Notes:
Sermon 137: On Corrupting the Word of God
1This sermon stands as No. 12 in Wesley’s list.
Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley’s Early Sermons’, p. 116.
2A reader may be entitled to a passing wonder at such a sermon (viz., on Christian preaching and the office of the Christian preacher) being preached to two congregations in the remote fen country of Lincolnshire, with no intention, apparently, of any wider audience. One should notice the careful contrast between three of the obvious ways in which the preaching office is most often abused (viz., by the preaching of one’s own fancies, by false interpretation, or by pandering to ‘the tastes of one’s hearers’) and the five ways in which the integrity of the Word of God is best preserved. There is, besides, a quite typical Puritan definition of the Christian preacher as ‘a commissioned officer’ of God, exercising his office ‘in the sight of him whose commission one bears’.
3Is this, then, nothing more than a donnish essay on preaching in an unlikely setting? Or, could it be understood somewhat more clearly as a son’s defence of the faithful preaching of his father in the latter’s uncompromising ministry of four decades in the hostile atmosphere of Epworth and ‘the Isle of Axholme’? After all, this description of authentic preaching matches Samuel Wesley, Sen.’s own practice, point for point. And such a defence would aptly match what we know of John’s sense of justice and fair play. After all, we do know that, in the previous August, John had preached a sermon in the Epworth pulpit, ‘On Universal Charity’,
Cf. ibid., p. 115, n. 4.
404:245For a later sermon on 2 Cor. 2:17, see No. 36, ‘The Law Established through Faith, II’ (especially I.1 and n.). This present manuscript was first published in October 1798, with no title.
MM, XXLI.505-10.
2 Corinthians 2:17
In the second chapter of St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, at the seventeenth verse, are these words:
“ We are not as many, who corrupt the Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ. ”P[reface].
This is the first sermon in John Wesley’s hand which supplies his own subdivisions. Here, his ‘P.’ is read as an abbreviation for ‘Preface’ (cf. No. 145, ‘In Earth as in Heaven’).
On ‘sincerity’, see No. 2, The Almost Christian, I.9 and n.
2[2.] But how to possess them with this belief is the question. How shall we bring them to take notice of our sincerity if they don’t advert to it of themselves? One good way, however common, is, frankly and openly to profess it. There is something in these professions, when they come from the heart, strangely insinuating into the hearts of others. The persons of any generosity that hear them find themselves almost forced to believe them; and even those who believe them not are obliged in 04:246prudence not to let their incredulity appear, since ’tis a known truth, ‘the honester any man is, the less apt is he to suspect another.’
An echo of Cicero’s Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem, I.i.12: ‘Nam ut quisque est vir optimus, ita difficillime esse alios improbos suspicatur’—‘The better a man is, the more difficult it is for him to suspect others of being unscrupulous’ (Loeb, 230:400-401); see also Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d, Act III, sc. 1: ‘Suspicion’s but at best a coward’s virtue.’
3[3.] Would not any man be tempted to suspect his integrity who, without proof, suspected the want of it in another that had fairly and openly professed the principles on which he acted? Surely none but who himself corrupted the Word of God—or wished that it were corrupted—could lightly suspect either St. Paul of doing it, or any that after him should use his generous declaration, ‘We are not as many, who (indeed) corrupt the Word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ!’
4[4.] Not that the Apostle, any more than his followers in preaching the gospel, desires they should wholly rely on his words; for immediately after, he appeals to his actions to confirm them. And those who in this can imitate him need not entreat men to believe their sincerity. If our works bear the stamp of it, as well as our words, both together will speak so loudly and plainly, every unprejudiced person must understand that we speak in Christ, as in sincerity, and that in so doing we consider we are in the sight of that God whose commission we bear.
5[5.] Those whom the Apostle accuses of the contrary practice, of corrupting the Word of God, seem to have been Jews who, owning Jesus to be Christ, and his gospel to be divine, yet adulterated it, by intermingling with it the law of Moses and their own traditions. And in doing of this their principal view was to make a gain of Christ, which consequently laid them under a necessity of concealing the end they proposed, as well as the means they used to obtain it. On the contrary, those who intend the good of mankind are by no means concerned to hide their intention. If the benefit we propose in speaking be to ourselves, ’tis often our interest to keep it private. If the benefit we propose be to others, ’tis always our interest to make it public—and ’tis the interest both of ourselves and others to make public those marks 04:247of distinction whence may clearly be known who corrupt the Word of God, and who preach it in sincerity.
11I. [1.] The first and great mark of one who corrupts it is his mixing it either with the heresies of others or the fancies of his own brain. To do this is to corrupt it in the highest degree—to blend with the oracles of God impure dreams, fit only for the mouth of the devil! And yet it has been so frequently done that scarce ever was any heretical opinion either invented or received but Scripture was quoted to defend it.
An early awareness that sola scriptura is not a single or simple norm; see also Wesley’s Preface (1746), §5 and n., and his Preface to his edn. of the Works (1771), §4.
2[2.] And when the imposture was too barefaced, and the texts cited for it appeared too plainly either to make against it, or to be nothing to the purpose, then recourse has usually been had to a second method of corrupting it—by mixing it with false interpretations. And this is done, sometimes, by repeating the words wrong; and sometimes by repeating them right, but putting a wrong sense upon them, one that is either strained and unnatural, or foreign to the writer’s intention in the place from whence they are taken—perhaps contrary either to his intention in that very place, or to what he says in some other part of his writings. And this is easily effected: any passage is easily perverted by being recited single, without any of the preceding or following verses. By this means it may often seem to have one sense, when it will be plain by observing what goes before and what follows after that it really has the direct contrary. For want of observing which unwary souls are liable to be ‘tossed about with every wind of doctrine’
Eph. 4:14.
33. A third sort of those who corrupt the Word of God, though in a lower degree than either of the former, are those who do so, not by adding to it, but taking from it—who take either of the spirit or substance of it away, while they study to prophesy only smooth things,
See Isa. 30:10.
An anticipation here of his later denunciation of horse-racing at Epworth in No. 143, ‘Public Diversions Denounced’.
4These are the methods of those corrupters of the Word, who act as in the sight of men, not of God. He trieth the hearts, and will receive no service in which the lips only are concerned. But their words have no intercourse with their thoughts; nor is it proper for them that they should; for if their real intention once appeared it must make itself unsuccessful. They purpose, ’tis true, doing good by the gospel of Christ—but ’tis to themselves, not to others—whereas they that use sincerity in preaching, in the good of others seek their own. And that they are sincere, and speak as commissioned officers, in the sight of him whose commission they bear, plainly appears from the direct contrariety between their practice and that of the dissemblers above described.
21II. [1.] First, considering that it is not their own word they preach, but the word of him that sent them, they preach it genuine and unmixed. As they do not only profess, but really believe that ‘if any man add unto the Word, God shall add unto him all the plagues that are written in it,’
Cf. Rev. 22:18.
Marginal note (‘2’) in MS indicates §2 starts in mid-paragraph.
33. In the next place, they are as cautious of taking from, as of adding to the Word they preach. They dare no more, considering in whose sight they stand, say less than [or] more than He has assigned them. They must publish, as proper occasions offer, all that is contained in the oracles of God: whether smooth or otherwise it matters nothing, since ’tis unquestionably true, and useful too. For ‘all Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable either for doctrine, or reproof, or correction, or instruction in righteousness;’
Cf. 2 Tim. 3:16.
MS first read ‘nothing related’; ‘nothing’ thereafter deleted.
As, e.g., at Epworth or Wroot?
44. Lastly, they who speak in sincerity, and as in the sight of him who deputes them, show that they do so by the manner in which they speak. They speak with plainness and boldness, and are not concerned to palliate their doctrine, to reconcile it to the tastes of man. They endeavour to set it always in the true light, whether it be the pleasing one or no. They will not, they dare not, soften a threatening so as to prejudice its strength; neither represent a sin in such mild colours as to impair its native blackness. Not that they do not choose mildness, where it is likely to be effectual: though they know the ‘terrors of the Lord, they desire rather to persuade men’.
Cf. 2 Cor. 5:11.
1[III.] 1. If then we have spoken the Word of God, the genuine, unmixed Word of God, and that only; 2, if we have put no unnatural interpretations upon it, but [have] taken the known phrases in their common, obvious sense, and where they were less known explained Scripture
MS reads ‘SS’, which sometimes means ‘Scriptures’ or ‘Sacred Scripture’.
See Ezek. 332-6. The first instance of what would become a characteristic cliché with Wesley when shifting responsibility from himself to others; cf. No. 150,‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’, §1. For Wesley’s usage of such phrases, see No. 36, ‘The Law Established through Faith, II’, I.5 and n.
See No. 65, ‘The Duty of Reproving our Neighbour’.
Ezek. 33:9.
2Which that we may all do, may God grant of his infinite mercy. To whom be ascribed might, majesty, and dominion, now and for evermore! Amen.
Cf. this brusque ascription with that in No. 136, ‘On Mourning for the Dead’; and see No. 1, Salvation Faith, III.9 and n.
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Entry Title: Sermon 137: On Corrupting the Word of God