Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (68 page)

O sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in; it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath that you are held over in the hands of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell; you hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder, and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment….

It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity: there will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery: when you look forward, you shall see along forever a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all; you will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty, merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains, so that your punishment will indeed be infinite.
Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable: for “who knows the power of God’s anger!”

How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh, that you would consider it, whether you be young or old! There is reason to think that there are many in this congregation now hearing this discourse that will actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are, or in what seats they sit, or what thoughts they now have—it may be they are now at ease, and hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now flattering themselves that they are not the persons, promising themselves that they shall escape. If we knew that there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregation, that was to be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing it would be to think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight it would be to see such a person! How might all the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him! But, alas, instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell! And it would be a wonder, if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here in some seats of this meetinghouse, in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before tomorrow morning!…

Therefore let everyone that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom. “Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest ye be consumed.”

Before becoming the Father of Methodism, John Wesley was ordained a deacon at the age of twenty-two and a priest at twenty-five in the Church of England. It was not until he was thirty-four, however, at a religious society in Aldersgate Street, London, that he experienced the famous conversion in which he felt his “heart strangely warmed”: “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had given away my sins.”

That assurance led Wesley to pursue his evangelism with unparalleled enthusiasm in “field preaching,” taking the message outside the churches and onto the fields and highways. By one accounting, Wesley preached more than forty thousand sermons and traveled farther than 200,000 miles on horseback; statues of him today at Methodist institutions often show him on a horse.

In what may be his greatest sermon, Wesley questioned the entire doctrine of predestination. On a field near Bristol, England, on April 29, 1739, he preached against this notion and sought to replace it with the concept of “free grace,” the love of God that is “free in all, and free for all.”

Wesley uses ancient images (“weeping crocodile tears”) and scriptural references to press the logic of his argument, enumerating and linking each step of the thought process that led him to deny predestination. For instance, the simple repetition of the adjective “uncomfortable” draws together the third and fourth points of the sermon, just as the anaphora of “It does not depend on…” introduces a listing of the many conditions previously held to be the sources of God’s grace.

***

HOW FREELY DOES
God love the world! While we were yet sinners, “Christ died for the ungodly.” While we were “dead in sin,” God “spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.” And how freely with him does he “give us all things!” Verily,
free grace
is all in all!

The grace or love of God, whence cometh our salvation, is
free in all
, and
free for all
.

First: it is free
in all
to whom it is given. It does not depend on any power or merit in man; no, not in any degree, neither in whole, not in part. It does not in any wise depend either on the good works or righteousness of the receiver—not on anything he has done or anything he is. It does not depend on his endeavors. It does not depend on his good tempers, or good desires, or good purposes and intentions; for all these flow from the free grace of God; they are the streams only, not the fountain. They are the fruits of free grace, and not the root. They are not the cause but the effects of it. Whatsoever good is in man, or is done by man, God is the author and doer of it. Thus is his grace free in all; that is, no way depending on any power or merit in man, but on God alone, who freely gave us his own Son, and “with him freely giveth us all things.”

But is it free
for all
as well as
in all
? To this some have answered, “No, it is free only for those whom God hath ordained to life; and they are but a little flock. The greater part of mankind God hath ordained to death; and it is not free for them. Them God hateth; and therefore, before they were born, decreed they should die eternally. And this he absolutely decreed; because so was his good pleasure; because it was his sovereign will. Accordingly, they are born for this, to be destroyed body and soul in hell. And they grow up under the irrevocable curse of God, without any possibility of redemption; for what grace God gives he gives only for this, to increase, not prevent, their damnation….”

But if this be so, then is all preaching vain. It is needless to them that are elected; for they, whether with preaching or without, will infallibly be saved. Therefore, the end of preaching, to save souls, is void with regard to them. And it is useless to them that are not elected, for they cannot possibly be saved. They, whether with preaching or without, will infallibly be damned. The end of preaching is therefore void with regard to them likewise; so that in either case our preaching is vain, as your hearing is also vain.

This, then, is a plain proof that the doctrine of predestination is not a
doctrine of God, because it makes void the ordinance of God: and God is not divided against himself. A second is that it directly tends to destroy that holiness which is the end of all the ordinances of God….

Thirdly, this doctrine tends to destroy the comfort of religion, the happiness of Christianity. This is evident as to all those who believe themselves to be reprobated, or who only suspect or fear it. All the great and precious promises are lost to them; they afford them no ray of comfort: for they are not the elect of God: therefore, they have neither lot nor portion in them. This is an effectual bar to their finding any comfort or happiness, even in that religion whose ways are designed to be “ways of pleasantness, and all her paths peace….”

Again: how uncomfortable a thought is this, that thousands and millions of men, without any preceding offense or fault of theirs, were unchangeably doomed to everlasting burnings! How peculiarly uncomfortable must it be to those who have put on Christ! To those who, being filled with bowels of mercy, tenderness, and compassion, could even “wish themselves accursed for their brethren’s sake”!

Fourthly: this uncomfortable doctrine directly tends to destroy our zeal for good works. And this it does, first, as it naturally tends (according to what was observed before) to destroy our love to the greater part of mankind, namely, the evil and unthankful. For whatever lessens our love must so far lessen our desire to do them good….

But, fifthly, this doctrine not only tends to destroy Christian holiness, happiness, and good works, but hath also a direct and manifest tendency to overthrow the whole Christian revelation….

You represent him as mocking his helpless creatures by offering what he never intends to give. You describe him as saying one thing and meaning another; as pretending the love which he had not. Him, in “whose mouth was no guile,” you make full of deceit, void of common sincerity—then especially, when, drawing nigh the city, he wept over it and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how oft
would I
have gathered thy children together—and
ye would not
.” Now, if you say,
they would
, but
he would not
, you represent him (which who could hear?) as weeping crocodile tears: weeping over the prey which himself had doomed to destruction!…

This is the blasphemy clearly contained in
the horrible decree
of predestination! And here I fix my foot. On this I join issue with every assertor of it. You represent God as worse than the devil—more false, more cruel, more unjust….

Oh, hear ye this, ye that forget God! Ye cannot charge your death upon him! “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God” (Ezekiel 18:23, etc.). “Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed… for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.” “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked…. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”

The only clergyman to sign the declaration of independence, Reverend John Witherspoon was a Scottish Presbyterian who in 1768 came to America to serve as president of the College of New-Jersey, now known as Princeton. Within a decade of his arrival, however, he was as actively involved in the political struggles of the colonies as in education.

In May 1776, Witherspoon caused controversy in preaching “The
Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men” in Princeton. This stern sermon, which was his first to discuss politics, preceded by a month his election to the Continental Congress and signaled the outspokenness of his political stance. When he was told that America was not ripe for independence, Witherspoon was said to have answered, “In my judgment, sir, we are not only ripe but rotting.”

Witherspoon’s sermon uses various rhetorical devices in urging that liberty is a religious as well as a political issue. Among these devices are the rhetorical question (“Would any man who could prevent it give up his estate, person, and family to the disposal of his neighbor…?”) and parrhesia, or apologizing for what follows (“Pardon me, my brethren, for insisting so much upon this”). The sermon concludes with what may be considered his central theme—“that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable.”

***

THERE IS NOT
a greater evidence either of the reality or the power of religion than a firm belief of God’s universal presence, and a constant attention to the influence and operation of his Providence. It is by this means that the Christian may be said, in the emphatical Scripture language, “to walk with God, and to endure as seeing him who is invisible.”

The doctrine of divine Providence is very full and complete in the sacred oracles. It extends not only to things which we may think of great moment, and therefore worthy of notice, but to things the most indifferent and inconsiderable; “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing,” says our Lord, “and one of them falleth not to the ground without your heavenly Father”; nay, “the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” It extends not only to things beneficial and salutary, or to the direction and assistance of those who are the servants of the living God, but to things seemingly most hurtful and destructive, and to persons the most refractory and disobedient. He overrules all his creatures, and all their actions.

Thus we are told that “fire, hail, snow, vapor, and stormy wind, fulfill his word,” in the course of nature; and even so the most impetuous and disorderly passions of men, that are under no restraint from themselves, are yet perfectly subject to the dominion of Jehovah. They carry his commission, they obey his orders, they are limited and restrained by his authority, and they conspire with everything else in promoting his glory. There is the greater need to take notice of this, that men are not generally
sufficiently aware of the distinction between the law of God and his purpose; they are apt to suppose that as the temper of the sinner is contrary to the one, so the outrages of the sinner are able to defeat the other; than which nothing can be more false. The truth is plainly asserted and nobly expressed by the psalmist in the text “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee; the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.”