A Vision of the Christian Life .:
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
tional "dullness" or "darkness" of contemporary, nominal Christians.
His struggles with "Smith," Smalbroke, and Lavington over the issue of "enthusiasm" show that this vision clearly contrasted with the vision of religious life that was being handed down by more conventional Anglican teachers.
A Vision of the Christian Life Given this understanding of religious experience, Wesley was vitally concerned with the process by which persons come to Christian faith and live out that faith. He held up the ethos of ancient Christianity as a pattern for the order in which he believed the Christian life was normally structured. Although his opinions on particular moments in the Christian life changed with his own experience and reflection, his thought can be consistently understood in terms of an ordo or via salutis, a "way of salvation." For Wesley, the "way of salvation" reached from the first "stirrings of conscience," through the "relative change" described as justification, through the "real change" described as sanctification, to its goal, "entire sanctification" or "Christian perfection."** Wesley's deletion of material extraneous to the via salutis from the Macarian homilies indicates the importance with which he viewed (and used) the idea of the via salutis.® He found in ancient Christian writings, and in works describing the faith of the ancient Christians, patterns for some of the specific stages of the via salutis, although there are not specific references to Christian antiquity for all the stages which he conceived of the via salutis as involving.
The Human Condition. Of all the material Wesley did include on the via salutis, however, very little deals with the state of persons apart from the influence of divine grace. He included a passage from Cave describing the natural human soul as "Heaven-born" and yet "clogged and overborne with the earthly and sensual Propensions of the lower
This inclusion is exceptional, however, given Wesley's general tendency to avoid passages enunciating obviously Hellenistic conceptions. Wesley omitted from his edition of Macarius several passages detailing the state of Adam before his transgression, the fallen condition of humankind, and the origin of infirmities and illness." In these cases, however, it is not clear whether Wesley omitted these passages because he disagreed with them, or because he thought them trifling.
Divine Initiative and Human Response. The Spiritual Homilies attributed to Macarius of Egypt must have presented a challenge to Wesley. Although they state in some places that it is God's grace that
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enables the Christian to perform God's commandments, in other places they speak of human beings as having the ability of themselves to turn to God. Wesley generally included passages of the first sort in his own version of the Spiritual Homilies. An example would be his inclusion of a passage asserting that the Spirit indwelling the Christian performs the commandments of the Lord. He consistently omitted passages of the second sort, such as a passage describing the human's guarding the soul, which results in the advent of divine grace, or a passage suggesting that humans ought to give themselves up to God in the hope that God would impart his grace to them. Wesley omitted no less than twenty-nine passages from the Macarian Homilies containing this sort of material,' and thus avoided giving the impression that Macarius believed in human initiative prior to, or apart from, divine grace. A similar pattern can be discerned in Wesley's editions of other works. For example, he omitted from I Clement a passage asserting that Christians are "justified by [their] Actions, not [their] Words."
On the other hand, Wesley was convinced that early Christian writers insisted upon a free human response to God's grace. In his
"Dialogue between a Predestinarian and his Friend," Wesley had the "Predestinarian" assert the authority of Augustine for the doctrine of predestination. The "Friend" (that is, Wesley) then replies:
Augustine speaks sometimes for [the doctrine of predestination], sometimes against it. But all antiquity for the first four centuries is against you...."
On another occasion, Wesley cited Augustine's expression, "He who created us without ourselves, will not save us without ourselves" against the doctrine of predestination." The manner in which this statement is cast suggests that Wesley understood the issue between Augustine (or, Augustine some of the time) and "all antiquity for the first four centuries" to be that of the possibility of a free human response to divine grace, which he evidently held Augustine to deny insofar as Augustine taught predestination."
Wesley's outlook on the issue of divine initiative and human response in salvation may be clarified somewhat by considering his estimate of two Christian heresies with which Augustine had dealt, namely, Manicheanism and Pelagianism. Wesley unambiguously rejected what he perceived as the determinism of the Manichean outlook. As early as 1729, in a letter to his father, Wesley referred to the "monstrous scheme" by which the Manicheans had attempted to explain the origin of evil, and regarded Augustine as having sufficiently refuted the Manichean outlook." In his later "Thoughts on Necessity,"
Wesley held up Manicheanism as one of the earliest systems of determinism, and pointed to it as one of a number of contradictory ac-
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
counts given by determinists of what the determining principle of the universe is.© Wesley's attitude toward Pelagianism was considerably. more ambiguous. He could recognize "Pelagianism" as being as dangerous an extreme as Calvinism," but he was not sure that the historical
Pelagius (so to speak) could be handily condemned as a heretic, if for no other reason than that none of Pelagius's own writings had survived. Moreover, Wesley argued, Augustine was angry at Pelagius, and for that reason Augustine's account of Pelagius could not be trusted. Wesley added the following note to Mosheim's conventional description of Pelagius:
It is scarce possible at this distance of time to know, what Pelagius really held. All his writings are destroyed: and we have no account of them but from Augustin [sic], his furious, implacable enemy. I doubt whether he was any more an Heretic than Castellio, or Arminius."
Elsewhere Wesley stated his guess that Pelagius was "both a wise and holy man,"" whereas of Augustine he wrote: "A wonderful saint! As full of pride, passion, bitterness, censoriousness, and as foul-mouthed to all that contradicted him, as George Fox himself.""' Pelagius, Wesley wrote to John Fletcher, "very probably held no other heresy than you and I do now."" He therefore doubted, if I may put it in this manner, whether Pelagius himself would have subscribed to "Pelagianism," meaning by the latter the view foisted on Pelagius by Augustine and identified as "Pelagian" in the subsequent Christian tradition, according to which human beings have a natural ability to keep God's commandments. Wesley may have felt that Pelagius was a kindred spirit, accused (as Wesley was accused) of denying the priority of grace in his stress on the necessity of following God's law."
Faith and Assurance. Wesley was convinced that the early Christians taught salvation by faith alone, but on at least two occasions he had to alter the texts of the Apostolic Fathers to ward off appearances to the contrary. He omitted from the Epistle of Polycarp an assertion
"that by your good Works, . .
. ye your selves may receive praise. .. ."
The second instance is rather bold: where Wake had rendered a passage from I Clement "By Hospitality and Godliness [dia philoxenian kai eusebian] was Lot saved out of Sodom," Wesley's version reads, "By faith was Lot saved out of Sodom."" These alterations do not have to be interpreted as meaning that Wesley thought that the Apostolic Fathers taught that human beings could achieve merit by good works; they indicate rather what he perceived as unfortunate expressions in their writings, which he felt obliged to amend.
Wesley also utilized the resources of the ancient church in his attempt to demonstrate that Christian faith (now using "faith" in a more
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restricted sense, where it is understood to have Christ as its object) is normally accompanied by an "assurance of pardon." Although Wesley's opinion varied as to whether this "assurance" was the necessary concomitant of Christian faith, he nevertheless maintained consistently that assurance was the usual concomitant of true Christian faith. Readers of Wesley's edition of the Macarian Homilies would have found references to "the Full Assurance of Faith" and to the Christian's assurance of eternal life. In two letters dating from the 1750s to Richard Tompson, Wesley asserted that Clement of Rome,
Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, and Origen all taught the doctrine of the assurance of pardon, although he could not recall any who had dealt with the subject "professedly," nor did he feel that he had
"leisure to wade through that sea" of ancient Christian literature in order to locate specific passages upholding the doctrine.*
Sin in, and Repentance of, Believers. The mature Wesley taught that sin remained in believers after regeneration, and that believers had therefore continually to repent of their sins. He vindicated this teaching by appeal to ancient Christian writings. The poem "On Clemens Alexandrinus's Description of a Perfect Christian" describes the struggle against sin in which the believer is engaged:
Learn thou the whole of Mortal State In stillness to sustain:
Nor sooth with false Delights of Earth Whom God has doom'd to Pain... °"
His edition of the Macarian Homilies in the first volume of A Christian Library presented to his readers the struggle between a Christian and indwelling sin. This edition includes numerous passages affirming the Christian's battle with sin, and stating that the Christian can fall from grace and thus ought to "lament, and grieve, and mourn" over their sins." In the early 1760s Wesley was forced by "a mistake which some were labouring to propagate,—that there is no sin in any that are justified," to defend his teachings "On Sin in Believers." In 1763 he composed a sermon by that title, the second paragraph of which asserts that "the whole body of ancient Christians, who have left us anything in writing, declare with one voice" their belief in sin remaining in believers.
Holiness and Perfection. Wesley also appealed to the early Christians as teaching the necessity of holiness, and as holding up the goal of Christian perfection. His edition of I Clement has the expression
"holiness of heart" (hosiotes kardias) that became part of Wesley's vocabulary for describing the goal of the believer's relationship to God.
Where Wake rendered a passage from Ignatius's Epistle to the Ephesians as "But all other things are the followers of Piety" (ta de
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
allapanta akolouthenta tes eusebias), Wesley translated it, "All other things pertaining to perfect holiness follow." Here, distinctively
Wesleyan vocabulary for the higher Christian life is more or less written back into an ancient Christian text. His edition of the "Martyrdom of St. Ignatius" includes a sentence asserting that in his early life Ignatius knew "that he had not attain'd to the pitch of a perfect disciple." The poem "On Clemens Alexandrinus's Description of a Perfect
Christian" also holds up the goal of Christian perfection. It begins with the stanza:
Here from afar the finish'd Height Of Holiness is seen:
But O what heavy tracts of Toil, What Deserts lie between.© Wesley's edition of Horneck's "Letter to a Person of Quality," moreover, states that the early Christians considered it the duty of their pastors to lead them to perfection."
Wesley was aware of the Gnostics' teachings on perfection, and was sensitive to the accusation that his doctrine was like theirs. He tried to contrast their notions with his own in this manner:
The doctrine of the Gnostics was not that a child of God does not commit sin, i.e., act the things forbidden in Scripture, but that they are not sin in him, that he is a child of God still; so they contended not for sinless but sinful perfection: just as different from what I contend for as heaven is from hell.
It may be noted, however, that on other occasions Wesley himself disavowed the notion of "sinless perfection." Wesley maintained that the earliest Christians strived for a perfection integrally related to the moral holiness they inculcated.
It is likely that the reason why Wesley was attracted to the Spiritual Homilies of Macarius was because of the stress that the Homilies laid on holiness and perfection. Indeed, these Homilies, as other Eastern Christian literature, regarded the goal of humankind as "deification" (theiosis or apotheiosis); but Wesley eliminated this controversial term from his edition of the Homilies." The Spiritual Homilies assert that the Christian ought to do good "by violence" until he can do it freely; they also describe "Degrees of Perfection.""" The Homilies speak of a "Sanctification of the Spirit" which can be termed "an Entire Redemption from Sin,"" or "the Baptism of Fire and of the Holy
Ghost."" Similarly, those who attain to spiritual perfection are described as "baptized into the Holy Spirit.""" The Christian's quest for holiness and perfection is a persistent theme in the Macarian Homilies which shines through Wesley's edition of them." Wesley saw
"Macarius," then, as a fourth-century advocate of the quest for holi-