John Wesley and Modern Religion automaton. And he moves just as necessarily as the rest, as the sun or moon, or earth. Only with this difference (which was necessary for completing the design of the Great Artificer) that he seems to himself perfectly free...." This is of a piece with the materialistic explanation of mind, which Wesley exhibits in another quotation: ""The soul is now connected with a material vehicle, and placed in the material world.
Various objects here continually strike upon one or other of the bodily organs. These communicate the impression to the brain; consequent on which such and such sensations follow. 'These are the materials a , on'which the understanding works, in forming all its simple and complex ideas; according to which our judgments are formed. And according to our judgments are our passions; our love and hate, joy and sorrow, desire and fear, with their innumerable combinations. Now, all these passions together are the will, variously modified; and all actions flowing from the will are voluntary actions; consequently, they are good or evil, which otherwise they could not be. And yet it is not in man to direct his own way, while he is — in the body, and in the world."
The associationist psychologist, David Hartley (1705-1757), began with Locke's sensationalism, as did Wesley also, and his scheme seemed "plausible" to Wesley. "Who can deny," he asked, "that not only the memory, but all the operations of the soul, are now dependent on the bodily organs, the brain in particular? insomuch that a blow on the back part of the head (as frequent experience shows) may take away the understanding, and destroy at once both
Rack 128 The Bases of Wesley's Theology sensation and reflection; and an irregular flow of spirits may quickly turn the deepest philosopher into a madman?" But this psychology implies determinism, "In all cases the choice must be determined by that motive which appears the best upon the whole.
But motives are not under our power. Man is passive in receiving impressions of things, according to which the last judgment is necessarily framed. This the will necessarily obeys, and the outward action necessarily follows the will."
Wesley followed the quotations just given by examining Jonathan Edwards' psychology and by an insistence on the dependence of Calvinistic theology upon deterministic philosophy. To Wesley, the picture of man helpless to co-operate with God was essentially the picture of man helpless before the Newtonian world-machine or helpless in the grasp of mechanical causes and effects working in himself. It is true that Wesley himself had no satisfactory answer to the questions raised by the determinists; he could only affirm his faith in the intention of "the God of Nature" to make man free and reasonable. Man is not a machine, however intricate and wonderful.
Nor—logician and logic-chopper that Wesley sometimes was—could he be satisfied with the finely-spun distinctions with which Edwards explained voluntary action. "The actions of men are quite voluntary," said Edwards; "the fruit of their own will. ... Now, if men voluntarily commit theft, adultery, or murder, certainly the actions are evil, and therefore punishable. And if they voluntarily serve God, and help their neighbours, the actions are good, and therefore
John Wesley and Modern Religion rewardable." But according to Calvinism their wills are not free, reiterated Wesley; they cannot help willing thus or thus. Here is the ancient antinomy: deterministic theories seem to demonstrate man's unfree will; but mankind knows itself to be free. It is significant that Wesley's answer is finally to quote from Milton:
For so I form'd them free: and free they must remain, Till they enthral themselves.
Even this brief discussion will be sufficient to show that in Wesley's fundamental doctrines of God and of man he rejected determinism. Although he worked with the traditional dogmatic materials which Anglican theology handed to him, he came down on the side of human freedom. Man is evil, but he has the prevenient grace of God, empowering grace which, if used, will enable a man to go on to repentance and faith, to the Christian life. Man is not a machine; of this Wesley was sure, even if he had to express his assurance in quotations from the poets. !
Before going on to-a more detailed examination of Wesley's evangelical doctrines, it is necessary to ask one more question about his assumptions: What did } <x. he regard as religious authority? The tendency with many in the eighteenth century was to adopt a simplified answer. If natural phenomena could be reduced to simple terms, so also could religious authority. The final authority of Christians is the Bible; — or reason, reduced to certain innate ideas, or the dogma of the Church as formulated by the ecumenical
The Bases of Wesley's Theology councils. It is customary to speak of Wesley as holding to some such simple religious authority: he was a Bible Christian, acknowledging no authority but the written word; he rested in the evidence of Christian experience; or, he combined the two.
Wesley called himself a Bible-Christian. He insisted that Christians should not require what is not found in the Scriptures, and that they should stand by all that is found there. 'To the law and to the Testimony," was his cry. "This," he wrote, "is the general method of knowing what is 'the holy and acceptable will of God.'" 8 To find the particular rule, one has only to apply the general. But he recognized that men may err in interpretation, and he enjoined caution because of this. One should be especially careful '"'with respect to those parts thereof which less immediately relate to practice." That men differ in interpretation is not proof that they are not children of God; "but it is a proof that we are no more to expect any living man to be infallible, than to be omniscient." *" But there are no mistakes in Scripture. Nevertheless, in his translations Wesley frequently anticipated the readings of later critics, and when he prepared the Sunday Services for America, he left out many psalms and parts of others
"as being highly improper for the mouths of a Christian congregation." Here, as often elsewhere, his practical sense overrode his theory.
But Wesley had another guide whose authority for him has not been so generally recognized. In the preface to the First Collected Edition of his works
(1771-1774), Wesley hoped he had written what was . 131
John Wesley and Modern Religion "agreeable to Scripture, reason, and Christian antiquity.' No one can follow Wesley with understanding without taking into consideration his high regard for the primitive Fathers. To Dr. Conyers Middleton,
Wesley explained this high esteem. By the primitive Fathers he meant particularly Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenzus, Origen, Cyprian, Macarius, and Ephraim Syrus. "I allow," he said, "that some of these had not strong natural sense, that few of them had much learning, and none the assistances which our age enjoys in some respects above all that went before."' He did not doubt, therefore, that one could find in their writings "many mistakes, many weak suppositions, and many ill-drawn conclusions." But he added: "Yet I exceedingly reverence them as well as their writings, and esteem them very highly in love. I reverence them, because _ they were Christians, such Christians as are above described. And I reverence their writings, because they describe true, genuine Christianity, and direct us to the strongest evidence of Christian doctrine. ...
They never relinquish this: 'What the Scripture promises, I enjoy. Come and see what Christianity has done here, and acknowledge it is of God.' " *°
The Fathers—'chiefly those who wrote before the Council of Nice'—are "the most authentic com-_ mentators.on Scripture, as being nearest the fountain, — and eminently endued with that Spirit by whom all
Scripture was given." *' This was written, not before 1738, but in 1756. And twenty-six years later, Wesley declared that he regarded no authorities but "the Ante-Nicene Fathers," although he would not accept
The Bases of Wesley's Theology them in opposition to Scripture.*" In 1784, he acted upon a conviction concerning the validity of presbyterial ordination which was rooted in his understanding of the practice of the Primitive Church.
Here again Wesley was in line with High Church Anglicanism. In the seventeenth century the Church of England had been remarkable for wealth of patristic learning. The appeal to antiquity was made by the Laudian divines in their controversies both with Rome and with the Puritans. And this appeal was made especially to the first six centuries, to the period of the undivided Church. But there was a tendency among English High Churchmen to narrow this still more. Bishop Andrewes, perhaps the most learned of the English divines, in the seventeenthcentury sense of the word, preferred for authority the Fathers before 500 A.D.*° Herbert Thorndike
(1598-1672), whose books occupy considerable space in The Anglo-Catholic Library, thought the Fathers before the fourth century should have preéminence, giving for this reasons very similar to those quoted above from Wesley.** The Nonjurors made their appeal to Scriptures, reason, and the Primitive Church; and with them patristic learning almost disappeared from the English Church until the Oxford Movement.
One of the first acts of the authors of "Tracts for the Times" was the publication of some of the writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
In listing his authorities, Wesley always coupled reason with Scripture. Here again Wesley was a child of the Enlightenment. "It is a fundamental principle with us," he wrote to Dr. Rutherforth, in 1768, "that John Wesley and Modern Religion to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand, and that all irrational religion is false religion." *° He did not, therefore, deny the value of so-called natural theology, and when taxed with having caricatured "natural religion" in his picture of the American Indian, Wesley replied that he was there speaking of "men's natural manners." °® He did not believe that natural religion is enough, for he insisted upon the necessity of revelation; but all religion is reasonable.
This is true, Wesley held, whether one means by reason, "the eternal reason, or the nature of things," or "the faculty of reasoning, of inferring one thing from another." The foundation of religion "stands on the nature of God and the nature of man, together with their mutual relations." And Wesley had no sympathy with mystic depreciations of reason. He contended that the Lord and his apostles were continually reasoning with their opponents, and that the Epistle to the Hebrews is "such a chain of reasoning or argumentation" as he did not know in ancient or modern times.*"
Wesley insisted that reasoning about religion is not fruitful unless "ideas" received by intuition are considered as well as those which come through the senses.
As will be seen later, he developed, in accordance with his Lockian psychology, a doctrine of faith which was, in reality, a theory of knowledge. Man may perceive certain truths directly instead of indirectly through the senses. These truths were, in fact, limited to Biblical doctrines personally applied; but Wesley believed that there was direct apprehension of these by The Bases of Wesley's Theology the mind. The materials of intuition, therefore, must be included by those whose reasoning on religion is to be sound.** In the main, however, Wesley agreed with his contemporaries that the reason must deal primarily with the natural world and derive therefrom its materials for a reasonable faith. 'The little which we know of God, (except what we receive by the inspiration of the Holy One)," he wrote, '"'we do not gather from any inward impressions, but gradually acquire from without. 'The invisible things of God,' if they are known at all, 'are known from the things that are made;' not from what God hath written in our hearts, but from what he hath written in all his works." *° Whatever one thinks of Wesley's conception of reason, however inadequate his theory may now seem, it is certain that he believed in the reasonableness of religion. 'The Scriptures are indeed the sole rule of faith and practice; but Wesley assumed that the Scriptures are themselves reasonable and must be so interpreted. Whatever is irrational is not religion.
While holding to this principle, Wesley shared the early eighteenth-century view that only practical matters are worth reasoning about. "I believe that most of the controversies which have disturbed the Church," wrote Wesley to Joseph Benson in 1788,
"have arisen from people's wanting to be wise above what is written, not contented with what God has plainly revealed there." 'Metaphysical disquisition" is worse than useless; it is dangerous." And Wesley was also too good a psychologist to encourage his converts to "reason" about their condition. His
John Wesley and Modern Religion exhortation was to simple trust and obedience. But there is no reason to doubt Wesley's sincerity when he repeatedly expressed his belief that religion is reasonable.
It has long been recognized that Wesley made a distinct contribution to modern religion by his emphasis upon Christian experience. What Wesley did, according to the usual interpretation, was to revolt against the eighteenth-pceneury conception of religion ual's Puch and posing Such an interpretation is only partially true. ~ In the first place, Wesley's interest in Christian experience is rooted in the same soil as the eighteenthcentury English interest in conduct. Just as he preferred reason devoid as far as possible of metaphysical subtleties, so he was interested in experience as a practical matter: the proper study of mankind is man.
In 1734, he argued with his father that Epworth was not the proper place for the true development of John Wesley's religious life. "But for the proof of every one of these weighty truths," he added, "experience is worth a thousand reasons." *? With Wes- | ley, religious experience, in the primary sense of the term, is the experience of God, or of the Holy Spirit.
But this experience is man's experience, and most of Wesley's concern was with the manward side. He believed and insisted upon the work of the Holy
Spirit, but any serious study of his writings must convince the student that Wesley was rather modest in his dealings with the Godward side of Christian experience. This is, in part, the explanation for his
The Bases of Wesley's Theology conservatism in theology. He would go no further than he thought reasonable interpretation of Scripture would allow when he spoke of God, but man's side of experience may be analyzed and expounded.
Wesley recognized the apologetic importance of introducing into theology the evidence of Christian experience. In his letter to Dr. Middleton, Wesley says that he conceives this '"'to be the strongest evidence of the truth of Christianity." Attacks upon the tradition "evidences" of Christianity had not destroyed those evidences, but some of the objections were weighty and did not a mit of self-evident answers. He doubted that the cause could long be maintained by appeal to these traditional evidences, and questioned "'whether, if they do not obey the loud call of God, and lay far more stress than they have hitherto doné on this internal evidence of Christianity, they will not one after another giv the external, and (in heart at least) go over se whom they are now contending with; so that in a century or two the people of England will be fairly divided into real
Deists and real Christians." ** To give up the outward evidences would mean for many very little.
They have neither faith nor love; they have no divine evidence of things unseen; they are neither happy nor holy; they have not learned, in whatsoever staté'they are, to be content; they do not walk as Christ walked.
But what does Wesley mean by experience? It is better to let him speak for himself. '"I now am assured that these things are so: I experience them in my own breast. What Christianity (considered as a doctrine) promised iis accomplished iin my own soul.
LGA John Wesley and Modern Religion And Christianity, considered as an inward principle, is the completion of those promises. It is holiness and happiness, the image of God impressed on a created spirit, a fountain of peace and love springing up into everlasting life." ** At another time, he wrote to one of his correspondents: '""We know there is nothing deeper, there is nothing better in heaven or earth than the God of love! So that we see distinctly what we have to aim at. We see the prize and the way to it!
Here is the height, here is the depth, of Christian experience! 'God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' " *4 Experience in these quotations refers to "inward" experience: the acme of it is love; for he that dwells in love dwells in God and God dwells in him. But | experience has a wider meaning for Wesley. In 1774,
Wesley explained to "Miss March" his method of estimating the experience of others. "I 'sum up the experience' of persons," he wrote, "in order to form their general character. But in doing this we take a different way of making our estimate. It may be you chiefly regard (as my brother does) the length of their experience. Now this I make little account of; I measure the depth and breadth of it. Does it sink deep in humble, gentle love? Does it extend wide in all inward and outward holiness? If so, I do not care whether they are of five or five-and-twenty years' standing." *° Here Christian experience includes not only inward but outward holiness. It is the experience of the whole man.
Wesley was alive to the possibilities of evidential value in the religious consciousness. He was especially The Bases of Wesley's Theology curious about claims to experience of the Trinity.
Some of his friends thought they had an experience similar to that of de Renty, the Catholic worthy whom Wesley so much admired, a direct experience of the three Persons of the Godhead. Among these was Lady Maxwell, to whom Wesley wrote in 1787:
"T think there are three or four in Dublin who likewise [he has named some others in London] speak clearly and scripturally of having had such a manifestation of the several Persons in the ever-blessed Trinity. Formerly I thought this was the experience of all those that were perfected in love; but I am now clearly convinced that it is not. Only a few of these are favoured with it." *® But Wesley was suspicious of peculiar experiences. Willing to allow for individual variations, he yet insisted upon "common salvation." *7 Whitefield had not done well to go against the judgment of the whole society, and Wesley's careful organization of his followers was designed not only to deepen but to regulate individual experience.
Besides, external authorities, the Scriptures, especially as interpreted by the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and reason (as he understood it) served as a check upon the vagaries of individual inner experiences. 'The conjunction of belief in the authority of an organic church with insistence upon the value and reality of individual experience as the final test," writes Dr. H.
B. Workman, "'gives to Methodism its special position in the Catholic Church." ** So much may be said of experience as an authority to which appeal may be made for the truth of Christianity. But there is another sense in which the John Wesley and Modern Religion Christian needs authority; that is, in the sense of guidance. What is the authority for one's actions at any given time? Wesley had to meet in his day the old claim to immediate inspiration, to guidance by direct impulses upon the mind and heart. Very early in his dealings with the Moravians he found them inclined to value highly this direction "'by the Spirit."
In November, 1738, he gave his opinion on some matter to James Hutton. "This may seem of very little weight to some of our brethren," he wrote, "especially when urged by one so weak as me; and they may think it deserves no other answer than 'He hath not the Spirit.""' *° Soon he learned to distrust this submission of matters to the tailors, mechanics, and other untrained men who were in the society; and he fell back upon the advice of men of like training with himself. Wesley's aristocratic system in his societies was not only because of his own predispositions, but because of his unsatisfactory experience with the impulses of his brethren.
Up until at least the middle of the 1740's, Wesley still resorted to lot or to some form of bibliomancy in determining his actions when he was at a loss how | to proceed. But this disappeared, and Wesley fell back more and more upon common sense and the Bible, interpreted by the early Fathers. ''How does the Spirit of God lead his children to this or that particular action? Do you imagine it is by blind impulse only? by moving you to do it, you know not why? Not so. He leads us by our eye, at least as much as by the hand; by light as well as by heat."
Wesley's belief concerning immediate inspiration The Bases of Wesley's Theology has been dealt with more fully in a monograph by the writer, but it is necessary to say that Wesley restricted the tendency to act upon impulses supposed to be of the Holy Spirit by safeguards which were intended to prevent any great reliance upon them. In practice they were not sufficient, and the documents which he himself collected from his friends, detailing their experiences, are replete with marvels. Believing as he did in the communion of the divine and the human,
Wesley could hardly exclude them a priori; but the dilemma was recognized, and he attempted to deal with it in his organization.
It must be remembered, however, that Wesley estimated the experience of others not only by their inner state of humble love but also by their inward and outward holiness. Experience, then, if one is to be true to the whole range of Wesley's thought, is not to be restricted to moments of experience, as in conversion, but includes the whole range of man's inner and outer life. It is in connection with this that one must observe a second meaning of experience. Not only one's own but the experience of other people has evidential value in religion. Men may learn something not only from their own seeing, but also from those who have been restored to sight.
"Now, transfer this to the case before us: and those who were blind, but now see—those who were sick many years, but now are healed—those who were miserable, but now are happy—will afford you also a very strong evidence of the truth of Christianity; as strong as can be in the nature of things, till you experience it in your own soul; and this, though it be
John Wesley and Modern Religion allowed they are but plain men, and in general of weak understanding—nay, though some of them should be mistaken in other points, and hold opinions which cannot be defended." °' This was Wesley's great evidence for the essential Christianity of Methodism. 'To the Bishop of London, Wesley appealed
"to plain facts." { "By the fruits shall ye know those of whom I speak; even the cloud of witnesses, who at this hour experience the gospel which I preach to be the power of God unto salvation. The habitual drunkard that was is now temperate in all things; the whoremonger now flees fornication; he that stole, steals no more, but works with his hands; he that cursed or swore, perhaps at every sentence, has now learned to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice in Him with reverence; those formerly enslaved to various habits of sin are now brought to uniform habits, of holiness. ... My Lord, can you deny these facts?" ®?'
Wesley felt that in his writings he was representing mature Christian experience. "In the Thoughts on Christian Perfection and in the Farther Thoughts," he wrote to one of his correspondents in 1766, "you have the genuine experience of the adult children of ©
God. Oppose that authority to the authority of any that contradict (if reason and Scripture are disregarded). iu.
The collections which Wesley made of religious autobiographies have furnished materials for more than one study in the psychology of religion. But Wesley was not merely a romantic, emphasizing the worth of the inner life. He was interested in man and his conduct. He would not admit the reduction
The Bases of Wesley's Theology of empirical psychology to the subjectivism which resulted in Hume's skepticism, but he did accept a practical consequence of empiricism, that one must turn to an analysis of man's experience for further light on the vexed questions of the relation between mind and reality.
In the light of this study of Wesley's fundamental assumptions, one may go on to examine his reconstruction of Christian doctrine. But the assumptions must be kept in mind. And not least among these assumptions is that of the nature of religious authority. It has been too easily assumed that Wesley simply reinstated orthodox theology and the letter of the Bible as Christian infallibilities, or that he set up
Christian experience as the final authority. The truth is that he felt the richness of Christian truth to be too great to allow so simple a solution. Inconsistent as his own treatment was, inadequate as was his attempt to give logical statement to his conviction, he did real- , ize how impossible it is to fit the manifold facts of hu-man experience into any one of the theological molds which were ready to his hand. In common with the historic Church, he recognized the Bible as the one rule of faith and practice; but he supplemented this by an acknowledgment of the priority of the primitive
Fathers as interpreters, and by a recognition of the place of reason; and to this he added the authority of experience, the religious experience of man in its broadest sense, but particularly the testimony of the "adult children of God.' No more consistent, no simpler authority would suffice: single and more logical molds were too rigid; the systems were too systematic.
CHAPTER VII THE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION ALTHOUGH Wesley expressed himself on such subjects as the nature of God, the nature of man and their relations, he was, as has been said, primarily interested in practical matters. He was sure that religion does not consist in orthodoxy or right opinions; they are but "a slight part of religion at best, and sometimes no part at all." If a man is a child of God, holy in heart and life, opinions are but the smallest part of his religion. If aman is a child of the devil, his opinions, however correct, are not religion at all.
Only the ingrained convictions of a lifetime can explain this tolerance, for in other matters Wesley was, during most of his life, contentious enough. In his old age he wrote of those who lie in bed eight or nine hours or more: "I do not say now (as I should have > been very apt to do fifty years ago) that all who indulge themselves in this manner are on the way to hell." ?
One of the most beautiful letters which John Wesley ever wrote was written to his nephew, Samuel, who had joined the Roman Catholic Church.
Samuel's defection troubled his uncle, but not because of his ""embracing such and such opinions (were they right or wrong). Wesley was troubled because his nephew had cut himself off from instructions
The Doctrine of Salvation which he sorely needed. His nephew lacked religion:
"Christ in you the hope of glory, Christ reigning in your heart and subduing all things to Himself." "I care not a rush," he wrote, "for your being called
Papist or Protestant. But I am grieved at your being an heathen. Certain it is that the general religion both of Protestants and Catholics is no better than refined heathenism." And, with delicate courtesy,
Wesley recommended to his Catholic nephew true religion, "'the religion which Kempis, Pascal, Fenelon enjoyed." "
The matter with which Wesley was most concerned was salvation. This is the doctrine which has been most expounded by his commentators and has been most extolled and condemned. It has been explained as a religion of feeling, as a revival of Luthero-Calvinian justification by faith, and as a doctrine formulated in reaction against Protestantism. A restudy of the doctrine of the Moravians, of the Reformers' faith, of the teachings of Arminius, are undoubtedly helpful; but the necessary thing is to examine carefully the teachings of that eighteenth-century son of the English Church, John Wesley. ;
In the first place, what did Wesley mean by salvation? He tells us in very understandable English.
"We mean," he wrote, "that the moment a man receives faith.... he is saved from doubt and fear, and sorrow of heart, by a peace that passes all understanding; from the heaviness of a wounded spirit, by joy unspeakable; and from his sins, of whatsoever kind they were, from his vicious desires, as well as words and actions. . . . By salvation I mean, not barely,
John Wesley and Modern Religion according to the vulgar notion, deliverance from hell, or going to heaven; but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy and truth; Salvation is here defined by a psychological analysis of the "saved" man. It is the state of the man who is the recipient of the saving grace of God. Wesley is using the framework of his theology of the Fall.
Man had lost the image of God; now it is restored.
He has been "'born again."
This new birth is "ta vast inward change, a change wrought in the soul, by the operation of the Holy Ghost; a change in the whole manner of our existence; for from the moment we are born of God, we live in quite another manner than we did before; we are, as it were, in another world." * In his sermon on ""The Great Privilege of Those that are Born of God,"
Wesley draws a long and interesting analogy between this new spiritual birth and natural birth. Before natural birth, the child exists, but without "senses." wb, 'All these avenues of the soul are hitherto quite shut up. Of consequence, it has scarcely any intercourse with this visible world; nor any knowledge, conception, or idea, of the things that occur therein." With birth, all is changed. "Every sense is employed upon HYay)4 such objects as are peculiarly suitable to it; and by pal:Pm]ii these inlets the soul . . . . acquires more and more knowledge of sensible things, of all the things which are under the sun."
The Doctrine of Salvation "So it is with him that is born of God." Man, hitherto existing without seeing or knowing the spiritual world, enters into new relationships. He is a man of a new heart and of a new life. "His soul is renewed after the image of God, in righteousness and in all true holiness. And having the mind that was in - Christ, he so walks as Christ also walked." The life of God in the soul of a believer implies 'the continual inspiration of God's Holy Spirit . . . . an unceasing presence of God; and an unceasing return of love, praise and prayer, offering up all the thoughts of our hearts, all the words of our tongues, all the works of our hands, all our body, soul, and spirit, to be a holy sacrifice, acceptable unto God in Christ Jesus." This implies "the reaction" of the soul; "God does not continue to act upon the soul, unless the soul reacts upon God." ° To Wesley, working as he did with adults to whom his preaching was new, new in emphasis and for most of them new in content, conversion was instantaneous. His converts were twice-born men. His own experience was not of this type, but he regarded instantaneous conversion as normal. But Wesley did not contend for this. From the time when a man is justified, "'salvation gradually increases in his soul."
And he said of the new birth: "Of the first sowing of this seed I cannot conceive to be other than instantaneous; whether I consider experience, or the word of God, or the very nature of the thing;—however, I contend not for a circumstance, but the substance: If you can attain it another way, do. Only see that you do attain it." *
John Wesley and Modern Religion Perhaps his best expression of the fact that there are marked differences in religious experience is in a letter which he wrote in 1785. He recalled his own dismay when he had listened to Spangenberg describe the "glorious privileges of a believer." He had immediately cried out: "If this be so, I have no faith."
Spangenberg replied: "Habes fidem, sed exiguam; You have faith, but it is weak."" Remembering this, Wesley applied it to his correspondent. 'The very same thing I say to you, my dear friend. You have faith, but it is only as a grain of mustard seed... .
There is an irreconcilable variability in the operations of the Holy Spirit on the souls of men, more especially as to the manner of justification. Many find Him rushing upon them like a torrent, while they experience 'the o'erwhelming power of saving grace.' This has been the experience of many; perhaps of more in this late visitation than in any other age since the time of the Apostles. But in others He works in a very different way:
He designs His influence to infuse, Sweet, refreshing, as the silent dews.
It has pleased Him to work the latter way in you from the beginning; and it is not impossible He will continue (as He has begun) to work in a gentle and almost insensible manner." ® The new birth, whether instantaneous or gradual, is connected with a realization of God's love for man
-as shown in the redeeming work of Christ. It is in this sense that the doctrine of the Atonement can be said to have had great importance for Wesley. But The Doctrine of Salvation it was not any theory of Christ's work, but the conviction that that work made possible the application of God's love to man, which was central in Wesley's thinking. Man is forgiven for Christ's sake. And we love him because he first loved us. "How came you then to love him at first?" asks Wesley. "Was it not because you knew that he loved you? Did you, could you, love God at all, till you tasted and saw that he was gracious; that he was merciful to you a sinner?
... And whatever expressions any sinner who loves God uses, to denote God's love to him, you will always upon examination find, that they directly or indirectly imply forgiveness. Pardoning love is still at the root of all." ° This confidence in a pardoning God is one of the essentials of faith, and this brings the student to consider Wesley's doctrine of faith.
It is necessary at this point to make a digression, - but a digression important for establishing Wesley's theological provenance. It has been too commonly assumed that Wesley grafted on to the body of Anglican doctrine, which he had inherited from his
High Church father and mother, the Lutheran or Calvinistic dogma of justification by faith. Wesley's variations came "in part from Peter Bohler, by further study of the Greek Testament, and listening to some one reading Luther's Preface to the Romans": so a Methodist scholar, Dr. J. Agar Beet, writing in 1920, explained Wesley's doctrine of faith.*°
In 1935, another Methodist writer asserts that '"Martin Luther is known to be, along with his [Wesley's] own independent inquiries into the Word of God, the only authority other than Scripture, that Wesley ever
John Wesley and Modern Religion acknowledged for his understanding of Justification Dy Paiehitn wise ee Wesley did sometimes declare his agreement with the sixteenth-century Reformers, saying, for instance, that he believed in justification by faith as Calvin did—although, as will be shown later, Wesley added what Calvin would never have admitted. But it must be kept in mind that Wesley thought that he had found his doctrines, and they are apparently taught, — in the writings of the early Fathers which he prized so highly. The Life of Thomas Haliburton, also, which Wesley read and extolled in Georgia, teaches unequivocally the free forgiveness of God obtainable by faith. It cannot be maintained that Wesley, a welltrained scholar, heard of justification by faith for the first time from the Moravians, Peter Bohler, or anyone else. That he quoted the Homily of his Church
"On Salvation" when he finally agreed with what he thought Peter Bohler was teaching about this doctrine is evidence that he had in mind that familiar authority. But Wesley definitely stated where he had learned the doctrine. In 1751, he wrote to the Bishop of Exeter, that "I learned it from the Eleventh and Twelfth Articles and from the Homilies of our
Church." 1? In 1762, he wrote Dr. George Horne, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, that he had taught his doctrine of justification "ever since I was convinced of it myself by carefully reading the New Testament and the Homilies." *° Taken generally, faith, according to Wesley, is "the demonstrative evidence of things not seen." By faith the spiritual man discerns the things of God. It is
The Doctrine of Salvation with regard to the spiritual world what the senses are to the physical world. Here Wesley falls back upon his psychology. There are no innate ideas; all come from the senses. In order, then, to have "fixed, distinct, and determinate" ideas, ''a clear apprehension of the things of God," one must have ''a new class of senses opened" in the soul. These are man's avenues to the invisible world; these are the senses whereby one is furnished with "ideas of what the outward 'eye hath not seen, neither the ear heard.' " ™"
In this Wesley can see no difficulty, not as much as in the explanation of the natural senses. '"'For there is the utmost difficulty in conceiving how matter should influence matter at all; how that which is totally passive should act. Neither can we rationally account either for gravitation, attraction, or any natural motion whatsoever, but by supposing in all the finger of God, who alone conquers the vis inertie which is essential to every particle of matter, and worketh all in all." *° Once again Wesley is laboring with his eighteenth-century psychology (and physics) to make clear a deep conviction, this time a conviction concerning man's intuition of divine things.
The source of this definition is clear. It stems remotely, of course, from the definition of the Epistle to the Hebrews; but it comes almost word for word from Scougal's Life of God in the Soul of Man, a book which Wesley was reading as early as 1736 to one of his parishioners in America. Scougal believed that the root of religion is faith; and the chief branches, love to God, charity to man, purity, and humility. As will be seen later, Wesley changed this;
John Wesley and Modern Religion for to him the root of religion is not faith, but love.
But the definition of faith which Scougal gave was retained: "Faith hath the same place in the divine life, which sense hath in the natural; being indeed a kind of sense, or feeling persuasion of divine things." *° What, then, is justifying faith? For Wesley, justification is "present forgiveness, pardon of sins, and, consequently, acceptance with God." This comes by faith. 'Justifying faith implies, not only a divine ékeyxos that God 'was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,' but a sure trust and confidence that Christ died for my sins, that he loved me, and gave himself for me." "And," adds Wesley, "'the moment a penitent sinner believes this, God pardons and absolves him." ** Justifying faith, then, is not simply an intuitive knowledge of a general truth but a persuasion of individual application. It is the general truth appropriated in individual experience.
But salvation by faith means more than forgiveness granted to those who trust in God, for present salvation is the state of one who is not only forgiven but saved from sin: it is, in short, holiness: "Without faith we cannot be thus saved; for we cannot rightly serve God unless we love him. And we cannot love him unless we know him; neither can we know God unless by faith. Therefore, salvation by faith is only, in other words, the love of God by the knowledge of God; or, the recovery of the image of God, by a true, spiritual acquaintance with him." *®
How faith as knowledge works out in the normal Christian life, Wesley explains more than once: "Let The Doctrine of Salvation but the eye of the soul be constantly fixed, not on the things which are temporal, but on those which are eternal, and our affections are more and more loosened from earth, and fixed on things above. So that faith, in general, is the most direct and effectual means of promoting all righteousness and true holiness.""
It is easy to see all this as so many words; but if Wesley is accorded the attention which is given to other men of another century and another universe of thought, his words have substance. Faith to him was something like the intuition of the poet, by which meanings are discovered which are hidden to others.
The man of faith lives in a new world, or, more exactly, he is a new man. True, Wesley was sure that by faith he discovered the truth of the Christian system as he understood it; but so are all man's intuitions bound up with his past as well as his present.
Beneath all his psychological explanations and all his theological carpentry is a profound conviction, that man may live in relation to the world perceived by faith instead of to a world apprehended only by the physical senses.
That Wesley meant precisely this is set forth in unmistakable language in a sermon which he wrote in his old age, "Walking by Sight and by Faith." ?? "Do you walk by faith?" he asked. 'Observe the question. I do not ask, whether you curse, or swear, or profane the Sabbath, or live in any outward sin. I do not ask, whether you do good, more or less; or attend all the ordinances of God. But, suppose you are blameless in all these respects, I ask, in the name of John Wesley and Modern Religion God, by what standard you judge of the value of things? By the visible or invisible world?" And he illustrates his meaning by asking whether his hearers would rather a son should "tbe a pious cobbler or a profane lord"; whether they would prefer a daughter "'should be a child of God, and walk on foot, or a child of the devil, and ride in a coach-and-six." '"Religion," he declared, "is no less than living in eternity, and walking in eternity; and hereby walking in the love of God and man, in lowliness, meekness, and resignation." This is the sense of Charles Wesley's verses:
The things unknown to feeble sense, Unseen by reason's glimmering ray, With strong commanding evidence Their heavenly origin display.
Faith lends its realizing light, The clouds disperse, the shadows fly, The Invisible appears in sight, And God is seen by mortal eye.
Man trusts in God to forgive his sins, and they are forgiven; but faith is not only trust, it is also the opening of man's inward eyes by the grace of God, so that he no longer walks by sight but by apprehension of a new world of values. He knows, not by logic, nor by authority, but by intuition, that God has indeed loved him and given His son for him. Man is restored, in part, to his primitive state where he knows by intuition as well as by his senses. But, knowing that God has so loved him, man himself loves: the love of God and of all mankind is shed abroad in the human heart.
The Doctrine of Salvation It is apparent that, in his discussion of faith, Wesley has had some difficulty with his intellectualistic tendencies. He would have clear and distinct ideas; and, while allowing that faith is a sure trust and confidence, he insists that faith is also intuitive knowledge. But there were certain other problems concerning the knowledge of the saved man which had to be raised. Does a man who has been forgiven know this to have been done? In other words, has he
This is a very old theological question. Augustine thought that man cannot know; the Westminster Confession says that such knowledge is possible, although one may struggle long before attaining it."'
Wesley had believed from the first that religion means happiness; and no man can be happy who doubts of his salvation. Therefore, very early in his career,
Wesley declared his belief in Assurance. At least as early as 1733, he wrote that "the Holy Spirit within us is the security of our salvation; he is likewise an earnest of it, and assures our spirits that we have a title to eternal happiness." 7?
Bohler did not teach Wesley the doctrine of justification by faith; it is doubtful if Wesley understood Bohler's advice in some important respects. But there were some new things in Bohler's teaching. These were, that the fruits of justifying faith are "dominion over sin and constant peace from a sense of forgiveness." 7? Concerning the latter, Bohler taught, more specifically, that when a man is justified, which always happens in a moment, "in that moment he has peace with God: which he cannot have without $55 John Wesley and Modern Religion knowledge that he has it." ** It has been somewhat generally assumed that Wesley held tenaciously to the doctrine that a Christian, to be a Christian, must know that his sins are forgiven, must have "peace with God." How far is this sustained by the facts?
In the Minutes of 1744, it was denied that one can be justified without knowing it, or that one who hears the gospel can go to heaven without an assurance of God's love. In 1745, however, the Conference would not declare "ta sense of God's pardoning love absolutely essential to our being in his favour." "°
There may be exempt cases. Neither would they say that such assurance is absolutely necessary for final salvation. In the same year, Wesley wrote to "John
Smith" that he did not deny God's working imperceptibly in some a gradually increasing assurance of his love."® But a man perceives the states of mind and heart, that is righteousness, peace, love, which the Spirit works in his heart. In later life, Wesley concluded that an assurance of salvation is the privilege of all Christians, but he ceased claiming that this is essential to "justifying faith." In his old age, he wrote to Melville Horne at Madeley:
"When fifty years ago my brother and I, in the simplicity of our hearts, told the good people of England that unless they know their sins forgiven, they were under the wrath and curse of God, I marvel, Melville, they did not stone us. The Methodists, I hope, know better now; we preach assurance as we always did, as a common privilege of the children of God; but we do not enforce it, under the ets7AS ee The Doctrine of Salvation pain of damnation, denounced on all who do not enjoy ee!
Wesley had some difficulties in stating his doctrine.
He did not teach, as he was often accused of teaching, that a man is justified because he believes he is justified. Vinet's statement would have pleased Wesley:
"Faith does not consist in the belief that we are saved; it consists in the belief that we are loved." ** At times Wesley recognized that, as a modern scholar has put it, "confidence is nothing but faith aware of itself." *° Writing to Richard Tompson in 1755,
Wesley spoke of assurance as "'no other than the full assurance of faith; therefore it cannot be a distinct thing from faith, but only so high a degree of faith as excludes all doubt and fear. This plerophory, or full assurance, is doubtless wrought in us by the Holy
Ghost; yet the mind of man is the subject of both.
I believe feebly; I believe without all doubt." *° But he could not get away from his predilection for clear and distinct ideas.
The testimony of the Spirit of God, the well-known v "Witness of the Spirit,"' he defined as "an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses to my spirit, that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given Himself for me; and that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God." ** The manner in which this direct communication, immediate revelation, in short, is given to man, Wesley does not undertake to say. "But the fact we know; namely, that the Spirit of God does give a believer such a testimony of this adoption, that while it is present to the soul, he
John Wesley and Modern Religion can no more doubt the reality of his sonship, than he can doubt of the shining of the sun, while he stands in the full blaze of his beams." *?
But when one has considered Wesley's doctrines of the new birth, of justification, faith, and assurance, he may yet overlook the essential nature of religion as Wesley understood it. A religion worthy of God who gave it is no other "than love; the love of God and of all mankind; the loving God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, as having first loved us, as the fountain of all we have received, and of all we ever hope to enjoy; and the loving every soul which God hath made, every man on earth, as our own soul."
"This love," he continued, "we believe to be the medicine of life, the never-failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of mankind. Wherever this is, there are virtue and happiness going hand in hand." ** In Christianity there has always persisted the view that love is the essence of religion, love which is, in fact, the life of God in the soul of man. Sometimes
Wesley speaks of Christians living by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, sometimes of the love of God in the heart; but his meaning is plain. To him the abiding characteristic of Christian living at its best is the love which is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy
Spirit. | Professor Webb has seen as one of the characteristics of the Oxford Movement "'its return to a primitive consciousness of organic participation in the risen life of Christ, with which the concentration of Western medieval piety on the Passion has less in common
The Doctrine of Salvation than it has with evangelical devotion to the Precious Blood." In speaking of this emphasis upon love as Catholic, one must remember that it is Catholic more truly in the sense that it is primitive and that it is especially characteristic of the mysticism of the Greek
Fathers. Professor Webb agrees with Dr. Brilioth, that "the thought of sharing in the glory of the risen Lord preponderates over confidence in the atoning work of the Cross"; that "Easter overshadows Good
Friday and makes its message only a part of its own." ** It seems to the writer beyond a doubt that, however strongly Wesley emphasized the Atonement, he did not give it the place which it had in the thinking of Calvinistic evangelicals. With Wesley the central idea is the love of God in the heart, which is the indwelling of the Spirit. He would not have phrased it as did the Tractarians or their Greek forerunners, but he did center on the thing itself. The beginning is faith, as Ignatius put it; but the end is love.
But love is not merely a state of the soul at any given moment. In one sense, love is holiness. Religion is not simply an inward sense, nor is salvation merely a psychological state. The root of religion is in the soul; but "if this root be really in the heart, it cannot but put forth branches, and these are the several instances of outward obedience, which partakes of the same nature as the root; and, consequently, are not only marks or signs, but substantial parts of religion." * This statement must be carefully weighed by those who think that Wesley's doctrine was concerned only with the emotional states of the John Wesley and Modern Religion believer. And, if one will recall that Wesley had clung from his earliest college years to the conviction that "without holiness no man can see the Lord," it will seem reasonable that he should not be able to forget this in his new-found zeal for a life of faith.
In his very definition of religion as love, Wesley lays it down for true that outward obedience is not a sign of salvation or of faith but a substantial part of religion. How was this reconciled with his doctrine of salvation by faith?
In the first place, let it be stated again, Wesley's is a religion of grace. He had the religious man's conviction of the divine initiative. In 1730, he had written to his father that the main point to be gained is "to have an habitual lively sense of our being only instruments in His hands, who can do things either with or without instruments." At that time he felt that "Show to affix this sense in us is the great question." °° In his mystical conversion, if not before, he had achieved that sense of the divine action. If he had heard the words of Bajezid Bistani, Wesley would have understood and approved them: "For thirty years I searched for God, and when at the end of this time my eyes were opened, I discovered that it was he who had searched for me." *"
Man is saved by the grace of God and by the merits of Christ. He was at one with all orthodox Reformation theologians in this. But how is he saved? What on man's part is the response which appropriates this grace? He had answered, that man is forgiven the moment thathe has faith, confidence in the love of God. This Wesley saw was very close to Calvinism,
The Doctrine of Salvation "only a hair's breadth" away. But it was also very close to antinomianism, the doctrine that man's efforts are useless, that the law has no authority for the Christian. Therefore, Wesley could not be satisfied to rest with a doctrine of forgiveness and of the peace of the saved man.
As usual Wesley was brought to clearer formulation of his theology by practical problems. Suppose a good man does not believe in justification by faith, suppose that he will not depend upon faith to save him: will that man be lost? On December 1, 1767, when Wesley had already had to face the problem as to his own state before 1738, he wrote in his Journal that this much "appeared clear as day": that "a Mystic, who denies Justification by Faith (Mr. Law, for instance,) may be saved. But, if so, what becomes of articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesie? Tf so, is it not high time for us to 'reject bombast and words half a yard long,' and to return to the plain word,
'He that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is (accepted of Him?' " ** The importance of this statement for Wesley's mature theology must not be slurred over. From his earliest manhood, Wesley had believed that "he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him." But when he came to know the power of a consciousness of God's love through faith, he accepted it as true that all who do not so realize the loving forgiveness of God are not Christians. God accepts only those who come by faith alone. But his Church of England training and his English common sense would not let him rest there. Neither would his abJohn Wesley and Modern Religion sorption in morality. So significant is his development here that it must be considered in some detail.
In 1742, Wesley declared all works done before justification to partake of the nature of sin.*® Before a man is forgiven he can do no good thing. In the Conference of 1744,*° the questions of repentance and of works meet for repentance were up for discussion. It was decided that these must go before forgiveness. In 1745, it was added: "if there be time for them" (this was to leave room for deathbed salvation).
But the difficulty was gotten around by calling repentance "'a low species of faith." In 1745, the Conference considered the case of Cornelius (Acts x). According to the theory, Cornelius' good works, which were said to have come up as a memorial before God, were only splendid sins. But the Conference could not agree to this. His works, the Conference decided, were sinful, but they were not "abomination to the Lord."
At first Wesley had scrupled even to use the word, "condition," in speaking of any requirement made of man previous to his forgiveness by faith.*+ But this, in which he went even beyond the Reformers, he soon gave over. In 1745, he wrote to "John
Smith": "I believe (1) that a rational assent to the truth of the Bible is one ingredient of Christian faith; (2) that Christian faith is a moral virtue in that sense wherein hope and charity are; (3) that men ought to yield the utmost attention and industry for the attainment of it, and yet (4) that this, as every
Christian grace, is properly supernatural, an immediate gift of God, which he commonly bestows in the The Doctrine of Salvation use of such means as He hath ordained. I believe it is generally given in an instant; but not arbitrarily, in your sense of the word; not without regard to the fitness (I should say the previous qualifications) of the recipient." *?
In 1779, Wesley made a clear-cut distinction. All the talk about "salvation by faith" and "salvation by works" tended to obscure what seemed to him the real point of division. Either salvation is the arbitrary breaking through of God upon man's passivity, or it is the reciprocal work of God and man. When he and his brother began to preach, "By grace are ye saved through faith," they had been astonished at the charge of preaching salvation by works which was leveled against them. At first Wesley had simply suspected the sincerity of those who so accused him; but later he hit upon the key to an understanding of 'their position. "This is the key," he wrote: "those that hold, Every one is absolutely predestinated either to Salvation or Damnation, see no medium between Salvation by Works and Salvation by Decrees." They are right, concludes Wesley. "'As averse as I once was to the thought, upon further consideration, I allow there is, there can be no medium. Either Salvation is by Absolute Decree, or it is (in a scriptural sense) by Works." He goes on to explain that salvation by the decree of God, in the strict Calvinistic sense, is salvation without human conditions. If conditions are insisted upon, then the absolute decree breaking through upon man's passivity must be set over against salvation on conditions, as salvation by faith against salvation by works. Faith itself is a condition; and Wesley
John Wesley and Modern Religion could not deny man's part even in present salvation:
""only he that believeth shall be saved." *° If there are conditions attached to man's forgiveness, there are certainly conditions attached to man's final salvation. In the point of conditions before justification, Wesley thought Calvin defective; in regard to the conditions of salvation at the end, he considered Luther woefully lacking. The only book of Luther which Wesley commented on at any length was the Commentary on Galatians. 'This Charles
Wesley had read in May, 1738, seeming to get no small comfort from it. John apparently did not read it until June, 1741, when he set down his opinion thereof in no uncertain language. "I was utterly ashamed," he wrote. "How have I esteemed this book, only because I heard it so commended by others; or at best, because I had heard some excellent sentences occasionally quoted from it! But what shall I say, now I judge for myself, now I see with my own eyes? Why, not only that the author makes nothing out, clears up not one considerable difficulty; that he is quite shallow in his remarks on many passages, and muddy and confused almost, on all; but that he is deeply tinctured with mysticism throughout, and hence often dangerously [in the first edition, it was "fundamentally" ] wrong. 'To instance only in one or two points: How " does he (almost in the words of Tauler) decry reason, right or wrong, as an irreconcilable enemy of Christ.
... Again, how blasphemously does he speak of good works and of the law of God—coupling the law with sin, death, hell, or the devil; and teaching that Christ delivers us from them all alike. ... Here (I appre2S=<San/rome.ndmaamie The Doctrine of Salvation hend) is the real spring of the grand error of the Moravians. They follow Luther, for better for worse." ** Luther had touched Wesley at two of the Englishman's most tender points. Nothing could make
Wesley give up his belief in the use of reason in religion nor in the primary place of holiness in the Christian life. It should be noted that Wesley's opinion of Luther did not result from the disagreements of the Methodists and the Moravians. Already in April,
1739, the day before he began to expound the Epistle to the Romans to one of the Bristol societies, Wesley spoke of "Luther in the fury of his Solifidianism." *
Luther simply did not emphasize works enough for the man who had inherited the mediating theology of Anglicanism and whose passion was first and last a - passion for holiness. It is significant that Wesley never included any writings of either Luther or Calvin in his numerous reprints for Methodists, although he had profound respect for the character and labors of both Reformers. As far as Wesley could go was to include two short biographies of the Reformers in his
With an intense conviction that "without holiness no man can see the Lord," Wesley could not exclude inward and outward holiness from the conditions of salvation, in the ordinary sense of the word. But he was equally convinced that present salvation, salvation from doubt and fear and from guilt and sin, is by faith, although a faith with conditions. Reconciliation of the two Wesley found in a distinction between salvation as a present experience and salvation as John Wesley and Modern Religion the final acceptance of man by God. In 1741 he read
Bishop Bull's Harmonica Apostolica,*® in which this distinction is made. At first, Wesley was repelled by the idea, but he was soon using it himself. In 1745, he was writing that justification at the last day is on the condition of "both inward and outward holiness."
He thought that this ought to meet the desires of all "who have hitherto opposed justification by faith alone merely upon a principle of conscience, because you was zealous for holiness and good works." **
He did not himself believe that any can be finally saved who is not holy. So far as he knew, all Christians believe this. The papists introduce a doctrine of purgatory to establish this, and others believe that holiness is attained only "in the article of death." But all agree that we must be "'fully cleansed from all sin, before we can enter into glory." He admitted that usually this happens at death, as will be seen when his doctrine of Christian Perfection is considered. But there is the hope that one may have holiness in this life.
Any way one approaches it, this doctrine requires good works as a condition of final salvation. | With Wesley's position in mind, one can understand the meaning of the famous Minutes of 1770. Until the death of Whitefield, Wesley had done everything possible to avoid conflict with the Calvinists. But he had already come to a conclusion about his own experience. He had adopted that theory of the infinite grades of faith and of assurance which he set forth to more than one correspondent, and he had decided on the division of Christian experience into two stages, the condition of a servant and the condiThe Doctrine of Salvation tion of a son, which is a part of his mature doctrine of Christian Perfection. Accordingly, in 1770, the Conference considered the question of faith and works. These Minutes have often been quoted, but no excerpts will take the place of the Minutes themselves. It is necessary to quote the relevant parts in extenso, together with the section published in the Long Minutes which gives the setting of the discussion.**
"Q. 74. What is the direct antidote to Methodism, the doctrine of heart-holiness?
"A. Calvinism: All the devices of Satan, for these fifty years, have done far less toward stopping the work of God, than that single doctrine. It strikes at the root of salvation from sin, previous to glory, putting the matter on quite another issue.
"Q. 75. But wherein lie the charms of this doctrine?
What makes men swallow it so greedily?
"A. (1) It seems to magnify Christ; although in reality.it supposes him to have died in vain. For the absolutely elect must have been saved without him; and the non-elect cannot be saved by him.
""(2) It is highly pleasing to flesh and blood, final perseverance in particular.
"QO. 77. We said in 1744, 'We have leaned too much toward Calvinism.' Wherein?
"A. (1) With regard to man's faithfulness. ...
(2) With regard to 'working for life,' which our Lord expressly commands us to do. 'Labour,' literally work, 'for the meat that endureth to everlasting life.' And in fact, every believer, till he comes to glory, works for as well as from life.
John Wesley and Modern Religion ""(3) We have received it as a maxim, that 'a man is to do nothing in order to justification.' Nothing can be more false. Whoever desires to find favour with God, should 'cease from evil, and learn to do well." So God himself teaches by the Prophet Isaiah.
Whoever repents, should 'do works meet for repentance. And if this is not in order to find favour, what does he do them for?
"Once more review the whole affair:
""(1) Who of us is now accepted of God?
"He that now believes in Christ with a loving, obedient heart.
But who among those that never heard of Christ?
""He that, according to the light he has, 'feareth God and worketh righteousness.'
Is this the same with 'he that is sincere'?
"Nearly, if not quite.
Is not this salvation by works?
"Not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition.
What have we then been disputing about for these thirty years?
"Tam afraid about words, namely, in some of the foregoing instances.
(6) As to merit itself, of which we have been so dreadfully afraid: We are rewarded according to our works, yea, because of our works. How does this differ from, 'for the sake of our works'? And how differs this from secundum meritis operum? Which is no more than, 'as our works deserve." Can you split this hair? I doubt I cannot." !
The Doctrine of Salvation The importance of these Minutes for an understanding of Wesley's theology cannot be minimized.
The Moravians had long since perceived that Wesley had interests that could not be reconciled to Lutheran theology. "Wesley," writes a Moravian historian, "'desired to give a prominent place in his system of the Christian religion to the doctrine of an active love, proceeding from the new birth and faith; and manifesting itself in striving after holiness and Christian perfection, and to the doctrine of the furtherance of this active love by the means of grace in the church.
Zinzendorf on the other hand allowed of none other than a grateful love, proceeding from the experience of the heart of a pardoned sinner; he condemned all self-made holiness, and every merely legal duty, and act of self-denial." *° Zinzendorf was true to Lutheran doctrine: man's good works are only those which proceed from thankfulness for justification; all others are self-acts. | The Minutes were understood as important by contemporaries, enemies and friends. 'The onslaught made against Wesley is well known, and Wesley did not regard his subsequent statement, that nothing in the Minutes contradicts justification by faith, as in any way a retraction of the Minutes themselves. He did believe in justification by faith, and in salvation by faith; but he could believe in present salvation only on conditions which man must meet and in final salvation only on the condition of inward and outward works. Fletcher of Madeley, who, Wesley hoped, would be his successor as ruler of the Methodists, saw in the Minutes something to be admired, that is, "the John Wesley and Modern Religion candour of an aged servant of God, who, instead of stiffly holding, and obstinately maintaining an old mistake, comes down as a little child, and freely acknowledges it before a respectable body of preachers, whose esteem it is his interest to secure."
In writing to Lady Huntingdon, Wesley 'rise that he had had regard for the honor of God for "above these forty years" (he was writing in 1771); and he thought Mr. Fletcher's letter (in the First
Check to Antinomianism) showed definitely that the Minutes "lay no other foundation than that which is laid in Scripture, and which I have been laying, and teaching others to lay, for between thirty and forty years." >! Jn the light of this, Fletcher's understanding of Wesley's meaning is important. This Fletcher stated succinctly: "For my part I entirely agree with the Authour of the Minutes, and thank him for daring to break the ice of prejudice and bigotry among us, by restoring works of righteousness to their deserved glory, without detracting from the glory of the Lord our Righteousness. 1 am as much persuaded that the Grace of Christ merits in the works of his — members, tho' it is mixed with dust and dross, which are good for nothing .... there is but one man whose works are truly meritorious; but when He works in us by his spirit, our works cannot (so far as he is concerned in them,) but be in a sense meritorious; because they are,—his works." °* In his Fourth