poor is not a matter of "charity" but of justice. This principle had already
Notes to Pages 98-113 5. Stewardship: The Redistribution of Wealth 1. Warner and Semmel are equally oblivious to this dimension of Wesley's thought.
9. It is a pity that Wesley did not see clearly the implication of this for the relation to Caesar, for there cannot be two owners, and if God truly is the sole proprietor, that leaves Caesar holding an empty bag!
3. In this Wesley stands in essential continuity with the teaching of the early Church. See, for example, the relevant sermons of Leo the Great in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. XII (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, reprint 1956). Especially important are the two sermons "On the Collection" (IX and X), but the sermons on fasting (XII, XVI, and XVII) are also relevant here, providing an early parallel to these elements of Wesley's teaching.
4. It must be clear that for this sort of evangelical economics, giving to the poor is not a matter of "charity" but of justice. This principle had already been clearly formulated by St. Gregory the Great in his Pastoral Rule when he wrote, "For when we administer necessaries to the indigent, we do not bestow our own, but render them what is theirs; we rather pay a debt of justice than accomplish works of mercy." See The Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, 2nd series, vol. XII (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, reprint 1956), p. 47.
Thus Warner (The Wesleyan Movement in the Industrial Revolution, pp. 209, 246) is correct when he distinguishes the Wesleyan ethic from the notion of charity, although he notes that the Methodists seemed to have lost sight of this after Wesley (p. 247). In this respect Semmel wrongly attributes to Wesley what became the misunderstanding of later Methodists (The Methodist Revolution, p. 80).
5. The text I have used is Certaine Sermons or Homilies: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1623, with an introduction by Mary Ellen
Richey and Thomas B. Stroup (Gainesville: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1968). All subsequent references to the texts of the Homilies will be taken from this edition, cited by page number in parentheses in the main text.
6. So, for example, Basil, in his sermon "I Will Pull Down My Barns," avers:
"He who who strips another man of his clothing, is he not a robber; and he who does not clothe the naked when he could, should he not be called the same? The bread you hold in your clutches, that belongs to the starving.
That cloak you keep locked away in your wardrobe, that belongs to the naked. Those shoes that are going to waste with you, they belong to the barefooted. The silver you buried away, that belongs to the needy.
Whomsoever you could have helped and did not, to so many have you been unjust." The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, trans. and ed. M. F. Toal
(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954), p. 332.
7. Wesley's initially romantic estimate of the character and culture of the Native Americans was to be tempered by subsequent experience; see
Journal, Dec. 2, 1737, 1:66-8; and Original Sin, XI:210-13.
Still he continued to be impressed by and made frequent allusion to the simplicity of their lives; see, for example, "Sermon on the Mount, Discourse VIII,"
V:365.
8. See Thomas W. Madron, "John Wesley on Economics," in Sanctification and Liberation, ed. Theodore Runyon (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981), pp:
108-9.