. Wesley, for example, protests against the view of a certain Dr. Cadogen,
Notes to Pages 73-95 saloons were providing the government with revenue while poisoning the bodies of the poor and so drugging their minds that they could not change their situation, they were making a decidedly Wesleyan point.
4. Protest Against Injustice . Wesley, for example, protests against the view of a certain Dr. Cadogen, who recommended total abstinence from wine, "But why should he condemn wine foto genere, which is one of the noblest cordials in nature?"
(Journal, Oct. 9, 1771, I11:443).
. But see the reference to Wesley's mysterious offer to raise troops for the Crown in the Appendix, pp. 199-22.
. For a description of the way in which Methodism, following the death of Wesley, turned its back on Wesley's social ethic in this as in other respects, see Bernard Semmel, The Methodist Revolution (New York: Basic Books,
. The "honest Quaker" was Anthony Benezet, who wrote three attacks on the institution of slavery from 1762 to 1771. The anti-slavery position of the Quakers dates from as early as 1727. See Warner, The Wesleyan
Movement in the Industrial Revolution, pp. 42-43.
. Thoughts Upon Slavery (X1:59-79) contains large sections extracted from the book by Anthony Benezet that had earlier impressed him.
. This is not clearly recognized by Leon O. Hynson in his celebration of the Wesleyan position on human liberty in To Reform the Nation:
Theological Foundations of Wesley's Ethics (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press, 1984).
. Fora brief description of the relationship between these forms of trade monopoly and their importance to England, see Franz Hinkelammert,
"I as condiciones econémico-sociales del Metodismo en la Inglaterra del Siglo XVIII," in La tradicién protestante en la teologia latinoamericana, ed.
(San José, Costa Rica: DEI, 1983), pp. 21-30. This economic analysis of theology is applied to our own context in Hinkelammert's
"The Economic Roots of Idolatry: Entrepreneurial Metaphysics," in Pablo Richard et al., The Idols of Death and the God of Life: A Theology
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1983).
. For an excellent analysis of liberation theology, see Rebecca Chopp, The Praxis of Suffering (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1986).
One of the weaknesses of Semmel's presentation of Wesley's political ethic is that he speaks of Wesley's horror of mob violence without recognizing the basis of this horror in Wesley's own experience. See Semmel, The Methodist Revolution, p. 63.
Indeed, a difference that separates the proponents of Marxist theory from those of liberation theology is that the former proclaim an abstract right of the oppressed to engage in armed struggle, but in practice oppose it wherever the interests of powerful Marxists are threatened, asin Hungary,
Poland, or Afghanistan. Many liberation theologians oppose violence, but refuse to offer a blanket condemnation when the poor are driven to insurrection by the oppression of the powerful, whatever they may call themselves. Wesley will not embrace any theory of armed struggle, but he does not suppose that the poor may be justly condemned for actions to which they are driven by their oppressors.
10.