The Wilderness State:

John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin

Martin D Phillips

MTh, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, 2018

BS, Indiana Wesleyan University, United States of America, 2016

School of Divinity, History, and Philosophy at

the University of Aberdeen

A thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Divinity

2022
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Declaration
This thesis has been composed by Martin David Phillips. No part of its content has been
submitted previously towards another degree. No part of its content has been composed by
any other person. Any work that is attributable to another author has been appropriately
marked and referenced.

Word count: 103,309.

______________________________
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For my family

In memory of Dale Edwin Phillips

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Acknowledgements
I came to John Wesley through my teacher, Tom Greggs. When Tom suggested the need for someone
to take Wesley to task on the doctrine of sin, hardly a month had passed since I was sat in his office
insisting on studying Paul Tillich for my master's dissertation, fully intent on bringing Tillich into my
doctorate as well. At the time, I was set on distancing myself from my Wesleyan roots. And my
questions were tailored to the tone and tenor of twentieth century theology and philosophy anyway. It
took three separate occasions where Tom pressed me to look at Wesley until I picked up the electric
blue covered anthology of Wesley's Sermons and dug in. As it turns out I did not know what I wanted
to know until I had found the right conversation partner, and I suspect Tom knew that in advance. I
was captivated by Wesley's boldness and intensity. I still am. In the two days it took to finish the blue
reader, I had resolved to allow my questions to be both refined and transformed through Wesley. The
death mask of that resolution is on display in this dissertation. So, it is Tom I have to thank most of all
for his patient guidance and timely encouragement. Without his support, this project would not exist.

Among my other teachers at the University of Aberdeen, I must also thank Brian Brock and Phil
Ziegler for their generosity in time, conversation, and recommendations along the way. Paul Nimmo,
Mike Laffin and John Behr also deserve credit. I am very much a product of Aberdeen's divinity
department, and proudly so. Ed Epsen deserves special thanks as not only my late-coming second
supervisor, who I trust to call all my bluffs on eighteenth-century intellectual history, but is also my
friend. I owe it to him for my discovery of Bishop Butler whose influence may be felt in what follows.
Likewise, Daniel Pedersen's kindness and friendship to me helped spur on my questions and helped
keep my work exciting even when I'd forgotten my reasons. More widely, I am grateful for friends,
colleagues, and teachers who have helped me from a distance and at the Wesleyan Theological
Society: Randy Maddox, Rex Matthews, the late Billy Abraham, John Drury, Jason Vickers, Justus
Hunter, Brannon Hancock, Geordan Hammond, G. B. McClanahan, and Caleb Rogers.

Writing and reading, however isolating they appear, are communal activities. So, I am unendingly
grateful for the friends who have joined me in this journey. This includes old friends who helped
introduce me to postgraduate life in Aberdeen like Ben and Mercy Shaw, Amy Erickson, Jake
Rollison, Cole Jodon, Emily Hill, and Michael and Jane Morelli; new friends like Alex and Michelle
Trew, Joshua and Sydney Blanchard, Kyle and Olga McCracken, Sarah Mannen, Sam Murillo,
Gabriel Schmid, Ben Coulter, and Rahel Siebald; and those friends who I've walked alongside for the
whole journey like Kevin and Chrissy O'Farrell, Topher and Sam Endress, Katie and Peter Cross,
Taylor and Dede Lankford, Anthony Zirpoli, Elena Maria, Ryan Graham, Hannah Waite, Julie Land,
and Emily Stevens. I continue to learn from each of you. I am also grateful for all the friends who
made us feel at home at Aberdeen Methodist Church. Finally, I cannot even begin to express my
gratitude for my wife Britt, who constantly reminds me to pay attention to the joy of everyday life, to
lift my head out of old books, and remember that there's wonder in the world just around the corner.
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Dissertation Abstract & Summary of Salient Points

Dissertation Abstract: This dissertation reinterprets John Wesley’s (1703-
1791) doctrine of sin with special reference to the place of faithlessness. The
argument of this dissertation is John Wesley provides a mode of framing
hamartiology around the everyday experience of unbelief, or, in Wesley’s
idiom, ‘practical atheism.’ That is, the ordinary condition of humanity is one
where God seems comfortably absent from the heart and mind. It is Wesley’s
recognition of the insolubility of unbelief as the condition of everyday life that
best describes his doctrine of sin. To demonstrate this the argument follows
Wesley in the order of experience. Since the condition of one’s being in the
world is one of unbelief, then awareness of sin remains conditional upon the
illumination (witness) of the Holy Spirit (Ch. 2). Sin is only known within the
movements of salvation. The next two chapters unpack how unbelief factors
into Wesley’s wider account of the doctrine of original sin pertaining to the
primal sin’s origin and its effects (Chs. 3-4). Then this thesis turns to role of
demonology and spiritual combat in how Wesley considers the condition of
unbelief (Ch. 5). Chapters three to five demonstrate the negative side of one’s
lifeworld resultant from the new birth and the witness of the Holy Spirit. The
final chapter explores the place of unbelief from within the contours of the holy
life in conversation with Wesley’s comments on ‘heaviness,’ ‘darkness,’ and
‘the wilderness state,’ addressing themes like doubt, temptation, and despair
(Ch. 6). This interpretation of Wesley’s doctrine of sin seeks to provide a thicker
account of the inner life of the sanctified person as grounded within the life of
the community, where the wilderness state is admitted, but not before carefully
differentiating between what follows simply from one’s creaturely finitude and
what follows from the consequences of the Fall.
Key words: John Wesley, Methodism, historical theology, hamartiology, soteriology,
illumination, sin, fallenness, finitude, faith, unbelief, atheism.
 6

Abbreviations
Analogy Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, edited by David McNaughton (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2021).

ATJ Asbury Theological Journal.

CD Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 14 volumes, translated by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance

(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936-1977).

ENNT John Wesley, Explanatory Notes on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986).

ENOT John Wesley, Explanatory Notes on the Old Testament (Salem: Schmul Publishers, 1975).

IJST International Journal of Systematic Theology.

Institutes John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, 2 volumes, edited by John T. McNeill
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960).

JWW John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, 14 volumes, edited by Thomas Jackson (Kansas
City: Beacon Hill Press, 1979).

J&D John Wesley, The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, volumes 18-24,
Journals & Diaries, edited by W. Reginald Ward and Richard Heitzenrater (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1988-2003).

Letters John Wesley, The Letters of John Wesley, A.M., 8 volumes, edited by John Telford, standard
edition (London: Epworth Press, 1931).

LW Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, American edition, 55 volumes, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan
and Helmut T. Lehman (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1955-1986.

MH Methodist History.

Sermons Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel, Fifteen Sermons & Other
Writings, edited by David McNaughton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

WJT The Wesleyan Journal of Theology.

WJW John Wesley, The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, 35 volumes, edited by
Albert C. Outler, et al. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984-).

W&MS Wesley & Methodist Studies.

Unless otherwise noted, all scriptural citations will be drawn from the NRSV with standard abbreviations.

Citations from John Wesley’s ENNT and ENOT are given with their corresponding passage in the Scriptures.
For example, Wesley’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 2.18 is cited as follows: Wesley, ENNT, 1 Cor. 2.18.
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Table of Contents
Declaration ...............................................................................................................................................................2
Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................................................4
Dissertation Abstract & Summary of Salient Points ................................................................................................5
Abbreviations ...........................................................................................................................................................6
Chapter 1: Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................9
1. Thesis & Contribution to Wesley Studies, Wesleyan Historical theology ..............................................10
a. Contemporary Readings of Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin and Their Problems. ......................................12
b. Approaching Wesley: A Therapeutic Approach Prioritising ‘Practical Divinity.’ .............................16
c. A Promissory Note for a Wider Theological Audience. .....................................................................21
2. Methods, Interpretations, and Definitions. ..............................................................................................24
3. Chapter Summaries ..................................................................................................................................28
Chapter 2: The Witness of the Spirit: John Wesley and the Illumination of Sin ...................................................34
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................................34
2. The Priority of Grace: Wesley’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s Work .....................................................38
a. The Witness of the Spirit as the Foundation of Existence in Christ. ..................................................39
b. Becoming Holy through God’s Holiness: The Witness of the Spirit and its relation to Christ as the
Law. 45
3. Experience and the Illumination of the Holy Spirit .................................................................................53
a. Illuminated Experience and the Searching of the Scriptures. .............................................................56
b. Illuminated Experience in the Fellowship of Believers. .....................................................................59
4. Illumination and the Renovation of Conscience ......................................................................................62
a. The Direct Witness of the Spirit: Wesley’s Extraordinary View of Conscience Against the Men of
Reasonable Religion.......................................................................................................................................62
b. Conversations & Contrary Principles: Wesley’s View of the Experience of Conscience as the
Manifestation of Our Being Simultaneously Justified & Sinner. ..................................................................69
5. Wesley’s Understanding of Faith, Power, and Spiritual Sensation .........................................................76
6. Illumination and the Boundary of Reason ...............................................................................................83
7. Conclusion: Wesley and the Transformation of the Ordinary .................................................................89
Chapter 3: ‘Unbelief—that evil root’: John Wesley and the Origin of Sin ...........................................................91
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................................91
2. The Development of Wesley’s Thematic Emphases in the Doctrine of Sin ...........................................96
a. Development in Wesley’s Doctrine of Original Sin ...........................................................................98
b. Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin among the Eighteenth-Century Divines ..................................................101
3. Original Righteousness and the Edenic Situation of Humanity ............................................................104
a. Wesley and the Image of God (I): Christ the Image of God, Thinking Creation through Redemption.
104
b. Wesley and the Image of God (II): Moral, Political, and Natural Images. .......................................109
4. The Entrance of Sin ...............................................................................................................................119
a. ‘Here Sin Began, Namely Unbelief’: The Case for Beginning with Unbelief. ................................120
b. Wesley’s Interpretation the Fall. .......................................................................................................125
5. The Meaning of Sin ...............................................................................................................................131
6. The ‘Season of Vanity’: The Fall as Cosmic Tragedy ..........................................................................138
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7. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................142
Chapter 4: ‘And there is no health in us’: John Wesley and the Consequences of Sin .......................................144
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................................144
2. Indwelling Sin, Spiritual Death, and Natural Death. .............................................................................146
a. Spiritual Death and the Corruption of Natures .................................................................................148
b. The Sting of Death: The Relation of Natural & Spiritual Death ......................................................149
c. Sin & Death: The Mystery & Fact of Sin’s Transmission. ...............................................................152
3. The Shape of Spiritual Death: Practical Atheism, Idolatry, and Love of the World. ............................155
a. Practical atheism. ..............................................................................................................................156
b. Idolatry. .............................................................................................................................................162
c. Love of the world: Wesley’s Triplex Concupiscientia. ....................................................................165
4. The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart: Wesley and the Incurvature of the Self. .................................169
5. ‘The earth soon became a field of blood’: Indwelling Sin, Structural Sin, and Violence. ....................173
6. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................180
Chapter 5: In the Image of the Devil: Wesley’s Doctrine of Evil Angels ...........................................................183
1. Introduction, Fallen Life in a Contested World .....................................................................................183
2. Mapping Wesley’s Doctrine of Evil Angels ..........................................................................................185
3. Key Themes in Wesley’s Doctrine of Evil Angels ................................................................................191
a. The Devil as ‘Prince of this World.’ .................................................................................................192
b. The Devil’s ‘Ruler of the Power of the Air’—Spiritual Sovereignty. ..............................................194
c. The Manifestation of the Devil’s Works. .........................................................................................199
4. The Works of the Devil: Advancing the Kingdom of Darkness ...........................................................203
a. The Kingdom of Darkness and Creaturely Sociality ........................................................................204
b. The Devil Disordering the Ordinary Life .........................................................................................207
5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................217
Chapter 6: The Wilderness State: John Wesley and Sin within the Christian Life.............................................219
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................................219
2. Wesley and the Discernment of Voluntary & Involuntary Sins ............................................................220
a. Sins Properly and Improperly So-Called: Situating Wesley’s Controversial Distinction. ...............220
b. Sin Remains but does not Reign .......................................................................................................224
c. Sin-Properly-So-Called: Wesley’s Fragile Moral Framework .........................................................228
3. Discerning ‘Simplicity and Godly Sincerity’: The Problem of Backsliding, Humility, & Repentance.
237
4. Heaviness, Darkness, and Anxiety ........................................................................................................245
5. Waiting on Holiness in the Wilderness State: ‘The Sum of True Religion’ within the Means of Grace
250
6. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................256
Chapter 7: Conclusion .........................................................................................................................................259
1. The Argument & Contribution of this Dissertation ...............................................................................259
2. Prospects for Further Study ...................................................................................................................261
Bibliography.........................................................................................................................................................264
Chapter 1:
Introduction

This dissertation concerns John Wesley’s (1703-1791) doctrine of sin. It remains

strange that Wesley, the optimist of grace remembered for teaching entire sanctification, should

be one the eighteenth-century’s fiercest defenders of the doctrine of sin. It is stranger still that

on closer analysis, Wesley considers the doctrine of sin, including an embrace of the doctrine

of original sin, essential to his theological vision.1 Wesley’s description finds itself at home

among the bleakest descriptions of human existence.2 Surely, he would recognise the truth in

Cioran’s lament of the ‘epidemic of life’ even as he drew on Hobbes’s confession that existence

is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’3 He would only qualify that this is life at present,

not in its original.4 Wesley will hardly be outdone in his description of the woes of humanity.

The bleakness of his demonstrations of the misery of humankind are perhaps only outdone by

his protege John Fletcher. 5 However, as George Croft Cell acknowledges, the bleakness of

Wesley’s picture of the fallen human condition in sin ‘has no meaning but in the light of the

Christian consciousness of salvation by faith and of the unbounded efficacy of God’s entire

work of grace for us in Christ, in us by the Holy Spirit.’6 Wesley knew the abiding witness of

the Spirit of Christ is the condition of the Christian’s acknowledgement of sin at all. Though

1
Wesley writes that the doctrine of original sin is the ‘grand, distinguishing point between heathenism and
Christianity.’ See ‘Original Sin,’ §III.1, WJW, 2:183.
2
His notoriety on this point was well known. F.D. Maurice reflects: ‘Immensely valuable as I hold the
Methodist preaching of the last age to have been, … I cannot but perceive that it made the sinful man and not
the God of all Grace the Foundation of Christian Theology. What a help a man tied and bound with the chain
of his iniquity could get to rise out of it was the question; all others were subordinate to that.’ See F. D.
Maurice, Theological Essays, 4th edition (London: MacMillan & Co., 1881), xvi. Maurice’s quip might be
overstated, but others have noticed Wesley’s severity, see George Croft Cell, The Rediscovery of John Wesley
(Lanham: University of America Press, 1935), 274.
3
E.M. Cioran, The New Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 12; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), I.13.9.
4
Wesley, The Doctrine of Original Sin: According to Scripture, Reason, and Experience, WJW, 12: 301-302.
5
John W. Fletcher, ‘An Appeal to Matter of Fact and Common Sense,’ The Works of Reverend John W.
Fletcher, Late Vicar of Madeley, 4 volumes (New York: B. Waugh & T. Mason, 1833), 3:245-373.
6
Cell, Rediscovery, 274.
Introduction 10

this idea has precedent, where it has found purchase in the mind of a divine it resonates with a

peculiar strangeness. It is seen in several variations in the history of theology, most notably, or

with the greatest resonance with Wesley, in Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and Donald

Mackinnon.7 Though in the eighteenth century, such a position, since it entails a denunciation

of civilised ‘natural religion,’ earned Wesley the sharp accusation, ‘Enthusiast!’ Yet, the

maximalist view of the horror of sin, death, and the devil alongside a maximalist view of the

splendour of holiness really given by the Holy Spirit is precisely where Wesley becomes a

rewarding interlocutor.

The task of this dissertation is to understand how and in what sense Wesley can retain

both a maximal doctrine of sin within a maximal doctrine of salvation. This introduction will

address the thesis of this dissertation, locating its significance primarily within Wesley studies

with an orientation towards Wesleyan theology but also suggest its relevance for a wider

audience. The introduction then surveys the methodological decisions made in this reading of

Wesley, highlighting the salient theological concepts and definitions. Finally, the introduction

closes with a survey of this dissertation’s chapters.

1. Thesis & Contribution to Wesley Studies, Wesleyan Historical theology

7
For these, faith, however understood, is the presupposition of the intelligibility of sin. For example, Barth
writes, ‘Sin is a reality—as the antithesis to God it is so almost as God Himself is, sui generis. But it is not an
autonomous reality. … The reality of sin cannot be known or described except in relation to the One who has
vanquished it.’ See Barth, CD, IV/1, 144. Mackinnon draws his understanding of sin from Barth, see
Mackinnon, Philosophy and the Burden of Theological Honesty (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2011),
143-148. According to Friedrich Schleiermacher, for perhaps different reasons, a similar claim is made,
wherein it is impossible to consider sin by itself: ‘If, then, it is our primary object to ascertain the characteristic
element in the consciousness of sinfulness, we ought not, within the sphere of Christian piety, to look for it
except in relationship to the God-consciousness.’ See Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 3rd ed. (London:
Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), §66. It is likely in this sense that Kierkegaard picks up the idea and makes it
his own, as he closes The Concept of Anxiety, he writes, ‘Therefore he who in relation to guilt is educated by
anxiety will rest only in the Atonement.’ See Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically
Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980),
162; Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 115. Among these
various modern divines, there is a genealogy to be traced. But none of these considered Wesley an interlocutor,
so the appearance of his thought among such a group is less a matter of historical reception than the surprise of
historical parallel and, more provocatively, a particular reading of the scriptures that can be mapped across the
tradition. One may draw attention to Martin Luther as the backstop for this approach to the doctrine of sin, see
Luther, LW, 1:146-154; cf. Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 177-195.
Introduction 11

This dissertation reinterprets Wesley’s doctrine of sin by attending to the relation of sin

and faithlessness. The argument will explore how Wesley treats the shadow side of the holy

life, that is, the tendency to fall into unconcern (Wesley’s ‘darkness’), the confrontation of

temptation and anxiety (Wesley’s ‘heaviness’), and the dread of melancholy or acedia and

despair. Each of these features of everyday life appears to strain the concept of faith so

treasured by Wesley’s heart religion. As will be shown, Wesley’s recognition of the

concreteness of the experience of difficult faith is integrated into his doctrine of sin. Wesley’s

notorious intensity about recognising the quality of faith as it the shapes existence in holiness

lends itself to question, for better or for worse, the relation between sin and unbelief.

This dissertation asserts the following thesis: Wesley’s mature doctrine of sin contains

within it a sensitivity to the everyday experience of faithlessness as an ambiguous feature of

human existence. To expand on this briefly, unbelief as one’s stance towards life is natural

insofar as faith is received as a gift from God—we do not possess faith by nature, nor do we

learn it through experience. Unbelief becomes sinful (or unnatural) insofar as being subject to

sin, faithlessness (or at least the self’s relation to it) distorts one’s relation with God. 8 Further,

this ambiguous condition requires continual transformation but does not straightforwardly

engender guilt. Finally, the flux between faith and faithlessness textures all human life, even

the holy life. The recognition of this flux gives Wesley’s theology purchase on such phenomena

as the Christian experience of anxiety, melancholy or acedia, and the threat of despair. While

developing this thesis, the following set of auxiliary contributions emerge:

a) a new presentation of Wesley’s doctrine of sin indexed to the doctrine of illumination;

b) an alternative account of Wesley’s theological anthropology with reference to his view

of the relation between body, soul, and the affections;

8
Wesley, ‘The General Deliverance’ & ‘The New Birth,’ WJW, 2:188-190, 438-442, esp., 441.
Introduction 12

c) a more textured understanding of the often noted ‘relational’ shape of Wesley’s

theology grounded in the priority of existence in medias res;

d) a theological discussion of Wesley’s doctrine of evil angels; and

e) suggestions for a fresh interpretation of Wesley’s theological vision.

This argument highlights Wesley’s sense that it is the ordinary condition of fallen humanity to

live, rather comfortably, without God in the world. Or, in Wesley’s words, most often humanity

muddles through everyday life as ‘practical atheists.’

a. Contemporary Readings of Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin and Their Problems.

The disquiet Wesley feels over this penchant to unbelief strikes any casual reader of

Wesley. His journals, letters, and sermons document an anxiety over faith and its opposite that

runs as an undercurrent throughout Wesley’s life from Aldersgate to the debates in the 1760’s

over the appearance and efficaciousness of assurance. 9 Awareness of this proclivity to

faithlessness and its dangers agitates the fierceness of Methodist asceticism. It is the seedbed

from which these enthusiasts grow. ‘Nothing in life is indifferent to Methodists,’ writes Henry

Rack, ‘and so they condemn much that ordinary people find innocent.’10 Wesley’s approach is

a programmatic attempt to agitate his audience’s conscience in Puritan fashion, to flee with all

their might from the banality of everyday life without faith.11 One can see this throughout

9
The controversy over assurance is sharpest in Wesley’s conflict with Robert Sandeman’s teaching of a faith of
adherence in the 1750’s. Wesley consistently taught a full assurance of faith, by which he simply meant
immediate favour of God, a confidence in God’s loving presence. This is contrasted with the assurance of
hope, which is a confidence in final salvation. See Wesley’s letter to ‘John Glass’ in October of 1757, Letters,
3:231-239; cf. Letters, 4:115; 4:219. For a helpful exposition of this issue, see Collins, The Theology of John
Wesley, 136-142; cf. Frederick Dreyer, ‘Faith and Experience in the Thought of John Wesley,’ The American
Historical Review, 88, no. 1 (1983), 19.
10
Henry Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London: Epworth, 2013), 92.
11
Accordingly, one may locate this thesis as a mode of corroborating the long-standing Puritan interpretation,
see Robert C. Monk, John Wesley: His Puritan Heritage, 2nd ed. (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 1999). Baird
Tipson’s recent monograph, Inward Baptism: The Theological Origins of Evangelicalism (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2020), in tracing a genealogy that begins in Luther and culminates in the evangelical revival
with Wesley, Whitefield, and Edwards corroborates this reading. Significant in Tipson’s analysis is the place
he affords the influence of William Perkins as the cornerstone for a decidedly English—Anglican, Puritan,
dissenter, and non-conformist—theological tradition. On Perkins’s legacy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century theology, see W. B. Patterson, William Perkins and the Making of a Protestant England (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2014).
Introduction 13

Wesley’s Sermons. It is as much an aspect of homiletical style as it is an outworking of his

doctrinal commitment.12

Nevertheless, even though such an observation is common, the structures of Wesley’s

doctrine of sin that fund his anxiousness over unbelief are insufficiently understood. The

remainder of this section will survey the landscape in which this dissertation stands. The

explanations for this hyper attentiveness to faith are often attributed to Wesley’s idiosyncratic

personality and to some version of the effects of mass hysteria. 13 Or, if socio- or psycho-

historical explanations leave one wanting, others have only examined the positive doctrinal

commitments in Wesley’s soteriology that motivate such anxiety over faith through his account

of grace, assurance, or perfection. This thesis hopes to uncover the deeper commitments that

motivate Wesley’s attention to unbelief from within his doctrine of sin. These commitments,

while beginning in how Wesley speaks about humanity’s condition in sin, sprawl outward into

the whole of his theology: from the nature of conversion, the spiritual senses, and spiritual

warfare, temptation, and the struggle within the holy life. It follows from the nature of this

inquiry, that it spans the breadth of Wesley’s doctrine of sin, from the Fall and original sin to

demonology, temptation, and actual sin.

12
Debates continue around the use of Wesley’s Sermons on Several Occasions: whether they were intended as
doctrinal tractates, devotional reading, or rhetorical homilies. In Coleman’s recent thesis, he helpfully reorients
attention to the rhetorical purpose of Wesley’s Sermons. Coleman’s commentary on the Preface is
commendable. Highlighting the Sermons rhetorical structure need not compete with the Sermons use for
theological work, yet such a distinction does inflect the kinds of theology Wesley undertakes. See Jim
Coleman, ‘The Antithetical Homiletic of John Wesley’s Sermons on Several Occasions, I-IV’ (PhD Diss., The
University of Manchester, 2016), 25-31, 35-51; cf. William J. Abraham, ‘Wesley as Preacher,’ in The
Cambridge Companion to John Wesley, edited by Randy L. Maddox and Jason E. Vickers (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 91-112. Though dated, Downey’s analysis of Wesley’s ‘athletic’
homiletical style is still useful, see James Downey, The Eighteenth Century Pulpit: A Study of the Sermons of
Butler, Berkeley, Secker, Sterne, Whitefield, and Wesley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 189-225.
13
Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). For a survey of a
collection of these more disparaging interpretations of Wesley and the rise of Methodism, see Timothy W.
Holgerson, ‘The Wesleyan Enlightenment: Closing the Gap between Heart Religion and Reason in Eighteenth
Century England’ (PhD Diss., Kansas State University, 2018).
Introduction 14

In Wesley studies, this dissertation builds upon and reinterprets valuable existing

analyses of Wesley’s doctrine of sin.14 Much is already known about the urgency with which

Wesley defended the doctrine of sin from its despisers. In general, among readings of Wesley’s

doctrine of sin there is an easy agreement on a few salient points: he affirmed a version of total

depravity; he admitted to the universality of sin within all humanity; he recognised the

continuity of original sin within the holy life; and he emphasised this doctrine as one of the

cornerstones of Christian belief. 15 If one turns their attention to the handful of studies that have

dealt exclusively with Wesley’s doctrine of sin, the location of this study emerges more clearly.

To date, the most thoroughgoing account of John Wesley’s doctrine of sin is Barry Bryant’s

doctoral thesis entitled ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin.’16 Given this status, this argument’s

14
Considering Wesley’s most well-known contribution is in soteriology, treatments of soteriology hardly pass
over the doctrine of sin, attention to Wesley’s doctrine of sin is vast. Cell is one of the first interpreters of
Wesley in the previous century to highlight the prominence of the doctrine: ‘Now Wesley taught from first to
last, and with all energy, the doctrine of original sin and total depravity. And he pushed this doctrine to the
limit. He did not temporize and tone it down. He did not qualify it. He did not evade it. He did not shrink back
from its unmitigated offense to natural reason, nor yield an inch to the humanist principles of the
Enlightenment. He taught the doctrine of sin harshly. He not only assumed the possibility; he also asserted the
fact of our being damned souls.’ See Cell, Rediscovery, 274.
15
Most studies since the early 1990’s can be indexed to Randy Maddox’s landmark Responsible Grace: John
Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994), 73-83. Maddox’s study is complemented
by two important dissertations: Craig Blaising, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Original Sin,’ ThD Thesis (Dallas:
Dallas Theological Seminary, 1979), and Barry Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ PhD Dissertation
(London: King’s College London, 1992). In those studies which preceded Maddox, there are a handful worth
mentioning. Harold Lindstrom’s classic study, Wesley and Sanctification: A Study in the Doctrine of
Sanctification (London: Epworth Press, 1950), 19-44. Cell’s chapter dedicated to Wesley’s view of sin is
remarkable for his recognition of the intensity of the doctrine, see Rediscovery, 273-296. For Umphrey Lee,
Wesley’s advocacy of original sin is so well known it hardly needs exposition, but his reading lacks the
necessary nuance to understand Wesley’s position, see Lee, John Wesley and Modern Religion (Nashville:
Cokesbury Press, 1936), 120-127, 185-187; cf. Leo Cox, ‘John Wesley’s Concept of Sin,’ Bulletin of the
Evangelical Theological Society 5, no. 1 (1962), 18-24. John Deschner makes the prescient remark, ‘One
cannot escape the impression, in all this, that Wesley is more interested in describing something which sinners
painfully experience rather than formulating a doctrine.’ See Deschner, John Wesley’s Christology: An
Interpretation (Dallas: Southern Methodist Univeristy Press, 1960), 152. Collin Williams, helpfully shows the
parallels between John Wesley’s position on sin with reference to Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Luther. See
Williams, John Wesley’s Theology Today (Nashville: Abingdon, 1960), 47-56.
16
Barry Edward Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin.’ (PhD Diss., King’s College, University of London,
1992). Bryant has gone on to become the de facto specialist on all things related to Wesley, sin, and evil, see
Bryant, ‘John Wesley on the Origins of Evil’ in The History of Evil in the Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries:
1700-1900 CE, edited by Douglas Hedley, Chad Meister, and Charles Taliaferro, The History of Evil, volume
4, edited by Chad Meister and Charles Taliaferro (London: Routledge, 2018). See also Blaising, ‘John
Wesley’s Doctrine of Original Sin.’ For a survey of the reception of the doctrine of sin among Methodist
theologians in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries, see Leon O. Hynson, ‘Original Sin as Privation: An
Inquiry into a Theology of Sin and Sanctification,’ WTJ, 22, n. 2 (1987), 65-83. In a more constructive
Introduction 15

engagement with Bryant will extend throughout this dissertation. Bryant’s concern is with the

prominence of the doctrine of sin within Wesley’s ‘Christian system.’17 His motivation appears

borne out of a desire to align Wesley with a specific vision for systematic theology, which

entails the commitment that doctrinal statements need to cohere to an abstract system of

propositions. These commitments are then reconciled with the existential and ethical field.18

Interpreted this way, Wesley’s doctrine of sin becomes problematic: Bryant thinks Wesley is

unable to reconcile the metaphysical and the physical.19 He thinks that Wesley leaves

untouched the gap between the doctrine of original sin according to ‘the essential nature of

things’ and the ‘real state of mankind.’20 He points, for example, to Wesley’s account of the

body, fallen and corrupt in principle but neutral in fact, and to original sin’s metaphysical

treatment over against actual sin’s ethical treatment. 21 On his terms, the criticism makes sense,

as do other critiques of Wesley’s doctrine of sin.22 However, Bryant’s hermeneutic

perspective: Sarah Heaner Lancaster, ‘Women, Wesley, and Original Sin,’ Quarterly Review, 23, no. 4 (2003),
360-72; Lori Haynes Niles, ‘Toward a Wesleyan Theology of Failure,’ WTJ, 43, no. 1 (2008), 120-32; Michael
A. Tapper, ‘Social Sin and Needed Corporate Reform in the Wesleyan Tradition,’ WTJ, 48, no. 2 (2013), 193-
208. There are set of helpful reappraisals of Wesley’s doctrine of sin: John R. Tyson, ‘Sin, Self, and Society:
John Wesley’s Hamartiology Reconsidered,’ ATJ, 44, no. 2 (1989), 77-89; Mark K. Olson, ‘John Wesley’s
Doctrine of Sin Revisited,’ WTJ, 47, no. 2 (2012), 53-71.
17
Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 10; On Wesley’s use of the term, see An Appeal to Men of Reason
and Religion, §12, WJW, 11:49; Doctrine of Original Sin, Preface, §4, WJW, 12:158; ‘Original Sin,’ §III.1,
WJW, 2:182.
18
Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 11.
19
Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 287.
20
Wesley, Appeals, §28, WJW, 11:55; Doctrine of Sin, Pt. 1, WJW, 12:160.
21
Bryant’s analysis is also overdetermined by a desire to align Wesley with social trinitarianism, see Bryant,
‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 287-288; cf. ibid., 142, 143-167.
22
In reception, Methodist theologians have expressed distaste at Wesley’s supposed untidy inconsistencies in
the doctrine of sin. Some, like Williams, think Wesley’s doctrine of sin simply ‘defective.’ See John Wesley’s
Theology Today, 203. There is some variety to these critiques, Olin Alfred Curtis argues Wesley never
delivered a coherent doctrine of sin, The Christian Faith Personally Given in a System of Doctrine (New York:
Eaton & Mains, 1905), 378. Lee suggests his doctrine of sin led him to an erroneous conception of entire
sanctification, John Wesley and Modern Religion, 186. More recently, see Olson, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of
Sin Revisited,’ 70: ‘Wesley bequeathed to his posterity … a theology of holiness bound with unresolved
tensions … We can either (1) narrow the definition of sin to voluntary transgressions or (2) give up the claim
of salvation from all sin.’ Olson may be correct in his analysis, and the way forward is to recognise the
continuity of sin within the Christian life, but this dissertation will demonstrate that such a decision need not
abandon Wesley’s vision for holiness.
Introduction 16

misunderstands the root of Wesley’s theological vision: the living integrity of the life of faith.

Thus, Wesley’s ‘Christian system’ refers to the unity of life in communion with the Father in

the Son and through the Holy Spirit and in fellowship with all believers through the means of

grace. Wesley’s ‘Christian system’ refers to the integrity of ‘practical divinity.’

b. Approaching Wesley: A Therapeutic Approach Prioritising ‘Practical Divinity.’

What is needed is a therapeutic reinterpretation. 23 To begin, one of the roots of many

pathologies is the misconfiguration of Wesley’s ethos and, thus, his method. Consider the

passage from the Appeals immediately following his appeal to ‘eternal reason:’

[This religion] is every way suited to the nature of man, for it begins in man’s knowing
himself: knowing himself to be what he really is—foolish, vicious, miserable. It goes
on to point out the remedy for this, to make him truly wise, virtuous, and happy, as
every thinking mind (and perhaps some implicit remembrance of what it originally
was) longs to be.
It finishes all by restoring the due relations between God and man, by uniting for ever
the tender father and the grateful, obedient son; the great Lord of all and the faithful
servant, doing not his own will, but the will of him that sent him. 24
It would be hard to uncover a more compact distillation of Wesley’s theological vision. There

are three things to note.

First, Wesley’s is not a regular theology but an irregular theology.25 As Barth defines:

‘By irregular dogmatics … we mean the enquiry into dogma in which there is no primary

thought of the task of the school and there is thus no primary concern for the completeness

mentioned above.’26 The hallmark of irregular theology is the singularity of focus, whether on

one theological issue like Luther’s near obsessive concern with re-envisioning salvation, or

23
The therapeutic approach undertaken in this study bears similarity to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s use: ‘There is not
a single philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were.’ See
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, et al., 4th ed. (Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2009), §133d; cf. Stanley Cavell, Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2010), 416-420.
24
Wesley, Appeals, §29, WJW, 11:55.
25
Barth, ‘§7.2. Dogmatics as a Science,’ CD, I/1: 281-292; cf. Jung Yang, ‘The Doctrine of God in the
Theology of John Wesley’ (PhD Diss., University of Aberdeen, 2003), 3-6.
26
Barth, CD, I/1: 281.
Introduction 17

with the present situation like Bonhoeffer’s occasional writings on the church and Christian

life arising from life in war-time Germany. For Wesley, unsurprisingly, this focus is ‘holiness

of heart and life,’ to see the fruit of the Spirit manifest in the ordinary lives of Christians.27 The

relation between regular and irregular theology is mutually enriching rather than contrastive,

not on any account of the finality of a given abstract system, but on the consistency of God,

theology’s subject and object.28 Moreover, irregular theology precedes and establishes regular

theological reflection. Calling, vocation, and discernment determine whether the theologian

should undertake a regular or irregular scheme: it is a misstep to idolize the ornate

sophistication of regular theology and subordinate irregularity. 29

Second, the irregularity of Wesley’s theology points to a reconfiguration of the meaning

of such phrases as ‘Christian system.’ This requires a suspension of what systematicity

means.30 There is no intrinsic vice to the intellectual organisation of data such that what one

Thus, soteriology is rightly identified as the guiding ‘norm,’ see H. Ray Dunning, ‘Systematic Theology in a
27

Wesleyan Mode,’ WTJ, 17:1 (1982), 17-18.

28
Barth, CD, I/1: 283.
29
‘Dogmatics as free discussion of the problems that arise for Church proclamation from the standpoint of the
question of dogma can and must be pursued in the Church outside the theological school and apart from its
special task. Such free dogmatics existed before there was the regular dogmatics of the school, and it will
always have its own necessity and possibility alongside this. It will differ from it by the fact that it does not
cover the whole ground with the same consistency, whether in respect of Church proclamation itself, the
decisive biblical witness, the history of dogma, detailed systematics, or strictness and clarity of method.
Perhaps for specific historical reasons it will take up a specific theme and focus on it. Perhaps it will be
relatively free in relation to the biblical basis or its choice of partners in discussion. Perhaps it will be more of
an exposition of results, and will take the form of theses or aphorisms, and will observe only partially or not at
all the distinction between dogmatics and proclamation. Perhaps it will leave much to be desired as regards the
explicit or implicit distinctness of its path of knowledge. In one respect or another, or even in many or all
respects, it will be, and will mean to be, a fragment, and it will have to be evaluated as such. … The dogmatic
work that has come down to us from the early Church, even from the pens of its most significant and learned
representatives, is not for the most part regular dogmatics but irregular dogmatics in the sense described. … It
should also be noted that regular dogmatics has always had its origin in irregular dogmatics, and could never
have existed without its stimulus and co-operation. If we keep clearly in view the complete difference between
the two both materially and historically, we shall be on guard against overhasty estimation or disparagement of
either the one or the other.’ Barth, CD, I/1: 282.
30
The trades on a hasty equivocation of ‘scientific’ and ‘systematic’ that, again, Barth underscores: ‘In
particular we shall refrain from immediately ascribing a scientific character to regular dogmatics and a non-
scientific character to irregular dogmatics. If the scientific nature of dogmatics lies in its special objectivity,
namely, in its orientation to the question of dogma, then there is no obvious reason why both regular and
irregular dogmatics should not be either scientific or non-scientific,’ Barth, CD, I/1: 283. Partly, this tendency
arises from the existential concern over whether there is a Wesleyan theology at all because Wesley’s writings
do not fulfil contemporary expectations and Wesleyans fail to converse with the theologians in their tradition.
Introduction 18

says about God and the world all hangs together. But one must attend Wesley’s use of

systematicity—it is not ours.31 From the internal consistency of Wesley’s sermons over the

course of his lifetime that many acknowledge it does not follow that he worked in the first

instance out of a self-conscious pursuit of a system of doctrine from which by deduction he

would construct his sermons, treatises, and letters. 32 If one presses further, the use of the term

‘Christian system’ by Wesley must be distanced from the kinds of systematicity that

characterise theology in Schleiermacher and Hegel’s wake.33 Similarly, one may be tempted to

take Wesley’s use of the ‘Christian system’ to retroactively coordinate this onto the kinds of

systematicity common to the schoolmen, perhaps using an Arminian frame to coach Wesley’s

writings into a more orderly fashion. 34 But this also falls short since such a hermeneutic

deliberately ignores Wesley’s existence within an intellectual culture grown impatient with the

perceived decadence of the scholastic method.

31
On meaning, use and historical theology, see Kevin W. Hector, Theology without Metaphysics: God,
Language, and the Spirit of Recognition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 125-146; cf. in a
different, but sympathetic perspective emphasising analogical imagination and historicality, see Ben Quash,
Found Theology: History, Imagination, and the Holy Spirit (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 1-26.
32
The internal consistency of Wesley’s theology in his writings has long been variously described, for example
Albert Outler, ‘Towards a Re-Appraisal of John Wesley as a Theologian’ in The Wesleyan Theological
Heritage, edited by Thomas C. Oden and Leicester R. Longden (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 39-54;
Outler, ‘John Wesley – Folk Theologian,’ Theology Today 34, no. 2 (1977): 150-60; Randy Maddox, ‘John
Wesley – Practical Theologian?’ WTJ 23, nos. 1-2 (1988): 122-47; Maddox, Responsible Grace: John
Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994), 19-22; Kenneth Collins, ‘Rethinking the
Systematic Nature of John Wesley’s Theology,’ Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester
86, nos. 2-3 (2003): 309-30; Collins, ‘The Method of John Wesley’s Practical Theology Reconsidered’ W&MS
9, no. 2 (2017): 101-22. In the early reception of Wesley, within a generation or two, the major positions in
this debate were largely already proposed. For example, following the notable controversy surrounding Robert
Southey’s The Life of Wesley, originally published in 1820, criticisms by Richard Watson and Alexander Knox
reveal the early contest in Wesley’s legacy, see Peter Knockles ‘Reactions to Robert Southey’s Life of Wesley
(1820) Reconsidered,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63, no. 1 (2012): 61-80. References to Southey’s Life
of Wesley and Alexander Knox’s rebuttal are drawn from the third edition, The Life of Wesley; and Rise and
Progress of Methodism, 3rd edition, with Notes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Remarks on the Life and
Character of John Wesley by Alexander Knox, 2 vols., edited by Charles Cuthbert Southey (London:
Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1846).
33
On the development and meaning of systematicity in modern theology, see A. N. Williams, The Architecture
of Doctrine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 23-78.
34
For example, consider W. Stephen Gunter, ‘John Wesley, A Faithful Representative of Jacob Arminius,’ WTJ
42, no. 2 (2007): 65-82; cf. Thomas H. McCall & Keith D. Stanglin, After Arminius: A Historical Introduction
to Arminian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 100-136; Herbert Boyd McGonigle, Sufficient
Saving Grace: John Wesley’s Evangelical Arminianism (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001).
Introduction 19

Third, the meaning the ‘Christian system’ conjoins with Wesley’s practice of ‘practical

divinity:’ these combine to denote a pattern of behaviours, including intellectual ones like

beliefs, which correlate to the real presence of the Spirit of Christ among God’s people: ‘I have

endeavoured to describe the true, the scriptural, experimental religion.’35 In fact, it is in how

the orientation with practical theology as a way of thinking that organically feeds into his

limited though substantial forays into speculative subjects as well as his at times tedious

polemics. Therefore, much depends on the meaning of Wesley’s practical divinity. There is an

interpretive tool ready-to-hand in the understanding of ‘theology as grammar.’ 36 There are three

dimensions of this approach: (a) theology as grammar points to a basic morphology of Christian

existence composed of right beliefs, right actions, and right feelings;37 (b) theology as grammar

realises this structure in its communication in everyday life;38 (c) theology as grammar drives

the categories of essence and existence together in such a way that orients the search for what

is real or true or good within the fabric of everyday life (in medias res).39 Thus, thought of as

a grammar of Christian existence, Wesley’s practical divinity understands the veracity of

35
Wesley, ‘Preface to the Sermons on Several Occasions,’ WJW, 1:106. Of the three modes of theological
discourse for the eighteenth century divine – speculative, practical, and polemical or controversial – Wesley’s
preference for practical theology need not be seen as competitive with the other two modalities. On theological
genre in eighteenth-century divinity with reference to Wesley’s use of practical and experimental divinity, see
Maddox, ‘John Wesley – Practical Theologian?’ 123-6; Maddox, ‘The Recovery of Theology as a Practical
Discipline,’ Theological Studies 51 (1990): 650-9.
36
For an introduction to this idea, see Fergus Kerr, Theology after Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 145-
148. The specific way ‘grammar’ is used here bears resemblance to Holmer’s view, see Paul [Link],
‘Wittgenstein and Theology,’ in Thinking the Faith with Passion: Select Essays, edited by David J. Gouwens
and Lee C. Barrett III (Eugene: Cascade, 2012), 110-119; cf. Holmer, ‘The Grammar of Faith,’ The Grammar
of the Heart: New Essays in Moral Philosophy & Theology, edited by Richard H. Bell (New York: Harper &
Row, 1988) 3-21. One may also find parallels with Lindbeck, whose use of doctrine as grammar is indebted to
Holmer. See George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age
(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984), 28n28.
37
Thus incorporating Theodore Runyon’s call for orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy, see The New
Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 147-149; cf. Gregory Clapper,
‘Orthokardia: The Practical Theology of John Wesley’s Heart Religion,’ Quarterly Review, 10, no. 1 (1990),
49-66.
38
‘Essence is expressed in grammar.’ Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §370; cf. Holmer,
‘Wittgenstein: “Saying” and “Showing”,’ Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und
Religionsphilosophie, 22:3 (1980), 222-35.
39
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §374.
Introduction 20

theological claims to arise from everyday life and return to everyday life in recognition of the

historicity of existence. 40 Therefore, Wesley’s approach emerges from the ‘crucible of life’ as

Timothy Crutcher has phrased it. 41 The kind of coherency to which Wesley aspires to is

unburdened by worries over the supposed gaps between the physical and metaphysical, perhaps

too naively, he supposes an analogy between the two. On the contrary, existence as a creature

in the world is a given for Wesley and, within the world, God is found.42 He, in many ways

like Joseph Butler, adopts a view of existence in medias res, setting distinct limitations on the

ambitions of human reason.43 Where probability wins the day for Butler,44 Wesley prioritises

the field of experience as illuminated by the Word which gives life to our words and is unveiled

in the Scriptures.45

40
A modification drawn from Martin Heidegger: ‘…[Philosophy] arises from factical life experience. And
within factical life experience philosophy returns back to factical life experience,’ The Phenomenology of
Religious Life, translated by Mattias Fristch & Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 2004), 6-7; cf. Karl Rahner, ‘The Experience of God Today,’ Theological Investigations, vol.
11 (London: Dartman, Longman & Todd), 149-166. More recently, see Theodore Runyon’s ‘The Role of
Experience in Religion’ in The International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 32, no. 2 (1992): 187-194. On
this view of everyday life (i.e. factical life experience), I have resisted a synthesis of the discernment of the
theological truths of history into absolute truth as seen in, for example, Tillich in his essay ‘Historical and
Nonhistorical Interpretations of History: A Comparison’ The Protestant Era (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1948), 54-69; cf. Systematic Theology, 3:362-73; cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology,
vol. 1 (London: SCM Press, 1970), 81-95. For a view more aligned with my own, again, see Rahner’s essay,
‘The Historicity of Theology’ in Theological Investigations, volume 9 (London: Dartman, Longman & Todd),
64-83.
41
Timothy J. Crutcher, ‘“The Crucible of Life”: The Role of Experience in John Wesley’s Theological Method’
(PhD Diss., University of Leuven, 2003).
42
Quash, Found Theology, 5-7.
43
For Butler, incorporating Locke’s emphasis on probability has implications for the existential situation of the
person. One is confined to probability. The sense of this exerts pressure on the extent of human reason to
organise the world and, in the end, gives way to the recognition that one finds themselves in the world as
given. See Butler, Sermons, 15.5: ‘Creation is absolutely and entirely out of our depth, and beyond the extent
of our utmost reach. … Our own nature, and the objects we are surrounded with, serve to raise our curiosity;
but we are quite out of a condition of satisfying it. Every secret which is disclosed, every discovery which is
made, every new effect which is brought to view, serves to convince us of numberless more which remain
concealed, and which we had before no suspicion of.’
44
Butler, Analogy, Intro., 3: ‘Probable evidence, in its very nature, affords but an imperfect kind of information.
… But to us, probability is the very guide of life.’ This attention to probability is rooted in John Locke, An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1975), IV.15 (654-657).
45
Wesley, ‘Preface,’ WJW, 1:105.
Introduction 21

In essence, this dissertation endeavours to follow Wesley in his practical divinity: ‘It

finishes all by restoring the due relations between God and man, by uniting for ever the tender

father and the grateful, obedient son.’46 In doing so, this dissertation will be confronted by

several recurrent tensions within Wesley’s theology: between the body and the soul, between

individuality and sociality, between original and actual sin, between the imputation of Christ’s

righteousness and the responsibility of the Christian to actualise personal righteousness,

between the mystery of freedom and the possibility of the full assurance of faith, to name a

selection. This shift in interpretation to see Wesley’s ‘heart religion’ as a grammar of Christian

existence underscores the importance of faithlessness within his doctrine of sin. Contemplation

of the mystery of iniquity is incorporated within the wider horizon of the Christian life. But,

importantly, for Wesley such a recognition of the depths of sin is bookended by redemption:

‘This great “mystery of godliness” began to work from the very time of the original promise.

According to the lamb, being (in the purpose of God) “slain from the beginning of the world,”

from the same period his sanctifying Spirit began to renew the souls of men.’47 In this way, as

a grammar, Wesley’s claim that ‘I do not see how it is possible for any to have vital religion

who denies that these three are one,’ makes sense. 48 The depths of sin drive Wesley to seek

stability externally in salvation already accomplished by Christ and available in the means of

grace in the encounter with God in prayer and at the eucharist. 49

c. A Promissory Note for a Wider Theological Audience.

At this point a final word may be offered as to the significance of this dissertation,

embedded within Wesley studies and Wesleyan theology though it may be, for the wider field

46
Appeals, §29, WJW, 11:55.
47
‘The Mystery of Iniquity,’ §3, WJW, 2:452.
48
‘On the Trinity,’ §18, WJW, 2:386.
49
Wesley, ‘The Means of Grace,’ WJW, 1:378-97; Wesley, ‘The Duty of Constant Communion,’ WJW, 3:427-
40.
Introduction 22

of the Christian doctrine of sin. Wesley’s approach is poised to offer a means of negotiating a

persistent issue in contemporary Protestant doctrines of sin over the place of experience. 50 For

Wesley, what emerges is less a doctrine and more a description of startling reality of experience

of sin and evil as creatures who find themselves in a fallen world.51 Wesley’s sensitivity to

experience and, more importantly, how he marshals evidence for this reliance on experience,

may proffer constructive appeal for the doctrine of sin today. This already finds traction with

recent proposals, prominently in Ian A. McFarland’s In Adam’s Fall.52 Protestant emphases on

the extrinsic quality of sin and salvation have come under severe criticism as being unable to

offer an account of manifest change in the holy life.53 Barth’s suspicion of experience did not

help secure a way forward.54 The nerves are warranted, since if justification by grace through

faith alone looks like any predictable form of life, then one is in fact not justified by grace

alone, but by grace and some condition in creaturely existence. 55 Instead, the Protestant

impulse emphasizes the forensic quality of justification and the promissory quality of holiness

50
For an excellent summary of this problem in recent theology, see Simeon Zahl, The Holy Spirit in Christian
Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 10-48.
51
Deschner, John Wesley’s Christology, 151.
52
McFarland, responding to critiques of theological approaches to sin and evil that seek an explanation,
resources Augustine’s commitment to treating sin descriptively. That is, speech about sin merely points to the
fact of its reality in the world and its promissory resolution in Christ. See, McFarland, In Adam’s Fall: A
Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010), 45-48; cf. Alistair McFadyen,
Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust, and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000).
53
Representative of these criticisms is John Milbank’s attack on the supposed ‘legal fiction’ at the root of
Protestant soteriology: ‘the Magisterial Reformers ... compromised love as the heart of Christianity, replacing
it with a loveless trust in an inscrutable deity.’ See Milbank, Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of
Being and the Representation of the People (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 64; cf. Milbank, Being
Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (London: Routledge, 2003), 110-111.
54
‘No, thy impress of revelation, thy emotion, thy experience and enthusiasm, are of this world, are flesh,’
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 72; cf. Barth, CD, I/1, 204-
232. Barth’s supposed aversion to the field of ordinary life must be sifted through his emphasis of theology’s
correspondence with the ethical, woven into the form of the Church Dogmatics, see Barth, CD, II/2, 508-550;
John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark,
2004). This is not to suggest that criticisms such as Milbank’s are entirely unwarranted, only that they demand
careful consideration of the content experience has to offer.
55
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 2:148, 217-231, esp. 222.
Introduction 23

to protect against incursion on the sovereignty of God’s work pro nobis.56 Ironically, Barth

signals Wesley’s value in providing a Protestant vision of experience. Barth identifies Wesley

alongside a handful of others as the only Protestant theologians to organise their projects

around the same account of salvation accused of having no bearing today.57 Following a

distinctly Protestant interpretation of Wesley, therefore, and focusing on sin, perhaps ‘heart

religion’ proffers an opportunity for wider Protestant theology to reintegrate the ‘affective

salience of doctrines’ without abdicating foundational theological instincts. 58

Thus, this dissertation’s contribution to Wesley studies and to Protestant theology is a

careful delineation of the structure of faithlessness within Wesley’s doctrine of sin. The

argument is that Wesley’s doctrine of sin accommodates the ambiguous persistence of

faithlessness as a feature of existence. The nagging persistence of ‘practical atheism’ is the

generative site for this reflection. While this argument builds on existing literature surrounding

Wesley, this interpretation privileges more strongly ‘Protestant’ readings of Wesley over

56
No better demonstration of this point exists than in the failures of the ordo salutis. Consider G. C.
Berkouwer’s comment on this point in reference to Paul’s message to the Corinthians that ‘we walk by faith
and not by sight’ (2 Cor. 5:7): [The Reformed proclamation of the Word], since it is concerned with the
incarnation, reconciliation with God, and eternal life, definitely treats of reality. Yet there is a radical
difference. “For according to the Reformation the believer enjoys the possession of this reality only by faith.”
The Reformation viewed the work of redemption as a reality of the past and the fulfilment of God’s promises
as a reality of the future. Now the believer lives ‘by faith’ and not by sight. He lives ‘between the times’ and is
related to the realities of past and future by faith alone.’ See Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 30-1.
57
Karl Barth, CD, IV/1, §61: 521-522: ‘It was Luther, above all others, who obviously regarded and described
the doctrine of justification as the Word of the Gospel. … [Orthodox Lutheranism] can hardly have understood
that for Luther it was more than an indispensable point of controversy, that in it Luther saw that everything
was at stake and note merely opposition to Rome. We must not overlook the fact that there have been men (not
confessional Lutherans) like Zinzendorf and the Bernese Samuel Lucius and John Wesley who followed
Luther in this matter. … The only thing is that with the possible exception of M. Kähler, no one dared actually
plan and organise Evangelical dogmatics around the doctrine of justification as a centre.’ Barth may be right to
identity no one with explicitly organising a dogmatic project around the doctrine of justification. But perhaps
in Wesley one has reason to believe there is a model for doing so in the future.
58
Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience, 4.
Introduction 24

against ‘Catholic’ or ‘Orthodox’ readings.59 But in such a topography there are limitations.60

Ultimately, this argument pursues Wesley’s meaning and seeks to understand his account from

within the landscape of his own theological horizon. The result presses the understanding of

Wesley’s doctrine of sin (and consequently of salvation) in important ways that bring further

clarity to Wesley’s theology and constructive opportunities for further reflection.

2. Methods, Interpretations, and Definitions.

This study prioritises the significance and utility of explicitly theological concepts as

interpretive tools within historical theology. Theology, of which historical theology is

derivative, may be understood here as the pursuit of wisdom within the holy life.61 Before

outlining this dissertation, three formal clarifications are helpful: first, the specification of this

dissertation as an exercise in historical theology; second, the decisions made regarding the

array of Wesley’s writings; and third, the suite of terms of art used throughout this argument.

First, this dissertation is an exercise in historical theology. Within this way of thinking

two modes, the historical and the theological, are intertwined. Historical theology requires care

59
These readings, often ecumenically well-intentioned, often overdetermine their interpretation of Wesley’s
texts. Maddox’s Responsible Grace remains the most significant study with an eye to the ‘Orthodox’ element
in Wesley. More recently there is a renewed interest in Wesleyan and Catholic theology or, following the
renewal of virtue theory, comparing Wesley and Aquinas: Daniel Castelo, ‘Tarrying on the Lord: Affections,
Virtues, and Theological Ethics in Pentecostal Perspective,’ Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 13, no. 1 (2004),
31-56; D. Stephen Long, John Wesley’s Moral Theology: The Quest for God and Goodness (Nashville:
Kingswood Books, 2001); Edgardo A. Colón-Emeric, Wesley, Aquinas, and Christian Perfection: An
Ecumenical Dialogue (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009); Greg Van Buskirk, ‘Iconic Dignity: Nature,
Grace, and Virtue in the Theologies of John Wesley and Thomas Aquinas,’ PhD Thesis (Boston: Boston
University, 2018).
60
Part of the problem lies Wesleyan theology’s overemphasis on the cooperant or synergistic aspects in
Wesley’s theology. A helpful corrective article can be found in Kenneth J. Collins and Christine Lynn
Johnson, ‘From the Gardens to the Gallows: The Significance of Free Grace in the Theology of John Wesley,’
WTJ, 48, no. 2 (2013), 7-29.
61
To understand theology as the pursuit of wisdom within the holy life is not to relegate theological work to the
confines of the church. On the contrary, the wisdom of God is to be sought in the world, as the world shows
forth the glory of God, see Dan Hardy, ‘The Future of Theology in a Complex World,’ God’s Ways with the
World: Thinking and Practicing the Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 44: ‘The fire for which we
seek is already among us … there is music in the fragments of melody. Where these are drawn together in their
interconnections, there is the “long rumour of wisdom” of which [Michael O’Siadhail] speaks. And that, … is
the issue – how in the interweavings of people, their cultures and nature, God is present. Where we can draw
out these interconnections, we will be finding wisdom in practice; where our searchings converge, there will be
a practical manifestation of wisdom.’ See also, on theology as a facet of sanctification, Tom Greggs, ‘On the
Nature, Task, and Method of Theology: A Very Methodist Account,’ IJST, 30, no. 3 (2018), 309-334.
Introduction 25

in approach, being necessarily interdisciplinary, it relies in part on the history of philosophy

alongside ecclesiastical and intellectual history while it motivates its queries from within

theology. The concept of tradition ought to inform the meaning of historical theology. 62 As

Paul writes, ‘… hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth

or by our letter’ (2 Thess. 2.15). This is not just one tradition among many, but the unique

distinction of working within the communion of saints. Historical theology engages its

tradition, recognising the linguisticality and historicity of theology, from within the all-

embracing horizon of the grace of the Holy Spirit to bind reality together. This perspective

presses against the ‘mythology of doctrines’ to attend to the history of God’s work in the church

through the communion of saints.63 In service of this, the thesis has sought to curtail the

tendency to treat the doctrines under examination as abstract entities. It has attempted to discern

the lived theology, or operant theology, afoot in Wesley’s Sermons.64 Doing so allows one a

point of access to understand Wesley’s texts as living documents and the conceptual

innovations he deploys to achieve his purposes. In sum, in view here is Wesley as our

contemporary insofar as he exists in a living tradition. As part of a living tradition, Wesley’s

62
The sense of tradition cultivated in Alisdair MacIntyre’s philosophy as embodied, socio-linguistic
communities and the recasting of hermeneutics within historical inquiry as a way of chastening historicism in
Hans-Georg Gadamer are now indispensable tools in historical theology. See Alisdair MacIntyre, Whose
Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988); Hans-Georg Gadamer,
Truth & Method (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013). With respect to the particularity of the theological
meaning of tradition, as one among several epistemological sources for the exercise of theological reason, the
rationality of the tradition is fundamentally constituted in the promise of the Word and the bond of the Spirit
around the interpretation of the scriptures (this is a self-consciously Protestant approach). See Greggs,
Dogmatic Ecclesiology, vol. 1, The Priestly Catholicity of the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018),
261-275; cf. Quash, Found Theology, 19-20.
63
As Dan Hardy recognises, the history of doctrine must yield to the communities they serve, and their
necessary transience, see ‘Faith Embedded within the Particularities of History,’ God’s Ways with the World,
273-275; cf. Quash, Found Theology, 26, 150-163. See also, in a different though sympathetic perspective,
John Behr, John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2019), 5-19.
64
These terms of art, lived and operant theology, refer to two live options in contemporary theological ethics
and practical theology, see Helen Cameron, et al., Talking about God in Practice: Theological Action
Research and Practical Theology (London: SCM Press, 2010), 54f. For a good example of operant theology in
a study on Wesley, see Sean McGeaver, Born Again: Wesley and Whitefield on Conversion (Minneapolis:
Lexham Press, 2020).
Introduction 26

context as an eclectic eighteenth-century Anglican divine is, like all historical events,

contingent and unrepeatable, but unrepeatability does not preclude re-enactment.65 There is no

need to shy away from genuine creativity in interpreting the tradition, unless one succumbs to

the transiency of new fashions.66 As David Ford says: ‘Be attentive to what is going on now,

and especially to the cries of those who are suffering.’67 Neither is there a need to regurgitate

what has already gone before. Such work would fall flat and dull in today’s context, falling

prey to vanity.68 ‘Beware,’ says Ford in another maxim, ‘of just repeating a tradition in new

situations; be suspicious of simplifications and formulae.’ 69 Historical theology thus has a foot

in two worlds—in the world of Wesley and in the world of today.

Second, it is necessary to list the interpretive decisions made in this study regarding

textual priority and periodization in Wesley’s writings. This dissertation relies principally upon

Wesley’s own recommendations: the Sermons on Several Occasions, the Hymns and Sacred

Poems, and The Explanatory Notes on the New Testament. Of these three sources, the Sermons

take highest priority. Alongside these, the Letters, the Appeals and other doctrinal treatises, and

the Journals & Diaries are supplemented. Even though the treatise On the Doctrine of Original

Sin is Wesley’s longest work, it is not Wesley’s most elegant consideration of the subject, being

spliced together with readings from Isaac Watts and Thomas Boston. 70 The 1765 sermon ‘On

Original Sin’ aptly captures the major insights developed in Wesley’s polemic against John

65
Accordingly, R. G. Collingwood’s sense of history as re-enactment is perhaps one way around the problems
downstream of the preceding critique of universals and the history of doctrine. For Collingwood, since history
presents itself as an interpretive medium dealing with the life of the mind, the contemplation of past data
through historical reason can be, in a refracted sense, re-enacted. ‘Historical knowledge,’ Collingwood writes,
‘has for its proper object of thought: not things thought about, but the act of thinking itself.’ See Collingwood,
The Idea of History, revised edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 305.
66
Hardy, ‘The Future of Theology in a Complex World,’ God’s Ways with the World, 38.
67
David Ford, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 198.
68
Hardy, God’s Ways with the World, 38.
69
Ford, Christian Wisdom, 198.
70
See Wesley, The Doctrine of Original Sin: According to Scripture, Reason, and Experience, WJW, 12:117-
482.
Introduction 27

Taylor.71 While homing in on the Sermons goes some way towards making the management of

Wesley’s vast writings less cumbersome, there is still a need to make a decision regarding the

development markedly observable over the lifetime’s worth of Wesley’s writings. This thesis

follows the three-fold periodisation of Wesley’s view of the holy life: the early (1733-1738),

the middle (1738-1765), and the later or mature period (1765-1791).72 Where there are

divergences or changes in position, this dissertation follows the mature position, dating from

1765 onwards.

Finally, in this dissertation there is a suite of terms of art drawn from and brought to

Wesley to assist in the development of the argument. First, there is frequent recourse to the

grammar of holiness (or Christian existence).73 Introduced above, this phrase captures the

meaning of Wesley’s theological vision as ‘practical divinity’ in pursuit of ‘heart religion.’ The

full phrase appears as follows: the grammar of Christian existence in the way of holiness as

continual repentance within the means of grace. This terse phrase summarises: (a) the

peripatetic mode of the holy life; (b) this life’s self-negating quality; which is pursuant of (c)

well-being found in God’s ordinances.74 This phrase captures how Wesley’s operant theology

emerges from a common life in the worshipping community: it conforms to the same patterns

as an outworking of one’s growth in holiness.

71
See ‘Original Sin,’ WJW, 2:172-185.
72
Maddox, Responsible Grace, 20-21. Moreover, Lohrstorfer’s study of the sources and development of
Wesley’s doctrine of sin has corroborated this periodisation of Wesley. See Lohrstorfer, ‘Know Your Disease,’
183-210; cf. Olson, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin Revisited,’ 53-60.
73
The intention is not to incur Wittgenstein’s baggage. However, it is true that Wittgenstein’s reception in
theology leads to a profitable analogy to the meaning of eighteenth-century practical divinity. See Holmer,
‘The Grammar of Faith,’ 3-21; cf. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 79-84. Such a distinction is hardly novel.
This argument tries to capture a common sensibility that seems elusive only in the modern world. Consider
Calvin, Institutes, 1: III.6.5: ‘For [our teaching] is a doctrine not of the tongue but of life. It is not apprehended
by the understanding and memory alone, as other disciplines are, but it is received only when it possesses the
whole soul, and finds a seat and resting place in the inmost affection of the heart.’
74
By peripatetic is meant both that Wesley thinks on the move and his intellectual debt to the Oxford
Aristotelian tradition.
Introduction 28

Second, this dissertation considers Wesley’s sense of conversation to denote the

existential and ethical attitude. The meaning of ‘to converse’ enjoys a wider valence in

Wesley’s context. 75 For Wesley, conversation, whether in the inner dialogue with the witness

of the Spirit, in searching the Scriptures within the select societies, or in common speech among

others in society, is existentially formative. This is so because to engage in conversation

requires attention, hence Wesley’s worries over singularity and dissipation; and because for

conversation to have integrity, the one who listens must trust the words of the one who speaks.

Thus, the third term of art is faithlessness used synonymously with unbelief to denote

in the most general sense the existential break (or the lack of conversation) with God. There

are a set of correlated, derivative meanings such as disbelief, incredulity, falsity, deception,

and doubt, but at the root for Wesley is the fundamental orientation of one’s being. The decision

between faith and faithlessness is an either/or ordeal for Wesley. Fourth, the term anxiety will

be used to capture the category of affective and existential conditions around the experience of

melancholy, acedia, despair, lowliness of spirits, darkness, and heaviness. Fifth and finally,

this dissertation will differentiate between tempers and dispositions as stable affective

conditions evidencing one’s existential attitude and affections as fleeting emotional states.

However, since it appears that affections stem from both the disposition and from external

causes, there is some overlap between the two.

3. Chapter Summaries

To demonstrate this thesis, this dissertation arranges its argument over five substantive

chapters, following Wesley’s concern that the doctrine of sin be reflexive upon the calling to

continual repentance in the shape of the holy life, that is, with the grammar of Christian

existence. The argument is that there is an insoluble pattern of falling back into faithlessness

75
The meaning of conversation in the eighteenth-century included a sharing or familiarity of identities, which
also refers to ‘the action of living or having one’s being in a place or among persons.’ This older use links
participation, behaviour, and identity together in a useful way. See ‘Conversation, n.’ in Oxford English
Dictionary Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2022).
Introduction 29

that marks Wesley’s doctrine of sin. Therefore, the first chapter begins by staging the question

for Wesley over the intelligibility of sin. In examining this criterion, the argument looks to

Wesley’s doctrine of illumination as a work of the Holy Spirit in the restoration of the spiritual

senses. This chapter emphasizes that Wesley’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit and soteriology entail

deeper changes than merely epistemic reorientation, differentiating this account from others

that are squarely within Wesley’s theological epistemology. Wesley describes actual

ontological change during everyday life. There are new beginnings and, as Collins points out,

‘In a real sense, believers become different people at different points in their spiritual

journey.’76 The ripple-effect of this insight disorients and reorients how Wesley understands

conscience and identity within the movements of the Spirit’s witness. In Wesley’s theology,

tensions emerge between the constant abiding of the Spirit and the invasion of the Spirit at the

event of justification. Wesley’s emphasis on the simultaneity of the Spirit’s prevenient grace

and human existence reconciles this tension. In the end, the result is an entrance into the world

where sin, death, and the devil are known within the wake of God’s salvation of the cosmos.

Only within the witness of the Spirit and the world transformed does it become plausible to

attest to the fundamental condition of humanity in original sin.

The discussion of Wesley’s view on original sin is complex. Therefore, it is discussed

in two chapters. First, chapter three explores Wesley’s reading of the Fall and the primal act of

sin grounded in his interpretation of the Scriptures. Chapter four explores how Wesley

discusses the effects of the Fall in history and experience, looking more explicitly at the

consequences of original sin. The interpretation approaches Wesley’s doctrine of sin as

enveloped by grace: to know oneself without God remains the distinct possibility of one abiding

within God. This knowledge unsettles, disorients, and induces dread—even holy fear. It is in

this condition of holy fear where the possibility of sin enters. This is, at the root, how Wesley

76
Collins, The Theology of John Wesley, 310.
Introduction 30

describes sin’s entrance into the world: ‘here sin began, namely, unbelief.’ This suggests that

the possibility of living without God in the world is descriptive of a fundamental aspect of

one’s existence. Sin then springs from this ‘evil root.’ So, it is necessary to press Wesley’s

view to see in what sense this possibility of faithlessness is evil: if it is woven into the fabric

of human being, and one’s awareness of it remains solely the effect of the Spirit’s witness, then

this creaturely anxiety is entangled with God’s sovereign holy love. To this end, the

interpretation of the Fall requires a sketch of life prior to it, in the perfection of Adam, with the

image of God still intact and the gift of faith in place. If Wesley would have situated his

description of unbelief after Adam’s Fall, or even coincident with it, or even called Eve’s

unbelief itself sin, then he would be following in line, at the minimum, with Luther and Calvin.

They exclude this intermediate and ambiguous condition of human life as a product of the Fall

against the older tradition of concupiscence. 77 For Calvin, concupiscence is identified with

original sin. There is no ambiguous intermediate state. But Wesley’s description of this reality

as evil yet not high-handed sin raises new possibilities that enable, as will be shown, a more

robust view of the ebb and flow of the holy life as a life in the wilderness.

Within this transformed view of the world, illumined by the spiritual senses, it is

imperative that one bear in mind that, for Wesley, the story of humanity, even in the Garden,

is not reducible to the merely human. In the Garden, the devil is already there, and in the world

the devil prowls like a roaring lion. Therefore, to gather a fuller picture of Wesley’s vision of

77
For Calvin (and Luther), the dispute over the doctrine of justification assumed contrary understandings of the
doctrine of original sin. In the wake of Augustine’s identification of concupiscientia with ‘sinful lust,’ the
church’s teaching departed with the ambiguous though natural ‘evil inclination’ (yēṣer hara, e.g., Gn. 6.5)
tradition, and identified concupiscientia with original sin. See F. R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of
the Fall and Original Sin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903). In medieval theology, while
subject to intense debate, concupiscientia becomes an existential manifestation of original sin, but it does not
necessarily determine human action. See Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 3-26. For the Reformers, humanity is overwhelmed by original
sin, see Calvin, Institutes, 1: II.1.8: ‘For our nature is not only destitute and empty of good, but so fertile and
fruitful of every evil that it cannot be idle. Those who have said that original sin is “concupiscence” have used
an appropriate word, if only it be added—something that most will be no means concede—that whatever is in
man, from the understanding to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, has been defiled and crammed with
this concupiscence. Or, to put it more briefly, the whole man is of himself nothing but concupiscence.’
Introduction 31

the postlapsarian condition of humanity, chapter four recovers Wesley’s demonology, which

is intrinsic to his description of the reality of the holy life. Interwoven with Wesley’s bleak

picture of humanity is the reality of creation’s struggle against the anti-God powers. Wesley’s

attentiveness to the demonic, the ghostly, and the supernatural has well been noted. 78

Nevertheless, sharing the story of ‘Old Jeffery,’ the Wesley family’s poorly ethereal

housemate, hardly captures the theological implications of what Outler noted as a ‘satanocratic’

view of the present world.79 Most accounts of Wesley’s demonology scarcely transcend the

domain of historical curiosity. They serve to offer insight into a strange persistence of belief in

the reality of the supernatural among some reasonable divines of the eighteenth century. But

this dissertation takes a different angle to gain new insight. This chapter provides an initial

theological reflection on Wesley’s demonology showing the active work of the devil and the

demonic within the world, which allows for an even thicker account of the movement from

individual to social (or structural) sin and evil.

Finally, this dissertation culminates in an exploration of the wilderness state itself. The

final chapter offers a reinterpretation of how Wesley conceives of the recalcitrance of sin within

the lives of believers. Arising from a discontent with extant interpretations of how and in what

sense Wesley views the Christian’s freedom from sin, the aim of this chapter brings the

universal and radical descriptions of original sin and the scheming treachery of the prince of

this world to bear on the experience of the holy life. This chapter differs from the any

interpretation of Wesley that eschews the presence of sin throughout the holy life; instead, the

presence of sin constantly encumbers the holy life. Moreover, the language of sin is self-

involving: it cannot be spoken of at remove. The consequence of this move invites a careful

78
Rack, ‘Doctors, Demons, and Early Methodist Healing,’ The Church and Healing (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982),
137-152; Davies, ‘Wesley’s Invisible World: Witchcraft and the Temperature of Preternatural Belief,’
Perfecting Perfection: Essays in Honour of Henry D. Rack (Eugene: Pickwick, 2015), 180-202.
See Outler, who suggests Wesley is inconsistent on this account, oscillating between ‘dualism and
79

monotheism,’ WJW, 1:306n32.

Introduction 32

reflection on how Wesley conceives of the holy life as one of struggle. This chapter sets the

troublesome debate over voluntary and involuntary sin from within Wesley’s telling appeal to

the holy life as one of continual repentance. Wesley’s scheme—the moral framework from sins

of commission to sins of surprise—points to the inevitable failure of human action in the face

of God’s glory. Thus follows a reappraisal of holiness: perfect holiness is manifest in the

harmony of the Christian’s witness with the witness of the Holy Spirit within an estranged

existence. Witness reframes perfect holiness with a promissory edge, meaning it cannot be

strictly identified with processes of moral reasoning or self-awareness, even within the holy

life. One receives and enacts perfect holiness; one narrates perfect holiness within the witness

of the Spirit manifest in a life full of the Spirit’s fruit. Recovering the transformative quality of

witness while retaining the possibility of perfect holiness agitates a concern over the anxiety

of the holy life. After all, the Christian constantly suffers this split-awareness of their bleak

condition and their being ingrafted within the life of Christ. This double-consciousness appears

especially in Wesley’s careful, though under-appreciated, descriptions of anxiety found in ‘The

Wilderness State’ and ‘Heaviness Through Manifold Temptations.’80 The close of this

dissertation draws these insights back into their appropriate context within the grammar of

holiness—a life of continual repentance and participation in the means of grace—so that entire

sanctification includes just self-knowledge, or, more aptly, knowledge of oneself as sinner.

In the end, Wesley proves an invaluable resource for thinking through the instability of

faith, the burden of sin, and the wonder of grace. The shape of the holy life reflects the contrary

ways of being in the world, wherein the subject must weather the confrontation of the story of

human folly in the hands of the devil and the sovereign wisdom of the Father’s holy love

accomplished once and for all in Christ and unveiled through the witness of the Holy Spirit.

The new birth witnesses to the inauguration of the new creation as an event of grace that occurs

80
Wesley, WJW, 2:205-235.
Introduction 33

within the fallen and broken world. The holy life brings one into contact with this reality.

Perfect holiness endures this confrontation in confession, at the table, and in love to one

another, through the resignation of one’s will. Emphasising the severity of sin’s effects even

on faith itself does not deny that Wesley is indeed the optimist of grace. On the contrary, such

a recovery is true to Wesley’s ethos. As Fletcher describes: ‘Thinking it therefore safest not to

“put asunder” the truths which “God has joined together,” [Wesley] makes all extremes meet

in one blessed Scriptural medium.’81 The extreme bleakness of Wesley’s view of the human

condition collides with the extreme optimism of the power of God in the holy life: in this life,

in the middle of things, this collision is ongoing save for those moments where the new creation

breaks through and sublimates the gravity of sin to the weight of glory.

81
Fletcher, First Check to Antinomianism, §I.5, Works, 1:18.
The Witness of the Spirit 34

Chapter 2:
The Witness of the Spirit: John Wesley and the Illumination of Sin

1. Introduction

This first substantive chapter locates Wesley’s doctrine of sin within the event of divine

illumination. It sketches the criteria for sin’s intelligibility from within the grammar of

Christian existence. From the situation of faith comes the only vantage point wherein sin

becomes intelligible. Sin is thus, for Wesley, categorically different from the ordinary sense of

immorality. To capture this difference gifted in faith, the language of divine illumination,

though not used by Wesley, aptly gathers the conceptual valence of what Wesley means when

speaking of faith within a classical register. 1 Therefore, the thesis’s argument begins by

examining how Wesley describes humanity’s discovery of their sin through the transformative

nexus of the advent of abiding faith: in Wesley’s idiom, the witness of the Spirit, the new birth,

and the restoration of the spiritual senses. This chapter unpacks the meaning and significance

of Wesley’s commitment to the notion that to have a sense of oneself-as-sinner is a condition

of being in the world restricted to those already being moved within the way of holiness. This

transformation is coincident with the advent of saving faith, since faith is, above all, a gracious

gift which transforms what it restores.

However, before proceeding there are some necessary qualifications. For Wesley, this

is divine illumination before the holy love of God: it would be a gross misunderstanding of

Wesley’s position to situate this discussion outside of the divine economy. Illumination is an

1
Treating Wesley’s understanding of faith and spiritual sensation under the umbrella of illumination finds
precedent in Mark M. Mealey, ‘John Wesley,’ The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity,
edited by Sarah Coakley and Paul Gavrilyuk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 241-256. The
doctrine of illumination enjoys a long history. Augustine’s variation, distilled in Soliloquies and De Trinitate,
remains the watershed moment in the history of the doctrine for Christian theology, and the primary reference
point for the debate, see NPNF(1), 7:537-560; 3:1-228 (respectively). For a careful exposition of the roots of
this intellectual tradition in Augustine through its development in the late medieval period, see Lydia
Schumacher, Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford:
Blackwells, 2011). For an history of the doctrine among the patristic era, see A. N. Williams, The Divine
Sense: The Intellect in Patristic Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). See also Sarah
Coakley and Paul Gavrilyuk, The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012).
The Witness of the Spirit 35

act of the Holy Spirit. Thus, while such ideas as faith, the witness of the Spirit, and spiritual

sensation are ordinarily treated within Wesley’s so-called theological epistemology, and in part

this chapter follows this strategy, it betrays Wesley’s impulse to bracket epistemological

concerns from their ontological source in the eternal life of God.2 Faith disorients and reorients

the fabric of one’s being towards the Triune God, in whom there is wholeness, well-being, and

freedom.3 Faith and the content therein is a gift of God, a divine event which retains its alterity

as divine. Moreover, if one is to inquire after Wesley about what sin and its effects are, then it

is necessary to begin from within the middle of the holy life. Starting elsewhere, for example,

from the human-as-such, would defy the adventitious quality of faith. To paraphrase Barth, the

plight is only known within the light of its solution. 4 Wesley’s account of divine illumination

is closely analogous to this disruptive event of faith in the new birth, which this argument

situates from within the economy of the Holy Spirit. Such a delimiting observation sufficiently

distances this account from a strictly epistemological retelling of the warp and woof of God’s

2
Mealey’s criticism of Wesley’s doctrine of illumination, that it is troublingly incoherent to pair spiritual senses
with both the work of the Holy Spirit and human beings, while misplaced, presents an important recognition of
the unique perspective Wesley’s view of spiritual sense yields, see Mealey, ‘Taste and See that the Lord is
Good: John Wesley in the Christian Tradition of Spiritual Sensation’ (PhD Thesis, University of St. Michael’s
College, 2006), 225. For a sympathetic account to the one argued in this chapter, consider Joseph W.
Cunningham, John Wesley’s Pneumatology: Perceptible Inspiration (London: Routledge, 2014). More
broadly, Wesley’s epistemology has been the subject of extensive inquiry in the past several decades. For an
overview of the contemporary debate, see Timothy Crutcher, ‘“The Crucible of Life”: The Role of Experience
in John Wesley’s Theological Method,’ PhD Dissertation (Leuven: Catholic University of Leuven, 2010), 5-
11; Cunningham, John Wesley’s Pneumatology, vii-xvi. Among the most important are Rex D. Matthews,
‘“Religion and Reason Joined”: A Study in the Theology of John Wesley’ (PhD Thesis, Harvard University,
1986). Matthews establishes the context of Wesley’s epistemology, highlighting Wesley’s indebtedness less to
Locke and more to the Oxford Aristotelian tradition. In broad strokes, the debate persists as to how and in what
sense Wesley’s perspective relates to those of his contemporaries—whether he be indebted to John Locke,
Peter Browne, or John Norris or whether he be comparable to Jonathan Edwards or David Hume. Rack, ‘A
Man of Reason and Religion?’ 6-8, 16-17; Dreyer, ‘Faith and Experience in the Thought of John Wesley,’ 18-
27; Don Marselle Moore, ‘Immediate Perceptual Knowledge of God: A Study in the Epistemology of John
Wesley,’ PhD Dissertation (Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1993); Mitsuo Shimizu, ‘Epistemology in the
Thought of John Wesley,’ PhD Dissertation (Madison: Drew University, 1980); Laurence W. Wood,
‘Wesley’s Epistemology,’ WTJ, 10 (1975), 48-59; cf. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 128-129; Collins, The
Theology of John Wesley, 142-143.
3
On ontological wholeness and theologically ordered well-being, see Hardy, God and God’s Ways with the
World, 25-30.
4
Barth, CD, IV/1, 144; cf. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion
(London: SCM Press, 1977), 442-7.
The Witness of the Spirit 36

illumination of the fallen soul in Wesley’s theology. The aim of this chapter is to interrogate

what Wesley holds to be the existential prerequisites necessary for describing of the brute fact

of sin. What emerges is Wesley’s commitment that within the holy life, knowledge of sin, like

all redeemed knowledge and activity, is held together through Christ by the power of the Holy

Spirit.

The advantage of current literature around the history of the doctrine of illumination is

the increasing awareness of the continuity of the spiritual sense tradition through the early

modern period, through figures such as the Cambridge Platonist John Smith and the Puritan

John Owen, well into the eighteenth century. 5 Wesley stands out within this tradition in his

insistence upon the evangelical experience of justification as the advent of illumination.6 In

5
John Smith, ‘On the True Way or Method of Attaining Divine Knowledge,’ Select Discourses, edited by
Henry Griffin Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1859), 1-24; John Owen, ‘Discourse on the
Holy Spirit: His Name, Nature, Personality, Dispensation, Operations, and Effects—His Work in the Old and
New Creation Explained, and the Doctrines Vindicated. The Nature and Necessity of Gospel Holiness: The
Difference between Grace and Morality, or a Spiritual Life Unto God in Evangelical Obedience, and a Course
of Moral Virtues, Stated and Declared,’ The Works of John Owen, D.D, edited by William H. Goold, vol. 3,
(Philadelphia: The Leighton Publications, 1862); Owen ‘Causes, Ways, and Means, of Understanding the
Mind of God, as Revealed in His Word, with Assurance Therein. And a Declaration of the Perspicuity of the
Scriptures, with the External Means of the Interpretation of Them,’ Owen’s Works, vol. 4; John Norris,
Religion & Reason, or, the Grounds and Measures of Devotion: Consider’d from the Nature of God, and the
Nature of Man, in several contemplations with Exercises of Devotion apply’d to every contemplation, 7th ed.
(London: Edmund Parker, 1724); Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, Religious
Affections (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). On Wesley’s context and the sources of his account of
illumination, see Mealey, ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Good,’ 20-49.
6
It is on subject of theological epistemology that the case is strongest for Wesley’s indebtedness to the
Cambridge Platonists. For example, Alexander Knox in his ‘Remarks on the Life and Character of John
Wesley’ reprinted in Southey’s Life of Wesley (1838), 445, comments that Wesley ‘formed his views in the
school of the Greek fathers, and in that of their closest modern followers, the Platonic divines of the Church of
England.’ On Knox and Wesley, see David McCready, The Life and Theology of Alexander Knox:
Anglicanism in the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 14-16, 53-74. Recent studies
from Long, John Wesley’s Moral Theology, 52-62, and Kevin Lowery, Salvaging Wesley's Agenda: A New
Paradigm for Wesleyan Virtue Ethics (Eugene: Pickwick, 2008), 65-200, attempt to corroborate a version of
this thesis. Long emphasises Wesley’s continuity with a distinctly Platonic reception of Aquinas; Lowery
emphasises Wesley’s status as Kant’s forerunner. Even though it is well known that Wesley valued the
Cambridge Platonists, editing their works in his Christian Library, and prizing their second-generation
representatives in John Norris of Bemerton and Henry Scougal, the question of influence is difficult to
establish. The best attempts to negotiate the influence of the Cambridge Platonists on Wesley are John C.
English’s helpful studies tracing the use of Norris and the Cambridge Platonists in Wesley’s writings, but
noting their presence does little to make Wesley the Cambridge Platonists eighteenth-century representative.
See English, ‘The Cambridge Platonists in Wesley’s ‘Christian Library’,’ Proceedings of the Wesley Historical
Society, 36:2 (1968), 161-86. English, ‘John Wesley and the Anglican Moderates of the Seventeenth Century,’
Anglican Theological Review, 51:3 (1969), 203-20; English, ‘John Wesley’s Indebtedness to John Norris,’
Church History, 60:1 (1991), 55-69.
The Witness of the Spirit 37

Wesley’s hands, divine illumination remains steadfastly experimental, committed to the

particularity of the Christ-event and each new birth. From within the horizon of this evangelical

experience where Wesley’s heart religion lives, spiritual sensation delimits a new way of

interpreting the world within grace of the Holy Spirit. By taking this approach, it is necessary

to consider Wesley’s account of the pneumatological economy: creative, preserving,

prevenient, justifying, regenerating, and sanctifying grace. This approach also presents an

opening for the distinctiveness of Wesley’s account of the doctrine of sin, conditional upon the

opposition of belief and unbelief. The spiritual senses unveil how illuminated reason exposes

one’s finitude, situatedness, limitation, and propensity to error, which no one, on their own

merits, can tolerate the knowledge of without assurance.

In outline, this chapter begins with Wesley’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s work

(Wesley’s economic pneumatology) as the living and active foundation for the illumination of

the redeemed intellect (§2.2). From this point, the thesis turns to Wesley’s explanation of the

acquisition of these new faculties, which seems to contravene ordinary experience and verges

on enthusiasm. The argument presses his explanation in two directions: (a) from the abiding

and enabling presence of the Holy Spirit in prevenient grace and (b) from the advent of saving

faith in the new birth. Negotiating this interaction between the abiding and adventitious senses

of the Spirit’s action grounds the pneumatological basis for Wesley’s view and positions one

to understand the meaning of ‘experience’ for Wesley’s practical divinity (§2.3). Then it

becomes possible to re-interpret both how Wesley conceives of experience within the grace of

the Spirit through the so-called natural conscience, recognising and discerning what is good or

ill, as ‘properly speaking’ an event of the Spirit’s grace; so too is one’s identity given through

the Spirit’s grace (§2.4). As an event of the Spirit’s grace, illuminated conscience attests to

Christ who justifies the ungodly, and one’s habitual ungodliness. These aspects of Wesley’s

wide and deep account of the witness of the Spirit are then brought to bear on the meaning of
The Witness of the Spirit 38

faith as spiritual sensation, that is, faith insofar as it denotes a power or, as it may be more

clearly distilled, as a way of being in the world (§2.5). Therefore, the chapter ends by reflecting

on the ‘eyes of faith’ and the limitations of creaturely reason that Wesley thinks drive one back

to the Word known in the Scriptures through the analogy of faith (§2.6). All this leads to the

claim that with a robust view of the witness of the Spirit as a mode of divine illumination in

mind, Wesley may be perhaps better thought of not as a reasonable enthusiast, but as a

chastened enthusiast. Yet to his benefit, Wesley is an enthusiast all the same. To see the world

as Wesley does, saturated by the power of the Spirit’s presence in the world and in the heart of

the person, opens the possibility of thinking about the brute fact of sin, to which the argument

will turn in the following chapter.

2. The Priority of Grace: Wesley’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s Work

The doctrine of sin is what may be termed a derivative doctrine, meaning it requires

antecedent doctrinal commitments if it is to have any intelligibility. To speak about sin, one

assumes the mode and manner in which sin is intelligible, whether through the activities of

natural reason, through revelation, or some mixture of these two. Wesley’s doctrine of sin is

no exception to this rule. The ground of reality, and therefore the ground of the intelligibility

of sin, is in the work of the Holy Spirit who binds reality together. The task of this section is to

disclose these central assumptions about the Holy Spirit’s work. As these assumptions are

woven into the foundation of his doctrine of sin, this section’s argument is essential. The key

assumption for Wesley is the fundamental priority of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s work.

Wesley discusses this doctrine whenever he speaks about grace—one may consider the Holy

Spirit’s work and grace as functional synonyms—this grace shines a light on the stain of sin.7

7
There is some ambiguity regarding how to conceptualise the working concepts in Wesley’s theology on this
point. Questions may arise over the distinctions made between Wesley’s doctrine of grace and his doctrine of
the Holy Spirit. In this analysis, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, of which economic pneumatology is a part,
subsumes the doctrine of grace. This formal distinction is commonplace—God’s work is always as grace (i.e.,
non-necessary)—but there is a more pressing hermeneutic basis for treating Wesley this way. As has gained
deserved attention, Wesley’s theology is inflected with a deep commitment to the confession of the Triune
The Witness of the Spirit 39

Wesley’s economic pneumatology is both robust and distributed. For these reasons it

can be difficult to chart the general shape of his view. This analysis groups the various

distinctions Wesley uses in the discussion of the Holy Spirit’s work according to the two-fold

ends of this work. The Holy Spirit’s illuminating work is described in two ways: as (a) the One

who witnesses to Christ and (b) the One who gathers creatures into Christ. Approaching

Wesley’s view this way gives heuristic structure to his operant theology. This section is

therefore divided according to this two-fold distinction. As this section sketches the shape of

Wesley’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s work, it explores the relation of the Holy Spirit’s

missions to creaturely existence along the way. Accordingly, there are a set of emphases that

are addressed: on the new birth, the relation of divine and human agency, and the relation of

the Spirit’s work to thought.

a. The Witness of the Spirit as the Foundation of Existence in Christ.

The prevalence of appeal and assumption of the Holy Spirit’s active work in the world

demonstrates the supreme importance of this doctrine within Wesley’s operant theology. In

incorporating the doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s work into this exposition of Wesley’s doctrine

of sin, this section highlights three features of Wesley’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit that bear on

the ensuing analysis: first, the absolute priority of the Holy Spirit to all creaturely agency;

second, the nature of the Holy Spirit’s work as witness that is necessarily transformative; and,

third, the ordering to the Holy Spirit’s work (grace) to Christ.8

God. When Wesley thinks about the experience of evangelical conversion, of illumination, of conviction, of
repentance, or of any other phenomenon within the holy life, it is reductive to describe this as an awareness of
grace. On the contrary, all these experiences are experiences of the divine persons, and the quality of these
experiences is grace. For Wesley’s trinitarian sensibility, see Elmer M. Colyer, The Trinitarian Dimension of
Wesley’s Theology (Nashville: Wesley’s Foundry Books, 2019).
8
The following is more or less the full list of the pneumatological sermons: ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of
Adoption,’ WJW, 1:249-266; ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit,’ WJW, 1:300-313; ‘The Witness of the Spirit,
I,’ WJW, 1:269-284; ‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ WJW, 1:285-298. The occasion of their composition varies
between the controversy over the possibility of the direct witness of the Holy Spirit and the question of
assurance. The sermons ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’ and ‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ in particular arise out
of controversies over assurance in anti-Methodist publications, see Gerald Cragg, Reason and Authority in the
Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 155-180.
The Witness of the Spirit 40

First, the new birth captures the ontological priority of grace for Wesley, which allows

for a description of the nature of the Holy Spirit’s action as witness. Derivatively, the new birth

enables this analysis to clarify the distinctions Wesley makes between grace with an emphasis

on the unity of the Holy Spirit’s work. 9 Among Wesley’s occasional lists of core doctrines of

the Christian faith, the new birth holds a pride of place.10 In the new birth, the person

experiences the grace of God in force as the Holy Spirit’s speech about Christ’s work. 11 In a

comment on 1 John 5.11, Wesley describes the Spirit’s witness as a summary of the evangelical

faith: it is ‘the testimony, the sum of what God testifies in all the inspired writings.’12 The new

birth demarcates a climactic stage in the experience of the Holy Spirit’s grace where prevenient

grace is intensified into justifying and sanctifying grace.13 Thus, Wesley sees the distinctions

in grace as differences of degree: at each interval, it is the Spirit’s witness that makes the crucial

difference. The Spirit is always witnessing to Christ, but the quality of that witness differs in

degree according to the orientation of the self.14 Wesley’s emphasis remains on the antecedent

activity of the Spirit, so every degree in the experience of grace is a ‘gift.’15 In other words, the

overriding emphasis is on the prevenient quality of all grace (regenerative, justifying,

9
By distinctions in grace is meant the ordinary distribution of sustaining, preventing, regenerating, justifying,
sanctifying, and perfecting grace and the relation of these.
10
For example, see Wesley, ‘The New Birth,’ §I.1, WJW, [Link] ‘If any doctrines within the whole compass of
Christianity may be properly termed fundamental they are doubtless these two—the doctrine of justification,
and that of the new birth: the former relating to that great work which God does for us, in forgiving our sins;
the latter to the great work which God does in us, in renewing our fallen nature.’
11
‘The New Birth,’ §II.4, WJW, 2:192-193.
12
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:286.
13
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §IV.1, WJW, 1:263.
14
Wesley explains that for those in the ‘natural state,’ they do not even fear God because they are asleep (or still
in spiritual death). Those in this state are not properly ‘under the law.’ There is an awakening from sleep to a
groggy, anxious fear, which itself is a gift of God. The fact that Wesley is so explicit at talking about every
stage in this process as divine gift speaks to the constancy of the Spirit’s witness. See ‘The Spirit of Bondage
and of Adoption,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:251.
15
This distinction is a common refrain in Wesley’s correspondence with ‘John Smith,’ see Letters, 2:45, 46, 61,
71.
The Witness of the Spirit 41

sanctifying, and perfecting).16 Wesley’s description of the new birth is the best example of this

reality that the Holy Spirit is the one who witnesses eternally to Christ. Understanding this

point allows one to read backwards on the way grace operates prior to and following from

evangelical conversion. It is important to note how strongly identified the Spirit’s speech is to

the real reorientation of persons towards Christ. The proximity of these two concepts is

important for understanding the dynamics of how Wesley envisions the Holy Spirit’s work.

Thus, the language of the ‘new birth,’ one of Wesley’s favoured ways of speaking about the

advent of the Spirit’s work in the soul in conversion, is charged with questions over agency

and existence.

This orientation to the Spirit’s antecedent work as witness enables three observations

regarding Wesley’s view of divine agency. First, Wesley emphasises the unity of God’s works:

the work of God in the ecstasy of evangelical conversion is the same God who breathes life

into creation, and God orders all God’s works to God’s glory in Christ.17 Second, God’s works

are universal by virtue of the sovereign providence of God: God’s sustaining and governing

work is everywhere active and spoken of in terms of God’s presence.18 Third, all God’s works

16
‘For allowing that all the souls of men are dead in sin by nature, this excuses none, seeing there is no man that
is in a state of mere nature; there is no man, unless he has quenched the Spirit, that is wholly void of the grace
of God. No man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly called ‘natural conscience.’ But this is not
natural; it is more properly termed ‘preventing grace.’ See ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.4,
WJW, 3:207; cf. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 83-90; Cunningham, John Wesley’s Pneumatology, 27-55.
17
Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §§21-2, WJW, 4:69-70: ‘We have the fullest evidence that the
eternal, omnipresent, almighty, all-wise, Spirit, as he created all things, so he continually superintends
whatever he has created. … We know that as all nature, so all religion and all happiness depend on him. … As
there is but one God, so there is but one happiness, and one religion. And both of these centre in God.’ On the
christocentricism of Wesley’s account, compare this statement of the unity of God’s acts towards nature,
religion, and happiness with the introduction to ‘The Mystery of Iniquity,’ §3, WJW, [Link] ‘[God the Father]
immediately appointed his Son, his well-beloved Son, “who is the brightness of his glory, the express image of
his person”, to be the Saviour of men, “the propitiation for the sins of the whole world”; the great Physician,
who by his almighty Spirit should heal the sickness of their souls, and restore them not only to the favour but
to the “image of God wherein they were created”. This great “mystery of godliness” began to work from the
very time of the original promise. Accordingly the Lamb, being (in the purpose of God) “slain from the
beginning of the world”, from the same period his sanctifying Spirit began to renew the souls of man.’
18
The importance of an all-embracing doctrine of providence is often overlooked in analyses of John Wesley’s
theology, but it was a foundational view to which he consistently appealed. See ‘On Divine Providence,’§§4,
7, WJW, 2:536-537: ‘All over that wonderful book [the Scriptures], as “life and immortality” (immortal life) is
gradually “brought to light”, so is “Immanuel, God with us”, and his kingdom ruling all. … There is scarce any
The Witness of the Spirit 42

are necessarily transformative: all that God does brings life to creation. This last point means

to highlight Wesley’s insistence that God’s antecedent activity is the condition of all creaturely

existence.19 These three other features highlight the general way Wesley thinks about divine

action while looking specifically at the Holy Spirit’s work in witness. Gathering these

observations together with the preceding recognition of the Holy Spirit’s work as witness

allows this analysis to reflect on how divine action relates to creatures.

Turning to creaturely existence, Wesley says that as God’s work, the new birth marks

God’s welcoming of the person into true life: ‘It is that great change which God works in the

soul when he brings it into life; when he raises it from the death of sin to the life of

righteousness.’20 The new birth is the choice analogy in discussing the difference between

believer and unbeliever. It displays the complete reorientation of the self that one undergoes in

being freed from sin. Interwoven within the language of the new birth is the challenge of the

apparent paradox of the new birth, relayed in Nicodemus’s visit with Jesus under the cover of

night (Jn. 3.1-21).21 The force of the challenge comes from the priority asserted to the new birth

for those already born and its entailment that the order of the analogy must emphasise that the

new birth is the deeper reality, to which biological birth witnesses. 22 Wesley’s interpretation

doctrine in the whole compass of revelation which is of deeper importance than [the doctrine of providence].’
Wesley was not shy about attributing speaking about creations on-going absolute dependence on God’s work.
Moreover, one of Wesley’s preferred ways of reflecting on God’s providential work is refracted through God’s
omnipresence. He even suggests that such ideas as omnipotence or sovereignty are unthinkable without first
admitting to the omnipresence of God. See ‘On the Omnipresence of God,’ §§II.1, 6, WJW, 42-3, 44: ’God
acts everywhere, and therefore is everywhere; for it is an utter impossibility that any being, created or
uncreated, should work where it is not. God acts in heaven, in earth, and under the weather, through the whole
compass of his creation; by sustaining all things, without which everything would in an instant sink into its
primitive nothing; by governing all, every moment superintending everything that he has made; strongly and
sweetly influencing all, and yet without destroying the liberty of his rational creatures. … We cannot believe
the omnipotence of God unless we believe his omnipresence.’
19
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §I.1, WJW, 3:202.
20
‘The New Birth,’ §1, WJW, 2:187.
21
ENNT, Jn. 3.1-21.
22
The priority of the spiritual to the natural is implied in Wesley’s speaking of redeemed existence as true life
knowing the ‘deep things of God,’ see Appeals, §§34-35, WJW, 11:57; ENNT, Jn. 1.4: ‘[The Word] was the
foundation of life to every living thing, as well as of being to all that is. … He who is essential life, and the
The Witness of the Spirit 43

asserts that in the new birth one’s moves closer towards reality, so that one looks outward from

this new centre in Christ and speaks of the quasi-life outside of faith.23 For him, the Holy Spirit

teaches a person of their true humanity by confronting them with their situation in sin.24

Wesley is specific that this reorientation to God’s antecedent activity applies to human

action and thought in their entirety. For example, reflecting on the experience of conscience he

writes that ‘[conscience] is not natural; it is more properly termed “preventing grace”.’25 The

Holy Spirit’s embrace contains the redeemed intellect, including the consciousness of sin. This

sense of creation’s dependence on the Spirit is fundamental. When Wesley confesses in ‘A

Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Gloucester’ that ‘I never did separate reason

from grace,’ he may well have added that grace is the very condition and fountain of reason. 26

Wesley can say on these lines that ‘no man that is in a state of mere nature; there is no man,

unless he has quenched the Spirit, that is wholly void of the grace of God.’27 The Spirit’s

witness transforms, even in a minimal sense as the ‘principal of life’ by holding back the

creature from death.28 Consider Wesley’s comment: ‘That the testimony of the Spirit of God

must, in the very nature of things, be antecedent to the testimony of our spirit, may appear from

this single consideration: We must be holy in heart and life before we can be conscious that we

are so.’29 The beginning of this renewal coincides with the all life, though its manifestation

varies by degrees. Therefore, human reasoning—understanding, judgment, and discourse (to

Giver of life to all that liveth, was also the light of men, the fountain of wisdom, holiness, and happiness to
man in his original state.’
23
On life as spiritual death, see below §4.2.
24
Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith,’ §12, WJW, 4:34-35.
25
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §4, WJW, 4:207. On illuminated conscience, see below, §2.4.
26
WJW, 11:477.
27
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §4, WJW, 4:207.
28
‘On the Omnipresence of God,’ §II.1, WJW, 4:43.
29
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §III.5, WJW, 1:289.
The Witness of the Spirit 44

use Wesley’s Aristotelian categories) 30—finds intelligibility from within the abundance of the

divine life already working in us. On this account, it may be ventured that all creatures, by

virtue of the gift of life and the grace of the Spirit, are on the way to salvation, even in nascent

ways.31 All of these ordinary faculties depend upon the work of the Holy Spirit.32

Third, the Holy Spirit’s transformative presence (grace) orders itself to the form of

Christ as the image of God.33 That is, the Spirit’s witness gathers creatures into Christ’s life.

This means the Holy Spirit’s witness constantly speaks about the event in history of Christ’s

life, death, and resurrection. 34 However nascent or remote the Spirit’s work is to the living faith

of ‘true Christianity,’ even if one is barely straining from the natural state, the Spirit’s witness

is always teleologically ordered to Christ. Wesley says of the redeemed: ‘They are joined unto

the Lord in one Spirit. They are ingrafted into him as branches into the vine.’35 The Spirit’s

grace reorients one towards their true being in Christ. The Spirit’s union establishes how

believers participate in Christ: more specifically, for Wesley the witness of the Spirit and the

event of new birth is entangled with Christ’s exaltation.36 For Wesley the new birth describes

the change by which one is ‘renewed in the spirit of your minds’ and thus shares in the potency

of Christ’s resurrection and exaltation in ‘the very ground of your heart.’37 Through the Spirit’s

30
‘What is Man,’ §5, WJW, 4:21.
31
‘The General Spread of the Gospel,’ §24, WJW, 2:497. Wesley does not leave room for universalism,
however, on account of his commitment to human liberty, see ‘Of Hell,’ §24, WJW, 3:31-44. A way off from
universalism is the question of whether prevenient grace is regenerative. The union of the Spirit’s illumination
and restoration of one’s life imply that this is indeed the case. This is not without debate, see Stanley J. Rodes,
‘Was John Wesley Arguing for Prevenient Grace as Regenerative?’ WTJ, 48, no. 1 (2013), 73-85.
32
This section reflects Cunningham’s important insight in passing that Wesley works with an ‘uncritical theory
of compatibilism.’ It is from this idea that this section springs. See Cunningham, John Wesley’s
Pneumatology: Perceptible Inspiration (London: Routledge, 2014), 33.
33
For more on Christ as the image of God, see below, §3.3.a.
34
On the evidence of one’s union with Christ in the formation of virtues, see ‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §I,
WJW, 1:235-237; cf. van Buskirk, ‘Iconic Dignity,’ 239-311; Cunningham, ‘John Wesley’s Moral
Pneumatology: The Fruits of the Spirit as Theological Virtues,’ Studies in Christian Ethics, 24, no. 3 (2011),
275-293.
35
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:235.
36
Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 52-57.
37
Wesley, ENNT, Eph. 4.23.
The Witness of the Spirit 45

manifest presence believers participate in Christ. Wesley writes that ‘they dwell in Christ, and

Christ in them … joined unto the Lord in one Spirit,’ and through this they share in Christ’s

history, being restored into Christ, the image of God.38 In this transformative union there is

also a union of one’s biography with the history of Christ, so that the Holy Spirit ‘bearing

witness with our own spirit’ (Rom. 8.16), recasts one’s existence in the light of God’s

redemption of the world in Christ. Indeed, Wesley says that ‘in the order of time,’ Christ’s

justification of the believer and the believer’s new birth converge so that ‘as Satan began his

first work … with unbelief, so the Son of God begins his work … by enabling us to believe in

him.’39 The reality of Christ’s history is the only way the holy-love of God is unveiled, and

through this concreteness the exalted Christ ‘opens and enlightens the eyes of our

understanding.’40 The event of Christ’s death and resurrection is nothing less than the

restoration of all things by the destruction of all the works of the devil. It is this history which

the Spirit witnesses and in which the Spirit invites one to partake. Christ’s life opens the

possibility of all life.

Thus, this exposition of Wesley’s pneumatology shows, first, how Wesley’s approach

to the new birth establishes the priority of the divine reality through the antecedent work of the

Holy Spirit; second, how the nature of the Holy Spirit’s work is necessarily transformative,

especially regarding creaturely reason; and third, that the transformative work of the Holy

Spirit is ordered to Christ. The section speaks of the Holy Spirit’s work in its most broad sense.

In the analysis to follow, the focus will narrow, driving ultimately towards the meaning of all

this for the illumination of the creaturely intellect.

b. Becoming Holy through God’s Holiness: The Witness of the Spirit and its relation to
Christ as the Law.

38
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:235.
39
‘End of Christ’s Coming,’ §III.1, WJW, 2:480-481.
40
‘End of Christ’s Coming,’ §III.1, WJW, 2:480-481.
The Witness of the Spirit 46

In the preceding subsection Wesley’s account of the Spirit’s work was spoken of as

both witnessing to Christ and gathering humanity into Christ. Within this frame, the section

also sketched Wesley’s general sense of the nature of divine action. This section develops these

ideas. The argument shows that for Wesley in the inward witness of the Spirit not only makes

the creature capable of God, but also confers responsibility by virtue of the Spirit’s potency

and one’s exposure to the Law. Framing the doctrine of the Spirit’s work this way allows this

analysis to connect how Wesley, on the one hand, orders the Spirit’s witness to the particularity

of Christ and, on the other hand, demonstrates that intrinsic to the experience of the Spirit’s

witness is a confrontation with the universal moral law embodied in the life of Christ.41 In

essence, the Spirit’s witness to Christ’s history unveils the nature of God as law and lawgiver.

This move sets the stage from within which Wesley speaks about true morality and, in turn,

discerns the nature of sin.

The new birth is a paradigmatic encounter with God. This encounter is where the

Spirit’s witness and one’s union with Christ is clearest. Consequently, this encounter is also

where the character of God who speaks through the Scriptures is shown. Thus, the uniqueness

of one’s evangelical conversion enables Wesley to use the new birth as a way of discussing

how and in what sense human beings are moral creatures. The basis of the moral life is, for

him, holiness. In the new birth, the regenerate ‘at last sees the loving, the merciful God’ who

is also ‘“a consuming fire;” that he is a just God and a terrible.’42 The allusion to Hebrews

12.29 directs one’s attention to God’s holiness, about which Wesley writes elsewhere:

‘Holiness is another of the attributes of the almighty, all-wise God. He is infinitely distant from

every touch of evil. He “is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. He is a God of unblemished

Collins, ‘John Wesley’s Platonic Conception of the Moral Law,’ WTJ, 21:1 (1986), 116-128; Long, John
41

Wesley’s Moral Theology, 165-170.

42
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:255.
The Witness of the Spirit 47

justice and truth: but above all is his mercy.’ 43 This feeling is the only means by which one can

‘now clearly [perceive] that the great and holy God is “of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.”’44

God’s holiness removes God from all iniquity. In God’s loving mercy, God chooses to be

present with the whole of God’s creation that groans under this iniquity. For Wesley, the feeling

of God’s holiness is inseparable from God’s mercy. Wesley says that existence ‘under the law’

describes the unbearable sense of God’s holiness faced with one’s iniquity whereas those

‘under grace’ feel this alongside an unshakeable sense of the loving grace of God.45 Only a

God who perfectly loves creation would choose to dwell with unholy creatures, and so in mercy

bring creation healing. This holy God is the one who is almighty, everywhere present in power,

and who calls all creatures back into God’s fold. It is from God’s holiness unveiled by the Spirit

of Christ that the category of the moral life finds any meaning.

Holiness is a form of experience, or a disposition in which the life of God as the heart

of reality appears. Thus, Wesley writes: ‘True religion is right tempers towards God and

man.’46 This feeling must be distinguished from a mere feeling or experience.47 The feeling of

holiness results from a real encounter with God. Thus, it is an experience of God, the event

inseparable from its content. In this encounter one realises that all reality participates in God

and is necessarily transformed by God.48 Wesley sees this feeling as expressive of the nature

of redeemed reality: ‘[True religion] begins when we begin to know God, by the teaching of

his own Spirit. As soon as the Father of spirits reveals his Son in our hearts, and the Son reveals

his Father, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts.’49 It is this real re-orientation of one’s

43
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §7, WJW, 4:62-63.
44
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §II.3, WJW, 1:255.
45
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §III.1, WJW, 1:260.
46
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §16, WJW, 4:66.
47
See the next section, §2.3.
48
See the preceding subsection, §2.2.a.
49
Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §17, WJW, 4:67.
The Witness of the Spirit 48

being that makes the Christian life materially distinct from others.50 In this way the feeling of

holiness and God’s life as holy are tied together through the Spirit of Christ. On this basis

Wesley states: ‘The knowledge of the Three-One God is interwoven with all true Christian

faith, with all vital religion.’ 51 To see and feel the Christian life as a life in God is the principle

of all Christian thought and action for Wesley.

This feeling of holiness is not without moral content; rather, the feeling is the ‘spring

of action.’52 The sense of holiness is the only way to fulfil the law. 53 Importantly, the experience

of God’s holiness limits Wesley from identifying some generative moral principles in human

nature. On the contrary, to find the shape of the moral life one must listen to the Spirit’s witness

and direct one’s attention to Christ. Moreover, Christ’s history now present through the Spirit

teaches the believer that the Son is ‘coeval’ with the Law.54 More precisely, the Law is

christocentric: all that the Law is and ever could be is unfolded in the Son. 55 In ‘The Original,

Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law’ (1750), Wesley makes this point: ‘And [the Law] he

showed not only to our first parents, but likewise to all their posterity, by “that true light which

enlightens every man that cometh into the world,”’ that is, the Son of God. But

‘notwithstanding this light, all flesh had in process of time “corrupted their way before him,”’

and preceding thence God elected a particular people, disclosing to them ‘a more perfect

knowledge of his law,’ written ‘on two tables of stone.’56 Wesley goes on:

It is he whom in his essence no man hath seen or can see, made visible to men and
angels. It is the face of God unveiled; God manifested to his creatures as they are able
to bear it; manifested to give and not to destroy life; that they may see God and live. It

50
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §20, WJW, 4:69.
51
‘On the Trinity,’ §17, WJW, 2:385.
52
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §23, WJW, 4:23.
53
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §20, WJW, [Link] ‘Men hereby wilfully and designedly put asunder what God
has joined, the duties of the first and second table.’
54
‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law,’ §I.4, WJW, 2:7.
55
‘The Original, Nature, Properties and Use of the Law,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:9.
56
‘The Original, Nature, Properties and Use of the Law,’ §I.5, WJW, 2:7.
The Witness of the Spirit 49

is the heart of God disclosed to man. Yea, in some sense we may apply to this law what
the Apostle says of his Son—it is ‘the streaming forth’ or outbeaming ‘of his glory, the
express image of his person.’57
The Law is ‘the face of God unveiled’ in the Christ-event, the Word become Flesh. This moral

reality is for Wesley the demonstration of God’s perfection: ‘all virtues in one, in such a shape

as to be beheld with open face by all those whose eyes God hath enlightened.’58 In this way,

Christ mediates God’s identity and the witness of the Spirit is not merely an attestation to this

identity but communes with that identity as the self-same God. The substance of that witness

in the new birth remains irreducibly transformative by virtue of the witness of the Spirit being

nothing less than the Spirit of Christ. It is because the Spirit’s witness reinscribes the soul with

the testimony of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection that the believer acts in holiness.

Therefore, it is only in the wake of the new birth as an event of the Holy Spirit that one

knows that ‘God has now dissipated the clouds which so long covered the earth.’59 The Holy

Spirit is the One who works to ‘assist our faith.’60 There is a need for the believer to recognise

that the inner word is not their own voice. The inner word is the Spirit of Christ. Wesley writes:

‘The testimony now under consideration is given by the Spirit of God to and with our spirit:

He is the Person testifying.’61 This witness gathers all creatures before Christ, who is the

express image of the Father as the holy and eternal law. In this way, Christ’s life is the principle

of all action, from whom the feeling of holiness flows.62 Wesley speaks of this as one’s

breathing with God:

And now he may be properly said to live: God having quickened him by his Spirit, he
is alive to God through Jesus Christ. He lives a life which the world knoweth not of, a
‘life which is hid with Christ in God.’ God is continually breathing, as it were, upon
the soul; and his soul is breathing unto God. Grace is descending into his heart; and

57
‘The Original, Nature, Properties and Use of the Law,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:9.
58
‘The Original, Nature, Properties and Use of the Law,’ §II.4, WJW, 2:9.
59
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:473.
60
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:473.
61
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:286.
62
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §23, WJW, 4:70-71.
The Witness of the Spirit 50

prayer and praise ascending to heaven: And by this intercourse between God and man,
this fellowship with the Father and the Son, as by a kind of spiritual respiration, the life
of God in the soul is sustained; and the child of God grows up, till he comes to the ‘full
measure of the stature of Christ.’63
The abiding presence of the Spirit’s sanctifying grace is the means of holiness, which ‘can have

no existence till we are renewed in the image of our mind.’64 Part of the reason why Wesley’s

doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s work is so controversial is because he claimed this feeling is a

direct or inward experience. This experience was for Wesley ‘absolutely necessary in order to

holiness.’65 In the inward witness, the Spirit is immediately and directly communicating to the

person. Such conversation, recalling the older sense of the word, entails an identification with

and the transformation of the one spoken to. 66 There are thus indirect effects of this speech,

changes in one’s person that point to the Holy Spirit’s presence. These effects are the

manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit. The inward witness tranforms the ‘holy tempers,’ the

redemption of the passions and drives. This renewal, for Wesley, by which one is gathered into

Christ, is particular to each individual while universally available to all creation.

In Wesley’s view, the witness of the Spirit plants the believer within the communion of

the Triune God and thus gives roots to one’s being: our communion with God through the

witness of the Spirit is the principle of the existential and the ethical dimensions of life. Wesley

summarises his whole view:

Both by Scripture and by experience we know that an unholy, and therefore an unhappy
man, seeking rest but finding none, is sooner or later convinced that sin is the ground
of his mystery, and cries out of the deep to him that is able to save, ‘God be merciful
to me a sinner.’ It is not long before he finds ‘redemption in the blood of Jesus, even
the forgiveness of sins’. Then ‘the Father reveals his Son’ in his heart, and he ‘calls
Jesus Lord by the Holy Ghost’. And then the love of God is ‘shed abroad in his heart,
but the Holy Spirit which is given unto him’. From this principle springs real
disinterested benevolence to all mankind, making him humble, meek, gentle to all men,
easy to be entreated, to be convinced of what is right, and persuaded what is good,

63
‘The New Birth,’ §II.4, WJW, 2:192.
64
‘The New Birth,’ §III.1, WJW, 2:194.
65
‘The New Birth,’ §III.1, WJW, 2:195.
66
See above, §1.2, n75.
The Witness of the Spirit 51

inviolably patient, with a thankful acquiescence in every step of his adorable

providence. This is religion, even the whole mind which was also in Christ Jesus.67
This process is how the Holy Spirit refashions human beings into redeemed moral agents. Only

through this activity is it possible to discern the right and the good, obedience and disobedience,

and thus to understand holiness and sin. The Holy Spirit makes fallen humanity into moral

agents, conferring responsibility on them. Of course, this becoming-an-agent does not happen

first at the new birth. Human beings are always accompanied by divine grace, so that one might

say in Wesley’s view that one is always being made responsible. 68

This observation raises the question of how divine and human agency relate. On this

point, this dissertation views Wesley’s position as an ‘uncritical compatibilism’ or naïve non-

competitive agency. 69 Wesley’s comments in ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’ make it

clear that God’s freely offered grace authorises the grateful response of the person and ventures

something towards an account of how one interacts with divine action. 70 Wesley states:

‘Therefore inasmuch as God works in you, you are now able to work out your own salvation.’71

He seems to brush the view that divine and human agency compete aside: ‘We shall then see

there is no opposition between these, “God works; therefore, do ye work;” but, on the contrary,

the closest connexion.’72 Moreover, to this can be added the near constant refrain throughout

Wesley’s writings that God is the agent of all that is holy.73 God is thus the source and condition

of all holiness. Wesley does not explore how such statements relate to his narrower

67
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §22, WJW, 4:70.
68
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.4, WJW, [Link] ‘For allowing that all the souls of men are dead in
sin by nature, this excuses none, seeing there is no man that is in a state of mere nature.’
69
See Cunningham, John Wesley’s Pneumatology, 33. For an introduction to the eighteenth-century debate over
liberty and necessity, see James A. Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-
Century British Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
70
Wesley, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.4, WJW, 3:207. Hence Randy Maddox’s thesis in
Responsible Grace, 19.
71
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.5, WJW, 3:207.
72
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.1-2, WJW, 3:206. Wesley appears to think the central problem of
determinism (theological or material) is the supposed competition between divine and human agency.
73
‘On the Education of Children,’ §14, WJW, 3:353.
The Witness of the Spirit 52

commitments to persons ability to resist grace, 74 or having both ‘liberty of contradiction’ and

‘liberty of contrariety.’ 75 This positive relation of God’s work to human work, however, is

exemplified in the foregoing analysis of the Holy Spirit’s conferral of responsibility on human

beings. In the moment where the Spirit brings one into the new birth, the Spirit fills the person

with the holy tempers. Only thus is sanctity possible. Consequently, the possibility of sanctity

demands the exercise of their newfound freedom.76 One may interpret this in the following

way: one enjoys freedom through and by the already active work of God. 77 Wesley’s view

suggests that one’s freedom persists in the ‘closest connexion’ to the grace of the Holy Spirit

so that one’s necessary dependence upon the manifold intensities of the Holy Spirit’s work is

the framework within which the heights of freedom becomes actual.

In summary, this section establishes the theological foundation of Wesley’s doctrine of

sin: the doctrine the Holy Spirit’s work. In speaking of the activities of the Spirit, the argument

has reached for the language of witnessing and gathering. Each of these, while pertaining to all

the various intensities of grace, shed important light on the meaning of prevenient grace for

Wesley. It is the Spirit’s activity that restores persons through the disruption and destruction of

former ways of living. This the Spirit does principally through the inward witness, which

through the Spirit’s testimony freely gives the fruit of the Spirit, redeeming the affections

through holy tempers. This gift is also the foundation of responsibility, where the relation

between the freedom of God and of God’s creatures finds purchase. Moreover, the Spirit’s

transformation is ordered to a particular end in Christ, which likewise becomes the groundwork

for the moral law. Further, this account gestures towards a kind of trinitarian ontology at work

74
‘Free Grace,’§10, WJW, 3:547.
75
The spontaneity entailed in the liberty of contrariety poses severe problems for Wesley’s view that his appeals
to common sense cannot overcome, see ‘What is Man,’ §11, WJW, 4:24.
76
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.7-8, WJW, 3:208-209.
77
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.1-2, WJW, 3:206.
The Witness of the Spirit 53

in Wesley.78 All of this was addressed at pace: this section’s intention is to clear the way for a

better understanding of the Spirit’s illumination, the discrete act which raises the consciousness

of sin to the mind of the human person. The emphasis on the priority of God’s work and the

distinction between God’s work as that which empowers human work, draws Wesley into a

sphere that opens his account to accusations of enthusiasm. In the next section, the argument

engages Wesley’s view of experience, a view which in discussion of one’s encounter with,

participation in, and transformation by the Triune God, the argument has already raised the

need for clarity on this heading.

3. Experience and the Illumination of the Holy Spirit

Wesley’s doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit entails the assumption that sin is not

available to natural reason. This claim may seem strange to suggest for a divine known for his

thorough integration of experience with theological thinking. It is not denied that Wesley’s is

an ‘experimental’ theology, but what needs to be made clear is in what sense Wesley is a

theologian of experience. Certainly, the new birth and the witness of the Spirit—inward,

outward, or otherwise—are kinds of experiences. Wesley’s appeal to them arises, on the one

hand, from the testimony of the Scriptures and, on the other hand, from the fact that in his

observations of human life these sorts of things really happen. These experiences of the Spirit’s

witness are adventitious, finding their origin in the wisdom of God for Wesley but they are

experiences. The argument of this section locates Wesley’s view of experience within this

wider horizon of the Holy Spirit’s illuminating grace. This reading is the most compelling way

to make sense of Wesley’s theology: it rests on the priority of experience illuminated by the

Holy Spirit. This distinction is even more important for Wesley’s account of sin, where he tends

to engage in descriptive styles of reasoning. It is the task of this section to distinguish the

78
Wesley does not provide much in the way of speculative support, but his teaching invites one to look either
backward—perhaps to Cudworth or Arminius—or forward—perhaps to Schleiermacher—to elaborate a
constructive Wesleyan position.
The Witness of the Spirit 54

meaning of experience from within this pneumatological frame. The argument first redresses

some matters of influence and provides Wesley’s normative definition of experience. Then it

will turn to the relation of experience to Scripture before examining the communicability of

experience.

First, to understand Wesley’s view of experience, one must first overcome a conflict in

interpretations. The genealogical claim made here is that Wesley’s view of experience bears

greater resemblance to the Cambridge Platonists than to Locke and the empiricists. When

Wesley speaks of experience, one can distinguish two senses. Either he speaks of experience

in a rhetorical sense or of experience in a more technical epistemological sense. Of these two,

the latter is relevant.79 Experience denotes a reflective disposition to the goings-on in everyday

life for Wesley rather than passivity in the face of an event. This is experience in the sense of

experimentum.80 It is generally understood that Wesley draws upon a variation of empiricism,

influenced both from his Oxford Aristotelian training and his appreciation for John Locke and,

more so, Bishop Peter Browne. 81 For Wesley, following Brown more closely than Locke,

experience yields not only the probability of matters of faith but certainty of existence within

the horizon of faith.82 So, the maxim that ‘there is nothing in the understanding which was not

For a helpful summary of Wesley’s account of experience agreeable to the one offered, see Crutcher, ‘“The
79

Crucible of Life,”’ 83-91.

80
On the development of the language of experience, see Peter Harrison, ‘Experimental Religion and
Experimental Science in Early Modern England,’ Intellectual History Review, 21:4 (2011), 413-433.
81
On Wesley’s indebtedness to the Oxford Aristotelian tradition, see Matthews, ‘“Religion and Reason
Joined,”’ 92-101, 201-204. For another perspective on Wesley’s relation to Locke, see Richard Brantley,
Locke, Wesley, and the Method of English Romanticism (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1984);
Brantley, Coordinates of Anglo-American Romanticism: Wesley, Edwards, Carlyle, and Emerson (Gainesville:
University of Florida Press, 1993). For two accounts elevating the significance of Browne for Wesley, see
Crutcher, ‘“The Crucible of Life,”’ 51-63; Lohrstorfer, ‘Know Your Disease,’ 45-98.
82
Locke relies on probability to secure the plausibility and intelligibility of matters of faith, removing things
like the resurrection them from rational criticism, but also to a significant extent of reflection as such, Locke,
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV.15.4 (655-657). Browne corrective retrieves and reintegrates
matters of faith more prominently within the reality of existence: revelatory knowledge—illumined
knowledge—is no addition to natural knowledge, as Locke has it, but an intrinsic aspect of knowledge, see
Peter Browne, The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding (London: William Innys, 1728),
468-477.
The Witness of the Spirit 55

first perceived by the senses,’ which Wesley recalls throughout his writings, denotes a

thoroughgoing commitment to experience, or experimental religion.83 Outler’s error that the

Cambridge Platonists affirmed the doctrine of innate ideas against an experimental view

reinforces the strength of this interpretation.84 However, Norris and the Cambridge Platonists

affirm this maxim too.85 Thus, if one considers Norris’s approach to experience, for him God

is the most intelligible thing in reality. 86 Creaturely reason sits within the field of experience in

constant need of God’s illumination to make possible even the most rudimentary intellectual

activity. God’s grace is woven into the fabric of reality.87 Thus, the condition for experience’s

intelligibility begins with God. As one’s reason conforms to its source, one’s reflection on

experience leads back to God too. Moreover, incorporating this view into Wesley’s operant

trinitarian ontology provides a more robust sense of the speculative underpinnings he has in

mind.

Second, it is now possible to understand Wesley’s definition of experience. Wesley’s

theological use of experience is nearly as distributed as his doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s work.

83
E.g., ‘On the Discoveries of Faith,’ §1, WJW, 4:29; ‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith,’ §7, WJW, 4:51;
‘On Living without God,’ §§3-4, WJW, 4:170; ‘On Faith,’ §18, WJW, 4:200.
84
See Outler, WJW, [Link] ‘Wesley was an unembarrassed intuitionist who openly claimed his heritage of
Christian Platonism.’ Compare, Outler, WJW, 1:276n46. While Outler is write to hitch Wesley up to the long
tradition of divine illumination in Christian Platonism, his error lies in supposing that holding to an intuitionist
view of religious experience incurs appeal to innate ideas, see WJW, 2:571n14. The Christian Platonists who
Wesley immediately draws from—the Cambridge Platonists—do not affirm any regular sense of the doctrine
of innate ideas, see John H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy: Studies in the
History of Idealism in England and America (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931), 39-46.
85
For Norris, understanding acts upon ideas, but these are ‘impressed’ upon the mind because they existence as
mental objects in the ideal world. When one thinks, for example, when God comes to mind, God is found and
through sense made known in the mind. Norris, An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible
World, 2 volumes (London, 1701-1704), 2:329-376; cf. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon
Philosophy, 98-102.
86
God is Being-Itself, so while God is the most intelligible ‘thing,’ God is more properly beyond any ‘thing.’ As
the One who is beyond being, God is the source and ground of all beings. See Norris, Reason & Religion, 11-
12.
87
In this Wesley’s position bears similarity to Norris’s argument for God as ‘Being-itself,’ the form and
foundation of thought, Reason & Religion, 27-33; cf. W. J. Mander, The Philosophy of John Norris (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 37-8.
The Witness of the Spirit 56

In fact, experience and the Holy Spirit’s work are entangled within Wesley’s idiom.88 One

normative explanation is in ‘The Witness of the Spirit, II’:

(1). Experience is sufficient to confirm a doctrine which is grounded on Scripture. (2).

Though many fancy they experience what they do not, this is no prejudice to real
experience. (3). The design of that witness is to assure us we are children of God; and
this design it does answer. (4). The true witness of the Spirit is known by its fruit––
love, peace, joy––not indeed preceding, but following it. (5). It cannot be proved that
the direct as well as the indirect witness is not referred to in that very text, ‘Know ye
not your own selves … that Jesus Christ is in you?’ (6). The Spirit of God, ‘witnessing
with our spirit’, does secure us from all delusion.89
In this passage, Wesley provides a terse summary of the meaning of experimental religion. For

him, experience is an involved reflection on that which goes on in the world, perceiving,

cataloguing, judging events as the happen one way or another during everyday life. The use of

‘involved’ draws attention to the interdependent relation between the knower, what is known,

and the One who enables what may be known.90 Experience lies within the domain of the Spirit,

and the Scriptures are the framework through which all experience is understood. Therefore,

to understand Wesley’s view of illuminated experience, one must address the role of the

Scriptures.

a. Illuminated Experience and the Searching of the Scriptures.

First, one cannot separate Wesley’s view of experience from his interpretation of the

Scriptures. There is a holism to experience generated on account of the antecedent personal

presence of the Holy Spirit, all aspects of experience resting on one illuminated horizon.91

There is a kind of hermeneutic circle at work: to use experience to confirm a doctrine assumes

88
Hence, the language of the feeling or experience of holiness, grace, and mercy in the preceding section, see
§2.2.
89
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §V.2, WJW, 1:297.
90
There is perhaps a correlation with the doctrine of intentionality, see Sartre, ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental
Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology,’ Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 1:2 (1970), 4-5; cf.
Aristotle, De Anima, III.8, 431b20.
91
See above, §2.2.a.
The Witness of the Spirit 57

the Spirit’s witness, which assumes the veracity and efficaciousness of the Scriptures, which

again depends on the surety and constancy of the one who ‘witnesses to our spirit.’92

The Scriptures are fundamental in this view, guiding and substantiating the witness of

the Spirit. Wesley emphasises the Scriptures not only to sidestep accusations of enthusiasm but

also in service to his doctrine of the Word.93 The Son of God—the living Word—speaks

through the Scriptures. In this way, the Scriptures supply an abundance of language for an

experience that fallen persons inevitably fail to represent. The Scriptures allow one to speak

about the Spirit’s witness to reality. Wesley writes about describing the Spirit’s witness: ‘It is

hard to find words in the language of men to explain “the deep things of God”. Indeed, there

are none that will adequately express what the children of God experience.’ 94 Thus, faced with

the question of how to distinguish the ‘testimony of our own spirit’ with the ‘testimony of the

Spirit,’ Wesley states:

The Holy Scriptures abound with marks whereby the one may be distinguished from
the other. They describe in the plainest manner the circumstances which go before,
which accompany, and which follow, the true, genuine testimony of the Spirit of God
with the spirit of a believer. Whoever carefully weighs and attends to these will not
need to put darkness for light.95
Wesley appeals to the language of the Scriptures considering ordinary language’s inadequacy

as it is used by fallen humans. By inhabiting the language of the Scriptures, one is then able to

describe the experience of the Spirit’s witness. There is an active sense in which Wesley speaks

about the Scriptures: he has in mind the sense of ‘searching the scriptures,’ a means of grace

that through one’s participation guides one in the way of holiness.96 Accordingly, the

92
ENNT, Rom. 8.16. On Wesley and the hermeneutic circle between Scripture and experience, see Crutcher,
‘“The Crucible of Life,”’ 133-138.
93
‘Letter to John Smith,’ Letters, 2:48.
94
‘The Witness of the Spirit, I,’ §I.7, WJW, 1:274.
95
‘The Witness of the Spirit, I,’§II.3, WJW, 1:277-278.
96
‘The Means of Grace,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:381; cf. below §6.5.
The Witness of the Spirit 58

description of the theological virtues and the fruit of the Spirit, because their origin is in the

Word, become avenues whereby one moves deeper into union with Christ.

The experience of the Word in searching of the Scriptures is an immediate experience

of the Spirit’s witness. It thus means more than the acquisition of holy tempers, virtues, and

the language to describe them. As a means of grace, the Scriptures locate one’s existence within

the history of God. Moreover, Wesley thinks the Scriptures tell God’s history, and that this is

the one true history of the world: ‘All over that wonderful book [the Scriptures], as “life and

immortality” (immortal life) is gradually “brought to light”, so is “Immanuel, God with us”,

and his kingdom ruling all.’ 97 That is, one feels the real union of oneself with God’s

providential ordering of the world to God’s glory. 98 In this way the experience of the Scriptures,

which assumes the antecedent witness of the Spirit, weaves one’s life into the almighty

providence of God. 99 In Wesley’s view, as one searches the Scriptures they are moved nearer

to the Word and thus become better imitators through the gift of the Spirit.

Yet, experience also conditions what might be said in a doctrine grounded in the

Scriptures.100 For example, Wesley’s critique of absolute predestination rests on an experiential

appeal to the phenomenon of free decision. 101 Similarly, his differentiation between core and

peripheral doctrines functions on the basis of those doctrines which bear directly on the

everyday life of the believer, so the doctrine of the Trinity, while necessary to confess, is less

97
‘On Divine Providence,’§§4, WJW, 2:536
98
‘On Divine Providence,’ §§27-29, WJW, 2:548-550.
99
‘The Witness of the Spirit, I,’ §I.8, WJW, [Link] ‘This “Testimony of the Spirit of God” must needs, in the
very nature of things, be antecedent to the “testimony of our own spirit”.’
100
This was certainly true of any of those committed in full force to empiricism. Consider, for example, Locke’s
reasoning for the abandonment of original sin, see W. M. Spellman’s John Locke and the Problem of
Depravity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
See, for example, Wesley, The Question ‘What is an Arminian?’ Answered by a Lover of Free Grace, and,
101

Thoughts Upon Necessity, WJW, 11:404-409; 528-546.

The Witness of the Spirit 59

important than the doctrine of free grace or of catholicity. 102 Wesley’s account of original sin

offers a further example of how he allows experience to condition doctrine, which eschews the

speculative aspects of the historical doctrine in favour of an emphasis on the description of the

human predicament and the brute facticity that there is misery.103 In this way experience of the

world and experience of the Scriptures are interrelated, moderated by the illumination of the

Spirit.

b. Illuminated Experience in the Fellowship of Believers.

One might worry that such emphasis on private feeling betrays an unhelpful

individualism in Wesley’s view of experience. Such worries may be assuaged by considering

the foundation of this experience in the Scriptures. Yet, more may be added to detail Wesley’s

view and counter the accusation of individualism. Wesley’s view of experience assumes that

private experience is accessible and intelligible. That is, all private experience is communicable

and therefore public. There is no hidden ‘I’ that cannot be represented by another. Even

illuminated experience is communicable insofar as the Scriptures supply a common language

within which the fellowship of believers can represent, detail, and testify about the antecedent

work of the Spirit in their lives among one another.

Thus, Wesley expresses little worry over the privacy of individual experience, but he

also expresses anxiety over offering any speculative description over how one need not be

worried. For example, he writes:

And here properly comes in, to confirm this scriptural doctrine, the experience of the
children of God—the experience not of two or three, not of a few, but of a great
multitude which no man can number. It has been confirmed, both in this and in all ages,
by ‘a cloud of’ living and dying ‘witnesses’.104

102
Not that the Trinity can be dispensed. Wesley is more negotiating and arranging a set of necessary beliefs
among diverse communities of faith: ‘I do not see how it is possible for any to have vital religion who denies
that these three are one.’ See Wesley, ‘On the Trinity,’ §18, WJW, 2:386.
103
See below, §3.6.
104
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §III.6, WJW, 1:290.
The Witness of the Spirit 60

In this passage Wesley directs one’s attention to two things: (a) the fellowship of believers and

(b) the evidence of the Holy Spirit’s witness in the fruit of the Spirit. In another place, Wesley

states: ‘Seeing so many other texts, with the experience of all real Christians, sufficiently

evince, that there is in every believer, both the testimony of God’s Spirit, and the testimony of

his own, that he is a child of God.’105 Wesley’s appeal places the burden of proof strictly on

the common testimony of all believers. He eschews explanation. For example, he says the new

birth, like the Spirit’s witness, eludes any ‘minute philosophical account,’ yet still its

description ‘suffices for every rational and Christian purpose, that, without descending into

curious, critical inquiries.’106 Wesley is mindful of this limitation: the Spirit’s presence aims to

assist ‘our faith, not gratify our curiosity.’107 Yet, perhaps Wesley is too quick to toss certain

issues aside as ‘curious, critical inquiries.’ Accordingly, this analysis wrestles with Wesley’s

resistance towards speculative work while urging the public nature of experience. The doctrine

of the Holy Spirit fills in what Wesley’s leaves unaddressed.

The experience humanity has in common is so not because of their humanity but

because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in power.108 For Wesley, the Holy Spirit is the

guarantor of the communicability of the Father’s redemption through the Son.109 The Holy

Spirit witnesses to us and gathers us into the eternal communion of the Father and the Son.

Moreover, the Word who one encounters as they search the Scriptures gifts common words

that tie the fellowship of believers together.110 Following Wesley’s logic, as one is reinscribed

with the Law, so one is reinscribed into the communion of saints. On this foundation, Wesley

may confidently speak about the experience humanity has in common because this experience

105
‘The Witness of the Spirit,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:291.
106
‘The New Birth,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:191.
107
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:472.
108
See above, §2.2.a.
109
See above, §2.2.b.
110
See above, §2.3.a.
The Witness of the Spirit 61

is bodied forth in obedience to the commands and demonstration of the fruit of the Spirit.111

The basis of this account is an ontology rooted in the economy of the Spirit, so it is God who

one meets in the depths of each individual soul and that God is One, ‘They are joined unto the

Lord in one Spirit.’ In this sense Wesley can say:

The Spirit itself bore witness to my spirit that I was a child of God, gave me an evidence
thereof, and I immediately cried, ‘Abba, Father!’ And this I did, (and so did you,)
before I reflected on, or was conscious of, any fruit of the Spirit. It was from this
testimony received, that love, joy, peace, and the whole fruit of the Spirit flowed.112
For Wesley, the more intensely personal and subjective one recognises the Spirit’s work to be,

the more radically interpersonal and objective reality is seen to be.113 Moreover, through the

doctrine of prevenient grace, even the most radical reorientation to God in one’s salvation is

communicable to the ‘presumptions of the natural mind’ even if that person has not had the

experience themselves. 114 The Holy Spirit is the reason such a view retains its integrity. Wesley

thinks such an appeal is thoroughly rational as well. The Spirit’s witness has its own integrity

borne out of the holiness of God. As the Lord and Giver of life, the Spirit enables creatures to

understand and share their experience in sustaining and preventing grace. It would be an error

on Wesley’s account to suppose there are creaturely ways to fortify experience’s

communicability.

Thus, it is possible to see how Wesley’s theological use of experience is fundamentally

informed by the economy of the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit’s illuminating grace, light of

Christ transforms experience. In the fellowship of believers, the common gifts of the holy

tempers and the knowledge of faith attest to this transformation. Thus emerges a more

theologically driven account of Wesley’s ‘experimental religion’. This section’s attempt to

recalibrate Wesley’s view of experience as a theological category stresses the need for the

111
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §III.6, WJW, 1:290-291.
112
‘On the Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §III.7, WJW, 1:127-8.
113
Recall Fletcher’s advice to the interpreter of Wesley, First Check, §I.5, WJF, 1:18.
114
‘The General Spread of the Gospel,’§18, WJW, 2:493.
The Witness of the Spirit 62

antecedent work of the Spirit and the framework of the Scriptures to guide human life. In this

way, Wesley speaks strongly about the feeling of holiness and the evidence of holiness in the

obedience to the commands, the demonstration of the fruit of the spirit, and the cultivation of

the virtues.

4. Illumination and the Renovation of Conscience

The preceding sections indicate that the Spirit’s grace makes humans into moral agents.

Being a moral agent is intrinsic to personal existence. A glimpse of this aspect was addressed

in the Spirit’s witness to Christ as the Law and charting the source of the moral aspect of

existence impacts how later discussions of sin and holiness unfold.115 It is necessary to deal

head-on with Wesley’s claim that the roots of morality lie in the Spirit’s witness. Thus, the

Spirit’s witness is also referred to as conscience by Wesley, taking something ordinarily

describing an indirect experience of God and recasting it as direct. 116 Therefore, this section

constructs Wesley’s account of the illuminated conscience. This section suggests that for

Wesley the experience and use of conscience—even the bad conscience—is a divine gift. He

reminds us that even life ‘under the law’ is a gift. 117 Further, the holy life under grace unveils

authentic humanity and self-knowledge through one’s union with Christ in the Spirit. It is in

the event of the grace of God that one uncovers the foundation for speaking about the moral

life—and about identity—at all. This argument will be made in two moves: (a) contrasting

Wesley’s view of conscience with Bishop Joseph Butler’s account and (b) then examining the

structure of Wesley’s view.

a. The Direct Witness of the Spirit: Wesley’s Extraordinary View of Conscience Against
the Men of Reasonable Religion.

115
See above §2.2.b.
116
For an overview of the history of conscience, see Hendrik G. Stoker, Conscience: Phenomena and Theories
(Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2018), 35-74.
117
Wesley, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:255.
The Witness of the Spirit 63

Conscience is, for Wesley and many in the eighteenth-century milieu, the seat of moral

authority as well as the gateway to self-knowledge.118 In this domain with issues like

conscience and identity, the demand for stability and continuity needs to be addressed. 119

Intrinsic to human life is moral activity; through the moral life one’s identity is formed. If this

is not a natural process or faculty, then whence comes such a universal phenomenon? A tension

emerges between the abiding, sustaining, and prevenient grace of the Holy Spirit and the advent

of Christ’s justification and the Spirit’s sanctification in the new birth. How should one speak

about the continuity of the experience of conscience prior to the new birth? The moralists of

Wesley’s time posited in a variety of ways that conscience is a distinct feature of personal

identity, an identity which is contiguous over one’s lifetime. Certainly, it is not only the

redeemed who enjoy these traits.120 In this sense, the witness of the Spirit and the witness of

our own spirit coincide: the Spirit’s witness is indirectly manifest in the attestation of one’s

own spirit. Conscience, as a natural endowment common to all people, evidences one’s relation

to God by the exercise of moral principles, right reason, or the pursuit of a moral- or aesthetic-

sense.121 In the eighteenth-century, a variation on this option is a compelling one: for

contemporaries of Wesley like Bishop George Berkeley and Bishop Joseph Butler this view is

For a general overview see Stephen Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’: 1640-1740
118

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); David McNaughton, ‘British Moralists of the Eighteenth
Century: Shaftesbury, Butler and Price’ in British Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment, edited by Stuart
Brown, Routledge History of Philosophy, volume 5 (London: Routledge, 1996), 166-185.
119
Such concerns were spread wide in the period and spring from theological concerns. For example, Locke’s
concern over identity arose in his attempt to make sense of whether and in what sense one’s resurrected self
was identical to their experience. See K. Joanna S. Forstrom, John Locke and Personal Identity: Immortality
and Bodily Resurrection in 17th-Century Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2010), 6-28. For an overview of
the return to the theological aspects of Locke’s thinking, see Nathan Guy, Finding Locke’s God: The
Theological Basis of John Locke’s Political Thought (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 1-74.
120
Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought,’ 1-22; Young, Enlightenment and Religion, 20-44.
121
Collins, ‘John Wesley’s Platonic Conception of the Moral Law,’ WTJ, 21:1 (1986), 116-128.
The Witness of the Spirit 64

key to their theologically motivated account of morality. 122 Consider Butler as a representative

example in his argument for native conscience:

The apostle asserts, that ‘the Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the law’. …
What that is in man by which he is ‘naturally a law to himself’, is explained in the
following words: ‘which shews the work of the law written in their hearts, their
consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else
excusing one another’. … [There] is a superior principle of reflection or conscience in
every man, which distinguishes between the internal principles of his heart, as well as
his external actions. … It is by this faculty, natural to man, that he is a moral agent,
that he is a law to himself.123
In Butler’s reading of Romans 2.14, the natural quality of the conscience which governs

thought and action is ordered to God’s creative act and in its exercise ordered to God’s

providential care.124 Importantly, however conscience is ordered, it is a property of the human

person.125 We are created with this capability of discerning internal motives, moral principles,

and the orientation of the heart. No divine superaddition is needed. Moreover, indexed to God’s

122
If one may hazard to locate Wesley within a particular theological tradition, even within Anglican theology,
one likely candidate is the collection of divines who, following and critiquing Locke, find significant appeal in
the notion of the doctrine of analogy. The origins of the controversy are, on the one hand, in the reception of
John Locke and, on the other hand, in critique of John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious. Peter Browne’s
contribution to the debate, Things Divine and Supernatural conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and
Human, more briefly referred to as the Divine Analogy, published in 1733, offers the most robust development
of a doctrine of analogy. Notably similar to Browne are similar accounts found in Bishop George Berkeley’s
Alciphron, Archbishop William King’s popular sermon ‘Divine Predestination and Foreknowledge consistent
with the Freedom of Man’s Will’ published in 1709, and Bishop Joseph Butler’s, Analogy of Religion,
published in 1736. Insofar as these figures have been grouped together, they have occasionally been termed the
British Moralists and are interpreted in some ways as parting with the import of revealed religion, however,
this does not seem entirely convincing, see Stephen L. Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal
‘Ought’, 1640-1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Wesley was aware of each of these
figures. He closely followed Browne’s interpretation of Locke, commending his works for the Methodists. He
read King’s On the Origin of Evil (De Origine Mali) a couple of times, apparently coming to enjoy it the
second time through. His criticisms of King the first time around may have been in an attempt win the respect
of potential suitor, as ego often leads one to exaggeration. Berkeley was also known Wesley, though he could
not admit his phenomenalism. The most interesting (and most controversial) connection is with Butler. The
two came face to face with one another while Butler was Bishop of Bristol, where Wesley was accused of
bald-faced enthusiasm. Much to Wesley’s horror at losing the respect of a notable bishop in his dear church,
Wesley attempted to save face by publishing his account of the meeting to exonerate his reputation and show
Butler’s acceptance of his work. Nevertheless, Wesley left Bristol shortly after their meeting. This encounter is
well-known, but less is known about the intellectual continuities of the two figures. See Frank Baker, ‘John
Wesley and Bishop Joseph Butler: A Fragment of John Wesley’s Manuscript Journal 16 th to 24th August 1739,’
Wesley Historical Society, 42 (1980), 93-100; cf. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists, 102f.
Butler, Sermons, 2.8, emphasis added; cf. Brian Hebblethwaite, ‘Butler on Conscience and Virtue’ in Joseph
123

Butler’s Moral and Religious Thought: Tercentenary Essays, edited by Christopher Cunliffe (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992), 197f..
124
Butler, Sermons, 2.8, 3.2.
125
Sermons, 2.9.
The Witness of the Spirit 65

creative rather than redemptive work, the faculty of conscience retains a basic quality in human

life. Butler’s strength is capturing the ordinary power of the experience of conscience.

Among the British Moralists and the eighteenth-century divines, Butler’s sophistication

and demonstrable theological influence make his work a helpful comparison with Wesley’s

view.126 As a case against deism, there is ample reason why Butler’s is important. The account

of conscience offered by Butler points to a way of making a case for the reasonableness of the

Christian faith while, on the one hand, conceding what is deemed important in the elevation of

reason and, on the other hand, distancing oneself from ‘enthusiasm.’127 Vital to this move is to

distinguish between the activity of the Holy Spirit and the ordinary (or natural) conscience. The

substance of Butler’s view requires that conscience is not the direct witness of the Holy

Spirit.128 The right use of conscience admits of a certain analogy with the work of the Holy

Spirit, but only indirectly. The idea of immediate or direct witness Butler would likely keep at

a distance.129 It is at this point that Wesley’s account contrasts from Butler’s.

In contrast, Wesley defines conscience as follows:

This faculty [conscience] seems to be what is usually meant by those who speak of
natural conscience; an expression frequently found in some of our best authors, but yet
not strictly just. For though in one sense it may be termed natural, because it is found
in all men; yet, properly speaking, it is not natural, but a supernatural gift of God,
above all his natural endowments. No; it is not nature, but the Son of God, that is ‘the
true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world.’ So that we may

126
A comparison invited by David Brown, ‘Butler and Deism,’ Joseph Butler’s Moral and Religious Thought,
8: ‘Not only does Butler retreat from proof to probability, he also at several point expresses scepticism about
how much can be known. So, despite the lack of meeting of minds in his encounter with Wesley, it is arguable
that his continued popularity can in part be seen as due to him representing an early anticipation of the move
away from reason towards experience and feeling that characterised both Methodism and more generally the
Romantic movement.’ Brown draws attention to a similar insight made by Downey, The Eighteenth Century
Pulpit, 48: ‘In spite of himself, [Butler] had, in theory at least, opened the door to the religious enthusiasm of
Methodism.’
On this subject, emphasising the theological core in Butler’s reasoning, see David Brown, ‘Butler and
127

Deism,’ Joseph Butler’s Moral and Religious Thought, 2-28; Gordan Kendal, ‘A God Most Particular: Aspects
of Incarnation in Butler’s Morality,’ Joseph Butler’s Moral and Religious Thought, 141-168.
128
Butler, Sermons, 1.2.
129
Nevertheless, Butler elaborates a profoundly intersubjective ontology on the basis of his christocentric vision
of natural law, but, in the interest of giving a universally reasonable account, his project is one of apologia, it
is in most cases resonant more with the natural limitations of finite existence than the burden of sin and
wickedness. See Butler, Sermons, 1.5; cf. Kendal, ‘A God Most Particular,’ 166-168.
The Witness of the Spirit 66

say to every human creature, ‘He,’ not nature, ‘hath showed thee, O man, what is good.’
And it is his Spirit who giveth thee an inward check, who causeth thee to feel uneasy,
when thou walkest in any instance contrary to the light which he hath given thee.130
Wesley, also following Paul, retains the qualification between a direct and indirect witness of

the Spirit.131 However, in his vigorous defence of the direct witness of the Spirit, Wesley’s

distinctive pneumatological account emerge. For Wesley, ‘“The scandal of the cross is” not yet

“ceased.”’132 That is, what is basic in his view is that by participating in Christ by the Spirit,

one finds oneself in direct communion with the life of God, and witnessing to Christ’s life,

death, and resurrection as the express image of God’s eternal life. Thus, grounded within the

Spirit’s economic life, the distinction between the direct and indirect witness of the Spirit are

subordinated to the immediate presence of God to the soul in the Spirit of Christ. Wesley is at

pains to distinguish between an ordinary and a Christian sense of conscience, or the

‘presumption of the natural man’ as ‘practical atheist’ and the ‘witness of the Spirit.’133 The

ordinary sense is illusory, only provisionally relating to the reality of the Christian sense of

conscience.134 This ordinary sense is truly the Holy Spirit’s work but unrecognised as such by

fallen creatures. The phenomenon of conscience is a form of participation in the divine

economy, demonstrating an insoluble relation to God, who with the Son and through the Spirit,

God, ‘not nature,’ reveals what is good or ill. 135 Moreover, the experience of conscience is

embodied: the phenomenon of guilt and unease, the twisting of the stomach, the haze of moral

130
‘On Conscience’ §I.5, WJW, 3:482, emphasis added.
131
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §II.6-8, WJW, 1:287-288.
132
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, III,’ §III.8, WJW, 1:526.
The phrase ‘practical atheist’ is one borrowed from John Norris’s ‘Concerning Practical Atheism’ in
133

Practical Discourses and becomes a concept of importance throughout Wesley’s discussions of the condition
of original sin. For Wesley’s use of ‘practical atheist’ see WJW, 1:517n52. Outler suggests that Wesley recruits
phrases like ‘practical atheism,’ ‘idolatry,’ and ‘dissipations’ as functional synonyms. This dissertation
presents a view wherein there is a more supple gradient in these terms that frequently occur in Wesley’s
Sermons. See below, §5.3.a.
134
Wesley, ‘On Conscience’ §I.5, WJW, 3:482.
135
‘On Conscience’ §I.5, WJW, 3:482.
The Witness of the Spirit 67

anxiousness, are given substance as the demonstration of the immediacy of the Holy Spirit,

who necessarily transforms that to which the Spirit is present. 136

Butler and Wesley’s approaches are hardly two antagonizing extremes among the

myriad interpretations of conscience. On the contrary, like Butler, Wesley is compelled to offer

a perspicuous account of ordinary conscience since he thinks this is the default experience of

life for the ‘practical atheist’ or the unbeliever.137 Wesley writes: ‘Every man has a greater or

less measure of [“natural conscience”], which waiteth not for the call of man. … And everyone,

unless he be one of the small number whose conscience is seared as with a hot iron, feels more

or less uneasy when he acts contrary to the light of his own conscience.’ 138 But it is in this

ordinary sense that Wesley describes how this immature experience of conscience leads to self-

deception.139 In the course of life for one outside of faith, the problem begins with the pseudo-

assurance stemming from the fact that the unbeliever ‘is utterly ignorant of himself.’140 The

problem intensifies as certainty begets a presumptuousness knowledge of what is and is not

holy.141 Exemplary for Wesley in this are the paragons of reason, the ‘men of learning,’ who

identify so-called rational faculties, freedom of the will, and the ‘absolute necessity of such

freedom,’ in order to defend the human person as a ‘moral agent,’ but in the ‘kind of joy’ which

arises ‘in congratulating himself upon his own wisdom and goodness’ end up indulging the

way of sin.142 It is rhetorically significant that the kinds of goods these reasonable figures

contemplate gratify ‘the desires of the flesh, or the desire of the eye, or the pride of life,’ the

136
On this, see below §6.4; cf. Cunningham, ‘Anxiety in the Wesleyan Spirit: A Core Theological Theme?’
IJST, 23:3 (2021), 352-369.
137
On ‘practical atheism’ and original sin, see below §4.3.a.
138
Wesley, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.4, WJW, 3:207.
139
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §I.4, WJW, 1:253.
140
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’§I.3, WJW, 1:252.
141
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §I.7, WJW, 1:254.
142
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §I.5, WJW, 1:253.
The Witness of the Spirit 68

phrase that signposts Wesley’s frequent appeal to the condition of original sin. 143 Indeed, in the

end Wesley says ‘all this time [they] are the servant of sin. [They] commit sin, more or less,

day by day. Yet [they are] not troubled.’144 This final comment regarding the ‘natural’

conscience demands attention: as this argument develops Wesley’s doctrine of sin, the fact that

outside of faith one is untroubled will become a signal feature of his view. The practical atheist

does not experience a particular and demonstrative form of anxiety entailed in Wesley’s

concept of faith. The universal experience of moral anxiety, wringing one’s hands over the

weight of a guilty conscience, is gathered up into a wider theological horizon.

To expand this vision of conscience as the Spirit’s personal presence, Wesley’s

inversion of the ideas of enthusiasm and bigotry prove useful. He redefines enthusiasm and

bigotry to mean one who turns away from the grace that calls to them in the Spirit of Christ.

This grace is freely and universally available: consequently, Wesley comes back to his own

affirmation of Paul’s assertion that one becomes a ‘law unto themselves’ which emphasises

grace over nature (Rom. 2:14). Wesley writes: ‘No man sins because he has not grace, but

because he does not use the grace which he hath.’ 145 Wesley says that while one is secure

because ‘the eyes of his understanding are closed’ all that time ‘he is the servant of sin.’ 146

Thus, the ‘natural man’—who is completely ignorant of the reality of salvation—is the real

enthusiast or bigot.147 Returning to the ‘natural’ self, Wesley notes:

How easily may he [the man of learning] persuade himself, that he is at liberty from all
vulgar errors, and from the prejudice of education; judging exactly right, and keeping
clear of all extremes. ‘I am free,’ may he say, ‘from all enthusiasm of weak and narrow
souls; from superstition, the disease of fools and cowards, always righteous over much;
and from bigotry, continually incident to those who have not a free and generous way
of thinking.’ And too sure it is, that he is altogether free from the ‘wisdom which

143
See below, §4.3.c.
144
Wesley, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption’ §I.7, WJW, 1:254.
145
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.4, WJW, 3:207.
146
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’ §§I.1, 7, WJW, 3:251, 254.
147
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:251.
The Witness of the Spirit 69

cometh from above,’ from holiness, from the religion of the heart, from the whole mind
which was in Christ.148
In such a claim to the liberty of free-thinking, Wesley inverts this to be the very definition of

enthusiasm: to be an enthusiast is to reason beyond the boundaries of the Spirit of Christ

unveiled through the Scriptures. An enthusiast is one who gratifies the imagination without

restraint and confuses partial truths with reality. Or, in Wesley’s words: ‘[Enthusiasm is] a

religious madness arising from some falsely imagined influence or inspiration of God; at least,

from imputing something to God which out not to be imputed to him, or expecting something

from God which ought not to be expected from him.’149 Likewise Wesley says that bigotry, ‘as

little understood as enthusiasm,’ is redefined as, ‘too strong an attachment to, or fondness for,

our own party, opinion, Church, and religion.’150 So, for Wesley, on account of Scripture’s

claim that ‘because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying,

“Abba! Father!”’ (Gal. 4.6), it must be the case that, if the text is to be understood in its ‘plain

and obvious meaning’ that Paul here describes a ‘direct testimony of the Spirit.’151 This

argument is the starting point, and the ‘men of learning’ Wesley has in mind appear within his

scheme to be much like the enthusiasts and bigots. In Wesley, these terms, conscience,

enthusiasm, bigotry, and many more are reorientated toward a specific, experientially, and

scripturally determined idea. While perhaps thinly made, such redefinition follows the logic of

the Holy Spirit’s illumination. Conscience is therefore not our voice but the voice of the Holy

Spirit. It becomes the task of Christian existence to learn to submit to this other voice.

b. Conversations & Contrary Principles: Wesley’s View of the Experience of Conscience

as the Manifestation of Our Being Simultaneously Justified & Sinner.

148
‘The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption,’ §I.6, WJW, 1:253.
149
‘The Nature of Enthusiasm,’ §12, WJW, 2:50.
150
‘A Caution Against Bigotry,’ §IV.1, WJW, 2:76.
151
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II’ §III, WJW, 5:288-293.
The Witness of the Spirit 70

Thus, it is possible to see how Wesley distinguishes his view of conscience from those

of his contemporaries by considering the experience of conscience as a conversation with the

Spirit. Wesley writes: ‘No man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly called “natural

conscience”. But this is not natural; it is more properly termed “preventing grace”.’152 In this

section, the argument examines the content of Wesley’s view of the conscience. It suggests that

for Wesley conscience describes the experience of a conversation between oneself and the

Spirit that cultivates the moral life. The discernment of sin and righteousness occurs within this

interior conversation. But the shape of this conversation is always one of contrast and

opposition—even one of war.153 Thus, in the experience of conscience, Wesley finds the

axiomatic foundation for the grammar of holiness:

Indeed this grand point, that there are two contrary principles in believers—nature and
grace, the flesh and the spirit—runs through all the epistles of St. Paul, yea, through all
the Holy Scriptures. Almost all the directions and exhortations therein are founded on
this supposition, pointing at wrong tempers or practices in those who are,
notwithstanding, acknowledged by the inspired writers to be believers. And they are
continually exhorted to fight with and conquer these, by the power of faith which was
in them.154
In essence, conscience describes the experience of our attempt to justify ourselves and the

Spirit’s judgement for Wesley. It shows how the ground from which all our moral discernment

springs is the confession that we are simultaneously justified and sinner (simul totus iustus et

simul totus peccatur). What follows describes the structure of this experience of conscience

according to Wesley.

In the sermon ‘On Conscience,’ Wesley summarises a view frequently made in his

writings. He describes the notion of conscience in ordinary and theological perspective. He

concedes that these have in common the sense that conscience is ‘a tribunal in the breast of

‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.4, WJW, 3:207; cf. ‘On Conscience,’ §I.5, WJW, 3:482; ‘The
152

Witness of Our Own Spirit,’ §6, WJW, 1:302.

153
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §V.1, WJW, 1:333.
154
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §III.6, WJW, 1:322.
The Witness of the Spirit 71

men to accuse sinners and excuse them that do well.’155 This sense of conscience as an inner

law court where the content of one’s actions demand justification is also hitched to the

affections. Those that are righteous incur pleasant emotions; unrighteous actions incur

unpleasant ones.156 Yet this is where the common ground ends: for the Christian, through the

Scriptures one knows this inner law court not as a metaphor describing some natural structure

of the mind, but as a description of the actual judgment of the Spirit on the content of one’s

life.157 Wesley writes: ‘No, it is not nature but the Son of God that is “the true light, which

enlightened every man which cometh into the world”. … And it is his Spirit who giveth thee

an inward check, who causeth thee to feel uneasy, who thou walkers in any instance contrary

to the light which he hath given thee.’ 158 So conceived, the experience of conscience correlates

with the believer’s participation in the Triune life. In this inner court, the Spirit witnesses to us

regarding the Living Word unveiled in the Scriptures.159 It is this concrete difference of the

Christian conference that becomes such a productive principle for Wesley.

This view of conscience allows Wesley to capture, on the one hand, the affective

experience arising from the believer’s genuine union with God through faith and, on the other

hand, the source of the anxiety that plagues human experiences our failed attempts at self-

justification. First, to revisit the nature of participation, on Wesley’s reading of Galatians 4.6,

while admitting the ontological priority of the Holy Spirit, there is an inseparability of the Spirit

of Christ communicated and one’s assurance.160 The communication of the Spirit draws one

into the heart of God, where one’s being is renewed. Underscoring that this is an ontologically

driven account, Wesley qualifies himself by saying, ‘We must be holy of heart, and holy in

155
‘On Conscience,’ §I.1, WJW, 3:481.
156
‘On Conscience,’ §I.3, WJW, 3:481.
157
‘On Conscience,’ §I.5, WJW, 3:482.
158
‘On Conscience,’ §I.5, WJW, 3:482.
159
‘On Conscience,’ §I.11, WJW, 3:485.
160
‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’ §§I.1-2, 10, WJW, 270-271, 275.
The Witness of the Spirit 72

life, before we can be conscious that we are so.’161 The believer cannot have any knowledge

apart from God’s Spirit, and they certainly cannot get behind God’s Spirit. The believer finds

themselves always already within the grace of the Spirit.

The pleasantness arising from the righteousness one shares in Christ is therefore

properly correlated with the fruit of the spirit. This change of affections charts the relation of

the direct witness to the indirect witness. From within the midst of the Spirit’s grace, Wesley

gives his understanding of the indirect witness:

It is a consciousness of our having received, in and by the Spirit of adoption, the

tempers mentioned in the word of God, as belonging to his adopted children; … A
consciousness that we are inwardly conformed, by the Spirit of God, to the image of
his Son, and that we walk before him in justice, mercy, and truth.162
Even in the indirect witness, the emphasis remains on one’s receptive acknowledgement of the

antecedent work of the Spirit. Where the direct witness demarcates the discrete communicative

and transformative work of the Spirit, the indirect witness describes the consequences of this

work, attending especially to the change in affections, the acquisition of the holy tempers. 163

The indirect form of the Spirit’s witness is the more stable feature in Wesley’s attention to

experience. The particular tempers, or, in contemporary language, moods, attitudes, or

dispositions, that Wesley has in mind are those of the fruit of the Spirit. These both form an

organic united testimony to the reality of salvation.

It is important to notice that the affections as the indirect witness is treated by Wesley

as a tactile embodied phenomenon:164

The testimony of the Spirit is 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

161
‘The Witness of the Spirit, I,’ §I.8, WJW, 1:274.
162
‘The Witness of the Spirit,’ §I.6, WJW, 1:273-274.
163
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §I.6, WJW, 1:237.
164
‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’ §I.7, WJW, [Link] ‘It is hard to find words in the language of men to explain
‘the deep things of God.’ Indeed, there are none that will adequately express what the children of God
experience.’
The Witness of the Spirit 73

loved me, and given himself for me; and that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I,
am reconciled to God.165
The language of ‘inward impression’ is not to be conflated with an innate principle of God-

consciousness but denotes the ongoing and active presence of the Spirit. Wesley draws

attention to the body’s reception of the inward witness. The presence of the Spirit precedes

verbal communication, effecting a bodily transformation and a conformity of the flesh to the

spirit.166 This word affects one’s being prior to one’s cognitive reflection. By consequence, the

Word changes the body first. This notion enables Wesley to demonstrate the assurance of faith

with ease: ‘Experience, or inward consciousness, tells me that I have the fruit of the Spirit. And

hence I rationally conclude: therefore I am a child of God.’ 167 The integrity of Christian identity

leans on the weight of one’s ‘disposition.’ Commenting on the gap between the practical atheist

and the Christian and why a perpetual antagonism exists between the two, Wesley states: ‘The

reason is plain. … The spirit which is in the world is directly opposite to the Spirit which is of

God. … [The] unlikeness of disposition … being a perpetual ground of enmity.’168 The focus

is upon an active and immanent divine life, ‘antecedent to the testimony of our own spirit,’

through whom ‘it is that he not only worketh in us every manner of thing that is good, but also

shine upon his own work, and clearly shows what he has wrought.’169 What Wesley tries to

capture is less a physical demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s presence and more the reality that

God’s work in the soul precedes one’s recognition of it. Moreover, the transformed

affections—the grace of God at work in one’s flesh and bones—remain alienated from the

affections of our corrupted nature. Thus, in the believer there is a double reality that bodies

165
‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’ §§I.6-7, WJW, 1:273-274.
166
‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’ §I.7, WJW, 1:274.
167
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §II.6, WJW, 1:288.
168
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, III,’ §III.5, WJW, 1:523.
169
‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’ §I.10, WJW, 1:310.
The Witness of the Spirit 74

forth in the affective life: a real union with God in the Spirit that shows itself in the holy tempers

and a perpetual reminder of one’s fallen nature in the antithesis of the evil tempers.

The experience of conscience includes this inner struggle in discerning whence come

one’s affections. 170 Wesley does not shy away from describing the intensity with which evil

tempers afflict the holy life. The view, then, admits: (a) a view of the Christian life as an

ongoing struggle to listen to the Spirit’s witness and (b) consequently admits that the

experience of conscience entails varying degrees. 171 The ‘good conscience’ denotes the

experience of only holy tempers: this is godly sincerity or pure religion, an experience reserved

for entire sanctification.172 What is the common form of conscience is a ‘tender conscience’ in

Wesley’s view. 173 The tender conscience describes the Christian’s sensitivity to the whole

gamut of the affective life. What one does and fails to do is made plain in the inward witness.

Wesley says that the tender conscience entails, first, a faith obedience to the Word of God and,

second, a ‘constant cry of the soul’ to God for mercy.174 This condition is the foundation for

growth in the holy life. It describes the recognition of, on the one hand, human striving to

justify themselves by their own works and, on the other hand, the abject failure of all attempts

to do so. It captures the sense of dependence on God alone for salvation, in whom one works

out one’s salvation in fear and trembling. 175 When one falls from this condition, they sink into

the ‘hardened conscience,’ which is the same as the presumption of the natural mind.176 The

struggle of the Christian life is to face the experience of conscience and to preserve the

tenderness of conscience.

170
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §III.3, WJW, 1:322.
171
‘On Conscience,’ §§10-17, WJW, 3:484-487.
172
‘On Conscience,’ §10, WJW, 3:484; on sincerity, see below §6.3.
173
‘On Conscience,’ §11, WJW, 3:484-485.
174
‘On Conscience,’ §11, WJW, 3:484.
175
‘On Conscience,’ §12, WJW, 3:485; ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §II.1, WJW, 3:203.
176
‘On Conscience,’ §13, WJW, 3:485-486; ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §I, WJW, 1:251-255.
The Witness of the Spirit 75

What the experience of conscience does for Wesley is capture the ordinary sensation of

the Spirit’s witness in the heart of the believer. It draws out the proper relation and connection

between the work God does for us in justification and the work God does in us through

sanctification, so that the former is seen as the master teaching and foundation for the latter. 177

His view yields the possibility within which the discernment of sin and righteousness occurs.

Wesley sees acutely that one’s consciousness of sin occurs within a life of struggle:

The sum of all is this: there are in every person, even after he is justified, two contrary
principles, nature and grace, termed by St. Paul the ‘flesh’ and the ‘spirit’. Hence
although even babes in Christ are sanctified, yet it is only in part. In a degree, according
to the measure of their faith, they are spiritual; yet in a degree they are carnal.
Accordingly, believers are continually exhorted to watch against the flesh, as well as
the world and the devil. And to this agrees the constant experience of the children of
God. While they feel this witness in themselves this witness in themselves they feel a
will not wholly resigned to the will of God. They know they are in him, and yet find an
heart ready to depart from him, a proneness to evil in many instances, and a
backwardness to that which is good.178
The Christian experience of conscience and Wesley’s claim that in every Christian there are

‘two contrary principles’ go hand in hand: the former is the expression of the latter. Thus, this

insight yields the essential framework within which Wesley’s elaborations on the doctrine of

sin exist. The reality of the Christian life demands acceptance that in this life one is

simultaneously justified and sinner. 179

In summary, given this qualification, for Wesley the experience of the Spirit’s direct

witness is ontologically and thus existentially basic, informing all the faculties of the soul,

including self-knowledge and conscience. Indeed, just self-knowledge is the recognition of our

ungodliness. Conversely, the Spirit witnesses to the true source of all holiness: it is God’s work

to illuminate God’s creatures, and only in the light of illumination can creaturely life exist.

Against the enthusiasts, enlightened or vulgar, Wesley appeals to the indirect witness of the

177
‘The New Birth,’ §1, WJW, 2:187; ‘Justification by Faith,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:187.
178
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §V.1, WJW, 1:332-333.
179
For an alternative view, see Colón-Emeric, Wesley, Aquinas, and Christian Perfection, 27-29.
The Witness of the Spirit 76

Spirit, the pressure of the feeling of the internal ought, to describe the direct witness of the

Spirit: both are the Spirit’s work, but in the indirect witness, since it is bound up with things

like growth in holiness and works of grace and mercy, there is an experiential visibility on

which one can rely. The examination of the radical reorientation of the faculties offers a key

distinction to be held closely as this argument presses deeper into Wesley’s understanding of

sin. The distinction is this: the consciousness of sin rests on the logic of the Spirit’s witness to

Christ. Consciousness of sin is analogous to the description of bad action, vice, and immorality,

but qualitatively different because it is only the Spirit who illuminates the reality of sin to the

fallen mind. Holiness is thus altogether different from morality. Holiness means living with

two contrary principles and cultivating a tender conscience. The argument has presented

Wesley’s view of experience of conscience prior to his description of faith because conscience

provides the context within which faith subsists and finds meaning. The sense of God-with-us

that conscience attests to is that to which faith is directed. Thus, this argument is poised to

address faith as a power of spiritual sensation in the next section.

5. Wesley’s Understanding of Faith, Power, and Spiritual Sensation

So far, this chapter presents Wesley’s doctrine of illumination rooted in the person and

work of the Holy Spirit. The preceding elucidation of Wesley’s views regarding the Holy

Spirit’s witness, our experience of this witness, and the nature of the Christian conscience

anticipate an exposition of his view of faith. For Wesley, the sheer gift of faith is also a power

of the redeemed intellect to see the world ordered to God. 180 The words of Christ are a useful

heuristic for understanding Wesley’s position: ‘It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless’

(Jn. 6.63).181 His use of the language of spiritual sensation captures this redeemed vision. As a

power gifted by the Spirit’s presence, faith’s quality as a gift, faith’s relation to the senses, and

180
Wesley, ‘Justification by Faith,’ §IV.2, WJW, 1:194.
181
ENNT, Jn. 6.63.
The Witness of the Spirit 77

the proper location of the cognitive quality of faith all fall into their proper place. It is, therefore,

a power and a faculty given to the person in grace.182 This mode of expressing faith as

experienced plays a crucial role in Wesley’s understanding of one’s consciousness of sin. 183

Namely, only through the powers of faith, that is, spiritual sensation, can one know themselves

as sinner or their world as fallen.184

It is imperative to underscore Wesley’s view of faith as a sheer gift. His commitment

to the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone is the assumption of all his

discussion of spiritual sensation and faith as a power. 185 Accordingly, the remit of justifying

faith is the ungodly and the blind.186 There are no prerequisites or preconditions to the gift of

faith: the consequence of this applies to spiritual sensation as well. 187 It is tempting to consider

the ‘eyes of faith’ as a quality intrinsic or connatural with human life that enables one to

perceive the goodness of God. So conceived, spiritual sensation describes God’s resuscitation

of a quality of human life which was there all along. The doctrine of justification demands that

this be rejected: as a matter of faith spiritual sensation must be categorically distinct from fallen

human capacities. 188 Faith is a work of grace: it is given to the ungodly, and it becomes theirs

182
It was predictably thanks to Wesley’s mother Susanna to break him free from his preoccupation with the
cognitive dimension of faith, documented in their correspondence, see Matthews, ‘“Religion and Reason
Joined,”’ 120-160.
183
For a review of this debate, see above n2.
184
In the debate surrounding Wesley’s doctrine of the spiritual senses, the principal error lies in the continued
attempt to ply an alternative framework not as a conceptual tool for articulating Wesley’s interpretation of the
Scriptures but rather as a condition for the integrity of Wesley’s position. Whether this condition be seen in
Locke (Brantley, Mealey), Browne (Crutcher), or Aristotle (Matthews), the order of thought misinterprets
Wesley’s position. It is undeniable that Wesley does make use of a catalogue of philosophical tools, but these
are deployed on the basis of a categorical distinction between the life-act of faith and the life of the faithless
and the ungodly. The principle of justification by grace through faith alone is and remains the master teaching
in Wesley’s heart religion. Wesley’s view makes far more sense as an extension of magisterial Protestant
concerns than an integration of empiricist philosophies with Anglican theology. One may plunder such other
views as analogues—as is the case with this argument’s attention to the Cambridge Platonist theology—but
only on the condition that faith is categorically distinct from and transfigures human life.
185
‘Justification by Faith,’ §III.1, WJW, 1:190.
186
‘Justification by Faith,’ §III.2, WJW, 1:191.
187
‘Justification by Faith,’ §III.2, WJW, 1:191.
188
‘Justification by Faith,’ §IV.2, WJW, 1:194.
The Witness of the Spirit 78

insofar as they look with gratitude on the One who gives faith. 189 When Wesley distinguishes

between justification and sanctification, what God does ‘for us’ and ‘in us,’ the former is the

condition of the latter. 190 This principle must be applied to the logic of the power of faith as

spiritual sensation. To understand Wesley’s position, one cannot let such description slide into

the language of something native in human nature that allows them to transcend their ungodly

state on their own, and—this must be underscored—no Lockean, Brownean, Aristotelian, or

Platonist epistemological analogue may be permitted as a necessary antecedent condition of

Wesley’s view of faith. No, faith is a work of grace; thus, to speak of the power of faith, one

speaks of the faithfulness of God who dwells with the ungodly to allow them to see as God

sees.

Only with this view in hand can one proceed to Wesley’s discussion of faith as spiritual

sensation. Wesley’s most sustained treatment of faith, spiritual sensation, and their dynamics

is in his apology to some of his more enlightened critics in the Appeals to Men of Reason and

Religion.191 The text has become a locus classicus for understanding Wesley’s view of the

spiritual senses:

Now faith … is … the demonstrative evidence of things unseen, the supernatural

evidence of things invisible, not perceivable by eyes of flesh, or by any of our natural
senses or faculties. Faith is that divine evidence whereby the spiritual man discerneth
God and the things of God. It is with regard to the spiritual world what sense is with
regard to the natural. It is the spiritual sensation of every soul that is born of God.192
The passage must be read considering the ontological priority of the Spirit: sensory immediacy

of the invisible is not shoe-horned into the picture, rather it is primary though hampered by

sin.193 This identification of the power of faith is accompanied by an analogy with the senses.

189
‘Justification by Faith,’ §IV.6, WJW, 1:196.
190
‘The New Birth,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:187.
191
An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, WJW, 11:37-94.
192
An Earnest Appeal, §6, WJW, 11:46, emphasis added.
This is the implicit reasoning of the majority of analyses of Wesley’s theological epistemology in general and
193

of the spiritual senses in particular, with the notable exception of the Crutcher’s ‘“The Crucible of Life.”’
The Witness of the Spirit 79

This analogy suggests that here too, Wesley operates within the perspective of experience and

declines the doctrine of innate ideas.194 For Wesley, there is no tension wherein the sensation

of the invisible—for example, the assurance of the Spirit, the conviction of sin, the intervention

of angels and demons, and the holy tempers and affections—are any less real than ordinary

sensation. Moreover, such an expansion of one’s understanding draws one closer to the unity

of reality. In this way, the sense of faith restores a sense of the spiritual depth in the world, and

the ubiquity of God’s presence. 195

Therefore, from within faith, Wesley says: ‘The wise and gracious Governor of the

worlds, both visible and invisible, … hath appointed faith to supply the defect of sense.’196

Through faith one perceives the orders of the new creation:

I mean, the spiritual world, … the kingdom of God in the soul of man. … The Holy
Spirit prepares us for his inward kingdom, by removing the veil from our heart, and
enabling us to know ourselves as we are known of him. … But all this conviction
implies a species of faith; being ‘an evidence of things not seen;’ nor indeed possible
to be seen or known, till God reveals them unto us.197
Within the life of faith, that is, within the embrace of the Holy Spirit, one finds the world

transformed. All true knowledge is refracted through God and exists in God for Wesley.198

194
Wesley, An Earnest Appeal, §7, WJW, 11:46-47.
195
‘On the Omnipresence of God,’ WJW, 4:40-47.
196
‘On the Discoveries of Faith,’ §4, WJW, 4:30. There is a question here of how Wesley thinks about the
relation between nature and supernature. Wesley retains the distinction, even if in the interest of a more refined
theological approach one may with otherwise. Knudson, it is safe to assume, was all too eager to leave Wesley
behind in the name of Schleiermacher: ‘Schleiermacher and Ritschl took the empirical principle implicit in
Methodism and gave to it the most thorough theological development it had yet received. Their conclusions
differ in many respects from our traditional theology, but in their fundamental thinking they stood far closer to
the true genius of Methodism than did the earlier Methodist theologians; and that Doctor Sheldon has a to a
considerable degree incorporated their standpoint in his theology is one of the permanent debts we owe him.’
Albert C. Knudson, ‘Henry C. Sheldon – Theologian,’ The Methodist Review, 108 (1925), 190.
197
Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith,’ §12, WJW, 4:34.
198
Wesley preferred to contemplate God’s omniscience and omnipresence. These are the only attributes that
receive their own treatment in the Sermons, and while the role of omnipresence may be felt in the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit, his approach suggests also that he flirts with Norris’s strange doctrines of omniformity and
omnipresence. On Norris’s doctrine of omniformity, drawn from his synthesis of Henry More and Nicholas
Malebranche, see Ideal & Intelligible World, 1:223-230; cf. Wesley, ‘On the Omnipresence of God,’ WJW,
4:40-47.
The Witness of the Spirit 80

Faith’s ‘office begins where that of [natural] sense ends.’199 Wesley strings together the order

of those things which faith unveils, beginning with the self, then the ministry of the angels,

then God’s identity and purpose, then eternal life, and before judgement and the new creation,

faith, ‘discovers, likewise, the souls of unholy men.’200 True self-knowledge of oneself as

sinner is internal to the logic of faith. The fact that spiritual sensation overlays natural sensation

does not annul the natural. Instead, this shift is the fulfilment of knowledge and, importantly,

the natural sense persists by necessity, since persons are creatures given to till and work the

soil of God’s creation.

One may draw the language of the witness of the spirit into this discussion. It is these

powers whose exercise are entailed in Wesley’s understanding of ‘witness of our own spirit,’

that is, the indirect witness of the Holy Spirit. The precise manner of the Holy Spirit’s witness

can be acquisitively known by the discovery of love, joy, peace, and the rest of the Spirit’s

fruits, but the manner eludes any direct explanation. One knows the Spirit’s witness by the

Spirit’s effects according to the rule of the Word. Wesley says: ‘For they dwell in Christ, and

Christ in them. They are joined unto the Lord in one Spirit. They are ingrafted into Him as

branches into the vine. They are united, as members to their head, in a manner which words

cannot express, nor could it before enter their hearts to conceive.’201 Wesley has two underlying

assumptions that grant stability to the idea of knowing the root from which one springs by their

fruit. His first is christological: ‘They who are of Christ, who abide in him, “have crucified the

flesh with its affections and lusts.”’202 That is to say, one’s membership within the body of

Christ is effective: by virtue of Christ’s limitless potency, those in Christ change. The change

199
‘On the Discoveries of Faith,’ §9, WJW, 4:33.
200
‘On the Discoveries of Faith,’ §§6-11, esp. 9, WJW, 4:31-34, 33.
201
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:235.
202
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:236
The Witness of the Spirit 81

is not thrust upon them, but to resist the change is ostensibly to lose one’s place in Christ. 203

This change occurs first in the body with the affections and then, by consequence, the actions

of the person in faith. His second premise is pneumatological: ‘They now “walk after the

Spirit,” both in their hearts and lives. … And by him they are led into every holy desire, into

every divine and heavenly temper, till every thought which arises in their heart is holiness unto

the Lord.’204 That is to say, one’s continual encounter with the Spirit, as One other than oneself,

guides, directs, and persuades one in the way of holiness.

At this point, the argument returns to the issue of experience’s shareability. Earlier the

point was made that grounded in the Spirit’s person and work, the category of experience is

universally intelligible.205 The perspective shifts here to the subjective. Wesley assumes that

experience is public. The basis of this view is grounded in the availability of affections and the

correlation of actions to the heart. Affections are public by virtue of their intrinsic correlation

with action. Moreover, the affections attest to the relation of one to God.206 Therefore,

subjective experience finds its stability precisely in this intensely subjective encounter,

participation, and transformation before God and one’s neighbours.207 For example, it is

important that after establishing the existential basis of holiness in the first three discourses on

the Sermon on the Mount—the principles of which are entirely a matter of the holy tempers—

the next discourse defends the inherent sociality of Christianity, not as a defence of an objection

This is Wesley’s argument against the imputation of Christ’s righteousness in ‘The Lord Our Righteousness,’
203

WJW, 1:449-465.
204
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §§I.3-4, WJW, 1:236.
205
See above, §2.3.
206
Accordingly, the following comment is characteristic of Wesley’s view, see ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’
§23, WJW, 70: ‘[Experiencing the love of God] his actions will spring from the same source as his words, even
from the abundance of a loving heart.’
207
Dreyer, ‘Faith and Experience in the Theology of John Wesley,’ 21.
The Witness of the Spirit 82

but as the necessary extension of Wesley’s view. 208 Such a formal example has direct, material

consequences. Wesley writes:

He to whom this character belongs, and he alone, is a Christian. To him the one, eternal,
omnipresent, all-perfect Spirit, is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. Not his
Creator only, but his Sustainer, his Preserver, his Governor; yea, his Father, his
Saviour, Sanctifier, and Comforter. This God is his God and his all, in time and in
eternity. It is the benevolence springing from this root which is pure and undefiled
religion. … Let all your thoughts, words, and actions spring from this.209
From this subjective point of view, one is led back to the same position as before. One never

thinks, wills, feels, or experiences alone. The abyss of isolation is a kind of relation to the world

downstream of the life of sin, where one closes oneself off from others, and even this is still

illusory.210

In summary, the idea of spiritual sensation as the rational power of faith becomes the

way fallen creatures perceive, apprehend, and judge God’s ways with the world, including sin

and its effects. They do this through the grace of the Holy Spirit, and as grace on the Holy

Spirit’s terms. This is neither a ‘natural capacity’ or an ‘innate ideas.’ Such errors are category

mistakes: faith is exclusively God’s work in us. Consequently, there is a need to prune the

unhelpful prioritisation of philosophical analogues to explain Wesley’s view. By following

Wesley’s operant theology, his distinctions can be appreciated.211 This view transfigures one’s

208
The overall importance of Wesley’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount has perhaps been
underappreciated. These discourses distil the core of Wesley’s practical divinity. Indeed, it is hard to find any
of Wesley’s key-concepts missing from these sprawling discourses. Alluding to the programmatic vision of the
‘Preface,’ Wesley writes: ‘The Son of God, who came from heaven, is here showing us the way to heaven, to
the place which he hath prepared for us, the glory he had before the world began,’ in ‘Upon Our Lord’s
Sermon on the Mount, I,’ §3, WJW, 1:470; cf. ‘Preface,’ §5: ‘I want to know one thing, the way to heaven—
how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he
came from heaven,’ WJW, 1:105. Outler notes the allusion at the point, but there is to-date no sustained
engagement on the significance of Wesley’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount within his theology
and, more immediately, to the general interpretation of the topography of the Sermons. Wesley’s commentary
needs to be compared with John Norris, Practical Discourses Upon the Beatitudes of Our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, 4 vols., 15th ed. (London: Edmund Parker, 1728).
209
Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §§24-25, WJW, 4:71.
210
For a useful comparison of the relation between individuality and sociality contemporary with Wesley, see
Butler, Sermons, S. 1, ‘Upon Human Nature, the Social Nature of Man,’ 17-25.
211
This interpretation also points to the influence of the Cambridge Platonists by focusing on Wesley.
The Witness of the Spirit 83

lifeworld, as Wesley says: ‘I doubt whether the very words, right and wrong, according to the

Christian system, do not imply, in the very idea of them, imply agreement and disagreement to

the will and word of God.’212 The result of this exposition displays an understanding that the

Christian notion of sin is a reality known already within the life of faith. To know one’s

sinfulness and to see its malaise in the world is already to find oneself within the grace of God.

6. Illumination and the Boundary of Reason

This chapter argues that in Wesley the vantage point of faith is the condition of sin’s

intelligibility. It demonstrates how understanding faith within the Holy Spirit’s work clarifies

Wesley’s view. Further, seeing faith in this pneumatological framework sets faith in its proper

theological location. The Spirit gives life and conforms one’s lifeless flesh. This sense of the

experience of faith bakes itself into Wesley’s operant theology and, this thesis argues, makes

better sense of his refusal to allow anything more than the slightest common ground between

‘true Christianity’ and morality. This distinction impacts how he articulates the intelligibility

of sin, death, and the devil.

Following this claim there is one final observation worth making: Wesley’s view of the

redeemed intellect remains limited within the horizon of everyday life. In essence, for Wesley

the negative aspect of his doctrine of illumination entails an awareness of the limits of human

reason.213 Wesley’s theology is self-aware of the limits of creaturely reason: all reasoning about

what sin is and what it is like occurs as a finite creature within the embrace of God. 214 The

Spirit’s illuminating activity is like a light exposing hidden crevices in a dusty room: it unveils

the limitations of human life, especially intellectual life. In their ordinary condition, one lives

212
Wesley, ‘On Conscience,’ §12, WJW, 3:485.
For example, see Wesley, ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §II.8, WJW, [Link] ‘Even with the help
213

of revelation he knows exceedingly little. But without it he would know abundantly less. And nothing with any
certainty.’
214
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §I.20, WJW, 1:346; cf. ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §17, WJW, 4:67.
The Witness of the Spirit 84

comfortably incapable and insensible of the experience of faith. 215 The experience of the Holy

Spirit discloses the regenerate’s absolute dependence within the field of God’s action in history.

The ‘vast and mighty change’ wrought by the Holy Spirit that precedes creaturely

understanding throws down the foundation for the movement from intuitive love of God to

discursive, illuminated reasoning. 216 This growth restores the believer to their proper place in

the orders of creation. Spiritual senses reawaken, coming alive within the life of the Holy Spirit,

reforming one’s perception of reality around the apocalypse of God. The fact that this is God’s

work alone forces the believer to reflect upon the implicit recognition that this work is not

one’s own. Illuminated reason unveils the limitations of creaturely reason: it does so not only

with respect to one’s ordinary condition as a finite being but also finitude’s perversion in the

one’s fallen condition.217 This idea was introduced earlier in the occasional references to

Wesley’s occasional phrase, ‘the presumption of the natural mind.’218 Making this implicit

awareness explicit through humility and repentance become essential nourishment for spiritual

growth. Thus, it is necessary to examine how Wesley treats the limitations of reason and show

how this impacts the shape of Wesley’s doctrine of sin.

The experience of the ‘natural’ self, the self without grace (but, importantly, unveiled

through grace) offers a way of untangling how Wesley views the limitations of human reason.

In this ordinary condition, one finds the value of creaturely limitations. In this faithless

condition, the human person is aware of their precariousness, individually and socially. Wesley

writes: ‘Mistake as well as ignorance is, in our present state, inseparable from humanity. Every

215
‘On Living without God,’ §8, WJW, 4:171-172.
216
‘Witness of the Spirit, I,’ §II.5, WJW, 1:279.
In this there is some parallel with Stoker’s analysis following Max Scheler: ‘Those with a troubled
217

conscience, in their experience of guilt, may suddenly obtain a real insight into their wickedness, into their
conflicted relationship to the whole world, to God and His creation.’ Stoker, Conscience, 220.
218
Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’ §II.1, WJW, 1:277
The Witness of the Spirit 85

child of man is in a thousand mistakes, and is liable to fresh mistakes every moment.’219

Further, Wesley explains that this liability of the intellect to mistaken judgement distorts action,

‘a mistake in judgement may occasion a mistake in practice, yea naturally leads thereto.’220 For

Wesley, this propensity to error describes the ordinary condition of human life. The limitation

of knowledge, ‘abundantly narrower than common people imagine, or men of learning are

willing to acknowledge,’ constantly presses against one’s curiosity.221 But, for the most part,

‘the present knowledge of man is exactly adapted to his present wants.’222 Wesley writes:

It is sufficient to warn us of, and to preserve us from, most of the evils to which we are
now exposed; and to procure us whatever is necessary for us in this our infant state of
existence. We know enough of the nature and sensible qualities of things that are round
about us, so far as they are subservient to the health and strength of our bodies; … we
know just as much as is conducive to our living comfortably in this world.223
Reason’s limited place has a sufficiency for ordinary life, from domestic to civic affairs, as

Wesley shows in ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered.’224 To recognise one’s finitude

is a signal feature of prevenient grace. This recognition, however fragmentary, in the

unregenerate life, is the gateway to repentance.225 Insofar as all people are bound to know their

own limitation, this recognition draws one into the gracious sovereignty of God’s unfailing

providence: ‘God has indeed provided for the execution of his own decree in the very principles

of our nature.’226 The consequence of this fragile situation is not only that human knowledge,

while sufficient to its immediate end, is limited, but also that this limitation is a means of grace.

219
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.2, WJW 2:406.
220
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.2, WJW 2:406.
221
‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge,’ §2, WJW, 2:568.
222
‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge,’ §3, WJW, 2:569.
223
‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge,’ §3, WJW, 2:569.
224
‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered,’ §I, WJW, 2:589-593.
225
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §22, WJW, 4:70.
226
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.5, WJW, 4:407.
The Witness of the Spirit 86

As ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge’ unfolds, Wesley brings the reader through

a reflection on God’s own life, God’s creative, providential, and salutary, addressing at pace

related aspects of creation. Despite the inherent limitation of one’s knowledge, Wesley still

maintains that this limitation brings meaning to creatureliness. He writes: ‘Therefore it is, that

by the very constitution of their nature, the wisest of men “know” but “in part.” And how

amazingly small a part do they know, either of the Creator, or of his works!’ It cannot be

overlooked that here Wesley attributes this limitation to the very essence of human nature, even

noting that while such a theme is both ‘very needful’ and ‘very unpleasing.’227 These

boundaries are an aspect even of Adamic perfection. Wesley writes: ‘Yet his knowledge was

limited, as he was a creature: Ignorance, therefore, was inseparable from him; but error was

not; it does not appear that he was mistaken in any thing. But he was capable of mistaking, of

being deceived, although not necessitated to it.’228 Wesley’s practical reflection on the use of

contemplating one’s limitation emphasises the commonality of humility, a confidence in God,

and a ‘lesson of resignation,’ by which one learns to yield to God’s will.229

Considering this limitation of reason, there are two points to note. First, this propensity

to sin and error carries implications for theological speech. Thus, this perspective motivates

Wesley’s descriptive as well as anti-speculative outlook.230 Wesley’s outlook is ever on the

particular: on articulating the Christian faith as experience by each individual, recognizing the

uniqueness of that person, and the polyphony of those expressions. He strives to represent the

unique work of God in every human life without making each story an iteration of the same.

He strives to represent Christ’s work in each person anew, and one finds new words within the

227
‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge,’ §4, WJW, 2:569.
228
‘End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.3, WJW, 2:474.
‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge,’ §IV.3, WJW, 2:585; ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, II,’
229

§I.4, WJW, 1:409.

See above, §1.1.b. This perspective impacts Wesley’s stance towards the doctrine of the inheritance of sin,
230

and his view on the origin of evil. See below, §4.2.

The Witness of the Spirit 87

One Word. The disposition of the Christian is one of earnest searching: striving to maintain

one’s conversation with the Spirit. Bound in the Spirit, one may appeal to the unity of the holy

tempers—‘Is thine heart right? Is thine heart right with mine?’—but this unity never excludes

the particularity of one’s experience of Christ.231 Indeed, it is in confrontation with the sheer

vastness of creation, a vastness opened by the empiricists outlook, that Wesley’s chastening of

what may be known comes by way of the fecundity of God and God’s works.232 The meaning

of this search for language in the wonder of creation points to the limits of what it means to be

a creature. It gestures towards the horizon of finitude, where Wesley may find himself at home

among figures as diverse as Aquinas and Bonhoeffer.233 One will not find an appeal to a set of

abstract principles, whether of the divine life in se or of morality. Instead, Wesley describes

the Christian life as a constant reach from the pressure of everyday life to the Scriptures, and

from the Scriptures back to everyday life.234 The movement between these two is precisely the

movement of the Spirit in which one participates by grace through faith alone. Reason, limited,

does not allow one to step outside of this movement and neither does tradition. Instead, the

posture of Wesley’s theological outlook as ‘practical divinity’ eschews abstraction in favour of

thinking conformed by humility before the will of God.

Second, given the limitations of reason and the forcefulness with which illumination is

at work within Wesley’s theological reasoning, one may see perhaps more clearly Wesley’s

relation to the Scriptures.235 Wesley is, like Luther, a theologian of the Word: ‘Let me be homo

231
‘Catholic Spirit,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:82-83.
232
‘God’s Approbation of His Works,’ §2, WJW, 2:387.
233
On Aquinas, see Emmanuel Falque, ‘Afterward: St. Thomas Aquinas and the Entrance of God into
Philosophy: Theological Limit and Phenomenological Finitude,’ Saint Bonaventure and the Entrance of God
into Theology: The Breviloquium as a Summa Theologica (New York: Franciscan Institute Press, 2018).
234
Crutcher, ‘“The Crucible of Life,”’ 128-138.
235
For an extended study of Wesley’s doctrine of scripture, see Scott Jones, John Wesley’s Conception and Use
of Scripture (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2016); cf. Joel B. Green & David F. Watson (editors), Wesley,
Wesleyans, and Reading the Bible as Scripture (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012), 3-64.
The Witness of the Spirit 88

unius libri.’236 Notice this well-known phrase is a petition—‘let me be.’ To move within the

grammar of Christian existence is to inhabit the Word; it is to live its language in the common

life of faith. Wesley writes: ‘This [the Word] “is a lantern unto a” Christian’s “feet, and a light

in all his paths”.’237 The Scriptures, the voice of the living Word of God, are the grand

assumption of Wesley’s Sermons (and, more widely, his theology). They provide the language

and logic that Wesley voices. Yet there needs to be due recognition of the way the Scriptures

are assumed. This is so, for one reason among many, because the Scriptures offer stability in

an unstable world outside of the illusory foundation of oneself. The Word speaks and the Spirit

witnesses within the community of faith: it is in the practice of ‘searching the Scriptures’ in

which one’s life finds intelligibility.238

This section, in summary, points to the negative aspect of Wesley’s use of the doctrine

of illumination: not only does the Spirit enlighten the mind, but this entails that one’s mind is

and remains limited in its creatureliness. Thinking begins within the middle of everyday life.

For Wesley, this acknowledgement and embrace of the limitations proper to finitude highlights

the noetic limitations of human persons. These limits are disclosed and fulfilled by the Holy

Spirit, but not destroyed. One knows by experience through the Holy Spirit that the limitations

that seemed to infringe on one’s desires were, in reality, divine gifts and means of grace to lead

one deeper in the heights, depths, and breadth of the holy love of God for the world. These

236
Wesley, Preface, §5, WJW, 1:104-105. Wesley, as a theologian of the First Epistle of St John—the
‘compendium of all the Holy Scriptures’—differs from Luther, theologian of the Psalms, see Wesley, J&D, 18
July 1765, WJW, 22:13; J&D, 9 Nov. 1772, WJW, 22:352. Robert W. Wall, ‘John’s John: A Wesleyan
Theological Reading of 1 John,’ WTJ, 46, no. 2 (2011), 105-141; cf. Fred Sanders, John Wesley on the
Christian Life: The Heart Renewed in Love (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013), 103-130; on Luther, see Brian Brock,
Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture, 165-237. It is helpful to understand
Wesley within (though downstream of) focus on the Johannine corpus, see Paul Cefalu, The Johannine
Renaissance in Early Modern English Literature and Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
237
Wesley, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit,’ §6, WJW, 1:303.
238
The means of grace—prayer, searching the Scriptures, and receiving the Lord’s Supper—are verbs, denoting
less an attention to what mediates grace and more to how, to the formation of a life transformed within the
Word, see ‘The Means of Grace,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:381; Maddox, ‘John Wesley—'A Man of One Book,’’ Wesley,
Wesleyans, and Reading the Bible as Scripture, 12-18; cf. Collins, ‘Scripture as a Means of Grace,’ Wesley,
Wesleyans, and Reading the Bible as Scripture, 22-24.
The Witness of the Spirit 89

limits are common to the situation of all humanity and, in the light of faith which unveils sin,

become a source of one’s estrangement from the world, alienation from God, and twisted

solidarity with the devil. The consequence of this perspective is that Wesley’s theology is: (a)

descriptive, (b) anti-speculative, and (c) orbiting around the Scriptures in search of language.

7. Conclusion: Wesley and the Transformation of the Ordinary

This chapter argues that Wesley’s account of divine illumination overflows from a

radical priority of the Holy Spirit’s work and the irruptive event of the new birth. The argument

has shown that there is enduring value not in explaining away Wesley’s enthusiasm but

celebrating it by seeing it as a courageous endeavour to take the transformative work of the

Holy Spirit with deadly seriousness. The Spirit’s universal abiding presence in prevenient grace

binds humanity in common. The Spirit’s advent in convincing, justifying, regenerating, and

sanctifying grace exalts the irreducible value of each person’s individual experience. The world

and the human soul are saturated with grace, forming the ground and source of even humanity’s

most basic faculties. It appears that, for Wesley, there is nothing natural about ordinary life. A

host of implications of this pneumatological orientation follow, reorientating how one might

consider Wesley’s reliance on experience, his articulation of consciousness and conscience, his

deployment of the spiritual senses, and how these all relate to the continuity of ordinary life

within the Christian life. In all this, one does well to think of Wesley’s approach as soteriology

as first theology. All theological reasoning, by virtue of the illuminated reason itself, begins in

the wake of the new birth. This starting point frames Wesley’s account in the following

chapters.

In conclusion, this chapter argues that the witness of the Spirit captures Wesley’s

ambitious and controversial view of divine illumination. In consequence of this, the idea of sin

resides within an insider’s conversation: the power of faith enables the perception of

faithlessness. Moreover, this chapter gestures at the location in which the doctrine of sin finds
The Witness of the Spirit 90

itself, that is, as a reflection upon the call to continual repentance in the holy life. This basic

idea clears the ground to approach Wesley’s description of sin. The next chapter examines the

doctrine of sin itself by exploring how the reality of faithlessness, the root from which all sin

springs, enters reality, beginning with the brute fact of sin as it appears in reality and moving

to its original explanation in the doctrines of original sin and the Fall.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 91

Chapter 3:
‘Unbelief—that evil root’: John Wesley and the Origin of Sin

1. Introduction

With Wesley’s doctrine of illumination in hand, it is now possible to understand his

doctrine of sin, beginning with the doctrines of the Fall and original sin.1 The preceding chapter

argued that the intelligibility of sin is contingent upon the illuminating grace of the Holy Spirit.

To know sin is to exist within God’s saving grace.2 Reflection on the fact of sin begins from

within the grammar of Christian existence, in continual repentance within the means of grace.3

Thus, Wesley’s doctrine of original sin can be differentiated between reflection upon the Fall

to which the Scriptures attest and the experience of the existential and cosmological situation

of fallen humanity. This and the next chapter follow this differentiation, focusing in this chapter

on the Fall and in the next turning to the Fall’s consequences. This chapter shows that Wesley

interprets the Fall to yield an understanding of sin as an organic process of decay that begins

in an originary faithlessness and ends in idolatry. 4

1
Contemporary reception of John Wesley’s doctrine of sin in these interpreters is addressed in the introduction,
see §1.1. For an alternative approach to Wesley’s doctrine of sin, see Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’
137-190; Hyson, ‘Original Sin as Privation,’ 65-83; Tyson, ‘Sin, Self, and Society;’ 77-89, and (older but still
useful) Blaising, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Original Sin;’ cf. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 73-83; Collins,
The Theology of John Wesley, 57-72; Runyon, The New Creation, 19-25.
2
As suggested in the preceding chapter, it is entirely deliberate and by no means merely pragmatic that the
Sermons on Several Occasions are arranged the way they are, beginning with ‘Salvation by Faith’ and a
catalogue of sermons on soteriology—Wesley’s theological vision is thicker than a desire to remain practical.
See Outler’s John Wesley’s Sermons: An Introduction (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), 39-63.
3
This is introduced in §2.3 and will return below in §6.5.
4
In emphasising the origin of sin in faithlessness there are strong parallels to be made with Calvin and Luther.
See Calvin, Institutes, 1: 2.1.4: ‘A further definition [of the first sin], however, must be derived from the kind
of temptation Moses describes. When, by the subtlety of the devil, the woman faithlessly abandoned the
command of God, her Fall obviously had its origin in disobedience. This Paul confirms when he says, that, by
the disobedience of one man, all were destroyed. At the same time, it is observed, that the first man revolted
against the authority of God, not only in allowing himself to be ensnared by the wiles of the devil, but also by
despising the truth, and turning aside to lies. Assuredly, when the word God is despised, all reverence for Him
is gone. Hence infidelity was at the root of the revolt. From infidelity, again, sprang ambition and pride,
together with ingratitude; because Adam, by longing for more than was allotted to him, manifested contempt
for the great liberality with which God had enriched him. … In fine, infidelity opened the door to ambition,
and ambition was the parent of rebellion, casting off the fear of God, and giving free vent to his lust.’ Luther,
more emphatically, orients the Fall around unbelief. See, LW, [Link] ‘Unbelief is the source of all sins; when
Satan brought about this unbelief by driving out or corrupting the Word, the rest was easy for him.’
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 92

Framed this way, the condition of faithlessness contains a necessary ambiguity. To

identify a phenomenon’s ambiguity does not recognise its moral neutrality, as if a lack of clarity

suspends value. Ambiguity underscores an instance of contingent complexity that, as a feature

of historical existence estranged from the history of God, unfolds opaquely in existence.5 There

are two features of the ambiguous worth mentioning. First, that which is ambiguous is also

originary: faced with the entanglement of what is created and what is fallen, an agent cannot

accept existence as permanent ambiguity.6 Second, the ambiguous includes within it a tragic

sensibility: the quest to disambiguate by necessity of historical existence will end in further

ambiguity—the finality of ultimate disambiguation is eschatological.7 This chapter shows that

the warrant for recruiting the language of ambiguity is baked into Wesley’s reading of the Fall.

Wesley thinks in terms of images and roots, of mirrors and trees, or of imitation and

5
On this, the most theologically developed use of the term remains Paul Tillich. His use of the term arises first
in the context of his account of ‘actual reason,’ where creaturely reason, a finite quality of being, existence,
and life, is confronted by the infinite in the ‘coincidence of opposites’ (1:81). Ambiguity is refined in the
context of Tillich’s discussion of ‘life:’ invoking the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and actuality
from his existentialist interpretation, one that certainly Wesley would likewise admit, ambiguity demarcates
the mixture of ‘essential and existential elements’ (3:11), or, as he sums up later on: ‘In all life processes an
essential and an existential element, created goodness and estrangement, are merged in such a way that neither
one nor the other is exclusively effective’ (3:107). Tillich may not admit it, but this reconfiguration may allude
to Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian, see Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy: Or, Hellenism and
Pessimism in Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 15-144. The utility of
‘ambiguity’ here is its allowance for the recognition of entanglement of finitude and fallenness within
Wesley’s doctrine of sin. This mixture highlights the demand for the witness of the Spirit to the Word to
disambiguate meaning in existence. See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1951-1963), 1:81-3; 3:11, 30-110.
6
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:78-80; 3:107-110; on the ambiguity of life as originary, i.e., causing (a) anxiety
and (b) forcing activity, see Emmanuel Falque, The Guide to Gethsemane: Anxiety, Suffering, and Death
(Fordham: Fordham University Press, 2019), 10-21; cf. the classic account given by Søren Kierkegaard, The
Concept of Anxiety; Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death.
7
The concept of the tragic as it is deployed here is akin to how Donald M. Mackinnon uses it, denoting the
utility of the tragic at capturing: (a) the negative experience of a desire for a just reality; and (b) that the tragic
does not subvert the finality of the Christ event but accommodates the eschatological remove of the triumph of
the ultimate gospel, see Donald M. Mackinnon, ‘Order and Evil in the Gospel’ and ‘Atonement and Tragedy,’
Borderlands of Theology and Other Essays (London: Lutterworth Press, 1968). Without admitting the
transcendent Fall—an interpretation that would betray Wesley’s belief in its historicity—one may also refer to
Tillich again, see Systematic Theology, 2:36-39. In reception, the theme of the tragic enjoys popularity in
contemporary theology: for example, see Rowan Williams, The Tragic Imagination (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016); Kevin Taylor and Giles Waller (editors), Christian Theology and Tragedy:
Theologians, Tragic Literature, and Tragic Theory (London: Routledge, 2011). The sensibility is
provocatively encapsulated by Blaise Pascal: ‘Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world.’ See Blaise
Pascal, Pensées (New York: Penguin, 1995), §919.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 93

participation. By virtue of envisioning the Fall as a process, having historicity, and taking place

in life, means it is encumbered by ambiguity. Wesley differentiates between the sin of Eve,

shrouded in faithlessness, doubt, and deceit, and the sin of Adam, high-handed, prideful sin in

the obvious sense. Wesley’s reading does not subordinate Eve to Adam but rather situates the

ordeal within a tragic narrative that then becomes his heuristic for thinking about sin akin to a

degenerative illness, as a process of decay: sin begins in faithlessness; sin ends in idolatry.8 If

there is within this frame something distinctive in Wesley’s doctrine of sin and not merely his

approach, it is in the sense of sin within an organic valence, as a graduated process of decay

within the movements of life—an illness as opposed to a disease, in the contemporary sense,

though Wesley does not distinguish these. 9 This chapter offers a thick description of this decay

in the Fall as a way of deepening contemporary understanding of Wesley’s doctrine of original

sin.

The following exposition may be considered a thematic rather than systematic

reconstruction of Wesley’s position.10 There is value in giving focus to this thematic element

of Wesley’s operant theology that does not outright contradict the systematising impulse. But

this account does offer reason to pause. For example, it is commonplace among those who

8
It does not appear that Wesley interprets the narrative of the Fall to pejoratively make women the first to sin.
However, the issue of Wesley’s relation to gender does come emerge. Lancaster takes this issue head on in,
finding in Wesley’s emphasis on unbelief constructive inroads. See Lancaster, ‘Women, Wesley, and Original
Sin,’ 360-72. On this see Phyllis Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in
Early Methodism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Paul W. Chilcote, John Wesley and the
Women Preachers of Early Methodism (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1991); cf. Maddox, Responsible Grace,
72-73.
9
The distinction is to separate the narrow, medical sense of disease as opposed to the wholistic and existential
sense of an illness—e.g., a cancer’s medical definition vis-à-vis the world-altering experience of the person
with cancer. Wesley’s use of sin as disease already carries with it this existential and holistic meaning
exemplified in his Primitive Physik (WJW, 32). See Havi Carell, The Phenomenology of Illness (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016); Maddox, Responsible Grace, 68-72; Maddox, ‘John Wesley on Holistic
Health and Healing,’ Methodist History, 46:1 (2007), 4-33; Madden, ‘Wesley as Adviser on Health and
Healing,’ The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley, edited by Randy Maddox & Jason Vickers (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 176-189; Madden, Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine: Religion,
Medicine, and Culture in John Wesley’s Primitive Physik (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Madden, ‘Medicine on
Demand: John Wesley’s Enlightened Treatment of the Sick,’ Perfecting Perfection: Essays in Honour of
Henry D. Rack, edited by Robert Webster (Cambridge: James Clark & Co. Ltd., 2016) 130-146.
10
Distinguished from Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 10-12.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 94

address Wesley on the origins of sin to move too quickly to the function and priority of pride

within the account. 11 The attention given to pride often comes with an interest in showing

Wesley’s common ground with the Anglican Reformed tradition of the doctrine of sin.

Important as this is, it is an injustice to the full picture of the human situation in sin to rush

headlong into pride.12 These concerns to elaborate the relation of what is commonly recognised

in Wesley’s account of sin—self-will, pride, idolatry, atheism, and love of the world—are

motivated from within the texts themselves. For one thing, pride and idolatry are occasionally

equivocated. Other times pride is subordinated to idolatry, so positing a singular motif that

demarcates a recognizably Wesleyan doctrine of original sin is difficult. In part, this

multivalence is a result of Wesley’s frustratingly successful attempt to think like a Bible: that

is, his attentiveness to the Scriptures and the performativity of his sermons, wherein sin’s

multivalence proffers a host of different ways of articulating the creativity of human

sinfulness.13 Nevertheless, drawing attention to the theme of faithlessness proves valuable.

This chapter begins by situating Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall. As a motif,

faithlessness hovers close to Wesley’s thinking over the course of his career, from his tortured

angst over his own unbelief during his misadventures in Georgia to his late reflections on the

realities of the ‘lowliness of spirits.’14 There are two historical difficulties needing sorted to

11
Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 111, 170. Collins recognises the differentiation of atheism, idolatry,
and pride, but does not engage their relation, see The Theology of John Wesley, 68-70; Williams, John
Wesley’s Theology Today, 49-50.
12
In contemporary debates, contextual theologies helpfully point out that overdetermining the doctrine of sin by
pride perpetuates the situation of the oppressed. Wesley’s account situated as it is within a classical frame,
allows for some nuance, see Lancaster, ‘Women, Wesley, and Original Sin,’ 360-72. For a perspective from
feminist theology, see Rachel Sophia Baard, Sexism and Sin-Talk: Feminist Conversations on the Human
Condition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2019); in process-relational perspective, Marjorie Suchocki,
The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Perspective (New York: Continuum, 1994).
13
On the polyvalence of sin-talk in the Scriptures, see the T&T Clark Companion to the Doctrine of Sin edited
by Keith L. Johnson and David Lauber (London: T&T Clark, 2016). For a historical account of sin and the Fall
in the scriptures, see F. R. Tennant, The Origin and Propagation of Sin (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1901-2); cf. N. P. Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin: A Historical and Critical Study
(London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1927), 1-164.
14
Wesley, ‘The Wilderness State’ and ‘Heaviness Through Manifold Temptations,’ WJW, 2:205-235.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 95

demonstrate the argument that faithlessness is fundamental within Wesley’s doctrine of sin.

First, the use and meaning of the theme needs to be distilled across its developments over the

course of Wesley’s career. Second, the material engagement with Wesley’s descriptions of the

Fall need to be assessed to see whether and in what sense this chapter’s thesis can be sustained.

To these ends, this chapter begins by tracing the use of faithlessness, unbelief and related

concepts used in relation to developments within how Wesley speaks about sin (§3.2). It is

suggested that there is an intrinsic relation between these two threads. Thus, the argument

brings these to bear on how Wesley describes the Fall, contrasting this with the Scripture’s

witness to Edenic perfection. Wesley’s imago dei is thus re-interpreted to speak about the

original faithlessness of the creature, where faith is given by the Holy Spirit in the condition of

Adamic perfection as an existential communion between Adam and Eve and Christ, and then

to its corruption in postlapsarian faithlessness (§3.3). Where faithlessness was once a feature

of created good, an opening in the self within an existence founded in and filled by the Word,

uniquely opening the human to God, now faithlessness becomes corrupted, the foundation

shifts, allowing sin to enter the world (§3.4). Of course, faithlessness does not encompass the

whole of Wesley’s account of the Fall, but it allows the shape of the Fall and, in turn, to provide

a meaning of sin (§3.5). But the Fall is not exclusively a human affair, so there is also a need

to display the cosmic shape of the Fall and original sin from the start (§§3.3.b, 3.6). In the end,

this chapter repackages Wesley’s account of the Fall and the doctrine of original sin by

attending to the dynamism at the heart of his account: the movement from faithlessness to pride

expressed in Eve and Adam and manifested in all human beings. There will be mention of

Wesley’s so-called theodicy and the doctrine of the transmission of sin along these lines. In a

rather anti-theodical mode, what matters is that human beings are entirely, utterly sinful, that

the Fall is an event in history. What is useless for Wesley’s heart religion; the how is where his
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 96

thought begins.15 This theological disposition colours the Wesleyan vision of the Fall and the

condition of original sin within a tragic hue that aptly stages a transition to the effects of the

Fall in the following chapter.

2. The Development of Wesley’s Thematic Emphases in the Doctrine of Sin

This section demonstrates the contextual import of the doctrine of sin for Wesley,

including relevant points in his development, as a way of clearing a path for this reinterpretation

of his doctrine of original sin. Considered as an isolated doctrine, sin (and original sin) is of

preeminent importance for Wesley’s theology. The frequency of Wesley’s appeals to the

doctrine of original sin invites continued attention to the shape and use of the doctrine. 16 This

section offers a sustained gloss on Wesley’s doctrine of original sin to see its place and function

within Wesley’s ‘Christian system.’17

The sheer abundance of source material from Wesley to engage means that the

arrangement of these works bears significantly on how the doctrine of original sin is

interpreted. His direct treatments include his longest written work, published in 1757 as The

Doctrine of Original Sin: According to Scripture, Reason, and Experience composed in

15
Alluding to Wesley’s famous reply to a request to know his account of the transmission of sin: ‘The fact I
know, both by scripture and by experience. … but how … I neither know nor desire to know.’ Further
consideration of this letter sheds important light on Wesley’s emphasis on the how rather than the what: His
reflection on Ramsay’s Principles of Religion begins thus: ‘The treatise itself gave me a stronger conviction
than ever I had before both of the fallaciousness and unsatisfactoriness of the mathematical method of
reasoning on religious subject.’ The close of the letter runs as follows: ‘True faith is a divine light in the soul
that discovers the laws of eternal order, the all of God, and the nothingness of creatures.’ It does; but it
discovers first of all that Christ loved me, and gave Himself for me, and washes me from my sins in his own
blood.’ There is demonstrated here Wesley’s disinterest in the explanation of mystery—e.g., of evil, of sin, of
its transmission, and so on—and passion for the performance and enactment of the scandalous foolishness of
God’s wisdom. See Wesley, Letters, 3:104-110. Bryant interprets Wesley as giving an account similar to those
of the metaphysical optimists such as G. W. Leibniz in his Theodicy and Archbishop William King in his De
Origine Mali. While Wesley engages with these figures—especially King—and uses their categories, Bryant
does not attend to the utility of Wesley’s approach. The fear is Bryant has projected this onto Wesley. This
argument suggests, to the contrary, that Wesley is not at all interested theodicy; rather, he is interested in the
recognition of the mystery of evil, and the rhetorical effect of the recognition to console and encourage the
believer. On closer examination, one may go so far as to see in Wesley an anti-theodicy. See Bryant, ‘Wesley’s
Doctrine of Sin,’ 85-115; Maddox, Responsible Grace, 78. This approach thus corroborates Chris E. W.
Green’s recent article, perhaps showing how Green’s proposal is not as radical as he supposes, see ‘Breathing
Underwater: Re-forming the Wesleyan Theology of Evil,’ W&MS, 13:2 (2021), 175-195.
16
Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 2-16, 137-190; Lohrstorfer, ‘Know Your Disease,’ 135-182.
17
On how this dissertation understands Wesley’s use of the phrase ‘Christian system,’ see above, §1.b.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 97

response to John Taylor’s treatise on the same subject from a deistic perspective.18 Wesley then

distils his long-winded polemic in the sermon ‘Original Sin’ (1760).19 Indirect treatments of

the doctrine abound. The use of ‘indirect’ means here that the doctrine of sin is deployed in

service to another argument. Listing all these instances would be an unhelpful task for this

dissertation’s purposes, and such erudition would bog down any theological observations.

Instead, this analysis attends to the most important sermons where the doctrine of sin is at work:

‘The New Birth’ (1760),20 ‘The Wilderness State’ (1760),21 ‘Heaviness through Manifold

Temptations’ (1760),22 ‘On Predestination’ (1773),23 ‘The General Deliverance’ (1781),24 ‘On

the Fall of Man’ (1782),25 ‘God’s Love to Fallen Man’ (1782),26 ‘The Mystery of Iniquity’

(1783),27 and ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’ (1790).28 It is an understatement to say

Wesley provides ample material from which to piece together a distinctive doctrine of original

sin.29 Wesley considers the doctrine of original sin integral to all Christian theological thinking.

‘From hence,’ Wesley summarises, ‘we may learn one grand, fundamental difference,

18
The treatise only underwent one printing, its relative unpopularity owing to the tedious nature of Wesley’s
critique of Taylor, but extracts were circulated throughout: Part I as the Dignity of Human Nature (1762) and
Part VII as the Doctrine of Original Sin (1784). Wesley remained committed to the full, original treatment. By
comparing titles, the inclusion of ‘reason and experience’ seems to adding a methodological sophistication
absent from Taylor’s tract. Later parts of the Doctrine of Original Sin are extracts from other authors, notably
Isaac Watts, The Ruin and Recovery of Mankind, written in 1740 and Jonathan Edwards, Original Sin. Bryant
has made extensive worth of Watts influence on Wesley, though perhaps too much so. See Wesley, The
Doctrine of Original Sin: According to Scripture, Reason, and Experience, WJW, 12:157-481.
19
Wesley, WJW, 2:170-185.
20
WJW, 2:186-201.
21
WJW, 2:202-221.
22
WJW, 2:222-235.
23
WJW, 2:413-422.
24
WJW, 2:436-450.
25
WJW, 2:400-412.
26
WJW, 2:422-435.
27
WJW, 2:252-270.
28
WJW, 4:150-160.
29
WJW, 2:451-471.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 98

considered as a system of doctrines, [between Christianity] and the most refined heathenism.’30

He pithily summarises, ‘Know your disease! Know your cure!’31

a. Development in Wesley’s Doctrine of Original Sin

Firstly, there are several ideas relevant to Wesley’s doctrine of original sin that undergo

meaningful development. On many of the aspects of Wesley’s theology, quite predictably for

a public career that spanned over sixty years, one may observe significant degrees of change.

However, the doctrine of original sin sees less conceptual flux than others.32 The theology of

Wesley’s late period is the most nuanced, and a thorough representation of his mature view can

be seen in ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’ (1790). More so than other doctrines,

Wesley is consistent in his presentation of the core-content of the doctrine of original sin.

However, there are several aspects of development worth noting. These concepts: (a) the

treatment of unbelief as a fallen or a natural possibility, (b) the universality of the condition of

sin before and after the new birth, and (c) the relation of sin to materiality, namely, the body

and the world.

First, between Wesley’s early to late period, the status of faithlessness as either a fallen

or a natural possibility of humanity undergoes a small but not insignificant shift. The shift is

from considering unbelief—which Wesley refers to as ‘practical atheism’ or misdirected life

apart from God—as a sinful condition in which the human being is culpable for their unbelief.

In the latter view, Wesley possesses a deeper sense of the conflicting sources of one’s attention

in the world and how these form the person.33 Accordingly, practical atheism only incurs guilt

30
‘Original Sin,’ §III.1, WJW, 2:182.
31
‘Original Sin,’ §III.5, WJW, 2:185.
32
See Lohrstorfer, ‘Know Your Disease, Know Your Cure,’ 211: ‘John Wesley’s mature position on original sin
can best be described as a solidifying of his earlier positions.’
33
For example, his pastorally orientated ‘On Friendship with the World,’ §10, WJW, 3:131.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 99

insofar as one succumbs to the temptation of faithlessness.34 Thus Wesley’s distinction between

‘simple distraction’ and ‘dissipation.’ 35 The shift shows itself directly and indirectly in

Wesley’s treatment of faith.36 Early Wesley plays fast and loose with the notion of faith and its

relation to existence and willing. The consequence of this position is that for a brief period in

the 1720’s and 1730’s it is plausible to level worries over a kind of Pelagian trajectory in his

thinking, as if saving faith were at root an assent and a meritorious act of the creature.37

However, by the time Wesley writes his way out of the controversy of faith of assurance over

against faith of adherence in the classic sermon ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’ in 1765, he

has worked out his more nuanced view. 38 Belief, thereafter, becomes for Wesley something

that begins outside of oneself, in and from God or in and from the world, rather than bare

assensus to a proposition.39 The issue is not ‘intellectual but passional’ (whether the interpreter

diverges or not, Wesley sees these as consistent with one another). 40 The will must agree, but

the will agrees precisely as it is moved by God or by the world.41 The comparison here between

God and world as the root from which faith springs is important: it signifies that faithlessness

is something common in the human experience; this comparison also raises the ambiguity of

faithlessness—that is, whether faithlessness is a feature of fallenness or of createdness.

34
In a letter to Ann Bolton, composed in 1785, Wesley expresses how fraught the Christian life is with these
temptations even in the seeming innocence of demonstrating one’s justification, see Letters, 7:263.
35
‘On Dissipation,’ WJW, 3:116-125.
36
On his early view of faith as assent, see Wesley’s letter to his mother in 1725, Letters, 1:22-3: ‘Faith is a
species of belief, and belief is defined ‘an assent to a proposition upon rational grounds.’ Without rational
grounds there is therefore no belief, and consequently no faith.’ In Wesley’s early letter, often criticized, one
may espy traces of the vision of the world eclipsed by the form and presence of God in an immature form: ‘I
call faith an assent upon rational grounds, because I hold divine testimony to be the most reasonable of all
evidence whatever. Faith must necessarily at length be resolved into reason. God is true; therefore what He
says is true.’ Cf. Matthews, ‘“Reason and Religion Joined,”’ 120-124.
37
For example, Wesley’s early sermon, ‘The Almost Christian,’ WJW, 1:131-141.
38
‘The Scripture Way of Salvation,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:161-162; cf. above Ch 1, n9.
39
Matthews, ‘“Religion and Reason Joined,”’ 125-156.
40
Michael G. Harvey, ‘Wittgenstein’s Notion of “Theology as Grammar,”’ Religious Studies, 25, no. 1 (1989),
91; cf. Holmer, ‘The Grammar of Faith,’ 8-10.
41
There is room on this line of reasoning to reflect on Wesley’s relation to classical accounts of double agency,
see Wesley, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ WJW, 3:199-209.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 100

Second, Wesley changes his position on the universality and continuity of the condition

of sin before and after the new birth.42 Early Wesley boldly suggests that the believer could be

cleansed from all sin, even that which cleaves to human being and acting by virtue of a common

life in a fallen world.43 He reverses course on this issue: in his mature theology, he offers a

nuanced view of what perfect love looks like within one’s existence in a fallen world.44 The

important thing to note is that the doctrine of original sin shifts from something from which

one can be freed (early Wesley) to something that textures the quality of all existence in the

world (late Wesley). In the former view, sin is severe, but since it is something from which the

Christian can be rid, they enjoy a certain privilege over sin and its effects, creating an intense

binary between believers and unbelievers by consequence. 45 In the latter view, sin is severe

and it is universal, the consequence of which is a greater sensitivity to the common plight of

life in a fallen world.

Third, over the course of Wesley’s career, having always had an interest in the whole

person—life as an embodied creature—he gradually comes to a rather sophisticated view of

the relation of natural phenomena—such as destruction, pain, and misery—to original sin and

its consequences.46 The kind of development here is one less of reorientation than of gradual

articulation.47 Wesley’s dualism between body and soul, and the estrangement between the

42
Despite his claims to the contrary in the Plain Account of Christian Perfection in 1766, WJW, 12:136-191,
and later in ‘On Perfection’ in 1784, WJW, 3:71-87, that he had ‘never wavered’ in his teaching on what the
doctrine of entire sanctification (and by implication the doctrine of sin) entailed, he clearly alters course
regarding the possibility of ‘sinless perfection’ as implied in ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’ the 1730’s.
For example, compare Wesley in ‘Circumcision of the Heart,’ WJW, 1:401-414, to ‘On the Repentance of
43

Believers,’ WJW, 1:335-352.

44
The sharpest expression is ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ WJW, 4:150-160.
45
Wesley, ‘The Almost Christian,’ WJW, 1:131-141. The idea of a two-tier Christianity does also appear later in
Wesley’s sermons, which does pose an issue as to its significance, but the continuity here does not discount
from the overall development regarding his doctrine of sin, see ‘The More Excellent Way,’ WJW, 263-277.
46
This is explored at some length below, see §§3.5-6; Ch. 4; §5.4. Wesley uses a version of the O felix culpa!
tradition, see Wesley, ‘God’s Love to Fallen Man,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:425; ‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.10, WJW,
2:411.
47
In Wesley’s early sermons there is already a demonstrable interest in thinking about the body. See ‘The Image
of God,’ §II, WJW, 4:295-299.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 101

two, derives from the holistic experience of oneself.48 He sees clearly the inextricable link and

the unavoidable estrangement between the two.49 The significance of this shift is, for Wesley,

the careful attention he pays to the relation of physical pain and what might be termed physical

or natural evil and its relation to sin. What Wesley identifies is that while one’s personal sin,

or the effects of original sin writ large, are causally implicated in the phenomena of pain,

misery, and evil, but only indirectly.

The value of highlighting these instances of development shows how Wesley’s account

of the doctrine of sin becomes increasingly sensitive to the experience of everyday life. The

point of this doctrine is to describe the inextricable situation in which the believer finds

themselves. The believer knows themselves to be ungodly, justified by Christ alone; original

sin is the heuristic doctrine that captures a sense of one’s ungodliness. Original sin as much as

any other doctrine is conditioned by Wesley’s version of ‘experimental religion.’ He begins

with the fact of the human condition. His interpretation of the Fall offers a way to narrate the

fact of existence in its present state. The meaning of this attention to everyday life within the

dialectic of scripture and experience was already developed in the preceding chapter. The

argument touches on this again to emphasise how this theological approach textures his

doctrine of sin. The status of (a) faithlessness, (b) sin’s universality, and (c) the body and the

world are all important factors that bear on any number of doctrinal issues in Wesley. For

present purposes, these three themes, especially unbelief, proves integral to the doctrine of

original sin that Wesley offers.

b. Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin among the Eighteenth-Century Divines

48
For a helpful engagement of these issues, see Kyle Brent Robinson, ‘Body and Soul of Enlightenment: John
Wesley, Methodism, and the Age of Reason,’ PhD Dissertation (New York: University of Rochester, 2018);
Paul N. Markham, ‘Conversion Converted: A New Model of Christian Conversion in Light of Wesleyan
Theology and Nonreductive Physicalism,’ PhD Dissertation (Durham: University of Durham, 2006), 41-92; cf.
Madden, Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine, 31-94.
49
Wesley, ‘What is Man?’ §10, WJW, 4:23.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 102

Wesley spent a great deal of time considering the doctrine of original sin. He seems

preoccupied with many of its consequences. He lingers on this topic because of the fact of sin

in the world. But his experience of it is textured by his own intellectual milieu. From the mid-

seventeenth- to eighteenth-century, the status of the doctrine of original sin was a hotly debated

topic.50 On the one hand, it is ordinarily noted that Wesley mounts a stalwart orthodox defence

of the doctrine of original sin against the Unitarians, Socinians, and the Deists, represented by

his engagement with John Taylor. 51 This is true, but only tells half the story. Wesley offers

more than a mere rebuttal of these heterodox figures interested in radical ‘rational dissent.’52

On the other hand, many divines in the eighteenth-century would happily part ways

with deism. Isolating Wesley’s argument against his deist opponents limits important and

illuminating comparisons with his theological allies. 53 Among these, the preceding generation

of latitudinarian but orthodox Anglicans such as Tillotson and Stillingfleet are helpful.54 But

50
This debate flares up in its earliest and sharpest form with the publication of Bishop Jeremy Taylor’s Unum
Necessarium in 1655, where he reinterprets the corruption of ‘natures’ to mean ‘habits and customs,’ thereby
denying any inherent corruption of human life as a result of original sin, see Taylor’s Works, 7:243-297. In
hindsight, Taylor’s commendable critique of the doctrine of original sin needs to be sharply differentiated from
the reductionistic deist position. Wesley’s commentary on Ephesians 2.3 shows his opposition on the matter:
‘And were by nature—That is, in our natural state. Children of wrath—Having the wrath of God abiding on us,
even as the gentiles. This expression, by nature, occurs also, Gal. 4.8; Rom. 2.14; and thrice in the eleventh
chapter. But in none of the places does it signify, by custom, or practice, or customary practice, as a late writer
affirms.’ See ENNT, Eph. 2.3. Other key figures in this debate include the Daniel Whitby, Isaac Watts, John
Taylor, and Jonathan Edwards. Lohrstorfer’s dissertation is the most erudite account of Wesley’s relation to
this debate. See Lohrstorfer, ‘Know Your Disease,’ 100-134.
51
John Taylor, Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin Proposed to Free and Candid Examination (London: J.
Wilson, 1740). Thomas H. McCall, comparing Jonathan Edwards and Wesley’s apologies for the doctrine of
original sin, notes, ‘But with respect to their doctrines of sin, the agreement is both considerable and important,
… if anything, Wesley is arguably in closer continuity with the confessional Reformed tradition than is
Edwards.’ See Thomas H. McCall, Against God and Nature: The Doctrine of Sin (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019),
24; cf. Andrew Russell, ‘Polemical Solidarity: John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards Confront John Taylor on
Original Sin,’ WTJ, 47, no. 2 (2012), 72-88.
52
Knud Haakonssen (editor), Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Donald Green helpful points out that the ‘age of reason’ applies more to Continental Europe than to the
53

British Isles in the eighteenth-century. For most ‘Augustinianism’ was the air they breathed. See Donald
Green, ‘Augustinianism and Empiricism: A Note on Eighteenth-Century Intellectual History,’ Eighteenth-
Century Studies, 1:1 (1967), 52-53.
54
On the orthodoxy of the Latitudinarians see, Donald Green ‘Latitudinarianism and Sensibility: The Genealogy
of the ‘Man of Feeling’ Reconsidered,’ Modern Philology, 75:2 (1977), 159-183.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 103

perhaps more intriguing is how Wesley compares with the collection of divines with whom he

was a contemporary, especially the massive intellect of Bishop Butler––an encounter already

proven fruitful in the preceding chapter. 55 For Butler, the doctrine of original sin becomes

analogically knowable through the demonstration of the ‘divine government of the world.’56

On this providential basis, Butler asks his audience to infer that humanity exists in a ‘state of

probation.’57

These Anglican divines like Butler, who are likewise joined by Dissenters and Non-

conformists, are the majority view of the theological mood of Wesley’s context.58 But there is,

indeed, something sour in this mood, despite its still holding the tone and tenor of Anglican

Augustinianism.59 In the eighteenth-century the doctrine of original sin—and the doctrine of

sin more broadly—loses its severity, paving the way for visions of human possibility. When

Alexander Pope declares that ‘The proper study of mankind is man’ he shrugs off the

theological frame, and consequently the burden of sin, in the name of the possibilities that

reason holds to understand this ‘darkly wise, and rudely great creature.’60 Even while the so-

called Enlightenment (better, Enlightenments) marks a massively diverse historical moment,

there is common ground in this abiding distaste in the legacy of original sin. But, importantly,

the doctrine of original sin is still in large measure commonplace.61

55
See above, §2.4.a.
56
Butler, Analogy, I. 2.
57
Butler, Analogy, I. 2.10. The similarities between his and Wesley’s doctrines of original sin invite comparison
and so this thesis will continue to carry this conversation between the two forward for the purpose of
highlighting Wesley’s significance. See Green, ‘Augustinianism and Empiricism,’ 48-49.
58
Downey observes that the doctrine of original sin was so common and so widely assumed that part of
Wesley’s controversy was his boldness to make an implicit assumption explicit, and so to welcome public
debate. See Downey, The Eighteenth Century Pulpit, 190.
59
B. W. Young, Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England: Theological Debate from Locke to
Burke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
60
Alexander Pope, ‘Essay on Man: Epistle II,’ Pope: Poetical Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978),
1-18.
61
It is perhaps symbolic of the decay of the doctrine of original sin that two years after the death of John
Wesley, Immanuel Kant publishes Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason in 1793. See Immanuel
Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 104

In summary of this section, acknowledging not only Wesley’s own concern to defend

the doctrine of original sin over the course of his whole career, but also his common ground

with other contemporary Anglican divines allows a more substantial foray into the material

significance of Wesley’s doctrine of original sin. Bearing in mind what Wesley is responding

to helps this argument evaluate the material claims in his view. Given that Wesley’s doctrine

of original sin, including relevant developments, remains markedly stable, it appears

unsatisfactory to leave something so important unaddressed in and of itself. There is something

more interesting going on in Wesley’s theological vision. With this two-fold historical

motivation in hand, it is possible to turn to the content of Wesley’s doctrine of original sin. But

to do that, it is first necessary to examine Wesley’s account of original righteousness, since this

is the framework within which Wesley’s doctrine of sin is located.

3. Original Righteousness and the Edenic Situation of Humanity

The way Wesley speaks of original sin is often in contrast with the original

righteousness of Adam and the perfection of the Edenic situation. Indeed, Wesley’s doctrine

of original righteousness, especially of Adamic perfection, has significance not only for his

doctrine of original sin, hence its inclusion in this chapter, but also his wider theology. The

following account of Wesley’s doctrine of the image of God focuses on Wesley’s use of the

concept original righteousness as essential to personhood: accordingly, this stresses the

extrinsic source of one’s personhood hidden in Christ through the Spirit; the inherent sociality

of creatures; and how individuality, including the features of the body, fits into this picture. 62

a. Wesley and the Image of God (I): Christ the Image of God, Thinking Creation
through Redemption.

In the first place, Christ is the image of God for Wesley. Humanity images God in

proportion to their relation to Christ. Thus, creation and humanity are understood in reference

62
On the image of God in Wesley, see Maddox, Responsible Grace, 68-72.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 105

to Christ. Moreover, to think with and in Christ is to think within the Spirit’s witness.

Accordingly, in one tight package seeing Christ as the image of God moves from christology

to economic Trinity. In faith, one is hidden in Christ (Col. 3.3). It is in Christ and through the

Spirit that the Scriptures are illuminated. Likewise, considering the limitations of the creaturely

intellect, even redeemed, access to one’s beginnings are mediated through the Scriptures by the

Spirit’s witness as one is incorporated into the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected Word. The

eyes of faith are the eyes of Christ, so that in Christ the Spirit gifts one with the ability to see

and understand the world within the Scriptures. If one turns to one’s knowledge of creation,

this dependence on illumination comes across even more strongly: ‘How small a part of this

great work of God is man able to understand!’63 The limitation, again, stems on the one hand

from the abundance and wonder of God and on the other hand from the limitation of creatures. 64

In ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ Wesley offers a summary example of the limited but no less

valuable access creatures have to their origins: ‘It is true the design of the Holy Spirit was to

assist our faith, not gratify curiosity. And therefore the account he has given in the first chapters

of Genesis is exceeding short.’65 Against speculation, Wesley draws attention to the address of

the Word through the Spirit for today: ‘Nonetheless, it is so clear that we may learn therefrom

whatsoever it concerns us to know.’66 Thus, Wesley’s treatment of creation, within which his

doctrine of the image of God emerges, is mediated through the Spirit and in Christ.

Knowledge of creation is, therefore, mediated by the Spirit of Christ. Wesley writes:

‘Let us, then, by the assistance of that Spirit who giveth unto man understanding, endeavour to

take a general survey of the works which God made in this lower world, as they were before

63
Wesley, ‘God’s Approbation of God’s Works,’ §2, WJW, 2:387.
64
See above, §2.6.
65
Wesley, ‘End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:474.
66
‘End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:474.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 106

they were disordered and depraved in consequence of the sin of man.’67 More than this, the

Spirit mediates to human beings in their particular situation burdened and groaning under the

pain of sin. Wesley asks: ‘But how are these Scriptures reconcilable to the present state of

things?’68 The understanding of one’s origins is necessarily inflected by the pressure, often

subliminal, of the travails of ordinary life. For example, it is worth observing that the place

where Wesley offers his most robust image of the situation of creatures before the Fall—the

sermon ‘The General Deliverance’—is in reflection upon Romans 8, where observing the

expectations and hope of creation, Wesley offers comment on the object of creation’s hope.69

The force of the argument, and the weight of the theology, is on the consummation of things,

not on the beginning.70 The pay-off of this relocation of how one thinks about creation is that

Wesley’s discourses addressing original creation are less about using rationality to

disambiguate between what is and remains originally good about fallen creation and more

about reflecting who it is in whose image one is made new, and how one enacts that image.

Christ, the absolute revelation of God, the Word of God, lies at the heart of Wesley’s

understanding of creation as well as redemption.71 Indeed, the revelation of Christ is the one

67
‘God’s Approbation of God’s Works,’ §2, WJW, 2:387.
68
‘The General Deliverance,’ §2, WJW, 2:438.
69
‘The General Deliverance,’ §1, WJW, 2:437.
70
Thus, note again Wesley’s preoccupation with the problem of evil is better framed within a performative
frame, raising the fact of evil as mystery rather than problem: ‘A mystery is a problem which encroaches on its
own data, invading them, as it were, and thereby transcending itself as a simple problem.’ See Gabriel Marcel,
The Philosophy of Existence (London: The Harvill press, 1948), 8f..
71
In Wesley’s commentary on Hebrews 1 this theme emerges, ENNT, Heb. 1: ‘God, who at sundry times - The
creation was revealed in the time of Adam; the last judgment, in the time of Enoch: and so at various times,
and in various degrees, more explicit knowledge was given. In divers manners - In visions, in dreams, and by
revelations of various kinds. Both these are opposed to the one entire and perfect revelation which he has made
to us by Jesus Christ. The very number of the prophets showed that they prophesied only ‘in part.’ Of old -
There were no prophets for a large tract of time before Christ came, that the great Prophet might be the more
earnestly expected. Spake - A part is put for the whole; implying every kind of divine communication. By the
prophets - The mention of whom is a virtual declaration that the apostle received the whole Old Testament,
and was not about to advance any doctrine in contradiction to it. Hath in these last times - Intimating that no
other revelation is to be expected. Spoken - All things, and in the most perfect manner. By his Son - Alone.
The Son spake by the apostles. The majesty of the Son of God is proposed, Absolutely, by the very name of
Son, verse 1, and by three glorious predicates, - ‘whom he hath appointed,’ ‘by whom he made,’ who ‘sat
down;’ whereby he is described from the beginning to the consummation of all things, Heb 1:2,3
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 107

avenue through which redemption and creation are known by creatures.72 And these two must

not be separated in Christ. Wesley states: ‘He is the Word whom the Father begat or spoke

from eternity; by whom the Father speaking, maketh all things; who speaketh the Father to

us.’73 In his view, speech has power, categorically more so for God’s speech: speaking and

creating are inseparable. Wesley’s view is implicit. He does not provide a speculative reflection

on a theology of the Word. Yet the word of God in Isaiah captures Wesley’s implicit position

adequately: ‘So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty’

(Isa. 55.11). This divine conversation occurs within the communion of the Godhead, and by

God’s grace humanity hears God’s speech; therefore, Wesley writes in reflection on Ephesians

4.6-7: ‘“One God and Father of all”—that believe. “Who is above all”—Presiding over all his

children, operating through them all by Christ, and dwelling in all by his Spirit. “According to

the measure of the gift of Christ”—According as Christ is pleased to give to each.’74 God’s

creative speech, conjoined in the ongoing blessedness of the life of God, calls creation out from

nothing and cultivates it according to the wisdom and holiness of God. 75 When the creature

asks about creation, they press into the dazzling reality of God’s speech. Such is the sentiment

Wesley expresses in saying: ‘How small a part of this great work of God is man able to

understand!’76 One’s entrance into the meaning of one’s origins is through, with, and by the

resurrected flesh of the Word whose speech illuminates darkened minds. It is to this Word that

the Spirit witnesses.77

Comparatively to angels, Heb 1:4. The proof of this proposition immediately follows: the name of Son being
proved, Heb 1:5; his being ‘heir of all things,’ Heb 1:6 - 9; his making the worlds, Heb 1:10 - 12 his sitting at
God’s right hand, Heb 1:13, &c.’
72
‘Upon the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §II.8, WJW, 4:158-159.
73
ENNT, Jn. 1.1.
74
ENNT, Eph. 4.6-7.
75
‘God’s Approbation of God’s Works,’ §I, WJW, 2:387-397.
76
‘God’s Approbation of God’s Works,’ §2, WJW, 2:387.
77
See above, §2.2.b.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 108

While in the most extensive comments on the creation narrative, such as ‘The General

Deliverance’ or the ‘New Birth,’ Wesley does not make explicit appeal to this christological

hermeneutic, following the logic of illumination, it is the assumption of his reading of the

Scriptures.78 Wesley emphasises the ongoing presence of Christ in creation. Wherever Christ

is present, Christ is present in power. So, Christ’s presence is an effective presence. Therefore,

Wesley affirms that Christ is the ‘image of the invisible God’ and ‘in him all things … were

created,’ and that Christ ‘is before all things, and in him all things hold together.’ Commenting

on Colossians 1.15-7, Wesley reflects: ‘“And he is before all things,” It is not said, he was: he

is from everlasting to everlasting.’79 Thus, Christ’s person and power are present, active, and

all-encompassing by virtue of Christ’s divinity. He adds further detail while interpreting

Colossians 1.17: ‘And in him all things consist.’ Wesley recognises that Christ’s Lordship is

not a matter of God’s transcendence, but in Christ’s immanence to creation, Christ binds

creation together: ‘The original expression not only implies, that he sustains all things in being,

but more directly, All things were and are compacted in him into one system. He is the cement,

as well as support, of the universe.’80 As the Word that binds creation, Christ’s draws the

redeemed intellect into the world through the Scriptures.

In summary, this discussion of how Wesley thinks about the image of God has moved

this argument into Wesley’s christology and consequently the doctrine of the Trinity. The One

who mediates creation to creatures is the same One who both justifies the ungodly and who

makes the ungodly holy: the speech of the Word is the form and substance of reality. The Word

made flesh is the one who holds all things together. Wesley does not, perhaps constrained by

78
This dissertation is not the only one to notice the christological core undergirding Wesley’s reasoning. For
example, see Knight, The Presence of God in the Christian Life, 78-91, and Deschner, Wesley’s Christology,
passim.
79
Wesley, ENNT, Col. 1.15-17. Suggesting, perhaps, a sympathy for the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of
Christ. See Deschner, Wesley’s Christology.
80
Wesley, ENNT, Col. 1.17.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 109

his practical divinity, explore the fulness of this dogmatic commitment, but one notion that

does emerge is the sensibility that since it is the Word who mediates creation, this Word, born

of Mary and suffered under Pontius Pilate, is the image of God. The importance of this for the

following exposition of Wesley’s doctrine of the image of God must not be missed. 81 By seeing

Christ as the image of God, Wesley refuses the turn towards the human, or his idea of the

human. Heart religion is not yet the anthropocentric turn expressed by Feuerbach.82 What it

means to be human is demonstrated in the life of Christ as God: not as a projection of human

life, but as the invasion of the true human, whose life is the speech of God, and through whose

speech the form of life before the Fall can find semblance of meaning. This view is at work in

Wesley’s experimental divinity: thus, in the rightly ordered holy life, believers express Christ

who is the true image of God. Wesley distinguishes between three aspects in how humanity

represents the image of God: the natural, the political, and the moral images. The exposition of

these distinctions are the task of the next section.

b. Wesley and the Image of God (II): Moral, Political, and Natural Images.

Second, Wesley’s account of how humanity represents the image of God follows a

threefold distinction. This distinction is rooted in humanity’s participation within the divine

life, and the kinds of relations intrinsic to the orders of creation. At this point, Wesley

transitions from thinking about Christ as the originary foundation of the image of God to the

way humanity represents Christ in the world. The switch is from christology to anthropology.

The way humanity represents Christ is nested within the eternal conversation of the Godhead;

yet the way humanity represents Christ also has a material appearance in the world. Wesley

81
This commitment shows itself in ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §22, WJW, [Link] ‘[As] there is but one
God, so there is but one happiness, and one religion. And both of these centre in God. … It is not long before
one finds “redemption in the blood of Jesus, even the forgiveness of sins”. Then “the Father reveals his Son” in
his heart, and he “calls Jesus Lord by the Holy Ghost”. And then the love of God is “shed abroad in his heart,
by the Holy Spirit which is given to him”. … This is religion, even the whole mind which was in Christ Jesus.’
82
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (Mieola: Dover Publications, 2008), 11: ‘Consciousness of is
self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge.’
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 110

employs a threefold distinction at this point: the natural image, the moral image, and the

political image. The image of God is in this dimension, for Wesley, a shorthand for speaking

about the existential relation between human beings and God, human beings and other

creatures, human beings and themselves, and the various forms in which these relations express

themselves.83

Ultimately, Wesley says holiness is ‘a deep, an intimate, an uninterrupted union with

God; a constant communion with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, through the Spirit; a

continual enjoyment of the Three-One God, and of all the creatures in him.’84 In this

communion human beings are bound in the One who binds creation together. The continuity

of, at a bare minimum, the telos of creation remains constant. Wesley writes: ‘As he was then

incapable of obtaining happiness by the old, God established a new covenant with man; the

terms of which were no longer, “Do this and live,” but, “Believe, and thou shalt be saved.” But

still the end of man is one and the same; only it stands on another foundation.’85 Human beings

were created for constant communion with God and to facilitate the whole of creation in

constant communion as well.

As an existential relation, the image of God includes the ethical question, ‘How shall I

live?’ It is therefore useful to see these distinctions in the image of God as aspects of the

grammar of Christian existence, the morphology of how human life looks in the light of the

gospel. However, one should note that Wesley distinguishes between an ideal state—Adamic

perfection—and an actual state. The telos of humanity’s actual state is ordered to the ideal.86

The image of God includes three interwoven but ordered elements: first, the natural image, ‘A

picture of his own immortality, a spiritual being endued with understanding, freedom of will,

83
The following reading is resonant with Runyon, The New Creation, 13-25.
84
‘The New Creation,’ §18, WJW, 2:510.
85
‘What is Man,’ §14, WJW, 4:26.
86
Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §18, WJW, 4:67.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 111

and various affections;’ second, the political image: ‘the governor of this lower world, having

“dominion over the fishes of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over

all the earth”;’ and, third, the moral image: ‘which, according to the Apostle, is “righteousness

and true holiness”.’87 These three sit on a scale culminating in the moral image. The natural

and political aspects demarcate those aspects of human creatureliness proper to the limitations

of finitude, the stuff of nature and ordinary life, the form of which requires a higher ordering

to be given meaning. Wesley writes that human beings were created ‘chiefly’ in the moral

image:

In this image of God was man made. ‘God is love’: accordingly man at his creation
was full of love, which was the sole principle of all his tempers, thoughts, words, and
actions. God is full of justice, mercy, and truth: so was man as he came from the hands
of his Creator. God is spotless purity: and so man was in the beginning pure from every
sinful blot. Otherwise God could not have pronounced him as well as all the other works
of his hands, ‘very good’. This he could not have been had he not been pure from sin,
and filled with righteousness and true holiness. For there is no medium. If we suppose
an intelligent creature not to love God, not to be righteous and holy, we necessarily
suppose him not to be good at all; much less to be ‘very good’.88
Nothing of the moral image is an intrinsic feature of human life: Wesley speaks of no innate

goodness, no natural holiness, no incorruptible constant at the heart of human identity. 89 No,

God calls human beings ‘very good’ because of God’s own free holy-love and God’s

recognition of their way of living in the world, the orientation of their existence. From the sense

of one’s life in and among other creatures arises the ethical question. The calling of God

establishes the goodness of God’s creation, not the creature themselves. 90 In this way one may

understand why in ‘The General Deliverance’ Wesley distances himself from reason as the

87
For Wesley’s more mature view where this three-fold distinction is at work, see ‘The New Birth,’ §I.1, WJW,
2:188; cf. ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.3-7, WJW, 2:474-476; ‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.1-6, WJW,
2:438-442. He appears to draw these distinctions from Isaac Watts, Ruin and Recovery of Mankind (London:
Rhett & Blackstone, 1740), 5-6.
88
‘The New Birth,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:188.
89
‘On the Education of Children,’ §5, WJW, 3:350.
90
The emphasis on God’s free decision to call human beings responsible draws out an emphasis on Wesley’s
voluntarism. This issue is complicated. Wesley would rather avoid separating either reason or will in the first
place, see ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ WJW, 4:61-71.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 112

distinguishing feature of humanity.91 The distinguishing feature is Adam and Eve’s existential

(and therefore ethical) capability of God: they were capable of constant communion, that is,

perfect obedience to the will of God, they knew God not as an object of the intellect, but as the

firmament of their soul, and so they could love God.92 Moreover, Adam and Eve received the

law, not the animals. 93 This capability of God is the power of existence in relation to God. What

is at stake in the moral image, in holiness, is a way of living in the world. 94

For Wesley, the understanding of the moral image is inseparable from living faith. This

is where the idea of an originary faithlessness comes into play: the command to ‘do this and

live’ denotes the freedom of Eve and Adam to believe the Word and live accordingly. The point

of unity between the two is that each convey the holy life as that which is not only capable of

God but full of God’s presence.95 The nature of this capability is neither a dormant ability nor

a sheer passivity. Rather, capability is a configuration of the will, being aligned with God’s

will and thereby reckoning with oneself as one finds themselves within the world. 96 To be

capable of God is to be moved by God. It is to recognise oneself through their openness to the

world, allowing the Spirit to conform one into the image of the Son. Thus, this capability of

God is, in Eden and in the way of holiness, a propensity of redeemed existence. In Further

Thoughts Upon Christian Perfection, Wesley writes:

91
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.5, WJW, [Link] ‘What then is the barrier between men and brutes, the line
which they cannot pass? It was not reason. Set aside that ambiguous term: Exchange it for the plain word,
understanding: and who can deny that brutes have this. We may as well deny that they have sight or hearing,’
92
One sees this also in Wesley’s description of the telos of human existence as obedience to the first
commandment in ‘On the Trinity,’ §17, WJW, [Link] ‘The knowledge of the Three-One God is interwoven
with all true Christian faith, with all vital religion.’ Or, as he states in ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §18,
WJW, [Link] ‘This is religion, and this is happiness, the happiness for which we are made. This begins when we
begin to know God, by the teaching of his own Spirit. As soon as the Father of spirits reveals his Son in our
hearts, and the Son reveals his Father, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts; then, and not till then, we
are happy.’
93
‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:6.
94
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §§17-18, WJW, 4:66-67.
95
See above, §2.3. Compare Keen, After Crucifixion, 140-1.
96
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §II.1, WJW, 3:203-204
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 113

When we have received any favour from God, we ought to retire … into our hearts,
and say, ‘I come, Lord, to restore to thee what thou hast given; and I freely relinquish
it, to enter again into my own nothingness. For what is the most perfect creature in
heaven or earth in thy presence, but a void capable of being filled with thee and by
thee; as the air, which is void and dark, is capable of being filled with the light of the
sun, who withdraws it everyday to restore in the next, there being nothing in the air that
either appropriates this light or resists it? O give me the same facility of receiving and
restoring thy grace and good works! I say, thine; for I acknowledge the root from which
they spring is in Thee, and not in me.’97
Wesley casts the language of participation in God as one’s capability of faith, and faith is

understood as a sharing in the witness of the Spirit that rests on the Spirit’s initiative. Faith is

a gift. As a gift, faith incorporates one into the will of God, showing them in an irreducibly

personal and existential way, the fact of one’s hiddenness in Christ. It is this participation

marked first by obedience to the Word of God that shows the creature’s rightly ordered relation

to God. In a word, Wesley is repackaging Cranmer’s sense of faith as obedience.98 In obedience

to this Word, as Eve and Adam exemplify in Eden, then the fulness of the image of God—

natural, political, and moral—manifests.

Moreover, this originary capability of God in faithfulness simply is the freedom of the

believer introduced in the preceding chapter, a freedom for God enabled by God and to whom

one conforms.99 This distinction excludes the error in thinking that what it means to be human

rests in any natural quality of creatures, such as the intellect, the will, or liberty. Liberty, which

is distinguished from freedom, is an aspect of the natural image: a condition, certainly, of the

moral image, but not its substance. 100 Within the natural image Wesley sees human beings

share in the commonality of all animals by virtue of the ‘power of self-motion’—that is, the

97
Further Thoughts on Christian Perfection, §II.9, WJW, 13:131.
98
See Wesley’s abridgement of Cranmer’s Homilies in The Doctrine of Salvation, Faith, and Good Works in
1738 (WJW, 12:32-43); Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to
Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 158-212, esp. 213-253.
99
Wesley, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §I.1, WJW, 3:202.
100
One way among many to avoid the perils of the free-will debate is too subordinate the argument to its
derivative place in the theological and moral landscape of Christian dogmatics, which is how this dissertation
engages with Wesley’s treatment. Such a move is warranted based upon the mode of reasoning employed in
Wesley’s ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ WJW, 3:199-209, treated above in §2.2.a.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 114

vitality of living things distinguishing them from inanimate beings—their reason or

understanding, their will, and their liberty.101 Of these common traits, the clarity and power of

understanding needs to be framed in the light of the priority of the will, including passions and

affections, shifting this mode of knowing towards an acquisitive, existentially involved

knowing.102 Accordingly, Wesley says: ‘Being steadily and uniformly guided by the dictates

of the understanding; embracing nothing but good, and every good in proportion to its decree

of intrinsic goodness.’103 Wesley’s claim needs to be tethered inextricably to the sovereign will

of God, who through the Spirit guides the understanding and enraptures the will. 104 This means

that while human beings exercise their liberty in accord with perfect understanding, even as

their understanding is as bound to the orientation of the will, both of these stem from their

existential orientation to God.105 These features, in Wesley’s view, are common to all animals,

humanity included, and relate organically, culminating in the exercise of liberty, ‘without

which all the rest would have been in vain.’106 Liberty provides the foundation from which

human beings distinguish themselves from animals in the natural image, but it is not constituent

to their freedom in the moral image.

Wesley’s use of liberty should be understood as one among many features of what it

means to be a living thing with spirit. One does well to emphasise that liberty is not the

arbitrating factor in one’s humanity.107 For example, consider his exposition of the ‘plain fact’

of liberty in ‘What is Man?’:

101
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:438-439.
102
‘His understanding was perfect in its kind; capable of apprehending all things clearly, and judging
concerning them according to truth, without any mixture of error.’ ‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.2, WJW,
2:439.
103
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:439.
104
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:439.
105
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:439.
106
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:438-439.
107
For a general exposition of the debate over liberty, see Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 115

I am conscious to myself of one more property, commonly called liberty. This is very
frequently confounded with the will; but is of a very different nature. Neither is it a
property of the will, but a distinct property of the soul; capable of being exerted with
regard to all the faculties of the soul, as well as all the motions of the body. It is a power
of self-determination; which, although it does not extend to all our thoughts and
imaginations, yet extends to our words and actions in general, and not with many
exceptions. I am full as certain of this, that I am free, with respect to these, to speak or
not to speak, to act or not to act, to do this or the contrary, as I am of my own
existence.108
This description of liberty is of life in its postlapsarian condition, so he will go on to clarify

that, ‘although I have not an absolute power over my own mind, because of the corruption of

my own nature; yet, through the grace of God assisting me, I have a power to choose and do

good, as well as evil.’109 Both the ‘liberty of contradiction’ and the ‘liberty of contrariety’ are

entailed in this fundamental liberty. That is, one can assent or decline to do this or that as well

as determine themselves spontaneously. 110 This kind of liberty is so because for Wesley to have

both liberty of contradiction and of contrariety is constitutive of any genuine agent.

Also included within the natural image are the affections. Wesley’s attention to the

affections rivals his attention to liberty. What is suggestive in Wesley’s view is how the

affections are interwoven with the will. Liberty depends upon the exercise of the will, which

for Wesley contains an active and passive modality, and is moved by passions and affections

as well as able to, in a limited sense, regulate those passions and affections. This passional will

is the ‘spring of action’ for all human beings; it incorporates ‘love, hatred, joy, sorrow, desire,

fear, hope &c., and a whole train of other inward emotions … mixed and diversified a thousand

ways,’ into one’s activity.111 The determinate aspect of the emotional life is not a stumbling

108
‘What is Man?’ §11, WJW, 4:23-24.
109
‘What is Man?’ §11, WJW, 4:23.
110
The liberty of contradiction and of contrariety correlate to the freedom of spontaneity and the freedom of
indifference. The liberty of contradiction is uncontroversial considering Wesley’s aims. By this he wants to
create space for genuine agency within ongoing causes. But he either views the liberty of contrariety as non-
competitive with antecedent causes, or he is inconsistent in his views, making an unnecessary and unhelpful
distinction. Moreover, his views seem dissonant with how he envisions grace in his vaguely compatibilist
idiom. See Wesley, Thoughts Upon Necessity, §III.9, WJW, 13:540.
111
‘What is Man?’ §7, WJW, 3:22.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 116

block for this vision of the will. The fact that cause for anger, compassion, or other emotions

(those recognisable classically as passions) lie in part in the world and not in oneself does not

mean the affections overwhelm the liberty of the will. It is generally assumed that in using the

language of passions and affections, the source of these stirrings extends from outside the

self.112 The affections are so vital for Wesley’s view of the self that one is right to espy from

this angle too, and not exclusively the christological angle, a distributed sense of the self. What

one feels as much as what one does indicates who one is. It is by these tempers that Wesley

describes the orientation of the will towards God in the Edenic situation:

From this right state and right use of all his faculties, his happiness naturally flowed.
In this the essence of his happiness consisted; But it was increased by all the things that
were round about him. He saw, with unspeakable pleasure, the order, the beauty, the
harmony, of all the creatures; of all animated, all inanimate nature; the serenity of the
skies; the sun walking in brightness; the sweetly variegated clothing of the earth; the
trees, the fruits, the flowers,
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams.
Nor was this pleasure interrupted by evil of any kind. It had no alloy of sorrow or pain,
whether of body or mind. For while he was innocent he was impassive; incapable of
suffering. Nothing could stain his purity of joy. And, to crown all, he was immortal.113
The constant communion between God, human beings, and the rest of creation overflowed with

the abundance of grace, and out of this grace the orientation of the tempers were entirely holy.

Each aspect of sense experience of the primordial harmony is accompanied by serene

affections. For Wesley ‘holiness and happiness’ thus share an intrinsic relation. 114

What is important to note is that in this integrated relationship between one’s will and

one’s liberty, Wesley has no problem affirming responsibility. The ground of responsibility is

expressed in the natural image as much as in the moral image.115 On the one hand, this position

112
For example, the irrational anger directed at a helpless table-leg because of the pain of an ill-timed stubbed
toe.
113
Wesley, ‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:440.
114
While for Wesley it is intrinsic that evangelical faith includes affective transformations, today this needs
theological reclamation. See, for example, Holmer, ‘Theology and Emotions,’ Thinking the Faith with
Passion, 221-243; cf. Zahl’s The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience.
115
Wesley, ‘The New Birth,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:188.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 117

finds philosophical precedent by locating Wesley alongside figures like Samuel Clarke, who

advocates for a moderate stance between libertarian and necessitarian positions. 116 On the other

hand, this position finds theological explanation by reflecting again on the relational quality of

the moral image.117 It is God who calls Adam and Eve ‘very good,’ and in doing so, God’s

calling establishes human responsibility. For example, turning from the natural to the political

image, Wesley emphasises how human beings ought to mediate on behalf of other creatures:

‘As all the blessings of God in paradise flowed through man to the inferior creatures; as man

was the great channel of communication, between the Creator and the whole brute creation; so

when man made himself incapable of transmitting those blessings, that communication was

necessarily cut off.’118 Human beings are set apart, sharing in common with animals all else,

to be the ‘channel of conveyance between his Creator and the whole brute creation.’119 But this

responsibility is sharpened by the precariousness of the Edenic situation. Wesley writes: ‘But

although man was made in the image of God, yet he was not made immutable. This would have

been inconsistent with the state of trial in which God was pleased to place him. He was

therefore created able to stand, and yet liable to Fall.’120 This liability is entrenched within the

responsibility of human beings to stand as the ‘channel’ of grace on behalf of creation. Called

to care for all creatures Wesley says that human beings are ordained to be ‘God’s viceregent

upon earth, the prince and governor of this lower world.’121 Human beings are the means of

116
This is quite straightforwardly the case, but it does not capture the depth of Wesley’s meaning, see Harris, Of
Liberty and Necessity, 42-62.
117
Maddox, Responsible Grace, 68; Runyon, The New Creation, 18-19.
118
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.1, WJW, 2:442.
119
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.3, WJW, 2:440.
120
‘The New Birth,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:188; ‘End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.8, WJW, 2:476. It is hard not to read this as
an inadvertent affirmation of an originary creaturely imperfection, a position that would place Wesley in line
with Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil,
translated by E. M. Huggard (Chicago: Open Court, 1990), 221: ‘And as for the cause of evil, it is true that the
Devil is the author of sin. But the origin of sin comes from farther away, its source is in the original
imperfection of creatures: that renders them capable of sinning, and there are circumstances in the sequence of
things which cause this power to evince itself in action.’
121
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:439.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 118

grace for all animals. What human beings have in common with all creatures gathers them

together in a cosmic vision of the church; what distinguishes human beings from all creatures

gathers humanity towards God in whose likeness they are made. 122

Responsible and nested within the organic unity with the world—between ‘the order,

the beauty, the harmony, of all the creatures’—one finds the domain of the political image. 123

In this, Adam and Eve’s office imitates the eternal royal priesthood of Christ as a royal

priesthood on behalf of all animal and inanimate creatures. 124 This aspect of the image of God

draws in close connection the dependency of human life upon the natural world, of the value

of the body, and the abiding import of material conditions within the kingdom of God. Wesley

has an acute sensitivity to human dependence upon the created world. Human beings are

creatures first, so Adam and Eve’s common life is properly in fellowship with all ‘creeping

things that creep upon the earth’ as ‘fellow-creatures’ (Gn. 1.27).125 Human fellowship among

all creatures is a prerequisite for kinship among human beings. Thus, God’s establishment of

Adam and Eve’s dominion establishes their authority over the created orders in the same way

that God orders their steps, through the gentleness and wisdom of holy love. In tenderness and

mercy, Adam and Eve mediated between ‘even the meaner creatures’ and God, for ‘as a loving

obedience to God was the perfection of man, so a loving obedience to man was the perfection

of brutes.’126 The love shared between Adam and Eve and the animal world is a hallmark of

Wesley’s visioning of Eden. Thinking about the restoration of creation, Wesley exclaims:

‘Miserable lot of such innumerable multitudes, who, insignificant as they seem, are the

122
‘The New Creation,’ §§16-18, WJW, 2:508-510.
123
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:439-440.
124
On Christ’s royal priesthood, see Maddox, Responsible Grace, 109-113.
125
‘The New Creation,’ §17, WJW, 2:508-509.
126
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.5, WJW, 2:441.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 119

offspring of one common Father; the creatures of the same God of love!’127 Wesley’s political

image captures necessary role human beings serve within the array of creaturely relations.

This section has sketched the signal features of Wesley’s account of humanity’s

creation in the image of God, drawing attention to the eschatological and christological framing

of Wesley’s discourses on creation, which highlight the incompleteness of creaturely

knowledge and one’s dependency upon the Spirit of Christ. Then the image of God as Wesley

envisions it was outlined, characterised by an existential communion with God in Christ and

creation within which the natural faculties of creatures—understanding, will, and liberty—are

ordered to and depend upon the abiding presence of the Spirit. The speech of God to human

beings is given pride of place in this reading: ‘Do this and live’ is the foundation of the moral

image in which Adam and Eve were created; ‘Believe and be saved’ is the foundation of the

moral image human beings attain in and through Christ. Both are divine commands, and

nothing less than obedience to the will of God will suffice to explain Wesley’s doctrine of the

image of God. In short, the image of God is something creatures do. In their enacting this

image, they find through activity who they are. But one may sharpen this point at the close of

this section, since the illuminated mind is still the fallen mind, one may be properly said to be

cut-off from one’s beginnings.128 One is left with ‘scanty knowledge’ of creation and, through

the Spirit’s witness, a wariness of projecting our shadows of the good onto the sovereign will

of God.129

4. The Entrance of Sin

Thus, it is now necessary to turn to Wesley’s reading of the Fall, which is explored in

the light of his description of the image of God. In the glimmer of life in Eden that Scripture

shows, Adam and Eve’s perfections overflowed from their conversation with the Father in the

127
‘The New Creation,’ §17, WJW, 2:509.
128
‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §II.8, WJW, 4:159.
129
‘God’s Approbation of His Works,’ §I.14, WJW, 2:396-397.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 120

Word and through the Spirit. Wesley’s view of the Edenic situation nests human sanctity within

the common life of all creatures. The benefits of this union stream outward over the created

orders. From the dust God breathed life and called human beings to the live as a vestige of

Christ’s royal priesthood consecrated for the glory of God and the blessing of creation.

Understanding the way humanity represents the image of God within this wider ecosystem is

a necessary step towards Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall. For Wesley, the entrance of sin

into the world remains a possibility in God’s governance over creation. The mutability of

creatures with liberty entails this notion. Wesley emphasises that humanity is created ‘able to

stand, and yet liable to fall.’130 The orientation of Wesley’s approach to the Fall begins in

searching the Scriptures, undertaken in sermonic exegesis and Christian conversation, and then

orientated towards everyday life. The claim of this section is that, rather than understand the

ordeal in the garden as humanity’s turn towards pride or disobedience, for Wesley the Fall is

best understood as a process. This process is represented in both Eve and Adam’s actions as

they move from faithlessness towards pride. Pride and disobedience are present in the narrative

and in Wesley’s doctrine of original sin. But this argument’s contribution identifies the

structural foundation for the turn to pride, self-will, and love of the world. There are two aspects

to this analysis: (a) to interrogate the textual basis for grounding Wesley’s doctrine of original

sin in unbelief; and (b) to then show how Wesley uses unbelief to interpret the Fall.

a. ‘Here Sin Began, Namely Unbelief’: The Case for Beginning with Unbelief.

In a set of key places where Wesley interprets the Fall, he leverages the concept of

unbelief as the genesis of sin.131 This raises the question as to the meaning of unbelief within

130
‘The New Birth,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:187.
131
The two appearances of unbelief in direct reference to the Fall are ‘On the Fall of Man,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:402,
and ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.9, WJW, 2:477. Other instances where unbelief describes the condition
of life in sin, see ‘On the Education of Children,’ §5, WJW, 3:350; ‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’
§I.4, WJW, 4:154. Widening the range, unbelief also refers to ‘the religion of atheism’ and ‘practical atheism,’
‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §3, WJW, 1:250; ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Borne of
God,’ §III.1, WJW, 1:441-442; ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, III,’ §I.11, WJW, 1:517; ‘Wandering
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 121

his account of the Fall. Given the complexity of unbelief’s meaning, this approach examines

Wesley’s use of the term to understand the meaning intended. As a provisional definition,

treated in general, the category of unbelief or faithlessness refers to the absence of faith.

Moreover, in highlighting faith’s existential and ethical qualities, it is more precise to consider

these terms along the lines of fidelity and infidelity. What one has faith in entails an ethical

relation (of trust, of dependence, of stability, etc.). Thus, the loss of faith entails a breech in

relationship with God: God’s covenant with humanity entails an obligation to remain in faithful

obedience.132 Holding this nuance in mind keeps the enacted and active modality of Wesley’s

thinking close to hand. In this more refined sense, the argument refers to unbelief, faithlessness,

and infidelity synonymously. But the different senses of unbelief—as an act of will (e.g.,

disbelief or incredulity), a condition suffered by external causes inducing doubt, anxiety, or

fear (e.g., faithlessness or unbelief), or a condition of simple ignorance (e.g., practical

atheism)—will play a role in this exposition. To begin, Wesley’s conceptually loaded

admission in ‘On the Fall of Man’ that ‘Here sin began, namely, unbelief,’ needs to be

unpacked.133 The result of this analysis demonstrates the conceptual priority of unbelief within

Wesley’s doctrine of original sin, and through this the argument proceeds towards a discussion

of his definition of sin. Therefore, it is necessary to set out the various instances at which

Wesley turns to unbelief in relation to the Fall to show the concept’s importance for his overall

account.

There are two telling instances where unbelief features prominently: in ‘On the Fall of

Man’ and in ‘The End of Christ’s Coming’.134 In these places, unbelief is integrated within the

Thoughts,’ §III.1, WJW, 2:132; ‘Original Sin,’ §II.7, WJW, 2:178; ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge,’
§III.2, WJW, 2:583; ‘On Riches,’ §II.1, WJW, 3:523; ‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith,’ §20, WJW,
4:58; ‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §§15, 19, 20, WJW, 4:66, 68-69; ‘On Living without God,’ §§1, 6, 7,
WJW, 4:169, 171.
132
‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law,’ §§I.3-4, WJW, 2:7.
133
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:402.
134
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:402; ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.9, WJW, 2:477.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 122

way Wesley speaks about the ordeal of the Fall. Referring to Eve’s temptation in Genesis 3.1-

6, Wesley writes:

‘“And the serpent said unto the woman, ‘Surely ye shall not die. For God doth know,
in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing
good and evil.’” Here sin began, namely unbelief. “The woman was deceived,” says
the Apostle. She believed a lie: she gave more credit to the word of the devil than to
the word of God. And unbelief brought forth actual sin.’135
Compare this comment with a parallel narrative in ‘The End of Christ’s Coming’:

‘And soon after [Satan] persuaded her to disbelieve God, to suppose his threatening
should not be fulfilled. She then lay open to the whole temptation. … So unbelief begot
pride. … It begot self-will. … It begot foolish desires, and completed all by outward
sin: “she took of the fruit and did eat”.’136
These two accounts, where the ordeal of the Fall begins in faithlessness, are not isolated turns

of phrase. Both accounts are composed in the 1780’s. They are, therefore, representative of

Wesley’s mature view. One finds resonance where Wesley finds opportunity to speak about

sin.137

However, over the course of Wesley’s career, the way he describes sin does undergo

some alteration. What this argument takes to be his mature position in the 1780’s, shown above,

characterises sin as beginning in unbelief which leads to pride or idolatry, self-will, and love

of the world (that is, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life). 138 There

are conflicting views on this point. On the one hand, it may appear that Wesley refers to

‘practical atheism’, ‘idolatry’, and ‘dissipation’ as functional synonyms, thus refusing to see

any working structure in Wesley’s sin-talk.139 On the other hand, other instances, for example

135
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §§I.1-2, WJW, 2:402-4, emphasis added.
136
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.9, WJW, 2:477.
137
For example, ‘The Righteousness of Faith,’ §I.8, WJW, 1:207; ‘The Way to the Kingdom,’ §II.1, WJW,
1:225-226; ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §§I.1-8 on ‘the natural man’ see, WJW, 1:251-255; ‘On
Sin in Believers,’ §§III.7, IV.2, WJW, 1:323, 326-327; ‘The Great Privilege of those Born of God,’ §§II.8-9,
WJW, 1:439-440; showing the movement from grace to sin, ‘The Great Privilege of those Born of God,’ §III.2,
WJW, 1:442.
138
See below, §4.3.
See Outler, WJW, 1:517n52. In some places the terms do seem to be used equivocally, e.g., ‘On Riches,’
139

§II.1, WJW, 3:523; ‘On the Wedding Garment,’ §12, WJW, 4:144; ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’
§§I.3, 4 WJW, 4:154; most notably, ‘Spiritual Idolatry,’ WJW, 3:103-114.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 123

in ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’ or ‘Justification by Faith,’ display pride and self-

will as the primary expression of sin, which then lead to atheism and love of the world. 140 Still

other instances, for example in ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, I,’ treat pride as the

root of sin and evil.141 It may look as if the irregular style of Wesley’s Sermons overwhelm the

search for an operant theology within them, even in the descriptive sense which this thesis

cultivates Wesley’s view.

On the contrary, the confusion fades when one recognises the varying degrees of

atheism that Wesley uses. For example, Wesley qualifies speaking of dissipation and idolatry

as atheism as follows: ‘[dissipation and idolatry are the] quintessence of atheism—it is artificial

added to natural ungodliness.’142 It is faithlessness as ‘natural ungodliness’ that this dissertation

leverages to explain Wesley’s view of the origin of sin. Furthermore, pride is genuinely the

root of all sin in that this is the devil’s originary transgression, and for Wesley the specification

between the human and angelic falls is of material significance; he does root the origin of sin

in the devil’s transgression.143 When humanity is at their worst they act like devils, and pride

is the signal manifestation of their wickedness. In this sense idolatry, pride, atheism, and the

like are used synonymously. They live as if they were devils. Yet when Wesley’s writing is

targeted at ordinary life in its postlapsarian form, he largely assumes that unbelief, practical

atheism, and atheism are normative for the condition of spiritual death. 144 He writes:

What are those spiritual diseases which everyone that is born of a woman brings with
him into the world?
Is not the first atheism? After all that has been so plausibly written concerning ‘the
innate idea of God’; after all that has been said of its being common to all men in all
ages and natures; it does not appear that man has naturally any more idea of God than
any beasts of the field: he has no knowledge of God at all, no fear of God at all; neither

140
Wesley, ‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §I.1, WJW, 4:153; ‘Justification by Faith,’ §IV.8, WJW,
1:197-198.
141
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,’ §I.4, WJW, 1:477.
142
‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith,’ §20, WJW, 4:58, emphasis added.
143
This is most prominent in ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.8, WJW, 2:476.
144
‘On a Single Eye,’ §§2-3, WJW, 4:124; ‘On Living Without God,’ §§1, 6-7, WJW, 4:169, 171.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 124

is God in all his thoughts. Whatever change may afterwards be wrought, … he is by

nature a mere atheist.145
Shown later in chapter four, our starting point is in this condition of spiritual death from which

salvation here and now only provisionally and partially liberates. 146 There remains this basic

propensity, even a predisposition wrought in human nature, to return to infidelity and in the

state of ‘natural ungodliness,’ one can decay into the ‘quintessence of atheism.’ 147

Thus, one can and should bracket the essential structure of sin that Wesley narrates in

his interpretation of the Fall. Doing so is supported by his wider discussions of sin. While this

may seem disingenuous to Wesley’s style, recognising the subtlety he brings to the fore is a

way of remaining attentive to his concern to think about the propriety of means rather than

ends.148 The recognition of the means to sin and salvation is in no way to diminish the import

of either the means or the ends—justification is still by grace through faith alone and holiness

is still perfecting love—but it does allow one to think within Wesley’s idiom and to recognise

the grammar of Christian existence. This attention to means is one of the reasons why Wesley

is so eager to differentiate his theology from that of contemporary moralists. 149 It is the

uniqueness of these means constituted by one’s participation in the divine life that make the

holy life categorically different from mere morality. Moreover, the recognition of this essential

structure is part and parcel with Wesley’s view of the way of salvation as one of continual

145
‘On the Education of Children,’ §§5-6, WJW, 3:350.
146
‘On Dissipation,’ §13, WJW, 3:121.
147
‘On a Single Eye,’ §4, WJW, 4:125.
148
He comments on this sort of reasoning in his correspondence, see Letters, [Link] ‘I would just add that I
regard even faith itself not as an end but a means only. The end of the commandment is love, of every
command, of the whole Christian dispensation. Let this love be attained, by whatever means, and I am content;
I desire no more. All is well, if we love the Lord our God with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves.’
The differentiation of faith as a means and love as the ends does not mean Wesley subordinates the one to the
other. On the contrary, the whole account hinges on the categorical difference of faith, and how this faith is the
means to authentic Christian love. Wesley’s apparent nonchalance as to the sorts of means in relation to ends is
superficial: the propriety of means matters, even if a multivalence of means is admitted.
149
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §17, WJW, 4:67.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 125

repentance or self-knowledge.150 It is to misread Wesley to focus all one’s attention on the end.

Articulating the means is just as important for gathering a full view of Wesley’s theological

vision. Therefore, it is necessary to take a hard look at the place of faithlessness as the

beginning of Wesley’s doctrine of original sin.

b. Wesley’s Interpretation the Fall.

Turning directly to Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall, the key source texts have been

already introduced, and it is with these in mind that the following exposition develops Wesley’s

interaction with the Fall narrative in the Scriptures. The preceding section outlined the textual

evidence for relying on how Wesley conceives of the inverse of faith, unbelief, as the starting

point for the doctrine of sin. Human sinfulness stems from unbelief. In unbelief the subject

does not merely fail to abide within the will of God. More severely, this failure of the will

begins a cascade that ends in irregular love, rebellion against the sovereign will of God. In the

end, Wesley prefers to speak of this condition of original sin in faithlessness in terms of disease

or illness.151 Already, it has been suggested that Wesley sees empirical proof for the first

symptom of the universal disease of sin to be ‘natural ungodliness.’ Unpacked here is how

unbelief becomes the first symptom of this condition in the Fall.

If one recalls Wesley’s interpretation of Adam and Eve’s perfection, in the obedience

of faith they enjoyed perfect freedom as imitators of Christ.152 The reality of this freedom is an

empty concept outside of their concrete situation, wherein Adam and Eve are confronted by a

moment of decision: occasioned by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and instigated

by God and the serpent. Certainly, perfect in their understanding, they were conscious that their

condition could be otherwise. Certainly, they knew that God’s command entailed the

150
‘On the Repentance of Believers,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:336.
Correlating to the therapeutic sense of sin and salvation noted by many, see ‘Circumcision of the Heart,’ §I.5,
151

WJW, 1:404; Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 176-179; Maddox, Responsible Grace, 74.
152
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §1, WJW, 2:400-401.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 126

possibility that they may not follow it. Their freedom is intrinsically relational. It is bound up

with the exercise of that freedom alongside the command to tend the garden into which they

are given (Gn. 1.26-30; 2.15ff.).153 It is a life situated, labouring between two trees so that

humanity can commune between God and the rest of creation. This structure of the self, situated

between the two trees, presses humanity into decision for or against God, to continue ‘as a free

agent’ to ‘steadily [choose] whatever was good, according to the direction of his

understanding,’ or reject faith, ‘being broke off from God, and looking upon him as an angry

judge.’154 Somewhere in this life in the garden, the devil enters the serpent, and here, for

Wesley, is the occasion for the ordeal: ‘“How came evil into the world?” It came from “Lucifer,

son of the morning”: it was “the work of the devil.” “For the devil”, saith the Apostle, “sinneth

from the beginning”; that is, was the first sinner in the universe; the author of sin; the first being

who by the abuse of his liberty introduced evil into the creation.’155 This entrance marks the

beginning of the descent of the human being from divine freedom to the freedom of

indifference which under sin becomes a condition of bondage.

Recalling the natural and political aspects of the image of God, 156 the perfections of

understanding, will, and liberty exercised in communion with God’s creatures allows the ordeal

between Eve and the serpent to take on cosmic significance. On the one hand, if Wesley

presumes Eve’s ignorance towards the serpent’s duplicity, then perhaps Eve’s initial reproof is

a gentle reminder, not a nervous warning. She may have simply been exercising that political

dimension of the image of God. Wesley mentions this possibility, but this interpretation is

insufficient.157 On the other hand, if Wesley presumes that as soon as the serpent uttered words

153
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.1, WJW, 2:442.
154
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.10, WJW, 2:477.
155
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.8, WJW, 2:476.
156
See above, §3.3.
157
Wesley, ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.9, WJW, 2:477.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 127

hostile to the divine prohibition, then there emerges a culpable depth to this decision. Wesley

holds the latter view. In Wesley’s scheme, in the original moral image of God, human reason,

like the other faculties, conforms to the holiness and righteousness of the will of God.158

Therefore, however fallible, Adam and Eve may have been, it is implausible to explain the Fall

based on ignorance.

Wesley’s comments elsewhere on the relation between faith and sin corroborate this

point. He writes: ‘Does sin precede or follow the loss of faith? Does a child of God first commit

sin, and thereby lose his faith? Or does he lose his faith first, before he commits sin? I answer:

some sin, sin of omission at least, must necessarily precede the loss of faith—some inward sin.

But the loss of faith must precede outward sin.’ 159 Wesley suggests that the loss of faith can

coincide with a sin of omission, the neglect of the command of God. In this way, Eve’s

conversation with the serpent aligns with his description of dissipation. Wesley defines

dissipation as ‘uncentring the soul from God, … whatever uncentres the mind from God does

properly dissipate us.’160 He demonstrates the link with conversation and dissipation further,

linking this to his emphasis on the Word: ‘And even as much as serving dissipated the thoughts

of Martha, and distracted her from attending to her Lord’s words, so a thousand things which

daily occur are apt to dissipate our thoughts, and distract us from attending to his voice who is

continually speaking to our hearts.’161 Wesley may as well be speaking here about Eve’s

temptation in the garden. Dissipation becomes the original break in the constant communion

between human beings and God. Yet, the situation in the garden is still unclear: Wesley admits

that when it comes to inward sins, one has to reckon with sins of infirmity (i.e., involuntary

158
‘The New Birth,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:188-189.
‘The Great Privilege of those that are Borne of God,’ §III.1, WJW, 1:441-442. On the moral framework of
159

Wesley’s doctrine of actual sin, sins of omission, commission, surprise, inward, and outward, see below,
§6.2.c.
160
‘On Dissipation,’ §11, WJW, 3:120.
161
‘On Dissipation,’ §§6-7, WJW, 3:118.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 128

sins) and sins of surprise.162 For either of these, they are sins—transgressions of God’s will—

but they are externally caused and thus do not confer guilt.163 One notes Wesley’s care in ‘The

End of Christ’s Coming’ to indicate that it is humanity’s ‘self-temptation’ and ‘self-will’ so as

not to render humanity the victim of some inexplicable necessity. 164 Nevertheless, he stretches

out the movement: ‘Thus far [Eve] appears to have been clear of blame. But how long did she

continue so?’165 Her gaze does not only falter but fastens onto a vain hope in the serpent’s false

promise. The serpent promises an illusory good, invites Eve to judge for herself, and so

dissipates the tempers of the soul, disorientating her from the voice of God. She takes up her

conversation with another.

Wesley refrains from interjecting that Eve, through this complex interchange,

deliberately sins and incurs guilt. The same problem that dogs Wesley’s distinction between

voluntary and involuntary sin in the Christian life is afoot in his interpretation of the Fall.166

The infidelity born in the will arises in a vastly complex situation, funded by the devil’s

deception as much as through disbelief. The whence of sin for which humanity is responsible,

while stemming from the situation of unbelief, is shrouded in tragic ambiguity. The sharpness

of the Fall appears only when Wesley considers Adam’s highhanded sin. Based on the essential

sociality of creatures, especially of human beings, it is beneficial to view Eve and Adam’s

ordeals as two moments in a single event: a narrative that portrays the essential structure of the

disease of sin.

162
See below, §6.2.c.
163
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §II.11, WJW, 1:242; cf. below, §6.2.
164
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.8, WJW, 2:476.
165
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:402.
166
See below, §6.2.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 129

For Wesley, Adam’s ordeal demonstrates the decay incurred once faithlessness already

has a foothold in existence. However ‘infectious’ Eve’s sin was, Adam’s sin brings with it a

clear picture of the horror of the Fall.167 Wesley writes:

Adam, in whom all mankind were then contained, freely preferred evil to good. He
chose to do his own will, rather than the will of his Creator. He ‘was not deceived,’ but
knowingly and deliberately rebelled against his Father and his King. In that moment he
lost the moral image of God, and, in part, the natural: He commenced unholy, foolish,
and unhappy. And ‘in Adam all died:’ He entitled all his posterity to error, guilt, sorrow,
fear, pain, diseases, and death.168
Wesley defaults often to the language of Adam. This preference aligns with much of the

tradition. Wesley’s difference is in how Adam and Eve’s individual falls relate. He does not

reconcile the moment of Adam’s high-handed sin with the hazy situation of Eve. Instead,

Adam’s sin as a ‘rank idolater’ stands out from the lesser fault of Eve. Adam has become the

prototype of the ‘quintessence of atheism.’ 169 In Wesley’s view, Adam is nothing less than an

artisan of evil: ‘[The] quintessence of atheism—it is artificial added to natural ungodliness.’170

Adam and Eve’s respective ordeals mark two ends on a continuum of sin. In this, one may map

Wesley’s doctrine of original sin within the free-will defence tradition and move on to other

topics.171 In a broad sense this is true, but in Wesley’s reading, as has been shown, the ordeal

of the Fall is complex. Tensions emerge between the various points in this story. While Wesley

does hold that sin began only with creaturely will, the prominence of deception in the devil’s

incredulity gives the Fall a tragic colouring: ‘She believed a lie: she gave more credit to the

167
While there is still room to problematise Wesley’s emphasis on Eve in the Fall for its implications for gender
(crudely, making the Fall the fault of women), he does resist an account that would entail making women
essentially inferior to men. Following Lancaster’s argument, the shift from Adam’s persuasion to sin over
against Eve’s deception invites a more subtle and less problematic doctrine of original sin. See Lancaster,
‘Women, Wesley, and Original Sin,’ 360-72, esp. 369.
168
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.6, WJW, 2:410.
169
‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith,’ §20, WJW, 4:58.
170
‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith,’ §20, WJW, 4:58.
171
Bryant, ‘Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 112-134.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 130

word of the devil than to the word of God.’172 The falsity of the devil’s conversation upends

the orders of creation.

The relation between Adam to Eve’s ordeal shows in what sense, moreover,

faithlessness is originary. The ambiguity of the world once Eve’s conversation breaks ripples

outward; this generates an unholy anxiety now that they have been ‘unhinged from God, their

proper centre.’173 The result is the tragic restlessness of the bondage of the will:

The hungry soul, like the busy bee, wanders from flower to flower; but it goes off from
each with an abortive hope and a deluded expectation. Every creature cries (some with
a loud and others with a secret voice), ‘Happiness is not in me.’ The height and the
depth proclaim to an attentive ear, ‘The Creator hath not implanted in me a capacity of
giving happiness; therefore with all thy skill and pains thou canst not extract it from
me.’174
The originary quality of faithlessness is exemplified by the restless and vain search for a centre.

The disordering of one’s desires is a situation no living creature can tolerate, so they set about

searching. This ongoing search becomes encumbered by the deceit of the devil who continues

to keep creation in its fallen condition.

In summary thus far, Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall leans on the nature of unbelief.

This move exposes infrequently noticed tensions and complexities within Wesley’s narrative

of the Fall. Unbelief takes the form of a primal transgression (Eve disbelieved) as well as

becoming the condition in which the rest of humanity finds themselves. While undoubtedly

fundamental, unbelief is not the end of sin.175 Instead, just as faith opens one unto the life of

holy-love, so too unbelief opens one unto unimagined and irrational wickedness. Wesley’s

emphasis on this point, that one should mark this ordeal before proceeding to the rest of the

Fall narrative, allows one to give coherence to the diversity of ways sin appears in the world.

172
Wesley, ‘On the Fall of Man,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:402.
173
‘On Dissipation,’ §10, WJW, 3:120.
174
‘A Single Eye,’ §4, WJW, 4:125.
175
For example, murder involves more than unbelief though it is funded from it (one disbelieves in the life of
peace against the divine will).
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 131

Still, all the various ways sin manifests index themselves to the analogy of faith, and this is

precisely how Wesley goes about his descriptions of sin in all its expressions. With Wesley’s

doctrine of the image of God and his interpretation of the Fall, this argument moves towards

the meaning of sin that emerges from this account.

5. The Meaning of Sin

Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall is performative: it assumes and then demonstrates a

definition of sin. It is part of the interpretive task to piece together the definition already

asserted in how Wesley narrates the Fall. In this section, Wesley’s definition of sin is presented.

Already, in Wesley’s noting of Eve and Adam as distinct points in a single narrative, he has

given us his view of sin: faithlessness, once inhabited, becomes the beginning of a life of decay

that only ends in the sclerosis of idolatry. The organic sense of sin as process and decay is

important. As such, this argument incorporates the ambiguous interior states between

faithlessness and pride within the two predominant motifs Wesley uses when speaking of sin,

either sin as illness or sin as transgression. Questions about the consequences, manifestations,

and transmission of sin are, for the moment, held off. Insofar as it is possible, this section

presents the meaning of sin in general as Wesley understands it. This is not to list a definition

of sin in abstracto, a mode of reasoning alien to this practical divine; rather, it continues along

the path already set forward: retracing Wesley’s interpretation of the Scriptures in the

fellowship of believers. Only in conversation with the Scriptures does Wesley’s voice emerge;

only in conjunction with the particularity of everyday life does it become clear.

Wesley relays these two senses of sin––one ‘from above’ and the other ‘from below’—

in his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer:176

‘Our trespasses.’ The word properly signifies ‘our debts’. Thus our sins are frequently
represented in Scripture. … Indeed we are already bound hand and foot by the chains

176
This language, though common to Wesley, is borrowed sympathetically to its use in Ian A. McFarland’s ‘Sin
and the Limits of Theology: A Reflection in Conversation with Julian of Norwich and Martin Luther,’
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 22:2 (2020) 147-168.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 132

of our own sins. These, considered with regard to ourselves, are chains of iron and
fetters of brass. They are wounds wherewith the world, the flesh, and the devil, have
gashed and mangled us all over. They are diseases that drink up our blood and spirits,
that bring us down to the chambers of the grave. But considered, as they are here, with
regard to God, they are debts, immense and numberless.177
On the one hand, sin is for human beings an open, festering wound: a putrid disease that alters

one’s life in the world. On the other hand, sin is for God an irrecoverable transgression and an

unpayable debt: an abomination to the holiness of the Triune God. Wesley’s style lends himself

to hold both motifs in hand rather than reduce or reconcile their meaning. It is unhelpful to

persist in thinking that Wesley made a conscious decision between the crude binary of a

juridical Latin/Western and a therapeutic Orthodox/Eastern idiom.178 Wesley’s descriptive

approach attunes with the multivalence of sin in the Scriptures, which earned him some

criticism for a perceived inconsistency and lack of clarity. 179 But when pressed, Wesley’s view

emphasises that sin is a condition suffered which we incur ourselves. Thus, Wesley shows

illness to be his preferred, though not exclusive, idiom for representing sin. 180

The value of privileging illness within the multivalence of scripture’s sin-talk is in its

phenomenological perspicuity. The experience of sin is much like a congenital, ‘inbred’ or

‘inbeing,’ illness. This becomes even more important by virtue of Wesley’s holistic and

relational ontology. Wesley’s attention never rests on the spiritual, though the spiritual is

177
Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, VI,’ §III.13, WJW, 1:586.
178
The juxtaposition of this typology, or other variations of it, hinders gathering the holistic sense of Wesley’s
theology. For example, see Maddox, Responsible Grace, 73-4; cf. Lindstrom, John Wesley’s Doctrine of
Sanctification, 41.
179
For example, John-Baptist Malassis de Sulamar, A short examen of Mr. John Wesley's system, as it appears
in his publick proposals concerning the doctrine of original sin; or the doctrine of original sin examined at the
living light of the doctrine of truth, in a letter publickly directed to Mr. John Wesley, by John-Baptist, the arch-
teacher (London: St. Clement's Church Yard, 1757) 4-5: ‘The Word Sin having so many Significations, you
should have begun by determining even in your short Proposals, if that Original Sin is an original Crime, or
only an original Fault, or Defect, Imperfection, or Falsity, or Error, or Lie, or Illusion, or Superstition, or
Idolatry, or Ignorance, or Infidelity, or Unfaithfulness. Thus, you are a bad Teacher of a Doctrine as bad, and
the Sin it’s Substance of whatever of all these kinds, this Sin may be.’
Sin is expressed variously as an illness, disease, infirmity, or inbred corruption. See ‘The Way to the
180

Kingdom,’ §II.2, WJW, 1:226; ‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §§I.20, II.1, WJW, 1:346-347; ‘The
Circumcision of the Heart,’ §I.5, WJW, 1:404; ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, I’ §I.13, WJW, 1:482-
483); ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, V,’ §III.2, WJW, 1:556; ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the
Mount, VI,’ §III.13, WJW, 1:586.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 133

fundamental. On the contrary, Wesley’s theological approach remains vigilant to the corporate

and corporeal essence of life. Life’s corporate dimension insists that existence entails being in

relation to one another. Life’s corporeal dimension insists that existence is embodied. Human

beings live in relation to one another as flesh and bone, created ‘from the dust’ and called ‘very

good’ (Gn. 1.1-2). For Wesley, it is true that ‘it is the spirit that gives life’ to useless flesh, but

that flesh lives in the spirit, taking on value and meaning.181 In his view, the created goodness

of life enfleshed––‘fearfully and wonderfully wrought into innumerable fibres, nerves,

membranes, muscles, arteries, veins, vessels of various kinds’––continues only through

prevenient grace.182 This goodness persists despite the Fall, though sin imposes misery and

decay upon the body. 183 For Wesley, reflection upon the relation of flesh and spirit is

unavoidable:

And by sad experience we find, that this ‘corruptible body presses down the soul.’ It
very frequently hinders the soul in its operations; and, at best, serves it very imperfectly.
Yet the soul cannot dispense with its service, imperfect as it is: For an embodied spirit
cannot form one thought but by the mediation of its bodily organs. For thinking is not,
as many suppose, the act of a pure spirit; but the act of a spirit connected with a body,
and playing upon a set of material keys. It cannot possibly, therefore, make any better
music than the nature and state of its instruments allow it. Hence every disorder of the
body, especially of the parts more immediately subservient to thinking, lay an almost
insuperable bar in the way of its thinking justly. 184
The body distorts the soul not on any account of the body’s wickedness but because the sin-

encumbered soul subjugates the body to its own wickedness, just like the subjugation of all

fellow creatures. One of Wesley’s consistent emphases is, then, the relation of the Fall to the

flesh, and out of this relation the importance of sin as an illness is reinforced. The experimental

view of embodiment is here interwoven with Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall and the

181
‘What is Man?’ §8, WJW, 4:22-23.
182
‘What is Man?’ §1, WJW, 4:20.
183
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.1, WJW, 2:405; cf. ‘What is Man?’ §1, WJW, 4:20.
184
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:405.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 134

meaning of sin. It is of some consequence since, by implication, sin is not merely a mental, but

a bodily ordeal.

The importance of this insight, among other things, is that here as elsewhere for Wesley,

‘the tree is known by its fruit’ (Mt. 12.33). That is, he insists upon an experiential transparency

between interior and exterior states. In the Edenic situation Wesley ventures the idea that Adam

and Eve would have enjoyed intuitive understanding like the angels, because their bodies

existed in perfect harmony with their spirits, and these both in perfect harmony with God and

creation.185 They were guided by their whole existence within the will of God: the call to attend

to fellow creatures manifested as much in the yearning for the object of one’s love as the delight

of the encounter with the other. But in the Fall, the body is subjected to fragmentation and

decay, and the body cries out against the spirit. 186 Wesley is aware that tempers and dispositions

(passions, affections, and drives) are deeper and thicker than mental phenomena. Thus, in

Wesley’s narration of the Fall, one may describe the advent of sin and the disorientation of the

will as a disintegration of body with the soul. ‘[You] have a body, together with your soul,’

Wesley says, ‘and that each is dependent on the other.’187 But this is a dependency in

disintegration: the disintegration of body and soul is a helpful way of interpreting the meaning

of sin as illness, in the essence of the phenomena, carries with it this basic disintegration. 188 In

Wesley’s words: ‘Run only a thorn into your hand; immediately pain is felt in your soul. On

the other side is shame felt in your soul. Instantly a blush overspreads your cheek. Does the

185
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:438-439.
186
‘The Image of God,’ §II.1, WJW, [Link] ‘[The Fall’s] first effect must have been on his body.’
187
‘On the Trinity,’ §12, WJW, 2:382.
188
For example, the dreadful unease induced by the ache of the body, something as subtle as a quietly torn
meniscus and a swollen knee, forces the mind to awake and, in the quiet of the night, alienates one from one’s
body, so one waits in distress, wondering if sleep will ever come. For a version of this argument at length, see
Falque, ‘The Discarnate Madman,’ International Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion, 1:1 (2019),
90-117; Wesley, Some Thoughts on Nervous Disorders, JWW, 11:515-520.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 135

soul feel fear or violent anger? Presently the body trembles.’189 This disintegration, or this

madness even, captures the perspicuity of the sense of sin as illness.

What then is to be made of the sense of sin ‘with regard to ourselves’ as illness in

relation to the sense of sin ‘with regard to God’ as transgression or lawlessness?190 On the one

hand, one may bifurcate the meaning of sin. In an objective view, sin is simply transgression

of divine law. In a subjective view, sin is experienced as an illness. The subjective experience

of sin in this cause not only derives from the notion of transgression but subordinates it to the

objective reality of things. On the other hand, one may refuse a bifurcation and see these as

valences of a singular phenomenon. This latter view is more appropriate to Wesley, for whom,

speaking elsewhere about matters of dogma, ‘I believe just so much as God has revealed, and

no more.’191 That is, in Wesley the ordo cogniscendi and the ordo essendi are not merely

conjoined but unfolding from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ in whom the believer

participates, and this is the order of experimental divinity.192 In Christ there can be no clean

separation between the revealed God confirmed in experience and the God unveiled in the

Scriptures. God freely chooses in God’s holy love to entangle Godself, by the Holy Spirit in

the flesh of the Son, with God’s creatures.193 In relation to sin, these two senses conjoin with

one another to give sin a depth of meaning. For example, the shame of Adam and Eve in the

garden demonstrates the transgression of the law of God; conversely, the transgression of the

law manifests in the guilty conscience and anxiety shown so clearly in Genesis 3.7-14. The law

is fleshed out even as sin invokes lawless existence. 194 Therefore, the emphasis of Wesley’s

189
Wesley, ‘On the Trinity,’ §12, WJW, 2:382.
190
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, VI,’ §III.13, WJW, 1:586.
191
‘On the Trinity,’ §15, WJW, 2:384.
This helps explain the sense in which Wesley necessitates the confession of the Trinity, see ‘On the Trinity,’
192

§18, WJW, [Link] ‘Therefore I do not see for any to have vital religion who denies that these three are one.’
193
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §§8-10, WJW, 4:63-64.
194
‘The Original, Nature, Property, and Use of the Law,’ §I.3, WJW, 2:7.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 136

sin-talk speaks of the human condition as the pursuit of health and wholeness so that

‘knowledge of their disease … disposes them to embrace with a willing mind… that faith which

alone is able to make them whole, which is the one medicine given under heaven to heal their

sickness.’195 In this sense, to venture into the doctrine of sin for Wesley is to wade into waters

from which one cannot remove oneself. Wesley’s account of sin, framed this way, begins in

the Psalmist’s confession that ‘I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me’ and

then proceeds to confess that ‘Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived

me’ (Ps. 51.3, 5). Sin is an illness in that it is world-forming, unavoidable, intractable, and

infectious. Moreover, one thinks about sin from within a sinful existence: the one who thinks

about sin is implicated in the situation they aim to depict. Wesley’s is not a concept of sin fallen

prey to mixed metaphors, but a wrestling with the embodied reality of sin and the weight of the

transgression of the law.

Therefore, within Wesley’s view of sin as an illness and as transgression, even if

unbelief is not always sin, all sin has as its basis the quality of unbelief. A final comparison

might be drawn between the view of sin ‘from below’ with the view ‘from above,’ this time

with emphasis on the law. The centre of Wesley’s understanding of the essence of sin before

God is grounded in 1 John 3.4, ‘Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is

lawlessness.’196 Wesley locates sin as a theological problem, as the violation of God’s law, ‘the

holy, just, and good law of God, and so sets [God’s] authority for nought.’197 The quality of

the law is personified in the Word incarnate and known to creatures in the proclamation of the

Word, the illumination of Spirit, and sharing in the means of grace.198 The law is existential for

195
‘Circumcision of the Heart,’ §I.5, WJW, 1:404.
196
See Wesley’s commentary in ENNT, 1 Jn. 3.4.
197
ENNT, 1 Jn. 3.4; ‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:9.
198
‘The Means of Grace,’ WJW, 1:378-387; ‘Of the Church,’ WJW, 3:46-57; cf. below, §6.5.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 137

Wesley, ‘ingraven on his heart by the finger of God.’ 199 The law transgressed is a holy-law

precisely because its origin is in God’s triune identity; the law transgressed by sin is a holy-

law precisely because its expression is in God’s triune activity.200 But because of the law’s

identification with Godself, this law is love. 201 All sin, whether actual or descriptive of the

condition of a subject before God (sinfulness), is actively transgressive of this holy-law, of

Godself.202 In this sense, following the grammar of holiness, sin is being set-apart—or, better,

thrown—from the presence of God. Therefore, sin flowing from the ordeal of faithlessness

becomes shaped by faithlessness; this is simultaneously a rejection of God’s law of holy-

love.203 This conception of law and the imitation of God expands on what is meant by

humanity’s capability of God, which certainly must include capability of fulfilling God’s law.

Where human life is not patterned (i.e. abiding by the law) after the movements of the divine

life in holy-love, there sin is.

In summary, Wesley’s understanding of sin gathers the juridical and therapeutic

emphases together in one scripturally and experientially ordered medium. On his account, sin

is a transgression of the Word of God that has material consequences for one’s life in the world

most aptly expressed as a disease. Sin is not adequately captured as, at bottom, idolatry, though

that is sin in its most high-handed meaning; sin is neither adequately captured as, at bottom,

199
‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law,’ §I.3, WJW, 2:7.
200
‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law,’ §§III.4, 6-7, WJW, 2:11, 12-13.
201
‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law,’ §III.12, WJW, 2:14-15.
202
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, V,’ §III.2, WJW, [Link] ‘If we use propriety of speech there is no
such thing as a little sin, every sin being a transgression of the holy and perfect law, and an affront to the great
majesty of heaven.’
203
Compare Luther, LW, [Link] ‘Let us learn, therefore, that this is the nature of sin: unless God immediately
provides a cure and calls the sinner back, he flees endlessly from God and, by excusing his sin with lies, heaps
sin upon sin until he arrives at blasphemy and despair. This sin by its own gravitation always draws with it
another sin and brings on eternal destruction, till finally the sinful person would rather accuse God than
acknowledge his own sin. Adam should have said: “Lord, I have sinned.” But he does not do this. He accuses
God of sin and says in reality: “Thou, Lord, hast sinned. For I would have remained holy in paradise after
eating the fruit if Thou hadst kept quiet.” This is the reality of the meaning of his words when he says, “I
would have fled if Thy voice had not frightened me.”’
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 138

faithlessness, though this is included in the condition of sin, living without God in the world.

Even while sinners are transgressors, they are at the same time chronically ill. Faithlessness is

the harbinger for the slow decay of sin into the sclerosis of idolatry, yet in Wesley’s reading of

Eve and Adam, where they mark two distinct moments in the ordeal of the Fall, this sense of

sin as a tragic decay is already at play. The catastrophe of the Fall that human beings do not,

unlike Eve and Adam, enter this world in the communion of grace, but exist in faithlessness,

dead to God.

6. The ‘Season of Vanity’: The Fall as Cosmic Tragedy

From the preceding interaction with Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall, where the

meaning of sin is performed, and the interrogation of that meaning, Wesley’s notion of sin may

be understood in an interrelated two-fold manner: (a) as a process of decay from faithlessness

to idolatry demonstrated in the catastrophic shift from Eve to Adam; (b) as an illness and as a

transgression. The guilt of human beings as transgressors is at once the substance of their

suffering. However, it is not enough to speak about the Fall as an isolated human phenomenon.

Wesley senses the reverberations of human sin in the world. Creation suffers on account of

humanity’s primordial sin.204 In this section, Wesley’s understanding of how the Fall severs

the relation between human beings and other creatures is explored. The focus remains on how

this break unfolds in Wesley’s interpretation of the Scriptures. This section is also where this

dissertation relocates the question of the origin of evil. It suggests that intrinsic to Wesley’s

theological vision is this cosmological shape of sin (and, by consequence, salvation). Wesley’s

doctrine of sin requires considerable attention to the corruption among created sociality.

To speak of Wesley’s version of created sociality is to understand individual and

communal identity as grounded in other persons—in Eve’s communion with Adam and vice

The classic pair of sermons in this domain are ‘The General Deliverance,’ WJW, 2:437-450, and ‘The New
204

Creation,’ WJW, 2:500-510.

‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 139

versa—as well as in communion with animate and inanimate creatures. Importantly, within the

political image of God, sociality extends beyond the human. Conversely, the Fall entails a

perversion of this created sociality. Wesley writes:

As all the blessings of God in paradise flowed through man to the inferior creatures; as
man was the great channel of communication, between the Creator and the whole brute
creation; so when man made himself incapable of transmitting those blessings, that
communication was necessarily cut off. The intercourse between God and the inferior
creatures being stopped, those blessings could no longer flow in upon them. And then
it was that ‘the creature,’ every creature, ‘was subjected to vanity,’ to sorrow, to pain
of every kind, to all manner of evils: Not, indeed, ‘willingly,’ not by its own choice,
not by any act or deed of its own; ‘but by reason of Him that subjected it,’ by the wise
permission of God, determining to draw eternal good out of this temporary evil.205
Human beings, in their common life and labour alongside other creatures, mediated the grace

of God to animal life. The sin of Adam and Eve ruptured that relation and by consequence they

introduced all creatures to pain and misery. Wesley says that animals are subjected by human

beings to violence, to ‘sorrow, to pain, of every kind, to all manner of evils.’206 They are

subjected, on no account of their own, to futility and necessity. The communion of grace

becomes a state of war.

Animal life in created sociality enjoyed the natural image of God along with human

beings. They shared, in Wesley’s interpretation, understanding, will, and liberty to such an

extent that he hardly doubts that human and animals were readily able to communicate:

‘Perhaps insects and worms had then as much understanding as the most intelligent brutes have

now.’207 The Fall crushed animal reason first: ‘undoubtedly they suffered far more in their

understanding; more than we can easily conceive.’208 Likewise, the will and the passions,

‘variously distorted,’ impairs their liberty, driving creatures by fear towards violence. Wesley

explains:

205
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.1, WJW, 2:442.
206
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.1, WJW, 2:442.
207
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:442.
208
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:442.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 140

They are still utterly enslaved to irrational appetites, which have the full dominion over
them. The very foundations of their nature are out of course; are turned upside down.
As man is deprived of his perfection, his loving obedience to God; so brutes are
deprived of their perfection, their loving obedience to man. The far greater part of them
flee from him; studiously avoid his hated presence. The most of the rest set him at open
defiance; yea, destroy him, if it be in their power.209
Out of this, Wesley contemplates especially the passions of animal life, ‘what savage

fierceness, what unrelenting cruelty.’210 The anthropomorphic treatment of animal life is worth

questioning, but it offers another place to highlight the significance of the affections within

Wesley’s theology.211 The examples he draws upon, of violent predators on land and at sea

driven by bloodlust against all but their own kind, portrays the ‘image of the brute.’212 Humans

in original sin take on this image, and in so doing they become sub-human and sub-animal, an

offence to all creatures. Therefore, when Wesley writes of a violent creature ‘that tears the

flesh, sucks the blood, and crushes the bones of their helpless fellow-creatures,’ he has a double

meaning in mind.213 On the one hand, he straightforwardly means the brutality of animal

violence seen in the natural world. On the other hand, he sees in this a window into the extremes

of human cruelty and violence, and the description of the violence of animal life has a direct

parallel to the description of warfare in Wesley’s account of the mystery of iniquity. 214

Moreover, in addition to all this, disgust enters the world, human beings begin to abhor the

grotesque bodies of animals.215

209
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:443.
210
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.3-4, WJW, 2:443-444.
211
For a recent theological engagement that negotiates this problem see David Clough, On Animals, volume 1,
Systematic Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), xix, 26-44. Clough’s distinction between a necessary
anthropocentrism and a problematic ‘anthropomonism’ helps reorientate further discussion over how to
theologically narrate the lives of non-human creatures.
212
Wesley, ‘God’s Love to Fallen Man,’ §1, WJW, 2:423.
213
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:443.
‘The Mystery of Iniquity,’ WJW, 2:450-470; The Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. I, WJW, 12:160-211; cf.
214

Runyon, The New Creation, 19-25.

215
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.4, WJW, 2:444.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 141

Further, in the natural world, Wesley argues that destructive events—for example,

earthquakes, hurricanes, and pestilence—also enter because of our first parent’s transgression.

This view seems to follow the traditional Augustinian account of the origin of sin and evil. 216

Wesley remains agnostic as to a metaphysical explanation of evil akin to those given by

Archbishop William King, whom he read and (eventually) sympathised with, and Leibniz. 217

The distinction is Wesley’s anti-speculative theological attitude. He eschews robust accounts

of how evil enters and the consequences therein, preferring instead to speak simply that evil

entered, and this awareness comes is only known through the illuminating activity of the Spirit

of Christ.218 What he is willing to admit to acquit God of any association with evil is that it has

its genesis in the sin of Adam and Eve in the Fall, and in the antecedent fall of the devil.219 He

admits the distinction, seen also in King, between natural and moral evil: that is, between the

deprivation of ordinary things by virtue of accident or disorder in creation (for example, an

earthquake) and that which suffers by virtue an agent (for example, an act of theft).220 But on

this subject, this argument remains sensitive to the risk of over-explaining, and therefore

misunderstanding, Wesley’s position.221 The import of this section is on the universal effect of

For a brief overview of theodicy, see René Van Woundenberg, ‘A Brief History of Theodicy,’ in The
216

Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil, edited by Justin P. McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder
(Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 177-191; on Augustine, 179-181.
217
Outler notes the ‘Leibnizian ring’ to Wesley’s theodical comments in WJW, 4:280. Wesley’s direct
engagement with Leibniz through the Clark-Leibniz correspondence (JWW, 4:45) show that he came to know
his work mid-career. Wesley’s engages King early, see Letters, 1:61, 68-72. His initial comments on King are
perhaps too critical; later in life he returns to King with greater sympathy, see Letters, [Link] ‘The tract of
Archbishop King has been particularly admired by many persons of excellent sense. I do not admire it as much
as they do; but I like it well.’
218
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §2, WJW, [Link] ‘This plain, simple account of the origin of evil, whether natural or
moral, all the wisdom of man could not discover till it pleased God to reveal it to the world. Till then man was
a mere enigma to himself, a riddle which none but God could solve.’ Cf. ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human
Heart,’ §II.8, WJW, 4:158-159.
‘God’s Love to Fallen Man,’ §II.15, WJW, 2:434; ‘On the Fall of Man,’ §2, WJW, 2:401; ‘The End of
219

Christ’s Coming,’ §I.8, WJW, 2:476.

220
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §2, WJW, 2:401; King, On the Origin of Evil, 132-139, 261-263.
221
One may, perhaps, explore the idea that given the relational quality of the image of God, that Wesley may
have in some sense opened the door to think through the place of physical and biological necessity in the
Edenic situation, pressing questions such as the natural goodness of work, hunger, sleep, and other everyday
rhythms.
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 142

the particular decision of Eve and Adam to sever the gracious relation between God and God’s

creatures.

In summary, the Fall is a catastrophe not only for human beings but also for the whole

of creation. The violence witnessed in creation against creatures is attributed in a maximal

sense to the fault of human beings, who originally were entrusted to care and work for the

glorification of God and the upbuilding of all other life. The brutality Wesley draws out of his

interpretation of animal life is not only a recognition of their condition consequent to human

sin, but also a symbol for the depths of human corruption: effectively saying that human beings

are no better. Wesley’s view resonates with the words of Ecclesiastes: ‘For the fate of humans

and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies another’ (Ecc. 3.19). This brief sketch

rounds out this chapter’s exposition of Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall, preparing the

analysis to transition to Wesley’s understanding of the consequences of sin and the experience

of sin in everyday life.

7. Conclusion

This chapter explored Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall. As the exposition unfolded,

it was demonstrated how sin is, for him, a decay from faithlessness to its ending in pride, to the

heart turned entirely inward. This meant an abdication of that original relationship wherein Eve

and Adam functioned as a royal priesthood on behalf of all creation, being the means of grace

to a world of abundance, in the image of God, natural, political, and moral. Just as the image

of God was forfeited, so too was the blessedness of original creation: with sin came evil into

the world. Brutality overcame the animal world and threatened human life. Following this

exposition, key themes may be drawn out that shape Wesley’s understanding of sin.

First, sin is a relational quality: it entails the breaking of a relation with another person.

It is, classically, ‘no thing’ but more than this, describes a movement away and against God

and the other. Sin, like the image of God, is represented as an existential attitude, a disposition
‘Unbelief – That Evil Root’ 143

of the self towards God and the world. Thus, the line between righteousness and wickedness is

absolute, there can be no ambiguous space between righteous communion with God and the

abandonment of that grace. The experience of the varieties of faithlessness are indexed to this

more fundamental existential disposition of the self. Had Eve doubted yet remained within the

command of God, her doubt and deception would never have matured. Second, while sin is

relational and the line between the holy and unholy is strict, it also expresses a kind of

progression. Sin is a movement of decay the leaves existence in the world an ambiguous affair.

This is expressed by Wesley in the movement in the Genesis narrative from Eve to Adam, they

represent the decay of sin from faithlessness to idolatry, the means and the ends of total

depravity. Third, one may observe that none of this is an exclusively human affair. On the

contrary, the whole of creation suffers at the hands of human beings. The consequences of these

themes are borne out in the following chapter.

‘And there is no health in us’ 144

Chapter 4:
‘And there is no health in us’: John Wesley and the Consequences of Sin

1. Introduction

The preceding chapter saw in Wesley’s interpretation of the Fall an expression of the

basic structure of sin as it appears in the self and in the world. In this chapter, the analysis

moves from the Fall to its consequences, looking at Wesley’s experimentally orientated

doctrine of the effects of original sin. This chapter shows how for Wesley the structure of

indwelling sin correlates to ordinary life. As a preliminary clarification, this chapter enters an

area of Wesley’s theology where he is at once the most forthright and agnostic. On the one

hand, the self-evidence of sin in history is one of Wesley’s common themes: war, pestilence,

and political disorder find an explanation ready-to-hand in the universality and radicality of

humanity’s fallen condition. On the other hand, when pressed to offer explanation as to how

original sin spread through the whole course of human existence, Wesley is remarkably silent.

It is this latter agnostic sensibility which this reading highlights. Moreover, when pressed by

Dr John Robertson on the transmission of sin, Wesley declines not only having a position, but

the value of the doctrine entirely: ‘I care not if there were [no explanation for the transmission

of original sin]. The fact I know, both by Scripture and by experience. I know it is transmitted;

but how it is transmitted I neither know nor desire to know.’1 The anti-speculative theological

sensibility in Wesley’s criticism has more to do with the priority of the existential quality of

heart religion rather than an indifference to refined conceptual reasoning.2

1
Letters, 3:107; for more on this sensibility, see above 3.1, n15.
2
On the importance of the schoolmen and of speculative thought for practical divinity: ‘Do I understand
metaphysics; if not the depths of the Schoolmen, the subtleties of Scotus and Aquinas, yet the first rudiments,
the general principles, of that useful science?’ Wesley, Address to the Clergy, §II.(5), JWW, 10:492. Ironically,
in this disposition Wesley has much in common with King, who in some ways anticipates Sartre. See N. G. E.
Harris, ‘Creating Values: Sartre and Archbishop William King,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 4:1 (1987),
53-65.
‘And there is no health in us’ 145

In outline, sketching Wesley’s experimental doctrine of the effects of original sin draws

attention to his descriptive mode of thought.3 This style of theology is not without allies.

‘Creation is entirely out of our depth,’ writes Butler in a parallel to Wesley’s criticism of the

so-called natural man, ‘and beyond the extent of our utmost reach.’4 There is a need to heed as

Bonhoeffer states that ‘humankind no longer lives in the beginning:’ humankind ‘finds itself

in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that it is in the

middle.’5 This recognition is all the more important within the doctrine of original sin. Wesley,

like Butler and Bonhoeffer, inhabits the ambiguous limitations of creatureliness: ‘The

impotence of the human mind even the Roman philosopher could discover … Nature points

out the disease; but nature shows us no remedy.’6 In essence, this chapter reflects on Wesley’s

view of the consequences of original sin revealed within the eyes of faith. To this end, this

chapter begins with an exposition of the relation of the phenomenon of human misery and sin

(§4.2). With Wesley’s close analogy of these two distinct phenomena in hand, the argument

reconstructs what he admits regarding the doctrine of the transmission of sin, showing the

various ways, all of them drawn from experience, that humanity tragically and inevitably

proliferates, agitates, and heightens the severity of its condition in original sin. This entails an

exposition of Wesley’s interpretation of the marks of sin: practical atheism, idolatry, and love

of the world (§4.3). Wesley demonstrates the persistence of this condition by recognising the

intolerable anxiety of the uncentred soul, i.e., the ‘deceitfulness of the human heart’ (§4.4), and

the presence of violence in history and everyday life, including violence against the created

order (§4.5). All this stems from humanity’s inability to tolerate an unbelieving existence,

3
That is to say, with McFarland, that the doctrine of original sin is a ‘reflex of the gospel of Jesus Christ,’ that
is, ‘the proper dogmatic function of original sin is limited to offering a description of rather than an
explanation for the human condition apart from grace,’ see In Adam’s Fall, 47.
4
Butler, Sermons, 15.5; Wesley, ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge,’ §2, WJW, 2:568-569.
5
Bonhoeffer, Creation & Fall, 28.
6
Wesley, ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §2, WJW, 2:472.
‘And there is no health in us’ 146

whether called practical atheism or spiritual death, which serves as the originary condition for

sin’s invasion and haunts the life of the believer.

2. Indwelling Sin, Spiritual Death, and Natural Death.

It is first necessary to examine the transition from the origin of unbelief in Wesley’s

account of the Fall to the fact of human existence afflicted by faithlessness. The observation of

this ‘natural ungodliness,’ common to all human life shows the estrangement of existence. 7

This situation is perpetually agitated because life’s anguish is unbearable when separated from

one’s centre.8 Thus enters the unavoidable confrontation between sin, suffering, death, and

their mutual relation. The fact of death, that all human beings die alone, indicates the

commonality of the human condition as subject to the pain of existence. Wesley expresses this

reality: ‘But since he sinned, he is not only dust, but mortal, corruptible dust.’9 The severity of

Wesley’s approach to the doctrine of original sin is coloured by his response to John Taylor,

who in a bid to deflate the severity of original sin suggested that only physical death is the

consequence of original sin. Wesley’s response is an attempt to defend the classic distinction

between physical and spiritual death. 10

First, this exposition scrutinises the notion of spiritual death in Wesley’s doctrine of

sin. Wesley defends two kinds of life and death: spiritual and natural. Spiritual life and death

are antecedent ontological facts and as such determine the existential reality of life and death.11

Through spiritual death come all the consequences of sin—including the inevitability of

physical death. Wesley writes: ‘It remains that the death expressed in the original threatening

7
‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith,’ §20, WJW, 4:58.
8
‘On a Single Eye,’ §I.3, WJW, 3:124.
9
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.1, WJW, 2:405.
10
Wesley, Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §I.3, WJW, 12:214; Taylor, The Scripture-Doctrine of Original Sin,
3rd edition (London: J. Waugh, 1750), 7.
11
Wesley, Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §I.3, WJW, [Link] ‘Allowing then that ‘Adam could understand it of
no other life than that which he had newly received’, yet would he naturally understand it of the life of God in
his soul, as well as of the life of his body.’ Cf. Taylor, The Scripture-Doctrine of Original Sin, 3rd edition
(London: J. Waugh, 1750), 7.
‘And there is no health in us’ 147

and implied in the sentence pronounced upon man includes all evils which could befall his soul

and body—death temporal, spiritual, and eternal.’ 12 All these consequences, in their seemingly

endless variety, find their cause in the personal confrontation with one’s faithlessness. Wesley

gives a complex image of the postlapsarian human condition arranged in a collection of

dispositions rooted in a basic insoluble relation to spiritual death. This relation corrupts all

aspects of life, especially how one deals with natural death. 13 The first sin, now the condition

of fallen human life, haunts every human being. Wesley says that sin ‘cleaves to the nature of

every man’ and in the face of this condition one turns to ‘self-will, pride, and independence of

God.’14 The germ of unbelief and the roots of self-will and pride feed into the entire life of

wickedness, recalling Wesley’s understanding of sin as an entropic process in human life. Here

is Wesley writing about this process in ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart:’

Hence springs every species of vice and wickedness; hence every sin against God, our
neighbour, and ourselves. Against God: forgetfulness and contempt of God, of his
name, his day, his Word, his ordinances; atheism on the one hand and idolatry on the
other; in particular, love of the world, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and
the pride of life; the love of money, the love of power, the love of ease, the love of the
‘honour that cometh of men’ (Jn. 5.41, 44), the love of the creature more than the
Creator, the being lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. Against our neighbour:
ingratitude, revenge, hatred, envy, malice, uncharitableness.15
Wesley is remarkably unwilling to allow sin-talk to be reduced to morality, culture, or

education.16 Instead, Wesley is conscious that sin pre-conditions all human life. He thinks there

is a genuine corruption in human nature. This differentiates Wesley’s account of sin from those

of contemporary moralists, who think it necessary for the formation of a rational moral agent

12
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §I.6, WJW, 12:220; cf. ENNT, Rom. 6.23.
To supply a comprehensive description of this situation is impossible, see ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human
13

Heart,’ §I.1, WJW, [Link] ‘It would be endless to enumerate all the species of wickedness, whether in thought,
word, or action, that now overspread the earth, in every nation and city and family.’
14
‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §I.4, WJW, 4:154.
15
‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §II.4, WJW, 4:156.
16
‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §I.1, WJW, 4:152.
‘And there is no health in us’ 148

to concede that one may by their own nature will and do what is good.17 This position does not

deny original sin but dampens the doctrine’s severity. Wesley’s contrary account demands that

sinfulness is unavoidably world-forming. Sin colours every aspect of one’s lifeworld. On this

account, the ensuing analysis of how Wesley understands: (a) the nature of spiritual death, (b)

its relation to natural death, and (c) the consequences which follow is intrinsic to understanding

the shape of the way of death.

a. Spiritual Death and the Corruption of Natures

First, Wesley says spiritual death effects a ‘deep and universal corruption of human

nature.’18 He means this in the strong sense: the essence of humanity is marred by the infection

of sin. Thus, human identity becomes fundamentally distorted: it is fractured in confrontation

with the distance between oneself and God that sin imposes and overwhelmed by the

subsequent invasion of mortality. Such is the consequence of being deprived of the life-giving

grace of God. He narrates spiritual death in ‘The New Birth:’

[Adam] ‘ate of the tree whereof the Lord had commanded him, Thou shalt not eat
thereof’. By this wilful act of disobedience, this flat rebellion against his sovereign, he
openly declared that he would not seek his happiness in God, but in the world, in the
works of his hands. Now God had told him before, ‘In the day that thou eatest’ of that
fruit ‘thou shalt surely die’. And the word of the Lord cannot be broken. Accordingly
in that day he did die: he died to God, the most dreadful of all deaths. He lost the life
of God: he was separated from him in union with whom his spiritual life consisted. The
body dies when it is separated from the soul, the soul when it is separated from God.
… [H]e lost both the knowledge and the love of God, without which the image of God
would not subsist.19
Wesley’s emphasis includes the belief that spiritual death—‘the loss of the life and image of

God’—corrupts all features of everyday life. This corruption includes natural death, pain, and

suffering.20 The life of God has one condition, faith; faith is a way of living rejected in the

17
Tipson, Inward Baptism, 110-139; cf. Daniel Dafydd Mills, Ethical Rationalism and Secularisation in the
British Enlightenment: Conscience and the Age of Reason (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020).
18
Wesley, ‘Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity,’ §1, WJW, 4:86-87.
19
‘The New Birth,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:189.
20
‘The New Birth,’ §I.3, WJW, 2:190.
‘And there is no health in us’ 149

ordeal of the Fall.21 For Wesley, spiritual death grafts itself onto the experience of natural death

similar to how the spiritual life grafts itself to natural life. Human nature is corrupted by sin.

However, the presupposition of grace and sin is some account of natures, no matter how

wounded that nature may be or how far removed one’s access to it is by virtue of their finitude.

The case is the same in spiritual death: one’s nature is corrupted beyond recognition, and grace

is sufficient for one to recognise this condition as sin. But of spiritual death, Wesley intends to

show how it is that one’s nature is fractured––irreparably wounded––through the condition of

faithlessness.22 These spiritual wounds have physical consequences by virtue of the embodied

nature of existence. It is not that sin-itself has any kind of substance. Sin is sheer privation of

the good (privatio boni) for Wesley.23 Yet, as the life of sin deprives the faculties constitutive

of human life, so too is the perception of reality distorted. 24 One’s consciousness of this

distortion is unveiled through the effectual nascent activity of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly,

one’s relation to this preventing grace varies in appearance outside of the embrace of faith, but

common to it is the awareness of an existential limit where in faithless resistance one can do

nothing to dig themselves out of the pit into which they have fallen. To use another phrase

Wesley uses to capture this condition, this is life in the ‘spirit of bondage.’25

b. The Sting of Death: The Relation of Natural & Spiritual Death

That Wesley’s account of spiritual death grafts itself onto natural death means it is, in

part, informed by analogy with an account of natural death. The interrelation between the two

21
Compare with Wesley’s ‘The Righteousness of Faith,’ §§I.6-7, WJW, 1:206-7.
22
The language of grafting parallels Wesley’s frequent appeal to organic metaphors such as the vine and the
branches. Wesley does not, it is suggested, use a direct causal relation between sin, pain, and natural death.
Rather, spiritual death always mediates between the experience of sin, pain, and natural death, thereby
distorting one’s relationship with these phenomena. A parallel account of sin as grafted onto finite life can be
found in Falque’s Guide to Gethsemane, 22-23.
23
For a general overview of influential view that sees mature formulation in Augustine, see Andrew P. Chignell,
Evil: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) 155-193.
Language of the corruption of natures is especially common in early Wesley, see ‘The Image of God,’ §II,
24

WJW, 4:295-299; ‘Salvation by Faith,’ §II.5, WJW, 1:123n; ‘The Way to the Kingdom,’ §II.2, WJW, 1:226.
25
‘Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ WJW, 1:249-266.
‘And there is no health in us’ 150

invites an exploration of each kind of death and their material relation. There is a need to clarify

what it is about death in Wesley’s reading that it becomes the great enemy of humanity and

proof of sin.26 Overall, in Wesley’s writings it is not self-evident that death-itself is the enemy,

at least in any direct fashion. One notes that most often, when Wesley speaks of sin and its

effects, he says, ‘sin and its attendant, pain,’ not death per se.27 Sin and its effects are distanced

from the phenomenon of death. In part, this is because of the impossibility of thinking about

death as such.28 Elsewhere, in a sermon composed in 1735, Wesley writes that death is even

recognised as means toward human liberation: ‘“Who then will deliver us from the body of this

death?” Death shall set those free in one moment who were “all their lifetime subject to

bondage”. Death shall destroy at once the whole body of sin, and therewith of its companion,

pain.’29 Death’s sting is not manifest in death itself. Instead, death’s contrast with life shows

that life is given as a sheer gift. Only the approach of death and the communal experience of

death are objects of thought, and therefore of terror. But this does reflect a common concern to

negotiate the experience of the approach of death. The experience of death’s approach, as the

tradition of the art of dying (ars moriendi) routinely shows, is an event of existential disclosure,

where the roots of one’s identity are exposed to the light of grace. 30 In one’s depraved

26
ENNT, Rom. 6.23: ‘Death—Temporal, spiritual, and eternal. Is the due wages of sin; but eternal life is the gift
of God—The difference is remarkable. Evil works merit the reward they receive: good works do not. The
former demand wages: the latter accept a free gift.’
27
See ‘The Mystery of Iniquity,’ §2, WJW, 2:452; on the relation of sin, suffering, and its accidental benefit,
‘The Promise of Understanding,’ §II.1, WJW, 4:285 ‘The Important Question,’ §III.7, WJW, 3:191-192;
‘God’s Love to Fallen Man,’ §I.7, WJW, 2:428-429; ‘The New Creation,’ §17, WJW, 2:509.
28
The psalmist captures this finality, Ps. 115.17: ‘The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down into
silence.’
29
‘The Trouble and Rest of Good Men,’ Proem, WJW, 3:534.
30
‘Death be not proud, though some have called thee / mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so.’ John Donne,
‘Holy Sonnets, X’ in The Complete Poetry and Select Prose of John Donne edited by Charles M. Coffin (New
York: The Modern Library, 2001), 262-3. Wesley’s exposure to this tradition is predominantly mediated
through his reading of Jeremy Taylor’s Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and of Holy Dying, Taylor’s
Works, vol 3; cf. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists, 34-35; Schmidt, John Wesley, 1:95f.;
Wesley, WJW, 18:21. It is sometimes supposed that the ars moriendi is associated with the works-
righteousness of early Wesley, standing in contrast with his ‘inherited theology’ and his ‘evangelical theology’
post-Aldersgate, to use the language of a recent thesis. However true this may be, the account here seeks to
emphasise continuity: attention to the ars moriendi does not fade in the story of early Methodism, it might
‘And there is no health in us’ 151

consciousness of death dwells sin, not in death as such.31 The struggle to which one must set

oneself is how to undergo the experience of death in a holy, loving, and faithful way. Supposing

that it is conceivable to die well, that is, to die without falling prey to vice, despair, and self-

condemnation, the struggle to do so displays sin’s entanglement with finitude. Death might not

be vicious for Wesley. Nevertheless, in the life of sin the dread of death’s approach induces a

visceral agony over the threat of life’s cessation.

Further, this presupposition that one can struggle against an unhappy and unholy death

assumes that death as a phenomenon in Wesley’s eyes can first be set in brackets. Wesley

reflects on death in ‘What is Man?’ (1788) in a rather matter of fact way that ‘Death is properly

the separation of the soul from the body,’ and no more than this can be apprehended by finite

reason.32 The clinical distance of this definition of death from the agony of the death’s approach

demonstrates just the quality in which spiritual death grafts itself onto finitude. This plain and

simple expression gives way to Wesley’s more pressing concern to acknowledge the

experience of death and its link with the terminus of human life. It is crucial that there remains

a gap between the two phenomena. He separates death from the contemplation of the end of

life: ‘To prepare for eternity … that he might know, and love, and enjoy, and serve his great

Creator to all eternity,’ for the reason that one errs if one treats death as a sheerly punitive

grow with Wesley’s Christological and soteriological developments, but it ought not be contrasted with the ars
moriendi as such. See Isaac Hopper, ‘‘Christ Alone for Salvation’: The Role of Christ and His Work in
Wesley’s Theology,’ PhD Dissertation (Manchester: Nazarene Theological College, 2017). On the ars
moriendi as a literary and spiritual tradition, see Nancy Lee Beaty, The Craft of Dying: A Study in the Literary
Tradition of the Ars Moriendi in England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). On the ars moriendi in
Methodism, see Richard J. Bell, ‘Our People Die Well: Deathbed Scenes in John Wesley’s Arminian
Magazine,’ Mortality, 10:3 (2005), 210-233; on Wesley and the ars moriendi see Christine Johnson, ‘Holiness
and Death in the Theology of John Wesley,’ PhD Dissertation (Manchester: Nazarene Theological College,
2014).
31
Wesley’s early sermons, ‘Death and Deliverance’ and ‘On Morning for the Dead,’ despite a measure of
pastoral insensitivity in rebuking even moderate grief, shows this attention to how one relates to death. See
WJW, 4:206-214, 237-243. The floods of stories of good deaths which Wesley receives over the course of his
career also demonstrate this point, see Bell, ‘Our People Die Well.’
32
‘What is Man,’ §12, WJW, 4:25; cf. ‘The Trouble and Rest of Good Men,’ Proem, WJW, 3:533-541.
‘And there is no health in us’ 152

phenomenon.33 Wesley’s attention to the threat of death’s approach and the neutrality of the

fact of death gestures towards death’s incorporation into the ambiguity of fallen everyday life.

Human beings, as creatures, do not enjoy natural immortality—this is always a divine gift. In

the garden, God’s prohibition implies that humanity has some partial understanding of death,

and that it must be avoided. 34 But, without the entrance of sin, the threatening is still unfamiliar.

Wesley says death ‘expressed in the original threatening and implied in the sentence’ must be

a possibility for the created, living beings, whose existence is fundamentally contingent upon

the grace of God.35

c. Sin & Death: The Mystery & Fact of Sin’s Transmission.

In the wisdom of God’s providence, creatures are not prevented from death. ‘We may

live,’ Writes Wesley, ‘but we will die.’36 The corruption of human nature even unto death

remains the surest evidence that sin has indeed been transmitted, not on any part of God’s, not

for any hidden benefit, but of humanity’s own doing. Wesley’s reticence to explain

transmission was leveraged to frame this chapter. He does affirm a position nearing a soft-

traducianism in his journals and diaries.37 But he provides no clear account and, in the end,

appeals to mystery.38 To Taylor’s denial of the corruption of natures, transmission of sin, and

33
‘What is Man,’ §12, WJW, 4:26.
34
ENOT, Gn. 2.16.
35
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §I.7, WJW, 12:220.
36
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §III.12, WJW, 12:256.
37
J&D, WJW, 21:350.
38
Lohrstorfer has most convincingly demonstrated Wesley’s storied journey to be convinced of traducianism
late in his career. He points out that Henry Woolner convinced Wesley of the traducian doctrine by the
composition of the second edition of the Explanatory Notes on the New Testament in 1760-2. However, the
impact of this shift only shows itself dimly in his late sermon ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ WJW,
4:150-160. Much of the material demonstrating the shift in Wesley’s position remains in the Journals and
Diaries and in the Arminian Magazine—these texts being even less stable than the Sermons and not the
theological orientation of the dissertation. Thus, while the shift in Wesley’s thinking is admitted, the change
bears little on this recounting of the operant doctrine of sin arising from the Sermons. See Lohrstorfer, ‘Know
Your Disease,’ 202-211.
‘And there is no health in us’ 153

imputation of guilt because ‘if we understand that it is unjust, God understands it to be so too,’ 39

Wesley responds:

I do not understand it is. It is quite beyond my understanding. It is a depth I cannot

fathom. ‘Therefore unless our understanding or perception of truth be false, it must be
unjust.’ Here lies the deceit. You shift the terms, and place as equivalent those which
are not equivalent. Our perception of truth cannot be false, our understanding or
apprehension of things may. ‘But understanding must be the same in all beings.’ Yes,
in the former sense of the word, but not the latter. ‘Therefore if we understand
(apprehend) it is unjust, God understands it so too.’ Nay verily: ‘As the heavens are
higher than the earth, so are’ his ‘thoughts higher than’ our ‘thoughts.’40
In this passage one can see Wesley’s anti-speculative temperament on the issue of the

transmission of sin and the imputation of guilt. There is no explanation he sees fit to give but

a resignation in the face of the wickedness of the world and the provision and promise of God.

Thus, for Wesley the experience of death, the seeds of which are ‘sown into our very nature,’

is only henceforth known in pain. 41 What he does think can be known is that God ‘permits

human souls to exist in bodies which are (how we know not, but the fact we know) “conceived

and born in sin.”’42 He appeals to the fact of death and how one must live with it. Moreover,

he points to their resolution in Christ.43

Accordingly, Wesley admits a soft-traducian view of the transmission of sin and an

admittance of the imputation of Adam’s guilt. In this Wesley expresses care in distinguishing

between sin and punishment. He explains in conversation with Taylor: ‘However, “no other

could in justice be punishable for that transgression [the Fall], which was their own act and

deed only.” If no other was justly “punishable”, then no other was punished for that

transgression. But all men were punished for that transgression, namely, with death. Therefore

39
Quoted by Wesley, Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §III.18, WJW, 12:268.
40
Wesley, Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §III.18, WJW, 12:268.
41
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.5, WJW, 2:408.
42
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §III.18, WJW, 12:269.
43
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §III.18, WJW, [Link] ‘But he has provided a Saviour for them all. And this
fully acquits both his justice and mercy.’
‘And there is no health in us’ 154

all men were justly punishable for it.’44 Wesley’s appeal to the syllogism in this instance is

meant to point to the fact of death and scripture’s description of it and away from the temptation

to seek to resolve the problem. His use of punishment, ‘suffering consequent upon sin, or pain

inflicted of sin preceding,’ includes collective guilt as well: in death ‘here are both.’45 He urges

the distinction between sin and suffering: ‘Sin is the cause of their condemnation, and not the

same thing with it.’46 They are associated under the command of God but ‘Sin is one thing,

death another; and the former here is the cause of the latter.’47 Wesley works hard in his rebuttal

of Taylor to carve out space to affirm suffering and death’s intrinsic link with sin, and also to

get enough distance to speak of death and suffering as an indirect benefit.48 The upshot for

Wesley is to point to the reality that even in living death God has not left human beings alone.

The justice of God is already alive, active, and reigns in heaven. Moreover, through the

universality of grace, no one can say they are condemned to death. Sin, condemnation for sin,

and the consequences of sin are not to be conflated. 49 God remains with God’s creatures in

prevenient grace.50

Thus, it is possible to see how Wesley conceives of natural death as a relatively neutral

phenomenon that undergoes a qualitive shift in its experience depending upon the condition of

a person in belief or unbelief. The language of spiritual death captures the condition of

faithlessness. The antimony between the soul and the body which causes physical pain is

likewise generative of a set of features that describe the corrupted nature of fallen human life.

Moreover, the universality of death demonstrates the universality of sin, so that this section

44
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §I.5, WJW, 12:217.
45
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §I.5, WJW, 12:217.
46
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §I.10, WJW, 12:225.
47
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. I, §I.15, WJW, 12:232.
48
See above, §4.2.b.
49
Wesley, Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §III.6, WJW, 12:246-247.
50
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.3-4, WJW, 3:207.
‘And there is no health in us’ 155

concluded by sketching Wesley’s soft-traducianism grounded in the appeal to the justice of

God in Christ and the universal presence of God in prevenient grace. Having established the

concept of spiritual death, therefore, this dissertation transitions to the distinguishing features

of fallen human nature: practical atheism, idolatry, and the love of the world.

3. The Shape of Spiritual Death: Practical Atheism, Idolatry, and Love of the World.

The reality of life in spiritual death is total, yet the sense in which it is still life shows

God’s ongoing choice to remain with human beings in their state of desolation. Life in spiritual

death is like being suspended over a cliff, held fast by the prevenient grace of the Holy Spirit. 51

In the preceding section the argument explored the implications of this thought and how it

relates to Wesley’s understanding of natural death. Given the chaos of the fallen world and the

estrangement of the self, without a guide there are no grounds from which one could formulate

a shape of the way of death. Wesley writes: ‘It would be endless to enumerate all the species

of wickedness, whether in thought, word, or action, that now overspread the earth, in every

nation and city and family.’52 True though this is, the Word of the living God shows in the

Scriptures by the illumination of the Holy Spirit how the way of death appears in a fallen world.

Wesley speaks about this pattern according to the Johannine formula: ‘Do not love the world

or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that

is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not

from the Father but from the world’ (1 Jn. 2.15-6, emphasis added). This threefold description

of the life beholden to the world, taken in the antagonizing sense in which John means it, not

as creation qua creation, is Wesley’s preferred way of speaking about the shape of life in the

51
‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.3-4, WJW, 3:207.
52
‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §I.1, WJW, 4:152.
‘And there is no health in us’ 156

way of death.53 This section unpacks these scriptural images Wesley uses as concepts, and draw

them into the wider vision of his doctrine of sin.

a. Practical atheism.

For Wesley spiritual death is the form of life stricken by indwelling sin, conditioning,

causing, and channelling sinfulness and all its expressions. These expressions can be reduced

to three distinguishing features of fallen human nature. That is, aspects of one’s disposition,

expressed through passions, affections, and desires manifest in habits and actions, through

which sinfulness, and unbelief, cling to all that one is, thinks, says, and does. The two fiercest

cases are ‘practical atheism’ and ‘idolatry.’54 In dealing with these two paradigmatic symptoms

of humanity’s illness, these must be indexed to the fallen human condition rooted in unbelief.55

The distinctions along the way from ‘natural ungodliness’ to the ‘quintessence of atheism’ have

to do with the ordering of the desires, the tempers, dispositions, and affections that motivate

one’s action.56

The basis for Wesley’s appeal to practical atheism leans on his shrewd observation of

human life: most people, Wesley observes, live as if God were absent.57 Thus, practical atheism

can be spoken of interchangeably as spiritual blindness or spiritual death. This is life without

the image of God in its fullness. The sin-induced opacity of spiritual reality invites one to take

on a dull mood towards such things in the world. Separated from God, bereft of ‘the life and

image of God,’ this carelessness towards divine things seems an intuitive consequence of such

53
‘The Almost Christian,’ §II(I).1, WJW, 1:137; ‘The Way to the Kingdom,’ §II.2, WJW, 1:226; ‘The
Repentance of Believers,’ §§I.20, II.1, WJW, 1:346-347; ‘The Important Question,’ §I.3, WJW, 3:183; ‘An
Israelite Indeed,’ §I.1, WJW, 3:282; ‘On the Education of Children,’ §III.8, WJW, 3:350-1; ‘On Riches,’ §II.2-
3, WJW, 3:524-525; ‘The Danger of Increasing Riches,’ §[II].10-11,WJW, 4:182-183.
54
‘Original Sin,’ §II.3, WJW 2:177.
55
‘Original Sin,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:177.
56
‘On Dissipation,’ §11, WJW, 3:129; Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §III.12, WJW, 12:256.
57
‘Original Sin,’ §§II.3-4, WJW, 2:177-178.
‘And there is no health in us’ 157

devastating loss.58 Wesley sees this first after the Fall at Adam and Eve’s shame at one another

and their subsequent attempt to hide themselves from God, to live as if God were not in the

world.59 It is an illusory contentment. This is for Wesley the first consequence of the fatal

disease unbelief: ‘the natural man discerns it not. … So long as a man born blind continues so,

he is scarce sensible of his want.’60 Filling out this meaning further allows one to texture merely

living (sinfulness) with the bare life of grace. Practical atheism coincides with humanity’s

spiritual blindness: that is, the human being no longer knows life as a gift of God, since true

vision of reality and perception of life is conditional upon our acceptance of the Holy Spirit’s

illuminative grace.61 The life which formerly was saturated with the gracious presence of God

and known as such becomes mere life. Outside of the life conformed to the Word, the creature

remains in complete ignorance of who God is, what reality is, and who they are. 62 Sinfulness

contorts the entire vision of reality. It is a complete loss of world and identity. Life carries on,

as Wesley observes, business as usual; this showcases the problem.

Nevertheless, for Wesley this spiritual blindness as practical atheism—vis-à-vis,

functional and therefore not entire—leaves the subject opaquely sensible to God and the ways

of God in the world through prevenient grace. The intelligibility of God’s ways with the world

depends on God’s intervention.63 Grasping about in the dark, they continually choose evil, and

even grow to prefer it insofar as it provides temporary comfort and the illusion of rest. 64 The

58
‘Original Sin,’ §4, WJW, 2:173.
59
ENOT, Gn. 3.6-7; cf. Claus Westermann, Genesis (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 24.
60
‘Original Sin,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:176.
61
See above, §2.6.
62
Wesley, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:251.
63
‘Original Sin,’ §II.4, WJW, 2:177-178.
64
‘Original Sin,’ §II.4, WJW, 2:177; cf. Norris, Reason & Religion, 163: ‘He therefore that chooses sin,
considers it at the instant of commission, as a lesser evil. And therein consists his error and mistake. He is
either habitually or actually ignorant. He either has not the habitual knowledge of all those things which
should preserve him in his duty, or at least he has not the actual consideration of them. For ’tis that which must
bring him to repentance. And ’tis impossible a Man should sin with the very same Thoughts, Convictions, and
‘And there is no health in us’ 158

bondage of the will, the inability to choose good or ill, follows the absence of one’s

conversation with the Word, the inability to discern good or ill.65 Indeed, Wesley explains that

insofar as ‘Whatsoever good is in man, or is done by man, God is the author and doer of it,’

the fact that one does anything good, or is any sense holy, remains conditional upon the

restoration of the spiritual senses, and the transition from unbelief to belief and the unveiling

of the will of God to re-saturate, restore, and reimbue the subject in the way of salvation.66 The

curious thing is that the prevenient grace of the Holy Spirit is nascently active even in the one

who is spiritually blind.67 Living in this fallen condition, however, means that one will always

confuse the genuine goodness in which the Holy Spirit guides for some apparent goodness. 68

Wesley’s underscoring of practical atheism as the routine condition in which human

beings finds themselves bespeaks his attention to experience and everyday life, and this, he

thinks, confirms Scripture.69 But within this experiential matrix he also observes that practical

atheism can appear differently according to the appetites of the subject. 70 That is, depending

on that with which one has their conversation. How persons react to this insensibility to

spiritual things and the appearance of God in the Holy Spirit’s nascent activity differs in

important ways. Some, like the ambitious artisans of Babel, strive to piece together the

substance of divinity in practice and in theory on their own efforts, but these attempts only

result in irreligion and superstition. 71 Whatever truth content the fallen mind may stumble upon

Considerations about him, as he has when he repents. … He therefore that sins, wants that consideration at
least to keep him in his duty, which when he repents, brings him to it. And is therefore ignorant and mistaken.’
65
‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit,’ §6, WJW, 1:302.
66
‘Free Grace,’ §3, WJW, 3:545.
67
Maddox, Responsible Grace, 83.
68
Wesley, ‘On Dissipation,’ §12, WJW, 3:120.
For one example of a phenomenology of the ‘natural man,’ see ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §I,
69

WJW, 251-255.
70
‘Spiritual Idolatry,’ WJW, 3:103-114.
71
Cf. Gn. 11.1-9; Is. 44.9-20.
‘And there is no health in us’ 159

is accidental and, tragically, when happened upon, generally unrecognised or

misappropriated.72 Yet they will strive. The bare, but efficacious, remnant of the image of God

sustained in prevenient grace means that God remains sensible for the subject and so God’s

omniactive presence in creation compels the subject to press what and who God is.

Accordingly, Wesley writes: ‘It is true, as soon as we came to the use of reason we learned “the

invisible things of God, even his eternal power and godhead,” from the “things that are made”.

From the things that are seen we inferred the existence of an eternal, powerful being that is not

seen.’73 This sensation of God within one’s heart and subsequent drive to make sense of it

undergirds for Wesley the fraught attempts at natural religion, which is, ‘abstracted from

traditional, and from the influences of God’s spirit!’74 He puts this criticism even sharper:

‘[Without divine mediation they] would have no religion at all: they would know no more of

God than the beasts of the field, than the “wild ass’s colt”.’75 By ‘natural religion’ or the

‘religion of atheism’ Wesley means any attempt at knowing God outside of the revelatory and

illuminating grace of God in the Spirit of Christ.76 This always remains possible, the ‘candle

of the Lord’ can always break in: through prevenient grace it remains possible for human beings

to say something right and true about God accidentally. But abstracted from the Word and the

72
Wesley’s late opinions on the differences between the burgeoning new philosophies following Hume,
Shaftesbury, Rousseau, and the like and himself trade on this logic, not refusing their merits in fact, but
disregarding their integrity in principle: ‘From hence we may clearly perceive the wide difference there is
between Christianity and morality. Indeed nothing can be more sure than that true Christianity cannot exist
without both the inward experience and outward practice of justice, mercy, and truth; and this alone is given in
morality But it is equally certain that all morality, all the justice, mercy, and truth which can possibly exist
without Christianity, profiteth nothing at all, is of no value in the sight of God, to those that are under the
Christian dispensation,’ See ‘On Living without God,’ §14, WJW, 4:174; cf. on ‘splendid sins’ see, ‘The
Reward of Righteousness,’ §I.5, WJW, 3:404; compare John Norris, ‘Considerations upon the Nature of Sin’ in
Misc. 288 (§7).
73
Wesley, ‘Original Sin,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:177.
74
‘Original Sin,’ §II.4, WJW, 2:178.
75
‘Original Sin,’ §II.5, WJW, 2:178; ‘On Faith,’ §4, WJW, 4:189; One should not confuse Wesley in his critique
of natural religion to be ejecting the possibility of natural theology or philosophy. On the possibilities for this
in Wesley’s theology, see Maddox, ‘John Wesley’s Precedent for Engagement with the Natural Sciences,’
WTJ, 44:1 (2004), 23-54.
76
Wesley, ‘On a Single Eye,’ §2, WJW, 4:124.
‘And there is no health in us’ 160

Spirit, natural religion, even if accidentally striking something resolutely true about God, the

world, or one’s self, remains precariously unstable because this thought springs from the illness

suffered by the subject, and not in gratuitous response to the grace of God.

In Wesley’s account, this unholy striving after religion is not always a cool, calculated

endeavour. Instead, among some this striving is engendered by a profound self-condemnatory

anxiety caused by the subject’s encounter with God from whom they have estranged

themselves. Again, practical atheism does not preclude divine encounter, it underscores the

unintelligibility of sin without redeemed participation in God. But in fallenness the subject

experiences God from the vantage point of the alien.77 God’s holiness stands against the

unholiness of the one who lives in fallenness. Ignorance limits holy wonder and reverence for

God without special divine mediation which ushers the subject into the dominion of the

Kingdom of God. But, in ignorance, there is still divine encounter. Sensing God outside of the

dominion of God evokes fear, terror, and dread of God’s presence in this alienated existence. 78

This feeling of dreadful alienation and self-condemnation is as commonplace as the life of

careless ignorance. 79 Wesley explains that from this misunderstood encounter with God’s

holiness springs the fountain of superstition, enthusiasm, and fanaticism: ‘It is allowed, indeed,

that most men have, sooner or later, a kind of senseless, irrational fear, properly called

“superstition”.’80 The alien presence of God exposes the sense of dread to the subject, which

urges the subject to find an object on which to aim their unruly desires.

Wesley thinks it true that from spiritual blindness follows fanaticism and irreligion, but

these are not the more dangerous of the faces of practical atheism. Indeed, Wesley says it is the

banality of ordinary life that wreaks the most havoc on one’s relation to God: ‘But still,

77
Wesley, ‘Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:255.
78
‘Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,’ §§II.1-2, WJW, 1:255.
79
‘Original Sin,’ §II.6, WJW, 2:178.
80
‘Original Sin,’ §II.6, WJW, 2:178.
‘And there is no health in us’ 161

although we had acknowledged his being, we had no acquaintance with him.’81 Wesley uses a

political and historical metaphor to demonstrate this point, comparing the natural knowledge

of God with an English person’s knowledge of the Empire of China. The long distant Emperor

exercises no dominion on the British Isles, their authority and identity does not inhabit the

minds and hearts of the English as it does their subjects. Therefore, the English subject remains

ambivalent to the foreign empire, whatever cares they might have are generated from

projections onto this foreign land from their own home.82 This indifference mirrors how

practical atheism deprives the affections.83 In the same way, without the revelation of God in

power known through the Son, the person in a state of unbelief resides in lamentable ignorance

in a foreign kingdom—quite literally: they live in the kingdom of darkness under the prince of

this world.84 The true knowledge of God unveiled in faith is the presupposition of the love of

God. It is self-evident for Wesley to be unable to love that which one does not know: ‘We

cannot love him we know not.’85 In other words, without affective participation in God in the

faith which God gives, there is no possibility of transformation, leaving humanity to carry on

in a life of folly, indifferent to the possibilities of holiness.

This line of thought can be pressed a step further in Wesley. It is also the case that one’s

alienation from God likewise funds a complete ambivalence towards all that is religious. This

much has been shown. Add to this that Wesley supplies an underlying cause from which

ambivalence and superstition stem. He draws again on the reality of unbelief. Our wounded

natures under indwelling sin evidence itself because living faith is demonstrably unnatural for

human beings.86 He makes this point as he struggles with the proliferation of what he considers

81
‘Original Sin,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:177.
82
‘Original Sin,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:177.
83
‘On a Single Eye,’ §II.2, WJW, 4:124.
84
See below, Ch. 5.
85
‘Original Sin,’ §II.5, WJW, 2:178.
86
‘On Living without God,’ §6, WJW, 4:171.
‘And there is no health in us’ 162

nominal Christians. Reflecting on them, Wesley brings this apparent incapacity for faith into

sharp relief: ‘Most men talk indeed of loving God, and perhaps they imagine that they do. …

No man loves God by nature, no more than he does a stone, or the earth he treads upon. What

we love, we delight in: but no man has naturally any delight in God.’87 Outside of this affective

participation, there is no possibility of love: ‘To love God! It is far above, out of our sight.’88

Sinfulness proves itself in one’s incapacity to move from belief to living faith, where the whole

of one’s being accepts that they are caught up in the divine embrace. This is the foundation of

the world which because of sin humanity refuses through ambivalence or superstition.

Practical atheism, in sum, is a necessary symptom of the life of indwelling sin. It

coincides with spiritual blindness and builds on the valence of unbelief that connotes ignorance.

It does not render the subject utterly insensible to God, but it does render them unable to

apprehend what it is they experience. Thus, the practical atheist constructs an artifice to abate

the anxiety that accompanies the encounter with the unintelligible holiness of God either in the

normalising of the mundane, the attempt to gain intellectual mastery, or in superstition. Yet,

life is unfeasible without something on which to fix one’s gaze, to orient one’s being. Wesley

writes: ‘From atheism there is an easy transition to idolatry—from the worship of no God to

the worship of false gods.’89 Refusing the reality of God, human attempts end in idolatry.

b. Idolatry.

The life of practical atheism stands irreconcilable beside the principle that human

beings, as creatures, worship.90 One cannot be content with mere faithlessness. Wesley believes

that no one could tolerate such emptiness without falling into despair. Instead, dislocated from

87
‘Original Sin,’ §II.5, WJW, 2:178; cf. John J. Wright, ‘“Use” and “Enjoy” in John Wesley: John Wesley’s
Participation in the Augustinian Tradition,’ W&MS, 6:1 (2014), 3-36; John C. English, ‘John Wesley’s
Indebtedness to John Norris,’ Church History, 60:1 (1991), 55-69.
88
Wesley, ‘Original Sin,’ §II.5, WJW, 2:178; cf. Norris, Reason & Religion, 149.
89
‘On Riches,’ §II.2, WJW, 3:524.
90
‘The General Deliverance,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:439-40.
‘And there is no health in us’ 163

salvific grace, human beings, ‘like gods,’ create their own idols (Gn. 3.5). These idols can be

anything on which the soul desires as an end unto itself, yet Wesley identifies two dominant

modes of idolatry: pride and self-will. It is vital that idolatry foregrounds pride. Wesley defines

pride as ‘either thinking of themselves more highly than they ought to think, or glorying in

something which they have received as though they had not received it.’ Whereas self-will is

‘doing their own will, not the will of him that made them.’91 Here Wesley nuances the position

that pride encapsulates the existential consequences of the Fall. He explains:

In his natural state every man born into the world is a rank idolater. … We ‘have set up
our idols in our heart’; and to these we bow down, and worship them. We worship
ourselves when we pay that honour to ourselves which is due to God only. 92
All pride is at once idolatry even if all idolatry is not pride. Wesley distinguishes between the

worship of other gods and the worship of the self, and pride is the far worse outcome between

the two.93 Insofar as Wesley stands in the broad stream of the Augustinian tradition, which

postulates that at the heart of sin is pride under the maxim homo incurvatus in se, Wesley’s

sensitivity to experience and his learning from Norris, among others, compels him to

distinguish between pride as one among several consequences that stem from the rotten root of

unbelief.94 It is here that Wesley riffs on the Augustinian tradition in a creative, substantive

way. Unbelief remains the controlling concept, the root of the problem, so that when the sin of

pride presents it indicates the deeper break in one’s relation to God in the rejection of the gift

of faith. The way Wesley can revise pride as the signal expression of sin is by making self-will

the more basic concept, of which pride is an intensification in degree.

91
‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §I.4, WJW, 4:154.
92
‘Original Sin,’ §II.8, WJW, 2:179; ENOT, Ezek. 14.3-4, 7.
93
In pride, one descends into the image of the devil, see ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.8, WJW, 2:476.
94
See English, ‘John Wesley’s Indebtedness to John Norris,’ 55-69.
‘And there is no health in us’ 164

Self-will, distinct from pride, receives a great deal of attention for Wesley. 95 Self-will

attends to the problem of free choice, that is, one’s liberty to do whatever one pleases, which

Wesley tirelessly disdains.96 But it also attends to the thoughtlessness of this species of idolatry.

For example, in ‘On the Education of Children,’ Wesley remarks that self-will is a thoughtless

self-worship:

Indeed, it may be said that every man is by nature, as it were, his own God. He worships
himself. He is, in his own conception, absolute Lord of himself. Dryden’s hero speaks
only according to nature when he says, ‘Myself am king of me.’ He seeks himself in
all things. He pleases himself. And why not? Who is Lord over him? His own will is
the only law; and he does this or that because it is his good pleasure. In the same spirit
as the son of the morning said of old time, ‘I will sit upon the sides of the north’ (Isa.
14.13), he says, I will do thus or thus.’ And so we not find sensible men on every side
who are of the selfsame spirit? Who, if asked, ‘Why do you do this?’ will readily
answer, ‘Because I had a mind to do it.’97
The arbitrariness of self-will, to do something solely for the sake of doing it, runs contrary to

the saturation of the ordinary with God’s grace and holiness. In unbelief, however, this

thoughtlessness comes naturally.

Both idolatry and pride may be understood as the intensification of self-will. It is

plausible to suggest for Wesley the end of idolatry is pride, a complete solipsism of the

personality after a fraught search for something which may bring fulfilment. It is not

thoughtless self-will, or sheer arbitrary activity, but conscious self-adoration. Idolatry, which

one can also understand as irregular love, does not remain static. Instead, idolatry in the form

of self-love, presses outward by worship of the self, which can never satiate the desires of the

heart. Therefore, human beings continue to strive, perpetuating their condition, by continual

intensification of self-will. Wesley explains that like the devil, the subject consciously turns

inward on themselves, ‘I will do my own will and pleasure, independently of that of my

95
E.g., Wesley, ‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §I.4, WJW, 1:337-338; ‘Original Sin,’ §II.8, WJW, 2:179; ‘On
the Education of Children,’ §15, WJW, 3:353-355; ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §§I.1, 4, WJW,
4:152, 154.
96
For example, ‘National Sins and Miseries,’ §I.2, WJW, 3:569.
97
‘Original Sin,’ §II.8, WJW, 2:179.
‘And there is no health in us’ 165

Creator.’98 By the thoughtful assertion of self-will, human beings assent to the reign of the

devil. Wesley writes: ‘because the devil and I are agreed; because Satan and I govern our

actions by one and the same principle.’99 Self-will debases human beings into the image of

fallen angels, where human beings succumb to the forced migration to the un-place of Hell.

Even this active rebellion is more basically culpable ignorance, illuminating again the priority

of unbelief. Wesley writes: ‘The will of God is not in his thoughts, … although it be the

supreme rule of every intelligent creature, … resulting from the essential, unalterable relation

which all creatures bear to their Creator.’100 Idolatry and self-will culminates in pride and

perpetuates the original lie first uttered in the garden at the beginning of human history.

Wesley’s treatment of idolatry sets pride as a heinous sin and a dominant symptom of

unbelief, but it is not basic to the experience of indwelling sin. This is an important element of

Wesley’s doctrine of sin: the symptoms of unbelief are manifold and differentiated according

to the context and circumstance of each individual. As the structures of fallen human nature,

these cooperate with one another, enfeebling and implicating all human lives in Adam’s Fall

through a fall of one’s own. Add to this practical atheism and idolatry the outward face of the

symptoms of sin: the love of the world.

c. Love of the world: Wesley’s Triplex Concupiscientia.

Having delineated how practical atheism and idolatry interact within fallen human

nature in its condition of spiritual death, it remains to examine the final element of fallen human

nature for Wesley: the love of the world. In this final dimension of life in spiritual death, human

beings press into a further branch of sinfulness than even the fallen angels and the animals: the

human condition, without God and in idolatry, experiences profound anxiety and seeks comfort

in fallen creation to find rest through the desires of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride

98
‘Original Sin,’ §II.8, WJW, 2:179; cf. Isa. 14.3.
99
‘Original Sin,’ §II.8, WJW, 2:179.
100
‘Original Sin,’ §II.8, WJW, 2:179, emphasis added.
‘And there is no health in us’ 166

of life.101 Wesley says human beings take on the ‘image of the brute, being fallen under the

dominion of brutal passions and grovelling appetites.’102 This condition describes the love of

the world, ‘which is now as natural to every man as to love his own will.’103 In particular focus

here for Wesley is in fact not an ignorant or primitive hedonism. Instead, Wesley is taking aim

at the vanity of the refined tastes of his eighteenth-century context:

Sensual appetites, even those of the lowest kind, have, more or less, the dominion over
him. They lead him captive, they drag him to and fro, in spite of his boasted reason.
The man, with all his good breeding and other accomplishments, has no pre-eminence
over the goat. Nay, it is much to be doubted whether the beast has not pre-eminence
over him!104
To find comfort in the sensual appetites is something not even creatures will do; they groan,

despite humanity, for redemption.105 By pointing towards the highest echelons of English

society, Wesley levels the moral field between all human beings. 106 He drives at the point that

the problem of original sin as it unfolds in atheism, pride, and love of the world, is a

disintegration of one’s being with the divine life. All human beings are equal in this depravity,

in part because these sensuous pleasures which now govern the appetite were once properly

ordered in love. In life conformed to the natural and political image, all the appetites proper to

creatureliness were expressed with joy, but now human beings are overcome by their desires,

at a loss for how to flee from their anxiety. Note at the outset that for Wesley these drives,

In this Wesley deploys aspects of the Augustinian tradition of the triplex concupiscientia, see ‘The Almost
101

Christian,’ §II(I).1, WJW, 1:137; ‘The Way to the Kingdom,’ §II.2, WJW, 1:226; ‘The Repentance of
Believers,’ §§I.20, II.1, WJW, 1:346-347; ‘The Important Question,’ §I.3, WJW, 3:183; ‘An Israelite Indeed,’
§I.1, WJW, 3:282; ‘On the Education of Children,’ §III.8, WJW, 3:350-1; ‘On Riches,’ §II.2-3, WJW, 3:524-
525; ‘The Danger of Increasing Riches,’ §[II].10-11,WJW, 4:182-183.
102
‘God’s Love to Fallen Man,’ §1, WJW, 2:423; ‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.6, WJW, 2:445. For a
contemporary parallel of the ‘image of the brute’ as less than human and less than animal, see Falque’s
discussion of finitude and sin as respectively animality and bestiality, see Falque, The Wedding Feast of the
Lamb, 70-79.
103
‘Original Sin,’ §II.9, WJW, 2:179.
104
‘Original Sin,’ §II.9, WJW, 2:180.
105
ENNT, Rom. 8.19-22.
106
Elsewhere in The Doctrine of Sin, Wesley does this again, tracing the various levels of English society, see
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. 1, §§II.11-15, WJW, 12:195-211.
‘And there is no health in us’ 167

whether atheism, idolatry, or love of the world, are reactions to the condition of unbelief. 107

This reaction gives Wesley’s doctrine of sin a tragic sensibility: the love of the world is the

pursuit of some diversion, any reason not to be confronted with oneself.

Wesley sees that the love of the world takes three forms: the desires of the eye, the

desires of the flesh, and the pride of life. 108 First, he suggests the desires of the flesh are the

desires to find ‘pleasure in sense of every kind.’109 This was largely described in the description

of the love of the world above. Second, the desires of the eye are those ‘pleasures of the

imagination.’ Wesley is thinking here of the tendency to abstract oneself into the imaginary, to

detach oneself from the concrete reality of the world in pursuit of some ‘great, or beautiful, or

uncommon objects.’110 On the one hand, Wesley might have in mind here the liberal

philosophes of his day, perhaps the strawman extreme of Bishop Berkley’s idealism.111 On the

other hand, Wesley could also be thinking here of the dangers of mysticism, something that

drove him both away from William Law and from the Moravians.112 In both instances, the

desire of the eye attempts to withdraw oneself from their givenness in the world. But these

attempts also prove distractions and vanity, as Wesley writes: ‘But let us experience this ever

107
‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §I.1, WJW, 4:152.
108
‘Spiritual Idolatry,’ WJW, 3:103-114.
109
‘Spiritual Idolatry,’ §I.5, WJW, 3:105.
110
‘Spiritual Idolatry,’ §§I.7-13, WJW, 3:107-108.
111
This is unlikely. Wesley read Bishop Berkley, but it remains to be seen whether he read him well. Bishop
Berkley’s distinctly theocentric and idealist phenomenalism builds upon the shoulders of Locke, Malebranche,
Norris, and King, all of whom Wesley finds himself amenable towards, on analysis would likely prove quite
sympathetic to Wesley’s theological vision, even if Wesley’s distaste for speculative thought dissuaded him
from engaging with Berkley at length. It is more likely that Wesley is attacking a strawman image of the
scholar driven by sheer curiosity, see ‘Original Sin,’ §II.10, WJW, 2:181n50. On the sin of curiosity see John
Webster, ‘On the Theology of the Intellectual Life,’ God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian
Theology, 2 vols (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 2:141-156.
112
Wesley’s dissatisfaction with the mysticism he encountered in Law and the Moravians stems from a set of
worries over attributing the cause of pain directly to God, the tendency towards quietism or antinomianism,
and the retreat from the patterns of everyday life. If there is a mysticism to Wesley’s theology (and there is) it
is a mysticism that flows through everyday life before the reality of our justification in Christ, not around it.
Wesley’s departure is displayed clearly in his An Extract of a Letter to the Rev. Mr Law, Thoughts upon Jacob
Behmen, and A Specimen of the Divinity and Philosophy of the Highly-Illuminated Jacob Behmen, JWW,
9:466-508, 509-514, 514-518 (respectively).
‘And there is no health in us’ 168

so often, the same desire will remain still. The inbred thirst continues fixed in the soul.’113 More

than this insatiable thirst, Wesley acutely describes the manner in which detaching oneself from

the world only burrows oneself deeper within the mire of indwelling sin: ‘Nay, the more it is

indulged, the more it increases, and incites us to follow after another and yet another object;

although we leave every one with an abortive home and a deluded expectation.’114 Third, the

pride of life marks the desire to receive status, approval, and exaltation from other creatures.

The pride of life is in essence a further mutation of the desire to be as a god.115 In each

expression the love of the world exacerbates the vanity of life outside of the prevenient grace

of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of the Word of God.

In summary, the essence of sin according to Wesley—as the loss of union with God

marked under the heading of unbelief—opens a yawning chasm in the subject known as

practical atheism. The anxiety of practical atheism generates dread, and the human being tries

to escape through idolatry and love of the world, but the inefficacy of human action to find any

solace is because their sinfulness saturates their life in the world: the effects of original sin are

present to the human person before any exercise of the will or of rationality, thereby all human

action is destined not only to failure, but also to sin. Human beings in their condition of

ignorance and self-deceit are incapable of avoiding sin because any actual sin begins with the

corruption of the human heart. Wesley writes: ‘Actual sin proceeds from original, evil works

from an evil heart.’116 This section began with this point, and now draws it back into view to

emphasise that the ignorance of the condition of original sin is not innocent. ‘For to say, “Eve

had irregular desires before she sinned,”’ writes Wesley, ‘is a contradiction, since all irregular

113
‘Original Sin,’ §II.10, WJW, 2:181.
114
‘Original Sin,’ §II.10, WJW, 2:181.
115
‘Original Sin,’ §II.11, WJW, 2:182.
116
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §III.12, WJW, 12:256.
‘And there is no health in us’ 169

desire is sin.’117 Instead, human beings are at fault for their ignorance, and all the vanities that

ensue. This sketch is the heart of the consequences of original sin as articulated by Wesley.

The consequences do not end there; all elements of existence are affected.

4. The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart: Wesley and the Incurvature of the Self.

This chapter outlines the contours of life in spiritual death according to Wesley, the

principal consequence of original sin which springs from unbelief. Since this chapter speaks

about the consequences of original sin as a condition, one should bear in mind that all these

features of fallen human nature are not one-off occurrences, but the ongoing, circular, self-

sealing process that follows indwelling sin as unbelief. The question pressed to Wesley is if

prevenient grace is nascently operant, and the conscience goes on attesting to the promise of a

happy and holy life, and the universality of Christ has established the eternal, moral law, a law

that obligates all life, how does one continue in the life of sin? The suggestion that there is a

situation in human existence where one is entirely dead to God is absurd, defying both

experience and the scriptures. But it is just as plain to Wesley that human beings double-down

on their folly and wickedness. Human life is graciously held back from the brink, but human

beings seem to desire the Fall. ‘There is in the heart of every child of man,’ Wesley writes, ‘an

inexhaustible fund of ungodliness and unrighteousness, so deeply and strongly rooted in the

soul, that nothing less than almighty grace can cure it.’118 The heart, once turned inward, cannot

right itself.119 Wesley’s treatment of ‘the deceitfulness of the human heart’ provides a variation

within this Augustinian strain. 120 This specific manner of speaking of self-deception allows

Wesley to underscore how, given the ubiquity and wonder of God’s grace, human beings delve

117
Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. II, §III.11, WJW, 12:256.
118
‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §II.4, WJW, 4:156.
In this domain, one may think of Augustine’s elegant homo incurvatus in se and its legacy, see Matt Jenson,
119

The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on homo incurvatus in se (London: T&T Clark, 2006).
120
Wesley, ‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ WJW, 4:150-160.
‘And there is no health in us’ 170

deeper into the life of sin. To understand this feature of Wesley’s doctrine of sin, this section

shows what Wesley means by self-deception within his view of the cosmic situation of original

sin. Self-deception is Wesley’s way of speaking about the necessity of human beings to justify

their own life within the pain and suffering of the fallen world.

Wesley’s perspective takes careful account of the bodily aspect of existence and,

consequently, the role physical suffering plays in the ordeal of sin, including in the perpetuation

of sin. In other words, the deceitfulness of one’s heart is not arbitrary but correlates to the

ordeal of suffering. The explanation for why sinners deceive themselves begins with the

recognition that sinners are deceived and suffer for it. This suffering finds its source not first

in human wickedness but in the devil’s rebellion. Wesley writes: ‘Here [the devil’s fall] was

the true origin of evil. Hence came the inexhaustible flood of evils upon the lower world.’121

Because of this prior spiritual fall, spiritual death is a spiritual problem that manifests

concretely. Wesley goes on to explain: ‘Revenge, cruelty, ambition, with all sorts of injustice,

every species of public and private wrongs, were diffused through every part of the earth.

Injustice, in ten thousand forms, hatred, envy, malice, blood-thirstiness, with every species of

falsehood, rode triumphant.’122 Thus, Wesley says that ‘immediately pain followed sin,’ and

the concomitant reality of physical death comes back into view. 123 For Wesley, the final

element of the consequence of sin is the entrance of pain and suffering in the world, pain and

suffering which follow consequently and perpetually from the symptoms of unbelief. 124

So then, what is the relation of one’s corrupt reaction to pain and self-deception? A way

towards an answer is in examining how Wesley discusses the estrangement of the soul from

the body. In Wesley’s view, the soul, retaining its immortality, feels the mortality of the body

121
‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §I.1, WJW, 4:152; cf. below, Ch. 5.
122
‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §I.1, WJW, 4:152.
123
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:403.
124
See above, §2.
‘And there is no health in us’ 171

pressing down against it, and from this dialectical tension suffering spirals downward in vain

attempts to resolve the tension wrought in one’s being between mortality and immortality. This

tension is felt by all human beings for Wesley, it is ‘by sad experience we find that this

“corruptible body presses down the soul”.’125 While it is fair to identify the risk Wesley’s

account brings upon itself by resting so heavily upon this distinction between soul and body,

what is more pertinent is that through sin the self undergoes a qualitative shift from congruence

to conflict. For Wesley, thinking and being are inherently bodily activities: ‘For thinking is not

... the act of a pure spirit, but the act of a spirit connected with a body, and playing upon a set

of material keys.’126 Admitting the strange mechanistic analogy common to Wesley’s time, the

insight here is that Wesley is clearly aware interiority is bound up with a holistic anthropology

that includes the embodiment of human persons.127 Under the conditions of sin these bodily

activities transition from order to disorder. In this way, the experience of pain exposes the

postlapsarian human being to the immanence of death, and they are everywhere reminded of

the necessary end of life. The coherence of Wesley’s account requires that death’s closest

attendant, pain, constantly remind humanity of unfortunate mortality. The centre of gravity is,

however, not primarily upon the condition of the human person in the world as a victim of pain,

but what suffering signifies: human nature itself is irreversibly, tragically, deprived and

depriving itself of the holiness of God.

The consequence, Wesley suggests, is that because of the antagonism and threat of

death apart from grace, not only are practical atheism (or dissipation), pride, and self-will

themselves the shape of life burdened by a wounded nature but also that these forms are also

fundamental lies about the nature of reality and of ourselves.128 Wesley says that the condition

125
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:405.
126
‘On the Fall of Man,’ §II.2, WJW 2:405.
127
Maddox, ‘John Wesley on Holistic Health and Healing,’ Methodist History, 46:1 (2007), 4-33.
128
‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §II.1, WJW, 4:155.
‘And there is no health in us’ 172

of indwelling sin is a lack of self-understanding: ‘Why is it that so few know themselves? For

this plain reason: Because the heart is not only “desperately wicked,” but “deceitful above all

things.”’129 He explains that out of this lack of self-understanding, this ‘inexhaustible fund of

ungodliness and unrighteousness,’ human beings go on ‘imagining themselves to be

abundantly better and wiser than they are.’130 Moreover, this becomes an artistry as one excels

in hardening one’s own heart to shield themselves from fallen existence. He writes: ‘It is the

art of forgetting God, of being altogether ‘without God in the world’—the art of excluding him,

if not out of the world he has created, yet out of the minds of all his intelligent creatures. It is

a total, studied inattention to the whole invisible and eternal world; more especially to death,

the gate of eternity, and to the important consequences of death, heaven and hell.’ 131 For

Wesley the cultivation of the self—the refinement of virtue and taste—is but a survival

mechanism in the face of a fallen world. Real Christianity is the recognition that cultivation of

the self only comes from one’s resignation of the self, allowing one to be transformed.

Yet this relation between individual self-deception is a public affair. Wesley writes:

‘And if men thus deceive themselves, is it any wonder that they deceive others also.’132 While

Wesley is critical of reducing original sin to bad-education and the corruption of culture,

emphasising one’s ‘sin-sick’ nature, he recognises how these structural aspects of sociality

make public the habits of self-deception:

What can parents do … with regard to the atheism that is natural to all children of men?
How is this fed by the generality of parents, even those that love, or at least, fear God,
while in spending hours, perhaps days, with their children, they hardly name the name
of God? Meantime they talk of a thousand other things in the world that is round about
them. Will not then the things of the present world, which surround these children on

129
‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §I.5, WJW, 4:155.
130
‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §II.1, WJW, 4:155.
131
‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith,’ §20, WJW, 4:58.
132
‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ §II.2, WJW, 155-6.
‘And there is no health in us’ 173

every side, naturally take up their thoughts, and set God at a greater distance from them
(if that be possible) than he was before?133
Culture becomes a vehicle through which the artistry of self-deception is honed. It is the spoken

word, or the lack thereof, which makes this situation so perilous. It is this integration of self-

deception and public-diversions that converges on one born into the world in ‘natural

ungodliness’ and keeps them there. One of the more interesting consequences is the recognition

of the force of the world, on the public face of self-deception, which inadvertently alleviates

some of the pressure to give a metaphysical account of the transmission of sin. It is enough for

Wesley to agree that sin does inhabit bad-culture and miseducation and take it on faith that

one’s nature is irremediably wounded. 134

In sum, Wesley’s way of narrating the universality and intractability of original sin is

to think in terms of self-knowledge and self-deception. One continues in sin despite themselves

and despite God. In this place especially the tragic sense of Wesley’s doctrine of sin comes

into view. Sin afflicts the self. It prevents a rightly ordered knowledge of God and God’s ways

with the world. It stands in the way of true union of oneself with God and with other creatures.

And sin does all this not because it has any essential power, but because in the fallen world,

lost in the wilderness of sin, life goes on, and human beings need to find a way to continue in

their folly.

5. ‘The earth soon became a field of blood’: Indwelling Sin, Structural Sin, and Violence.

So far this analysis of Wesley’s doctrine of original sin has followed his understanding

of the Fall’s consequences primarily with the effects on the individual person in view except

for the brief glimpse towards the social dynamics of self-deception in the preceding section.

However, such an exposition proceeds with the essential sociality of human beings so central

133
‘On the Education of Children,’ §13, WJW, 3:352; cf. ‘On Friendship with the World,’ §17, WJW, 3:166.
On this point, Wesley view is drawn close to Jeremy Taylor’s Unum Necessarium, and held side by side it is
134

hard to avoid the sense that Taylor’s exceeds Wesley’s doctrine in simplicity and elegance, and Wesley’s
avowal of the corruption of nature feels, at best, superfluous to his argument.
‘And there is no health in us’ 174

to Wesley’s theology close to hand. Human beings are social beings: their well-being is

likewise tied up with fellow creatures, so too is their corruption, individual and corporate. 135

The ‘fact’ of sin is a public affair for Wesley made visible in the warp and woof of history.

Wesley’s comments on violence offer a key to understanding how Wesley conceives of the

interrelation between the personal and social aspects of sin. In essence, his view is that just as

personal sin perpetuates itself through self-deception, social sin perpetuates itself by the same

organic, destructive process. Moreover, these two domains mutually enrich one another,

generating an infinite negative spiral into pain and suffering without the mediation of divine

grace.

In the extended discussion of the history of humankind set out in Wesley’s The Doctrine

of Original Sin, violence (expressly represented in warfare) is the clearest proof for the reality

of original sin in the world.136 In Wesley’s treatise, he writes:

Here are forty thousand men gathered together on this plain. What are they going to
do? See, there are thirty or forty thousand more at a little distance. And these are going
to shoot them through the head or body, to stab them, or split their skulls, and send
most of their souls into everlasting fire, as fast as they possibly can. Why so? What
harm have they done to them? O none at all! They do not so much as know them. But
a man, who is the King of France, has a quarrel with another man, who is the King of
England. So these Frenchmen are to kill as many of these Englishmen as they can, to
prove that the King of France is in the right. Now, what an argument is this! What a
method of proof! What an amazing way of deciding controversies! What must mankind
be, before such a thing as war could ever be known or thought of upon earth? … If
then, all nations, Pagan, Mohametan, and Christian, do, in fact, make this their last
resort, what farther proof do we need of the utter degeneracy of all nations from the
plainest principles of reason and virtue? of the absolute want, both of common sense
and common humanity, which runs through the whole race of mankind?137

135
Tapper sees Wesley’s account of social sin as an opportunity for recovery, see Tapper, ‘Social Sin and
Needed Corporate Reform in the Wesleyan Tradition,’ 193-208. Wesley’s view of structural sin has
occasionally been criticised for its preoccupation with personal sin. For a helpful defence of Wesley’s view,
see Tyson, ‘Sin, Self, and Society: John Wesley’s Hamartiology Reconsidered,’ ATJ, 44, no. 2 (1989), 77-89.
136
The Doctrine of Sin, Pt. I, §II.10, WJW, 12:192f.. Theodore Runyon helpfully points this out. Runyon, The
New Creation, 23-5.
137
The Doctrine of Sin, Pt. I, §II.10, WJW, 12:193.
‘And there is no health in us’ 175

Thus, in the reality of war and widespread violence Wesley finds a harsh proof of humanity’s

condition. There is no justification of war in Wesley’s view: ‘And surely all our declamations

on the strength of human reason, and the eminence of our virtues, are no more than the cant

and jargon of pride and ignorance so long as there is such a thing as war in the world.’ 138 As a

product of the Fall there is no justice to come from it, no circumstance in which it is a means

towards peace. The absurdity of war shows how humanity inhabits the image of the brute. A

quarrel between two persons, regardless of status, forced to be carried out by masses of men.

Wesley goes on: ‘Men in general can never be allowed to be reasonable creatures till they know

not war any more. So long as this monster stalks uncontrolled, where is reason, virtue,

humanity? They are utterly excluded. They have no place. They are a name and nothing

more.’139 Indeed, one may suggest that the example of war shows the extremities of the

deceitfulness of the human heart, the refusal of the magistrate to know themselves, to submit

to the ordering of the cosmos in Christ.

But war is far from the only instance where humanity enacts violence. One can think

about Wesley’s critique of riches along a parallel line. Wealth accumulation is an expression

of the self-deception in the face of unbelief. 140 Wesley writes in ‘The Use of Money’:

It is termed ‘the mammon of unrighteousness’ (Lk 16.9) because of the unrighteous

manner wherein it is frequently procured, and wherein even that which was honestly
procured is generally employed. … It has indeed been the manner of poets, orators, and
philosophers, in almost all ages and nations to rail at this as the grand corruptor of the
world, the bane of virtue, the pest of human society. … ‘The love of money,’ we know,
‘is the root of all evil’ (1 Tim. 6.10); but not the thing itself. The fault does not lie in
the money, but in them that use it.141
Wesley goes on to talk of how money yields profound and wonderful possibilities, but it comes

with risks. Moreover, in practice, riches become a means of imposing violence on one’s

138
The Doctrine of Sin, Pt. I, §II.10, WJW, 12:194-195.
139
The Doctrine of Sin, Pt. I, §II.10, WJW, 12:195.
140
It is worth admitting Wesley’s abuse of power in limiting the incomes of his followers while not his own, see
Abelove, Evangelist of Desire, 16.
141
‘The Use of Money,’ §2, WJW 2:268.
‘And there is no health in us’ 176

neighbour. Personal self-preservation comes at the cost of harming another, provoking

economic injury. Wesley warns that economic violence stands plainly in contrast to the image

of God: ‘We cannot, if we love everyone as ourselves, hurt anyone in his substance. We cannot

devour the increase of his lands, and perhaps the lands and houses themselves, by gaming, by

overgrown bills …, or by requiring or taking such interest as even the laws of our country

forbid. … None can gain by swallowing up his neighbour’s substance, without gaining the

damnation of hell.’142 Noting how economic violence steals those of their material needs for

their own welfare, Wesley goes on: ‘Neither may we gain by hurting our neighbour in his

body.’ Further, taking aim at the harm caused by trading in liquors. He explains:

They murder his Majesty’s subjects by wholesale, neither their eye pity or spare. They
drive them to hell like sheep. … A curse is in the midst of them: the curse of God
cleaves to the stones, the timber, the furniture of them. The curse of God is in their
gardens, their walks, their groves; a fire that burns to the nethermost hell. Blood, blood
is there—the foundation, the floor, the walls, the roof are stained with blood!143
This use of riches to indulge the sinful appetite evidences the violence that sinfulness inflicts

from personal to social and back again. The visceral depiction Wesley gives draws one’s

attention to the first fratricide (Gn. 4.9-10). As the example of trading in liquor knowing the

harm it causes others demonstrates, the abuse of riches shows that here too one becomes like

Cain, refusing the gift of sociality into which one is given in the self-sealing viciousness of

unbelief. The personal and the social are inextricably linked, and in sin these domains feed off

one another to the detriment of both.

Wesley’s account is not restricted to human culture and society. He also reflects on the

struggle between animals and human beings as fellow creatures. Whereas human beings lost

the enriching originary relationship with the God through the Fall, animals lost their analogous

relation to human beings. Animals, reasons Wesley, have ‘the very foundations of their nature

142
‘The Use of Money,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:270.
‘The Use of Money,’ §I.3, WJW, 2:271. Wesley is all too familiar with the horrors of the gin craze, see
143

Thoughts on the Present Scarcity of Provisions, JWW, 11:53-58.

‘And there is no health in us’ 177

are out of course,’ their share in the natural and political image of God ripped from them by

human folly.144 Their understanding, their reason, their will, and their liberty all impaired.

‘They are still utterly enslaved to irrational appetites,’ Wesley says, ‘which have the full

dominion over them.’145 As a result is a situation of chaotic and endemic violence in creation:

‘The far greater part of them flee from him; studiously avoid his hated presence. Most of the

rest set him at open defiance; yea, destroy him, if it be in their power.’146 This explanation

allows Wesley to give account of the seriousness with which he considers the pains suffered

by the animal world. Moreover, Wesley entertains the idea that resulting from this ‘train of

preparatory evils’ animal life exists by rule of the survival of the fittest.

The portrayal of animal life in this way, again, has a double meaning. 147 Wesley

gestures on the one hand to the fault of human beings for imposing this situation on them:

‘During this season of vanity, not only the feebler creatures are continually destroyed by the

stronger; not only the strong are frequently destroyed by those that are of equal strength; but

both the one and the other are exposed to the violence and cruelty of him that is now their

common enemy,––man.’148 This likewise follows his thoroughgoing commitment not only to

responsibility but human responsibility. The violence human beings suffer at the hands of the

animal world is, he reasons, the fault of their own. On the other hand, this portrayal of animal

life becomes a symbol of the life enslaved to indwelling sin. Wesley writes: ‘The lion, the tiger,

or the shark, gives them pain from mere necessity, in order to prolong their own life; and puts

them out of their pain at once: But the human shark, without any such necessity, torments them

of his free choice; and perhaps continues their lingering pain till, after months or years, death

144
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:442.
145
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:442.
146
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:442.
147
See above, §3.6.
148
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.6, WJW, 2:445.
‘And there is no health in us’ 178

signs their release.’149 This recalls the image of the brute: the violence of necessity belongs to

animals alone; more heinous is the violence of free choice that human beings inflict upon the

animal world. The sense in which Wesley talks about the ‘free choice’ of human beings here

must be corroborated by preceding expositions of Wesley’s sense of freedom as one of

moderate libertarianism. 150 Moreover, the free choice fallen human beings exercise is free

choice within the deception of the human heart. Wesley holds that humans, like animals, are

‘enslaved to irrational appetites.’151 This is another way of speaking about Wesley’s ‘dissipated

man’ or the ‘practical atheist’: ‘It may be said of every man that is a stranger to the grace of

God, that all his passions are dissipated. … Distraction, in St. Paul’s sense, is nearly allied to,

or rather the same with, dissipation.’152 The violence of human beings is, for Wesley, not of

necessity, at least of natural necessity; rather, through self-deception, human beings choose to

will, subjecting themselves to unholy tempers, succumbing to the chaos of the wounded inner

life.

The categories of moral and natural evil are thus entangled in Wesley’s forceful attempt

to emphasise the startling reality of human responsibility. 153 Human beings might not be free

in their dissipated condition, under the affliction of indwelling sin, but they are full well capable

of free choice. Through this free choice humans exact violence and receive violence in return

on creation. But, what then of natural disasters? Should they, in Wesley’s mind, likewise be

causally attributed to the actions of fallen human agents. Wesley demonstrates a recognition of

149
‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.6, WJW, 2:445.
150
A position similar to Samuel Clarke, see Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity, 47-53.
151
Wesley, ‘The General Deliverance,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:442.
152
‘On Dissipation,’ §10-11, WJW, 3:120.
Wesley’s views quite naturally are of use in contemporary ecotheology and animal theology, see Clough, On
153

Animals, 133-137.
‘And there is no health in us’ 179

the regular distinction between natural and moral evils. Moreover, he also admits that natural

evils are likewise punitive, relating by accident to the Fall.154 Wesley writes:

It has been well observed, that all evil is either natural, moral, or penal; that natural evil
or pain is no evil at all if it be overbalanced with following pleasure; that moral evil, or
sin, cannot possibly befall anyone unless those who willingly embrace, who choose it;
and that penal evil, cannot possibly befall any unless they likewise choose it by
choosing sin.155
Since all have indeed chosen sin, Wesley quite readily acknowledges the indirect secondary

causality between natural and moral evils. That one suffers and that there is chaos in the world

is a product of the Fall, its roots are situated in original sin, but Wesley is more chastened in

offering meaning exposition of natural disasters, most notably in his response to the Lisbon

Earthquake, in theological terms. 156 Wesley’s emphasis is again and again on human choice as

the fundament from which all evil flows: ‘[Evil] did not exist at all in the original nature of

things.’157 Instead, Wesley says God ‘suffered [humanity] to choose death, in consequence of

which the whole creation groaneth together.’158 Creation’s disorder is the world fallen life

inhabits, only indirectly is the individual person at fault for a natural disaster. But when such

things happen, it is a direct opportunity for the trial that purifies faith, demonstrated not only

in endurance of the consequences of the event, but also in responding to the needs of living

creatures who also have suffered.

154
Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 110-112.
155
Wesley, ‘The Promise of Understanding,’ §II.1, WJW, 4:285. The composition of this sermon in 1730
coincides with Wesley’s correspondence with his father concerning King’s De Origine Mali, indicating at least
part of Wesley’s position can be traced to King, see Letters, 1:64, 68. Outler also notes that Wesley could have
retrieved the rather commonplace distinction from his reading of Norris, the English Augustine, see WJW,
4:285n19; cf. Norris, Miscellanies: Consisting of Poems, Essays, Discourses and Letters, Occasionally
Written, 9th ed. (London: Edmund Parker, 1740), 300.
156
Wesley, Thoughts Occasioned by the Late Earthquake at Lisbon, JWW, 11:1-13. Many of his contemporaries
rushed to attribute such an occurrence to the sins of Catholics or Protestants or both. Not so for Wesley: for
Wesley, the occasion of natural evil presents an ordeal for the expression of fidelity of the agent.
157
‘God’s Approbation of His Works,’ §§II.2-3, WJW, 2:398-399.
158
‘God’s Approbation of His Works,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:399.
‘And there is no health in us’ 180

Wesley’s doctrine of original sin, therefore, accommodates a capacity to speak openly

of personal and social sin, with the caveat that the seed of all social sin begins with the

corruption of the individual. The fundamental issue for Wesley is that in the soul of every

human person there is a shared corruption, a life lived in spiritual death, marked by practical

atheism, idolatry, and the love of the world, through which all individuals attempt, in vain, to

reconcile the experience of pain and the approach of death with a longing for eternity. This is

not a one-off occurrence, but a recurring, constant disposition of the one who lives in original

sin, that necessarily fuels violence that continues to manifest. The disintegration and corruption

of one’s being must become manifest in the everyday. In the distinction between voluntary and

involuntary sin in the Christian life, Wesley’s account of sin can seem overdetermined by such

a high view of responsibility that persons can so remove themselves from their situation under

original sin as to be their own judge. The preceding argument demonstrates the fundamental

reason within Wesley’s view why this problematic interpretation is not the case. Wesley never

softens his view of original sin; Wesley’s interpreters have only forgotten his insistence upon

it.159 In sum, the internal turmoil that presses in on the subject in their condition of unbelief is

always manifesting outwardly into every aspect of creation, this proliferation of violence is yet

another consequence of original sin. The end, which these outbursts of violence try to avoid at

all cost, is physical and spiritual death. These then are the consequences of original sin manifest

because of humanity’s unbelief.

6. Conclusion

This chapter shows how Wesley motivates a doctrine of the consequences of original

sin beginning from and returning to everyday life and history. Wesley’s view of sin’s

consequences is in large part empirical, though with the sense of faith illumined by the Word

in mind. The preceding chapter examined Wesley’s attention to the scriptures and the reading

159
See below, §6.2.
‘And there is no health in us’ 181

he gives of the Fall that informs his reflections on experience. The fact of misery confirms the

identification of sin portrayed in the scriptures, but the way of knowing is a one-way street:

there is no getting behind the ambiguity of life in the world, there is only one’s acceptance of

the double reality of life in a fallen world and the final victory of Jesus Christ. Further, this

chapter shows that there is little warrant to offer a robust theoretical explanation for sin’s

transmission on Wesley’s account for two reasons. First, since illuminated everyday life is

salient enough to demonstrate humanity’s shipwrecked condition, for Wesley undue

metaphysical speculation remains simply unnecessary, even pastorally cumbersome. Second,

since such theoretical speculation reach beyond the bounds of fallen reason, and themselves

become corrupted by practical atheism, idolatry, and love of the world, there is better reason

to provide a chastened doctrine of original sin. In essence, it is not by individual reasoning, by

the independent testimony of one’s conscience, or by careful, scientific observation of the

world as such that reveals the reality of sin. By these means one could only press at the common

human experience of misery, anxiety, and death. Sin is deeper feature of existence than these.

Only by the Word which through the Spirit gives faith and unveils the staggering depths of sin.

But this humble chastening does not prohibit a robust description of life in death. On the

contrary, based on illuminated experience and history, Wesley presents a view of the

consequences of the Fall that accommodates the theological need to articulate the contingency,

radicality, communicability, and universality of original sin.160 The argument above

demonstrates that Wesley’s conceives of the consequences of original sin as a transition to life

as the condition of unbelief, following from the original act of unbelief and recurrent in all

human life, as one of spiritual death. To this end, this chapter has demonstrated the elements

of corrupted human nature, derivative of the fundamental inversion of the image of God and

the disease in which all humanity shares, the condition of unbelief.

160
Criteria distilled by McFayden, Bound to Sin, 16
‘And there is no health in us’ 182

This and the preceding chapter, therefore, constitute to a revision in the interpretation

of Wesley’s doctrine of original sin by attending to Wesley’s motivations. This chapter

highlighted the ambiguity of unbelief within Wesley’s theology and how attention to this theme

places different kinds of pressure on aspects of the traditional doctrine of original sin. The

analysis so far has dealt with the anthropocentric features of Wesley’s doctrine of sin, but to

stay in this mode would be to provide an extraordinarily superficial exploration. The problem

of sin is polyvalent and multidimensional. It includes the activities of the anti-god powers.

Therefore, the next chapter examines the structure and significance of the doctrine of evil

angels for Wesley.

In the Image of the Devil 183

Chapter 5:
In the Image of the Devil: Wesley’s Doctrine of Evil Angels

1. Introduction, Fallen Life in a Contested World

The preceding chapters show how Wesley’s doctrine of original sin describes a process

of decay beginning in faithlessness and hardening into callous idolatry. Human beings live in

blind faithlessness—nothing less than a spiritual death—that reflects the creature’s failure to

remain open to God, fellow creatures, and one’s own finitude. But this description is not a

complete rendering of Wesley’s vision of the human condition in sin. What is lacking is the

place of that unfashionable subject of the demonic. This chapter fills out Wesley’s view of the

burden of sin by demonstrating that not only are human beings bound by original sin and its

effects but also that they are engaged in spiritual combat with demonic agents. These agents

war against the peace of Christ, either keeping one from faith, or dragging them back into

faithlessness.1 In Wesley’s sermons, by treating the doctrine of sin as a description of the

human situation in a fallen world it becomes necessary to bring the reality of the devil’s work

into view.

On this topic, as elsewhere, one can hear Wesley say, ‘What must we do with our

Bibles?’2 In John’s first epistle, Wesley interprets the admonition that ‘Everyone who commits

sin is a child of the devil’ is no simple rhetorical flourish; on the contrary, John’s admonition

offers explanatory power for everyday life. 3 The transparency of the heart in the habits,

patterns, and activity of the person mean for Wesley, whether it be the image of God, the image

1
Abraham’s observation is helpful: ‘…The deepest objection to much traditional treatments of sin is that they
do not go deep enough. They fail to come to terms with the reality of the demonic in treatments of human evil.
… In contrast to this, the canonical heritage of the church has a strange treasure hidden in the basement that is
a sever embarrassment to the contemporary theologian, namely a robust commitment to the reality of the
demonic.’ See Abraham, Divine Agency and Divine Action, 4 volumes (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2018-2021), 3:182; 4:168-184. In a different perspective, see Phil Ziegler, ‘Bound Over to Satan’s Tyranny’:
Sin and Satan in Contemporary Reformed Theology,’ Theology Today, 75:1 (2018), 89-100; Ziegler, ‘The
Devil’s Work—Divine Action and Its Antithesis,’ Divine Action and Providence: Explorations in Constructive
Dogmatics (Dower’s Grove: Zondervan Academic, 2019), 173-186.
2
‘Original Sin,’ §4, WJW, 2:173.
3
ENNT, 1 Jn. 3.8.
In the Image of the Devil 184

of the brute, or the image of the devil, that the sources of oneself is shown in what one does.

To bear indwelling sin is to live in the kingdom of the devil. Indeed, insofar as MacFarland

suggests that any doctrine of sin ought to be a ‘reflex on the gospel,’ here the centrality of

Christ’s victory over Satan on the cross shines through.4 In ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’

Wesley lays out the importance of understanding the devil’s work to better one’s apprehension

of God’s gracious saving activity: ‘Satan began his work in Eve by tainting her with unbelief,

so the Son of God begins his work in man by enabling us to believe in him. … Out of darkness

he commands light to shine, and takes away the veil which the god of this world had spread

over our hearts.’5 The story of redemption is displayed within the frame of a three-agent drama.

Human beings not only need salvation from their own foolish devices, but because demonic

forces actively oppress creation: ‘As Satan turned the heart of man from the Creator to the

creature; so the Son of God turns his heart back again from the creature to the creator.’6

Wesley’s vision of the human condition entails a lifelong struggle not only against the disease

of sin and the threat of temptation, but against the devil.

Therefore, as this thesis continues to draw out Wesley’s operant doctrine of sin from

the Sermons, drawing on his doctrine of evil angels opens ways of speaking about the agonistic

shape of life in the fallen world and one’s existence within seemingly intractable structural and

systemic evil. The twin sermons on angelology (‘Of Good Angels’ and ‘Of Evil Angels’7),

4
McFarland, In Adam’s Fall, 48. On the atonement in Wesley and the Christus victor motif, see Deschner,
Wesley’s Christology, 118-126. Deschner’s is the only account to develop the theological significance of
Wesley’s view of the demonic. He sketches the broad contours of Wesley’s demonology within the kingly
office of Christ, highlighting the centrality of the devil’s rebellion and Christ’s absolute victory. This motif is
subordinate in Deschner’s reading to the theme of sin, grace, and judgement because of Wesley’s
preoccupation with human responsibility. This argument suggests less dissonance between these two schemes.
5
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §III.1, WJW, 2:480-481.
6
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §III.2, WJW, 2:481.
7
WJW, 3:4-29.
In the Image of the Devil 185

sermons on temptation (‘On Temptation,’8 ‘Satan’s Devices,’9 and ‘Wandering Thoughts’10),

and others like ‘The End of Christ’s Coming’ are interwoven with the theme of the devil’s

work.11 The outline of this argument begins with a demonstration of the prevalence of the

demonic as a theme within Wesley’s theology and then stepping back to examine some of the

roots of the idea in Puritan and Anglican theology (§5.2). Then the remainder of the chapter

analyses the form of the works of demonic agents, first in reference to human sociality as a

point of intersection with structural sin (§5.3) and second with reference to the individual where

the demonic is interpreted through the psychological struggles of the holy life effected directly

and indirectly by the devil (§5.4).

2. Mapping Wesley’s Doctrine of Evil Angels

Historically, Wesley’s view coincides with a gradual decline in emphasis of the doctrine

of evil angels.12 In reaction against Puritan traditions which overdetermine human pain,

suffering, and sin with the devil’s work and speculative Catholic traditions of angelology and

transitioning towards a deeper understanding of the composition of human health and

wholeness, Anglican demonology in the eighteenth-century is noticeably understated. Save for

Wesley. Indeed, it is on this heading that, alongside his talk of the direct witness of the Holy

Spirit, Wesley is repeatedly accused of reckless enthusiasm either directly or by association.13

8
WJW, 3:157-168.
9
WJW, 2:139-151.
10
WJW, 2:126-137.
11
WJW, 2:471-484.
12
For an overview of the history of the devil in the period, see Jeffrey Burton Russell, Mephistopheles: The
Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); cf. Daniel Robinson (editor), The History
of Evil in the Early Modern Period: 1450-1700 CE, The History of Evil (London: Routledge, 2021); Douglas
Hedley (editor), The History of Evil in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: 1700-1900 CE, The History of
Evil (London: Routledge, 2018).
13
For example, Wesley association with the self-acclaimed prophet George Bell, see Kenneth Newport, ‘George
Bell: Prophet and Enthusiast,’ Methodist History, 35:2 (1997), 95-105; Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, 338-342;
Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists, 210-211.
In the Image of the Devil 186

This section provides a clearer picture of Wesley’s talk of the devil in his context.14 What is

shown is how, if one interrogates Wesley’s angelology (and, in turn, demonology) in context,

accommodating the rhetorical use of the language of demonology to encourage the listener’s

response, one may also identify a substantial angelology operant within Wesley’s Sermons.

The upshot is that Wesley modifies aspects of classical angelology for his purposes of ‘holiness

of heart and life.’

In Wesley’s eighteenth-century, part and parcel with the metaphysics of the old regime

interlaced with burgeoning empiricism, is the ordering of creation recognised in the idea of the

‘Great Chain of Being.’15 Within this metaphysical scale of the forms, theologians often

postulated a doctrine of angelic governance to describe the hierarchy of angels who carry out

various duties according to their station, from the ordering of nations (seraphim) to the

protection of individuals (guardian angels).16 Yet, distinct to Wesley’s Anglican situation is

the suspicion towards the undue speculations of Roman Catholicism and scholasticism. 17 The

academic distaste for the presumed superfluity of scholastic theologizing meant that magisterial

accounts of the hierarchies of angels are limited. The tendency of Anglican accounts parallels

the English intellectual proclivity towards simplicity based on experience in the popularity of

plain style. This creates a sensibility emerging in Bacon that matures with Locke, Berkley, and

Hume that certainly extends to theologians as much as to philosophers. Despite this English

14
The orientation is on Wesley’s theological views of the devil and spiritual combat and not his views on the
supernatural in general, about which historians have written much, see Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, 194-198;
Rack, ‘Doctors, Demons, and Early Methodist Healing,’ The Church and Healing (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982),
137-152; Davies, ‘Wesley’s Invisible World: Witchcraft and the Temperature of Preternatural Belief,’
Perfecting Perfection: Essays in Honour of Henry D. Rack (Eugene: Pickwick, 2015), 180-202.
15
Arthur C. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2001); Bryant, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 90-92.
16
The classical sources are many, but central to medieval and early modern developments is Pseudo-
Dionysius’s ‘On the Celestial Hierarchy,’ Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 143-192; cf.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, MD:
Christian Classics, 1981) I, q. 108.
17
On Wesley’s anti-Catholicism, see Glen O’Brien, ‘I Wish Them Well, but I Dare Not Trust Them,’ Journal of
Religious History, 45:2 (2021), 185-210.
In the Image of the Devil 187

Protestant sensibility, the mainstay of these accounts also holds firmly to a doctrine of the

angelic fall which explains the origin, essence, and actions of the demonic: this fall establishes

an inverted heavenly kingdom wherein the fallen angels retain their essential domain and along

with it their power. The integration of angels and demons with every dimension of everyday

life authorises speech about demonic and angelic activity in the cosmological, political, and

even physical expressions.

Wesley picks up this conception of angelology largely from the Anglicans and Puritans.

Outler notes three influential sources: Bishop George Bull, Thomas Crane, and John Milton: 18

Bull and Crane offer interesting comparisons in the description of the particulars of the

doctrine. Milton is Wesley’s source for displaying the cosmic scope of salvation history. Bull’s

Some Important Points of Primitive Christianity promotes a deflationary angelology, wary of

not only the abstractions of scholastics but also of the ‘Romish’ error of angel worship.19 The

other major source, Crane’s Isagoge ad Dei Providentiam (1672), situates angelology strongly

within divine providence. 20 A noteworthy common thread between Bull and Crane’s account

is a strong affirmation that demonic agency accidentally coincides with the will of God. It is

also of note that the Holy Club read and discussed William Spurnstone’s Spiritual Chemist

(1666), a characteristically puritan account of demonology.21 However, the conventionality of

Wesley’s doctrine here does not preclude the possibility that under careful analysis proffers

new perspectives regarding the relation of demonology to hamartiology.

18
Wesley, WJW, 3:3.
19
George Bull, ‘Sermon XI: The existence of angels proved from reason as well as scripture, their creation by
God, the fall of some of them, the nature of the holy angels, their state and condition in reference to God’ &
‘Sermon XII: The office of the holy angels in reference to good men; being appointed by God as the ministers
of his special providence towards the faithful; and wherein the angelical ministry doth more especially
consist,’ The Works of George Bull, D.D., Lord Bishop of St. David’s, 7 vols, edited by Edward Burton
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1846), 1:261-325.
20
Thomas Crane, Isagoge Ad Dei Providentiam: Or, a Prospect of Divine Providence (London: A. Maxwell,
1672).
21
William Spurstone, The spiritual chymist, or, Six decads of divine meditations on several subjects (London,
1666), 169-173.
In the Image of the Devil 188

In ‘Of Good Angels,’ Wesley lays out the nature and function of angels within the order

of being.22 Angelic beings, good or ill, are spiritual beings with supernatural capabilities.

Existing without body, they possess intuitive knowledge and wield immense power. In

understanding and knowledge Wesley says that the angels ‘see at one glance whatever truth is

presented to their understanding.’23 He also holds that the immediacy of perception and truth

unfolds in an ‘inconceivable degree of wisdom.’24 The same is true of their holiness, which

parallels their wisdom. The strength of the angels is likewise great, their power extends to exert

effect agency over events in the natural world, such as the destruction of Job’s home and family

(Job 1.19-20), the desolation of the Assyrians (2 Kgs. 19.35), or the killing of the first-born of

the Egyptians (Exod. 12.12).25 These examples signify the cosmic domain of the angels and

their activity in the world, but Wesley is equally attentive to the power exerted by angelic

agents over the human body. Wesley writes: ‘The angels of God have great power, in particular

over the human body; power either to cause or remove pain and diseases; either to kill or to

heal.’26 Wesley posits not only that angelic agents exert their power over human governance

and institutions, but that they also exert influence in all other kinds of events, accidents, or the

lack thereof, each caused by an angelic being. To emphasise this point, Wesley draws on Job’s

affliction (Job 2:7) and the healing of Daniel (Dan. 10.17-8).27 Angelic agents are involved in

all that goes on in the world. So far Wesley is carrying Anglican angelology forward

unoriginally into the eighteenth-century context.

22
Wesley, WJW, 3:4-15.
23
‘Of Good Angels,’ §I.2, WJW, 3:7.
24
‘Of Good Angels,’ §I.2, WJW, 3:7.
25
‘Of Good Angels,’ §§I.3-5, WJW, 3:8-9. It is of note that in instances of the exercise of violence, such as the
examples Wesley cites above, Wesley is ambivalent as to whether it was a good angel or demon who enacted
the violence, both occur to the same effect.
26
‘Of Good Angels,’ §6, WJW, 3:9.
27
‘Of Good Angels,’ §§6-7, WJW, 3:9-10.
In the Image of the Devil 189

On Wesley’s account, angels and demons are creatures who, like any other creature,

serve as instruments within the good providence of God. 28 Wesley says that creature’s operate

as the hands of providence through God’s ‘immediate power.’29 He introduces this idea as a

way of understanding the entanglement of angelic and divine agency: by immediate power is

understood that what angelic agents enact is concomitantly abiding within the will of God, even

works enacted by evil angels, which through perverse willing accidentally actualise the divine

redemptive will.30 In Wesley’s words:

‘But does not the Scripture teach, ‘The help which is done upon earth, God doth it
himself’? Most certainly he does. And he is able to do it by his own immediate power;
he has no need of using any instruments at all, either in heaven or earth. He wants not
either angels or men to fulfil the whole counsel of his will. But it is not his pleasure so
to work. He never did; and we may reasonably suppose he never will. He has always
wrought by such instruments as he pleases: but still is God himself that doth the
work.’31
Angelic agency is active in the everyday, but to posit this is neither to exclude nor to circumvent

divine agency. The referent in the passage above is to the activities of righteous angels and

human beings. Wesley expands: ‘Whatever help therefore we have, either by angels or men, is

as much the work of God as if he were to put forth his almighty arm and work without any

means at all. ... [T]he same glory redounds [God] as if he used no instruments at all.’32 All

creatures move within the grace of God, and this orientates creation towards God in the

concurrent movements of gratitude and grace. 33 It is likely because Wesley can speak

equivocally of angelic agency and divine agency that save for the handful of explicit treatments

28
‘Of Good Angels,’ §§II.8-9, WJW, 3:14; ‘On Divine Providence,’ §§14-15, WJW, 2:540-541.
29
‘Of Good Angels,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:14.
30
‘Of Good Angels,’ §II.10, WJW, 3:15.
31
‘Of Good Angels,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:14.
32
‘Of Good Angels,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:14.
33
‘On the Education of Children,’ §14, WJW, [Link] ‘God orders all things: he makes the sun shine, the wind
blow, and the trees bear fruit. Nothing comes by chance: that is a silly word: there is no such thing as chance.
As God made the world, so he governs the world, and everything that is in it. Not so much as a sparrow falls to
the ground without the will of God. And as he governs all things, so he governs all men, good and bad, little
and great. He gives them all the power and wisdom they have. And he overrules all.’
In the Image of the Devil 190

of angelology in his sermons and the narratives scattered throughout the journals and letters he

defaults to speaking divine agency and creaturely agency. Parsing the agency of a particular

act—God or an angel—unless indicated by scripture, breaks with Wesley’s desire for

simplicity and ‘plain meaning’ and, more broadly, betrays the English sensibility to simplicity,

clarity, and experience in their intellectual reaction against scholasticism.

Within this context where talk of angels and demons seems increasingly superstitious,

Wesley’s approach to the knowledge of angels is intriguing for its courage and restraint.

Peculiar phenomena occur in everyday life, but, perhaps curiously, Wesley pushes against a

common sense understanding of angels. Instead, Wesley urges that angelology, while

irrefutably real on account of the witness of scripture, is only intelligible as revelatory

knowledge that gives symbolic meaning to events in the ordinary: ‘Revelation only is able to

supply this defect; this only gives us a clear, rational, consistent account of those whom our

eyes have not seen, nor our ears heard.’34 Even with the illumination of the Spirit and the

restoration of the spiritual senses, the spiritual being of the angels necessitates a deflationary

approach to human knowledge of their essences and activities. Wesley explains his position at

length:

We can only observe, in a gross and general manner, rising one above another, first,
inorganical earth, then minerals and vegetables in their several orders; afterwards
insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, beasts, men, and angels. Of angels indeed we know
nothing with any certainty but by revelation. The accounts which are left by the wisest
of the ancients, or given by the modern heathens, being no better than silly, self-
inconsistent fables, too gross to be imposed even upon children. But by divine
revelation we are informed that they were all created holy and happy; yet they did not
continue as they were created—some kept, but some left, their first estate.35
This argument proceeds, then, with a healthy measure of caution—a caution no doubt learned

by his wariness towards the abuses of demonology and the excesses of enthusiasm. No matter

how substantial an account of demonology might be available, the sense in which this

34
‘Of Good Angels,’ §4, WJW, 3:6.
35
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §2, WJW, 3:16.
In the Image of the Devil 191

knowledge is available to the subject must be borne in mind. Wesley’s empirical sensibility

positively orients him towards the idea that the creature finds themselves thrown into the world.

It follows that as a matter of course creatures encounter things which elude comprehension

until revelation supplies explanatory power once the creature is liberated from their spiritual

blindness. Therefore, to acknowledge that angelology requires mediation through revelation is

not to deny the existence of spiritual beings at all. Rather, it hedges any exposition from the

outset from the dangers in speculation while still accounting for the fulness of the human

situation in the world.

Thus, Wesley’s angelology follows in the train of contemporary Anglican views of his

time. But this is incorporated within his vision of ‘heart religion.’ Awareness of one’s situation

within and among angelic agents affects the activity of the subject in the world in all domains.

The sketch of Wesley’s angelology makes clear his view that angelic agents (fallen or no) are

immediately and efficiently involved in all aspects of creaturely life: angels guide rulers to their

own ends; angels create occasions for praise and lament in the natural world through disasters,

accidents, or their prevention; and angels persuade individuals inside and outside of grace in

their perpetual campaign to align the subject with their allegiant. Considering this, one might

suggest that even while Wesley routinely appeals to divine agency, it is reasonable to infer that

this is a layered claim, within it is also the presence of real and effective angelic agency. With

this in hand, this analysis can transition to what makes Wesley’s demonology distinctive.

3. Key Themes in Wesley’s Doctrine of Evil Angels

This section argues that Wesley’s demonology trades on three themes. The substance

of these themes are drawn largely from Wesley’s sermon ‘Of Evil Angels,’ effectively a rolling

commentary on Ephesians 6.12: ‘For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh,

but against rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness,
In the Image of the Devil 192

against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’36 ‘This single passage,’ Wesley

writes, ‘seems to contain the whole Scripture doctrine concerning evil angels.’37 One may

discern three themes in Wesley’s view as follows: (a) that the devil is the present ruler of the

world; (b) that demonic sovereignty is spiritual; and (c) that the kingdom of darkness manifests

in the proliferation of sin and evil. These three motifs characterise everyday life amidst ‘the

present evil age’ (Gal. 1.4). It is in this regard that Wesley modifies, amends, and emphasises

aspects of the inherited doctrine of evil angels. The difference is a matter of degree rather than

of substance. The intent of the following exposition is to elucidate and support this claim

considering the horizon of hamartiology. In essence, this chapter shows that for Wesley the

world is subject as much to original sin as it is subject to Satan and the demonic legions.

a. The Devil as ‘Prince of this World.’

First, Wesley states that the devil is the present ruler of this world. He is bold and

consistent in this position. This view is made clear in ‘Of Evil Angels’ when he says that ‘They

are (remember! so far as God permits) …, “governors of the world!”’38 He expands on this

view elsewhere in ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit,’ reflecting on St John’s sense of the term

‘world’ saying:

‘We have had our conversation with the world;’ even in the world of the ungodly: not
only among the children of God—that were, comparatively, a little thing—but among
the children of the devil, among those that ‘lie in wickedness,’ … ‘in the wicked one.’
What a world this is! How thoroughly impregnated with the spirit it continually

36
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §17, WJW, [Link] ‘This single passage (Ephesians 6.12) seems to contain the whole Scripture
doctrine of the evil angels. I apprehend the plain meaning of it, literally translated, is this: “Our wrestling”, the
wrestling of real Christians, “is not” only, or chiefly, “against flesh and blood”—weak men or fleshly appetites
and passions—“but against principalities, against powers”—the mighty princes of all the infernal legions, with
their combined forces: and great is their power, as is also the power of the legions which they command—
“against the rulers of the world” (this is the literal meaning of the word). Perhaps these principalities and
powers remain chiefly in the citadel of their kingdom. But there are other evil spirits that range abroad, to
whom the provinces of the world are committed. “Of the darkness”—chiefly the spiritual darkness—“of this
age”—which prevails during this present state of things—“against wicked spirits”—eminently such, who
mortally hate and continually oppose holiness, and labour to infuse unbelief, pride, evil desire, malice, anger,
hatred, envy, or revenge—“in heavenly places”—which were once their abode, and which they still aspire
after.’
37
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §3, WJW, 3:17.
38
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.1, WJW, 3:20.
In the Image of the Devil 193

breathes! As our God is good and doth good, so the god of this world and all his children
are evil, and do evil (so far as they are suffered) to all the children of God. Like their
father they are always lying in wait, or ‘walking about, seeking whom they may
devour.’39
The use of ‘conversation,’ denoting a manner of behaviour or shape of life, and ‘breath,’

denoting the orientation of one’s being captures in a double respect the completeness of the

devil’s reign.40 Wesley holds that the world, ‘they who know not God, even the loving,

pardoning God,’ is enthralled to the devil. 41 This insistence seems to call into question

Wesley’s emphasis on God’s sovereign working through grace and providence, but the

challenge is only apparent: for Wesley to say that the devil is ‘the ruler of this world’ with St

John, or to acknowledge ‘the present evil age’ with St. Paul for that matter, is not to give way

to a crude though ‘interesting … dialectic between dualism and monotheism,’ as Outler

comments.42 On the contrary, Wesley’s instincts are profoundly Johannine. 43 It is this sense of

‘world’—those who do not know God—which the devil rules. Moreover, in Wesley’s view

there is no capitulation to any Manichean sensibility, and neither is the sovereignty of God

forfeited by the ascendancy of the devil for Wesley, for one must read such statements

christologically. Wesley’s position follows John’s pressurised statement of the gospel: ‘The

Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil’ (1 Jn. 3.8). As

Wesley’s comment on this encapsulation of the gospel, ‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ makes

plain, he has little interest in beginning with the juxtaposition of absolute divine sovereignty

and spiritual authority. His interest is in the particular force of the Christ event—the life, death,

and resurrection of the Son of God—the fulness of the salvation of God in individual believers

39
‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit,’ §10, WJW, 1:305.
40
Cf. above, §§2.3, 2.4.
41
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, III,’ §III.4, WJW, 1:522-523.
42
Outler, WJW, 1:306n32.
43
Wall, ‘John’s John,’ 112-118. On Johannine dualism in the seventeenth century among the dissenters, see
Paul Cefalu, The Johannine Renaissance, 217-254.
In the Image of the Devil 194

throughout time and space.44 Thus, Wesley may readily admit, without a strange dialectic

between monotheism and dualism, that through Christ ‘God was pleased to reconcile to himself

all things’ (Col. 1.20) alongside the stark reality that the devil is the ‘ruler of the world’ (Jn.

12.31). One adds to this the observation that the force of both truths must be maximally felt.

Wesley will not reconcile one into the other, for example, to say that the finality of Christ has

destroyed and removed the devil’s reign, for the realization of such knowledge dwells in

eschatological reserve.

b. The Devil’s ‘Ruler of the Power of the Air’—Spiritual Sovereignty.

Seeing dimly does not mean, however, one does not see at all. In Wesley’s view,

following the logic of illumination, for one to know the devil’s works is to be in the

transformative and healing grace of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the source of one’s

breath and conversation. Wesley’s position establishes that only those already in Christ may

discern, through the Spirit’s illuminating grace and the Father’s providence, the contested

spiritual reality.45 Such a distinction allows one to transition to the second theme: that the

devil’s sovereignty is spiritual. The kingdom of the devil simply is sin. Thus, Wesley’s view

is akin to Calvin’s:

It is not from creation but from corruption of nature that men are bound to sin and can
will nothing but evil. For whence comes that inability which the wicked would freely
use as an excuse, but from the fact that Adam willingly bound himself over to the
devil’s tyranny?46
The devil is the ‘ruler of the power of the air’ (Eph. 2.2). Giving the modality of the devil’s

reign due attention both solidifies this reading of Wesley which precludes some dialectic

between monotheism and dualism and nuances the meaning of moral responsibility. Therefore,

in Wesley’s account, the devil’s sovereignty is best understood as spiritual sovereignty, that is,

44
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §III.6, WJW, 2:483.
45
See Ch 2.
46
Calvin, Institutes, 1: 2.5.1.
In the Image of the Devil 195

enveloping and recharacterizing the universality of sin as spiritual death. In this sense, there is

ample evidence to sketch a vision of Wesley’s doctrine of evil angels safe from worries over

cosmic dualism for three reasons: (1) Wesley’s post-millennial tendency in eschatology; (2)

his high valuation of the subject’s responsibility; and (3) his meticulous account of providence.

First, one can glean a better understanding of Wesley’s position by observing the

intersection of eschatology. Here this argument links with Wesley’s deflationary approach to

the ‘signs of the times,’ indications of the in-breaking of the eschaton and the manifestation of

grace and providence. The approach to signs of the times parallels evidence of demonic (or

angelic) activity in the world. 47 ‘Of angels,’ Wesley cautions, ‘we know nothing with any

certainty but by revelation.’48 Indexed thus, one is directed back to the role of faith, or spiritual

sensation.49 The sense of the spiritual world is apparent in an analogous way to the providence

of God. Wesley writes the one comes to know the kingdom of God unlike how we come to

know ordinary states of affairs: ‘“The kingdom of God came not with observation”, but “within

us” … when it begins in an individual or in a nation it “is like the grain of a mustard seed”.’50

Revelation and illumination emerge from the person’s heart in an authorizing event,

emboldening and enabling one to see the world as it is, and conferring responsibility for

understanding spiritual reality as such. What Wesley says of providence is also true of the

perception of the devil’s works. Only from within the Word does the authentic perception of

spiritual realities, providence, angels, demons, etc., become plausible. The Word transforms

experience; experience confirms the Word. Thus, as an iteration of this way of reasoning,

Wesley’s generally post-millenial—perhaps a-millenial—eschatology attempts to distance

47
Wesley, ‘The Signs of the Times,’ WJW, 522-533; cf. ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, XII,’ WJW,
1:675-686.
48
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §2, WJW, 3:16.
49
See above, §2.5.
50
ENNT, Mt. 14.31-2.
In the Image of the Devil 196

evidentialist assertions to supernatural agents efficiently involved in the events of the world. 51

Time and again in his pastoral work, Wesley exhorted caution and reason in the face of what

appeared to be stirrings of spirits. The worry stems from many areas, including, for instance,

Wesley’s life in an English society exhausted by the violence that followed strong

identifications of demonic activity as a means of maintaining social order. More

straightforwardly, Wesley’s teachings were already encumbered by charges of enthusiasm

which he was keen to refute, hence his keeping the knowledge of angels and demons

exclusively as revealed in scripture. If one considers that this deflationary sensibility in

eschatology parallels Wesley’s demonology, then heavy-handed, evidentialist accounts of

demonic agency are likewise unpalatable to him.

Second, one is reminded again of the role of one’s moral responsibility in Wesley’s

theology. The importance and constancy of moral responsibility is collected under the doctrines

of the witness of the Spirit in the conscience and of the image of God.52 In each place,

responsibility entails life-in-relation to other creatures and to God. We are never without our

neighbours, and we are never without God (though may believe the to the contrary). The

doctrine of evil angels, especially the observation of the devil’s sovereignty, seems to challenge

the integrity of one’s responsibility. Wesley’s view avoids this error. Life under the effective

dominion of the devil does not expunge human beings of their responsibility as creatures-in-

relation, but it does thicken the meaning of responsibility and, in turn, freedom. The way of

sin, death, and the devil and the way of holiness are diametrically opposed. Wesley writes:

‘The spirit which is in the world is directly opposite to the Spirit which is of God.’53 The

51
In the debate concerning Wesley’s eschatology, whether it be amillenial or post-millennial are the most
plausible positions. This thesis prefers a post-millennial reading as a means of explaining Wesley’s desire to
realise the eschaton, albeit provisionally, in the quotidian. See Maddox, Responsible Grace, 236-239; Collins,
Theology of John Wesley, 314-316.
52
See above, §§2.4, 3.3
53
Wesley, ‘Sermon on the Mount, III,’ §III.4, WJW, 1:523.
In the Image of the Devil 197

‘utmost contrariety’ between these two ways of being in the world are consequences of the

source, the ‘breath,’ of the human being. One lives either in the image of God or the image of

the devil. In the way of sin, Wesley says that God’s ‘Spirit strives with them no longer, and

then Satan hardens them effectually.’54 At the close of ‘Of Evil Angels,’ he states his view at

its sharpest: ‘[I]n general we may observe that as no good is done, or spoken, or thought by

any man without the assistance of God, working together in and with those that believe in him;

so there is no evil done, or spoke[n], or thought, without the assistance of the devil.’55 In a way

paralleling Luther’s sense of the will as a horse ridden either by God or the devil, Wesley seems

to suggest that sin and evil, by virtue of their viciousness, are the province of the devil’s reign,

and thus when one sins, they fashion themselves into the image of the devil. 56 The woundedness

of one’s nature through indwelling sin is at the same time cooperating with the devil’s

wickedness, making this one’s own. What continuity one enjoys with the natural and political

image is communicated solely through the wonder of prevenient grace. Moreover, since

prevenient grace confers responsibility when manifest in the experience of the good or bad

conscience––Wesley’s version of human beings as in bondage to the devil has a softer touch

than Luther’s. The operant term in Wesley’s view is the ‘assistance’ of God or the devil: human

beings, as agents, cooperate with God or with the devil. This view supposes that one’s acts

retain their integrity through cooperation and that an action’s fulfilment is: (a) contingent upon

another agent; and (b) the quality of that action indicates with whom one cooperates.57 In other

words, one is enabled by grace to enact their freedom, and when one seeks to enact this, the

ends unveil whether they did so in faith (in the image of God) or in dissipation (in the image

54
‘The Signs of the Times,’ §II.6, WJW, 2:529.
55
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:24.
56
Luther, LW, [Link] ‘Thus the human will is placed between the two like a beast of burden. If God rides it, it
wills and goes where God wills, as the psalm says: ‘I am become as a beast [before thee] and I am always with
thee’ (Ps. 73:22). If Satan rides it, it wills and goes where Satan wills; nor can it choose to run to either of the
two riders or to seek him out, but the riders themselves contend for the possession and control of it.’
57
Wesley, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation,’ §III.3, WJW, 3:206-207.
In the Image of the Devil 198

of the devil). Therefore, the creature retains both responsibility and culpability no matter how

much one agitates the form and function of the demonic in this scheme. The best the devil can

do is distract one from the incoming tide of divine. Humanity cannot play the victim to cosmic

antagonists, even if they do suffer for their situation under the domain of the devil.

Third, Wesley’s commitment to the universal scope of the good providence of God in

creation includes even the most heinous and vile creatures. Angelic beings are intermediaries,

they move about advancing the will of God according to divine providence. 58 As Wesley

frames it, the demonic is permitted to act in accordance with the good providence of God. He

writes: ‘In the prosecution of this infernal design they are diligent in the highest degree. ... But

it is well for mankind that God hath set them their bounds which they cannot pass. He hath said

to the fiercest and strongest of the apostate spirits, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther.”’59

The fallen angels, even in their fervour to destroy and degrade, cannot counteract the Triune

God’s eternal will for salvation. Even the worst possible horror the devil could enact

accidentally aligns with God’s abiding will for redemption. 60 This in no sense means that

Wesley thinks demonic activity or suffering sin is an essential aspect of salvation history, in

the sense that God actively wills that it should be so. Nothing could be further from the case. 61

The indication that there is some pedagogical sense of the endurance of suffering is likewise

free from the guise of divine necessity. On the contrary, Wesley’s view of the relation between

providence and the demonic follows in the felix culpa tradition. It is not that evil is caused by

God, yet in the mystery of God’s wisdom God brings good from evil. This is a secondary and

58
Wesley, ‘Of Good Angels,’ §§II.8-10, WJW, 3:14-15; ‘Of Evil Angels,’ §§I.5, II.1, WJW, 3:19, 21.
59
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §I.5, WJW, 3:19; cf. Job 38.11.
60
On Wesley and God’s permissive will, see ‘The Wisdom of God’s Counsels,’ §4, WJW, 2:553; relating to the
conceptual distinction between God’s absolute freedom in the act of creation (potentia absoluta) and God’s
conditional freedom in the act of governance (potentia ordinata), see Thoughts Upon God’s Sovereignty,
WJW, 13:548-550. Wesley’s reflections on the permissiveness of God’s will are always refracted through the
historicity of their resolution in Jesus Christ. See ‘God’s Love to Fallen Man,’§II.16, WJW, 434-435.
61
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §I.8, WJW, 2:476.
In the Image of the Devil 199

non-necessary relation, and as such it is the expression of God’s freedom that healing,

restoration, and redemption grow out of blood-stained soil.62 Within human existence in a

contested world, God’s redemptive purposiveness remains mysterious but nonetheless real: the

possibility of redemption, seen here as liberation from the demonic, remains a beacon of hope

for the creature.

The notion of the devil’s (limited) spiritual sovereignty is thus understood with

appropriate care by attending to its link with eschatology and spiritual sense, its relation to

human responsibility, and its relation to the providence of God. It stems from the boundaries

already stressed by Wesley that here too there are limits to what can be said. One may note the

difference between Wesley’s mediating account and, on the one hand, the enthusiast and, on

the other hand, the enlightened luminary. In as much as Wesley claims that the devil is the

present ruler of the world, this dominion exists as a spiritual sovereignty: it is non-coercive,

concurrent with the malformed actions the person, enhancing one’s proclivity to evil, but not

obscuring the responsibility of the creature. In essence, demonic sovereignty can be

summarised as follows: where there is sin, the devil reigns; where the devil reigns, sin

proliferates.

c. The Manifestation of the Devil’s Works.

The third theme in Wesley’s doctrine of demonology is that the dominion of the devil

manifests in the quotidian through the experience of sin, pain, suffering, and misery. Note that

only now is this analysis of Wesley’s view turning fully to the place of experience. Further,

what is said here is to further clarify in what sense experience bears on the doctrine of evil

angels, so that what follows in the next section, a more intensive searching of how Wesley’s

understanding of the works of the devil in fallen existence, may be appropriately understood.

The caution here is deliberate. Wesley emphasises: ‘Of angels indeed we know nothing with

62
‘The Mystery of Iniquity,’ §§1-3, WJW, 2:452; ‘God’s Love to Fallen Man,’ §II.14-16, WJW, 2:434-435.
In the Image of the Devil 200

any certainty but by revelation.’63 But now, carefully guided through the shape of the doctrine

of evil angels distilled in the scriptures, one may examine the manifestation of the demonic in

everyday life in: (a) personal and individual affairs; and (b) social affairs. First, one of the

consequences of this angelology is that they become exemplars of human personhood,

demonstrations of that of which human beings are capable, perhaps with a bit of hyperbole. On

this Wesley follows a well-trodden pattern in Christian theology, one exemplified in George

Bull, who Wesley draws on for his discourses on angels and demons. 64 Wesley argues that

angels become moral exemplars as well as parallels to human personhood: ‘[W]e may imitate

[the angels] in all holiness; suiting our lives to the prayer our Lord himself has taught us;

labouring to do his will on earth as angels do it in heaven.’65 Conversely, demons are fallen

angels, sharing in the same knowledge, wisdom, and power as those of the holy angels. 66 Their

corruption is irredeemable, exemplifying the unholy life. Wesley writes: ‘From the time that

they shook off their allegiance to God they shook off all goodness, and contracted all those

tempers which are most hateful to him, and most opposite to his nature. And ever since they

are full of pride, arrogance, and haughtiness, exalting themselves above measure; and although

so deeply depraved through their inmost frame, yet admiring their own perfections.’67

Understanding the existence of demons is a window into the soul under the conditions of

original sin in its fiercest intensity.

Analysing the nature and activities of the demonic allows for new pathways of thought

into the nature of the subject’s condition under sin, which Wesley hints at insofar as the demons

63
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §2, WJW, 3:16.
64
Bull, Works, 1:319-320; Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 93, a. 3.
Wesley, ‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.10, WJW, 3:15. On the Lord’s Prayer and the patterns of the Christian life, see
65

D Stephen Long, John Wesley’s Moral Theology: The Quest for God and Goodness (Nashville: Kingswood
Books, 2005), 141-165.
66
Wesley, ‘Of Evil Angels,’ §I.4, WJW, 3:19.
67
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §I.4, WJW, 3:19.
In the Image of the Devil 201

want nothing more than for the subject to become like them. Wesley writes: ‘They are full of

cruelty, of rage, against all the children of men, whom they long to inspire with the same

wickedness with themselves, and to involve them in the same misery.’68 The singular desire of

the demonic is that human beings would trade the image of God for the image of the devil.69

The evil fallen angels, rival in power and knowledge to their holy counterparts but corrupt in

their affections, are viciously driven to gather up humanity into their condition, and in so doing

they offer a window into the depths of the effects of original sin. The intersubjective unity of

the demonic in an inversion of the intersubjective unity of the angels. Instead of the unity of

love, malice and pride pull the fallen angels down, corrupted and corrupting. 70 Thus, it is not

only useful to talk about the demonic as a means of explaining the nuances of the subject’s

situation in the world, but also a means of exploring what it means to be a postlapsarian creature

as well.

A second consequence of the devil’s spiritual sovereignty is that the demonic is also

supra-personal. In their common purpose, the multiplicity of fallen angels act as a unit, or rather

an apparent singular malevolent spiritual entity in the world. Describing this unity, Wesley

writes: ‘They do not wander at large, but are all united under one common head. It is he that is

styled by our blessed Lord, “the prince of this world”; yea, the Apostle does not scruple to call

him “the god of this world”. ... [T]he other evil angels are under his command; that they are

ranged by him according to their several orders, and have from time to time their several works

and offices assigned them. And undoubtedly they are connected (though we know not how;

certainly not by love) both to him and to each other.’71 The unity of the demonic is personalised

under the name of Satan, or the devil. For this reason, Wesley speaks regularly of the devil as

68
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §I.4, WJW, 3:19.
69
Collins, Theology of John Wesley, 63.
70
Wesley, ‘Of Evil Angels,’ §I.6, WJW, 3:20.
71
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §I.6, WJW, 3:20.
In the Image of the Devil 202

a personal agent, but in meaning the name is representative of the multiplicity of unholy angels

acting in union with their head. Wesley aptly describes how one experiences demonic activity

in the world alongside the testimony of the creature. In one’s struggle against the demonic,

these forces seem overwhelming, but their power is an illusion, as Wesley explains: ‘It may be

observed in all these instances we usually say “the devil”, as if there was one only; because

these spirits, innumerable as they are, do all act in concert, and because we know not whether

one or more are concerned in this or that work of darkness.’72 The proof Wesley offers for this

is causal implication of the demonic in all sin and evil that occurs in the world: ‘He and his

angels, in connection with, and in subordination to him, dispose all the ignorance, all the error,

all the folly, and particularly all the wickedness of men, in such a manner as may most hinder

the kingdom of God, and most advance the kingdom of darkness.’73 In this way, the condition

of human beings under original sin and outside of grace is the particular dominion of the devil.

In summary, there are three themes in Wesley’s demonology: that the devil is the

present ruler of the world, that demonic sovereignty is chiefly spiritual, and that the kingdom

of darkness is evidenced by the proliferation of sin and evil. Simply put, the experience of evil

and sin in the world have a spiritual depth to them: one cannot speak of mere sin or mere evil,

whether it be natural or moral, the devil is always implicated in the occasion of sin and evil in

the world.74 This appeal to the priority of spiritual depth—a consequence of the elevation of

‘heart religion’—is the guiding theme of Wesley’s demonology. This means that, in the sense

one finds in St John’s gospel, the paradox of order and evil is not irrational, it demands an

illumination of creaturely reason. Again, this retrieval of Wesley’s demonology allows for a

fuller account of hamartiology, one which can reckon with life in this ‘present evil age.’ It is

72
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.15, WJW, 3:27.
73
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.1, WJW, 3:21.
74
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:24.
In the Image of the Devil 203

incumbent that Wesley should speak realistically about what scripture tells of life in the world

this side of the eschaton and thus boldly name the diabolical agents who will creation’s

undoing. These themes allow this argument to turn to the next sections where this argument

explains and critically analyse Wesley’s description of the activities of the demonic at every

dimension of the ordinary, to which this argument now turns.

4. The Works of the Devil: Advancing the Kingdom of Darkness

This chapter thickens Wesley’s conception of the situation of the person in the world

through the doctrine of evil angels. What preceded this section introduced the general shape of

Wesley’s doctrine of evil angels and the salient themes that give his account a sense of

distinctiveness from those of his contemporaries. At the close of this initial exposition, the

manifestation of the devil’s works in everyday life was introduced, but only briefly. In this

section, the argument examines this final theme at length. Minding again Wesley’s insistence

that ‘Of angels indeed we know nothing with any certainty but by revelation,’ the devil’s works

are brought into view with special reference to the polarity of human individuality and

sociality.75 This section argues and interprets Wesley’s notion that the terminus of demonic

agency is the corruption of created orders by disrupting forms of human sociality.

Wesley emphasises creation’s harmonious order.76 The peace of rightly ordered

relationships between God and human beings, and between human beings and other creatures,

is the orienting theme of his account of the new creation. The actuality of harmony is short-

changed by the intrusion of sin and encumbered by our wounded natures, but these are not the

only difficulties. The devil’s work subverts harmony and advances chaos. In service to this

sense of the end of the devil’s work, Wesley’s view proceeds according to three aspects: (a)

the exercise of the devil’s reign separates humanity from God; (b) the exercise of the devil’s

75
‘On Evil Angels,’ §2, WJW, 3:16.
‘The General Deliverance,’ §III, WJW, 2:445-450; ‘The New Creation,’ WJW, 2:500-510; cf. Runyon, The
76

New Creation, 8-12; Maddox, Responsible Grace, 252-253.

In the Image of the Devil 204

reign disrupts social, political, and ecclesial orders of everyday life; finally, (c) the most

desirable form of the devil’s work is to confuse institutionalised and systemic oppression for

political order. This section shows how this view operates within his sermons and wider

reflections on political and cultural events.

a. The Kingdom of Darkness and Creaturely Sociality

This section elucidates the forms undertaken by the devil to disrupt creaturely sociality.

That is, the argument now turns to Wesley’s view of the devil’s works, beginning with the

devil’s activity against human sociality. The idea of an essential created sociality is an

eschatologically loaded concept.77 The form of sociality Wesley discerns in his sermons is

cosmological, and derivatively ecological, and takes its bearings from the beginning and

endings of salvation history in the garden (Gn. [Link] & Rev. 21; cf. Joel 2, Isa. 65). 78 The devil’s

work inverts this order. Thus, the means of undoing the movement of creation towards

redemption comes by pitching humankind against itself. Wesley writes: ‘Next to the love of

God there is nothing which Satan so cordially abhors as the love of our neighbour.’79 Thus, as

human beings live in sin, they imitate the devil, becoming image-bearers for the prince of this

world, and so Wesley may speak indirectly of the concrete experience of the devil’s work in

the goings-on of everyday life by pointing to our sinful turn inward at the expense of all

creatures.80 The devil’s work pursues the dissolution and perversion of the beauty and goodness

of the orders of the new creation incessantly. Wesley writes: ‘[W]hether or no particular men

are attended by particular evil spirits, we know that Satan and all his angels are continually

77
Hardy, God’s Ways with the World, 204-205.
78
‘The New Creation,’ §§14-17, WJW, 2:507-509.
79
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.5, WJW, 3:22.
80
One might well begin with the individual, given Wesley’s profound attention to interiority, and focus on
issues like wandering thoughts and temptation. This exposition attempts to underscore that the almost constant
attention to the individual in Wesley’s thought is an attention on means. See above, §3.5.
In the Image of the Devil 205

warring against us, and watching over every child of man.’81 The terminus of creation is in its

composition as one holy and everlasting church, with humanity interceding as a royal

priesthood on behalf of all creatures. Preventing this end is the singular desire of all the devil’s

energy.82

For as much as Wesley’s eschatology is ordered to peace and points to the benefits

gained through suffering in this life, when it comes to the ethics of sociality, Wesley’s orienting

concern is conservative: schism, dissent, rebellion, and the like are all considered evidence of

sin, evil, and the demonic.83 Breaks in the present order are seen as vicious. As evidence of sin

and evil, they are also demonized—that is, attributed to the assistance of the devil’s activity.

This tendency leads to a quietist impulse nestled within Wesley’s call for an active life of faith.

For instance, Wesley rebukes his ministers for speaking ill of those in political authority. 84

Wesley fails to imagine the possibility of institutionalised or structural injustice, setting

instances of injustice as either a product of the individual moral failing of political leaders or

the aggregation of individual viciousness in society. 85 Problems arise here in Wesley’s

theology, not just for his doctrine of sin: not only does he export political discourse into the

81
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.3, WJW, 3:21.
82
Thus, the consideration of the ends of creation and the desire of the demonic leads to an intersection with
Wesley’s view of political life, see Theodore Weber’s study, Politics in the Order of Salvation: Transforming
Wesleyan Political Ethics (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2001). There is in Wesley’s writings a tension, a
tension exacerbated when examined with the demonic in frame. For all his use of theological language in the
Sermons, his explicit treatments of socio-political issues are composed in a predominantly humanist style. Not
that the theological commitments are indiscernible, see David N. Field, ‘Imaging the God of Justice and
Mercy: Theological Allusions in John Wesley's Thoughts upon Slavery,’ Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 47:1
(2021), 1-20. For as involved as Wesley and the Methodists were in the social reform of English society, he
expressed caution when pressed to articulate the theological warrant for his often-subversive activity: ‘I am no
politician; politics lie quite out of my province.’ See JWW, 11:14; cf. ‘How far is it the duty of a Christian
Minister to Preach Politics,’ JWW, 11:154-5. The raging spiritual war, the struggle against sin, death, and the
devil, seems to fade in public. What this means for Wesley’s view of the political is twofold: one, Wesley
simply fails to supply a robust theological set of categories for interrogating social life; two, Wesley’s does
hint at an organic, though unimaginative view of the constitution of the political in human society. There is
perhaps need for a substantial re-envisioning of Wesley’s political image of God.
83
Of course, there is a tension here with Wesley’s constant ecclesial and moral reform, but his assumption is
that such change does not entail the disruption of the ordering of society.
84
Wesley, ‘The Trouble and Rest of Good Men,’ §II.3, WJW, 3:538-539; cf., ‘On the Reformation of Manners,’
§IV.5, WJW, 2:318.
85
‘National Sins and Miseries,’ WJW, 3:566-576.
In the Image of the Devil 206

secular sphere, but on his terms all dissent, all protest, and all rebellion are unjust given the

ossification of the present political regime. Moreover, the unilateral condemnation of divisive

behaviour is entangled with the image of the devil. Wesley writes: ‘[the devil] therefore uses

every possible means to prevent or destroy this; to excite either private or public suspicions,

animosities, resentment, quarrels; to destroy the peace of families or of nations, and to banish

unity and concord from the earth.’86 Wesley goes on to say that seeding chaos among the forms

of everyday life is the height of the devil’s work, ‘[T]his indeed is the triumph of his art; to

embitter the poor, miserable children of men against each other, and at length urge them to do

his own work, to plunge one another into the pit of destruction.’87 In the conflicts and turmoil

which occur in the several forms of everyday life the subject is most effectively dislodged from

their disposition within the grace of God. This identification of the locus of the devil’s activity

in everyday life, ‘to plunge one another into the pit of destruction,’ reopens the question of the

interrelation of Wesley’s demonology and the political, but one finds themselves back in the

same unthoughtful conservatism which strikes incoherently with the subversive reality of the

Methodist movement.

Thus, Wesley’s view considers public vice and misery to be intrinsically related to sin

and the devil and, as such, public outcry is met with urging individual moral reform. It notes

how on this account problems certainly arise, many of which would carry this analysis beyond

the scope of the present argument, but there is one worth highlighting at this transition. The

prioritization of spiritual to material concerns undercuts Wesley’s otherwise holistic view of

sin and salvation. For all the dynamism at work in his view of the way of salvation and the way

of sin, faced with change at scale—in history and society—he fails to carry this recognition of

the dynamic nature of existence forward. Therefore, at the level of society, harmony and peace

86
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.5, WJW, 3:23.
87
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.5, WJW, 3:23.
In the Image of the Devil 207

cannot arise through political struggle. Wesley relies too heavily on the porosity of relation

between individual and social and, consequently, his doctrine of evil angels contains within it

the risk of demonizing the cry of the oppressed. On this reading, however, this discrepancy is

a matter of inconsistency perhaps attributed to Wesley’s self-interest in remaining in the good

graces of the established church. It is possible to carry Wesley’s holistic view of sin and

salvation forward and incorporate it into his doctrine of evil angels, as the next section attempts.

If Wesley is even remotely consistent, then the inverse would apply: the devil’s spiritual

sovereignty has real material consequences.

b. The Devil Disordering the Ordinary Life

The doctrine of evil angels is a means of describing the fallen world in which humanity

finds themselves, antagonised by the devil, an agent of unbecoming who works principally in

the soul of the individual. This section considers how Wesley conceives of the devil’s work

with respect to the individual, shifting from sociality to individuality; it argues that for him the

devil is most actively at work within the inner life of the creature. Wesley says that the devil

seeks that human beings would worship him and, to this end, ‘He and his angels, in connection

with and in subordination to him, dispose all the ignorance, all the error, all the folly, and

particularly all the wickedness of men, in such manner as may most hinder the kingdom of

God, and most advance the kingdom of darkness.’88 This activity appears in two ways: (a)

directly as the devil attempts to deceive the creature (e.g., temptation); and (b) indirectly as the

devil provokes the creature to sin through external causes (e.g., suffering, pain, and misery).

‘They are ever watching,’ Wesley writes, ‘to see whose outward or inward circumstances,

whose prosperity or adversity, whose health or sickness, whose friends or enemies, whose

youth or age, whose knowledge or ignorance, business or idleness, whose joy or sorrow, may

88
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.1, 3, WJW, 3:20, 21.
In the Image of the Devil 208

lay them open to temptation.’89 To evidence this argument, the thesis returns to Wesley’s

understanding of selfhood, especially as interiority interacts with the demonic in the event of

temptation, then examine the form of direct and indirect demonic activity.

Wandering Thoughts and the Emergence of Anxiety in Spiritual Combat

In this connection of the devil’s works with the inner life of the soul, this analysis is

brought back into the strength of Wesley’s theology, back into the horizon of ‘heart religion.’

The devil aims to break one’s orientation to God. Wesley explains: ‘The inward kingdom of

heaven, which is set up in the heart of all that “repent and believe the gospel”, is no other than

“righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost” ... Now this is the grand device of Satan:

to destroy the first work of God in the soul, or at least to hinder its increase by our expectation

of that greater work.’90 For Wesley, the devil’s entanglement with the experience of anxiety,

temptation, and doubt intensifies the spiritual struggle. In this view, he carries forward a deep

tradition of spiritual combat refracted to him through the Puritans. He explains that the ‘grand

prize’ of the devil’s work in the inner life of the subject corresponds with the root of sin:

faithlessness and its conceptual cognates in Wesley’s theology—practical atheism, dissipation,

and unbelief.

Therefore, beginning with the direct activity of the devil in the heart of the human life,

one returns to Wesley’s conception of faithlessness as dissipation. Wesley writes: ‘[A]bove all

he strives to damp our love of God, as he knows this is the spring of all our religion, and that

as this rises or falls the work of God flourishes or decays in the soul.’91 Only once one dislocates

their gaze from the Triune God, they trade obedience to God’s sovereignty for the reign of the

devil. If one loses sight of the Word, they forfeit the moral image of God to which they are

ordered. In this sense, one can see the importance of the claim that Wesley’s demonology

89
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.3, WJW, 3:21.
90
‘Satan’s Devices,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:139-140.
91
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.4, WJW, 3:22.
In the Image of the Devil 209

locates the activity of the devil primarily within the inner life of the person in the form of

deception and deceit. Wesley begins by showing how the devil meddles with aspects of the

natural and political image of God: reason, will, and the passions. Beginning with the

understanding, he writes, drawing on Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: ‘“The god of this

world knows” how to “blind our hearts,” to spread a cloud over our understanding, and to

obscure the light of those truths which at other times shine as bright as the noonday sun.’92 The

work of the demonic is thus to ease a proclivity already within human nature wounded by

indwelling sin to live as if God were absent from the world. For Wesley, this state is to be

‘separated from God, that is disunited with his centre.’93 The spiritual blindness endemic to

indwelling sin is at once a consequence of disunion from God and inflicted by the devil’s

malice. Wesley writes: ‘The god of this world hath so blinded their eyes that the light cannot

shine upon them; so that they can no more discern the signs of the times than the Pharisees and

Sadducees of old.’94 To break one’s ‘conversation’ with God the devil needs only cloud the

eyes of faith and, in so doing, to plunge the person into spiritual blindness, robbing them of the

sense of faith. The end of this diabolical work is to return the creature to the ‘natural’ condition

in unbelief, from which all viciousness flows. Accordingly, Wesley states: ‘All these

wandering thoughts easily and naturally spring from that evil root of unbelief.’95 The ends of

this assault are the dispositions of the holy life: faith, hope and love. 96 Naturally, Wesley

considers at some length how to consider the devil’s interruption of one’s affective and

existential union with God.

92
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.4, WJW, 3:22.
93
‘On Dissipation,’ §12, WJW, 3:120.
94
‘The Signs of the Times,’ §II.7, WJW, 2:529.
95
’Wandering Thoughts,’ §II.1, WJW, 2:129.
96
‘By these means he assaults our faith, our evidence of things unseen. He endeavours to weaken that hope of
full immortality to which God had begotten us, and thereby to lessen, if he cannot destroy, our joy in God our
Saviour. But above all he strives to damp our love of God, as he knows this is the spring of all our religion, and
that as this rises or falls the work of God flourishes or decays in the soul.’ ‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.4, WJW, 3:22.
In the Image of the Devil 210

Wesley points also to the devil’s work in disordering the dispositions and tempers of

human beings. This is the principal instrument by which the devil attempts to pry the creature

from their gracious relation to the Creator. Wesley says that the devil does this directly by

‘continually labouring with all his skill and power to infuse evil thoughts of every kind into the

hearts of men.’97 Breaking one’s existential communion with God, one loses the fruits of the

spirit, not only faith, hope, and love, but also the train of holy tempers. The subject’s spirit can

interact with other spiritual beings in this way, transferring thoughts, as it were, without a

sensory medium.98 ‘It is as easy,’ Wesley says, ‘for a spirit to speak to our heart as for a man

to speak to our ears.’99 The devil strikes up an unholy conversation with the troubled soul.

One’s joy is threatened by the devil’s confronting one with their ‘vileness, sinfulness, and

unworthiness,’ intermixed with the suggestion that this horrible condition is shamefully

necessary on account of the all-consuming burden of sin.100 Similarly one’s peace may be

rattled by distorting the nature of one’s holiness, tricking the soul into believing that the work

of holiness falls on one’s own shoulders.101

Conversely, Wesley says that the devil also ‘labours to awaken evil passions and

tempers in our souls.’102 On this topic, Wesley lists something nearing a taxonomy of the fruit

of the spirit and their wicked corresponding tempers. The list is worth presenting in full:

He endeavours to inspire those passions and tempers which are directly opposite to ‘the
fruit of the Spirit.’ He strives to instil unbelief, atheism, ill-will, bitterness, hatred,
malice, envy,––opposite to faith and love; fear, sorrow, anxiety, worldly care,––
opposite to peace and joy; impatience, ill nature, anger, resentment,––opposite to long-
suffering, gentleness, meekness; fraud, guile, dissimulation,––contrary to fidelity; love
of the world, inordinate affection, foolish desires,––opposite to the love of God.103

97
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.7, WJW, 3:23.
98
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.7, WJW, 3:23; cf. ‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §IV.6, WJW, 2:136.
99
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.7, WJW, 3:23.
100
‘Satan’s Devices,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:141.
101
‘Satan’s Devices,’ §I.2, WJW, 1:142.
102
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.8, WJW, 3:24.
103
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.8, WJW, 3:24.
In the Image of the Devil 211

This list comes close to the sharpest and most formalised taxonomy of the passions in Wesley’s

writings, or, leveraging an older idiom, an anatomy of the passions. Wesley’s inclusion of this

taxonomy within the context of the doctrine of evil angels is illuminating because, among other

things, it highlights, on the one hand, the relation of the affective life to the way of holiness

and, on the other hand, the contested nature of the affective life. Wesley thinks human beings

can regulate their tempers and dispositions.104 They are something over which a person can

exert moderate control. Interestingly, he closes the paragraph containing this passage with a

turn to the relation of the body to the passions of the soul: ‘One sort of evil desires he may

probably raise or inflame by touching the springs of this animal machine,’ recognizing the

psycho-somatic genesis of the passions and affections, ‘endeavouring by means of the body to

disturb or sully the soul.’105 In this telling inclusion of the relation of the body, the passions

and affections, and spiritual warfare, there is in Wesley a remarkable presentation of the

estrangement of self from the world as a result of the Fall.

There is a subtlety in Wesley’s account of spiritual warfare worth highlighting. The

nature of spiritual blindness and its intersection with the works of the devil highlights the

condition of anxiety induced by the disorientation of one’s being from God. Wesley expresses

this almost off-handedly when addressing how the devil communicates with the soul. Wesley

writes:

But sometimes it is exceeding difficult to distinguish these from our own thoughts,
those which he injects so exactly resembling those which naturally arise in our own
minds. Sometimes indeed we may distinguish one from the other by this circumstance:
the thoughts which naturally arise in our minds are generally, if not always, occasioned
by, or at least connected with, some inward or outward circumstance that went before.
But those that are preternaturally suggested have frequently no relation to or connection
(at least none that we are able to discern) with anything which preceded. On the
contrary they shoot in as it were across, and thereby show that they are of a different
growth.106

104
See above, §§2.4.b, 3.3.b.
105
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:24.
106
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.7, WJW, 3:23.
In the Image of the Devil 212

The difference Wesley recognises between ordinary thoughts as prompted from some sort of

state of affairs, such as how the smell of a certain coffee draws out memories of old meetings,

and the condition of the promptings of the devil as from no-where is suggestive. The

placelessness of the devil’s work and yet the domineering presence of these estranged and

unfounded thoughts creates anxiety in the soul of the person. Moreover, the entanglement of

these placeless thoughts with the embodied reality of existence strains the distinction of

‘wandering thoughts’ from vicious counterparts. Wesley explains:

At the same time ... [the devil] endeavours to weaken, if not destroy, our faith. Indeed
[joy, peace, and faith] are inseparably connected, so that they must stand or Fall
together. So long as faith subsists we remain in peace; our heart stands fast while it
believes in the Lord. But if we let go our faith, our filial confidence in a loving,
pardoning God, our peace is at an end, the very foundation on which it stood being
overthrown.107
This situation that Wesley sketches, wherein the devil works ‘by means of the body,’ stages

further reflection on how he sees the relation of the demonic to ‘nervous disorders’ in what

follows. For the moment, the argument emphasises how Wesley depicts the direct work of the

devil primarily prompting spiritual conversation to dislodge the power of faith and, in turn, the

dispositions and tempers.

The Devil’s Activity in the Experience of Sin and Misery.

When direct insinuation fails, the devil indirectly provokes the creature. Wesley is still

able to predicate demonic agency of any and all sinful and evil actions and events in the world

even while our access to the demonic is limited to the testimony of scripture and only hesitantly

evidenced through experience:

As the children of God ‘are workers together with God’ in every thought, or word, or
action; so the children of the devil are workers together with him in every thought, or
word, or work. So that as all good tempers, and remotely all good words and actions,
are the fruit of the good Spirit; in like manner all evil tempers, with all the words and
works which spring from them, are the fruit of the evil spirit.108

107
‘Satan’s Devices,’ §I.8, WJW, 2:143-144.
108
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:24.
In the Image of the Devil 213

Thus, on the one hand, Wesley sees the intrinsic connection between the direct and indirect

work of the devil and, on the other hand, demonstrates at least part of the reason for the boldness

to associate, even if by analogy, what goes on in everyday life with the activity of the devil. In

the all-or-nothing quality of human activity is a reminder that for the Methodist there is no

morally neutral territory. For Wesley, seeing the world with the sense of faith, ‘all the “works

of the flesh”, of our evil nature, are likewise the “works of the devil”.’109 This conception

enabled this argument to speak previously about the demonic regarding structural sin and evil

(even stretching beyond Wesley); now it allows this argument to attend to the complicated

territory of the role of demonic agency within natural accidents which cause suffering and

illness.

By virtue of the nature of evil angels as spiritual beings who hold dominion over the

world, any and all events are likely occasioned or manipulated by the devil to provoke the

subject to sin. The eyes of faith seem to include this state of agitation nearing paranoia. Wesley

writes: ‘If he cannot entice men to sin he will (so far as he is permitted) put them to pain.’110

With boldness, Wesley posits the devil as the instigator of many of the ills that afflict creaturely

life. It is worth setting Wesley’s explanation out in full:

There is no doubt but he is the occasion, directly or indirectly, or many of the pains of
mankind; which those who can no otherwise account of them lightly pass over as
‘nervous.’ And innumerable ‘accidents’, as they are called, are undoubtedly owing to
his agency, such as the unaccountable fright or falling of horses, the overturning of
carriages, the breaking or dislocating of bones; the hurt done by the Falling or burning
of houses, by storms of wind, snow, rain, or hail, by lightning or earthquakes. But to
all these, and a thousand more, this subtle spirit can give the appearance of ‘accidents’,
for fear the sufferers, if they knew the real agent, should call for help on one that is
stronger than him.111
These are peculiar words coming from the same author of The Appeals to Men of Reason and

Religion who presents Christianity as a tolerant, rational, and palatable religion to even the

109
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:24.
110
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §11, WJW, 3:25.
111
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §11, WJW, 3:25.
In the Image of the Devil 214

most refined sensibilities. But Wesley presses further: ‘There is little reason to doubt but many

diseases likewise, both of the acute and the chronical kind, are either occasioned or increased

by diabolical agency.’112 He places special emphasis on mental illness, variously referred to as

‘nervous disorders,’ ‘lowliness of spirits,’ or ‘madness’ in the eighteenth-century parlance. 113

The seemingly uncaused nature of mental illness is reasonable proof for Wesley that the devil

is the agent behind the affliction. 114 Wesley has some nuance on this line of thought. 115 The

nature of demonic cooperation means that while one’s mental illness may not be directly

attributed to the work of the devil, giving Wesley a helpful critical distance from the dangers

of such an association, the devil is still involved in creating the occasion for such misery to

occur.116 This is perhaps an analogous mode of agency to what Cunningham notes as the

‘uncritical theory of compatibilism’ that Wesley deploys in speaking of the relation of divine

to human agency.117 But one notes that this relation is an analogous relation to God’s agency,

not the self-same, which is important if one is to ward off, as Wesley is, any risk of cosmic

dualism. The mystery of demonic agency in mental illness leads Wesley to reflect on the end

of this activity, which he asserts is shrouded in a haunted ambiguity.118 He concludes his

account of the activity of the devil in the events of the world by reflecting on human dreams:

‘I know not whether [the devil] may not have a hand in that unaccountable horror with which

112
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §12, WJW, 3:25.
113
In the eighteenth-century, medical practice, especially the treatment of mental illness, underwent massive
transitions. As such, terminology and definitions are unstable, and the treatments one finds are often highly
problematic. For a variety of perspectives, see Medicine in the Enlightenment, edited by Roy Porter
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995).
114
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §§12-13, WJW, 3:25-26. Thoughts on Nervous Disorders, JWW, 11:515-520.
For example, Wesley’s measured consideration of ‘lowliness of spirits’ or melancholy and its natural causes
115

and spiritual effects in Thoughts on Nervous Disorders, JWW, 11:515-520.

116
On Wesley’s care in this regard, see Maddox, ‘John Wesley on Holistic Health and Healing,’ MH, 46, no. 1
(2007), 4-33; Joe Gorman, ‘John Wesley and Depression in an Age of Melancholy,’ WTJ, 34, no. 2 (1999),
196-221.
117
Cunningham, John Wesley’s Pneumatology, 33.
118
Wesley, ‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.14, WJW, 3:26.
In the Image of the Devil 215

many have been seized in the dead of night, even to such a degree that all their bones have

shook. Perhaps he has a hand also in those terrifying dreams which many have, even while they

are in perfect health.’119 There is no limit, it seems, in ordinary fallen life to the torments of the

demonic.

Wesley’s leveraging of the doctrine of evil angels to explore pain, suffering, and misery

suggests again the question of his relation to theodicy; or what kind of theodicy Wesley has in

mind.120 It is imperative to understanding Wesley’s doctrine of sin and his engagement with

demonology that one refrains from transposing the logic of theodicy over top of his theology.

Wesley is unconcerned to give a rational explication of evil. He is unconcerned because in

Christ God has already given an account. 121 The free-will defense of evil recognised here and

by others is shaped by its use. Wesley’s attention is on the shape of the holy-life given that the

subject finds themselves in an evil age already reconciled to Christ:

This great ‘mystery of godliness’ began to work from the very time of the original
promise. Accordingly the Lamb, being (in the purpose of God) ‘slain from the
beginning of the world’, from the same period his sanctifying Spirit began to renew the
souls of men.122
The very recognition of the devil’s works and that in our sin humankind takes on the image of

the devil occurs from within the overwhelming horizon of redemption. For Wesley, the

‘mystery of iniquity’ and the ‘mystery of godliness’ refers to a view of the cosmos already

being shepherded along the way of salvation. This double mystery is baked into the heart of

everyday life.123 He demonstrates little practical interest in the conceptual architecture of

119
‘Of Evil Angels,’ §II.15, WJW, 3:26-27; cf. ‘Human Life a Dream,’ §§15-17, WJW, 4:118-119.
120
Cf. §§3.6, 4.2, 4.5.
Reflecting on Jenyns Free Inquiry, Wesley writes: ‘It is very kind in this sweet-tongued orator to make an
121

excuse for God! But there is really no occasion for it: God hath answered for himself.’ ‘God’s Love to Fallen
Man,’ §II.15, WJW, 2:434.
122
‘The Mystery of Iniquity,’ §3, WJW, 2:452.
123
‘The Mystery of Iniquity,’ §3, WJW, 2:452.
In the Image of the Devil 216

Leibniz or King that gives rational substance to the condition of the world. 124 The rational

judgement that this is the best of all possible worlds falls short of the explanatory power of the

doctrine of sin and the demonic that rejects the sinful concern to comprehend the fulness of

God’s works.125 Theodicy abstracts from reality and deals in Wesley’s view with the ‘pleasures

of tasting,’ a variety of the ‘desire of the flesh’ that falls into one of the very sins that Wesley

warns against.126 There is no value for Wesley in offering a coherent explication for why evil

occurs in the world; it is sufficient to ‘proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’ (1 Cor. 11.26).

One can think of Wesley targeting the rationalist propensity to explain away the lived-reality

of the world in the following comment: ‘The best of them either sought virtue partly from God

and partly from themselves; or sought it from those gods who were indeed but devils, and so

not likely to make their votaries better than themselves.’127 The attention must always be on

the movements of grace known in Christ through the Spirit within ordinary life.

On a final analysis, then, Wesley’s inclusion of demonology within the doctrine of sin

is necessary and beneficial in that demonology attests to the fundamentally descriptive nature

of the doctrine of sin, capturing the heinousness and malevolence of evil. It is necessary

because the doctrine of sin outlines the breadth and depth of our need for Christ’s atonement,

as Wesley states: ‘Satan began his work in Eve by tainting her with unbelief, so the Son of God

begins his work in man by enabling us to believe in him.’128 It is beneficial in that for Wesley

our ability to move within the movements of grace requires that we have the fullest awareness

of our situation and condition, our virtue and our vice: ‘There is an absolute necessity, if ever

124
For an alternative perspective, see Bryant, who hitches Wesley quite closely to the ‘optimists’ of the
eighteenth-century, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin,’ 85-110.
Due to Wesley’s disinterest in speculative thought, he is in a sense bound to differ from Leibniz’s
125

metaphysical courage. The two perhaps share greater common ground, especially when one examines their
account of reason and faith. See Leibniz, Theodicy, 73-122.
126
Wesley, ‘On a Single Eye,’ §I.2, WJW, 4:124.
127
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §4, WJW, 2:473. There is reason to be critical of the anti-speculative attitude
that Wesley seems to inhabit.
128
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §II.1, WJW, 2:480-481.
In the Image of the Devil 217

we would conquer vice, or steadily persevere in the practice of virtue, to have arms of a better

kind than these; otherwise we may see what is right, but we cannot attain it.’129 Wesley’s writes

about our struggle against the demonic as forcefully as our struggle against sin. The point is

that Wesley sees that it is detrimental to a full account of the doctrine of sin to refuse to entangle

sin and evil with the demonic. This is not to detract from the heinousness of evil or to cheapen

human responsibility, but to attend to scripture and allow experience to follow. The redemption

of creation is a cosmic, three-agent drama; knowledge of this drama and the creature’s place in

it only increases the gracious gratitude of the creature.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, this chapter argues that Wesley’s openness to the reality of the cosmic

battle and its entanglement with all forms of everyday life gives form and function to his claim

that creatures live amidst an evil age. This is known from within the reconciliation of the world

to Christ to which the Spirit witnesses. In consequence, such a sensitivity to this situation

heightens Wesley’s motivation to cling to a description of creaturely life as one of struggle. In

no way is the source of this struggle attributed directly to the will of God. In this sense, greater

texture can be given to the insight distilled in the discussion of original sin that the creature

finds themselves already within a world in conflict. Similarly, for Wesley both structural, extra-

personal relations (warfare, rebellion, pestilence, etc.) and intra-personal relations (temptation,

melancholy, anxiety, despair) are filled out in greater detail by attending to the demonic.

Wesley writes: ‘As Satan turned the heart of man from the Creator to the creature; so the Son

of God turns his heart back again from the creature to the creator.’ 130 Situated in the middle of

things, nested between the mysteries, one not only suffers the consequences of their sin but

also agonizes against spiritual, malevolent agents.

129
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §1, WJW, 2:472.
130
‘The End of Christ’s Coming,’ §III.2, WJW, 2:481.
In the Image of the Devil 218

Transitioning from an analysis of Wesley’s description of the human situation before,

with, and under sin, death, and the devil towards an analysis of the unique situation of a holy

life embedded within this fallen world, the insights of the preceding chapters are brought to

bear on the shadow side of Wesley’s well-known vision of holiness. At the very least,

understanding Wesley’s posture of holiness needs to reconsider what it means to accept and

humble oneself before the realities of present salvation and the depths of sin and misery. In a

broad stroke, Wesley’s theology is an antinomian corrective, but with this forceful repudiation

of antinomianism he opens himself to other criticisms. One is not removed from this situation

in holiness, Wesley suggests that to think otherwise ‘is as if we should pray to be angels and

men, mortal and immortal, at the same time,’ that is to say, mere fantasy.131 On the contrary,

what the next chapter emphasises from Wesley is that the holy-life is the life lived accepting

of its creaturely finitude in wondrous openness to God and the world. Holiness is enacted; it

confronts and apprehends the full measure of the human situation in the woes of human

depravity and the horrors of demonic activity. The holy life does so in the confidence of God’s

superabundant grace. Believers find themselves through the illuminative grace of God

simultaneously confronted by the precariousness of the human condition and situation and the

immensity of God’s gracious mercy.

131
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §IV.7, WJW, 2:136.
The Wilderness State 219

Chapter 6:
The Wilderness State: John Wesley and Sin within the Christian Life

1. Introduction

In this final chapter, this dissertation’s argument turns from an analysis of Wesley’s

description of the human condition and situation in a fallen world towards the question of sin

within the holy life. In this turn, the argument touches both on the doctrine of actual sin as well

as the doctrine of sanctification. 1 In a therapeutic mode, this chapter utilises the doctrine of sin

to rehabilitate the foundational elements of Wesley’s most notorious teaching: the doctrine of

entire sanctification. Therefore, the argument of this chapter is that by virtue of the gravity of

Wesley’s doctrine of sin, the problem of sin within the Christian life never dissipates. This

simple argument draws out the importance of the grammar of holiness: a life founded upon

continual repentance among the means of grace within the life of the church. It is in this place

where Wesley seeks to abide in ‘perfecting perfection.’ 2 Growth in holiness becomes an

individual journey alongside the church and within the Word.

In outline, the argument begins by sketching Wesley’s doctrine of actual sin beginning

with a contextual interpretation of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary sin

(§6.2.a), then re-evaluating the prominence of the sin that remains in the Christian life (§6.2.b),

and finally showing the moral framework Wesley uses to distinguish between various sins

(§6.2.c). The upshot of this section leads to the need to understand how Wesley then expresses

the continual propensity to sin within the Christian life—i.e., the problem of backsliding. Thus,

Wesley’s balance between the threat of despair and the virtue of humility is redressed (§6.3)

before discussing Wesley’s concept of anxiety (§6.4). It is in this final section where Wesley’s

pastoral sensitivity pays theological dividends (if one permits the separation of these for a

1
For two accounts that argue similar perspectives on the relation of sin and sanctification as offered in this
chapter, see Niles, ‘Toward a Wesleyan Theology of Failure;’ Olson, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin
Revisited.’
2
See Outler’s introduction to Wesley’s ‘Christian Perfection,’ WJW, 2:98-99.
The Wilderness State 220

moment) by allowing the accommodation of severe psychological distress without challenging

the integrity of faith in his distinction between heaviness and darkness (or the wilderness state).

The chapter closes by gesturing at some of the implications for the doctrine of sanctification,

sketching the importance of repentance, the means of grace, and life in community (§6.5).

2. Wesley and the Discernment of Voluntary & Involuntary Sins

This opening section sketches the three principal elements of this argument’s approach

to Wesley’s view of sin within the Christian life: (a) the sharp distinction between voluntary

and involuntary sin is drawn out of its polemical setting and reintegrated within Wesley’s other

comments on holiness and the persistence of sin; (b) then the force of the remains of sin is

shown, indicating that Wesley’s apparent nonchalance regarding its import is disingenuous to

his overall scheme; finally, (c) Wesley’s moral framework distinguishing between various

species of sin is sketched. This section demonstrates that despite the risk of a self-justifying

moralism, Wesley’s aim is to agitate not only Christian action but also their absolute

dependence upon God’s grace throughout the grammar of Christian existence. The framework

through which the whole scheme must be interpreted is Wesley’s persistent view that in the

Christian there are two contrary principles, ‘nature and grace, the flesh and the spirit,’ alive

and active in believers.3 This is simply the Christian experience of conscience: the witness of

the Spirit who justifies the ungodly and the witness of our own spirit who attempts to justify

oneself.4 Faced with this constant struggle, what is demonstrated here is a way of thinking of

the distinction between voluntary and involuntary sin as not claiming any form of sinlessness,

but as offering consolation to the believer struggling in their walk of faith.

a. Sins Properly and Improperly So-Called: Situating Wesley’s Controversial

Distinction.

3
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §II.3, WJW, 1:322; ENNT, Rom. 7.14-15, 24; Gal. 5.17.
4
See above, §§2.4-5.
The Wilderness State 221

The prominent, though apparent, critiques of Wesley’s doctrine of actual sin contend

that he embraces, or at least opens the door to, Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism.5 By this

accusation is meant not only the allowance of meritorious salutary action but also a doorway

to self-justifying moralism. If it is the case that one can distinguish between sins of one kind

or another, does this not entice them to seat themselves where only Christ can be seated? Does

this mean that in the assurance of salvation one can see from the judgement seat? Surely, no

Christian soteriology could permit such brazen claims to ultimate judgments. These critiques

centre on Wesley’s distinction between ‘sin properly so-called’ and ‘sin improperly so-called:’

both concepts refer to the conditions necessary for moral action and revolve around a working

definition of the will; sin properly so-called refers to human action where the subject

understands the intended act’s impropriety; sin improperly so-called refers to actions

committed in ignorance, or at least within an incomplete horizon of moral certainty. Wesley

invites controversy by claiming two things: (a) one who has living faith does not commit

volitional sin; and (b) involuntary sins within the Christian life are not a mark against us.6 He

makes a principle of John’s exhortation that ‘No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins

has either seen him or known him’ (1 Jn 3.6; cf. 1 Jn 5.18). Yet he seems to forget John’s word

that ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (1 Jn. 1.8).

5
Pelagianism is here defined according to its designation and refutation at the Second Council of Orange (529
CE), especially Can. 5: ‘If anyone says that the increase as well as the beginning of faith and the very desire of
faith—by which we believe in him who justifies the sinner and by which we come to the regeneration of holy
baptism—proceeds from our own nature and not from a gift of grace, namely, from an inspiration of the Holy
Spirit changing our will from unbelief to belief and from godlessness to piety, such a one reveals himself in
contradiction with apostolic doctrine.’ Denzinger, 375; cf. 375-378. Within the same breath, Wesley’s
comments on Pelagius embrace and celebrate his piety while rebuking Augustine’s vicious style. However, it
would be a mistake to take this as an endorsement of any degree of Pelagianism. It is more likely simply an
expression of Wesley’s apprehensions with some of the Reformed interpretations of Augustine than it is
indicative of a heterodox soteriology. In ‘The Wisdom of God’s Counsels,’ for example, Wesley’s discussion
of Montanus and Pelagius deals more with the imperfection of human knowing and the mystery of God’s
action. See Wesley, WJW, 2:555-556.
6
It is as these distinctions converge with the universal and radical description of the human condition in sin that
critiques of the deficiency of Wesley’s doctrine of sin as a whole arise, see above Ch 1, n21.
The Wilderness State 222

Indeed, without emphasising the interrelation of what has already been discussed about the

gravity of sin within this locus, these criticisms of Wesley are warranted.

What Wesley means when differentiating between voluntary and involuntary sins is

straightforward. When Wesley is working in his most straightforward style, he is often engaged

in polemic and prone to syllogisms. In passages like these, understanding Wesley requires

careful consideration to avoid misinterpreting his position in these reductionist appeals to

syllogism. Instead, his comments to be situated alongside other texts. The infamous passage in

question is found in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection:

To explain myself further on this head: (1.) Not only sin, properly so called, (that is a
voluntary transgression of a known law) but sin, improperly so called, (that is, an
involuntary transgression of a divine law, known or unknown,) needs the atoning
blood. (2.) I believe that there is no transgression in this life as excludes these
involuntary transgressions which I apprehend to be naturally consequent on the
ignorance and mistakes inseparable from mortality. (3.) Therefore sinless perfection is
a phrase I never use; lest I should seem to contradict myself. (4.) I believe a person
filled with the love of God is still liable to these involuntary transgressions. (5.) Such
transgressions you may call sins, if you please: I do not, for the reasons above
mentioned.7
It is clear for Wesley that all sins, voluntary and involuntary, before or after conversion

engender guilt.8 Some of these sins, as indicated above by (2), appear not to count against us.

In other words, actions are always intractably contextual, affected by the subject’s ignorance

and propensity to mistake in a fallen and (penultimately) contested world. In the power of the

Holy Spirit, one is only free from voluntary sin. But even this freedom is tinged with

7
Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, §19, WJW, 13:169. The passage is reissued from his earlier
Thoughts on Christian Perfection, Q6, A, WJW, 13:61-2.
8
As Wesley writes in his preface to Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742):
[W]e not only allow, but ‘earnestly contend’ … that there is no such perfection in this life as implies any
dispensation from attending all the ordinances of God, or from ‘doing good unto all men, while we have time’,
though ‘especially unto the household of faith’. And whosoever they are who have taught otherwise, we are
convinced, are not ‘taught by God’. We dare not ‘receive’ them, ‘neither bid them God speed’, lest we be
‘partakers of their evil deeds’. We believe that not only the ‘babes in Christ’ (1 Cor. 3.1), who have newly
found redemption in his blood, but those also who are grown up ‘unto perfect men, unto the measure of the
stature of the fullness of Christ’, are indispensably obliged (and that they are obliged thereto is their ‘glory and
crown of rejoicing’), as oft as they have opportunity, to eat bread and drink wine ‘in remembrance of him’; to
‘search the Scriptures’; by fasting (as well as temperance) to ‘keep their bodies under, and bring them into
subjection’; and above all to pour out their souls in prayer, both ‘secretly’ and ‘in the great congregation’.
The Wilderness State 223

involuntary factors, with error, misjudgement, and ignorance, which follow from fear,

depression, anxiety, and the like. 9 The more interesting inquiry is to examine Wesley’s

conception of the voluntary, which is conditional not only upon the will itself, but includes the

passions (dispositions, inclinations, and the tempers), and reflect on how his psychology

nuances this distinction.

If one desires to hold on to the strange accusation that Wesley is naively optimistic

about the vestiges of sin within the Christian life, consider his description of everyday life

under the conditions of grace:

[The children of God] continually feel an heart bent to backsliding, a natural tendency
to evil, a proneness to depart from God, and cleave to the things of the earth. They are
daily sensible of sin remaining in their heart, pride, self-will, unbelief, and of sin
cleaving to all they speak and do, even their best actions and holiest duties. Yet at the
same time they ‘know that they are of God’; they cannot doubt of it for a moment. They
feel ‘his Spirit clearly witnessing with their spirit that they are the children of God’.
They ‘rejoice in God through Christ Jesus, by whom they have now received the
atonement’. So that they are equally assured that sin is in them and that ‘Christ is in
them, the hope of glory.’10
Or consider an even sharper statement on the contested nature of the Christian life:

[T]o expect deliverance from those wandering thoughts which are occasioned by evil
spirits is to expect that the devil should die or fall asleep; or at least should no more go
about as a roaring lion. To expect deliverance from those which are occasioned by other
men is to expect either that men should cease from the earth, or that we should be
absolutely secluded from them, and have no intercourse with them; or that having eyes
we should not see, neither hear with our ears, but be senseless as stocks or stones. And
to pray for deliverance from those which are occasioned by the body is in effect to pray
that we may leave the body. Otherwise it is praying for impossibilities and absurdities;
praying that God would reconcile contradictions by continuing our union with a
corruptible body without the natural, necessary consequences of that union. It is as if
we should pray to be angels and men, mortal and immortal, at the same time. Nay, but
when that which is immortal is come, mortality is done away.11
Therefore, intensively and extensively the Christian life is contested. The grammar of the holy

life consists alongside other competing ones. Intensively, Wesley identifies that the believer

9
‘On the Deceitfulness of the Human Heart,’ WJW, 4:152-153.
10
’On Sin in Believers,’ §III.7, WJW, 1:323. The Lutheran sensibility that the creature lives simil iustus et
peccattur springs to mind.
11
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §IV.7, WJW, 2:136.
The Wilderness State 224

sees in themselves a constant tension between the ‘two contrary principles in believers—flesh

and spirit, nature and grace.’12 Extensively, he also shows that the believer is prone to ‘sudden

attacks’ from ‘the world, or the god of this world, and frequently from our own evil hearts.’13

To understand Wesley’s intention behind speech about one’s power over sin, it must be

articulated from within the horizon of a fallen world reconciled to Christ. Taking this into

account, this chapter seeks to substantiate that in Wesley the form of holiness is in continual

repentance (not only but primarily this). Thus, the next three sections develop what it means

for Wesley to see sin from the vantage of holiness won for us in Christ.

b. Sin Remains but does not Reign

If this distinction between sin and its effects (or lack thereof) in the believer has earned

Wesley major criticism historically, it is not the intention of this dissertation to avoid it. Still

less is it this dissertation’s intention to explain it away or embrace it. On the contrary, the hope

is to expose its limitations and therefore demonstrate the utility of Wesley’s distinctions of sin

within the Christian life within the broader context of the grammar of holiness. The Sermons

are replete with references to the continuity of indwelling sin, the conditions of actual sin, and

the development of the will and the tempers under grace. But there are two sermons which are

integral to understanding what Wesley has in mind when he speaks about actual sin. In the

1760’s, Wesley publishes ‘On Sin in Believers’ (1763) and ‘The Repentance of Believers’

(1767) in an effort to substantiate and thicken his claim that through grace one need not commit

sin.14 Wesley’s argument in these sermons hinges on two premises that operate axiomatically:

one, that the disease of sin indwells and no longer exercises dominion over the will and, two,

that sin can be distinguished between voluntary (sin-properly-so-called) and involuntary (sin-

improperly-so-called) sin. The exposition of these claims advances the description begun in the

12
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §III.3, WJW, 1:322.
13
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §§II.11, 13, WJW, 1:242-3.
14
WJW, 1:317-334, 334-352.
The Wilderness State 225

preceding section and raise the question of the utility of this distinction by straining the integrity

of Wesley’s account. Far from ambivalent, Wesley demonstrates remarkable concern for the

force of indwelling sin within the Christian life.

In ‘On Sin in Believers’ and ‘The Repentance of Believers,’ Wesley ventures to mediate

between two extremes. On the one hand, Wesley distances himself from an account of the

bondage of the will that amounts to fatalism. 15 These positions problematically see indwelling

sin as so determinative of human life under grace that God’s salutary activity and the subject’s

liberation from sin is merely forensic.16 On the other hand, Wesley separates himself from the

position of the Moravians, that of sinless perfection, which under pressure not even they could

uphold:

[The Moravians] ran into another [error], affirming that ‘all true believers are not only
saved from the dominion of sin but from the being of inward as well as outward sin, so
that it no longer remains in them.’ … And after a time, when the absurdity of this was
shown, they fairly gave up the point; allowing that sin did still remain, though not reign,
in him that is born of God.17
The mediating position that Wesley affirms intends to hold together the continual struggle of

the subject against sin in the new birth while likewise affirming the sufficiency of the salutary

activity of the divine economy. In a word, Wesley sets himself, self-aware or not, to elaborating

a sensibility parallel notion to Luther’s simul iustus et peccatur beyond the event of justification

and regeneration towards sanctification. 18 This connection with the Lutheran doctrine, offers a

key insight into how one might understand Wesley’s argument. The proposition that sin

15
Fatalism is deployed here to capture some of the more extreme necessitarian views exemplified, for instance,
in some of the English non-conformist Reformed as well as in the Jansenists. For a sophisticated account of the
development of human agency in Reformed thought, see Muller, Divine Will and Human Choice. Harris offers
an important study in similar themes, though negligent of the theological overtones at times, in his Liberty and
Necessity; cf. ‘On Sin in Believers,’ §I.3, WJW, 1:318.
16
Outler comments that here Wesley is trying to abide by the Tridentine formula vis-à-vis Luther’s doctrine of
the simul iustus et peccatur; this contrast neglects the distinction of the Anglican Articles of Religion from the
Council of Trent as well as caricatures what is meant by Luther’s doctrine, see WJW, 1:318n9.
17
Wesley’s principal divergence from Ludwig von Zinzendorf and the Moravians was over the antinomianism
to which the Moravians were prone. On this unfortunate disagreement, see A Dialogue Between an Antinomian
and His Friend, JWW, 10:266-276; cf. ‘On Sin in Believers,’ §I.5-7, WJW, 1:318-319.
18
See above, §2.4.b.
The Wilderness State 226

remains but does not reign, therefore, can be framed as an explanation of the reality that the

believer who knows themselves as holy likewise—and often far more profoundly—knows

themselves as a sinner.

As Wesley elaborates, actual sin looks to the ‘inward kingdom’ of the person: that is,

sin is a matter of the inner life. Wesley writes: ‘By “sin” I here understand inward sin: any

sinful temper, passion, or affection; such as pride, self-will, love of the world, in any kind or

degree; such as lust, anger, peevishness; any disposition contrary to the mind which was in

Christ.’19 The question of how and in what sense sin remains in the believer deals explicitly

with the subject’s disposition as a disclosure of the one with whom one has their conversation.20

More pressing for this section, however, is how Wesley’s use of disposition unveils one’s

intersubjectivity and availability to the world through the landscape of the affections. So, the

notion of one’s disposition describes the subject as always already orientated towards an object:

that is, subjectivity involves itself in the object of thought.21 Among other subjects, this means

that a person finds themselves in relation to another subject, they are never isolated from the

whole, even if this can be bracketed out (or reduced) in the task of thinking. One is always

disposed to and involved in another: that is, affecting and being affected by the person or thing

to which we are directed. 22

19
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §II.2, WJW, 1:320.
20
‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit,’ §10, WJW, 1:305.
21
On this one may compare this with Aristotle, De Anima, III.8, 431b20: ‘…The soul is in a way all existing
things.’
22
This is developed in chapter two with regard to Wesley’s doctrine of the spiritual senses. This
phenomenological point is indicative of several important ontological and theological observations that make
sense of the ever-ambiguous notions of participation which bears on Wesley’s thinking. For example, see
Scougal famous description in The Life of God in the Soul of Man, The Works of Henry Scougal, edited by
Richard Watson (Glasgow: William Collins, 1830), 39: ‘But certainly religion is quite another thing, and they
who are acquainted with it will entertain far different thoughts, and disdain all those shadows and false
imitations of it. They know by experience that true religion is a union of the soul with God, a real participation
of the divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, or, in the apostle’s phrase, ‘It is Christ
formed within us.’ —Briefly, I know not how the nature of religion can be more fully expressed, than by
calling it a Divine Life.’
The Wilderness State 227

Wesley further clarifies that speaking about the remains of inward sin excludes,

‘whether inward sin will always remain in the children of God; whether sin will continue in the

soul as long as it continues in the body;’ and whether a believer may ‘relapse either into inward

or outward sin.’23 These ideas are conditional upon what Wesley has to say about the remains

of sin, but these detract from the heart of the question: which addresses the quality of one’s

disposition in the world. Wesley goes on to suggest that the best explanation of what this

premise means is that ‘[the believer] has power over both outward and inward sin, even from

the moment he is justified.’24 Prior to conversion the subject lives ignorant of their condition

and situation at the hands of the principalities and powers and in the wake of original sin.

Notwithstanding the glimmers of light in the surprising prevenient grace of the Holy Spirit, the

subject has no final power over that to which they are disposed. A person in this condition has

no understanding of Christ as the image of God, and therefore all that they dispose themselves

towards are mere appearances. God’s salutary activity—Christ’s justification of humanity and

the indwelling of the Holy Spirit––awakens to the reality of God’s ubiquitous and salvific

presence.25 This newfound awareness gifts the subject with the consciousness of themselves

and of reality and provides the occasion to actualise one’s freedom.

When Wesley speaks of sin remaining but no longer reigning, he is differentiating

between one’s spiritual freedom and their continuity as a finite (and fallen) being who lives in

a world inundated with evil and suffering. The imputation of guilt that condemns humanity to

eternal death is effaced at the moment of new birth, but the effects of sinfulness remain in the

form of the lasting inclination to fear or love the apparent goods of the fallen world as ends in

themselves.26 This awareness is exclusive to the believer. But this awareness also poses a

23
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §II.3, WJW, 1:320.
24
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §II.4, WJW, 1:321.
25
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §II.4, WJW, 1:320-321.
26
‘The New Birth,’ §II.4, WJW, 2:192-193.
The Wilderness State 228

constant temptation for the believer in the face of the all-pervasive reality of sin in the world.

This temptation intensifies in one’s propensity to abandon one’s faith and slide back into

faithlessness—there is comfort in the darkness of sin. The pressure to change one’s disposition

haunts the Christian’s life, agitating doubt, fear, anxiety, and laying the basis for what Wesley

treats under backsliding.

c. Sin-Properly-So-Called: Wesley’s Fragile Moral Framework

The preceding exposition dwelt on the first aspect of how Wesley speaks about the

continuity of sin within the Christian life. This conversation takes place at the existential and

ontological level, as a matter of life and being. He rejects both the fatalism of the necessitarians

and the naïve optimism of the Moravians (and also the Socinians and Unitarians). While sin no

longer exerts control over the will of the believer, sin still exerts power, to which the believer

must resist and can only do so through the power of the Holy Spirit. All this sets the frame for

the second distinction Wesley employs: the differentiation between voluntary and involuntary

sin. Under this heading, this argument encounters Wesley’s high view of responsibility, which

he incurs by affording believers the capacity of distinguishing between voluntary and

involuntary sins. At face value, he suggests that we are only responsible for the sins we know

we commit. What this section suggests is that while Wesley does show that believers can make

real differentiations in kind and degree regarding their actions, making these distinctions

inevitably leads to the existential awareness of one’s ungodliness. That is, the utility of

Wesley’s moral framework demonstrates our absolute dependence on grace.

Mapping Our ‘Immense & Numberless’ Wickedness: Wesley’s Moral Framework.

The distinction between voluntary and involuntary (or ‘sins of infirmity’) sins resides

within a consistent moral framework that Wesley uses and is worth outlining. Any venture to

differentiate between species and degrees of sin, especially whether they are voluntary or

involuntary as is the case for Wesley, requires the intelligibility of natures by some means. For
The Wilderness State 229

Wesley such recognition is mediated through the witness of the Holy Spirit in prevenient grace.

Through this extension of the work of the Spirit into territory ordinarily occupied by the

activities of natural practical reason, he can speak of the Christian life in ways parallel to his

enlightenment contemporaries. Yet historically, Wesley’s idiom calls back to the tradition of

Anglican moral theology.27 Thus arises one perspective, advocated by Outler, that the

differentiation Wesley has in mind carries forward a common distinction between voluntary

and involuntary transgression as developed and deployed in Catholic as well as the Anglican

Moralists in the early modern period. 28 This view holds that the subject retains culpability only

for voluntary sins, which are differentiated between mortal (high-handed) or venial

(inadvertent) acts. 29 Moreover, Wesley demonstrates a moral framework wherein voluntary

sins may be further differentiated between sins of omission—such as the neglect of the means

of grace—and sins of commission—such as ‘uncharitable conversation’ or other sins of

speech.30 In fact, Wesley in his wariness of antinomianism and spiritual sloth shows a recurring

interest in sins of omission. More specifically, Wesley thinks sins of omission pose a particular

threat because they strike at the roots of one’s existence, separating one’s attention from God:

‘[Some] sin, of omission at least, must necessarily precede the loss of faith—some inward sin.

27
This genealogy finds at its base Richard Hooker and William Perkins, see Peter H. Sidgwick, The Origins of
Anglican Moral Theology (Leiden: Brill Academic, 2018); W. B. Patterson, William Perkins and the Making
of Protestant England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). The tradition in Sidgwick’s account reaches
its peak in Jeremy Taylor. However, it may be demonstrated based on the more recent appreciation of
Perkins’s massive influence how Wesley carries this tradition forward into the eighteenth-century, see Baird
Tipson, Inward Baptism, 140-172.
28
See Outler’s comments in WJW, 1:315.
29
The differentiation between mortal and venial sins is premised upon the orientation of the subject’s will. By
the eighteenth century in English theology, the differentiation between the two is not altogether common,
though among the Anglican Moralists, as Outler notes. For example, Richard Lucas in his Enquiry after
Happiness (1717) uses a similar definition of sin to that of Wesley. On the Anglican Moralists, see Rupp,
Religion in England, 1688-1791 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 278-288.
30
On sins of commission, see Wesley, ‘The Wilderness State,’ §II.2, WJW, 2:208-209. On sins of omission, see
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §I.14, WJW, 1:343-344; ‘The Great Privilege of Those that Are Born of God,’
§III.1, WJW, 1:441; ‘The Law Established through Faith, I,’ §III.8, WJW, 2:31-32; ‘The Wilderness State,’
§II.3, WJW, 2:209.
The Wilderness State 230

But the loss of faith must precede the committing of outward sin.’31 Put so sharply, it is for

good reason that Wesley is especially concerned to agitate in his audience a sense of the sin of

omission. In ‘The Wilderness State,’ Wesley contrasts sins of omission with sins of

commission: ‘The former may be compared to pouring water on a fire; the latter to withdrawing

fuel from it.’32 It is through omission, Wesley explains, that faith ‘is much more frequently

lost.’33 In this sermon dedicated to dealing with anxiety and the threat of darkness, it is these

sins which receive the most attention alongside inward sins, or sins of the affections.34

Finally, added to sins of omission and commission, inward and outward sins, is the

peculiar category of sins of surprise.35 Wesley describes this phenomenon as ‘when one who

commonly in patience possesses his soul on a sudden and violent temptation’ acts suddenly

contrary to their virtue.36 Similarly, he explains that one may act contrary to their virtue in the

face of ‘sudden assaults either from the world, or the god of this world, and frequently from

our own evil hearts, which we did not, and hardly could forsee.’ 37 In either instance, it seems

Wesley holds the criterion for moral culpability to be adequate intention.38 So long as one is

conscious of what is going on around them, they may be found culpable. On the one hand,

Wesley’s position seems rather common sense: when a child burns themselves on a hot stove-

31
‘The Great Privilege of Those that Are Born of God,’ §III.1, WJW, 1:441.
32
‘The Wilderness State,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:209.
33
‘The Wilderness State,’ §II.3, WJW, 2:209.
34
‘The Wilderness State,’ §§II.4-10, WJW, 2:209-211.
35
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §§II.11-13, III.6, WJW, 1:242-3, 247. Outler indicates that Wesley draws this
idea from William Law’s Serious Call to Holy and Devout Life. This seems to be a reflection on weak-willed
action and, indeed, parallels Aristotle’s distinction of weak-willed action (akrasia) between impetuous
(propeteia) and weak (astheneia) acts in Nicomachean Ethics, VII.1-10, esp. 1045b10–15.
36
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §II.11, WJW, 1:242.
37
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §§II.11, 13, WJW, 1:242-3.
38
Intention is used in the perceptual sense, as in the inter-relation of subject and object in perceptual activity,
and not in the ordinary moral sense of ‘good intention.’ On this basis, Wesley’s treatment, involving
suddenness and surprise, similar to the weakness of will without qualification, or impetuousness, seems
different from Paul’s discussion on Romans 7, which deals more straightforwardly with qualified weakness of
the will. For a historical perspective leading up to Wesley, see Risto Saarinen, Weakness of the Will in
Renaissance and Reformation Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 210-230.
The Wilderness State 231

top for the first time and erupts in confusion and anger, it would be strange for a parent to fault

the child for what they did not know. On the other hand, Wesley’s position is dubious: he has

already clarified that the criterion for the intelligibility of sin and the Christian life entails self-

understanding and recognition of one’s affections—the Christian is not encountering the world

in conflict for the first time. Moreover, when compared to involuntary sin, or sins of infirmity,

Wesley’s position shows more instability. He seems aware of this point. For him, sins of

surprise and sins of infirmity are nearly indistinguishable: ‘Perhaps it is not easy to fix a general

rule concerning transgressions of this nature. … In proportion as a sinful desire or word or

action is more or less voluntary, so we may conceive God is more or less displeased, and there

is more or less guilt upon the soul.’ 39 Sins of surprise are thus sins of infirmity insofar as the

‘desire or word or action’ does not resemble one’s character in holiness. This is, to say the

least, a slim argument. Wesley does not seem interested in staking out this position anyway,

since in the end he emphasizes a continual need for repentance. Therefore, Wesley provides a

scaffolding to differentiate between a variety of sins to, first, retain the distinction between

voluntary and involuntary sin and, second, treat involuntary sin as, effectively, sins over which

one need not worry. There is pastoral value in this approach—a help for the over-anxious

mind—but its theological utility is limited.

For Wesley, only sin-properly-so-called is ‘A voluntary transgression of a known law

of God.’40 The trouble is whether Wesley can square this with his own recognition of the

universality of original sin with its guilt and power. Recall his description of sin in his

commentary on the Lord’s Prayer. After speaking of sin as ‘chains of iron and fetters of brass’

and ‘wounds wherewith the world, the flesh, and the devil, have gashed and mangled us all

over,’ he says: ‘But considered, as they are here,’ that is, as confessed within the Christian life,

39
‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’ §II.11, WJW, 1:242.
40
‘On Perfection,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:79.
The Wilderness State 232

‘with regard to God, they are debts, immense and numberless.’41 There is a real tension in

Wesley between defending the possibility of life without sin (but not sinless perfection) and

Wesley discussing the remnant of sin within the Christian life. He writes:

‘Nay, but all transgressions of the law of God, whether voluntary or involuntary, are
sin. For St John says, ‘All sin is a transgression of the law’ (1 Jn 3.4). True, but he does
he not say, ‘all transgression of the law is sin.’ This I deny: let him prove it if he can.42
Wesley thinks the difference in question is little more than a problem in definitions, but this

skirts around the complex issue at hand. 43 In fact, Wesley treads along a tedious and contentious

debate, originating in the reception and use of the doctrine of sin in late medieval practices of

penance.44 What matters in this instance is to seek a resolution on this point: the gravity of the

remains of sin presses on this distinction between voluntary and involuntary sin over which

Wesley goes to so much trouble.45 Granting Wesley’s insistence on the intractable remains of

sin, why maintain the distinction at all? One worry is that such a view allows not only the

ability to avoid (volitional) sin but also the ability to stand as their own judge. But this is

precisely the opposite of where he goes. Instead, the distinction between the voluntary and

involuntary falls away and is overcome by the grammar of Christian existence as one of

continual repentance. Quoting Romans 8.21, Wesley writes:

‘This one thing let us do: forgetting those things which are before, let us press toward
the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus;’ crying unto him day
and night till we also are ‘delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious
liberty of the sons of God.’46

41
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, VI,’ §III.13, WJW, 1:586.
42
‘On Perfection,’ §II.9, WJW, 3:79.
43
He goes on in ‘On Perfection,’ §II.9, WJW, [Link] ‘To say the truth, this [is] a mere strife of words. You say
none is saved from sin in your sense of the word; but I do not admit that sense, because the word is never so
taken in Scripture. And you cannot deny the possibility of being saved from sin in my sense of the word. And
this is the sense where in the word sin is over and over taken in Scripture.’
44
See Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation.
45
See above, §6.2.
46
‘Christian Perfection,’ §II.30, WJW, 2:121.
The Wilderness State 233

Wesley’s position here is hardly a ‘conscious rejection of the idea behind the slogan, simul

iustus et peccator,’ that is, a cleansing of all ill-will and malicious passions through the

dispensation of God’s grace. 47 Considering this moral framework within the horizon of

Wesley’s comments in ‘Original Sin,’ ‘On Sin in Believers,’ ‘The Repentance of Believers,’

and ‘The Wilderness State,’ the heart of Wesley’s doctrine of the Christian life is in the

recognition of oneself as sinner and opening oneself to the Word through the Spirit and in the

church.48 There stands in the way an obstacle that again threatens the whole moral frame, the

reality of evil thoughts and tempers, inward sins, which persist through the Christian life.

Wandering Thoughts & Sins of Infirmity.

Wesley pens the sermon ‘Wandering Thoughts’ as, in effect, an extensive meditation

on this notion that one can be freed from evil thoughts and tempers. Alongside ‘On Sin in

Believers’ and ‘The Repentance of Believers,’ this forms the final caveat to the heavy-handed

claims levelled in ‘Christian Perfection’ and other earlier sermons which build on the same

themes. ‘Wandering Thoughts’ differs from its adjacent texts in that here one finds Wesley

giving sustained thought as to how the subject interacts with perceptions of the world and the

fluctuations of the finite, fallen imagination:

... [T]o expect deliverance from those wandering thoughts which are occasioned by evil
spirits is to expect that the devil should die or Fall asleep; or at least should no more go
about as a roaring lion. To expect deliverance from those which are occasioned by other
men is to expect either that men should cease from the earth, or that we should be
absolutely secluded from them, and have no intercourse with them; or that having eyes
we should not see, neither hear with our early, but be as senseless as stocks or stones.
And to pray for deliverance from those which are occasioned by the body is in effect
to pray that we may leave the body. Otherwise it is praying that God would reconcile
contradictions by continuing our union with a corruptible body without the natural,
necessary consequences of that union. It is as if we should pray to be angels and men,
mortal and immortal, at the same time. Nay, but when that which is immortal is come,
mortality is done away.49

47
See Outler’s comments in WJW, 2:121n.146
48
In a constructive, sympathetic perspective, see Niles, ‘Toward a Wesleyan Theology of Failure,’ 120-32.
49
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §IV.7, WJW, 2:136.
The Wilderness State 234

The ordinary quality of life which is displayed well in this passage renders the idea that the

Christian life is exempt from involuntary thoughts absurd. Instead, the Christian life

progressively leans deeper into the sense of faith and consequently can apprehend reality more

robustly than is possible by a subject encumbered by indwelling sin. In faith, one is privy to

more wandering thoughts, not less. Accordingly, within the Christian life evil tempers are more

apparent, not less. Though neither wandering thoughts nor evil tempers exert control over the

agent, they constantly threaten their stability in faith, and only in the eyes of faith is one ever

cognizant of these wicked dispositions.

The causes of these thoughts are occasioned by the reality of one’s life in the world.

They come from interacting with other persons, with the natural world, with demons and

angels, and ultimately with ourselves.50 At bottom, Wesley admits: ‘Every man, therefore, that

does anything in our sight, or speaks anything in our hearing, occasions our mind to wander

more or less from the point it was thinking of before.’51 Wesley could include not only human

beings but spiritual beings and any object in the field of one’s horizon as well. Yet this

understanding of the causes of wandering thoughts still permits Wesley to distinguish carefully

between two kinds of thoughts that go awry: those ‘that wander from God, and thoughts that

wander from the particular point at a hand.’52 By the second kind Wesley means simple

distraction. More interestingly, by the first kind Wesley underscores the corrupted disposition

of the human mind because of indwelling sin:

[Our thoughts] are continually wandering from God: we think nothing about him. God
is not in all our thoughts: we are one and all, as the Apostle observes, ‘without God in
the world’. We think of what we love; but we do not love God; therefore we think not
of him. Or if we are now and then constrained to think of him for a time, yet as we have
no pleasure therein, nay, rather, as these thoughts are not only insipid, but distasteful
and irksome to us, we drive them out as soon as we can, and return to what we love to
think of. So that the world and the things of this world—what we shall eat, what we

50
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §§II.3-9, WJW, 2:129-131.
51
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §II.9, WJW, 2:131.
52
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:127.
The Wilderness State 235

shall drink, what we shall put on, what we shall see, what we shall hear, what we shall
gain, how we shall please our senses and imagination—takes up all our time, and
engrosses all our thoughts. So long therefore as we love the world, that is, so long as
we are in our natural state, all our thoughts from morning to evening, and from evening
to morning, are no other than wandering thoughts.53
In this portrayal of the tumultuous life of the mind, while he remains pastorally sensitive to the

realities of life in the world where we are buffeted by other things, he also is clear in designating

that there is a kind of wandering of the mind which is sinful. Not only are we without God, but

even thinking often against God. These thoughts, ‘make flat war with God; these are wandering

thoughts of the highest kind.’54 He observes the several reasons for why this condition of

wandering thoughts is the default for human beings. One’s thoughts wander from God because

human beings are practical atheists, idolaters, lovers of the world and the flesh, and finally of

unbelief.55 This seems to apply as much to the believer as the unbeliever. This is, in effect, an

outworking of how Wesley’s doctrine of original sin works: it follows a distinctive order, a

process of organic decay, a real spiritual disease. 56 In wandering, the mind moves from idle

pleasure to idle pleasure in ignorance and defiance of the law of God. To add to the severity of

the problem, the mind can seem to move about of its own accord, through the mere ‘association

of ideas,’ being moved about by the external world, even contrary to the desire of the subject.57

It is in this that Wesley begins to set out the ordeal of temptation.

Temptation is an unsettling ordeal for the person in living faith.58 It is precipitated by

wandering thoughts, which unveil evil tempers hidden away in the recesses of one’s

conscience, drawing the subject towards the allure of faithlessness.59 As malignant inclinations

53
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:127.
54
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §I.2, WJW, 2:128.
55
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §I.3, WJW, 2:129.
56
See above, §§3.5, 4.2.
57
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §II.6, WJW, 2:130.
58
‘On Temptation,’ §2, WJW, 3:157-8)
59
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §III.1, WJW, 2:132.
The Wilderness State 236

and shameful dispositions threaten to break one’s living faith from the vital source in Christ,

they are not volitional sins yet, but it is always possible that they become so in that Wesley

holds these thoughts are straightforwardly sinful: ‘[A]ll thoughts which spring from sinful

tempers are undoubtedly sinful.’60 These thoughts evidence that even while cleansed from our

disease, we know ourselves as subjected to the constraints of our illness, bent to backsliding

and prone to wander. Whether internally or externally caused, these thoughts are provocations

to volitional sin, wherein the subject, of their own accord, through an indirect cause in the

world, or through the antagonism inflicted by demons.

Thus, tenuous nature of Wesley’s face-value differentiation of voluntary and

involuntary sin as sin properly- and improperly-so-called can be demonstrated. This has been

shown by discussing the moral framework he develops: inward and outward sins, sins of

infirmity, commission, omission, and surprise. The ambiguity between sins of infirmity and

those of surprise pointed to something lacking in Wesley’s distinction which seems so vital.

Then the argument turned to the threat of inward sin in Wesley’s sense of wandering thoughts

and temptation. This thread teases out an important and largely unrecognised feature of

Wesley’s doctrine of the Christian life. Namely, the grammar of holiness includes in its

foundation a negative experience of grace.61 In the work God does for us (justification) and in

us (sanctification), God remains the one who justifies the ungodly.62 We remain the ungodly

who by grace act in gratitude and benevolence. 63 The moral framework, wandering thoughts,

and the like, if provided to encourage self-justification, are clearly dubious. On the contrary,

60
‘Wandering Thoughts,’ §III.2, WJW, 2:132.
61
See above, §2.4.b; cf. Zahl, ‘Incongruous Grace as a Pattern of Experience,’ 70-74. Zahl’s recovery of the
idea of a negative experience conflates the encounter with God that discloses the asymmetry between God and
God’s creatures with negative affections. It remains to be seen how Zahl’s description squares with Wesley’s
more dynamic picture of the experience of God generating not only the terrified conscience but also the far
greater emergence of the fruit of the spirit. On the fruit of the spirit, see Wesley, ‘The First Fruits of the Spirit,’
WJW, 1:234-247.
62
‘The New Birth,’ §1, WJW, 2:187.
63
‘The Unity of the Divine Being,’ §16, WJW, 4:67.
The Wilderness State 237

these distinctions are real, but they are overwhelmed by the recognition of oneself as sinner

within grace. Hence, continual repentance is the seedbed of the holy life.

3. Discerning ‘Simplicity and Godly Sincerity’: The Problem of Backsliding, Humility, &
Repentance.

In the preceding sections, the argument has shown Wesley’s belief that in the Christian

two contrary principles—‘nature and grace, the flesh and the spirit’—persist. This intense

opposition frames his elaborate way of discussing the varieties of sin within the Christian life.64

The result is a rather pessimistic view of the ability of the believer to retain moral integrity.

The Christian life includes more than simply feeling this tension; no, feeling is entangled with

willing and understanding and, therefore, with activity, in Wesley’s scheme. Thus, for Wesley

the heart is ‘bent to backsliding’ and, indeed, one does backslide.65 One falls away, or is

threatened by it to greater or lesser degrees, because they live in a world in conflict, which they

know through the eyes of faith. Part of the way of holiness is the recognition of this struggle

and resigning one’s will to grace in the face of it. Wesley will refer to this pattern in terms of

the disposition of humility or ‘poverty of spirit’ expressed in the activity of repentance. These

are foundational to the Christian life. 66 In their description, the experience of contrition, guilt,

and ‘utter helplessness’ comes near to the experience of despair, by which is meant a resigned,

melancholic condition where one loses hope. The proximity of humility to despair in Wesley’s

account raises the problem of backsliding acutely. This section explores Wesley’s sense of

backsliding and its consequences. It probes what differentiates humility from the perils of

despair and, in doing so, present a more articulate sense of Wesley’s meaning of sincerity.

Wesley commits himself to a description of sin within the Christian life that leaves open

the possibility of becoming entirely sanctified, or orientating one’s being towards its source in

64
Wesley, ‘On Sin in Believers,’ §II.3, WJW, 1:322.
65
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §III.7, WJW, 1:323; cf. Farther Thoughts upon Christian Perfection, §I.24-25, WJW,
13:105-106.
66
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, I,’ §I, WJW, 1:475-483.
The Wilderness State 238

Christ fully. This possibility entails not merely that one is sharing in Christ’s righteousness by

virtue of Christ’s merits through divine decree, nor that one’s activity has any intrinsic merit

whatsoever. Wesley declines both positions.67 This maximally optimistic but soteriologically

mediate position is captured in Wesley’s espousal of the description of salvation as a ‘real as

well as a relative change.’68 This position leads Wesley into conflict with the problematic

suggestion of sinless perfection on the one hand and the rejection of all perfection language on

the other. The fault line in this debate is ultimately to do with the relation of Christ’s

righteousness and one’s own. His solution is simply the following: ‘The righteousness of Christ

is the sole foundation of all our hope.’69 But to understand his meaning, one must look with

care on the challenges to that hope. The dissonance between the complete justification and

sanctification of human beings in Christ and an embattled Christian existence in the world

forces this conversation: there is, as he readily observes, ‘an heart bent to backsliding,’ that is,

‘a natural tendency to evil, a proneness to depart from God, and cleave to the things of earth.’70

Thus, just as St John says, it is true that ‘Those who have been born of God do not sin’ (1 Jn.

3.9) and it is also true that ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not

in us’ (1 Jn. 1.8). For Wesley, the challenge is to hold both perspectives in view.71

The problem of backsliding, that Christians on the way towards holiness fall to the

wayside and cease any longer to strive after the joy which they once tasted, recurs in Wesley’s

67
Against the notion of imputed righteousness as a strict federal covenant, or transaction, see Wesley’s ‘The
Lord Our Righteousness,’ §II (WJW, 1:453-465). On the contrary, for Christ’s righteousness to be imputed,
and it is as a matter of fact imputed, the righteousness of Christ necessarily requires one’s appropriation:
‘Whoever says, ‘I abide in him,’ ought to walk just as he walked’ (1 Jn.1.6; cf. Jn. 15). For more on this sense
of abiding see below, §6. Against ultimately meritorious action, see ‘The Righteousness of Faith,’ §I.8, WJW,
1:207.
68
‘The Scripture Way of Salvation,’ §I.4, WJW, 2:158.
69
‘The Lord Our Righteousness,’ §II.13, WJW, 1:459.
70
‘On Sin in Believers,’ §III.7, WJW, 1:323.
71
Fletcher, Works, 1:18.
The Wilderness State 239

Sermons.72 Wesley’s teaching of the full assurance of faith collides with the sheer fact of the

persistence of sin in the Christian life. 73 In his mature view, represented in ‘A Call to

Backsliders,’ Wesley accepts the reality of backsliding and provides a nuanced pastoral and

phenomenological description of the experience’s content.74 He demonstrates a sensitivity

unlike Wesley’s more heavy-handed teaching in ‘The Almost Christian’ from the early days of

the revival. His understanding of ‘backsliding’ is intertwined with the experience of doubt,

melancholy, and anxiety that accompany the true recognition of one’s position before God

which are distinct from the danger of inward sin. Reflecting on the experience of the absence

of God, he distinguishes between presumption, a mode of inward sin cognate with ‘practical

atheism,’ and despair, a mode of one’s finitude.75

On despair, Wesley writes: ‘I mean the want of hope; by thinking it impossible that

they should escape destruction. Having many times fought against their spiritual enemies, and

always been overcome, they lay down their arms; they no more contend, as they have no hope

of victory.’76 It is this acute experience of helplessness in the face of the agonistic struggle

within the Christian life that can, and sometimes does, give way to despair. This is a condition

Wesley treats with profound sensitivity:

For example, it is a key theme of ‘The Almost Christian,’ ‘Awake Thou That Sleepest,’ and ‘The Spirit of
72

Bondage and of Adoption,’ respectively, WJW, 1:131-141, 142-158, 249-266.

73
‘On Temptation,’ §I.5, WJW, 3:161.
74
‘A Call to Backsliders,’ WJW, 3:211-226. The importance of not only Wesley’s views on mental illness and
psychology but also his experience of it is of increasing interest. For an analysis that presses whether Wesley
did indeed experience depression, see Joe Gorman’s ‘John Wesley and Depression in an Age of Melancholy’
(1999). Exploring Wesley’s personal experience of mental illness is vexing given the lengths he underwent to
curate the stability of his public image as the figurehead of the Methodist movement, a self-presentation
explored with a critical edge in Henry Abelove’s The Evangelist of Desire: John Wesley and the Methodists
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). Nevertheless, as Gorman and others, such as Maddox’s in ‘John
Wesley on Holistic Health and Healing’; Madden’s ‘Medicine and Moral Reform: The Place of Practical Piety
in John Wesley’s Art of Physic,’ Church History, 73:4 (2004); there is ample reason to peel back the resilient
mask of Wesley the evangelist. Moreover, there is recent constructive engagement with Wesley’s treatment of
anxiety that deserves mention in Joseph W. Cunningham’s ‘Anxiety in the Wesleyan Spirit: A Core
Theological Theme?’ IJST, 23:3 (2021), 352-369, a study introduced here and engaged at greater depth in the
following sections.
75
‘A Call to Backsliders,’ §1-5, WJW, 3:211-2.
76
‘A Call to Backsliders,’ §2, WJW, 3:211.
The Wilderness State 240

In this case, as in a thousand others, ‘the heart knoweth its own bitterness, but a stranger
intermeddleth not with its own grief’. It is not easy for those to know it who have never
felt it. For ‘who knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him’?
Who knoweth, unless by his own experience, what this sort of ‘wounded spirit’ means!
Of consequence there are few that know how to sympathise with them that are under
this sore temptation. There are few that have duly considered the case, few that are not
deceived by appearances. They see men go on in the course of sin, and take it for
granted, it is out of mere presumption; whereas in reality it is from the contrary
principle—it is out of mere despair. Either they have no hope at all, and while that is
the case they do not strive at all; or they have some intervals of hope, and while that
lasts, ‘strive for mastery’. But that hope soon fails. They then cease to strive, and are
‘taken captive’ of Satan ‘at his will’.77
The one who despairs is the one who, not for their lack of desire, cannot bear the weight of

existence between the two contrary principles. Their horizon is thoroughly immanent, closed

off by the gravity of the world and the work of the devil. Indeed, this is demonic work. Wesley

says that the devil’s work against the grace of God in the soul endeavours to ‘damp our joy in

the Lord [and our peace, and holiness, and ultimately faith] by the consideration of our own

vileness, sinfulness, unworthiness; added to this, that there must be a far greater change than

there is yet, or we cannot see the Lord.’78 One’s insufficiency eclipses their former joy: in the

isolating shadow, one removes oneself from the community where they might find a cure. In

effect, despair displaces the object of one’s being, the hope of which Wesley speaks. Closed

off from God and community, one desires without an object; that is, one no longer strives.79

The absence of the Spirit of Christ as the object of Christian hope and one’s desire for this

object generates anxiety. This penetrating recognition of the experience of despair as loss of

the object of desire differentiates this experience from presumption. For the one who is

presumptuous, no desire is left. Wesley writes: ‘If we knew we must remain as we are, even to

the day of our death, we might possibly draw a kind of comfort, poor as it is, from that

77
‘A Call to Backsliders,’ §3, WJW, 3:211-2.
78
‘Satan’s Devices,’ §I.1, WJW, 3:141.
79
‘A Call to Backsliders,’ §2, WJW, 3:211.
The Wilderness State 241

necessity.’80 Wesley has acutely recognized in his treatment of despair that anxiety is over

nothing.

Wesley treats the problem of backsliding as one internal to the holy life. His treatment

touches on what elsewhere he identifies as one of the constituent parts of the way of holiness:

poverty of spirit, or humility and its cognate repentance. 81 Despair is not a condition from

which ‘real’ Christians are exempt. Neither is despair straightforwardly a loss of faith. Faith,

that sense of the depth of the world reconciled in Christ, holds firm in the one encumbered by

despair, otherwise they would not perceive the disorder of their lives. The problem of

backsliding arises within the sense of faith in confrontation with the harsh texture of existence

in the fallen world. For Wesley, the risk of backsliding, succumbing to ‘lowness of spirits,’

comes within a ‘hairs breath’ of what he identifies among the signal features of Christian

existence, the ‘poverty of spirit,’ that is, humility.82 He says both have ‘a deep sense of the

loathsome leprosy of sin;’ both have their ‘guilt … now also before [their faces];’ indeed, both

have ‘a just sense of our inward and outward sins, and of our guilt and helplessness.’83

Moreover, since humility and poverty of spirit are so closely entwined, both the beginning and

the end of the way of holiness are marked by humility and, therefore, haunted by despair. The

difference, then, between this intrinsic feature of a living faith in the way of holiness and the

despair which risks separating one from faith itself lies in the orientation of one’s being.

The importance of faith as a conversation that transforms one’s perception of the world

again comes to the forefront of this argument. 84 For Wesley, faith is a means towards the end

80
‘Satan’s Devices,’ §I.1, WJW, 3:141.
81
On humility, see ‘The Circumcision of the Heart,’ §§I.2-5, WJW, 1:430-404; ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on
the Mount, I,’ §I, WJW, 1:483-475.
82
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, I,’ §I.4, WJW, 1:477.
83
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, I,’ §§I.4, 5, 7, WJW, 1:477-9.
84
See above, §2.5.
The Wilderness State 242

of holiness in love, but he cares a great deal about the adequacy of means. 85 ‘In all the

vicissitudes of life,’ Wesley writes, ‘their “heart standeth fast, believing in the Lord”.’86 God’s

speech, the Holy Spirit’s witness, illuminates creaturely existence. Faith draws the one into

Christ, uniting the soul with God, and transforming the soul in the new birth. This union of the

soul with Christ serves as the reason for the prominence of repentance—Christ’s presence in

conscience continuously witnesses to human inadequacy—and that despair is not necessarily

final. This provisional quality is so because in the experience of despair—and true humility—

the sufferer participates in and is watched over by Christ. Wesley writes: ‘In whatever

sufferings or temptations we are, our Great Physician never departs from us. He is about our

bed and about our path.’87 The sense in which Christ is present to the sufferer does not remove

one from the struggle of human life, since this is indeed life there is a struggle involved in it.

One notes, moreover, that the mood, or disposition, remains characteristically serious. Wesley

states: ‘Let us then receive every trial with calm resignation.’88 It is in the sense of faith as a

union with the depths of reality in Christ that differentiates faithful humility from despair. 89

Finally, the analysis turns to Wesley’s concept of sincerity. If one allows the

connection, the existential attitude of the believer as, on the one hand, accepting one’s

inadequacy to handle the sharp edges of everyday life and, on the other hand, accepting that

only an Altogether Other’s will can bring order to the chaos of the fallen world is a better way

to understand Wesley’s meaning of sincerity. 90 It appears that Wesley’s use of sincerity is quite

different from the striving for moral purity in intention. For Wesley, to live in ‘simplicity and

godly sincerity’ (2 Cor. 1.12) demarcates one’s ability to be filled with the power of the Spirit

85
See above, §3.5.
86
‘The Marks of the New Birth,’ §I.7, WJW, 1:162.
87
‘On Temptation,’ §II.2, WJW, 3:163.
88
‘On Temptation,’ §III.10, WJW, 3:168.
89
For Wesley’s conception of our participation in Christ as the image of God, see §3.3.a.
90
On sincerity, see above §6.3.b.
The Wilderness State 243

to experience the world as it is. Sincerity is tied up with the ideas of endurance and obedience—

whether one retains the purity of desire through the experience of pain—as well as discernment

and judgement—whether one can recognise the movements of God and the movements of the

devil. As a mode of discernment grounded in experience, then, sincerity allows one to gather a

better sense of this distinction between whether oneself or one’s fellow suffers presumption or

despair. Sincerity is the avenue towards discernment. Wesley says of the one living in sincerity

that this is the ‘wise man,’ who sees with a clarity brighter than ‘the light of the noonday sun’

their true identity stricken by sin in a fallen world before the holiness of God.91 The

superabundance of this brightness leaves one unable to capture the fulness of what it means to

abide in God. To give voice to this sense of God’s light is to word a radiance, it fails on the

linguistic gap between the frailty of the human word considering the depths of the Word of

God.92 Wesley uses this sense of sincerity to see reality, in the spiritual senses, brighter than it

first appears, to explain what it means to be hidden with Christ (Col. 3.3): ‘I now live, even in

the flesh, a life of love, of pure love both to God and man; a life of holiness and happiness,

praising God and doing all things to his glory.’93 The glory of God is at once both hidden from

the world as much as it hides the believer in Christ; therefore, the hiddenness of God’s wisdom

appears in the holy life as sincerity. Consequently, sincerity also describes the ability to bear

reality as it is because in Christ reality in all its troubles are already reconciled to God. Wesley

warns that despair may threaten one along the narrow way, ‘[the believer] shall be tempted not

less than they who know not God,’ but it is this affliction that brings forth the wonder of being

hid with Christ, to abide with Christ even as Christ suffered for the redemption of the world.

91
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, XI,’ §II.2, WJW, 1:692.
92
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II,’ §I.7, WJW, 1:274. This sense of the grandeur of the glory of God is a way of
reasoning exampled by Greggs, ‘Glorifying in God’s Glory,’ Revista Theologica, 2 (2017), 47-63; Greggs, ‘In
Gratitude for Grace: Praise, Worship, and the Sanctified Life,’ Scottish Journal of Theology, 70, no. 2 (2017),
147-165.
93
Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, XI,’ §II.3, WJW, 1:693.
The Wilderness State 244

Indeed, this is the way out of the path of despair offered by Wesley within ‘A Call to

Backsliders.’ He says to the desolate conscience to remember that Christ’s sacrifice still stands

at the heart of the new creation and that so long as one’s heart yearns for Christ: there is no

need to fear being cut-off from the superabundant grace of God. 94

The problem of backsliding and its relation to repentance and humility reflects the

necessary movement of the experience of sin within the Christian life which Wesley explores.

Through prevenient grace in the conscience, the redeemed intellect can perceive and

differentiate the streams of their actions and thoughts and the sources from which they flow.

But such a recognition, as Wesley is clear, rarely authorises an emboldened disregard for sin.

On the contrary, such a recognition throws one into confrontation with the ‘vicissitudes of life’

and one’s own entanglement with them, with the pain one suffers and inflicts, accidentally or

intentionally, during everyday life.95 Faced with such knowledge, it is no surprise that

backsliding and repentance are drawn so close together. To face the gravity of the fallen world

from the standpoint of redemption takes real courage: a courage that does not negate the

severity of one’s state of affairs but senses the hope of reconciliation through the eyes of faith.

What remains between the two is the persistence of the struggle of the Christian life in a fallen

world. Sincerity differentiates the one who despairs from the one who preservers. The mark of

sincerity is being hidden with Christ, not free from the world, but within the world, nestled

within and among the ordinary affairs and struggles of common life. While linking the

distinction between despair and presumption to discerning sincerity within and among

everyday life shows a sensitivity to the reality of spiritual struggle, it also further pressurises

the interior life of the believer. Therefore, in the following section, this analysis continues

examining Wesley’s therapeutic account of interiority.

94
‘A Call to Backsliders,’ §II.2(4), WJW, 3:221.
95
‘Marks of the New Birth,’ §I.7, WJW, 1:422.
The Wilderness State 245

4. Heaviness, Darkness, and Anxiety

Having outlined the structure and variety of Wesley’s doctrine of actual sin, challenged

the integrity of his distinction between the voluntary and involuntary, highlighted the

prevalence of wandering thoughts, and located this within the difference between despair and

humility, this section examines how Wesley integrates this within the Christian life. In so

doing, this section sketches something of Wesley’s ‘concept of anxiety,’ however anachronistic

that term may be, which shows how the burden of sin threatens to re-alienate the believer from

oneself, from creation, and from God. 96 In the confrontation with the fallen world, one is

tempted, as Christ is tempted in the desert, to trade living faith for unbelief. Wesley’s view

conveys that it is the certainty of one’s existence in a contested world that sets the stage for the

ordeal of anxiety, variously considered as ‘the wilderness state’ or ‘darkness’ and its

correlating experience as ‘heaviness’ and ‘despair.’ He deploys these concepts in a pair of

sermons which follow ‘The New Birth’ called ‘The Wilderness State’ and ‘Heaviness through

Manifold Temptations.’97 In effect, Wesley is elaborating on the return to reality that so often

happens after the ecstasies of conversion, when the world seems to flow back in upon the

96
The history of the concept of anxiety is linguistically fluid, making finding a common definition or use in
history extraordinarily unstable, despite the phenomenon’s universality, see Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia
and Depression: From Hippocratic Time to Modern Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). It is
especially difficult because treating anxiety as a critical element of theology and philosophy does not pick up
until the nineteenth-century, inaugurated by Immanuel Kant, see Bergo Bettina, Anxiety: A Philosophical
History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 37-76. This dissertation uses ‘anxiety’ akin to the sense of
‘melancholy,’ ‘lowliness of spirits,’ or ‘acedia’ in the early modern usage. Its advantage is to link its use with
contemporary theological reflections, most notably in Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety, 52-62, and Paul
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:34-35. Despite significant differences in meaning, one common aspect of the
concept is its description of the alienation of the one who experiences this phenomenon from themselves and
their world. For a recent approach to Wesley on these matters, see Joseph W. Cunningham, ‘Anxiety in the
Wesleyan Spirit: A Core Theological Theme?’ IJST, 23, no. 3 (2021), 352-369.
97
Wesley, WJW, 2:202-221 and 222-235 (respectively). There is evidence of the importance of this distinction
in his return to it shown in Wesley’s ongoing pastoral work, indicating its importance in his understanding of
the Christian life and the burden of sin. See his letter to Mary Bishop from September of 1774: ‘…The
difference between heaviness and darkness of soul (the wilderness state) should never be forgotten. Darkness
(unless in the case of bodily disorder) seldom comes upon us but by our own fault. It is not so with respect to
heaviness, which may be occasioned by a thousand circumstances, such as frequently neither our wisdom can
forsee nor our power prevent.’ See, Letters, 6:110. Wesley’s concept of zeal may be interpreted as the
redeemed instance of anxiety in the Christian life, see ‘On Zeal,’ WJW, 3:308f..
The Wilderness State 246

redeemed person.98 This section explores these concepts within the frame of this chapter

interrogating Wesley’s view of sin within the Christian life. In his mature theology, Wesley

suggests a generous view which accommodates the experience of anxiety within the life of

faith by de-centring holiness from oneself. At the close of this section, it is demonstrated how,

given that even while indwelling sin does not exert control over the person, its vestiges

constantly agitate one’s doubt, remorse, and regret, which means that for Wesley, the grammar

of Christian existence finds its intelligibility as a life of continual repentance along the way of

salvation and among the means of grace.

Wesley’s concept of anxiety undergoes some development which by noting we can

draw out some important insights into the analysis. By the time of composing ‘The Wilderness

State’ and ‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations,’ Wesley had distanced himself from his

early position which downplayed the experience of anxiety within the Christian life. For

example, in the Minutes of 1744 one finds the following description:

Q. 10. Must every believer come into a state of doubt, or fear, or darkness? Will he do
so, unless by ignorance or unfaithfulness? Does God otherwise withdrawal himself?
A. It is certain, a believer need never again come into condemnation. It seems he need
not come into a state of doubt, or fear, or darkness; and that (ordinarily at least) he will
not, unless by ignorance and unfaithfulness. Yet it is true, that the first joy does seldom
last long; that it is commonly followed by doubts and fears; and that God frequently
permits great heaviness before any large manifestation of himself.99
The account delivered here in the Minutes shows a reticence to admit the prevalent recurrence

of these dark and unruly tempers of fear, doubt, and despair within the holy life. Indeed, these

emotional conditions are causally implicated in the subject’s own fault through ignorance or

unfaithfulness (sins of omission), which in this place are cast as uncommon occurrences.

Wesley reluctantly admits that these things happen. Tied up in his concept of anxiety is the

98
‘How naturally do those who experience such a change imagine that all sin is gone!’ Wesley observes in a
representative passage in ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation,’ §§5-6, ‘…But it is seldom long before they are
undeceived, finding sin was only suspended, not destroyed,’ WJW, 2:158-159.
99
‘Minutes of 1744,’ JWW, 8:276-277.
The Wilderness State 247

relation of the subject to God’s presence: whether God has withdrawn or whether God is about

to reveal Godself. Of course, for Wesley to speak about God’s withdrawal is to speak about the

relation of the soul to God, not of God’s actual withdrawal from creation, which would be

creation’s undoing. Wesley says: ‘Therefore [God] never deserts us, as some speak; it is we

only who desert him.’100 He likewise distinguishes his account sharply from the notion

common to some mystical authors of his time that the experience of darkness or heaviness is

directly helpful to one’s faith. 101 Yet, Wesley focuses on the important concept that the quality

of one’s relation to God is the generative core of creaturely anxiety.

In ‘The Wilderness State’ and ‘Heaviness through Manifold Temptations’ Wesley

concedes some ground regarding his earlier reticence toward the prevalence of the experience

of anxiety over the assurance of faith in believers. These reflections enrich those already given

in his treatment of backsliding.102 The approach is allegorical, reflecting the Exodus narrative:

the wilderness state referring to the Israelite’s wandering through the desert. 103 By the

wilderness state or darkness Wesley understands the condition of someone who has succumbed

to fear and doubt, and is overcome with remorse:

Certain it is that the condition wherein these are has a right to the tenderest compassion.
They labour under an evil and sore disease, though one that is not commonly
understood. And for this very reason it is the more difficult for them to find a remedy.
Being in darkness themselves, they cannot be suppose to understand the nature of their
own disorder; and few of their brethren—nay, perhaps of their teachers—know either
what their sickness is, or how to heal it.104
Wesley proceeds to delineate the nature and symptoms of this misunderstood spiritual disease.

He says that, in essence, the wilderness state is, ‘the loss of that faith which God once wrought

100
‘The Wilderness State,’ §II.1, WJW, 2:208.
101
Wesley is critical of suggesting that God really withdrawals or that such a condition is good or even
necessary for growth in faith. He interprets the Lutheran concept of the hiddenness of God (deus absconditus)
to incur this problematic view. See ‘Heaviness Through Manifold Temptations,’ §§7-8, WJW, 2:229-230.
102
See §6.4.
103
This connection has precedent in seventeenth century Puritan writings, see Outler’s introductory comments
in WJW, 2:202-4.
104
‘The Wilderness State,’ §2, WJW, 2:205.
The Wilderness State 248

in their heart.’105 Coincident with the loss of faith those wandering likewise lose their love, joy,

peace, and in sum all the power of Christ within the grace of the Holy Spirit. 106 Darkness

describes the regression into practical atheism, back into the form of life bound by indwelling

sin. Without faith which opens the way to God; without love that stirs the soul to chase after

God; without joy which draws one’s neighbours to share in one’s delight; and without peace

which comforts the soul as one journeys through a tumultuous world; sin finds its power again

in the heart of the believer. The subject becomes lost to their own devices, falling back into the

ordinary mode of being. Wesley explains: ‘“Sin” had then “no more dominion over him”; but

he hath now no more dominion over sin. He may struggle indeed, but he cannot overcome; the

crown is fallen from his head. His enemies again prevail over him, and more or less bring him

into bondage.’107 Faith is the ‘one thing needful’ for Wesley: all other gifts fade. 108 After

enjoying the image of God, Wesley admits that it is possible to forfeit this image and trade it

again for the image of the devil.

Darkness does not come from nowhere. Wesley thinks there are a set of causes that

agitate the wilderness state and threaten the holy life. Excluding darkness induced by the body,

Wesley consistently suggests that this state is one’s own doing.109 The inner conflict between

the spirit and the world is the condition of the wilderness state: the fact that redeemed existence

is contested means assurance is always hard won.110 On the wilderness state in particular, there

are a number of causes Wesley lists, whether inward or outward sins, whether of omission or

commission.111 There is no escaping temptation within redeemed existence in this fallen

105
‘The Wilderness State,’ §I.1, WJW, 2:206.
106
‘The Wilderness State,’ §§I.1-4, WJW, 2:206-8.
107
‘The Wilderness State,’ §I.5, WJW, 2:208.
108
‘The One Thing Needful,’ WJW, 352-359.
109
‘The Wilderness State,’ §II, WJW, 2:208-214.
110
‘Heaviness Through Manifold Temptations,’ §1, WJW, 2:222.
111
‘The Wilderness State,’ §§II-III, WJW, 2:208-214. For Wesley’s moral framework, see above §6.3.b.
The Wilderness State 249

world.112 Three of these causes deserve closer attention: the omission of private prayer,

ignorance, and temptation. Each of these are ways of closing oneself off from the reality of

God and the world. Moreover, they all close oneself off from self-knowledge, so that one may

be confused into thinking one no longer suffers sin and its effects. For example, on temptation

Wesley says: ‘The force of those temptations … will be exceedingly heightened if we before

thought too highly of ourselves, as if we had been cleansed from sin.’113 In each instance, the

negative experience of grace reinforces a sensitivity to the flesh as much as suspicion of its

testimony, as Wesley warns: ‘That because we feel no sin, we have none in us.’114 Or, this time

reflecting on temptation, he continues: ‘All is calm within: perhaps without, too, while God

makes our enemies to be at peace with us. It is then natural to suppose that we shall not see war

any more. And there are instances wherein this calm has continued, not only for weeks, but for

months and years.’115 This false sense of security, a calm that does not come through the

Word’s speech, is the object of Wesley’s worry. This kind of calm originates from the world.

For Wesley it is therefore fleeting: ‘But commonly it is otherwise.’ 116 It is only in the

cultivation of simplicity, to return to the preceding section, that differentiates the danger of

darkness from the burden of heaviness.

The upshot of this section underscores the place of repentance within the Christian life

in Wesley’s scheme. The crucial difference between darkness and heaviness is whether one

presumes a measure of comfort at the silence of the Word or whether one cries out in

recognition of their utter helplessness. In other words, darkness again draws another riff on the

propensity of human life toward practical atheism or spiritual death. Repentance therefore

112
‘The Wilderness State,’ §III.13, WJW, 2:220.
113
‘The Wilderness State, §(III).2, WJW, 2:213.
114
‘The Wilderness State,’ §(III).2, WJW, 2:214.
115
‘The Wilderness State,’ §(III).1, WJW, 2:213.
116
‘The Wilderness State,’ §(III).1, WJW, 2:213.
The Wilderness State 250

becomes a bellwether for discernment. Without repentance, which is holy self-understanding

in humility through faith, there is little chance for Wesley’s picture of Christian existence to

find any purchase as a workable position. Wesley’s sense of repentance extends from the

disposition that unfolds from one’s conversation with God: in the Spirit’s witness the Word

speaks, ‘Discover thyself, thou poor self-deceiver!’117 It is from within the Word that one’s

situation in the wilderness state, where the ambiguity between ‘heaviness’ and ‘darkness’ falls

away, becomes intelligible. Holiness’s foundation is Christ-alone. Therefore, for Wesley the

grammar of Christian existence demands constant mortification of oneself, so that they may be

made alive in Christ: ‘Thou who art confident in being a child of God. … O cry unto him, that

the scales may fall from thine eyes.’118 When by prevenient grace one recognises one’s ‘heart

bent to backsliding,’ only then does the fruit of the Spirit mend the wounds inflicted by the sin

that remains. Wesley recognises that for fallen human beings, suffering this judgement is one

of the hardest things a creature can do, but, thankfully, through Christ one no longer strives

alone. Faith can endure heaviness. In this way, the troublesome distinction between voluntary

and involuntary sin is removed from self-justification and indexed to the more important aspect

of Wesley’s view of the Christian life: its focus on the fulness of life among the abundance of

the means of grace.

5. Waiting on Holiness in the Wilderness State: ‘The Sum of True Religion’ within the
Means of Grace

In this final section of this chapter probing Wesley’s doctrine of sin within the Christian

life, the argument briefly elaborates on the setting within which the foregoing contemplation

of the doctrine of sin takes place: that is, within the grammar of Christian existence. This is a

corporeal and corporate life in faith moving along the way of holiness as continual repentance

among the means of grace. The account of sin within the Christian life so far provided has

117
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II’ §II.8, WJW, 1:281.
118
‘The Witness of the Spirit, II’ §II.8, WJW, 1:281-2.
The Wilderness State 251

challenged the viability of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary sin. It has

challenged the distinction as itself resting on irregular desires viciously seeking self-

justification. It has challenged the distinction internally showing the ambiguities in Wesley’s

account. But the infamous distinction between sins properly- and improperly-so-called was

never meant to be Wesley’s last word on the sin within the Christian life. On the contrary,

Wesley gives a profound account of the experience of anxiety over the sin that remains within

the Christian life, that ‘cleaves’ to all one’s thoughts, desires, and actions. In the end, the

grammar of holiness is founded upon continual repentance and reception of the means of

grace. That is, growth in holiness and overcoming sin requires a just knowledge of oneself and

an openness to be formed by grace in community. This section sketches what sanctification

means as continual repentance, then situate this disposition within the means of grace, and

close by locating this further still within the holiness of the church.

First, for Wesley the Christian life is one of ‘continual repentance.’ Repentance means

more than seeking pardon for Wesley. It is more appropriately considered in two aspects: (a) a

conviction of utter helplessness; and (b) just self-knowledge.119 Repentance is, therefore, a

feature of the illumination of the Holy Spirit. The sharpest presentation of this aspect of

Wesley’s doctrine of sanctification comes from the sermon given to the topic, ‘The Repentance

of Believers.’120 In this sermon, after urging the Christian to search themselves for sin, he drives

them to the single conclusion that they are in dire need of repentance: ‘In this sense we are to

repent after we are justified. And till we do so we can go no farther.’ 121 The repentance of the

119
His appeals to the notion occur throughout the sermons. See ‘The Way to the Kingdom,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:225;
‘Awake Thou That Sleepest,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:147; ‘The Righteousness of Faith,’ §II.6, WJW, 1:212; ‘The
Circumcision of the Heart,’ §§I.2-3, WJW, 1:403-404; on repentance and ‘poverty of spirit,’ ‘Upon Our Lord’s
Sermon on the Mount, I,’ §I.4, WJW, 1:477; ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, X,’ §7, WJW, 1:652-
653; ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, XIII,’ §III.6, WJW, 1:696; ‘Spiritual Idolatry,’ §II.4, WJW,
3:113.
120
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ WJW, 1:335-352.
121
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:347.
The Wilderness State 252

believer becomes an extension of their faith. Conversing with God in the witness of the Spirit,

they know themselves to be ever in need of the Lord’s saving grace. More than this, repentance

is an act of courage: to seek it with integrity is to do so with the ‘faith of a child’ assured that

God is able, willing, and ever present to those who would cry out in prayer. 122 It is in precisely

this recognition that Wesley explains that ‘in the children of God repentance and faith exactly

answer each other.’ 123 He continues:

By repentance we feel the sin remaining in our hearts, and cleaving to our words and
actions. By faith we receive the power of God in Christ, purifying our hearts and
cleansing our hands. By repentance we are still sensible that we deserve punishment
for all our tempers and words and actions. By faith we are conscious that our advocate
with the Father is continually pleading for us, and thereby continually turning aside all
condemnation and punishment from us. By repentance we have an abiding conviction
that there is no help in us. By faith we receive not only mercy but ‘grace to help in
every time of need.’ Repentance disclaims the very possibility of any other help. Faith
accepts all the help we stand in need of from him that hath all power in heaven and
earth.124
This pattern of repentance and faith coincides in the single recognition of the promise of the

gospel to draw one from sin to holiness. They can never be separated: recognizing oneself as

sinner, ‘a deep conviction of our utter helplessness,’ coincides with the gift of faith. 125

Moreover, Wesley writes that this conviction resolutely conveys to the Christian that the source

of one’s self resides solely in Christ, so that one lives ‘upon Christ by faith, not only as our

Priest but as our King.’126 In the faith of obedience, one is ‘fulfilled in a strong and deep sense

when we thus, as it were, go out of ourselves, in order to be swallowed up in him; when we

sink into nothing that he may be all.’ 127 There is no self to be possessed, only an idol to be

resigned.

122
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §II.2-5, WJW, 1:347-349.
123
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §II.6, WJW, 1:349.
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §II.6, WJW, 1:349-350; ‘Justification by Faith,’ §IV.6, WJW, 1:196; ‘The
124

Way to the Kingdom,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:225.

125
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §III.4, WJW, 1:352.
126
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §III.4, WJW, 1:352.
127
‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §III.4, WJW, 1:352.
The Wilderness State 253

Second, the Christian life finds nourishment among the means of grace. The means of

grace are a source of spiritual food for the journey of faith for Wesley. And it is within the

means of grace that continual repentance occurs. Wesley’s account of sin within the Christian

life, a life ordered to the speech of the body manifest in the tempers and dispositions and

evidenced by one’s actions, puts immense pressure on the source of one’s life. This sustained

reflection on the force of sin drives one back to one of the fundamental commitments in

Wesley’s theology: the priority of the means of grace. 128 There are two questions of equal

importance that emerge: what (or, better, who) is the root from which one springs? and where

is the root from which one’s springs? The means of grace are the particular spaces created by

the command and promise of Christ in which one’s holy tempers are cultivated and, in turn,

regulated.

Wesley elaborates his scheme of the means of grace to integrate the whole of life within

the omnipresence of God. He differentiates between the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘prudential’ means

of grace.129 Wesley consistently lists the following as the ordained means: ‘The chief of these

means are prayer, whether in secret or with the great congregation; searching the Scriptures

(which implies reading, hearing, and meditating thereon) and receiving the Lord’s Supper,

eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of him.’130 In some sense these are coextensive

with works of piety.131 The prudential means are those habits and practices conducive to one’s

growth in grace and relate especially to the enactment of the Scriptures in the holy life.132 Most

Knight’s remains the most thorough-going exposition of Wesley’s view of the means of grace, see The
128

Presence of God in the Christian Life: John Wesley and the Means of Grace (London: Scarecrow Press, 1992).
Kevin M. Watson, Pursuing Social Holiness: The Band Meeting in Wesley’s Thought and Popular Methodist
129

Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

130
‘The Means of Grace,’ §II.1, WJW, 1:381.
On works of piety as means of grace, see ‘The Repentance of Believers,’ §I.13, WJW, 1:342-3, ‘On Zeal,’
131

§§II.5, III.7, WJW, 3:313, 318, ‘On Visiting the Sick,’ §1, WJW, 3:385; cf. Aquinas, ST, II-I, Q. 32, art. 2.
132
Kenneth Collins’s definition that the prudential means are ‘particular rules posited by reason and experience
in light of the guidance of the Holy Spirit with the goal of growing in grace’ in The Theology of John Wesley:
Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 266, undercuts the flexibility and
The Wilderness State 254

generally these include ‘Christian conferencing,’ that is, participation in Methodist class,

society, band, and select society gatherings to pray, confess, and fast in fellowship as well as

works of mercy: ‘feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, entertaining the stranger, visiting

those that are in prison, or sick, or variously afflicted.’133 As means of grace, (a) their value

‘depends upon their actual subservience to the end of religion;’ 134 (b) they are, if separate from

the Holy Spirit, ineffectual;135 (c) and they do not atone for sin.136 Wesley’s distinctions are his

self-conscious attempt to strike a balance between formalism and enthusiasm. Rightly ordered,

Wesley says the means of grace are ‘effectual channels’ through which creatures are nourished

by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Thus, third, the Christian life grows only within the church.

They provide the food for the journey towards ‘holiness of heart and life’ and, importantly, are

governed by Wesley’s insistence that ‘Christianity is essentially a social religion, and to turn it

into a solitary one is to destroy it.’ 137 Life in the means of grace has a kind of circularity, in

faith sharing in the appointed means which nourishes one with the strength to move in faith

again. This is, briefly, the full breadth of general means of grace in Wesley’s scheme. The

means of grace are, through the command and mercy of God, stable features of everyday life

where one may wait upon grace. They refer to a particular shape of life, one in which the Lord’s

Supper lies at the heart, where the believer finds rest, healing, and growth in the way of

salvation.138 In this way, to understand the means of grace in general, one must understand the

ordinary means of grace. Thus, by recognizing the location within which the cultivation of the

responsiveness of Wesley’s account. Henry Knight III’s analysis in The Presence of God in the Christian Life:
John Wesley and the Means of Grace (London: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 112-6, is a helpful corrective.
133
‘The Scripture Way of Salvation,’ §III.10, WJW, 2:166.
134
‘The Means of Grace,’ §II.2, WJW, 1:381.
135
‘The Means of Grace,’ §II.3, WJW, 1:382.
136
‘The Means of Grace,’ §II.4, WJW, 1:382.
137
‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, IV,’ §I.1, WJW, 1:533.
138
‘The Means of Grace,’ §V.1, WJW, 1:393.
The Wilderness State 255

holy tempers in the life of faith and repentance take place, one has a better vantage point from

which to re-envision Wesley’s doctrine of entire sanctification.

The trajectory of this line of thought for interpreting Wesley’s theology extend well

beyond the scope of this thesis. There are a collection of approaches arising from recent

movements in social trinitarian theologies and in postliberal theologies that through

constructive work uncover a historical analogy to Wesley’s vision. 139 The analogy is limited

but does illuminate aspects of Wesley’s soteriology and ecclesiology which are prone to

misinterpretation. Among the errors which this trajectory of interpretation disallows are

Wesley’s apparent individualism and the depreciation of the import of the sacraments in favour

of personal piety. For instance, Stanley Hauerwas brings his programmatic argument for the

social formation of virtues in the Christian community to bear upon the so-called individualism

that burdens Wesley’s doctrine of entire sanctification. 140 The argument set forward here

concedes Hauerwas’s recommendation to reconfigure the source of the redeemed self, and

advances that in doing so one has more properly understood Wesley’s aim.141 Or, in a

sympathetic direction, Craig Keen’s argument in ‘Homo Precarius’ and After Crucifixion that

holiness is a communal sacramental enactment that gives patterns to all of Christian existence

in a common life in the world is likewise given firm ground in Wesley’s theology. 142 But in

139
Among the many theologians included in these movements, Geoffrey Wainright, D. Stephen Long, and
Stanley Hauerwas are especially relevant.
Stanley Hauerwas, ‘The Sanctified Body: Why Christian Perfection does not Require a Self’ in Sanctify
140

Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 83-98; cf. Niles, ‘Toward a Wesleyan
Theology of Failure,’ 31-32; Olson, ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin Revisited,’ 61-70.
141
Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (South Bend:
Notre Dame University Press, 1981). See also Long, John Wesley’s Moral Theology. The question of a
Wesleyan virtue ethics arises in this domain as well. For a perspective that answers this question positively,
see Colón-Emeric, Wesley, Aquinas, and Christian Perfection. At this stage, the argument recommends careful
consideration of the categorical difference of the evangelical protestant understanding of faith for the
reconfiguration of virtue. Compare with Jennifer Herdt’s analysis, ‘Hauerwas Among the Virtues,’ The
Journal of Religious Ethics, 40, no. 2 (2012), 202-227. In wider perspective, see Alasdair Macintyre, After
Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (South Bend: Notre Dame University Press, 2007); Jennifer Herdt, Putting on
Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
142
Craig Keen, The Transgression of the Integrity of God: Essays and Addresses (Eugene: Cascade, 2012), 123-
145.
The Wilderness State 256

either of these accounts by contemporary Wesleyans (however loosely Hauerwas may be

included in that identifier) there is something lost that Wesley preserves: namely, the

intractability and universality of sin and, consequently, the contingency of the church as a

formative community.143

In conclusion, for Wesley there is a structure to one’s conversation with God: it requires

that one do away with oneself and strive to be filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit. This

structure is corporeal: the presence of the fruit of the Spirit that coincide with continual

repentance give rise to a renovation of the affections. Holy love, joy, and peace give shape to

the embodied existence within the Word. All of this highly communicative, affective, and

embodied approach is part and parcel with the vision of ‘heart religion.’ 144 However, it is

crucial that the manner of the body’s speech be understood, especially here regarding the place

of sin within the Christian life. Moreover, this is not an isolated journey, but one undertaken in

the worshipping community. Thus, this exploration of Wesley’s doctrine of sin, and here of his

doctrine of sin within the Christian life, has led to this: that whatever holiness is, it is something

extrinsic to oneself. The perfect Christian is the one who recognizes their utter dependence

upon the free grace of a holy and loving God.

6. Conclusion

This dissertation’s intention is to understand and develop Wesley’s doctrine of sin with

special reference to the way the dynamics between faith and faithlessness shape his thinking

on this topic. Doing so led this inquiry to end within the context of sanctifying grace, where

the relation between these two antithetical concepts strains the formulation of characteristically

143
A promising and provocative constructive account that builds on this sensibility in Wesley is available in
Greggs’s Dogmatic Ecclesiology.
144
For a general overview, see Gregory Clapper, John Wesley on Religious Affections: His Views on
Experience and Emotion and their Role in Christian Theology (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1989); Henry H.
Knight III, The Presence of God in the Christian Life; Randy Maddox, ‘A Change of Affections’; Collins,
‘John Wesley’s Topography of the Heart’; for a sympathetic view to the one offered here, see Emily Walker
Heady, ‘Flutters, Feelings, and Fancies,’ Christianity and Literature 53, no. 2 (2004).
The Wilderness State 257

optimistic interpretations of Wesleyan visions of holiness. Wesley’s defence of righteous

action was scrutinised and found wanting, if left in isolation (§§6.2-3). Parsing Wesley’s quip

that ‘sin remains but does not remain’ guided the analysis back to into the meaning of ‘heart

religion,’ where the redeemed conscience and the movements of the passions, affections, and

drives take centre stage. Wesley’s subtlety in dealing with the phenomenology of the redeemed

emotional life pays dividends. He readily integrates the experience of highs and lows of the

holy life in holistic and interdependent ways. That in the holy life one experiences melancholic

heaviness, (anxiety, depression, despair) is to be expected. Being given to the wilderness state

entails the heights and depths of existence (§6.5). The question is how one interacts with the

shadow side of the holy life. Wesley strides the balance, sometimes veering towards reckless

severity in his younger, intemperate writings, between what one has power to control and what

one necessarily suffers. In the end, the analysis returned to the sphere of grace onto humanity’s

utter dependency upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit to draw wandering creatures within the

body of Christ into the means of grace.

In conclusion, the concept of holiness needs to accommodate the continuity of the

shadow-side of life: creation’s struggle against sin, death, and the devil, even as it seeks finality

in entire sanctification. This chapter demonstrated Wesley’s integration of his wider view of

humanity’s struggle against sin and its effects into the vision of holiness. Through this the

ambiguous character of faithlessness as it continues within the sanctifying grace of the Holy

Spirit arose. Often a Christian has no faith. Sometimes they recognise this absence and in

anxiety they turn inward, succumbing to sin. Other times they recognise the familiar comfort

of unbelief, a stance towards the world that softens the hard edges of everyday life. The

instability of faith alters the meaning of Wesley’s interpretation of working out our own

salvation by displacing the stability of God’s healing presence outside oneself and towards the

means of grace. Accordingly, holiness may be rethought as a life waiting for the Holy Spirit to
The Wilderness State 258

invade and clothe one in the image of God. The time between these moments, where the Spirit

witnesses indirectly to us, are the times where humanity enacts their own witness, testifying to

ourselves about the grace which has already gone before us. The shadow-side of holy life, what

Wesley terms ‘the wilderness state’, need not be misinterpreted as sin of one’s own making, or

even sin at all. This too Christ assumes for us. Wesley offers a reminder that salvation consists

in both Christ’s redemption of our sin and Christ’s solidarity in our common humanity.

Enduring the wilderness state belongs to what it means to be a creature. Still, only the witness

of the Holy Spirit, who bears with one’s own, can guide one through the wilderness.
Conclusion 259

Chapter 7:
Conclusion

1. The Argument & Contribution of this Dissertation

This dissertation reinterprets John Wesley’s doctrine of sin and argues that his view

accommodates the presence of faithlessness within the fabric of one’s existence, as a

disposition humanity is predisposed to inhabit stemming from the ambiguity between sin and

finitude. The thesis demonstrates this argument over the course of five substantive chapters,

interrogating the signal aspects of Wesley’s doctrine of sin as a way of mutually informing the

meaning of faithlessness and of the doctrine of sin within Wesley’s theology.

The second chapter argues that Wesley’s theological starting point is in faith understood

as an illuminating event of the Holy Spirit. The importance of this chapter establishes how, for

Wesley, sin is an insider’s conversation. Rather than understand faith as rational assent to

propositions or as confidence in a reality in the past and a promise of an eschatological future,

Wesley’s concept of faith describes a change in one’s being enacted by the Holy Spirit. This is

the power of faith or spiritual sensation. Through spiritual sensation one’s relation with the

world is restored, thereby restoring one’s perception of the world. This means that in faith

reality is saturated with the grace of God and the depths of sin. Such an insight provides the

backdrop to the observation that for the Methodist there is no morally neutral territory. The

Holy Spirit’s illuminating grace agitates one into a kind of spiritual insomnia where it is apt to

describe Wesley’s position as enthusiasm. But this faithful opening of reality is not a constant

experience. In the holy life, the urgency of the moment of salvation fades. Faith likewise can

fade even to the point of unbelief.

The next two chapters deal with Wesley’s treatment of the doctrine of original sin.

Chapter three explores the Fall and its interpretation. Chapter four shows the consequences of

the Fall and the evidence of original sin in history and everyday life were. These chapters

rework Wesley’s understanding of original sin with the idea of faithlessness in mind. This
Conclusion 260

means first shifting the understanding of Edenic perfection and the image of God. To speak of

Wesley’s image of God as relational is not detailed enough. The entailment of this relationship

is that faith—the thing which binds the uniqueness of the human to the Trinity—is properly a

gift of God. It is not something humanity ever had, but something for which they were made.

Love is that to which humanity is ordered; faith is how they get there. This growth is conditional

upon the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit and humanity’s incorporation into the Word. The

relationality of the image of God includes the gifting and receiving of faith. But in the Fall, as

Wesley describes it, humanity is robbed of and abandons the faith God gave them, irreversibly

deforming their being. From this event, the quality of humanity’s fundamental lack of faith

becomes ambiguous. This shows how Wesley thinks through the structure of original sin,

giving a textured account of the descent of humanity into sin. Importantly, this means that one

should not rush too quickly to describe sin as pride. On the contrary, the self’s confrontation

on the one hand with their faithlessness and on the other hand with their fallenness, a

consciousness unveiled through faith, is the originary site within one’s existence from which

sin stems. The relation of sin to this anxiety is like the blind reaction to a nudge in a dark,

foreign room: without one’s bearings, one flails wildly, often tragically finding themselves in

a worse situation than before. The way this plays out in the Fall between Adam, Eve, and the

devil becomes a pattern for human history and offers descriptive power for everyday life.

But this does not capture the entire situation into which humanity has fallen. The fifth

chapter examines the doctrine of evil angels within this nexus of sin and faithlessness. This

chapter argues that Wesley’s doctrine of evil angels adds important detail to his doctrine of sin.

He follows broadly in the Anglican and Puritan traditions of demonology, where the site of

conflict with nefarious spiritual agents shifts from the world to the inner life. But one of the

more interesting aspects of Wesley’s view is how the inner struggle against the demonic relates

to the cosmological register in which Wesley also holds to the view that at present the devil is
Conclusion 261

the ‘prince of this world.’ In this way, the devil’s work dislodges the believer’s faith by any

means necessary and this creates a scaffolding through which Wesley can speak of structural

and systemic realities as well as the struggle of temptation.

Finally, this thick description of the meaning of faithlessness was brought to bear on

the holy life. The focus in this chapter is how to make sense of the fact that faith may fade

within the holy life, whether though sin—intentional or accidental—or through demonic

temptation. In this chapter the nature of sin properly and improperly so-called was examined

alongside the affections, revisiting the treatment of the tempers and the conscience begun in

chapter two. Added to this was a consideration of what Wesley refers to as ‘the wilderness

state’ where, whether through temptation or some other cause, the inner life is disordered, and

one walks in ‘heaviness’ (melancholy) even risking ‘darkness’ (despair). Those without faith,

but who through the Holy Spirit have memory enough to know once its absence, still find

solace and consolation in the Word. Here Wesley directs his ‘heart religion’ outwards, towards

the means of grace in prayer, proclamation, and the eucharist. The analysis concludes by raising

the possibility that it is even primarily through the means of grace and not through the

immediate experience of salvation that best defines Wesley’s vision of salvation, a conclusion

that only appears when the severity of his vision of sin is better understood.

2. Prospects for Further Study

Going forward there are three principal directions which the conclusions of this

research open. First, following this interpretation of Wesley there stands a need to continue this

approach into other areas of his theology. This may look like a reinterpretation of his doctrines

of justification and sanctification seeing how these were frequently met over the course of this

study. It may also include a return to Wesley’s doctrine of God in order to find new grounds to

think about his insistence upon God’s sovereignty. The conclusions of this research certainly
Conclusion 262

necessitate an elevated view of the sovereignty of God so that salvation remains efficacious

even for the desolate and the lost.

Second, much of this research trades on Wesley’s confidence in the transparency of

experience. To this end, there is need to give further description to the meaning of experience

as a theological category both in a historical and constructive modality. Historically, Wesley’s

view of experience, only glossed here, needs to be carefully re-examined within and alongside

the critical views of empiricism held by Browne, Butler, Berkeley, and King. If the suggested

trajectory of this dissertation’s interpretation proves viable, then contemporary understandings

of Wesley need to revisit the sources of a theology of experience adjacent to and preceding the

empiricists. The absence of careful work addressing Wesley’s relation to the Cambridge

Platonists is a standing deficit in contemporary literature. The insight that needs reconsideration

is that Wesley, like these contemporaries, finds theological warrant for the prioritisation of

experience that offers a significant alternative to either a Kantian or a Schleiermacherian view.

Historically, the legacy of Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth, Nathaniel Culverwell, John

Smith, and Henry More that Wesley receives through Norris signals a more proximate relation

to a form of Christian Platonism. Constructively, there are striking parallels between Wesley’s

experimental theology or practical divinity and the new phenomenology. Perhaps there is even

room to rethink Wesleyan theology as phenomenological theology.

Third, as suggested in the introduction, there is promise in thinking through Wesley’s

use for the contemporary issues in Protestant theology over salvation and experience. Wesley

provides an alternative for those theologians wary that contemporary appeals to virtue, rooted

as they are in Thomism, necessarily abdicate vital Protestant claims regarding the forensic

nature of justification and the promissory quality of everyday life. Wesley may be thought of

as the culmination of Luther’s theological project. At least in soteriology, Luther’s

breakthrough recovers the categorical difference of faith, and in his labours to defend this
Conclusion 263

position he left the consequences for the doctrine of sanctification to be filled in by his

successors, who like William Perkins take up the charge to carry Luther’s breakthrough to its

conclusion. Wesley’s mature project may be conceived as the outworking of the doctrine of

justification by grace through faith alone across the whole of the Christian life; thus, Wesley

explores domains Luther did not find reason to do so himself. Considered together, such a claim

offers profound resources for the development of an evangelical Protestant soteriology. It

remains to be seen whether such a claim will be demonstrated in Christian theology, though

doing so would prove immensely valuable.

In the end, this dissertation offers is a new interpretation of John Wesley’s doctrine of

sin. This work sticks close to Wesley’s practical divinity. In so doing, the analysis ends where

it begins: that is, to think about the doctrine of sin is to think in terms of adequate self-

knowledge, recognition of the state of reality, and confession of one’s complicity within this

reality. In a word, the doctrine of sin is an outworking of the activity of repentance.

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