Notes:
Sermon 73: Of Hell
This is a sermon on yet another topic about which Wesley had previously written very little and which, apparently, had not bulked large in his oral preaching save as it mirrored the conventional eschatological ideas of the day. As early as 1731, in Oxford, he had preached from Mark 9:48; he had used the same text again in 1770. Still later, in 1788, he would produce another sermon on hell and heaven (see No. 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’). In all of these his views of hell and perdition were wholly conventional; already he had, as a matter of course, included the phrase, ‘descended into hell’ in the text of the Apostles’ Creed in his revision of the Order of Morning Prayer in The Sunday Service (1784), and he would never have approved its omission by the American Methodists (1786 and thereafter). When Wesley’s references to hell (here and elsewhere) are compared to a classical Puritan statement like Jonathan Edwards’s famous ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ (first preached in 1741 and then published as Sermon XV in Sermons on Various Subjects, 1765), Wesley’s emphases seem low-keyed. But when compared to a more direct source (viz., Isaac Watts, Discourses XII and XIII on Mark 9:46, in The World to Come… [1745], in Works, I.705-52), the resemblances are striking. If anything, Wesley’s tone is more severe than Watts’s.
‘Of Hell’ was finished on October 10, 1788, at Newport on the Isle of Wight; it was, therefore, written on the road during a regular preaching mission (cf. JWJ, October 7-11). One may guess that it was written expressly for inclusion in the Arminian Magazine since it promptly appeared there, without a title but numbered as ‘Sermon XII’ in the ensuing issues (Vol. V, 1782, November and December, pp. 565-69, 623-32)—i.e., before the twin sermons on angels. In SOSO, VI, he reversed this order and placed ‘Of Hell’ after the other two (i.e., pp. 147-69). It was reprinted separately in 1789 and 1790, with a different title, ‘The Eternity of Hell Torments’. What is more distinctive than the doctrines in this sermon are Wesley’s applications of them, and his obvious efforts to update them with illustrations both from the traditional sources and contemporary ones as well.
03:031Wesley had already included an eschatological discourse on 2 Pet. 3:10-13, by James Knight, in his own collected Works (1773), XX.290-321; cf. Knight, A Discourse on the Conflagration and Renovation of the World (1736). A copy of Wesley’s extract is still extant—in the Methodist Archives in the John Rylands Library, Manchester—in a hand closely resembling Wesley’s own (but probably by John Jones). It had the following quaint superscript that would date from somewhere toward the end of the nineteenth century:
“The celebrated John Wesley gave this to a Mr. Whitney who gave it to Ann Livingston of Deptford, who, after giving it to Mrs. Eleanor Smith, she in her turn, gave it to John Overton of Rose Cottage, Kings Road, Chelsea.” Of HellMark 9:48
Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
11. Every truth which is revealed in the oracles of God is undoubtedly of great importance. Yet it may be allowed that some of those which are revealed therein are of greater importance than others, as being more immediately conducive to the grand end of all, the eternal salvation of men. And we may judge of their importance even from this circumstance, that they are not mentioned once only in the sacred writings, but are repeated over and over. A remarkable instance of this we have with regard to the awful truth which is now before us. Our blessed Lord, who uses no superfluous words, who makes no ‘vain repetitions’,
Matt. 6:7.
See Heb. 12:1.
22. And let it not be thought that the consideration of these terrible
truths is proper only for enormous sinners. How is this supposition consistent
with what our Lord speaks to those who were then doubtless the holiest men upon
earth? ‘When innumerable multitudes were gathered together, he said to his
disciples’ (the apostles) ‘first of all, I say unto you, my friends, Fear not
them that can kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I
say unto you, Fear him who after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell;
yea, I say unto you, Fear him!’
Luke 12:1, 4-5.
Luke 16:28.
33. It behoves therefore not only the outcasts of men but even ‘you, his friends’, you that fear and love God, deeply to consider what is revealed in the oracles of God concerning the future state of punishment. How widely distant is this from the most elaborate accounts which are given by the heathen authors! Their accounts are (in many particulars at least) childish, fanciful, and self-inconsistent. So that it is no wonder they did not believe themselves, but only related the tales of the vulgar. So Virgil strongly intimates, when, after the laboured account he had given of the shades beneath, he sends him that had related it out at the ivory gate, through which (as he tells us) only dreams pass; thereby giving us to know that all the preceding account is no more than a 03:033dream.
Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, vi.893-98:
Sunt geminae Somni portae; quarum altera, fertur
Cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris,
Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,
Sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes.
His ubi tum natum Anchises unaque Sibyllam
Prosequitur dictis portaque emittit eburna.
Dryden’s translation (which Wesley had in mind) stresses the image of ‘the ivory gate’:
Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;
Of polish’d iv’ry this, that of transparent horn:
True visions thro’ transparent horn arise;
Thro’ polish’d iv’ry pass deluding lies,
Of various things discoursing as he pass’d,
Anchises hither bends his steps at last
Then, thro’ the gate of iv’ry, he dismiss’d
His valiant offspring and divining guest.
Virgil’s source was Homer, Odyssey, xix.562-67; cf. also No. 132, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:1’, §16.
Juvenal, Satires, ii. 149,152: ‘There are [stories about] the Manes [ghosts and infernal deities] and the underworld…that children do not believe except those too young to be allowed in the public baths.’ The Latin quotation, with a slightly different translation, is repeated in No. 132, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:1’, §17. Hesiod also speaks of ‘spiritual creatures’ which Milton then versifies; see No. 70, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, II.1 and n.
‘Even our children do not believe a word of the tales concerning another world.’
44. Here, on the contrary, all is worthy of God the Creator, the Governor of mankind. All is awful and solemn, suitable to his wisdom and justice by whom ‘Tophet was ordained of old’;
Cf. Isa. 30:33.
Matt. 25:41.
The punishment of those who in spite of all the warnings of God resolve to have their portion with the devil and his angels
Ibid.
Cf. one of Wesley’s favourite essays, Thomas Boston, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State (1720), State IV, Head VI, pp 424 ff. The idea, however, comes from a familiar scholastic distinction between the punishment of bereavement and deprivation (poena damni), i.e., of what had been valued in this life, and the active punishment of the bodily senses (poena afflictiva seu sensus). Cf. Thomas, Summa Theologia, Appendix I, Q. 2, Art. 1 [Respondeo], and cf. R. J. Deferrari (ed), A Lexicon of St. Thomas (1948), 844, for definitions and citations from Thomas. The idea, of course, runs back to patristic eschatology, cf. the article on ‘Hölle’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche.
1I. 1. And, first, let us consider the poena damni, the punishment of loss. This commences in that very moment wherein the soul is separated from the body; in that instant the soul loses all those pleasures, the enjoyment of which depends on the outward senses. The smell, the taste, the touch delight no more; the organs that ministered to them are spoiled, and the objects that used to gratify them are removed far away. In the dreary regions of the dead all these things are forgotten; or, if remembered, are only remembered with pain, seeing they are gone for ever. All the pleasures of the imagination are at an end.
For more instances of this phrase, ‘pleasures of the imagination’, see No. 44, Original Sin, II.10 and n.
See Matt. 8:12; 13:42.
Dan. 12:2.
22. Thus are they totally separated from all the things they were fond of in the present world. At the same instant will commence another loss—that of all the persons whom they loved. They are torn away from their nearest and dearest relations, their wives, husbands, parents, children, and (what to some will be worse than all this) the friend which was as their own soul.
See 1 Sam. 18:1, 3; 20:17; and No. 47, ‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations’, III.4.
The thesis of J.-P. Sartre, Huis Clos (Paris, Gallimard, 1947); translated by Stuart Gilbert as No Exit (New York, Knopf, 1948).
Milton, Paradise Lost, ii.496-97.
03:035does not affirm that there is any concord among the human fiends that inhabit the great abyss.
33. But they will then be sensible of a greater loss than that of all they enjoyed on earth. They have lost their place in Abraham’s bosom,
Luke 16:22.
Rev. 2:7.
Ezek. 28:13; 31:8, 9.
44. But as happy as the souls in paradise are, they are preparing for far greater happiness. For paradise is only the porch of heaven; and it is there the spirits of just men are made perfect.
See Heb. 12:23. In Wesley’s eschatology, paradise was regarded as only ‘the ante-chamber of heaven’(cf. Nos. 84, The Important Question, II.4; and 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, I.3 and n.); he sharply distinguished this from what he understood of the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory.
See Ps. 16:11 (AV).
Augustine, Confessions, I.i; cf. No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Steepest’, II.5 and n.
2 Thess. 1:9.
Such is the loss sustained by those miserable creatures on whom that awful sentence will be pronounced, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed!’
Matt. 25:41.
1II. 1. From the time that sentence was pronounced upon man, ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,’
Cf. Gen. 3:19.
22. The first thing intended by the worm that never dieth seems to be a guilty conscience, including self-condemnation, sorrow, shame, remorse, and a sense of the wrath of God. May not we have some conception of this by what is sometimes felt even in the present world? Is it not of this chiefly that Solomon speaks when he says, ‘The spirit of a man may bear his infirmities’, his infirmities or griefs of any other kind, ‘but a wounded spirit who can bear?’
Cf. Prov. 18:14.
See Job 6:4.
See Job 7:15.
Cf. Homer, Odyssey, xi.576-81. Tityus was ‘a son of Earth’ whose body covered ‘nine acres’ and who was punished for his assault upon Leto by having two vultures to tear away at his liver. This is to be distinguished from the more familiar Promethean myth in Hesiod’s Theogony where, for stealing fire from heaven and giving it to man, Prometheus is punished by being chained to a rock where an eagle gnawed away at his liver even as it was also continually renewed. Cf. Theogony, 559-86 for the story of the ‘crime’ and 521-25 for the ‘punishment’; cf. also No. 84, The Important Question, III.10. In No. 15, The Great Assize, III.2, Wesley defines pride, malice, revenge, rage, horror, despair as the ‘dogs of hell’.
33. We may observe a remarkable difference in the manner wherein our Lord speaks concerning the two parts of the future punishment. He says, ‘Where their worm dieth not’ of the one; ‘where the fire is not quenched’ of the other. This cannot be by chance. What then is the reason for this variation of the expression?
Does it not seem to be this? ‘The fire’ will be the same, essentially the same, to all that are tormented therein—only perhaps more intense to some than others, according to their degree of guilt. But ‘their worm’ will not, cannot be the same. It will be infinitely varied according to the various kinds as well as degrees of wickedness. This variety will arise partly from the just judgment of God, ‘rewarding every man according to his works’.
Cf. Matt. 16:27.
1 Cor. 3:8.
The phrase, ‘incommunicably his own, according to “his own labours”’, is omitted in SOSO (1788) and subsequent edns.
44. But it has been questioned by some whether there be any fire in hell—that is, any material fire. Nay, if there be any fire it is unquestionably material. For what is immaterial fire? The same as immaterial water or earth! Both the one and the other is absolute nonsense, a contradiction in terms. Either therefore we must affirm it to be material, or we deny its existence. But if we 03:038granted them there is no fire at all there, what would they gain thereby? Seeing this is allowed on all hands, that it is either fire or something worse. And consider this: does not our Lord speak as if it were real fire? No one can deny or doubt of this. Is it possible then to suppose that the God of truth would speak in this manner if it were not so? Does he design to fright his poor creatures? What, with scarecrows? With vain shadows of things that have no being? O let not anyone think so! Impute not such folly to the Most High!
55. But others aver ‘It is not possible that fire should burn always. For by the immutable law of nature it consumes whatever is thrown into it. And by the same law, as soon as it has consumed its fuel, it is itself consumed; it goes out.’
It is most true that in the present constitution of things, during the present laws of nature, the element of fire does dissolve and consume whatever is thrown into it. But here is the mistake: the present laws of nature are not immutable.
An echo of Malebranche’s ‘occasionalism’, which Wesley found more congenial for apologetic purposes than the Newtonian world-view of ‘[physical] laws’. Cf. Wesley’s letter to ‘John Smith’, June 25, 1746, §7; see also Malebranche’s Treatise Concerning the Search After Truth (1964), VI.ii.3.
See Matt. 24:35, etc.
66. I say, ‘If it were true that fire consumes all things now.’ But indeed it is not true. Has it not pleased God to give us already some proof of what will be hereafter? Is not the linum asbestum, the incombustible flax, known in most parts of Europe?
Chambers’s Cyclopaedia has a two-column article on asbestos and Wesley has more than two pages on it in the Survey (1777), II.319-21. See also Peter Sterry, Free Grace Exalted (1670), p. 12: ‘They say of the Romans of old that they had a sort of linen that would not be burnt in the fire, and after they had burned their dead as was their custom, they took up the bones and wrapt them in that linen and therein burnt them to ashes unmixed from the common ashes.’ See also No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §7 and n.
In the Survey, ibid., an experiment with the attempted burning of ‘a handkerchief of [asbestos]’ is reported. The reference to the British Museum applies to the Sir Hans Sloane Collection which, in Wesley’s time, was in the great buildings on Great Russell Street. In 1826 this collection (with the ‘towel or handkerchief’ to which Wesley refers) was transferred to the new Museum of Natural History on West Cromwell Road.
77. Many writers have spoken of other bodily torments added to the being cast into the lake of fire. One of these, even pious Kempis, supposes that misers, for instance, have melted gold poured down their throats; and he supposes many other particular torments to be suited to men’s particular sins.
A puzzle; no such reference appears in Kempis, although there is a passage where it would have been relevant; cf. Imitation, i.24 (see Wesley’s translation, The Christian’s Pattern, 1735, pp. 56-61). Nor has any other likely source been located. For other references to Kempis, see No. 55, On the Trinity, §1 and n.
Milton, Paradise Lost, ii.596.
Ibid., 599.
Isa. 33:14.
88. This is strongly illustrated by a fabulous story, taken from one of the eastern writers, concerning a Turkish king who, after he had been guilty of all manner of wickedness, once did a good thing; for seeing a poor man falling into a pit, wherein he must have inevitably perished, and kicking him from it, he saved his life. The story adds that when for his enormous wickedness he was cast into hell, that foot wherewith he had saved the man’s life was permitted to lie out of the flames.
π; source not identified.
Rev. 19:20.
0III. It remains now only to consider two or three circumstances attending the never-dying worm and the unquenchable fire.
11. And first consider the company wherewith everyone is surrounded in that place of torment. It is not uncommon to hear even condemned criminals in our public prisons say, ‘O! I wish I was hanged out of the way, rather than to be plagued with these wretches that are round about me.’ But what are the most abandoned wretches upon earth, compared to the inhabitants of hell? None of these are as yet perfectly wicked, emptied of every spark of good; certainly not till this life is at an end; probably not till the day of judgment. Nor can any of these exert without control their whole wickedness on their fellow-creatures. Sometimes they are restrained by good men; sometimes even by bad. So even the torturers in the Roman Inquisition are restrained by those that employ them when they suppose the sufferer cannot endure any more. They then order the executioners to forbear; because it is contrary to the rules of the house that a man should die upon the rack.
Wesley’s knowledge of the Inquisition, apart from the common store of anti-Roman lore from which this detail probably comes, was largely based on Michael Geddes, A View of the Inquisition of Portugal; with a list of the Prisoners which came out of the Inquisitions of Lisbon, in an Act of Faith (1682), in Miscellaneous Tracts (1730), I.385-443; and Samuel Chandler, The History of Persecution (1736). See also Nos. 82, ‘On Temptation’, II.2; and 91, ‘On Charity’, III.10.
Cf. Job 38:11.
See Matt. 18:34.
22. Consider, secondly, that all these torments of body and soul are without intermission. They have no respite from pain; but ‘the smoke of their torment ascendeth up day and night.’
Cf. Rev. 14:11.
Mark Le Pla, A Paraphrase on the Song of the Three Children, st. 21, ll. 7-8 (cf. Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems [1744], II.119).
Cf. Edward Young, Night Thoughts, i.1 (Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems [1744], II.229); ‘Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep!’
steals upon us by insensible degrees, and brings an interval of ease. But although the damned have uninterrupted night, it brings no interruption of their pain. No sleep accompanies that darkness: whatever either ancient or modern poets, either Homer or Milton, dream, there is no sleep either in hell or heaven.
See No. 51, The Good Steward, II.10 and n.
Again. The inhabitants of earth are frequently diverted from attending to what is afflictive by the cheerful light of the sun, the vicissitudes of the seasons, ‘the busy hum of men’,
Milton, L’Allegro, l. 118. Cf. Wesley’s Preface to Sermons (1746), §5, where he speaks of ‘the busy ways of men’.
George Frederick Handel, Samson, An Oratorio (1742):
Total eclipse: No sun, no moon,
All dark amidst the blaze of noon!
Cf. Milton, Samson Agonistes, ll. 80-81.
no change of seasons or of companions.
See above, I.2: ‘no friendship in hell’.
Pope, Essay on Man, i.197-98.
33. And of this duration there is no end! What a thought is this! Nothing but eternity is the term of their torment! And who can count the drops of rain, or the sands of the sea, or the days of eternity? Every suffering is softened if there is any hope, though distant, of deliverance from it. But here,
Milton, Paradise Lost, i.66-67; see also No. 84, The Important Question, II.7.
the inhabitants of the upper world! What, sufferings never do end!
Cf. The Last Day, iii.156-57; see No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §15 and n.
Suppose millions of days, of years, of ages elapsed; still we are only on the threshold of eternity! Neither the pain of body nor of soul is any nearer at an end than it was millions of ages ago. When they are once cast into τὸ πῦρ τὸ ἄσβεστον
Mark 9:43.
Cf. No. 72, ‘Of Evil Angels’, II.10.
Mark 9:44, 46, 48. Cf. No. 15, The Great Assize, III.1, where endless torment is also affirmed.
03:043Such is the account which the Judge of all
Heb. 12:23.
Luke 12:4-5.
What a guard may these considerations be against any temptation from pleasure! Will you lose, for any of these poor, earthly pleasures which perish in the using (to say nothing of the present substantial pleasures of religion), the pleasures of paradise, such ‘as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into our hearts to conceive’?
Cf. 1 Cor. 2:9.
Heb. 12:23.
See Ps. 36:8.
See Ps. 16:11 (AV).
Are you tempted by pain either of body or mind? O compare present things with future. What is the pain of body which you do or may endure, to that of lying in a lake of fire burning with brimstone?
Rev. 19:20.
See Luke 16:28.
I conclude with one more reflection, taken from Dr. Watts:
“03:044It demands our highest gratitude that we who have long ago deserved this misery are not yet plunged into it, while there are thousands who have been adjudged to this place of punishment before they had continued so long in sin as many of us have done. What an instance is it of divine goodness that we are not under this fiery vengeance! Have we not seen many sinners, on our right and left, cut off in their sins? And what but the tender mercy of God hath spared us week after week, month after month, and given us space for repentance? What shall we render unto the Lord for all his patience and long-suffering, even to this day? How often have we incurred the sentence of condemnation by our repeated rebellion against God? And yet we are still alive in his presence, and are hearing the words of hope and salvation. O let us look back and shudder at the thoughts of that dreadful precipice, on the edge of which we have so long wandered! Let us fly for refuge to the hope that is set before us, and give a thousand thanks to the divine mercy that we are not plunged into this perdition.An abridgement and paraphrase of Watts’s longer and more graceful ‘Reflection V’, in his Discourse XII, ‘The Nature of the Punishments in Hell’ (on Mark 9:46), in The World to Come…; see Works, I.724.
Newport, Isle of Wight, Oct. 10, 1782
Place and date as in AM.
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Entry Title: Sermon 73: Of Hell