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Sermon 127: On the Wedding Garment

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon127

04:139 On the Wedding Garment

1This is the first in a group of six written sermons produced by Wesley in the last year of his life, and easily the most important in the whole of SOSO, IX. It signals the end of Wesley’s theological development, much as ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’ had marked its beginning in 1733. In the fifty-seven-year span between, Wesley had moved from a gospel of moral rectitude, to the gospel of faith alone, to the gospel of ‘faith, working by love’. In one sense, ‘On the Wedding Garment’ is a return full circle to the vision of salvation first delineated in ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’. In another sense, it reflects an upward spiralling. On this account, the two sermons will repay careful comparison; each stands as a ‘landmark’ in its time.

2The Matthean parable of ‘the wedding garment’ had already had a long history of controverted interpretation. It had been taken by some as a metaphor for ‘faith alone’, by others as signifying ‘charity implanted’, by others as a veiled reference to the Lord’s Supper. In his Notes, Wesley had left open the question between ‘faith’ and ‘charity’, and had rejected only the last suggestion. But then, as the Calvinists pressed him with their charges of ‘works-righteousness’, he seems to have felt it important to summarize his distinctive emphasis on the unity of faith and love in true holiness, as a sort of ‘last word’.

3His oral delivery of that ‘last word’ had occurred on October 25, 1789, in London: ‘Sunday, 25. In the morning I preached at West Street on Matt, xxii.11…and showed that this has no manner of respect either to the Lord’s Supper or the righteousness of Christ, but that it means neither more nor less than holiness.’

4In the March following he revisited Madeley, where Mrs. Fletcher was still living in the vicarage.

See JWJ, March 24-25, 1790.

Then follows his entry for the 26th: ‘I finished my sermon on the Wedding Garment, perhaps the last that I shall write. My eyes are now waxed dim; my natural force is abated.

Note the echo here of Deut. 34:7.

However, while I can I would fain do a little for God before I drop into 04:140the dust.’

Cf. Job 17:16; 20:11; 21:26.

It was not actually his last written sermon; it is, however, one of his most important. It is, in effect, his last word on ‘impartation’.

5Its first half appeared in the Arminian Magazine

XIV.117-20, 173-77.

for March 1791 (he had died on the 2nd); the second half was published in the April issue, as if in an unbroken sequence: ‘Sermon LXII’. It was then included as No. 11 in SOSO, IX. Joseph Benson, in his edition of 1812, supplied it with Wesley’s title from the Journal; Thomas Jackson followed suit in 1825 and 1829.

On the Wedding Garment

Matthew 22:12

How earnest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment?

11. In the verses preceding the text we read: ‘After these things, Jesus spake to them again in parables, and said, A certain king made a supper for his son. And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw one who had not on a wedding garment. And he saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Cf. Matt. 22:2, 11:13.

22. Upon this parable one of our most celebrated expositors

William Burkitt (1650-1703), Cambridge M.A. and country parson in Suffolk and Essex. His Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament was published in 1700 and frequently republished thereafter (including an American edn. in 1794).

comments in the following manner: ‘The design of this parable is to set forth that gracious supply made by God to men in and by the preaching of the gospel. To invite them to this, God sent forth his servants, the prophets and apostles.’ And on these words, ‘Why earnest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment?’ he proceeds thus: ‘The punishment of which ought not to discourage us, or make us to turn our backs upon the holy 04:141ordinances.’

A garbled abridgement of Burkitt’s note on Matt. 22:2-13; the original reads: ‘The design and scope of this parable of the marriage supper is to set forth that gracious offer of mercy and salvation which was made by God in and through the preaching of the gospel to the church of the Jews. The Gospel is here compared to a feast…. To this marriage feast, or Gospel Supper, almighty God invited the church of the Jews, and the servants sent forth to invite them were the prophets and apostles in general and John the Baptist in particular…. The presence of an unholy person at the Lord’s Table ought not to discourage us from our duty or cause us to turn our back upon that ordinance.’

Certainly it ought not; but nothing of this kind can be inferred from this parable, which has no reference to the ordinances, any more than to baptism and marriage. And probably we should never have imagined it, but that the word ‘supper’ occurred therein.

In his own Notes Wesley had already asserted that the ‘“wedding garment”…has no relation to the Lord’s Supper but to God’s proceeding at the last day.’ But notice the term ἄριστον (‘main meal’) in ver. 4 and δεῖπνον μέγα (‘great feast’) in the Lucan parallel, 14:16-17.

33. However, most of the English annotators have fallen into the same mistake with Mr. Burkitt. And so have thousands of their readers. Yet a mistake it certainly is. And such a mistake as has not any shadow of foundation in the text. It is true, indeed, that none ought to approach the Lord’s table without habitual, at least (if not actual), preparation; that is, a firm purpose to keep all the commandments of God, and a sincere desire to receive all his promises. But that obligation cannot be inferred from this text, though it may from many other passages of Scripture. But there is no need of multiplying texts: one is as good as a thousand. There needs no more to induce any man of a tender conscience to communicate at all opportunities than that single commandment of our Lord, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’

Cf. Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24, 25.

44. But whatever preparation is necessary in order to our being worthy partakers of the Lord’s Supper, it has no relation at all to the wedding garment mentioned in this parable. It cannot; for that commemoration of his death was not then ordained. It relates wholly to the proceedings of our Lord when he comes in the clouds of heaven

Matt. 26:64.

to judge the quick and the dead;

2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5; also, The Apostles’ Creed.

and to the qualifications which will then be necessary to their ‘inheriting the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world’.

Cf. Matt. 25:34. Wesley accepts the reference of the metaphor to the Last Judgment; cf. Notes.

504:1425. Many excellent men, who are thoroughly apprised of this, who are convinced the wedding garment here mentioned is not to be understood of any qualification for the Lord’s Supper, but of the qualification for glory, interpret it of the righteousness of Christ, which (say they)

Cf. Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, II.174: ‘As to “the wedding garment”, is it faith or is it a holy life? This is a useless controversy.’ But it had been controverted—with the Puritans, generally, understanding the metaphor as denoting ‘Christ’s imputed righteousness’. Cf. John Eaton, The Honey-Combe of Free Justification by Christ Alone (1642), Preface, pp. 5-6 (‘the perfect righteousness of Christ’); see also George Downham (Downame), A Treatise of Justification (1639), IV.24-25. So also Thomas Barlow, Two Letters…Concerning Justification by Faith Only (1701), p. 166: ‘Christ’s imputed righteousness is an entire robe…which covers all our sins.’ More emphatically, Thomas Adam (of Wintringham) had insisted that the parable was a shibboleth separating true evangelicals from false; see Works (1822), I.345, 348. Cf. Matthew Poole’s comment that ‘the wedding garment signifies Christ’ (and he, too, speaks of the controversy as to whether it also means ‘faith’ versus ‘love’ as ‘an idle dispute’). To Matthew Henry, the metaphor had signified ‘an inward thing, …a frame of heart and a course of life agreeable to the gospel.’ Similarly, William Bates, Sermons Preached on Several Occasions (1693), Sermon X, p. 381: ‘Unfeigned faith that unites us to Christ, and is effectual and evident in all good works, is the “wedding garment”.’ Cf. Wesley’s extract of Ralph Cudworth, ‘Sermon Preached Before the House of Commons’, Mar. 31, 1647, in the Christian Lib., XVII.25-26; and Samuel Clarke, Forty Sermons (1806), Sermon II, pp. 16-17.

is ‘the sole qualification for heaven; this being the only righteousness wherein any man can stand in the day of the Lord’. For who, they ask, will then dare to appear before the great God, save in the righteousness of his well-beloved Son? ‘Shall we not then at least, if not before, find the need of having a better righteousness than our own! And what other can that be than the righteousness of God our Saviour?’ The late pious and ingenious Mr. Hervey descants largely upon this; particularly in his elaborate Dialogues between Theron and Aspasio.

James Hervey (1714-58), one of the early Oxford Methodists, author of the popular Meditations Among the Tombs (1746); the reference here is to Theron and Aspasio (3 vols., 1755), II.381-84.

66. Another elegant writer,

Cf. Thomas Adam (who had died in 1784), A Paraphrase and Annotations on the Eleven First Chapters of…Romans (1771), Preface, in Posthumous Works (1786), Vol. II.

now I trust with God, speaks strongly to the same effect in the preface to his comment on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. ‘We certainly’, says he, ‘shall need a better righteousness than our own, wherein to stand at the bar of God in the day of judgment.’ I do not understand the expression. Is it scriptural! Do we read it in the Bible? Either in the Old Testament or the New? I doubt, it is an unscriptural, awkward phrase, which has no determinate meaning. If you mean by that odd, uncouth question, ‘In whose righteousness are you to stand 04:143at the last day?’ for ‘whose sake’, or ‘by whose merits’ do you expect to enter into the glory of God, I answer, without the least hesitation, for the sake of Jesus Christ the righteous.

1 John 2:1.

It is through his merits alone that all believers are saved, that is, justified, saved from the guilt, sanctified, saved from the nature of sin, and glorified, taken into heaven.

77. It may be worth our while to spend a few more words on this important point. Is it possible to devise a more unintelligible expression than this? ‘In what righteousness are we to stand before God at the last day?’ Why do you not speak plain, and say, ‘For whose sake do you look to be saved?’ Any plain peasant would then readily answer, ‘For the sake of Jesus Christ.’ But all those dark, ambiguous phrases tend only to puzzle the cause, and open a way for unwary hearers to slide into antinomianism.

88. Is there any expression similar to this of the wedding garment to be found in Holy Scripture? In the Revelation we find mention made of ‘linen white and clean, which is the righteousness of the saints’.

Rev. 19:8.

And this too many vehemently contend means the righteousness of Christ. But how then are we to reconcile this with that passage in the seventh chapter, ‘They have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’?

Rev. 7:14.

Will they say, ‘The righteousness of Christ was washed and made white in the blood of Christ?’ Away with such antinomian jargon. Is not the plain meaning this?—it was from the atoning blood that the very righteousness of the saints derived its value and acceptableness to God.

99. In the nineteenth chapter of the Revelation, at the ninth verse, there is an expression which comes much nearer to this: ‘The wedding supper of the Lamb’.

ὁ γάμος τοῦ ἀρνιοῦ; AV: ‘marriage supper of the Lamb’; Geneva: ‘Lamb’s Supper’, etc.; cf. Wycliffe (1380): ‘the soper of weddynge of the lamb’.

There is a near resemblance between this and the supper mentioned in the parable. Yet they are not altogether the same: there is a clear difference between them. The supper mentioned in the parable belongs to the church militant, that mentioned in the Revelation to the church triumphant. The one to the kingdom of God on earth, the other to the kingdom of God in heaven. Accordingly in the former there may be found those who have not a wedding 04:144garment. But there will be none such to be found in the latter. No, not ‘in that great multitude, which no man can number, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation’.

Rev. 7:9.

They will all be ‘kings and priests unto God’,

Rev. 5:10.

and ‘shall reign with him for ever and ever’.

Cf. Rev. 22:5.

1010. Does not that very expression, ‘the righteousness of the saints’,

Cf. William Bates, Sermons, Sermon X, p. 381.

point out what is the wedding garment in the parable? It is the ‘holiness without which no man shall see the Lord’.

Heb. 12:14.

The righteousness of Christ is, doubtless, necessary for any soul that enters into glory. But so is personal holiness, too, for every child of man. But it is highly needful to be observed that they are necessary in different respects. The former is necessary to entitle us to heaven; the latter, to qualify us for it. Without the righteousness of Christ we could have no claim to glory; without holiness we could have no fitness for it. By the former we become members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven. By the latter we are ‘made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light’.

Col. 1:12.

1111. From the very time that the Son of God delivered this weighty truth to the children of men, that all who had not the wedding garment would be cast into outward darkness, where are weeping and gnashing of teeth,

Matt. 22:13, etc.

the enemy of souls has been labouring to obscure it, that they might still seek death in the error of their life,

Wisd. 1:12; cf. No. 6, ‘The Righteousness of Faith’, §2 and n.

and many ways has he tried to disguise the holiness without which we cannot be saved. How many things have been palmed, even upon the Christian world, in the place of this! Some of these are utterly contrary thereto, and subversive of it. Some were no ways connected with or related to it, but useless and insignificant trifles. Others might be deemed to be some part of it, but by no means the whole. It may be of use to enumerate some of them, lest ye should be ignorant of Satan’s devices.

See 2 Cor. 2:11; also No. 42, ‘Satan’s Devices’.

1212. Of the first sort—things prescribed as Christian holiness, although flatly contrary thereto—is idolatry.

Cf. Nos. 78, ‘Spiritual Idolatry’, proem; and 23, ‘Sermon on the Mount, III’, I.11 and n.

How has this, in 04:145various shapes, been taught, and is to this day, as essential to holiness! How diligently is it now circulated, in a great part of the Christian church! Some of their idols are silver and gold, or wood and stone,

See Dan. 5:4, 23; Rev. 9:20.

‘graven by art and man’s device’;

Acts 17:29.

some men of like passions with themselves,

Acts 14:15.

particularly the apostles of our Lord, and the Virgin Mary. To these they add numberless saints of their own creation, with no small company of angels.

1313. Another thing, as directly contrary to the whole tenure of true religion, is what is diligently taught in many parts of the Christian church: I mean, the spirit of persecution; of persecuting their brethren even unto death. So that the earth has been often covered with blood by those who were called Christians, in order to ‘make their calling and election sure’.

2 Pet. 1:10.

It is true many, even in the Church of Rome, who were taught this horrid doctrine, now seem to be ashamed of it. But have the heads of that community as openly and explicitly renounced that capital doctrine of devils as they avowed it in the Council of Constance,

1414-18, the council that ended the ‘Great Western Schism’ (since the death of Gregory XI, 1378) and, among other things, executed John Hus and Jerome of Prague, even after the Emperor Sigismund had given them his solemn pledge of safe conduct. Wesley ignores Mosheim’s extenuating explanation of this (as a special case of revenge by the dominant nominalist party at the council over two ‘realists’). He was convinced that Constance, in effect, had decreed that ‘no faith need be kept with heretics’; this was the account of the affair in the Magdeburg ‘Centuries’ and was widely shared in England. Cf. William Gilpin’s Lives of John Wiclif and the Most Eminent of His Disciples, …Jerome of Prague (1766); cf. also Wesley’s letter to Dr. Conyers Middleton, Jan. 4, 1749; to the Printer of the Public Advertiser, Jan. 12, 1780; and his letters to the editors of Freeman’s Journal, Mar. 23 and 31, 1780.

and practised it for many ages? Till they have done this they will be chargeable with the blood of Jerome of Prague,

C. 1370-1416; Bohemian reformer, disciple of Wycliffe and friend of John Hus. Cf. Wesley’s letter of Mar. 31, 1780, to Freeman’s Journal, where the stories of Hus and Jerome had been recounted together.

basely murdered, and of many thousands, both in the sight of God and man.

1414. Let it not be said: ‘This does not concern us Protestants: we think and let think.

Cf. No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, I.6 and n.

We abhor the spirit of persecution, and maintain as an indisputable truth that every rational creature has a right to worship God as he is persuaded in his own mind.’ But are we true to our own principles? So far, that we do not use fire and faggot. We do not persecute unto blood those that scruple to 04:146subscribe to our opinions. Blessed be God, the laws of our country do not allow of this.

Cf. No. 107, ‘On God’s Vineyard’, IV.2 and n.

But is there no such thing to be found in England as domestic persecution? The saying or doing anything unkind to another for following his own conscience is a species of persecution. Now are we all clear of this? Is there no husband who in this sense persecutes his wife? Who uses her unkindly in word or deed for worshipping God after her own conscience? Do no parents thus persecute their children; no masters or mistresses their servants? If they do this, and think they do God service

See John 16:2.

therein, they must not cast the first stone

See John 8:7.

at the Roman Catholics.

1515. When things of an indifferent nature are represented as necessary to salvation it is a folly of the same kind, though not of the same magnitude. Indeed it is not a little sin to represent trifles as necessary to salvation, such as going on

Here, both AM and Jackson read ‘of’; Benson reads, more naturally, ‘on’. There is no manuscript control.

pilgrimages, or anything that is not expressly enjoined in the Holy Scripture. Among these we may undoubtedly rank orthodoxy, or right opinions.

Cf. No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, I.6 and n.

We know indeed that wrong opinions in religion naturally lead to wrong tempers, or wrong practices; and that consequently it is our bounden duty to pray that we may have a right judgment in all things. But still a man may judge as accurately as the devil, and yet be as wicked as he.

1616. Something more excusable are they who imagine holiness to consist in things that are only a part of it. (That is, when they are connected with the rest; otherwise they are no part of it at all.) Suppose, in doing no harm. And how exceeding common is this! How many take holiness and harmlessness to mean one and the same thing!

Cf. No. 32, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XII’, II.2 and n.

Whereas were a man as harmless as a post he might be as far from holiness as heaven from earth. Suppose a man therefore to be exactly honest, to pay everyone his own, to cheat no man, to wrong no man, to hurt no man, to be just in all his dealings; suppose a woman to be uniformly modest and virtuous in all her words and actions; suppose the one and the other to be steady practisers of morality, that is, of justice, mercy, and truth; yet all this, though it is good as far as it goes, is but a part of 04:147Christian holiness. Yea, suppose a person of this amiable character to do much good wherever he is, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, relieve the stranger, the sick, the prisoner, yea, and to save many souls from death: it is possible he may still fall far short of that holiness without which he cannot see the Lord.

1717. What then is that holiness which is the true wedding garment, the only qualification for glory? ‘In Christ Jesus’ (that is, according to the Christian institution, whatever be the case of the heathen world)

Cf. No.91, ‘On Charity’, I.3 and n.

‘neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation,’

Cf. Gal. 6:15 and Notes. The AV here reads ‘new creature’, as do the Geneva Bible, Wycliffe, Coverdale, et al. The Greek καινὴ κτίσις can bear either translation; ‘new creation’ is the more literal.

the renewal of the soul ‘in the image of God wherein it was created’.

Cf. Col. 3:10.

In ‘Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision’, but ‘faith which worketh by love’.

Gal. 5:6.

It first, through the energy of God, worketh love to God and all mankind; and by this love every holy and heavenly temper. In particular, lowliness, meekness, gentleness, temperance, and long-suffering.

See Gal. 5:22-23 (Notes).

‘It is neither circumcision’, the attending on all the Christian ordinances, ‘nor uncircumcision’, the fulfilling of all heathen morality, but ‘the keeping of the commandments of God’;

Cf. 1 Cor. 7:19.

particularly those, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.’

Mark 12:30-31, etc.

In a word, holiness is the having ‘the mind that was in Christ’,

Cf. Phil. 2:5.

and the ‘walking as Christ walked’.

Cf. 1 John 2:6.

1818. Such has been my judgment for these threescore years, without any material alteration. Only about fifty years ago I had a clearer view than before of justification by faith: and in this from that very hour I never varied, no not an hair’s breadth.

A clarification of his adherence to the ‘holy living’ tradition since 1730 at least (cf. No. 17, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’); note the vague reference to ‘about fifty years ago’ (i.e., 1740) without any reference to Aldersgate. Cf. Nos. 1, Salvation by Faith (1738); and 5, ‘Justification by Faith’ (the first drafts of which could be dated around 1740).

Nevertheless an ingenious man has publicly accused me of a 04:148thousand variations.

This could be James Hervey (cf. above, §5; and Works [1773], XXII.233); or John Hampson, whose Memoirs of the Late Rev. John Wesley (1791) reflected his own personal animosities; or even Richard Hill in his Review of all the Doctrines Taught by the Rev. Mr. John Wesley (2nd edn., 1772),p. 10: ‘Saying and unsaying is nothing new with Mr. W., who has only shown himself consistent by a regular series of inconsistencies.’ Hill then cites one hundred and one instances in which he affirms Wesley contradicts himself (see Bibliog, No. 341). But more likely Wesley still had in mind Josiah Tucker’s Brief History of the Principles of Methodism (1742), pp. 37-38; see Wesley’s Principles of a Methodist, §30.

I pray God not to lay this to his charge!

See Acts 7:60.

I am now on the borders of the grave, but by the grace of God I still witness the same confession. Indeed some have supposed that when I began to declare, ‘By grace ye are saved through faith,’

Eph. 2:8.

I retracted what I had before maintained, ‘Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.’

Cf. Heb. 12:14.

But it is an entire mistake; these Scriptures well consist with each other; the meaning of the former being plainly this, ‘By faith we are saved from sin, made holy.’ The imagination that faith supersedes holiness is the marrow of antinomianism.

Cf. No. 35, ‘The Law Established through Faith, I’, II.2.

1919. The sum of all is this: the God of love is willing to save all the souls that he has made. This he has proclaimed to them in his Word, together with the terms of salvation revealed by the Son of his love, who gave his own life that they that believe in him might have everlasting life.

See John 6:40.

And for these he has prepared a kingdom from the foundation of the world.

See Matt. 25:34.

But he will not force them to accept of it. He leaves them in the hands of their own counsel. He saith: ‘Behold, I set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; choose life, that ye may live.’

Cf. Deut. 30:19.

Choose holiness by my grace, which is the way, the only way, to everlasting life. He cries aloud, Be holy, and be happy; happy in this world, and happy in the world to come. ‘Holiness becometh his house for ever!’

Ps. 93:5.

This is the wedding garment of all that are called to ‘the marriage of the Lamb’.

Rev. 19:7.

Clothed in this they will not be found naked: ‘they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’

Rev. 7:14.

But as to all those who appear in the last day without the wedding garment, the Judge will say: ‘Cast them into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Madeley, March 26, 1790

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