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Sermon 111: National Sins and Miseries

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon111

03:564 An Introductory Comment

Wesley had been bred up as a Tory and remained one all his life. He could even define the term (in 1785) in much the same sense as his father and elder brother before him: ‘one who believes God, not the people, to be the origin of all civil power’.

See his letter to Gent’s Mag., Dec. 24, 1785; see also his Thoughts concerning the Origin of Power (1772).

From this ‘divine right’ premise, it followed that he recoiled as vigorously from John Wilkes’s populism as from his radical secularism.

See Wesley, Free Thoughts on the Present State of Public Affairs (1770); for an account of the Wilkes affair by a historian who was also interested in Wesley and Methodism, see W. E. H. Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (1892), III.242-345.

And it also followed equally that he had deplored the rising clamour among the American colonists for what he could only regard as a false ‘liberty’. Suiting deeds to thought, he issued a whole series of adverse judgments upon the American Revolution, including a paraphrase of Samuel Johnson’s Taxation No Tyranny (1775) that gained a wider audience for Johnson’s views than the original.

See Wesley, A Calm Address to our American Colonies, 1775 (Bibliog, No. 354, Vol. 15 of this edn.).

That these pamphlets had stirred a storm of controversy goes without saying but, by the same token, it may also be taken for granted that Wesley went on unmoved; see Some Observations on Liberty (1776), A Calm Address to the Inhabitants of England (1777), A Serious Address to the People of England (1778), etc.

The opening battles of the new revolution had come in April 1775—at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill—and had resulted in an unexpectedly large number of English casualties. Almost as if by reflex, such events had rekindled Wesley’s dread and horror of yet another ‘civil war’, Briton against Briton.

Cf. Robertson, England under the Hanoverians, pp. 251-68.

Thus, when an invitation came to him to deliver a ‘charity sermon’ at St. Matthew’s Church (Bethnal Green) on November 12, 1775, for the benefit of the widows and orphans of these early victims of the war, he was glad to respond. But, quite contrary to his custom, he wrote out a manuscript in full (dated November 7), organizing his political sentiments around his providential view of 03:565history: viz., a nation’s ‘miseries’ are the bitter fruit of a nation’s ‘sins’. His mood at this time is reflected in the Journal entry for Saturday, November 11:

“I made some additions to the Calm Address to Our American Colonies. Need anyone ask from what motive this was wrote? Let him look round: England is in a flame—a flame of malice and rage against the King and almost all that are in authority under him. I labour to put out this flame. Ought not every true patriot do the same? If hireling writers on either side judge of me by themselves, that I cannot help.

Wesley had been accused of currying favour with the king: ‘…one hand stretched out to the King, the other raised up to God’; see Gent’s Mag., 1775, p. 561.

”

The sermon’s actual occasion is then recorded as follows:

“Sunday, 12. I was desired to preach, in Bethnal Green Church, a charity sermon…. Knowing how many would seek offence, I wrote down my sermon. I dined with Sir John Hawkins and three other gentlemen that are in commission for the peace;

I.e., local Justices of the Peace.

and was agreeably surprised at a very serious conversation, kept up during the whole time I stayed.”

The sermon was promptly printed, as A Sermon preached at St. Matthew’s, Bethnal Green, on Sunday, Nov. 12, 1775. It was reissued in a second edition nine years later (1784). Its present title was supplied by Thomas Jackson in 1825. For further bibliographical details, see Bibliog, No. 356.

03:566 National Sins and Miseries

2 Samuel 24:17

Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done?

11. The chapter begins, ‘And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.’

2 Sam. 24:1.

‘Again’—it had been kindled against them but a few years before; in consequence of which ‘there had been a famine in the land three years’, year after year, till ‘David inquired of the Lord’, and was taught the way of appeasing it.

Chap. 21:1.

We are not informed in what particular manner Israel had now offended God, by what particular cause his anger was kindled, but barely with the effect. ‘He moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.’ ‘He’—not God! Beware how you impute this to the fountain of love and holiness! It was not God, but Satan, who thus moved David.

An exegesis determined by a theological bias: the bare text of 2 Sam. 24:1 leaves the translator no option with respect to the antecedent of ‘he’; it is God. But Wesley knew the difficulties here and implies that 1 Chr. 21:1 establishes the sense of 2 Sam. 24:1. He also knew the juggling act attempted by Poole, Annotations, on 2 Sam. 24:1, and Henry’s conclusion in his Exposition that despite what the text might seem to say, still ‘God is not the author of sin; he tempts no man.’

So the parallel Scripture expressly declares: ‘And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.’

1 Chr. 21:1.

‘Satan stood’ before God to accuse David and Israel, and to beg God’s permission to tempt David.

An echo of Job 1:6-12.

Standing is properly the accuser’s posture before the tribunals of men. And therefore the Scripture, which uses to speak of the things of God after the manner of men, represents Satan as appearing in this posture before the tribunal of God. ‘And David said to Joab, and to the rulers of the people, Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring the number of them to me, that I may know it.’

Ver. 2.

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22. It does not clearly appear wherein the sin of thus numbering the people consisted. There is no express prohibition of it in any of the Scriptures which were then extant. Yet we read, ‘The king’s word was abominable to Joab,’

Ver. 6.

who was not a man of the tenderest conscience, so that he expostulated with David before he obeyed. ‘Joab answered, Why doth my lord require this thing? Why will he be a cause of trespass’—of punishment or calamity—‘to Israel?’

1 Chr. 21:3.

God frequently punishes a people for the sins of their rulers, because they are generally partakers of their sins in one kind or other. And the righteous Judge takes this occasion of punishing them for all their sins. In this Joab was right; for after they were numbered it is said, ‘And God was displeased with this thing.’

1 Chr. 21:7.

Yea, ‘David’s heart smote him, and he said unto the Lord, I have sinned greatly in that I have done: and now, I beseech thee, O Lord, take away the iniquity of thy servant.’

2 Sam. 24:10.

Did not the sin lie in the motive on which the thing was done? Did he not do it in the pride of his heart?

See No. 14, The Repentance of Believers, I.3 and n.

Probably out of a principle of vanity and ostentation, glorying not in God, but in the number of his people.

33. In the sequel we find that even Joab was for once a true prophet: David was ‘a cause of trespass’, of punishment, ‘to Israel’. His sin, added to all the sins of the people, filled up the measure of their iniquities. So ‘the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel, from the morning’—wherein Gad the prophet gave David his choice of war, famine, or pestilence

See 2 Sam. 24:13.

—‘unto the evening of the third day.’ ‘And there died of the people from Dan unto Beersheba seventy thousand men.’

Ver. 15.

‘And when David saw the angel that smote the people’, who appeared in the form of a man with a drawn sword in his hand,

See Josh. 5:13; this particular detail is not in the 2 Sam. story.

to convince him the more fully that this plague was immediately from God, ‘he said, Lo, I have sinned, I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done?’

44. Is there not in several respects a remarkable resemblance between the case of Israel and our own? General wickedness then 03:568occasioned a general visitation; and does not the same cause now produce the same effect? We likewise have sinned, and we are punished; and perhaps these are only the beginning of sorrows.

See Matt. 24:8.

Perhaps ‘the angel’ is now ‘stretching out his hand over’ England to destroy it. O that the Lord would at length say to him that destroyeth, ‘It is enough; stay now thine hand!’

Cf. 2 Sam. 24:16.

55. That vice is the parent of misery, few deny; it is confirmed by the general suffrage of all ages. But we seldom bring this home to ourselves: when we speak of sin as the cause of misery we usually mean the sin of other people, and suppose we suffer because they sin. But need we go so far? Are not our own vices sufficient to account for all our sufferings? Let us fairly and impartially consider this: let us examine our own hearts and lives. We all suffer: and we have all sinned. But will it not be most profitable for us to consider every one his own sins as bringing sufferings both on himself and others? To say, ‘Lo, I have sinned, I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done?’

1I. 1. Let us inquire, first, what they suffer. And afterwards, what is the cause of these sufferings. That the people suffer none can deny, that they are afflicted in a more than ordinary manner. Thousands and tens of thousands are at this day deeply afflicted through want of business. It is true that this want is in some measure removed in some large and opulent towns. But it is also true that this is far, very far, from being the general case of the kingdom. Nothing is more sure than that thousands of people in the west of England—throughout Cornwall in particular—in the north, and even in the midland counties, are totally unemployed. Hence those who formerly wanted nothing are now in want of all things. They are so far from the plenty they once enjoyed that they are in the most deplorable distress, deprived not only of the conveniences, but most of the necessaries of life. I have seen not a few of these wretched creatures, within little more than an hundred miles of London, standing in the streets with pale looks, hollow eyes, and meagre limbs; or creeping up and down like walking shadows. I have known families who a few years ago lived in an easy, genteel manner, reduced to just as much raiment as they had on, and as much food as they could gather in the field. 03:569To this one or other of them repaired once a day, to pick up the turnips which the cattle had left; which they boiled, if they could get a few sticks, or otherwise ate them raw. Such is the want of food to which many of our countrymen are at this day reduced by want of business.

Wesley knew as much of rural England at first hand as any other man of his time, and his observations of the adverse economic (and human) effects of the Industrial Revolution are scattered through his Journal and Letters during the 1770s; cf., e.g., JWJ, Oct. 27, 1772; Dec. 21, 1772; Jan. 7, 1773; and his letters to Mrs. Barton, Jan. 21, 1773; and to Lord North, June 14, 1775; see also Thoughts on the Present Scarcity of Provisions, Jun. 20, 1773 (Bibliog, No. 344, Vol. 15 of this edn.). Something of the same picture appears in William Cobbett, Rural Rides (1830); William Marshall, A General Survey…of the Rural Economy of England (1787-98); F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor (1797), which forms the background for T. R. Malthus’s gloomy Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Cf. Samuel Johnson’s comments that support Wesley’s observations reported in Boswell’s Life of Johnson (Oct. 20, 1769; Apr. 6, 1772; and Mar. 30, 1778). See also George Rudé, Hanoverian London, 1714-1808, pp. 191 ff.

22. Grievous enough is this calamity, which multitudes every day suffer. But I do not know whether many more do not labour under a still more grievous calamity. It is a great affliction to be deprived of bread; but it is a still greater to be deprived of our senses. And this is the case with thousands upon thousands of our countrymen at this day. Widespread poverty (though not in so high a degree) I have seen several years ago. But so widespread a lunacy I never saw, nor I believe the oldest man alive. Thousands of plain, honest people throughout the land are driven utterly out of their senses by means of the poison which is so diligently spread through every city and town in the kingdom. They are screaming out for liberty while they have it in their hands,

An echo of Wesley’s favourable comments on the character and government of George III; in addition to the citations already given, see A Word to a Freeholder (Bibliog, No. 139, Vol. 14 of this edn.); and ‘How Far is it the Duty of a Christian Minister to Preach Politics?’ in AM (1782), V.151-52.

while they actually possess it; and to so great an extent that the like is not known in any other nation under heaven; whether we mean civil liberty, a liberty of enjoying all our legal property, or religious liberty, a liberty of worshipping God according to the dictates of our own conscience. Therefore all those who are either passionately or dolefully crying out, ‘Bondage! Slavery!’ while there is no more danger of any such thing than there is of the sky falling upon their head, are utterly distracted; their reason is gone; their intellects are quite confounded. Indeed many of these have lately recovered their senses; yet are there multitudes 03:570still remaining who are in this respect as perfectly mad as any of the inhabitants of Bedlam.

The Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem (London), used since the sixteenth century as an asylum for the mentally deranged; hence by extension ‘a lunatic asylum’. The original Bedlam was situated near London Wall, not far from Wesley’s headquarters in Upper Moorfields.

33. Let not anyone think this is but a small calamity which is fallen upon our land. If you saw, as I have seen, in every county, city, town, men who were once of a calm, mild, friendly temper, mad with party zeal,

Cf. James Thomson, The Seasons, ‘Spring’, l. 929: ‘And honest zeal, unwarped by party-rage’.

foaming with rage against their quiet neighbours, ready to tear out one another’s throats, and to plunge their swords into each other’s bowels; if you had heard men who once feared God and honoured the king

See 1 Pet. 2:17.

now breathing out the bitterest invectives against him, and just ripe, should any occasion offer, for treason and rebellion; you would not then judge this to be a little evil, a matter of small moment, but one of the heaviest judgments which God can permit to fall upon a guilty land.

44. Such is the condition of Englishmen at home. And is it any better abroad? I fear not. From those who are now upon the spot I learn that in our colonies,

In the early stages of resistance to British rule in America Wesley had commented favourably on American demands for civil liberties; see his letter to the Earl of Dartmouth, June 14, 1775: ‘I cannot avoid thinking (if I think at all) that an oppressed people asked for nothing more than their legal rights, and that in the most modest and inoffensive manner which the nature of the thing would allow;’ see also his letter to Lord North, June 15, 1775. But when the colonists raised the cry of independence, Wesley turned against them.

also, many are causing the people to drink largely of the same deadly wine; thousands of whom are thereby inflamed more and more, till their heads are utterly turned, and they are mad to all intents and purposes. Reason is lost in rage; its small still voice is drowned by popular clamour. Wisdom is fallen in the streets.

See Isa. 59:14.

And where is the place of understanding?

Job 28:12, 20.

It is hardly to be found in these provinces. Here is slavery, real slavery indeed, most properly so called. For the regular, legal, constitutional form of government is no more. Here is real, not imaginary, bondage; not the shadow of English liberty is left. Not only no liberty of the press is allowed—none dare print a page or a line unless it be exactly conformable to the sentiments of our lords, the people—but no liberty of speech. Their ‘tongue’ is not ‘their own’.

Cf. Acts 2:8.

None must dare to utter one word 03:571either in favour of King George, or in disfavour of the idol they have set up—the new, illegal, unconstitutional government, utterly unknown to us and to our forefathers. Here is no religious liberty; no liberty of conscience for them that ‘honour the King’, and whom consequently a sense of duty prompts them to defend from the vile calumnies continually vented against him. Here is no civil liberty; no enjoying the fruit of their labour any further than the populace pleases. A man has no security for his trade, his house, his property, unless he will swim with the stream. Nay, he has no security for his life if his popular neighbour has a mind to cut his throat. For there is no law, and no legal magistrate to take cognizance of offences. There is the gulf of tyranny—of arbitrary power on one hand, and of anarchy on the other.

An echo of Horace Walpole’s dictum that ‘the name of the opposition is anarchy’, cited in Robertson, England Under the Hanoverians, p. 265.

And, as if all this were not misery enough, see likewise the fell monster, war!

See No. 128, ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’, II.4, where Wesley, quoting from Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane, Act I, sc. 1, ll. 96-100, speaks of ‘that foul monster, war’. For his other comments on war, see No. 22, ‘Sermon on the Mount, II’, III.18 and n.

But who can describe the complicated misery which is contained in this? Hark! The cannons roar! A pitchy cloud covers the face of the sky. Noise, confusion, terror, reign over all! Dying groans are on every side. The bodies of men are pierced, torn, hewed in pieces; their blood is poured on the earth like water! Their souls take their flight into the eternal world; perhaps into everlasting misery. The ministers of grace turn away from the horrid scene; the ministers of vengeance triumph. Such already has been the face of things in that once happy land where peace and plenty, even while banished from great part of Europe, smiled for near an hundred years.

55. And what is it which drags on these poor victims into the field of blood? It is a great phantom which stalks before them, which they are taught to call, ‘liberty’! It is this which breathes

…into their hearts stern love of war,

And thirst of vengeance, and contempt of death.

Cf. Samuel Wesley, Jun., ‘The Battle of the Sexes’, vi.6-8 (Poems, 1736, p. 24):

Male banners wave, while sounding trumpets’ breath

Kindles in martial breasts stern love of war,

Delib’rate valour, and contempt of death.

See also John Wesley, A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), III.21.

03:572

Real liberty, meantime, is trampled underfoot, and is lost in anarchy and confusion.

66. But which of these warriors all the while considered the wife of his youth, that is now left a disconsolate widow—perhaps with none that careth for her; perhaps deprived of her only comfort and support, and not having where to lay her head? Who considered his helpless children, now desolate orphans; it may be, crying for bread, while their mother has nothing left to give them but her sorrows and her tears?

II. 1. And yet ‘these sheep, what have they done’, although all this is come upon them? ‘Suppose ye that’ they are ‘sinners above other men, because they suffer such things? I tell you, Nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.’

Cf. Luke 13:2-3.

It therefore behoves us to consider our own sins—the cause of all our sufferings. It behoves each of us to say, ‘Lo, I have sinned; I have done wickedly.’

2 Sam. 24:17.

2. The time would fail should I attempt to enumerate all the ways wherein we have sinned; but in general, this is certain:

The rich, the poor, the high, the low,

Have wandered from his mild command;

The floods of wickedness o’erflow,

And deluge all the guilty land:

People and priest lie drowned in sin,

And Tophet yawns to take them in.

See John and Charles Wesley, Hymns for Times of Persecution (London, 1744), n. 4 (Poet. Wks., IV.4).

How innumerable are the violations of justice among us! Who does not adopt the old maxim,

“ Si possis, recte; si non, quocunque modo rem:

Horace, Epistles, I.i.65-66; cf. No. 95, ‘On the Education of Children’, §19 and n.

“If you can get money honestly, do; but, however, get money.” ”

Where is mercy to be found, if it would stand in opposition to interest? How few will scruple, for a valuable consideration, to oppress the widow or fatherless?

See Zech. 7:10.

And where shall we find truth? Deceit and fraud go not out of our streets. Who is it that speaks 03:573the truth from his heart? Whose words are the picture of his thoughts? Where is he that has ‘put away all lying’,

Cf. Eph. 4:25.

that never speaks what he does not mean? Who is ashamed of this? Indeed it was once said, and even by a statesman, ‘All other vices have had their patrons; but lying is so base, so abominable a vice, that never was anyone found yet who dared openly to plead for it.’

Cf. No. 100, ‘On Pleasing All Men’, I.4, where Wesley identifies Addison.

Would one imagine this writer lived in a court? Yea, and that in the present century? Did not he himself, then, as well as all his brother statesmen, plead for a trade of deliberate lying? Did he not plead for the innocence, yea, and the necessity, of employing spies? The vilest race of liars under the sun? Yet who ever scrupled using them, but Lord Clarendon?

Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon (1604-74), whose History of the Rebellion (1702-4) Wesley had read in 1726 and had often recommended (cf. his letter to Samuel Furly, Mar. 7, 1758; and JWJ, Oct 18, 1774). On this point of spies and spying (and an explanation of how spies had come to be called ‘lions’), cf. Addison’s essay in The Guardian, No. 17, June 2, 1713; see also his remarks about the Earl of Clarendon in The Spectator, No. 439, July 24, 1712. Actually, of course, Clarendon’s scruples were not strong enough to prevent his making use of them; see T. H. Lister, Life and Administration of Edward, first Earl of Clarendon (1838), Vol. 2.

33. O truth, whither art thou fled? How few have any acquaintance with thee? Do not we continually tell lies for the nonce, without gaining thereby either profit or pleasure? Is not even our common language replete with falsehood? Above an hundred years ago the poet complained,

It never was good day

Since lowly fawning was called compliment.

Cf. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, III.i.109-10:

’Twas never merry world

Since lowly feigning was called compliment.

In this context ‘fawning’ is clearly the wrong word; it may have been a printer’s misreading; but see No. 90, ‘An Israelite Indeed’, II.8 and n.

What would he have said had he lived a century later, when that art was brought to perfection?

44. Perhaps there is one palpable evidence of this which is not usually attended to. If you blame a man in many other respects, he is not much affronted. But if you say he is a liar, he will not bear it; he takes fire at once. Why is this? Because a man can bear to be blamed when he is conscious of his own innocence. But if you say 03:574he is a liar you touch a sore spot; he is guilty, and therefore cannot bear it.

55. Is there a character more despicable than even that of a liar? Perhaps there is; even that of an epicure. And are we not a generation of epicures? Is not our ‘belly’ our ‘god’?

Cf. Phil. 3:19.

Are not eating and drinking our chief delight, our highest happiness? Is it not the main study (I fear, the only study) of many honourable men to enlarge the pleasure of tasting?

See No. 50, ‘The Use of Money’, II.2 and n.

When was luxury (not in food only, but in dress, furniture, equipage) carried to such an height in Great Britain, ever since it was a nation? We have lately extended the British empire almost over the globe. We have carried our laurels into Africa, into Asia, into the burning and the frozen climes of America. And what have we brought thence? All the elegance of vice which either the eastern or western world could afford.

66. Luxury is constantly the parent of sloth.

Cf. Plato, Republic, IV.422: ‘Wealth is the parent of luxury and sloth….’ But see also the proverb in Nicholas Ling, Politeuphuia, Wits Common-wealth (1699): ‘Sloth is the mother of poverty.’ In No. 89, ‘The More Excellent Way’, III.1, Wesley had said that sloth is inconsistent with religion; see also No. 113, The Late Work of God in North America, I.14.

Every glutton will in due time be a drone. The more of meat and drink he devours, the less taste will he have for labour. This degeneracy of the Britons from their temperate, active forefathers, was taken notice of in the last century. But if Mr. Herbert then said,

“O England, full of sin, but most of sloth,

George Herbert, The Temple, ‘The Church Porch’, ver. 16, l. 1.

”

what would he have said now? Observe the difference between the last and the present century, only in a single instance. In the last, the Parliament used to meet hora quinta ante meridiem!

π;There is another reference to this alleged custom in Wesley’s Estimate of the Manners of the Present Times, §1: ‘With regard to sloth, it was the constant custom of our ancestors to rise at four in the morning. This was the stated hour, summer and winter, for all that were in health. The two Houses of Parliament met “at five”; hora quinta antemeridiana, says their Journal.’ A proper citation for this is lacking.

—at five in the morning. Could these Britons look out of their graves, what would they think of the present generation?

77. Permit me to touch on one article more wherein indeed we excel all the nations upon earth. Not one nation under the canopy of heaven can vie with the English in profaneness. Such a total 03:575neglect, such an utter contempt of God, is nowhere else to be found. In no other streets, except in Ireland, can you hear on every side,

…the horrid oath, the direful curse,

That latest weapon of the wretch’s war,

And blasphemy, sad comrade of despair!

Cf. Prior, ‘Henry and Emma’, ll. 464-66, beginning, ‘Must hear the frequent oath, the direful curse.’ See also, A Serious Address to the People of England, §9 (Bibliog, No. 386, Vol. 15 of this edn.).

88. Now let each of us lay his hand upon his heart and say, ‘Lord, is it I?

Matt. 26:22.

Have I added to this flood of unrighteousness and ungodliness, and thereby to the misery of my countrymen? Am not I guilty in any of the preceding respects? And do not they suffer because I have sinned?’ If we have any tenderness of heart, any bowels of mercies,

Col. 3:12.

any sympathy with the afflicted, let us pursue this thought till we are deeply sensible of our sins as one great cause of their sufferings.

9. But now the plague is begun, and has already made such ravages both in England and America, what can we do in order that it may be stayed? How shall we stand between the living and the dead? Is there any better way to turn aside the anger of God than that prescribed by St. James, ‘Purge your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded’?

Cf. Jas. 4:8.

First, ‘Purge your hands’. Immediately put away the evil of your doings. Instantly flee from sin, from every evil word and work, as from the face of a serpent.

Rev. 12:14.

‘Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth,’

Eph. 4:29.

no uncharitable, no unprofitable conversation. Let no guile be found in your mouth:

See 1 Pet. 2:22.

speak to every man the truth from your heart. Renounce every way of acting, however gainful, which is contrary either to justice or mercy. Do to everyone as, in parallel circumstances, you would wish he should do unto you.

See Matt. 7:12.

Be sober, temperate, active; and in every word and work labour to have a conscience void of offence toward God and toward man.

See Acts 24:16.

Next, through the almighty grace of him that loved you and gave himself for you,

See Gal. 2:20.

‘purify your hearts by faith.’

Cf. Acts 15:9.

Be no longer 03:576double-minded, halting between earth and heaven, striving to serve God and mammon.

See Matt. 6:24.

Purify your hearts from pride, humbling yourselves under the mighty hand of God;

See 1 Pet. 5:6.

from all party zeal, anger, resentment, bitterness, which now especially will easily beset you; from all prejudice, bigotry, narrowness of spirit; from impetuosity, and impatience of contradiction; from love of dispute, and from every degree of an unmerciful or implacable temper. Instead of this ‘earthly, devilish wisdom’ let ‘the wisdom from above’ sink deep into your hearts; that ‘wisdom’ which ‘is first pure’, then ‘peaceable, easy to be entreated’, convinced, persuaded, or appeased, ‘full of mercy and good fruits; without partiality’, embracing all men; ‘without hypocrisy’,

Jas. 3:15, 17.

genuine and unfeigned. Now, if ever, ‘putting away with all malice, all clamour’—railing—‘and evil-speaking; be ye kind one to another’, to all your brethren and countrymen; ‘tenderhearted’ to all that are in distress, ‘forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.’

Cf. Eph. 4:31-32.

10. And now ‘let my counsel be acceptable to you’, to every one of you present before God. ‘Break off thy sins by repentance, and thy iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility’

Cf. Dan. 4:27.

—of what degree of it still remains among us. Show mercy more especially to the poor widows, to the helpless orphans of your countrymen who are now numbered among the dead, who fell among the slain in a distant land. Who knoweth but the Lord will yet be entreated, will calm the madness of the people, will quench the flames of contention, and breathe into all the spirit of love, unity, and concord. Then brother shall not lift up sword against brother, neither shall they know war any more.

See Isa. 2:4; Mic. 4:3.

Then shall plenty and peace flourish in our land, and all the inhabitants of it be thankful for the innumerable blessings which they enjoy, and shall ‘fear God, and honour the king’.

Cf. 1 Pet. 2:17.

London, Nov. 7, 1775

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