Notes:
Sermon 90: An Israelite Indeed
This is another sermon prepared expressly for the Arminian Magazine. We have no other data about its context except the interesting fact that Wesley seems to have used John 1:47 as a preaching text but twice—once in 1728 (see No. 138A, ‘On Dissimulation’) and again in 1755. In a way more probing than ‘The More Excellent Way’, this sermon is a discussion of a Christian’s inner motivations and aims, and his outward expressions of Christian benevolence; the illuminating metaphor for all this is Nathanael’s guilelessness. The sermon also serves as Wesley’s belated refutation of the naturalist ethics of Francis Hutcheson and Hutcheson’s claim (along with the deists generally) that the virtues of human benevolence are innate and universal in human nature itself. (See No. 12, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, §5 and n.) One may suppose that Hutcheson’s influence had continued to grow, and Wesley had concluded that a formal rejection was needed, since on Hutcheson’s ground one could dispense with the supernatural aspects of biblical revelation. The sermon first appeared in the Arminian Magazine (July and August 1785), VIII.349-54, 393-98, with no title but numbered as ‘Sermon XXVIII’. It was then included in SOSO, VII.215-31, with its present title apparently lifted from the text. It was not reprinted in Wesley’s lifetime.
03:279 An Israelite IndeedJohn 1:47
Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.
11. Some years ago a very ingenious man, Professor Hutcheson of Glasgow,
Texts in both the AM and SOSO read ‘Hutchinson’, but this is obviously a printer’s error. The reference is to Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746); see above No. 12, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, §5 and n. Wesley secured a copy of An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in the year of its publication (1725); a copy of the third edn. (1729) initialled ‘J. W. 1772. Kingswood’ is still in the library of the Kingswood School where, along with Hutcheson’s Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections with Illustrations Upon the Moral Sense (1726), it had been used as a text.
This is a caricature of Hutcheson’s argument (Pt. II, Concerning Moral Good and Evil); Hutcheson had repeatedly asserted that both virtue and the love of God are fixed in us by our divine Creator; cf. No. 12, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, §5 and n.
22. I cannot see this beautiful essay of Mr. Hutcheson’s in any other light than as a decent, and therefore more dangerous, attack upon the whole of the Christian Revelation;
The quarrel between Wesley and Hutcheson turns upon the issue of the prime motivation for human benevolence (i.e., what is ‘the first and great commandment’?); and Hutcheson does deny that our primary ethical concern is to seek or earn God’s approval of our moral actions. Yet he insists (against Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hobbes, and the deists) that even on naturalistic grounds, ‘Christianity…gives us the truest idea of virtue and recommends the love of God and of mankind as the sum of true religion’ (Inquiry, xix-xx); cf. No. 105, ‘On Conscience’, I.8-10.
Matt. 22:38.
Cf. Mark 12:30.
33. Yet it cannot be denied that this writer himself has a marginal note in favour of Christianity. ‘Who would not wish’, says he, ‘that the Christian Revelation could be proved to be of God? Seeing it is unquestionably the most benevolent institution that ever appeared in the world.’
No such sentence appears in Hutcheson’s published writings; it is, apparently, a tenuous paraphrase by Wesley from Hutcheson’s rare allusions to Christianity as such. Cf. Inquiry, p. 151: ‘Whoever would appeal to the general strain of Christian exhortations will find disinterested love [i.e., benevolence] more inculcated and motives of gratitude more frequently suggested than any others.’ See also pp. 275-76 (1st edn.) and sect. 3, xv. Cf. Nos. 128, ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’, II.8; and 12, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, §5 and n.
44. Another ingenious writer advances an hypothesis totally different from this. Mr. Wollaston, in the book which he entitles, The Religion of Nature Delineated, endeavours to prove that ‘truth is the essence of virtue’, or conformableness to truth.
William Wollaston (1660-1724), a moral philosopher whose fame rests on one book (privately printed in 1722 and first published in 1724). It was yet another variation on the rationalistic ethics of Samuel Clarke, but with a distinctive emphasis on ‘the truth’ as the prime norm for all judgments ‘of moral good and evil’ (sect. I, Theses IV-X). Wollaston’s home was in Charterhouse Square, and Wesley ‘remembers to have seen [him] when I was at school, attending the public service at the Charterhouse chapel’ (No. 106, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:6’, II.2). His alleged quotation does not appear in Wollaston’s text but is a reasonably accurate over-simplification of the basic argument. For example, Wollaston’s second ‘Thesis’ (p. 8) asserts that ‘those [moral propositions] are true which express things as they are…. Truth is the conformity of those words or signs by which things are exprest, to the things themselves.’ If one treats a post as if it were a man, or vice versa, this is more than a mistake; it is morally wrong (p. 15). But this presupposes that rational creatures are competent judges of ‘truth’, without any necessary aid of God’s self-revealed will or ‘law’—and this is what Wesley objects to. Even so, he kept copies of The Religion of Nature Delineated (which he had read first in 1733) in the preaching-house libraries in London, Bristol, and Newcastle (cf. Minutes, Aug. 3, 1745), and he includes it in a list of recommended readings in his edition of John Norris, Reflections Upon the Conduct of Human Life (1741; Bibliog, No. 3). For other references to Wollaston, cf. No. 120, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, §18; and JWJ, July 9, 1737. For ‘natural religion’, see No. 1, Salvation by Faith, I.2 and n.
Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37.
55. However, both of these authors agree, though in different ways, to put asunder what God has joined. But St. Paul unites them together in teaching us to ‘speak the truth in love’.
Cf. Eph. 4:15.
66. But who is it concerning whom our blessed Lord gives this glorious testimony? Who is this Nathanael, of whom so remarkable an account is given in the latter part of the chapter before us? Is it not strange that he is not mentioned again in any part of the New Testament? He is not mentioned again under this name; but probably he had another, whereby he was more commonly called. It was generally believed by the ancients that he is the same person who is elsewhere termed Bartholomew, one of our Lord’s apostles, and one that in the enumeration of them, both by St. Matthew and St. Mark, is placed immediately after St. Philip, who first brought him to his Master. It is very probable that his proper name was Nathanael—a name common among the Jews—and that his other name, Bartholomew, meaning only the son of Ptolemy, was derived from his father, a custom which was then exceeding common among the Jews, as well as the heathens.
Cf. Wesley’s Notes for John 1:45: ‘…Nathanael was probably the same with Bartholomew;’ he is here following Bengel’s Gnomon, lot. cit., and an ancient tradition that thus reconciles John 1:45; John 21:2; Matt. 10:3; and Acts 1:13. But see R. B. Y. Scott, ‘Who Was Nathanael?’ In Expository Times, XXXVIII, No. 2 (Nov. 1926), pp. 93-94, and U. Holzmeister, ‘Nathanael, fuitne idem ac S. Bartholomaeus apostolus?’ in Biblica, XXI (1940), 28-39.
77. By what little is said of him in the context he appears to have been a man of an excellent spirit; not hasty of belief, and yet open to conviction, and willing to receive the truth from whencesoever 03:282it came. So we read (verse 45): ‘Philip findeth Nathanael’ (probably by what we term accident), and said unto him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth. Nathanael saith unto him, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Has Moses spoke, or did the prophets write, of any prophet to come from thence? ‘Philip saith unto him, Come and see,’ and thou wilt soon be able to judge for thyself. Nathanael took his advice, without staying to confer with flesh and blood.
See Gal. 1:16.
John 1:45-49 (Notes).
But what is implied in our Lord’s character of him—‘in whom is no guile’? It may include all that is contained in that advice,
Cf. George Herbert, The Temple, ‘The Church Porch’, II.73-74:
Lie not; but let thy heart be true to God,
Thy mouth to it, thy actions to them both.
See also John Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), I.25.
1I. 1. We may first observe what is implied in having our hearts true to God. Does this imply any less than is included in that gracious command, ‘My son, give me thy heart’?
Cf. Prov. 23:26.
Cf. No. 44, Original Sin, II.10 and n.
1 John 2:16. Cf. No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.2 and n.
Cf. John 5:41, 44.
See No. 87, ‘The Danger of Riches’, II.4 and n.
Cf. Matt. 6:19; see also No. 50, ‘The Use of Money’, intro.
22. But in a more proper sense we give God our heart when we not only seek but find happiness in him. This happiness undoubtedly begins when we begin to know him by the teaching of his own Spirit; when it pleases the Father to reveal his Son in our heart, so that we can humbly say ‘My Lord and my God;’
John 20:28.
Cf. Rom. 8:15-16.
Rom. 5:5.
33. But it has been questioned whether it is the design of God that the happiness which is at first enjoyed by all that know and love him should continue any longer than, as it were, the day of their espousals. In very many, we must allow, it does not; but in a few months, perhaps weeks, or even days, the joy and peace either vanishes at once, or gradually decays. Now if God is willing that their happiness should continue, how is this to be accounted for?
44. I believe, very easily. St. Jude’s exhortation, ‘Keep yourselves in the love of God’,
Jude 21.
Luke 8:18 [cf. also John 10:10].
55. Indeed part of this verse is translated in our version, ‘that which he seemeth to have’. But it is difficult to make sense of this. For if he only seemeth to have this, or any other gift of God, he really hath it not. And if so it cannot be taken away; for no man can lose what he never had. It is plain therefore ὅ δοκεῖ ἔχειν ought 03:284to be rendered ‘what he assuredly hath’.
Luke 8:18 (Notes). Cf. Nos. 43, The Scripture Way of Salvation, §1 and n.; and 82, ‘On Temptation’, §2 and n. See also Wesley’s Notes for 1 Cor. 10:12.
Cf. No. 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’, III.6 and n.
1II. 1. Meantime, as the heart of him that is ‘an Israelite indeed’ is true to God, so his words are suitable thereto. And as there is no guile lodged in his heart, so there is none ‘found in his lips’.
Mal. 2:6; cf. 1 Pet. 3:10.
Cf. Augustine, De Mendacio, iv.5 (Migne, PL, XL.491), or ‘On Lying’, §5, in NPNF, I, III.460.
22. Most casuists, particularly those of the Church of Rome, distinguish lies into three sorts: the first sort is malicious lies; the second, harmless lies; the third, officious lies
Cf. Thomas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 110, Art. 2: ‘Whether lies are rightly divided into Officious, Jocose, and Mischievous lies?’ His answer is affirmative, and in Art. 3 he proceeds to the conclusion that ‘every lie is a sin, as also Augustine declares (Contra Mendac. xiv)’. Cf. Bishop Ezekiel Hopkins, Exposition on the Ten Commandments, which Wesley extracted and printed in 1759 (Bibliog, No. 234): ‘Now lies are usually distinguished into three kinds: the jocular, officious, and pernicious…’. See also Thomas Manton, One Hundred and Ninety Sermons on the 119th Psalm (1681), p. 187: ‘There are three sorts of lies: mendacium jocosum, officiosum, et perniciosum. There’s the sporting lie, tending to our recreation and delight; there’s the officious lie, tending to our own and others’ profit; and there’s the pernicious and hurtful lie, tending to our neighbour’s prejudice.’ Cf. Steele, The Spectator, No. 234, Nov. 28, 1711; and John Tillotson, Works, I.562.
Eph. 4:25.
22. Concerning officious lies, those that are spoken with a design to do good, there have been numerous controversies in the Christian church. Abundance of writers, and those men of renown for piety as well as learning, have published whole volumes upon the subject, and in despite of all opposers, not only maintained them to be innocent, but commended them as meritorious.
Cf. Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium; Or, the Rule of Conscience (1660) Bk. III, ch. ii, ‘Of Laws Penal and Tributary’, Rule V, §§7-11. In §10, Taylor tells of a young Christian in Jerusalem who (by confessing to a deed of which he was not guilty) saved the larger community from execution ‘by an officious and charitable lie…. Himself indeed was put to death…but he saved the lives of all the rest; who, I doubt not, believed that young man to have in heaven a great reward for his piety, and no reproof for his innocent and pious lie;’ cf. Taylor, Works, III.429. The burden of Taylor’s general argument, however, lies heavily against any self-serving form of lying.
Ver. 7-8.
Cf. Augustine, Contra Mendac., xx.41, xv.31-32, vi.15 (Migne, PL, XL.547-48, 539-40, 527), and their parallels in NPNF, I, ‘To Consentius: Against Lying’, III.500, 495-96, 487. Cf. also Wesley, A Farther Appeal, Pt. II, II.24 (11:236 in this edn.).
44. The second thing which is implied in the character of ‘an Israelite indeed’ is sincerity. As veracity is opposite to lying, so sincerity is to cunning. But it is not opposite to wisdom or discretion, which are well consistent with it. ‘But what is the difference between wisdom and cunning? Are they not almost, if not quite, the same thing?’ By no means. The difference between them is exceeding great. Wisdom is the faculty of discerning the best ends, and the fittest means of attaining them. The end of every rational creature is God: the enjoying him in time and in eternity. The best, indeed the only, means of attaining this end is ‘the faith that worketh by love’.
Cf. Gal. 5:6. Cf. also II.11, below, and No. 2, The Almost Christian, II.6 and n.
Cf. Jas. 3:15.
See Rev. 9:11; 20:1; cf. also No. 32, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XII’, I.7 and n.
55. The two great means which cunning uses in order to deceive are simulation and dissimulation.
Cf. Nos. 100, ‘On Pleasing All Men’, I.6; and 138A, ‘On Dissimulation’.
Here Wesley turns a casual counsel of Ovid in Remedia Amoris (‘The Remedies of Love’) into a formal aphorism. Ovid’s advice (I.493) is ‘Et sanum simula…’ (‘Feign to be heart-whole…’) and (I.497) ‘Quod non es, simula, positosque imitare furores’ (‘Feign to be what you are not, and counterfeit an assuaged frenzy’). The distinction between simulare and dissimulare is not Ovid’s. Cf. Johnson, Dictionary, on simulation and his quotation from Robert South: ‘…a deceiving by word is commonly called a lie; deceiving by actions, gestures, or behaviour is called simulation or “hypocrisy”.’
66. ‘But suppose we are engaged with artful men, may we not use silence or reserve, especially if they ask insidious questions, without falling under the imputation of cunning?’ Undoubtedly we may; nay, we ought on many occasions either wholly to keep silence, or to speak with more or less reserve as circumstances may require. To say nothing at all is in many cases consistent with the highest sincerity. And so it is to speak with reserve, to say only a part, perhaps a small part, of what we know. But were we to pretend it to be the whole, this would be contrary to sincerity.
77. A more difficult question than this is, ‘May we not speak the truth in order to deceive?’ Like him of old, who broke out into that exclamation, applauding his own ingenuity, Hoc ego mihi puto palmarium, ut vera dicendo eos ambos fallam
A curious conflation from two different plays of Terence. In The Eunuch, Act V, sc. 4, ll. 929-30, Parmeno boasts of what he hopes to be his ‘veritable masterpiece’ (‘hoc…ego mihi puto palmarium’); in The Self-Tormentor, Act IV, sc. 4, ll. 709-12), Syrus says to Clinia, ‘Here is my prize plan, my masterpiece, my pride and glory, that I’ve such force and cunning in me as by telling the truth to deceive the pair of them [Antiphila and Clitipho]’ (‘huic equidem consilio palmam do: hic me magnifice ecfero, qui vim tantam in me et potestatem habeam tantae astutiae, vera dicendo ut eos ambos fallam’).
Cf. No. 104, ‘On Attending the Church Service’, §17; see also Nos. 138A-C, ‘On Dissimulation’. Cf. JWJ, Aug. 1, 1738; and Wesley’s letter to John Fry, Jan. 1, 1791.
88. Perhaps this is properly termed simplicity. It goes a little farther than sincerity itself. It implies not only, first, the speaking no known falsehood, and secondly, the not designedly deceiving anyone; but thirdly, the speaking plainly and artlessly to everyone when we speak at all—the speaking as little children, in a childlike, though not a childish manner. Does not this utterly 03:288exclude the using any compliments? A vile word, the very sound of which I abhor; quite agreeing with our poet,
Cf. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, III.i.109-10:
’Twas never a merry world
Wesley repeats his emendation of Shakespeare in No. 111, National Sins and Miseries, II.3.
I advise men of sincerity and simplicity never to take that silly word in their mouth; but labour to keep at the utmost distance both from the name and the thing.
99. Not long before that remarkable time,
Another conflation, this one from a poem by his brother, Samuel Wesley, Jun., preserved in Adam Clarke, Memoirs of the Wesley Family (1823), p. 382, and somehow omitted from Poems (1736). Samuel, Jun. was a protégé of Bishop Francis Atterbury and a critic of Sir Robert Walpole; the reference is to Atterbury’s banishment because of his opposition (1715-23) to the new Whig government; cf. Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 1714-1760, pp. 144-45, 174-76. Here is Samuel’s poem with John’s epigrams picked out:
Till banish’d Francis do the same for thee.
several Bishops attacked Bishop Atterbury at once, then Bishop of Rochester, and asked: ‘My lord, why will you not suffer your servants to deny you, when you do not care to see company? It is not a lie for them to say your lordship is not at home; for it deceives no one. Everyone knows it means only, your lordship is busy.’ He replied, ‘My lords, if it is (which I doubt) consistent 03:289with sincerity, yet I am sure it is not consistent with that simplicity which becomes a Christian bishop.’
All the Wesleys were partisans of Bishop Francis Atterbury (1662-1732) and of his Tory churchmanship and politics; they were saddened and outraged by Walpole’s ruthless treatment of him. This anecdote does not appear in Atterbury’s writings or in J. H. Overton’s biography in DNB. One supposes that it was heard and preserved in the family’s painful memories of the tragedy of 1723.
1010. But to return. The sincerity and simplicity of him in whom is no guile have likewise an influence on his whole behaviour; they give a colour to his whole outward conversation; which though it be far remote from everything of clownishness, and ill breeding, of roughness and surliness, yet is plain and artless, and free from all disguise, being the very picture of his heart. The truth and love which continually reign there produce an open front, and a serene countenance. Such as leave no pretence to say, with that arrogant King of Castile, ‘When God made man, he left one capital defect: he ought to have set a window in his breast;’
The ‘arrogant King of Castile’ was probably Alphonso X (El Sabio); see No. 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, II.1 and n. The allusion here to a window in the human breast is an echo of the story of Momus, the Greek god of wit, who was supposed to have said of the human creature fashioned by Prometheus that ‘this new being should have had a window in his breast so that his thoughts might be seen.’ Cf. No. 4, Scriptural Christianity, III.5 and n.
1111. This then is real, genuine, solid virtue. Not truth alone, nor conformity to truth. This is a property of real virtue, not the essence of it. Not love alone, though this comes nearer the mark; for ‘love’ in one sense ‘is the fulfilling of the law’.
Rom. 13:10.
Wesley’s definition of ‘the essence of virtue’, contra Hutcheson (see above, §2 proem). Note especially this correlation of ‘truth and love united’ with ‘virtue or holiness’, as if taken together they were working synonyms.
Ps. 51:6.
1 Tim. 1:15 (BCP, Communion, Comfortable Words).
Cf. Gal. 5:6. Cf. above II.4; and No. 2, The Almost Christian, II.6 and n.
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Entry Title: Sermon 90: An Israelite Indeed