Notes:
Sermon 132: On Faith
1At the time of Wesley’s death, his sermon, ‘On the Wedding Garment’ was already being printed for inclusion in the March and April issues of the Arminian Magazine, 1791. Moreover, as we have already seen, James Creighton had decided that for the May and June issues he would publish ‘Human Life a Dream’, on the supposition that it would be Wesley’s last published writing. Presently, however, yet another sermon manuscript turned up, and was promptly printed in the July and August issues of 1791, with the following postscript:
“N.B. This is the last sermon which Mr. Wesley wrote. It is very remarkable that the preceding sermon inserted in our Magazine for May and June had been about fifteen months [cf. Creighton’s ‘eighteen’, above] in the hand of the Corrector of the Press, who had laid it by without any design, except that it was not dated, as all the rest were, and inserted several others, though later written. Then he inserted it, the first part of which was printed before Mr. Wesley’s last illness, and the latter part was printing on the very day when his remains lay in the Chapel, previous to its interment. Whoever looks back to that part of it inserted in the Magazine for June, will be struck when he considers the above circumstances, and sees how it is connected with the sermon now inserted; and all this without any design, either of the writer or any other person.AM, XIV.406.
After this, as noted above, four more sermons were discovered in Bristol, written during the previous spring, summer, and early fall, and these were then published, belatedly, in the Magazine in 1792.
2This last-written sermon is dated, ‘London, January 17, 1791’. There is no Journal entry for its day (or period); Wesley’s diary records his reading of a sermon during these days but not his writing of one. The probability is that on the 17th he had closed out yet another written meditation ‘on faith’. He had, of course, already published one sermon on Heb. 11:1 (see No. 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’). Here, however, his focus is more restricted and specific. At the outset, he defines ‘faith’ in an explicitly mystical sense. Whereas Matthew Henry had taken πίστις in this context to mean ‘the firm assent of the soul to the divine revelation and every part of it’, Wesley understands it as ‘a divine conviction of the invisible and eternal world’(§I). This allows him then 04:188to speak of that world in both eschatological and ethical terms. He pays his critical respects to Archibald Campbell and to others who seem to him to presume beyond the truth vouchsafed to us in Scripture; he dwells on some interesting speculative notions of his own. His conclusion is fittingly serene.
3As usual, the sermon had no title when it appeared in the Arminian Magazine;
XIV.344-49, 400-406.
Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the evidence of things not seen.
11. Many times have I thought, many times have I spoke, many times have I wrote upon these words;
E.g., see Nos. 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’ on Heb. 11:1; 43, The Scripture Way of Salvation, II.1; and the ‘Extract from a Letter to Mr. Law’, Jan. 6, 1756 (Telford, III.359); see also No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Steepest’, I.11 and n.
22. I am now an immortal spirit, strangely connected with a little portion of earth; but this is only for a while. In a short time I am to quit this tenement of clay, and to remove into another state,
Cf. John Hughes, The Siege of Damascus, III.i.203-4; see also No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §17, and n. 55.
04:189What kind of existence shall I then enter upon? When my spirit has launched out of the body, how shall I feel myself? Perceive my own being? How shall I discern the things that are round about me, either material or spiritual objects? When my eyes no longer transmit the rays of light, how will the naked spirit
See No. 124, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §9 and n.
33. How strange, how incomprehensible, are the means whereby I shall then take knowledge even of the material world! Will things appear then as they do now? Of the same size, shape, and colour? Or will they be altered in any or all these respects? How will the sun, moon, and stars appear? The sublunary heavens? The planetary heavens? The region of the fixed stars? How the fields of ether,
Cf. Sir Richard Blackmore, ‘Creation; A Philosophical Poem’, in Chalmers, British Poets, X.380; the phrase occurs also in Dryden, Somerville, and James Thomson. Such terms as ‘sublunary’, ‘planetary’, ‘fixed stars’, ‘fields of ether’ were part and parcel of eighteenth-century popular science. See Nos. 55, On the Trinity, §7 and n.; and 56, ‘God’s Approbation of His Works’, I.5 and n.
44. What then can we know of those innumerable objects which properly belong to the invisible world? Which mortal eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into our heart to conceive?
See 1 Cor. 2:9.
All the English versions in Wesley’s time had rendered ᾅδης as ‘hell’, with the exception of Wycliffe and Douai which have ‘torments’ for Luke 16:23, and Geneva which has ‘grave’ for Acts 2:27, 31. Wesley, however, translates it as ‘hell’ in Matt. 11:23 and Luke 16:23; whereas in Acts 1:18 and Rev. 1:18; 6:8; 20:13, he resorts to a transliteration, ‘Hades’.
Cf. Phil. 1:23.
Cf. No. 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’.
Luke 16:26.
Archibald Campbell, a Scottish Nonjuror, briefly Bishop of Aberdeen (1721-24) and active in the unsuccessful negotiations between the Nonjurors and the Eastern Orthodox. He is best known for The Doctrines of a Middle State Between Death and the Resurrection (1721). This reflects the eschatological views of Eastern Orthodoxy and differs explicitly from Roman Catholic teachings on purgatory.
The issue here was whether Dives had died totally unrepentant and therefore in mortal sin (Wesley’s view) or with some glimmer of presumptive repentance and faith. Cf. Campbell’s argument (pp. 12-14) that ‘the great gulf fixed’ is between those who go into Hades without repentance and amendment of life at all and those who, though ‘wicked’ (like Dives), have nonetheless a modicum of distinterested love for others which Campbell claims is a form of true repentance. He is as clear as Wesley that purgatory has no escape hatches for the finally unrepentant. There is a gulf which separates between the ‘Right-’ and the ‘Left-hand sides of Hades, which makes it impracticable for any soul that is on the one side to go into the other. This secures the righteous, who are on the right, from falling…and effectually hinders the wicked, who are on the left, from entering into the lot of the righteous’ (p. 57). This is re-emphasized on pp. 135, 137-78, a catena of twenty-nine advocates of what Campbell claims are similar doctrines of ‘a Middle State’, from Calvin to someone cited as ‘Dr. J. E. Grate’ (i.e., his own contemporary, Dr. John Ernest Grave, a learned patrologist).
55. I cannot therefore but think that all those who are with the rich man in the unhappy division of Hades will remain there, howling and blaspheming, cursing God and looking upwards, till they are cast into ‘the everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels’.
Matt. 25:41.
Luke 16:22.
John Flavell, Husbandry Spiritualized, in Works (1740), II.272 (‘ripening apace for heaven’). See also Wesley’s extract in the Christian Lib., XXVII.229; and No. 114, On the Death of John Fletcher, III.12 (‘ripening for glory’).
Matt. 25:34.
66. But who can inform us in what part of the universe Hades is situated? This abode of both happy and unhappy spirits till they are reunited to their bodies? It has not pleased God to reveal anything concerning it in the Holy Scripture; and consequently it is not possible for us to form any judgment or even conjecture about it. Neither are we informed how either one or the other are employed during the time of their abode there. Yet may we not improbably suppose that the Governor of the world may sometimes permit wicked souls
Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, i.152.
Or perhaps, in conjunction with evil angels, to inflict vengeance on wicked men. Or will many of them be shut up in the chains of darkness unto the great judgment of the great day? In the meantime, may we not probably suppose that the spirits of the just, though generally lodged in paradise, yet may sometimes, in conjunction with the holy angels, minister to the heirs of salvation?
See Heb. 1:14.
Almost certainly an attempted recollection of a stanza from his brother’s Hymns for…Redemption (1747), Hymn XXII, st. 2 (Poet. Wks., IV.240). But cf. No. 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, I.3 and n., where John’s views of ‘the peaceable dead’ in Paradise differ sharply from Charles’s other lines in this stanza: ‘Their souls are impassive above, / And nothing of mortals they know.’
It is a pleasing thought that some of these human spirits attending us with, or in the room of, angels, are of the number of those that were dear to us while they were in the body. So that there is no absurdity in the question:
John and Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740), p. 199 (Poet. Wks., I.365).
But be this as it may, it is certain human spirits swiftly increase in knowledge, in holiness, and in happiness, conversing with all the wise and holy souls that lived in all ages and nations from the beginning of the world; with angels and archangels, to whom the children of men are no more than infants; and above all with the eternal Son of God, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Col. 2:3.
77. But how will this material universe appear to a disembodied spirit? Who can tell whether any of these objects that surround us will appear the same as they do now? And if we know so little of these, what can we now know concerning objects of a quite different nature? Concerning the spiritual world? It seems it will not be possible for us to discern them at all till we are furnished with senses of a different nature, which are not yet opened in our souls. These may enable us both to penetrate the inmost substance of things, whereof we now discern only the surface, and to discern innumerable things of the very existence whereof we have not now the least perception. What astonishing scenes will then discover themselves to our newly opening senses! Probably fields of ether, not only tenfold, but ten thousandfold ‘the length of this terrene’.
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi.78; see also No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §17 and n.
Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 772, 840; x.460.
whether of those that retain their first habitations and primeval strength, or of those that, rebelling against their Creator, have been cast out of heaven? And shall we not then, as far as angel’s 04:193ken,
Ibid., i.59.
Cf. ibid., vii.224, 230-31:
See also No. 69, ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge’, I.5 and n.
Yea, shall we not be able to move, quick as thought, through the wide realms of uncreated night?
See Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 150; and No. 26, ‘Sermon on the Mount, VI’, III.6 and n.
See Jer. 23:24.
See Rom. 9:5.
88. How variously are the children of men employed in this world! In treading o’er
Cf. Young, The Last Day, I.78 (‘The paths they trod five thousand years before’); included in Wesley’s Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), II.73.
But who knows how we shall be employed after we enter that invisible world? A little of it we may conceive, and that without any doubt, provided we keep to what God himself has revealed in his Word, and what he works in the hearts of his children. Let us consider, first, what may be the employment of unholy spirits from death to the resurrection. We cannot doubt but the moment they leave the body they find themselves surrounded by spirits of their own kind, probably human as well as diabolical. What power God may permit these to exercise over them we do not distinctly know. But it is not improbable he may suffer Satan to employ 04:194them, as he does his own angels, in inflicting death or evils of various kinds on the men that know not God. For this end they may raise storms by sea or by land, they may shoot meteors through the air. They may occasion earthquakes, and in numberless ways afflict those whom they are not suffered to destroy. Where they are not permitted to take away life, they may inflict various diseases—and many of these which we judge to be natural are undoubtedly diabolical. I believe this is frequently the case with lunatics. It is observable that many of those mentioned in Scripture who are called lunatics by one of the evangelists are termed demoniacs by another. One of the most eminent physicians I ever knew, particularly in cases of insanity, the late Dr. Deacon,
Thomas Deacon (1697-1753), physician and nonjuring bishop, whose Compleat Collection of Devotions (1734) Wesley had carried with him to Georgia. Deacon was a pupil and friend of the celebrated Dr. Richard Mead (1673-1754) and shared his views concerning demoniacal possession; cf. Mead’s Medica Sacra; a Commentary on the Diseases Mentioned in Scripture (1755). None of Deacon’s published writings deal with medical questions. See No. 72, ‘Of Evil Angels’, II.13.
99. May not some of these evil spirits be likewise employed in conjunction with evil angels in tempting wicked men to sin, and in procuring occasion for them? Yea, and in tempting good men to sin, even after they had escaped the corruption that is in the world? Herein doubtless they put forth all their strength, and greatly glory if they conquer. A passage in an ancient author
Orig., ‘anthem’; corrected to ‘author’ in the 1800 edn.
Professor Patrick Henry, III, has located the locus classicus of this story in the Apophthegmata Patrum in Heribert Rosweyd’s 1615 edn., De Vita et Verbis Seniorum, V.v.39 (580); it was reprinted in Migne, PL, LXXIII.855-56, and appears in an English translation by Owen Chadwick in Western Asceticism, LCC, 12:73-74 (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1958). But notice that Chadwick translates et vix nocte iste prevalui ut facerem eum fornicari as ‘at last in the night I prevailed to make him lust’ instead of the literal meaning, ‘to make him fornicate’. It seems unlikely that Wesley would have known Rosweyd’s text, or even that in J. B. Cotelerius, Apophthegmata Patrum (1677). Wesley’s story is clearly the same in its main point but, as one can see in Chadwick, it has been abridged here in transmission.
1004:19510. Ought not we then to be perpetually on our guard against those subtle enemies? Though we see them not,
Cf. Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), II.119 (Poet. Wks., V.261); see No. 72, ‘Of Evil Angels’, II.10 and n.
Herein they join with ‘the rulers of the darkness’ (the intellectual darkness) ‘of this world’;
Eph. 6:12.
Cf. Eph. 2:2.
2 Thess. 2:9.
1111. But meantime, how may we conceive the inhabitants of the other part of Hades, the souls of the righteous, to be employed? It has been positively affirmed by some philosophical men that spirits have no place! But they do not observe that if it were so they must be omnipresent—an attribute which cannot be allowed to any but the Almighty Spirit. The abode of these blessed spirits the ancient Jews were used to term ‘paradise’—the same name which our Lord gave it, telling the penitent thief, ‘This day shalt thou be with me in paradise.’
Luke 23:43; for other comments on ‘paradise’, see Nos. 73, ‘Of Hell’, I.4 and n.; and espec. 115, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, I.3 and n.
Ps. 103:21 (BCP).
1 Cor. 15:52.
Heb. 2:10.
Exod. 33:11.
BCP, Morning Prayer, Te Deum.
A conjectural reconstruction of what may have been an undecipherable passage. Both the 1791 and 1800 edns. read, ‘Above all the name of creature owns, with Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant’, which scarcely makes sense. Wesley clearly intended a climax here; cf. BCP, Morning Prayer, Te Deum; see also No. 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, §8.
The deathbed scene of Thomas Halyburton; see No. 120, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, §18 and n.; the quotation here is from Wesley, An Extract of the Life and Death of Mr. Thomas Haliburton (1741), pp. 86-87.
Luke 16:26. Is this a mistake for what should read ‘Abraham and Dives’? Cf. ver. 23, where ‘the rich man’ sees ‘Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom’. This would seem to exclude the notion that Abraham and Lazarus were ‘afar off’ on ‘different sides of “the great gulf”’.
1212. And how much will that add to the happiness of those spirits which are already discharged from the body, that they are permitted to minister to those whom they have left behind! An indisputable proof of this we have in the twenty-second chapter of the Revelation. When the Apostle fell down to worship the glorious spirit which he seems to have mistaken for Christ, he told him plainly, ‘I am of thy fellow-servants, the prophets’;
Cf. Rev. 22:9.
See Heb. 1:14.
Thomas Ken, ‘An Evening Hymn’, sts. 10-11, adapted; cf. Wesley, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1738), pp. 58-59; see also No. 71, ‘Of Good Angels’, II.2 and n.
04:198And may not the Father of spirits allot this office jointly to angels and human spirits waiting to be made perfect?
1313. It may indeed be objected that God has no need of any subordinate agents, of either angelical or human spirits, to guard his children in their waking or sleeping hours; seeing he that keepeth Israel doth neither slumber nor sleep.
See Ps. 121:4.
Ps. 104:24.
1414. This we know concerning the whole frame and arrangement of the visible world. But how exceeding little do we now know concerning the invisible? And we should have known still less of it had it not pleased the Author of both worlds to give us more than natural light, to give us ‘his word to be a lantern to our feet, and a light in all our paths’.
Cf. Ps. 119:105 (BCP).
1515. And without revelation how little certainty of invisible things did the wisest of men obtain! The small glimmerings of light which they had were merely conjectural. At best they were only a faint, dim twilight, delivered from uncertain tradition; and so obscured by heathen fables that it was but one degree better than utter darkness.
1616. How uncertain the best of these conjectures was may easily be gathered from their own accounts. The most finished of all these accounts is that of the great Roman poet. Where observe how warily he begins, with that apologetic preface:
Virgil, Aeneid, vi.266; the original is not a question but a plea, ‘Allow me to tell what I have heard’ (Loeb, 63:525).
04:199And in the conclusion, lest anyone should imagine he believed any of these accounts, he sends the relator of them out of Hades by the ‘ivory gate’, through which he had just informed us that only dreams and shadows pass!
Ibid., vi.893-96; see No. 73, ‘Of Hell’, §3 and n.
1717. How little regard they had for all these conjectures with regard to the invisible world clearly appears from the words of his brother poet, who affirms without any scruple:
AM and Benson have Nec fieri credunt—which makes no sense. Wesley may have written viri, as one may see from his translation, ‘not even a man of them now believes.’ But his source was Juvenal, Satires, ii.149, 152, which reads, Nec pueri credunt (‘these things not even boys believe’); Jackson may have known this, for his text also reads pueri.
‘That there are ghosts or realms below, not even a man of them now believes.’
So little could even the most improved reason discover concerning the invisible and eternal world. The greater cause have we to praise the Father of lights, who hath opened the eyes of our understanding
See Eph. 1:18.
See 2 Cor. 4:6.
Heb. 12:2.
Heb. 1:2.
Samuel Wesley, Jun., ‘An Hymn to God the Son’, Poems (1736), p. 4, published by John Wesley in A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1737), p. 12; and A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), III.181.
These things we have believed upon the testimony of God, the Creator of all things visible and invisible.
BCP, Communion, Nicene Creed.
1804:20018. Upon the whole, what thanks ought we to render to God, who has vouchsafed this ‘evidence of things unseen’ to the poor inhabitants of earth, who otherwise must have remained in utter darkness concerning them! How invaluable a gift is even this imperfect light to the benighted sons of men! What a relief is it to the defects of our senses, and consequently of our understanding, which can give us no information of anything but what is first presented by the senses.
See No. 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, §1 and n.
Charles Wesley, ‘The Life of Faith’, sts. 5-6, in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740), p. 7 (Poet. Wks., I.210). See No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §17 and n.
London, Jan. 17, 1791
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Entry Title: Sermon 132: On Faith