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Sermon 142: The Wisdom of Winning Souls

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon142

04:305 An Introductory Comment

1This sermon mas originally designed for a service of ordination in Christ Church Cathedral on September 19, 1731, which explains its opening reference to ‘a place where philosophy or the love of wisdom is so universally professed and so carefully cultivated’. It was a gracious phrase from a Christ Church alumnus, by then mildly notorious as the leader of the group labelled ‘the Godly Club’.

2The sermon’s basic theme is the evangelical power of holy living: ‘this is inseparably connected with the winning of souls.’ The motive and end of authentic evangelism is ‘the glory of God’, an idea which is developed rather elaborately. The correlation between ‘holiness and happiness’ that will bulk so large in the later Wesley is also affirmed here; it is crucial in ‘the winning of souls’ to make religion appear as winsome as it really is.

3The first step in ‘winning souls’ is bringing the seeker both to a conscious desire for the purification of his heart from ‘its darling lusts’ and to the deliberate ‘regulating of the affections’. This must then be followed by a positive commitment to holy living as a gift and a task. The final step in the transaction is a ‘fixing’ of the convert in his new-found ‘generous resolutions’. None of this is possible, of course, by human resolution alone; it is all the work of grace.

4What would have been most challenging in this sermon to its Christ Church auditory is its generous allowances for irregular ministries and even for lay ministries of evangelism (note the closing section entitled, ‘Inferences’). This is an interesting affirmation of the evangelical mission of all Christian believers; it is also a denial of any exclusive right of the ordained clergy to evangelize. Here, then, at a very early stage, is Wesley’s distinction between the duty of all Christians to bear witness to their Christian faith (and to win others to it) and the special rights of ordination to the sacramental ministries of the church (see No. 121, ‘Prophets and Priests’). When, therefore, Wesley came later to employ laymen as his assistants in the Methodist Revival, he already had a theory for it to buttress his mother’s practical wisdom.

See Moore, Wesley, I.505-6, for Susanna’s comments about Thomas Maxfield, Wesley’s first full-time lay assistant.

504:306John Wesley’s copy of this sermon has not survived; what we have is a manuscript in Charles Wesley’s hand, in a volume bearing the note, ‘transcribed from my brother’s copies ’. It is in the Colman Collection in the Methodist Archives, Manchester. That transcription is given a title, as above, in Charles’s hand, and begins with an abbreviated invocation (I.N.D.—In nomine Dei). There is also a marginal notation, in another hand, ‘Preached before the University of Oxford’. Further annotations, compared with John Wesley’s diary, indicate that it was also preached in St. Miles, Oxford (September 26, 1731), and in St. Mary’s, Gloucester (July 9, 1732). John’s diary also shows that it was composed during the week of July 5-12, 1731, well in advance of its first preaching. His sermon list indicates that this was his fifty-fourth written sermon;

Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley’s Early Sermons’, p. 121.

one can only speculate as to why he chose never to publish it. A heavily edited version of it was finally published in 1816 as No. I in Charles Wesley’s Sermons.

The Wisdom of Winning Souls

Proverbs 11:30

I.N.D.

In Nomine Dei; see No. 139, ‘On the Sabbath’, n. 1.

In the eleventh chapter of the Proverbs, at the thirtieth verse, it is written,

He that winneth souls is wise.

1In a place where philosophy or the love of wisdom is so universally professed and so carefully cultivated, where so many are obliged by their office to study and practise this particular sort of wisdom, and where more are designed and endeavouring to qualify themselves for the same holy function, it can’t but be highly proper to make that wisdom the subject of our consideration, which a great part of us are engaged by so peculiar 04:307ties to recommend both by our lives and doctrines;

The majority of Wesley’s audience would have been ordained priests; cf. BCP, Ordering of Priests, opening and closing collects.

and to explain and enforce this important truth, ‘He that winneth souls is wise.’

2He that winneth souls, that draws them from vice to virtue, from rebellion against God to obedience, that recovers them from darkness and the shadow of death to the way of light and peace, that disentangles them from that fatal snare from which they had no hope, nay, no desire, of escaping, that disappoints the lion of his prey, even when he had said, there is none to help them—he is wise indeed! As will be evident if we consider:

3First, the end he proposes, and secondly, the means that lead to it.

0I. First, the end he proposes. Winning of souls may be considered, first, as bringing glory to God. ’Tis true, no action of any created being can do this in a strict sense, can at all add to that essential glory wherewith his Creator was clothed from eternity. Yet in a lower sense, whatsoever we do may be done to the glory of God; that is, may at least remotely tend to manifest his glory, to increase the honour paid to him by his creatures, to make him more known and more loved.

1And in this sense he that winneth souls eminently advances the glory of God, by displaying his glorious nature and attributes to the sons of men, who alone of all the visible creation are capable of contemplating them. Man alone of all the inhabitants of this world can acknowledge and praise him that made it; can raise his thoughts and affections from sensible objects to him ‘whom no man hath seen nor can see’.

1 Tim. 6:16.

And to persuade him to make this true use of the privileges he enjoys, to declare to him the wonderful works which God hath done, the wisdom and goodness he hath shown in all his works, is as noble a way of advancing his glory as any creature can aspire to.

2It was for this very thing that God wrought those works, that ‘his eternal power and Godhead’

Rom. 1:20.

might be known. That the invisible nature of him might be seen in them, ‘He spake, and they were made.’

Cf. Ps. 148:5 (BCP).

With this design were ‘the heavens and the earth created, and all the hosts of them.

Cf. Gen. 2:1.

For this, God formed man of 04:308the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. With the same great view he preserves what he has made, and ‘upholds all things by the word of his power’.

Cf. Heb. 1:3.

With the same [view], after all his other gifts, ‘he withheld not from us his Son, his only Son!’

Cf. Gen. 22:12, 16.

He gave us him, after he had freely given us all things,

See Rom. 8:32.

that his name might be known and glorified.

3This purpose it is which God hath uniformly pursued through our creation, preservation, and redemption.

See BCP, Thanksgivings, A General Thanksgiving.

And this purpose it is, seeing the glory of God is inseparably connected with the winning of souls, which the wise man we are speaking of is continually promoting; as well as its necessary consequence, with regard to which we may, in the second place, consider the end he proposes, namely, the good it brings to every person whom he wins to glorify God.

4Now this is of two sorts: deliverance from misery, and advancement to happiness. Of the former we need only observe this one circumstance, that it is eternal (as indeed it must be, unless there were repentance in the grave, since endless sin implies endless misery).

See No. 124, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §13.

This alone is abundantly sufficient to show us the greatness of it. To show that if it were proposed either to save the whole world, or to save a soul—to preserve ten thousand millions from being in pain sixty years, or one man from being in pain, though but equal, to all eternity—a wise man would not pause a moment which were the nobler instance of mercy; seeing although as many men as there are stars in the heavens or sands on the sea-shore were to be miserable for sixty years, the whole quantity of misery they sustained would bear no more proportion to the endless misery of one than finite to infinite, than time to eternity.

See Nos. 67, ‘On Divine Providence’, §13; and 54, ‘On Eternity’.

5The same single consideration is enough to give us a general notion of that happiness, the enjoyment of which is secured to him who is rescued from endless misery. That this too is eternal we know, and so need not inquire into the particulars. Nor indeed can we tell these if we would. If it were possible for man to utter them, St. Paul doubtless, after having been in the third heaven,

2 Cor. 12:2.

04:309would have been best able to have done it. But since even he was not equal to the task, well may we decline so fruitless an attempt. Only we are expressly told that no pain is there,

See Rev. 21:4.

but inexhaustible rivers of pleasure;

See Ps. 36:8.

that the hungry soul shall there be satisfied with good, and no desire of his soul return empty.

See Ps. 107:9 (BCP).

And that part of this happiness will be an intimate union with and enjoyment of ‘the spirits of just men made perfect, of the general assembly of the church of the first-born, of an innumerable company of angels, and lastly, of God, the judge of all, and Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant’.

Cf. Heb. 12:23-24.

6Here is wisdom! The pursuing such an end as this! The recovering him that was just sinking into the gulf of misery to happiness incomprehensible, eternal! To the depth of the mercies of God! This is the good which he that wins a soul brings to him whom he wins to virtue, over and above the good he brings to himself—which is thirdly to be considered.

7And no small part of the good it brings to himself is the honour that necessarily attends it, the honour of answering the end of his creation, promoting at once the glory of God and the good of man; of sharing in the office of those superior natures who continually minister to the heirs of salvation; of working together with God, of being a fellow-labourer with the ever blessed Spirit, and Jesus Christ the righteous!

1 John 2:1; a nod to those (in that audience and elsewhere) who did, indeed, count Wesley’s zeal as ‘madness’; cf. No. 150, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’ [English], II.14 and n.

An honour which however lightly it may be esteemed by those who count zeal madness, is justly prized by those whose supposed foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of the world.

See 1 Cor. 1:20-25.

An honour which shall not fail to be paid them in part in the moment wherein they deserve it, if not by men, yet by those more discerning beings who disdain not to call good men their fellow-servants; and by their common Master, who hath expressly declared, ‘Them that honour me, I will honour.’

1 Sam. 2:30.

8Nor can it ever be said of this honour, as is too often true of the honour of men, that it brings no advantage with it. This is never the case with regard to the honour which cometh from God. 04:310None can be conscious of this without an immediate advantage, without such satisfaction as words cannot express. None can resemble God in extending his mercy even to the evil and unjust, without experiencing, even at that time, some degree of his happiness whose goodness he imitates. No human creature can have so little of the law of kindness written in his heart as not to feel his heart burn within him

See Luke 24:32; this biblical metaphor of the warmed heart was common in the devotional literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and would be brought even more vividly to Wesley’s attention in 1738 in the ‘heart theology’ of the Moravians.

while he is saving a soul from death.

See Jas. 5:20.

9A foretaste this of that more ample reward which shall hereafter enlarge his heart, when he, with those whom he hath been a means of saving, shall together enter into the joy of their Lord. We need not dispute whether St. James touches upon this reward in those remarkable words, ‘Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know that he which converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and hide a multitude of sins.’

Jas. 5:19-20.

Now supposing these be only the sins of the person saved, and not the infirmities of the saver, yet how will every good man rejoice even in the joy of the penitent! And how eminent a share must he have in this, who was the instrument of his conversion, who has occasioned that joy in heaven, which is more over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine that need no such repentance!

See Luke 15:7.

To whom, under God, it is owing that all his sins which he had committed are not once mentioned unto him,

See Ezek. 18:22.

that the handwriting against him is blotted out,

See Col. 2:14.

and his name written in the book of life!

See Rev. 21:27.

10Neither need we inquire what foundation there is for that opinion of the ancients,

Cf. Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom (A.D. 235), II.14-16, 30, 47-51; see also J. L. von Mosheim, Institutiones historiae ecclesiasticae (1726; Eng. tr. by J. Murdock, 1841), ‘Century’ I, v.9-15. For a review of the history and theology of martyrdom in the early church, see W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (1963), pp. 199-200, 353-58.

that the same reward awaits those who give witness to the truth by dying for it themselves, or by saving a soul from death. For whether the reward of a martyr and of a winner of souls be one or no, sure we are that either is sufficient; 04:311sure we are that either is eminently glorious above that of common Christians. Neither God’s Word nor his attributes suffer us to doubt that different men will have different rewards in heaven; ‘that as one star differeth from another star in glory, so it will be in the resurrection of the dead’;

Cf. 1 Cor. 15:41-42.

‘every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labour.’

1 Cor. 3:8 [note the echo here of ‘the gospel of moral rectitude’].

And some of the highest of these rewards are promised to the converters of sinners. All who are admitted into the presence of God will be glorious, but these shall exceed in glory. ‘They that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, [and] they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever!’

Cf. Dan. 12:3.

11Such is the wisdom of him that winneth souls! Such is the end which he proposes! The means which lead to that end I come now, under my second general head, to consider.

0II. The first of these is, the regulating his understanding [of him] whom he endeavours to win to virtue; the freeing him from those confused apprehensions of things, those false judgments and ill-grounded conclusions which he has long been planting in himself, and which perhaps have been striking root for many years. Whether the first seeds of these were early sown by education, or afterwards by ill advice or example; whether they relate to faith or practice in general, or to any particular branch of either; whether they are errors of a whole sect of men, or peculiar to the person infected—they are carefully to be weeded out, and no root of bitterness left.

Heb. 12:15; note the theory of evangelism by Christian nurture that is here presupposed by the early Wesley.

1In particular there is an absolute necessity of removing the confused notion which most vicious men entertain of virtue. They apprehend religion as ‘a terrible spectre looking down from heaven only to enslave the earth, standing over them with so horrible an aspect’

A curious conflation (in translation) of Virgil, Aeneid, iii.658 (monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens), and Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), i.65 (horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans). See No. 151, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’ [Latin], I.9; and An Earnest Appeal, §65 (11:72 in this edn.).

as damps the courage of all who behold it; and such a monster as this they cannot but judge to be the bane of happiness, the destroyer of pleasure, and the imposer of 312numberless burdens too painful to be borne; whence they naturally infer that to throw off her yoke is the surest mark of a good understanding, and that the first rule of prudence is, ‘Be not righteous overmuch.’

Eccles. 7:16; a text favoured by the latitudinarians against all rigorists and enthusiasts. Later (1739), a mild-mannered Tory poet, Dr. Joseph Trapp, ally of Samuel Wesley, Sen., in the Sacheverell affair, would gain fame and opprobrium from George Whitefield’s denunciations of his sermon in Christ Church, Newgate, on The Nature, Folly, Sin and Danger of Being Righteous Overmuch.

He who is so, they are persuaded, destroys himself, and so at best cannot be over-wise.

2To make one who thinks thus wise unto salvation, he must be rescued from all these errors. And that the confused notion he has of religion, the ground of them all, may be cleared, he must be brought to fix his eye upon her, that he may perceive ‘he feared where no fear was’;

Cf. Ps. 53:6 (BCP).

that he may see the monster of his imagination in her real shape, her native loveliness; that he may know that righteousness therefore looked down from heaven that mercy might flourish upon earth,

See Ps. 85:11 (BCP).

that men might have a light to guide them to her, whose ‘ways are ways of pleasantness, and all whose paths are peace’.

Cf. Prov. 3:17.

He is to be convinced that religion forbids no pleasure but what would deprive him of a greater,

Another early version of Wesley’s eudaemonism; see No. 5, ‘Justification by Faith’, I.4 and n. See also No. 84, The Important Question, III.12, where Wesley speaks of the man who ‘sold his soul for threescore years of pleasure’.

nor requires any pain to be embraced, unless in order to more than equal pleasure. The plain consequence of which, he may readily observe, is that ‘a good understanding have all they that do thereafter;’

Ps. 111:10 (BCP).

and that there is the very same danger of being righteous overmuch, provided a man knows what righteousness is, as of having overmuch ease and safety in this life, or overmuch happiness in the other.

3But the convincing an ill man

I.e., ‘wicked’ or ‘depraved’; cf. OED, 3.

of these and the like truths is only one step towards his conversion, and often no step at all; since every conviction is not a lasting one. No, a man who has been long wedded to a mistake, if he be at last convinced it is so, will, unless great care be taken to prevent it, soon unconvince himself. Old opinions, though not quickly parted with, are quickly received into favour again; and the new, which seemed so firmly 04:313fixed that no force could make them give way, are by a prejudiced mind as easily broke through ‘as a thread of tow that has touched the fire’.

Cf. Judg. 16:9.

The confirming one who is brought to a knowledge of the truth is therefore as necessary as the convincing him at first. And when this is done, when due care has been used to strengthen his understanding, then ’tis time to use the other great means of winning souls, namely, the regulating his affections.

4Indeed without doing this the other can’t be done throughly—he that would well enlighten the head must cleanse the heart. Otherwise the disorder of the will again disorders the understanding, and perverseness of affection will again cause an equal perverseness of judgment. For whatever inclination is contrary to reason is likewise destructive of it; and whoever makes the world his god, that god will surely blind his eyes.

See 2 Cor. 4:4.

5This then is the most important work of all, namely, ‘the laying the axe to the root of the tree’;

Cf. Matt. 3:10.

the prevailing on a man to purify his heart, till it be holy and undefiled; to resolve upon giving up all his darling lusts

A cliché to match ‘bosom sin’, etc.; cf. No. 48, ‘Self-denial’, II.2 and n.

which will not submit to the law of God; to stifle every inclination which is contrary to the spirit of holiness, which would either prevent his entering upon, or retard his progress in, the race set before him. To lay aside pride, malice, envy, revenge, intemperance, covetousness; indeed every passion, every habit, which would keep him ‘a stranger to the covenant of promise, and alien from the commonwealth of Israel, without hope, and without God in the world’.

Cf. Eph. 2:12.

6When he has determined to renounce these inclinations which are evil in themselves, the next point is to bring him to a resolution of transferring those which are not so to new objects, of ‘setting these affections on things above, and not on things of the earth’.

Cf. Col. 3:2.

On things that were designed to be the delight, and engage the desires, of rational creatures, and are accordingly adequate to their capacities, which no perishable objects are. To a resolution of seeking his happiness, not in the things that are seen, but in things that are not seen;

See 2 Cor. 4:18.

not like the half-Christians who (to speak in the words of an excellent man) ‘use God, and enjoy the 04:314world’,

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, H. F. Stewart, ed. (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950), pp. 304-5; cf. No. 30, ‘Sermon on the Mount, X’, §7 and n. For the phrase ‘half-Christians’, see Nos. 2, The Almost Christian, proem and n.; and 4, Scriptural Christianity, II.5 and n.

but as one who knows his privilege better, ‘who uses the world, but enjoys God’.

7After inspiring a sinner with this generous resolution, one step more is to be taken, and that is to fix him in it, to guard him from a relapse, lest his last state should be worse than the first;

See Matt. 12:45.

in spite of the arts which his old enemies will soon use to draw him from his steadfastness, to ‘hold up his goings in the way, that his footsteps slip not’;

Cf. Ps. 17:5.

to watch over his soul till he has fully proved the whole armour of God, that he may be able to ‘wrestle with principalities and powers, with the rulers of the darkness of this world, to quench every fiery dart of the wicked, and, having done all, to stand’.

Cf. Eph. 6:11-13.

He who hath thus enlightened the understanding and regulated the will of a sinner, he hath eminently advanced the glory of God, he hath rescued a fellow-creature from destruction, he hath procured an exceeding reward for himself; he hath won a soul; he is wise.

A later hand has added ‘truly’ before ‘wise’.

8Inf[erences]. But is not this a higher degree of wisdom than anyone who was born of a woman hath yet attained to? This is the inference which a man of reflection would immediately draw from what has been said of it. ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’

2 Cor. 2:16.

Who is equal to so vast an undertaking? We have heard indeed that it is easy for a designing man to lead others whither he pleases; to bring them into just what opinions he will, and set their affections by his own. Nay, but he who has seen how slowly a confused apprehension is cleared, or a prejudiced judgment rectified, and how unwillingly men admit a truth they have long despised, even as if it were a sword piercing through their hearts; he who has observed that an ill man is almost as easily brought to cut off a right hand, or pluck out a right eye,

See Matt. 5:29-30.

as to set his affections on things above,

See Col. 3:2.

and mortify his darling lusts; in a word, he who knows that the persuading a bad man to be happy is the persuading him out of his fancy, judgment, and inclinations, 04:315all which must take an entirely new turn, must undergo such a change as is that from death to life: he knows that the winning a soul is a work of no common difficulty. He knows that, after every help of nature and art, after the nicest observations both upon things and men, after the most intense study and even the longest experience, still ‘with men this is impossible.’

Matt. 19:26.

9But with God all things are possible!

Ibid.

Here is our hold! This bids us go on and prosper!

A distorted echo from 1 Kgs. 22:15.

This bids us not doubt but when we have cleansed our own hearts, God will deliver others into our hands. What though we can do nothing of ourselves? ‘We can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth us!’

Cf. Phil 4:13.

What though we are not able to turn away the least captain in our enemy’s army? He who is with us hath counsel and strength for the war, and his power is sufficient for us!

See 2 Cor. 12:9.

His power will never forsake the duty prepared and commissioned labourers in his harvest, but as their day is, so their strength will be;

See Deut. 33:25.

they shall reap, if they faint not.

See Gal. 6:9.

10I would not here be understood to exclude all but these from having any share in this glorious work. No! God forbid! How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed,

Num. 23:8.

by denying them the blessing of joining with us in converting some from the error of their ways?

See Jas. 5:20.

Far be it from us, from the ministers of mercy, to be guilty of such arrogant cruelty as to condemn all who have not a part in our ministry as reprobate from God, and from the benefits of it; which we must do if we forbid their doing this work of God, so far as he hath given them ability; since our Lord himself expressly declares, ‘He that gathereth not with me, scattereth.’

Luke 11:23.

He that gathers not, as he may, subjects to my kingdom, scattereth them away from it. He that is not, according to his power, an agent for God, is a factor for the devil!

11Several acts of our blessed office indeed there are which may not be performed unless by particularly commissioned officers; but here a general commission is given to all the servants of Christ to tread in his steps, to do what in them lies

An early reference to the ancient monastic tradition of in se est; see Introduction (1:72 and n. 19, in this edn.); and see Nos. 143, ‘Public Diversions Denounced’, V and n. 48; and 151, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford’ [Latin], II.7 and n.

in their several 04:316stations, to save the souls for whom Christ died. ’Tis true, we are the ambassadors of God, and as such have many powers which they have not. But what Scripture denies any man the power of beseeching others, for Christ’s sake, to be reconciled to God? Yea, God will do so to us, and more also, should we thus outrage our fellow-Christians, should we thus magnify our office by speaking as from God what God hath not spoken, as to cut off any who stretch not themselves beyond their measure, from the wisdom of winning souls.

12Indeed, if Solomon had only said, ‘The priest that winneth souls is wise,’ they had some colour for saying to all who are not invested with this office, ‘Ye have neither part nor lot in this wisdom;

Cf. Acts 8:21.

even with such sacrifices God is not pleased,

Cf. Heb. 13:16.

when they are offered by your unhallowed hands.’ But Solomon’s words are universal, ‘He that winneth souls is wise!’ Who is he that is wiser and inspired by a better spirit? Let him stand forth and make the restriction!

For further theoretical developments of this doctrine of the place of the ‘extraordinary ministry’ of lay evangelists, see No. 110, Free Grace, §10 and n.; see also No. 121, ‘Prophets and Priests’, for an extended discussion of the distinction between lay preaching (licit) and the lay administration of the sacraments (illicit).

13But is this a time for making restrictions? For binding the hands of any of our fellow-labourers? When the avowed opposers and blasphemers of our holy religion are so zealously labouring to destroy souls; when those who have themselves made shipwreck of the faith

See 1 Tim. 1:19.

so earnestly endeavour to plunge others in the same gulf; when even ‘of ourselves have men arisen, speaking perverse things,’

Cf. Acts 20:30.

and not content ‘to deny the Lord that bought them’

Cf. 2 Pet. 2:1.

themselves, unless they drew disciples after them. Is this a time for refusing any help? For driving away any that would assist us? Is this a time for turning back any soldier of Christ who offers to set himself in array against the destroyer? Rather is there not a cause that we should cry aloud, ‘Who is on our side, who?’

Cf. 2 Kgs. 9:32.

Who will rise up with us against the enemy?

See Ps. 94:16.

Who will stand with us in the gap

Ps. 106:23 (BCP).

against these wolves, that now no longer put on sheep’s clothing,

See Matt. 7:15.

but go about in their own shape, seeking whom they 04:317may devour?

See 1 Pet. 5:8.

The apostles of Satan labour one and all: shall any of the servants of God stand idle? Every one of those is zealous to destroy: shall not every one of these be zealous to save? Yea, in this let the heathen teach the Christian. Let us too do something, from the least to the greatest! Now surely let us suffer even the little children to fight for Christ, and forbid them not,

See Matt. 19:14.

lest it be said of us, with more justice than it has been hitherto, ‘Ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi.’

Num. 16:7.

Let us cut off this occasion of reproach from them that seek occasion; nor let it always be true that ‘the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light!’

Luke 16:8; note the absence of an ascription here, in a setting where it would certainly have been expected; see No. 1, Salvation by Faith, III.9 and n. Apparently the ending of John’s sermon was not transcribed; there are two blank pages in the notebook before the next sermon begins.

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