from Part III - Wesley’s work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2010
The elderly John Wesley, just a few months shy of his eighty-sixth birthday, asked a crowd of Irish Methodists gathered in Dublin a classic question from an unlikely source - the Calvinist Westminster Confession: “For what end did God create man?” One simple answer, Wesley insisted, should be “inculcated upon every human creature: 'You are made to be happy in God.'” Wesley then tendered advice to parents. Even when a child first begins to speak or to run alone, a good parent follows behind saying, many times each day, “He made you; and he made you to be happy in him; and nothing else can make you happy.” What is the happiness for which humans were made? Wesley insisted that just “as there is one God, so there is one religion and one happiness.” This one human happiness and true religion is the love of God and the love of neighbor. It is, “in two words, gratitude and benevolence; gratitude to our Creator and supreme Benefactor, and benevolence to our fellow creatures.” The active benevolence toward others that is born of our gratitude to God is for Christians the wellspring of the moral life and of human happiness. Happiness is impossible without this grateful love of God and benevolent, active love toward others. And the moral life is one with this happiness.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.