Notes:
Sermon 122: Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity
1After the Korah sermon, Wesley continued his itinerant mission through Ireland. He was in Dublin on June 28, 1789, and in his Journal speaks frankly of his increasing infirmities:
“This day I enter on my eighty-sixth year. I now find I grow old: (1) my sight is decayed so that I cannot read a small print unless in a strong light; (2) my strength is decayed so that I walk much slower than I did some years ago; (3) my memory of names, whether of persons or places, is decayed till I stop a little to recollect them….”2And yet, five weeks later, he is presiding over a lively and harmonious session of the Irish Conference (July 3-7). And, in the midst of all this, he found the time to write down yet another sermon for the Arminian Magazine. Its organization is loose-jointed and its arguments more casual than usual, and yet Wesley’s design is clear enough and the application is as trenchant as ever.
3His larger problem here (and he had reflected on it off and on for fifty years) is the embarrassing disparity between Christianity’s claims and promises (‘a universal remedy for a universal evil’) and its actual performances even at its best. Predestinarian explanations of this disparity had never persuaded him, and thus he had found himself, in characteristic candour, with a most unwelcome paradox: ‘Does it not seem (and yet this cannot be) that Christianity, scriptural Christianity, has a tendency in process of time to undermine and destroy itself?’ Why? Because ‘wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which, in the natural course of thing, must beget riches—and riches naturally beget pride, love of the world, and every temper that is destructive of Christianity’ (§17). Thus Wesley has brought us back around to a favourite ‘cause’: his denunciation of riches and his complaint against the stubborn refusal of the Methodist people to heed him on this pivotal point.
4There is an interesting sidelight here in Wesley’s citation of Edward Brerewood as an expert witness on the global statistics of the religions of the world and of Christianity’s minority status among them. He appeals to Brerewood’s authority as ‘an ingenious and laborious countryman’ of 04:086‘the last century’ who had ‘travelled over a great part of the known world on purpose to inquire…what proportion the Christians bear to the heathens and Mahometans’ (§3).
For other references to Brerewood, cf. Nos. 15, The Great Assize; and 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel.’
5Over against this doubtful appeal to a doubtful authority, however, the reader should note the sermon’s ‘short summaries’; e.g., ‘the analogy of faith’ is defined (§6) more compactly than anywhere else in the entire Wesley corpus. What we have here, then, is an old man’s sermon in which the flashes of his characteristic zeal and wisdom are still being struck off. It was published in 1790 in the July and August issues of the Arminian Magazine.
XIII.343-49, 399-404.
Jeremiah 8:22
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
11. This question, as here proposed by the prophet, relates only to a particular people, the children of Israel. But I would here consider it in a general sense, with relation to all mankind. I would seriously inquire, Why has Christianity done so little good in the world? Is it not the balm, the outward means, which the Great Physician has given to men to restore their spiritual health? Why then is it not restored? You say, Because of the deep and the 04:087universal corruption of human nature. Most true. But here is the very difficulty. Was it not intended by our all-wise and almighty Creator to be the remedy for that corruption? An universal remedy for an universal evil? But it has not answered this intention. It never did. It does not answer it at this day. The disease still remains in its full strength: wickedness of every kind, vice inward and outward in all its forms, still overspread the face of the earth.
22. O Lord God, ‘righteous art thou! Yet let us plead with thee!’
Cf. Jer. 12:1.
See Isa. 60:2.
John and Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740), p. 106 (Poet. Wks., I.288).
33. What a mystery is this! That Christianity should have done so little good in the world! Can any account of this be given? Can any reasons be assigned for it? Does it not seem that one reason it has done so little good is this: because it is so little known? Certainly it can do no good where it is not known. But it is not known at this day to the far greater part of the inhabitants of the earth. In the last century our ingenious and laborious countryman, Mr. Brerewood,
Edward Brerewood; see No. 15, The Great Assize; II.4 and n. Cf. this whole sermon with No. 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’.
44. But why is it that so little advantage is derived from it to the Christian world? Are Christians any better than other men? Are they better than Mahometans or heathens? To say the truth, it is well if they are not worse, worse than either Mahometans or heathens. In many respects they are abundantly worse. But then they are not properly Christians. The generality of these, though they bear the Christian name, do not know what Christianity is. They no more understand it than they do Greek or Hebrew; therefore they can be no better for it. What do the Christians, so called, of the Eastern Church, dispersed throughout the Turkish dominions, know of genuine Christianity? Those of the Morea, of Circassia, Mingrelia, Georgia?
An echo of a similar passage in No. 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’, §5; the references here are to regions in southern Greece and east of the Black Sea.
Cf. Claude Fleury, Manners of the Ancient Israelites, ed., Adam Clarke (1825), p. 52: ‘dregs of the people’.
Cf. John 4:23.
Wesley’s knowledge for such judgments had been gathered from travellers’ reports and from his own insular and Anglican perspectives. He was, however, eye-witness to the waning vitality of the fides historica in eighteenth-century Europe, under the pressures of the ‘Enlightenment’.
55. But is not Christianity well known at least to all the inhabitants of the western world? A great part of which is eminently termed Christendom, or the land of Christians.
‘Christendom’ had rarely connoted ‘the land of Christians’ but, rather, the Christian community as a whole; cf. OED.
Cf. Hos. 4:6.
66. ‘But surely this cannot be the case of the Protestants in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland! Much less in Denmark and Sweden!’ Indeed I hope it is not altogether. I am persuaded there are among them many knowing Christians. But I fear we must not think that one in ten, if one in fifty, is of this number; certainly not if we may form a judgment of them by those we find in Great Britain and Ireland. Let us see how matters stand at our own door. Do the people of England in general (not the highest or the lowest, for these usually know nothing of the matter, but people of the middle rank) understand Christianity? Do they conceive what it is? Can they give an intelligible account either of the speculative or practical part of it? What know they of the very first principles of it? Of the natural and moral attributes of God? Of his particular providence? Of the redemption of man? Of the offices of Christ? Of the operations of the Holy Ghost? Of justification? Of the new birth? Of inward and outward sanctification? Speak of any of these things to the first ten persons you are in company with, and will you not find nine out of the ten ignorant of the whole affair? And are not most of the inhabitants of the Scotch highlands full as ignorant as these? Yea, and the common people in Ireland? (I mean the Protestants, of whom alone we are now speaking.) Make a fair inquiry, not only in the country cabins, but in the cities of Cork, Waterford, Limerick! Yea, in Dublin itself. How few know what Christianity means! How small a number will you find that have any conception of the analogy of faith!
See Nos. 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, §2; and 62, ‘The End of Christ’s Coming’, III.5 and n.
704:0907. However, in some parts, both of England and Ireland, scriptural Christianity is well known; especially in London, Bristol, Dublin, and almost all the large and populous cities and towns of both kingdoms. In these every branch of Christianity is openly and largely declared, and thousands upon thousands continually hear and receive ‘the truth as it is in Jesus’.
Cf. Eph. 4:21.
A favourite maxim of Wesley; see No. 113, The Late Work of God in North America, I.7 and n. Its ‘primitive source’ has yet to be located.
88. To bring the matter closer still. Is not scriptural Christianity preached and generally known among the people commonly called Methodists?
For Methodist ‘triumphalism’, see No. 102, ‘Of Former Times’, §22 and n.
See Nos. 2, The Almost Christian; and 107, ‘On God’s Vineyard’, II.1-3.
Cf. Phil. 2:5.
See Matt. 11:29.
Matt. 26:39.
Cf. John 6:38.
Cf. Gal. 6:14.
1 John 2:16 (Notes); see No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.2 and n.
Cf. Col. 3:3.
Cf. 1 John 2:6.
Cf. 1 Pet. 2:21.
Matt. 6:19.
I.e., No. 50, ‘The Use of Money’; see espec. I.1 and n.
99. O that God would enable me once more, before I go hence and am no more seen,
See Ps. 39:15 (BCP).
See Matt. 8:20.
See Luke 18:2.
See Isa. 58:7.
See Ezek. 18:7, 16.
Cf. Matt 25:21, 23.
See No. 88, ‘On Dress’, §21 and n.
1010. ‘But is it possible to supply all the poor in our society with the necessaries of life?’ It was possible once to do this, in a larger society than this. In the first church at Jerusalem ‘there was not any among them that lacked, but distribution was made to everyone according as he had need.’
Cf. Acts 4:34-35.
0A gentleman (a Methodist) told me some years since, ‘I shall leave forty thousand pounds among my children.’ Now suppose he had left them but twenty thousand, and given the other twenty thousand to God and the poor; would God have said to him, ‘Thou fool’?
Luke 12:20.
Wesley’s prescription for relief from destitution: the immediate distribution of surplus capital accumulation. Note his estimate that £20,000 would have ‘set all the society far above want’. The reference here, more probably, is to all the Methodist Societies taken as one.
1111. But I will not talk of giving to God, or leaving half your fortune. You might think this to be too high a price for heaven. I will come to lower terms. Are there not a few among you that could give a hundred pounds, perhaps some that could give a 04:093thousand, and yet leave your children as much as would help them to work out their own salvation? With two thousand pounds, and not much less, we could supply the present wants of all our poor, and put them in a way of supplying their own wants for the time to come. Now suppose this could be done, are we clear before God while it is not done? Is not the neglect of it one cause why so many are still sick and weak among you? And that both in soul and in body? That they still grieve the Holy Spirit by preferring the fashions of man to the commands of God? And I many times doubt whether we preachers are not in some measure partakers of their sin. I am in doubt whether it is not a kind of partiality. I doubt whether it is not a great mercy to keep them in our society. May it not hurt their souls by encouraging them to persevere in walking contrary to the Bible? And may it not in some measure intercept the salutary influences of the blessed Spirit upon the whole community?
1212. I am distressed. I know not what to do.
The lament of an aging hero no longer in control of his own hero-cult; cf. No. 50, ‘The Use of Money’, and intro.
1313. But to return to the main question. Why has Christianity done so little good, even among us? Among the Methodists? Among them that hear and receive the whole Christian doctrine, and that have Christian discipline added thereto, in the most essential parts of it? Plainly because we have forgot, or at least not duly attended to those solemn words of our Lord, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.’
Luke 9:23; cf. Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34.
No written source located; could this have been an oral comment of John Fletcher to Wesley, still remembered?
1414. It would be easy to show in how many respects the Methodists in general are deplorably wanting in the practice of Christian self-denial; from which indeed they have been continually frighted by the silly outcries of the antinomians. To instance only in one. While we were at Oxford the rule of every Methodist was (unless in case of sickness) to fast every Wednesday and Friday in the year, in imitation of the primitive church, for which they had the highest reverence.
The early Wesleys set great store by the traditions of fasting in the primitive church and the observance of the early Christian praxis of ‘stations’; see JWJ, May 24, 1738, §6; and Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, pp. 30-31 (and index for ‘Stations’).
See No. 27, ‘Sermon on the Mount, VII’, I.6 and n.
1515. But can anyone deny that the members of the Church of 04:095Scotland fast constantly? Particularly on their sacramental occasions. In some parishes they return only once a year, but in others, suppose in large cities, they occur twice or even thrice a year. Now it is well known there is always a fast-day in the week preceding the administration of the Lord’s Supper. But occasionally looking into a book of accounts in one of their vestries I observed, ‘So much set down for the dinners of the ministers on the fast-day!’ And I am informed there is the same article in them all. And is there any doubt but the people fast just as their ministers do? But what a farce is this! What a miserable burlesque upon a plain Christian duty! O that the General Assembly would have regard to the honour of their nation! Let them roll away from it this shameful reproach, by either enforcing the duty, or removing that article from their books. Let it never appear there any more! Let it vanish away for ever!
1616. But why is self-denial in general so little practised at present among the Methodists? Why is so exceeding little of it to be found even in the oldest and largest societies? The more I observe and consider things, the more clearly it appears what is the cause of this in London, in Bristol, in Birmingham, in Manchester, in Leeds, in Dublin, in Cork. The Methodists grow more and more self-indulgent, because they grow rich. Although many of them are still deplorably poor (‘Tell it not in Gath; publish it not in the streets of Askelon!’),
2 Sam. 1:20.
1717. But how astonishing a thing is this! How can we understand it? Does it not seem (and yet this cannot be!) that Christianity, true scriptural Christianity, has a tendency in process of time to undermine and destroy itself?
See No. 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’, §16 and n. Here, Wesley seems closer to agreeing with Luther’s dictum that revivals rarely outlive their first generation, although his explanation of this is rather different. For other references to Luther, see No. 14, The Repentance of Believers, I.9 and n.
1818. But is there no way to prevent this? To continue Christianity among a people? Allowing that diligence and frugality must produce riches, is there no means to hinder riches from destroying the religion of those that possess them? I can see only one possible way—find out another who can. Do you gain all you can, and save all you can? Then you must in the nature of things grow rich. Then if you have any desire to escape the damnation of hell, give all you can. Otherwise I can have no more hope of your salvation than for that of Judas Iscariot.
1919. I call God to record upon my soul, that I advise no more than I practise. I do, blessed be God, gain, and save, and give all I can. And so, I trust in God, I shall do, while the breath of God is in my nostrils. But what then? I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus, my Lord!
See Phil. 3:8.
John and Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), p. 94 (Poet. Wks., I.85); see No. 11, The Witness of the Spirit, II, III.7 and n.
Dublin, July 2, 1789
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Entry Title: Sermon 122: Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity