pet. 1:7.
Matt. 16:27.
Cf. 2 Cor. 4:17.
77. Add to this the advantage which others may receive by seeing our behaviour under affliction. We find by experience, example frequently makes a deeper impression upon us than precept. And what examples have a stronger influence, not only on those who are partakers of like precious faith, but even on them who have not known God, than that of a soul calm and serene in the midst of storms, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;
2 Cor. 6:10.
John 18:11.
Job 1:21.
1V. 1. I am to conclude with some inferences. And, first, how wide is the difference between darkness of soul and heaviness! 02:234Which nevertheless are so generally confounded with each other, even by experienced Christians! Darkness, or the wilderness state, implies a total loss of joy in the Holy Ghost; heaviness does not; in the midst of this we may ‘rejoice with joy unspeakable’.
1 Pet. 1:8.
Cf. 2 Pet. 1:2.
See Heb. 11:1.
See Acts 3:19.
Cf. above, I.1 and n.
22. We may learn from hence, secondly, that there may be need of heaviness, but there can be no need of darkness. There may be need of our being in ‘heaviness for a season’, in order to the ends above recited; at least in this sense, as it is a natural result of those ‘manifold temptations’ which are needful to try and increase our faith, to confirm and enlarge our hope, to purify our heart from all unholy tempers, and to perfect us in love. And by consequence they are needful in order to brighten our crown, and add to our eternal weight of glory.
2 Cor. 4:17.
33. From the Apostle’s manner of speaking we may gather, thirdly, that even heaviness is not always needful. ‘Now, for a season, if need be’; so it is not needful for all persons; nor for any person at all times. God is able, he has both power and wisdom, 02:235 to work when he pleases the same work of grace, in any soul, by other means. And in some instances he does so: he causes those whom it pleaseth him to go on from strength to strength, even till they ‘perfect holiness in his fear’,
Cf. 2 Cor. 7:1.
Cf. Ecclus. 2:5.
44. We ought therefore, lastly, to watch and pray,
Matt. 26:41.
Jer. 19:7.
Cf. Luke 7:30.
Cf. 2 Cor. 6:1.
Cf. 2 Cor. 7:1 (Notes).
Cf. 2 Pet. 3:18.
How to Cite This Entry
Bibliography:
, “.” In , edited by . , 2024. Entry published February 28, 2024. https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon047.About this Entry
Entry Title: Sermon 47: Heaviness through Manifold Temptations