Quotations by John Wesley

Methodists and the Leveling of Society

"I thank your ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist Preachers. Their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavoring to level all ranks, and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiment so much at variance with high rank and good breeding."

From a letter by the Dutchess of Buckingham to the Countess of Huntingdon. Lady Huntingdon was a supporter of the Wesleyans.

John Wesley on Doing Good

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.

God’s Universal Grace

The benefit of the death of Christ is not only extended to such as have the distinct knowledge of His death and sufferings, but even unto those who are inevitably excluded from this knowledge. Even these may be partakers of the benefit of His death, though ignorant of the history, if they suffer His grace to take place in their hearts, so as of wicked men to become holy.
“A Letter to a Person Lately Joined with the People Called Quakers”

Works (Jackson) 10:178

War and Colonialism

(In article Original Sin John Wesley referenced this passage taken from Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift)

Another cause of making war is this: A crew are driven by a storm they know not where; at length they make the land and go ashore, they are entertained with kindness. They give the country a new name; set up a stone or rotten plank for a memorial; murder a dozen of the natives, and bring away a couple by force. Here commences a new right of dominion: Ships are sent, and the natives driven out or destroyed. And this is done to civilize and convert a barbarous and idolatrous people.

Works (Jackson) 9:221

John Wesley Description of War (as evidence of Original Sin)

Here are forty thousand men gathered together on this plain. What they going to do? See, there are thirty or forty thousand more at a great 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 king of France has a quarrel with another man, who is king of England. So these Frenchmen are to kill as many of these Englishmen as they can, to prove 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? How shocking, how inconceivable a want must there have been of common understanding, as well as common humanity, before any two governors, or any two nations in the universe could once think of such a method of decision! If then, all nations, Pagan, Mohammedan, and Christian, do, in fact, make this their last resort, what farther proof of 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?

Works (Jackson) 9:221 The Doctrine of Original Sin (part 1)

John Wesley on Ecology

“But the lesson which our blessed Lord inculcates here, and which he illustrates by this example, is that God is in all things, and that we are to see the Creator in the face of every creature; that we should use and look upon nothing as separate from God, which indeed is a kind of practical atheism; but with a true magnificence of thought survey heaven and earth and all that is therein as contained by God in the hallow of his hand, who by his intimate presence holds them all in being, who pervades and actuates the whole created frame, and is in a true sense the soul of the universe.”

Sermon 23, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, III” I.11

John Wesley ….On the Connection of Peace and Justice

But in the full extent of the word a ‘peacemaker’ is one that as he hath opportunity ‘doth good unto all men’; one that being filled with the love of God and of all mankind cannot confine the expressions of it to his own family, or friends, or acquaintance, or party; no, nor those who are partakers of like precious faith; but steps over all these bounds that he may do good to every man; that he may some way or other manifest his love to neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies.

Sermon 23, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, III”, II.4.

John Wesley…On Religious Tolerance and Judgment

“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.

Let it be observed, I purposely add, ‘to those that are under the Christian
dispensation’, because I have no authority from the Word of God ‘to judge those that are without’. Nor do I conceive that any man living has a right to sentence all the heathen and Mahometan world to damnation. It is far better to leave them to him that made them, and who is the Father of the spirits of all flesh’; who is the God of the heathens as well as the Christians, and who hateth nothing that he hath made.”

Sermon 130, “On Living with out God”, 14

John Wesley ….On Ministry of Women

“But may not women, as well as men, bear a part in this honourable service?” Undoubtedly they may; nay, they ought; it is meet, right, and their bounded duty. Herein there is no difference; “there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus. “Indeed, it has long passed for a maxim with many, that “women are only to be seen, not heard.” And accordingly many of them are brought up in such a manner as if they were only designed for agreeable playthings. But is this doing honour to the sex? Or is it a real kindness to them? NO; it is the deepest unkindness; it is horrid cruelty; it is mere Turkish barbarity. And I know not how any woman of sense and spirit can submit to it. Let all you that have it in your power assert their right which the God of nature has given. You. yield not to the vile bondage any longer. You, as well as men, are rational creatures. You, like them, were made in the image of God; you are equally candidates for immortality; you too are called of God, as you have time, to “do good unto all men.” Be “not disobedient to the heavenly calling.” Whenever you have opportunity, do all the good you can, particularly to your poor, sick neighbour. And everyone of you likewise “Shall receive your own reward, according to your own labour.”

Sermon 98, “On Visiting the Sick”, III. 7.

John Wesley …. On Poverty and Dignity

Has poverty nothing worse in it than this, it makes men liable to be laughed at? Is not want of food something worse than this?

God pronounced it as a curse upon man that he should earn it by the sweat of his brow.But how many are there in this Christian country that toil, and labor, and sweat, and have it not at last, but struggle with weariness and hunger together? Is it not worse for one, after a hard days labor, to come back to a poor, cold, dirty, uncomfortable lodging, and to find there not even the food which is needful to repair his wasted strength? You that live at ease on this earth, that want nothing but eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts to understand how well God hath dealt with you, is it not worse to seek bread day by day, and find none? Perhaps to find the comfort also of five or six children crying for what he has not to give!

Were it not that he is restrained by an unseen hand, would he not soon acurse God and die? O want of bread! Want of bread! Who can tell what this means, unless he hath felt it himself? I am astonished it occasions no more than heaviness even in them that believe.

John Wesley, Sermons, Heaviness Through Manifold Temptations III 3 (S, II 270-71)

John Wesley…On Wealth and Inheritance

I am pained for you that are ‘rich in this world’. Do you give all you can? You who receive five hundred pounds a year, and spend only two hundred, do you give three hundred back to God? If not, you certainly rob God of that three hundred. You that receive two hundred, and spend but one, do you give God the other hundred? If not, you rob him of just so much. ‘Nay, may I not do what I will with my own?’ Here lies the ground of your mistake. It is not your own. In cannot be, unless you are Lord of heaven and earth. ‘However, I must provide for my children.’ Certainly. but how? By making them rich? Then you will probably make them heathens, as some of you have done already. “What shall I do, then?” Lord, speak to their hearts! Else the preacher speaks in vain. Leave them enough to live on, not in idleness and luxury, but by honest industry. And if you have not children, upon what scriptural or rational principles can you leave a groat behind you more than will bury you?

Sermon 131, “The Danger of Increasing Riches”, II. 17.

John Wesley …On Separation of Church and State

O the depth both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! Causing a total disregard for all religion to pave the way for the revival of the only religion which was worthy of God! I am not assured whether this be the case or not in France and Germany. But it is so beyond all contradiction in North America: the total indifference of the government there whether there be any religion or none leaves room for the propagation of true scriptural religion without the least let or hindrance.

Sermon 102, “Of Former Times”, 20

John Wesley …. On Love of Neighbor

If we cannot think alike, at least we may love alike and can anything but love beget love?

John Wesley…On Racism and the Legal System

Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a “law’ in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this?

Letter to William Wilberforce, February 24, 1791 (the last letter John Wesley ever wrote)

John Wesley … on Perfection

By perfection I mean the humble, patient, gentle love of God and our neighbor, ruling our tempers, words and actions.

John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christianity 1765

John Wesley …. On Reason

You go: “It is a fundamental principle in the Methodist school that all who come into it must renounce their reason.” Sir, are you awake? Unless you are talking in your sleep, how can you utter so gross an untruth? It is a fundamental principle with us that to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand, and that all irrational religion is false religion.

John Wesley, Letters to Dr. Rutherforth V.3,64

John Wesley… On the Work Ethic

Yet again: “in what spirit do you go through your business? In the spirit of the world, or the Spirit of Christ?” I am afraid thousands of those who are called good Christians do not understand the question. If you act in the Spirit of Christ you carry the end you at first proposed through all your work from first to last. You do everything in the spirit of sacrifice, giving up your will to the will of God, and continually aiming not at ease, pleasure, or riches; not at anything this short enduring world can give; but merely at the glory of God. Now can anyone deny that this is the most excellent way of pursuing worldly business?

Sermon 89, “The More Excellent Way”, III. 3.

John Wesley … On Parliament

I had spent two or three hours in the House of Lords. I had frequently heard that this was the most venerable assembly in England. But how was I disappointed! What is a Lord but a sinner, born to die!

John Wesley, Journal, Tuesday January 25, 1785