Wesley’s Preface to Sermons on Several Occasions, Volumes V-VIII

We turn now to a much later collection of Wesley’s sermons, that mirrors his mind and ministry in its last two decades. In the Works of 1771-74, he had included fifty-three ‘Sermons on Several Occasions’ in the first four volumes (1771). In a prefatory note ‘To the Reader’ he had explained that in that edition (and one thinks especially of the sermons):

This suggests an assumption on his part that in SOSO, I-IV, he had rounded off his theological task, in so far as written sermons could have done that.

Actually, of course, two more tumultuous and fruitful decades lay ahead for him; to his amazement, the Revival continued on from strength to strength. But this could only have the effect of raising old problems in new contexts. His health and vigour held up remarkably,

02:350In response, and as a fresh new resource for the Methodists, Wesley had launched a serial publication, entitled The Arminian Magazine (1778-). Its axial theme was defined by its sub-title: Extracts and Original Treatises on Universal Redemption. Its monthly instalments were collected into annual volumes, with a comprehensive table of ‘Contents’. Its obvious design was to furnish extra help to the Methodists in their unending struggles ‘with the patrons of particular redemption’.

To begin with, be it noted, there were to be no ‘original sermons’. Soon, however, he was persuaded to alter this format, and to add new sermons of his own. In this way he found a new ‘pulpit’ in the Magazine. His explanation of this development is given in the ‘Preface’ to Vol. IV (1781):

Thus it was that the Arminian Magazine became a prod to the publication, in one decade, of more sermons than had thus for appeared in print in Wesley’s whole career. Moreover, these new sermons are not old oral favourites reduced to writing; the correlation between the texts of the sermons written for the Magazine and those of his oral preaching is unaccountably low. The evangelical foundations of SOSO, I-IV are everywhere presupposed, and occasionally restated, but there is no announced ‘programme’ for their progression. The one common concern in them is Wesley’s interest in dealing with specific issues as they had emerged in the later course of the Revival. Where earlier statements had 02:351been misunderstood or un-understood, he took this new forum to redefine and to revise them in fresh terms. In every case, he is intent upon an updating of his message in the light of unfolding cultural changes in ‘an age of transition’. This would seem to have been his warrant for the marked increase of various sorts of rhetorical ornamentations (quotations, allusions, illustrations, etc.).

Wesley’s overloaded schedule and the lack of qualified assistants created special problems in the publishing operations of the Magazine: this helps to explain certain otherwise puzzling features here. First, and unavoidably, Wesley was writing in haste, against unaccustomed deadlines and, more often than not, without libraries to consult. Then, too, his advancing years were taking their inevitable toll.

It may be doubted that Wesley had further plans for the republication of these Magazine sermons. After all, ‘the first four volumes of sermons’ (as they had been termed in the ‘Model Deed’ of 1763) remained in place as a doctrinal baseline. In 1787, however, his hand was forced by a move by others to publish an unauthorized collection of these later sermons. His response was a decision to do the job himself. The cover of the Magazine for January 1788 announces the publication of a new edition of SOSO, I-IV. This appeared with its original ‘Preface’ (1746) and in its original order of 1746-60. The notice added: ‘There are also in the press, and will shortly be published in four volumes, 02:352price 10s., all the sermons in the ten volumes of the Arminian Magazine’—actually, as we have seen, in the eight volumes, IV-XI.

This new quartet, numbered SOSO, V-VIII, have their own Preface, which affords a fresh revelation of Wesley’s interests at this later stage. But it leaves some obvious questions unanswered. Why, for example, the reversion to the forty-four sermons of 1746-60, and therefore the discarding of all but one of the nine new sermons that had appeared in SOSO, I-IV in 1771? Only The Lord Our Righteousness was retained, inserted out of order in SOSO, V.105-25. Again, why was the original design (twelve sermons per volume) enlarged to fourteen? And, even more crucially, why the particular ordering of this new collection? It is neither chronological, topical, nor in the original sequence in the Magazine. Wesley may have been, as he claimed, ‘the properest person’

Of the fifty-six sermons in SOSO, V-VIII, forty-three had already appeared in the Magazine. Six would appear in the concurrent volume (XI, 1788). Two more would appear in SOSO, VIII, before they did in the Magazine (XII, 1789). As we have seen, only one of the nine sermons from the 1760s survived in this new edition, although four of those that had been discarded had been published separately.

SOSO, V-VIII, are still ‘plain truth for plain people’: evangelical, strong on ‘application’. Their ‘Preface’ stresses this even more emphatically than the 1746 ‘Preface’ had done. There is, however, no mistaking the fact that Wesley’s homiletical style and theological substance had acquired fresh nuances over the years. Thus, in V-VIII, the reader may expect more ornamentation, more speculative formulations, more show of learning, more of an emphasis upon a theology of culture. Salvation by faith alone is everywhere presupposed, but now the stress is upon its outworkings in the new circumstances of the 02:353Methodist people (social, economic, cultural). These new volumes are not a mere addendum to I-IV; they amount to a second major phase in Wesley’s development as a ‘folk theologian’.

They have, however, been sadly neglected by the generality of Wesley’s interpreters. Joseph Benson, in the first posthumous edition of Wesley’s collected Works (in seventeen volumes, 1809-13) adopts a different rubric for the sermons.

Such an imbalance needs redressing. Despite their uneven quality, these later sermons exhibit Wesley’s ripened Christian wisdom in a quite remarkable fashion—its broadened scope, its ample theological perspective, its quickened sensitivities to Christian social imperatives. They are, therefore, a remarkable achievement by a phenomenally busy old man, still leading a still burgeoning Revival. They give us a sight of the continued stretching of his mind toward a fuller understanding of his faith. Thus, they enlarge our resources for understanding that faith and its lifelong passion for an integrated vision of the Christian order of salvation.