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Self-Denial and the Free Churches: some literary responses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

David Keep
David Keep*
Affiliation:
Rolle College, Exmouth
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Extract

The ascetic ideal found in wandering holy men in the east and in the self- and world-denying vows of regular clergy and laity in the middle ages came down to English nonconformity through puritanism. Bunyan’s pilgrim, like Benedict and Francis was passing through a temporary and evil world. Their attitude to life was that of the Sermon on the Mount, on the lips of the shepherd lad:

      ‘I am content with what I have,
      Little be it, or much.‘

Wesley blended the high Anglican discipline of Jeremy Taylor and the Oxford Holy Club with his field evangelism and exhorted his Methodists to ‘Gain all you can; save all you can; then give all all you can.’ The gain was to be without doing harm to anyone. The Methodist was ‘to despise delicacy and variety, and be content with what plain nature requires.’ He was to ‘waste no part of it … in costly pictures, painting, gilding, books; in elegant rather than useful gardens.’ The Methodist was to avoid sensuality, curiosity and vanity. Wesley’s sermon on ‘The use of money’ is regularly quoted and is required reading for every Methodist preacher.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 22: Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition , 1985 , pp. 397 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1985

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References

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