1770s, Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)
Source: Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm"
“Beware, lastly, of imagining you shall obtain the end without using the means conducive to it.”
Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm"
Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)
Context: Beware, lastly, of imagining you shall obtain the end without using the means conducive to it. God can give the end without any means at all; but you have no reason to think He will. Therefore constantly and carefully use all those means which He has appointed to be the ordinary channels of His grace. Use every means which either reason or Scripture recommends, as conducive (through the free love of God in Christ) either to the obtaining or increasing any of the gifts of God. Thus expect a daily growth in that pure and holy religion which the world always did, and always will, call “enthusiasm;” but which, to all who are saved from real enthusiasm, from merely nominal Christianity, is “the wisdom of God, and the power of God;” the glorious image of the Most High; “righteousness and peace;” a “fountain of living water, springing up into everlasting life!”
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Beware, lastly, of imagining you shall obtain the end without using the means conducive to it." by John Wesley?
John Wesley 77
Christian theologian 1703–1791Related quotes
“Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.”
John Denham
(1615–1669) English poet and courtier
Of Prudence (1668), line 83.
William Carey (missionary)
(1761–1834) English Baptist missionary and a Particular Baptist minister
Sect. V : An Enquiry into the Duty of Christians in general, and what Means ought to be used, in order to promote this Work.
An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians (1792)
Context: Many can do nothing but pray, and prayer is perhaps the only thing in which Christians of all denominations can cordially, and unreservedly unite; but in this we may all be one, and in this the strictest unanimity ought to prevail. Were the whole body thus animated by one soul, with what pleasure would Christians attend on all the duties of religion, and with what delight would their ministers attend on all the business of their calling.
We must not be contented however with praying, without exerting ourselves in the use of means for the obtaining of those things we pray for. Were the children of light, but as wise in their generation as the children of this world, they would stretch every nerve to gain so glorious a prize, nor ever imagine that it was to be obtained in any other way.
Miguel de Unamuno
(1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality
Context: The vain man is in like cause with the avaricious — he takes the mean for the end; forgetting the end he pursues the means for its own sake and goes no further. The seeming to be something, conducive to being it, ends by forming our objective. We need that others should believe in our superiority to them in order that we may believe in it ourselves, and upon their belief base our faith in our own persistence, or at least in the persistence of our fame. We are more grateful to him that congratulates us on the skill with which we defend a cause than we are to him who recognizes the truth or goodness of the cause itself. A rabid mania for originality is rife in the modern intellectual world and characterizes all individual effort. We would rather err with genius than hit the mark with the crowd.
“Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending.”
Julian of Norwich
(1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress
The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22
Context: Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending. For which love He said full sweetly these words: If I might suffer more, I would suffer more.
Vladimir Lenin
(1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution
As quoted in George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (1981), page 57.
Attributions
“Imagination means nothing without doing.”
Charlie Chaplin
(1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker
Isaac Leib Peretz
(1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright
Advice to the Estranged. S. Liptzin. Peretz. Yivo, 1947, p. 348.
Context: A Jew waits for Messiah to come and redeem the world from fear and pain, from the cataclysmic conflicts between rich and poor. All shall enjoy the earth. This means, in popular imagination, that bread and clothes shall grow, ready-made, on trees. Do you have more winged ideals?