Wesley's sermon on "Scriptural Christianity" feels like a lot of things other people have said before and since--the original Church was good and true and had things figured out until Blame Outside Force Here disturbed their community, the current world is coming to an end and prophecies will soon be fulfilled, believers are pale imitations now of what they are meant to be. This sermon has been preached in every generation sermons have been preached, and not just in Christianity.
Given this reality of rehashing concepts, how are we to understand and appreciate the impact of Wesley's particular critiques? The English audience that heard this sermon was only a few years removed from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," had just seen Robert Walpole step down from being prime minister after 20 years, was newly introduced to Handel's Messiah, and presumably had seen the Great Comet of 1744--in other words, the English audience was living in a world that was changing and moving and being, as it had before and has since. When Wesley tells them, "suppose now the fullness of time to be come, and the prophecies to be accomplished," to what end is he calling them? When he accuses people of being "a generation of triflers," how is that viewpoint seen in his slow shaping of the methodical church? And how do we as modern readers understand such themes as we study the ways in which the early Church was not perfect, the world trundles on, and people have always been rather awful at faithfulness? Why, in short, does a sermon like this still matter, it having been done so many times before?
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