To William Wilberforce
SELF-IMAGES IN THE LETTERS
so you were labouring to promote his work. You are following the order of his providence wherever it appeared, as an holy man strongly expressed it, in a kind of holy disordered order. But there is one expression that occurs twice or thrice in yours which gives me some concern: you speak of finding "freedom" to do this or that. This is a word much liable to be abused. If I have plain Scripture or plain reason for doing a thing, well. These are my rules, and my only rules. I regard not whether I have freedom or no. This is an unscriptural expression and a very fallacious rule. I wish to be in every point, great and small, a scriptural, rational
Christian.
In one instance formerly you promised to send me your journal. Will you break your word because you do not find "freedom" to keep it? Is not this enthusiasm? O be not of this way of thinking! You know not whither it may lead you. You are called to Square your useful life below By reason and by grace.?
But whatever you do with regard to me you must do quickly, or you will no more in this world.
Your affectionate friend and brother, To William Wilberforce * Balam, February 24, 1791 Dear Sir, Unless the divine power has raised you up to be as Athanasius contra
2. A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780), DXII, st. 3.
1. Cf. Letters, VIII, 265. This note, written just a week before Wesley's death, reechoes a long-standing moral concern, first expressed in his vigorous opposition to the introduction of slavery into the Georgia colony. Throughout his ministry he was active in the antislavery campaign in England and threw his weight behind the efforts of Wilberforce, Clarkson, Howard and others to ban it throughout the Empire. (Cf. Thomas Clarkson, History of ... the Abolition of the African SlaveTrade ... [1808], I, 447 ff.) In America, it became a badge of virtue amongst the Methodists for a slaveholding convert to free his slaves. (Cf. Abel Stevens, A Compendious History of American Methodism |New York, n.d.], 125-26, 135.)
In 1774 Wesley published a tract entitled Thoughts Upon Slavery (Works, XI, 59-79), which was reprinted and widely distributed in England and America. It was represented to be his own production (cf. Letters, VII, 6, 7, 276) —and its vivid
THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED
mundum, 1 see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villany * which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a "law" in all our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villany is this?
That he who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things, is the prayer of, dear sir,
Your affectionate servant, sentiments certainly are. Actually, however, it was an abridgment of Some Historical Account of Guinea, which had been published in Philadelphia in 1771 by Anthony Benezet, an American Quaker. In judging such a literary "borrowing," it is useful to realize that Wesley and his eighteenth-century colleagues generally understood this as a form of endorsement. When he found something that said what he wanted to say, he felt free to make it available to those who might not otherwise have seen it. This is the case, for example, with his Calm Address to Our American
Colonies (1775), borrowed from Samuel Johnson, Taxation No Tyranny; A Treatise on Baptism (see below, p. 317 ff.), and A Roman Catechism (1756), abridged from a treatise of a similar title by Bishop John Williams of Chichester (1686), in Works,
2. "Athanasius arrayed against the world"; cf. R. Hooker, Of The Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1593-97), V, sec. 42.
3. Cf. Thoughts Upon Slavery; see also Wesley's correspondence with the other leaders of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, in Letters, VIII, 6, 17, 23, 194, 207, aS
SELF-IMAGES IN THE SERMONS
Editor's introduction.
In his lifetime Wesley was best known as a preacher, and himself preferred to be known and judged by his sermons.
In the Model Deed, which he drew up in 1763 to govern the legal arrangements for the Methodist preaching houses, the principal stipulation is a doctrinal one: "Provided always that the persons [admitted to a given pulpit by the Trustees] preach no other doctrine than is contained in Mr. Wesley's Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and four volumes of sermons." ! The sermons in these four volumes add up to forty-four. In the first four volumes of his Works (1771) Wesley included nine others, making a total of fifty-three. In the last collected edition of his sermons issued in his lifetime (in eight volumes, 1787-88), the first four volumes retain the original forty-four, and these have remained as doctrinal "standards" in Methodist law.? Besides the Sermons on Several Occasions, Wesley published others in The Arminian Magazine and elsewhere, so that the inclusive number of his sermons in the Jackson edition runs to one hundred and fifty-one.'
Throughout Wesley's preaching the man and his message illuminate each other. As exemplars of this, the Preface to the first collection of Sermons and two of the actual sermons will suffice. "Catholic Spirit" is both a précis of Wesley's ecumenical design and an exhibition of his theological temper. "God's Vineyard" is an autobiographical rehearsal of the history of the Methodist movement, together with a summary appraisal of Methodist doctrine and discipline.
As he himself implies in the Preface, Wesley's published sermons were 1. Le. Sermons on Several Occasions, 1 (1746); II (1748); III (1750); IV (1760).
For the text of the Model Deed, see Works, VIII, 330-31. i 2. For a discussion of the historical and legal details of this question, see Sermons
(Sugden), I, 13-26; II, 331-40.
3. Works, V-VIIL.