Pastor John Wright

One of Wesley's well-known sermons is his sermon on "Catholic Spirit." He begins the sermon with the biblical commands to love everyone, including our enemies. But he recognizes a special love, "a peculiar love which we owe to those who love God." The sermon then tries to bind Christians together in the special love that comes from participation in God. He writes that "herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences. These remaining as they are, they may forward one another in love and in good works."

Wesley's "Catholic Spirit" has often been invoked to justify a certain type of "pseudo-Christian tolerance," a tolerance that empties the faith of its content, and thus makes it palatable for the contemporary liberal nation-state or the liberal international system that justifies these states. It is important to see that Wesley's convictions are not grounded in a subjective piety, though faith in Christ, of course, is important. Wesley sees Christian unity grounded first and foremost in God.

The next couple days I will quote from this sermon about what Wesley taught was implied in "Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart." He begins, as he should, with a full and classical Christian doctrine of God. His embracing of such a doctrine as central to Christian convictions speaks firmly against those who wish to evoke a "Wesleyanism" in order to justify a non-catholic teaching about God, such as God's openness, as central to his thought. For Wesley, God is God, eternal, unchangeable, the Alpha and the Omega. All things must be seen by faith in the Invisible, so as not to get caught in reducing the visible to merely the visible.

I. 12. The first thing implied is this: Is thy heart right with God? Do you believe His being and His perfections? His eternity, immensity, wisdom, power? His justice, mercy, and truth? Do you believe that He now 'upholds all things by the word of His power'? and that God governs even the most minute, even the most noxious, to God's own glory, and the good of them that love Him? Have you a divine evidence, a supernatural conviction of the things of God? Do you 'walk by faith, not by sight'? looking not at temporal things but things eternal?

13. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, 'God over all, blessed forever'? Is He revealed in your soul? Do you know Jesus Christ and Him crucified? Does He dwell in you and you in Him? Is He formed in your heart by faith? Having absolutely disclaimed all your own works, your own righteousness, have you 'submitted yourself unto the righteousness of God,' which is by faith in Christ Jesus? Are you 'found in Him,not having your own righteousness, but the righteousness which is by faith'? And are you through Him, 'fighting the good fight of faith, and laying hold of eternal live'?

14. Is your faith "filled with the energy of love? Do you love God (I do not say 'above all things', for it is both an unscriptural and an ambiguous expression, but) 'with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your soul, and with all your strength'? Do you seek all your happiness in Him alone? And do you find what you seek? Does your soul continually 'magnify the Lord, and your spirit rejoice in God your Saviour'? Having learned 'in everything to give thanks', do you find 'it is a joyful and a pleasant thing to be thankful'? Is God the centre of your soul, the sum of all your desires? Are you accordingly laying up your treasure in heaven, and counting all things else dung and dross? Has the love of God cast the love of the world out of your soul? Then you are 'crucified to the world'; you are dead to all belove, and your 'life is hid with Christ in God.'