Wesley Corpus

The Trouble And Rest Of Good Men Preached at St. Mary's in Oxford, on Sunday, September 21, 1735. Published at the request of several of the hearers. "There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest." Job 3:17. [This appears to have been the first Sermon that Mr. Wesley ever committed to the press. It was preached about a month before he sailed for Georgia; and published the same year by C. Rivington, in St. Paul's Church-Yard. After remaining out of print upwards of ninety years, it is here republished as an authentic, and not uninteresting, specimen of his preaching at the time when he left his native country to convert Heathens; and, as he states, learned in the ends of the earth, what he least suspected, that he had never been converted himself. The reader will observe that while the Sermon displays great seriousness and zeal, it exhibits a very inadequate view of real Christianity. The Preacher attributes the sanctification of human nature, in a great measure, to personal sufferings; assumes that the body is the seat of moral evil; and that sin exists in the best of Christians till they obtain deliverance by the hand of death. With what ability and success he afterwards opposed these unevangelical principles, and taught the doctrine of present salvation from all sin, by faith in Jesus Christ, is well known to all who are conversant with his Works, and especially with his Journal and Sermons. Viewed in connexion with his subsequent writings, this Sermon is of considerable importance, as it serves very strikingly to illustrate the change which took place in his religious sentiments previously to his entrance upon that astonishing career of ministerial labour and usefulness, by which he was so eminently distinguished. As a perfect antidote to the doctrinal mistakes which it contains, the reader is referred to the admirable Sermon, entitled, "The Scripture Way of Salvation," [43] (Sermons, vol. 2, p. 43.) -- Edit.] ____________________