Notes:
Sermon 69: The Imperfection of Human Knowledge
These next two sermons were paired in this order in SOSO, VI (1788), even though they had been written earlier and in reverse sequence. ‘The Case of Reason…’ dates from July 6, 1781, and from Langham Row in Lincolnshire (cf. the Journal entry for that day for Wesley’s critical remarks on the then famous historian, William Robertson). He then had the sermon published as No. VI in the Arminian Magazine for November and December of that year (IV.574-80, 630-36) without a title. Wesley had preached from its text, 1 Cor. 14:20, only twice before (January 8, 1753, and March 20, 1772). ‘Imperfection…’ had been written in early March 1784 in Bristol and then promptly printed in the Arminian Magazine as No. XXI in June and July (VII.233-41, 290-98), also without a title and with an error in citation of the text (‘…we know in part’ is cited as 1 Cor. 13:10 instead of 13:9, and this error is faithfully repeated twice by Paramore in SOSO, VI.53-54). That this was a problem still much on Wesley’s mind is suggested by the fact that he had preached on 1 Cor. 13:9 four times in 1783.
Wesley brought both sermons together in SOSO, VI, and quite logically, since both are comments on the actual limitations of ‘human understanding’ and on the practical implications for Christian living of an intellectual modesty deeply grounded in a religious understanding of transcendence. Wesley had grown up in the fading days of an Anglican rationalism (Ray, Butler, Clarke, Paley) which took for granted that a sincere ‘faith seeking understanding’ would surely be richly rewarded, since faith and reason are finally consonant. And, as we have seen, he was himself a rationalist of sorts. But as deism and ‘the Enlightenment’ had progressed and, even more particularly, as a certain confidence in human rationality had filtered down to ordinary folk, Wesley recognized a growing threat both to Christian faith and to any proper sense of Christian reverence and awe.
02:568These two sermons are therefore intended as antidotes and alternatives to what Wesley regarded as a false rationalism. Even so, and not accidentally, Wesley also reflects here his undiminished interest in a valid ‘theology of culture.’ It is worth noting and comparing the higher than average number of his passing allusions here to ‘contemporary’ science, philosophy, and literature. If this is ‘plain truth for plain people’, the Methodists were no longer as ‘plain’ as they had been in their earlier, humbler beginnings.
The Imperfection of Human Knowledge1 Corinthians 13:9
All edns. up to and including that of Joseph Benson (1809-13) read 1 Cor. 13:10 here—an unnoticed succession of the same error. The misreading was first corrected by Thomas Jackson in 1825.
We know in part.
11. The desire of knowledge is an universal principle in man, fixed in his inmost nature.
Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, I.i [980]: ‘All men, by nature, desire to know.’ But see also à Kempis’s qualification (to which Wesley subscribed) in Imitation, I.ii.1: ‘All men naturally desire to know, but what availeth knowledge without the fear of God?’ Cf. No. 140, ‘The Promise of Understanding’, proem, §2.
Eccles. 1:8.
22. But although our desire of knowledge has no bounds, yet our knowledge itself has. It is indeed confined within very narrow bounds, abundantly narrower than common people imagine or 02:569men of learning are willing to acknowledge—a strong intimation (since the great Creator doth nothing in vain) that there will be some future state of being wherein that now insatiable desire will be satisfied, and there will be no longer so immense a distance between the appetite and the object of it.
33. The present knowledge of man is exactly adapted to his present wants. It is sufficient to warn us of, and preserve us from, most of the evils to which we are now exposed, and to procure us whatever is necessary for us in this our infant state of existence. We know enough of the nature and sensible qualities of the things that are round about us, so far as they are subservient to the health and strength of our bodies. We know how to procure and prepare our food; we know what raiment is fit to cover us; we know how to build our houses, and to furnish them with all necessaries and conveniences. We know just as much as is conducive to our living comfortably in this world. But of innumerable things above, below, and round about us, we know little more than that they exist. And in this our deep ignorance is seen the goodness as well as the wisdom of God, in cutting short his knowledge on every side on purpose to ‘hide pride from man.’
Job 33:17; cf. No. 45, ‘The New Birth’, I.4 and n.
44. Therefore it is that by the very constitution of their nature the wisest of men ‘know’ but ‘in part’. And how amazingly small a part do they know either of the Creator or of his works! This is a very needful, but a very unpleasing theme; for ‘vain man would be wise.’
Job 11:12.
I. 1. To begin with the great Creator himself. How astonishingly little do we know of God! How small a part of his nature do we know! Of his essential attributes! What conception can we form of his omnipresence? Who is able to comprehend how God is in this and every place? How he fills the immensity of space? If philosophers, by denying the existence of a vacuum,
I.e., the Cartesians; cf. articles on ‘Vacuum’ in Chambers’s Cyclopaedia; together they run past four folio columns, suggesting how general and exigent the arguments about space and matter were in the eighteenth century.
2.
The order here of §§2, 3 is that of the text of Sermons (1788), a reversal of the order in AM.
Cf. H. G. Alexander, ed., The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, With Extracts from Newton’s Principia and Opticks (Manchester, Univ. of Manchester, 1970), pp. 12-13 (§3), 16-17 (§3), 28-29 (§§10-12), 40-41 (§24). An even more likely direct source of this phrase and its attribution, for Wesley, is Addison, The Spectator, No. 565 (July 9, 1714): ‘The noblest and most exalted way of considering this infinite space is that of Sir Isaac Newton, who calls it the “Sensorium” of the Godhead.’ There is a rather different reference in Luis Vaz de Camoens, The Lusiad (tr. by W. J. Mickle in 1776), Bk. X, pp. 537-38 (see Mickle’s n.): ‘[Infinite space was] called by the old philosophers and school divines, “The Sensorium of the Deity”.’ The common source of the idea, of course, is Plato’s notion of a ‘Receptacle’ (τὸ ὑποχείμενον), as in the Timaeus, 51A, 57C, etc. See also No. 10, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’, I.12 and n.
Attributed to Thales by Aristotle and Cicero; see No. 23, ‘Sermon on the Mount, III’, I.6 and n.
Jer. 23:24.
Cf. Ps. 139:7-10 (AV and BCP conflated).
See Ps. 139:6.
3. A second essential attribute of God is eternity. He existed before all time. Perhaps we might more properly say, he does exist from everlasting to everlasting. But what is eternity? A celebrated author says that the divine eternity is, Vitae interminabilis tota simul et perfecta possessio—‘the at once entire and perfect possession of never-ending life’.
Cf. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, V.6 (10): ‘Aeternitas igitur est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio.’
4. If indeed God had stamped (as some have maintained) an 02:571idea of himself on every human soul, we must certainly have understood something of these, as well as his other attributes; for we cannot suppose he would have impressed upon us either a false or imperfect idea of himself.
Christian Platonists in general had maintained this notion of innate ideas of God, and Wesley follows them since ‘our knowledge of God and the things of God’ are not ‘empirical’ but rather intuitive. Cf. Richard Bentley’s Boyle Lecture, No. 4 (1692): ‘The commonly received notion of an innate idea of God, imprinted upon every soul….’ See also Nos. 95,’On the Education of Children,’ §5; 96,’On Obedience to Parents’, §1; 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, §1; and ‘Remarks Upon Mr. Locke’s Essay an Human Understanding’ (AM, 1783-84, Vols. VI-VII).
Cf. Rom. 1:20.
5. Hence then, from his works, particularly his works of creation, we are to learn the knowledge of God.
The central theme of Wesley’s Survey; see espec. his closing summary, 1st edn. (1763), II.244-56; 3rd edn. (1777), V.235-55.
For Wesley’s interest in astronomy, cf. No. 55, On the Trinity, §7 and n.
Cf. Job 38:5-7.
Milton, Paradise Lost, vii.231; repeated in Nos. 103, ‘What is Man? Ps. 8:3-4’, I.5; and 132, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:1’, §7.
Cf. No. 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, I.10 and n.
Cf. John Hutchinson, Works, II (‘D’): ‘…the light is pressed out by the influx of spirit and spirit is pressed in by the influx of light; and so the whole matter of the heavens is perpetually changing conditions and circulating….’ See Wesley’s account of ‘The Hutchinsonian System’ in his Survey, 1st edn. (1763), II.136-39; 3rd edn. (1777), III.276-80. Cf. also No. 57, ‘On the Fall of Man’, II.6 and n.
John Rogers, M.D., Dissertation on the Knowledge of the Antients in Astronomy; cf. JWJ, May 12, 1757: ‘I finished Dr. Rogers’ essay on the learning of the ancients. I think he has clearly proved that they had microscopes and telescopes, and knew all that is valuable in modern astronomy.’ Wesley’s doubts about the latter were reinforced by the gross variations in their calculations. E.g., for the distance between sun and earth, their estimates range from Rogers’s 2,910,164 miles to Copernicus’ 4,302,625, to Kepler’s 12,907,876, to De la Hire’s 136,923,591; see Rogers, p. 75. But see also A. Wolf, A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 18th Century (New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1961), pp. 144, 175-76. It is now known that the earth’s distance from the sun is not constant, due to the changes in the earth’s orbit, but that the mean (with less than 2 percent variation) is about 93,000,000 miles (or a parallax of 8.79″). Unsurprisingly, Newton’s calculation (86,051,398) came closest to this. There is an interesting comment on the role of astronomy in England in Williams, The Whig Supremacy, pp. 354-56. In any case, one may hope that Dr. Rogers was a better physician than astronomer.
Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, i.291; in No. 103, ‘What is Man? Ps. 8:3-4’, II.10, Wesley repeats the phrase without quotation marks. Cf. also JWJ, Sept. 20, 1759.
yea, have marked out all her seas and continents! But after all we know just nothing of the matter. We have nothing but mere uncertain conjecture concerning the nearest of all the heavenly bodies.
6. But let us come to the things that are still nearer home, and inquire what knowledge we have of them. How much do we know of that wonderful body, light? How is it communicated to us? Does it flow in a continued stream from the sun? Or does the sun impel the particles next his orb, and so on and on, to the extremity of his system? Again, does light gravitate, or not? Does it attract or repel other bodies? Is it subject to the general laws which obtain in 02:573all other matter? Or is it a body sui generis, altogether different from all other matter? Is it the same with the electric fluid or not? Who can explain the phenomenon of electricity? Who knows why some bodies conduct the electric fluid and others arrest its course? Why is the phial capable of being charged to such a point and no farther?
The phenomenon of the Leyden jar; cf. Survey, 3rd edn. (1777), III.218-25.
7. But surely we understand the air we breathe, and which encompasses us on every side. By that admirable property of elasticity it is the general spring of nature. But is elasticity essential to air, and inseparable from it? Nay, it has been lately proved by numberless experiments that air may be fixed, that is, divested of its elasticity, and generated, or restored to it again. Therefore it is no otherwise elastic than as it is connected with electric fire!
See No. 15, The Great Assize, II.13 and n.
Probably Benjamin Franklin, whose Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751) Wesley had read, Feb. 17, 1753. Fascinated with this newly discovered mystery, Wesley also read Hoadly and Wilson, Observations on a Series of Electrical Experiments (1756); William Watson, Observations Upon the Effects of Electricity (1763); Richard Lovett, Philosophical Essays (1766); John Freke, An Essay to Shew the Cause of Electricity (2nd edn., 1746), et al. (see the Preface to Wesley’s Desideratum; or Electricity Made Plain and Useful [1760]), all of whom had tended to regard electrical phenomena in cosmic terms. Cf. Wesley’s Survey (1777), III.215-47, espec. p. 242: ‘Electricity will probably soon be considered as the great vivifying principle of nature by which she carries on most of her operations. It is a fifth element distinct from and of a superior nature to the other four.’ See also No. 15, The Great Assize, III.4 and n.
8. Let us now descend to the earth which we tread upon, and which God has peculiarly given to the children of men. Do the children of men understand this? Suppose the terraqueous globe to be seven or eight thousand miles in diameter,
Another measurement about which the geographers of Wesley’s time still differed; cf. William Pemble, A Brief Introduction to Geography (1675), p. 9: ‘The thickness of half the earth [i.e., the radius] is about 4,000 miles;’ George Cheyne, Philosophical Principles of Religion (4th edn., 1734), I.71-72: ‘The earth’s middle diameter is 7,846 miles, each of which contain 5,000 feet…;’ and Thomas Salmon, A New Geographical and Historical Grammar (6th edn., 1758), p. 17: ‘the circumference of the earth is 24,840 English miles’ and ‘the diameter almost a third, or 7,900 miles’. Current measurements push Wesley’s upper limit: i.e., 7,917.4 miles (12,742 km).
Cf. above, No. 15, The Great Assize, III.4 and n.
9. How much of the very surface of the globe is still utterly unknown to us! How very little do we know of the polar regions, either north or south, either in Europe, or Asia! How little of those vast countries, the inland parts either of Africa or America! Much less do we know what is contained in the broad sea, the great abyss which covers so large a part of the globe. Most of its chambers are inaccessible to man, so that we cannot tell how they are furnished. How little do we know of those things on the dry land which fall directly under our notice! Consider even the most simple metals or stones: how imperfectly are we acquainted with their nature and properties! Who knows what it is that distinguishes metals from all other fossils? It is answered, ‘Why, they are heavier.’ Very true, but what is the cause of their being heavier? What is the specific difference between metals and stones? Or between one metal and another? Between gold and silver? Between tin and lead? It is all mystery to the sons of men!
10. Proceed we to the vegetable kingdom. Who can demonstrate that the sap in any vegetable performs a regular circulation through its vessels or that it does not? Who can point out the specific difference between one kind of plant and another? Or the peculiar internal conformation and disposition of their component parts? Yea, what man living thoroughly understands the nature and properties of any one plant under heaven?
11. With regard to animals. Are microscopic animals
Cf. the section on ‘microscopic animalculae’ in Wesley’s Survey (4th edn., 1784), II.70-71: ‘As to some of the animalculae observed by Leewenhoeck [1632-1723], he computed that three or four hundred of them placed close together in a line would equal the diameter of a grain of sand…. But [Nicolaas] Hartsoeker [Meditationes in Oeconomiam Generationis Animalium (1715)] carries the matter still farther [and asks] according to our present system of generation…how minute the animalculae produced now may have been at the beginning.’ See also Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, ‘Animalcule’.
Cf. Ps. 139:15-16.
‘Salient point’; cf. Survey, V.248 (Appendix), where the same rhetorical question had been asked. Cf. also Aristotle, Historia Animalium, VI.iii: τούτο δὲ τὸ σημεῖον πηδᾷ καὶ κινείται. The Latin phrase had come to be a technical term for that ‘point’ in an egg or embryo where vital motion begins (spontaneously, as most naturalists agreed). Cf. Edward Phillips, The New World of English Words (ed. J. Kersey, 1706). But see also Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation, p. 59; Arthur Collier, Clavis Universalis, p. 148; and Sir Richard Blackmore, ‘Creation, A Philosophical Poem’ (1712), p. 359.
Ps. 139:14.
12. With regard to insects, many are the discoveries which have been lately made.
All the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century naturalists had sections on ‘Insects’. Cf. Ray, op. cit., pp. 6-7; Derham, Physico-Theology; Goldsmith, History of the Earth…; and Wesley’s Survey (4th edn., 1784), II.56-135. Cf. also No. 60, ‘The General Deliverance’, III.7.
13. Well, but if we know nothing else, do not we know ourselves? Our bodies and our souls? What is our soul? It is a spirit, we know. But what is a spirit? Here we are at a full stop. And where is the soul lodged? In the pineal gland?
Cf. Descartes’s discovery that the point of jointure of body and soul is ‘a certain very small gland…situated in the middle of its substance [the brain] and which is so suspended above the duct whereby the animal spirits in its anterior cavities have communication with those in the posterior that the slightest movements which take place in it alter very greatly the course of these spirits; and reciprocally so that the smallest changes which occur in the course of these spirits may do much to change the movements of this gland’ (Passions of the Soul, I.30-31). This idea had become familiar in England; cf. Addison’s essay in The Spectator, No. 275 (Jan. 15, 1712): ‘The pineal gland, which many of our modern philosophers suppose to be the seat of the soul’. Cf. also No. 116, ‘What is Man? Ps. 8:4’, §6; Wesley’s Survey (4th edn., 1784), I.52; ‘Remarks on the Limits of Human Knowledge’, Survey, V.252; and ‘A Thought on Necessity’ (AM, 1780, III.487).
Cf. No. 67, ‘On Divine Providence’, §10 and n. Cf. also Thomas Hobbes, Human Nature (1684), XI.72: ‘It is a plain contradiction in natural discourse to say of the soul of man that it is tota in toto et tota in qualibet parte corporis.’
And as to our body itself, how little do we know!
For the body as a machine, cf. No. 51, The Good Steward, I.4 and n.
A distinction between ‘insensible perspiration’ (exhalation) and sweat (‘sensible perspiration’). Wesley had borrowed it from Joseph Rogers, M.D., An Essay on Epidemic Disease (Dublin, 1734), ‘Appendix’. He uses it in the Survey (4th edn., 1784), I.47: ‘An ingenious physician, Dr. Rogers, has found by numerous experiments that a person perspires abundantly less when he sweats than when he does not: that one who perspires twenty-four ounces in seven hours of sleep, if he sweats does not perspire above six…. Whence he infers that it is not the same matter which is evacuated by insensible perspiration and by sweat…. What a field does this open!’
An allowable alternative to ad infinitum; cf. A Farther Appeal, Pt. II, II.5 (11:219 in this edn.); and Wesley’s letter to Samuel Furly, May 21, 1762.
For some of Wesley’s other discussions of animal spirits, cf. No. 80, ‘On Friendship with the World’, §17; his ‘Thoughts on Nervous Disorders’ (AM, 1786, IX.52-54, 94-97); his letter ‘To an old Friend’, Nov. 27, 1750. For other references, cf. Dr. Edward Young (father of the poet), Sermon V, ‘The Heavenly Pattern’, which Wesley extracted for the Christian Lib., XLVI.91-113 (see espec. p. 98); Bishop Berkeley discussed the matter in an essay for The Guardian, No. 35 (Apr. 21, 1713), as did Addison in The Spectator, No. 128 (July 27, 1711). Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, I.118, 121, 139, 143, spoke of them. So did Samuel Annesley in his sermon on ‘Universal Conscientiousness’, in The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate (1661), p. 7. Cf. also, ‘Essay on Learning’, in The Young Students Library (1692), p. iii. Johnson, Dictionary, cites Bacon’s Natural History as an illustration of ‘spirit’ (No. 17).
For ‘sleep’, cf. No 93, ‘On Redeeming the Time’, passim; for ‘dreams’ and ‘dreaming’, cf. No. 124, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §4 and n.
1II. 1. But are we not better acquainted with his works of providence than with his works of creation? It is one of the first principles of religion that his kingdom ruleth over all; so that we may say with confidence, ‘O Lord our Governor, how excellent is thy name over all the earth!’
Cf. Ps. 8:1, 9 (BCP).
A counter-thesis to Wesley’s emphatic faith in providence and moral agency; cf. Cicero, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), II.xxxvii.93: ‘The world’s order cannot be the result of some fortuitous concourse of atoms;’ and Richard Lucas, Enquiry After Happiness, I.101: ‘’Tis beneath the dignity of a soul…to make chance and wind and waves the arbitrary disposers of his happiness…. Oh, how I hug the memory of those honest heathens who in a ragged gown and homely cottage bade defiance to fortune.’ This notion is repeated endlessly by Wesley; cf., e.g., Nos. 71, ‘Of Good Angels’, II.3; 95, ‘On the Education of Children’, §14; his Notes on Luke 10:31 and Acts 17:18. See JWJ, July 6, 1781, where Wesley says, ‘So far as fortune or chance governs the world, God has no place in it.’ Also his letter to Hester Ann Roe, Feb. 11, 1779: ‘Chance has no share in the government of the world.’ Cf. also, An Estimate of Manners of the Present Times, §14.
Cf. Prov. 16:33.
Cf. Matt. 10:29.
Luke 12:7.
22. But although we are well apprised of this general truth, that all things are governed by the providence of God (the very language of the heathen orator, deorum moderamine cuncta geri),
Cicero, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), II xxx.75; cf. No. 67, ‘On Divine Providence’, §1 and n.
33. Even with regard to entire nations, how little do we comprehend of God’s providential dealings with them! What innumerable nations in the eastern world once flourished, to the terror of all around them, and are now swept away from the face of the earth; and their memorial is perished with them!
Ps. 9:6.
Cf. Isa. 14:23; a ‘besom’ was, originally, a bundle of twigs and rods used for punishment, then for sweeping (hence, ‘broom’); fig., a weapon to sweep away something undesirable.
44. But it is not only with regard to ancient nations that the providential dispensations of God are utterly incomprehensible to us: the same difficulties occur now. We cannot account for his present dealings with the inhabitants of the earth. We know, the 02:579Lord is loving unto every man, and that his mercy is over all his works.
Ps. 145:9 (BCP).
I.e., Hindustan, or India. Besides the general reports, Wesley was much impressed by William Bolt’s melancholy Considerations on the Affairs of India (1772-75); cf. JWJ, Feb. 23, 1776. Home criticism of British rule in India had begun to mount, with the seven-year-long impeachment of Warren Hastings already foreshadowed. Cf. No. 61, ‘The Mystery of Iniquity’, §33. Notice also how, in §35, ‘ruffians’, ‘wolves’, and ‘bears’ are linked in Charles’s hymn (where he uses ‘beasts’); see below, John’s revision in this same paragraph.
55. And who cares for thousands, myriads, if not millions of the wretched Africans? Are not whole droves of these poor sheep (human if not rational beings!) continually driven to market, and sold like cattle into the vilest bondage, without any hope of deliverance but by death?
A detestation of slavery was part of Wesley’s lifelong concern for the oppressed. Cf., e.g., his comment on 1 Tim. 1:10 in Notes, denouncing ‘traders in Negroes, procurers of servants for America’. He borrowed heavily from Anthony Benezet’s Historical Account of Guinea (1771). They both agreed that ‘slavery under the pagan Romans and infidel Turks was more tolerable than in the Christian exploitation of African slaves for the Spanish and English colonies’ (Benezet, VI.63-71); see also, Wesley’s extract of Benezet in Thoughts Upon Slavery, 1774 (Bibliog, No. 350; Vol. 15 of the edn.). In A Seasonable Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain (Bibliog, No. 359; Vol. 15 of this edn.), he argues that ‘one principal sin of our nation is the blood we have shed in Asia, Africa, and America…. The African [slave] trade is iniquitous from first to last. It is the price of blood! It is a trade of blood, and has stained our land with blood!’
Cf. also JWJ, Apr. 14, 1777, and Mar. 1788; and his letters to Samuel Hoare, Aug. 18, 1787; Granville Sharp, Oct. 11, 1787; Henry Moore, Mar. 14, 1790; and William Wilberforce, Feb. 24, 1791.
‘Hottentots’ was the generic label for natives of southern Africa. Much had been written about them by the frequent travellers who stopped over at the Cape of Good Hope. ‘The late writer’ cited here was Peter Kolben, in The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope (1731); cf. IV.36. But even Kolben’s evaluation of them is ambivalent; see, e.g., pp. 47, 56, 330-31. Cf. Wesley’s No. 28, ‘Sermon on the Mount, VIII’, §9 and n.
Cf. Kolben, ibid., pp. 331-32. In Bond’s edn. of The Spectator, III.461, n. 1, there is a reference to John Maxwell’s comment in his ‘Account of the Cape of Good Hope’ (Philos. Trans. No. 310, 1707), that the Hottentots have ‘no notion of God’. They are also discussed in William Dampier’s Voyages (1703), and by various writers in the Collection of Voyages (1704) or A. and J. Churchill. Cf. also, Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I.2 (intro.). See also No. 105, ‘On Conscience’, I.4; and the Doctrine of Original Sin, I.ii.2 (Vol. 12 of this edn.).
66. How little better is either the civil or religious state of the poor American Indians!
Cf. No. 38. ‘A Caution against Bigotry’, I.9 and n.
The second largest island in the Caribbean (after Cuba) named Española by Columbus; it is now divided between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
77. However, the inhabitants of Europe are not in so deplorable a condition. They are in a state of civilization. They have useful laws and are governed by magistrates. They have religion. They are Christians. I am afraid, whether they are called Christians or not, many of them have not much religion. What say you to thousands of Laplanders,
Cf. No. 38, ‘A Caution against Bigotry’, I.4 and n.
Wesley’s spelling: ‘Samoeids’—i.e., the Finno-Asian neighbours of the Laplanders and Finns in the Archangel district (Nenets) of what is now the extreme northwest corner of the USSR.
Cf. John 3:16.
88. Is there not something equally mysterious in the divine dispensation with regard to Christianity itself? Who can explain why Christianity is not spread as far as sin? Why is not the medicine sent to everyplace where the disease is found? But alas! it is not; ‘the sound of it is’ not now ‘gone forth into all lands’!
Cf. Ps. 19:4 (BCP).
Another echo of Brerewood; see No. 15, The Great Assize, II.4 and n. In any of his value judgments, the Wesley whose conscious evangel was ‘Universal Redemption’ (as on the masthead of his Magazine) also makes an unselfconscious correlation between British Christianity at its best and Christianity as such.
See Luke 18:4.
99. Equally incomprehensible to us are many of the divine dispensations with regard to particular families. We cannot at all comprehend why he raises some to wealth, honour, and power; and why in the meantime he depresses others with poverty and 02:582various afflictions. Some wonderfully prosper in all they take in hand, and the world pours in upon them; while others with all their labour and toil can scarce procure daily bread. And perhaps prosperity and applause continue with the former to their death; while the latter drink the cup of adversity to their life’s end—although no reason appears to us either for the prosperity of the one or the adversity of the other.
1010. As little can we account for the divine dispensations with regard to individuals. We know not why the lot of this man is cast in Europe, the lot of that man in the wilds of America; why one is born of rich or noble, the other of poor parents; why the father and mother of one are strong and healthy, those of another weak and diseased; in consequence of which he drags a miserable being all the days of his life, exposed to want, and pain, and a thousand temptations from which he finds no way to escape. How many are from their very infancy hedged in with such relations that they seem to have no chance (as some speak), no possibility of being useful to themselves or others? Why are they, antecedent to their own choice, entangled in such connections? Why are hurtful people so cast in their way that they know not how to escape them? And why are useful persons hid out of their sight, or snatched away from them at their utmost need? O God, how unsearchable are thy judgments or counsels! Too deep to be fathomed by our reason: ‘and thy ways’ of executing those counsels ‘not to be traced’
Cf. Rom. 11:33.
III. 1. Are we able to search out his works of grace any more than his works of providence? Nothing is more sure than that ‘without holiness no man shall see the Lord.’
Cf. Heb. 12:14.
‘New Land’. Two bleak islands in the Barents Sea off the northern coast of Siberia; now spelt Novaya Zemlya. Cf. Addison, The Free-Holder, No. 5 (Jan. 6, 1716), where he compares the inhabitants of Nova Zembla and the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope.
Ps. 65:5 (BCP).
2. I desire it may be observed that if this be improved into an objection against revelation it is an objection that lies full as much against natural as revealed religion.
For Wesley’s comments on ‘natural religion’, see No. 1, Salvation by Faith, I.1 and n. But notice the resemblance between this turn of Wesley’s argument and the central thesis of Joseph Butler’s Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed (1736); thus far had it become standard and thus far Wesley shared this aspect of Anglican rationalism; see Irène Simon, Three Restoration Divines, I.i.75-148.
Cf. No. 23, ‘Sermon on the Mount, III’, I.11 and n.
3. Even among us who are favoured far above these—to whom are entrusted the oracles of God,
Cf. No. 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, §2 and n.
See Ps. 119:105 (BCP).
4. It is doubtless the peculiar prerogative of God to reserve the ‘times and seasons in his own power’.
Cf. Acts 1:7.
5. There is likewise great variety in the manner and time of God’s bestowing his sanctifying grace,
Note the definition here, and cf. No. 19, ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’, §2 and n.
Cf. Deut. 30:6.
Cf. Eph. 4:30.
Cf. Rom. 8:27.
1IV. [1.] Several valuable lessons we may learn from a deep consciousness of this our own ignorance. First, we may learn 02:585hence a lesson of humility: not to think of ourselves, particularly with regard to our understanding, ‘more highly than we ought to think’; but ‘to think soberly’,
Cf. Rom. 12:3.
Cf. 1 John 2:20, 27.
See Job 32:8.
2[2.] From hence we may learn, secondly, a lesson of faith, of confidence in God. A full conviction of our own ignorance may teach us a full trust in his wisdom. It may teach us (what is not always so easy as one would conceive it to be) to trust the invisible God farther than we can see him! It may assist us in learning that difficult lesson, ‘to cast down’ our own ‘imaginations’ (or reasonings rather, as the word properly signifies), to ‘cast down every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.’
Cf. 2 Cor. 10:5.
Cf. 1 Cor. 4:5.
3[3.] From a consciousness of our ignorance we may learn, thirdly, a lesson of resignation.
Cf. No. 22, ‘Sermon on the Mount, II’, I.4 and n.
Matt. 26:39.
John 19:30.
Phil. 3:10.
Bristol, March 5, 1784
Place and date as given in AM.
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Entry Title: Sermon 69: The Imperfection of Human Knowledge