Notes:
Sermon 78: Spiritual Idolatry
This is another pair of sermons that belong together. They were written in the same fortnight and on the same text, 1 John 5:20-21; they were then quickly published in sequence in the Arminian Magazine as ‘Sermons II and III’. Their shared theme is the very fundament of all Wesley’s theology: the valid worship of the one true God incarnate in the Son, and the folly of ‘spiritual idolatry’, which is to say, any other focus of human devotion than God in Christ. Together, they add up to a single essay in a Christocentric doctrine of spirituality. What is not so clear, however, is their placement (along with their sequel ‘On Dissipation’) in SOSO, VI, very far past the point where they could have served a schematic purpose as an essay in fundamental theology.
‘Spiritual Worship’, without that title, is dated in London on December 22, 1780. This, of course, would have been in the still tense aftermath of the tragic Gordon Riots of the previous June.
See John Paul De Castro, The Gordon Riots (Oxford Univ. Press, 1926); George Rudé, Hanoverian London, 1714-1808, pp. 178-79, 221-26; and Leslie Stephen’s article on Lord George Gordon [‘agitator’] in DNB.
Cf. JWJ, entries for Nov. 5 through Dec. 29, 1780, espec. Dec. 16, and his letter of Mar. 23, 1780, to Freeman’s Journal, reprinted in AM, IV.295-300.
‘Spiritual Idolatry’ was dated January 5, 1781, also in London, and is clearly a sequel to ‘Spiritual Worship’. It was also as clearly written for the Arminian Magazine as one of two parts of a basic theme. This 03:089impression is reinforced by the fact that there is only a single reference to 1 John 5:21 as a preaching text before 1780 (and only two to 1 John 5:20). It moves beyond conventional notions to the classical view of idolatry as the ‘idolizing of any human creature’ or anything like supreme devotion to any other good than God. Then it focuses on Wesley’s favourite text about sin: the famous triplex concupiscentia of 1 John 2:16, and the folly of life on any other terms than wholehearted piety to God. For other references to idolatry, cf. Nos. 44, Original Sin, II.7; 127, ‘On the Wedding Garment’, §12; and 128, ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’, I.4; see also Wesley’s letter to Samuel, Jun., for a comment on an early sermon on the idolatry of the Samaritans (December 5, 1726); and A Word to a Protestant (Bibliog, No. 113; Vol. 14 of this edn.).
The two sermons were published in succession, without titles, in the first volume of the Arminian Magazine to introduce Wesley’s original sermons, 1781: in March and April for ‘Spiritual Worship’ (IV.129-36, 184-89), and May and June for ‘Spiritual Idolatry’ (IV.242-50, 300-3). Titles were supplied for their republication in SOSO, VI—‘Spiritual Worship’, pp. 239-60, and ‘Spiritual Idolatry’ pp. 261-80. There is no record of any other editions of them during Wesley’s lifetime.
03:103 Spiritual Idolatry1 John 5:21
Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
11. There are two words that occur several times in this epistle, παιδία
1 John 2:13, 18.
1 John 3:10; 5:2.
But consult the lexicons (cf., e.g., Arndt and Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon, and Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon); Wesley’s translation is barely possible, but certainly not obvious.
22. An ancient historian relates that when the Apostle was so enfeebled by age as not to be able to preach he was frequently brought into the congregation in his chair, and just uttered, ‘Beloved children, love one another.’
Cf. Jerome, Commentary on Galatians (6:10), in Migne, PL, XXVI.462.
33. Indeed there is a close connection between them: one cannot subsist without the other. As there is no firm foundation for the love of our brethren except the love of God, so there is no possibility of loving God except we ‘keep ourselves from idols’.
But what are the idols of which the Apostle speaks? This is the first thing to be considered. We may then, in the second place, inquire how shall we keep ourselves from them.
1I. 1. We are first to consider, What are the idols of which the Apostle speaks? I do not conceive him to mean, at least not principally, 03:104the idols that were worshipped by the heathens. They to whom he was writing, whether they had been Jews or heathens, were not in much danger from these. There is no probability that the Jews now converted had ever been guilty of worshipping them. As deeply given to this gross idolatry as the Israelites had been for many ages, they were hardly ever entangled therein after their return from the Babylonish Captivity. From that period the whole body of Jews had shown a constant, deep abhorrence of it. And the heathens, after they had once turned to the living God, had their former idols in the utmost detestation. They abhorred to touch the unclean thing; yea, they chose to lay down their lives rather than return to the worship of those gods whom they now knew to be devils.
22. Neither can we reasonably suppose that he speaks of those idols that are now worshipped in the Church of Rome; whether angels, or the souls of departed saints, or images of gold, silver, wood, or stone. None of these idols were known in the Christian Church till some centuries after the time of the apostles. Once, indeed, St. John himself ‘fell down to worship before the face of an angel’
Cf. Rev. 22:8.
I.e., St. Michael.
Rev. 22:9.
33. Setting then pagan and Romish idols aside, what are those of which we are here warned by the Apostle? The preceding words show us the meaning of these. ‘This is the true God’—the end of all the souls he has made, the centre of all created spirits—‘and eternal life,’
1 John 5:20.
Prov. 23:26.
44. Take an instance that occurs almost every day: a person who has been long involved in the world, surrounded and fatigued with abundance of business, having at length acquired an easy fortune, disengages himself from all business and retires into the country—to be happy. Happy in what? Why, in taking his ease. For he intends now,
Horace, Satires, II.vi.61-62: ‘now with sleep and idle hours, to quaff sweet forgetfulness of life’s cares’. Cf. also An Earnest Appeal, §41 (11:60 in this edn.), and An Estimate of the Manners of the Present Times, §1 (Bibliog, No. 426, Vol. 15 of this edn.).
Happy in eating and drinking whatever his heart desires: perhaps more elegant fare than that of the old Roman who feasted his imagination
Cf. below, I.7, 8, 12; also No. 44, ‘Original Sin’, II.10 and n.
Horace, Satires, II.vi.63-64: ‘O quando faba, Pythagorae, cognata simulque uncta satis pingui ponentur oluscula lardo!’ ‘O when shall beans, brethren of Pythagoras, be served me and, with them, greens [cabbage?] well larded with fat bacon!’ Cf. Wesley’s translation in JWJ, Nov. 5, 1766.
Happy—in altering, enlarging, rebuilding, or at least decorating, the old mansion-house he has purchased; and likewise in improving everything about it, the stables, outhouses, grounds. But meantime where does God come in? Nowhere at all. He did not think about him. He no more thought of the King of heaven than of the King of France. God is not in his plan. The knowledge and love of God are entirely out of the question. Therefore this whole scheme of happiness in retirement is idolatry from beginning to end.
55. If we descend to particulars, the first species of this idolatry is what St. John terms ‘the desire of the flesh’.
The triplex concupiscentia again; see No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.2 and n.
For Epicurus as a sort of eponym, cf. No. 9,‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, I.2 and n.
66. But we must not imagine this species of idolatry is confined to the rich and great. In this also ‘the toe of the peasant’ (as our poet speaks) ‘treads upon the heel of the courtier.’
Cf. Shakespeare, Hamlet, V.i.153: ‘The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.’ For other variations on this quotation, see Wesley’s letter to the Editor of Lloyd’s Evening Post, Dec. 9, 1772, and also his Thoughts on the Present Scarcity of Provisions, I.6 (Bibliog, No. 344, Vol. 15 of this edn).
6. The second species of idolatry mentioned by the Apostle is ‘the desire of the eye’;
1 John 2:16; see I.5, above.
Cf. above, I.4 and n.
For a continuing discussion of novelty, cf. the following paragraphs as well as No. 25, ‘Sermon on the Mount, V’, §1 and n.
Cf. No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §8 and n.
Cf. Prior, Solomon, iii.160, ‘The ocean rolling, and the shelly shore’; see also Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), I.169.
03:107give to one who has been long accustomed to it? Yea, what pleasure do we generally receive from the grandest object in the universe,
Cf. Prior, Solomon, i.638-40, beginning ‘This fair half-round, this ample azure sky’. See also Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), I.115; and No. 103,‘What is Man? Ps. 8:3-4’, §2.
88. Beautiful objects are the next general source of the pleasures of the imagination—the works of nature in particular. So persons in all ages have been delighted
Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv.140 (‘a sylvan scene’), and viii.262-63:
See No. 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, I.4 and n.
Others are pleased with adding art to nature, as in gardens with their various ornaments; others with mere works of art, as buildings and representations of nature, whether in statues or paintings. Many likewise find pleasure in beautiful apparel or furniture of various kinds. But novelty must be added to beauty, as well as grandeur, or it soon palls upon the sense.
99. Are we to refer to the head of beauty the pleasure which many take in a favourite animal—suppose a sparrow, a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog? Sometimes it may be owing to this. At other times none but the person pleased can find any beauty at all in the favourite. Nay, perchance it is in the eye of all other persons superlatively ugly. In this case the pleasure seems to arise from mere whim or caprice—that is, madness.
1010. Must we not refer to the head of novelty, chiefly, the pleasure found in most diversions and amusements; which, were we to repeat them daily but a few months would be utterly flat and insipid? To the same head we may refer the pleasure that is taken in collecting curiosities;
An echo from a recent Journal entry (for Dec. 22, 1780): ‘At the desire of some of my friends, I accompanied them to the British Museum. What an immense field is here for curiosity to range! One large room is filled from top to bottom with things brought from Otaheite [Tahiti]; two or three more with things dug out of the ruins of Herculaneum [first excavated in 1738]. Seven huge apartments are filled with curious books, five with manuscripts, two with fossils of all sorts, and the rest with various animals. But what account will a man give to the Judge of the quick and dead for a life spent in collecting all these?’
1111. But it is not chiefly to novelty that we are to impute the pleasure we receive from music. Certainly this has an intrinsic beauty, as well as frequently an intrinsic grandeur. This is a beauty and grandeur of a peculiar kind, not easy to be expressed; nearly related to the sublime and the beautiful in poetry, which give an exquisite pleasure.
An echo from Edmund Burke’s famous Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756), which Wesley had read.
1212. From the study of languages, from criticism, and from history, we receive a pleasure of a mixed nature. In all these there is always something new; frequently something beautiful or sublime. And history not only gratifies the imagination
Cf. above, I.4 and n.
Cf. James Beattie, ‘The Minstrel’, I.lv.8-9:
In JWJ, Dec. 16, 1775, Wesley adjudges Beattie (1735-1803) as ‘certainly one of the best poets of the age. He wants only the ease and simplicity of Mr. Pope. I know one, and only one, that has it.’ This one, presumably, would have been his brother Charles. Beattie’s ‘Retirement’ and ‘Hermit’ appeared in AM, Dec. 1778 and Oct. 1786.
1313. The love of novelty is immeasurably gratified by experimental philosophy; and, indeed, by every branch of natural philosophy, which opens an immense field for still new discoveries. But is there not likewise a pleasure therein, as well as in mathematical and metaphysical studies, which does not result from the imagination, but from the exercise of the understanding? Unless we will say that the newness of the discoveries which we make by mathematical or metaphysical researches is one reason 03:109at least, if not the chief, of the pleasure we receive therefrom.
1414. I dwell the longer on these things because so very few see them in the true point of view. The generality of men, and more particularly men of sense and learning, are so far from suspecting that there is, or can be, the least harm in them, that they seriously believe it is matter of great praise to ‘give ourselves wholly to them’.
1 Tim. 4:15.
William Derham (1657-1735), rector of Upminster in Essex (1689-1735), Fellow of the Royal Society, Canon of Windsor (1716-35). His Physico-Theology (1713) and Astro-Theology (1715) greatly influenced William Paley, and Wesley claimed to have included the substance of Derham’s work in his own Survey; cf. his letter to Miss M. Lewen in AM (1780), pp. 602-4. Wesley’s quotation from Derham may have come to him from oral tradition since it does not appear in Derham’s published writings, or in Leslie Stephen’s life of Derham in the DNB, or in Eleazar Albin’s Natural History of English Insects (1724), to which Derham contributed notes. Incidentally, The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Essex (1903-56), I.136-43, lists fifty-four species of butterflies as having been identified in Essex, at the turn of the twentieth century.
Cf. No. 20, The Lord Our Righteousness, II.20 and n.
1515. The third kind of ‘love of the world’ the Apostle speaks of under that uncommon expression, ἡ ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου.
1 John 2:16; see I.5, above.
John 5:44.
1603:11016. But what creates a difficulty here is this: we are required, not only to ‘give no offence to anyone’,
Cf. 2 Cor. 6:3.
Rom. 12:17.
Cf. Rom. 15:2.
Cf. Rom. 14:16.
1717. To which of the preceding heads is ‘the love of money’
1 Tim. 6:10.
The texts in AM and in SOSO, VI, read ‘distant’, and no alteration is made in the printed errata or Wesley’s own copy of the former. Jackson (1825) altered it to read ‘distinct’, however, and this may have come from Wesley’s revised copy of SOSO, VI, now missing. The original text does read ‘distinct’ in the opening sentence of I.18.
18. I would take notice of only one more, which, though it in some measure falls in with several of the preceding, yet in many respects is distinct from them all, I mean the idolizing any human creature. Undoubtedly it is the will of God that we should all love one another. It is his will that we should love our relations and our Christian brethren with a peculiar love; and those in particular whom he has made particularly profitable to our souls. These we are commanded to ‘love fervently’—yet still ‘with a pure heart’.
Cf. 1 Pet. 1:22.
Cf. Matt. 19:26.
See Rom. 1:25.
Matt. 19:6.
Cf. Prior, ‘Henry and Emma’, 710. Wesley had published this poem in the Sept. issue of AM (1779), II.481-96. Some of his readers complained that it ‘was not strictly religious’. Wesley’s extended response to such a criticism is an interesting reflection of his own theology of culture (see ‘To the Reader’, AM, 1780, III.iv-v).
That is: ‘I desire nothing more but thee! Thou art the thing that I long for! All my desire is unto thee, and unto the remembrance of thy name.’ Now if this is not flat idolatry I cannot tell what is!
II. Having largely considered what those idols are of which the Apostle speaks, I will come now to inquire (which may be done more briefly) how we may ‘keep ourselves from them’.
1. In order to this I would advise you, first, be deeply convinced that none of them bring happiness; that no thing, no person under the sun—no, nor the amassment of all together—can give any solid, satisfactory happiness to any child of man. The world itself, the giddy, thoughtless world, acknowledge this unawares, while they allow, nay, vehemently maintain, ‘No man upon earth is contented.’ The very same observation was made near two thousand years ago.
03:112Horace, Satires, I.i.1-3. Is the translation here Wesley’s own? It is neither Pope’s nor Dryden’s. Loeb translates: ‘No man living is content with the lot which either his choice has given him or chance has thrown in his way.’
And if no man upon earth is contented, it is certain no man is happy. For whatever station we are in, discontent is incompatible with happiness.
22. Indeed not only the giddy but the thinking part of the world allow that no man is contented, the melancholy proofs of which we see on every side, in high and low, rich and poor. And generally, the more understanding they have, the more discontented they are. For,
Matthew Prior, Solomon, iii.345-46, beginning ‘To know’; cf. Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), I.174. See also, Sermon 125, ‘On a Single Eye’, II.5, where Wesley again quotes these lines as well as the two preceding.
It is true, everyone has (to use the cant term of the day—and an excellent one it is) his ‘hobby-horse’!
I.e., a child’s plaything; cf. Horace, Satires, II.iii.247-49, and Erasmus, In Praise of Folly (‘Epistle to More’), p. xviii. But Wesley also uses the term to mean ‘a chamber horse’ for exercise: ‘If you have no other [horse] you should daily ride a wooden horse, which is only a double plank nine or ten feet long, properly placed upon two vessels. This has removed many distempers and saved abundance of lives’ (cf. letters to Mrs. Christian, July 17, 1785; Samuel Bradburn, Mar. 13, 1788; and Sarah Wesley, Aug. 18, 1790).
Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, i.95-96. Cf. also Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), I.305, with the footnote added: ‘Yes, blessed is the man whose iniquity is forgiven, and his sin covered’ (cf. Ps. 32:1).
Still he is walking in a vain shadow which will soon vanish away!
See Ps. 39:7.
See Augustine, Confessions, I.i; cf. also No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Steepest’, II.5 and n.
Prov. 14:6.
3. When you are thoroughly convinced of this I advise you, secondly, stand and consider what you are about. Will you be a fool and a madman all your days? Is it not high time to come to your senses? At length awake out of sleep, and shake yourself from the dust! Break loose from this miserable idolatry, and ‘choose the better part.’
Cf. Luke 10:42.
Matt. 22:4.
Cf. Job 22:21.
4. But do not either resolve or attempt to execute your resolution trusting in your own strength. If you do you will be utterly foiled. You are not able to contend with the evil world, much less with your own evil heart, and least of all with the powers of darkness. Cry therefore to the Strong for strength.
See No. 48, ‘Self-denial’, III.4 and n.
Cf. Isa. 26:4.
See 1 Cor. 13:12. For Wesley’s notion of repentance as self-knowledge, cf. No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.1 and n.
55. What should you ask for next?
Cf. John and Charles Wesley, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’, st. 9, ll. 3-4, in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742), p. 205 (Poet. Wks., II.259). See also, A Collection of Hymns (1780), No. 157 (7:277 of this edn.).
Cf. Charles Wesley, Hymn 161, in Hymns for a Family (1767), p. 171 (Poet. Wks., VII.194). Wesley has conflated lines from two verses:
Hast thou not said, ‘If thou canst believe’,
Mark 9:23.
Cf. John 11:40.
Cf. Mark 9:24.
See Heb. 4:9.
See Ps. 45:2 (BCP).
66. From the moment that you begin to experience this, fight the good fight of faith;
1 Tim. 6:12.
See Matt. 11:12.
See Luke 9:23.
See Matt. 5:29.
See Mark 9:23.
See Phil. 4:13.
See Gal. 5:1.
Eph. 6:10.
Eph. 3:19.
London, Jan. 5, 1781
The date and place are added only in AM.
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Entry Title: Sermon 78: Spiritual Idolatry