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John Wesley not only turned 18th century England around with his preaching, but he made lots of money in the process. Here is a story about, and advice from, a man who knew how to make money… and how to spend it.

Most of us know that John Wesley was used by God to revive 18th-century England and to start the Methodist Church. We know him as a great preacher, and a greater organizer. We remember him for his contribution to the Church’s thinking on sanctification. But few of us realize that Wesley made enormous sums from preaching; the sale of his writings made him one of England’s wealthiest men. In an age when a single man could live comfortably on £30 a year, his annual income reached £1,400. No wonder Wesley had strong opinions about the place of financial matters in the Christian life. This “rich” preacher has much to say to us about money.

In later life, Wesley grew discouraged with Methodism. Although he had seen the movement grow from two brothers to a society of almost a million people, he felt that it had lost much of its spiritual power. He believed the Methodists no longer hungered and thirsted for righteousness as they once had. He observed that they were not as eager to attend the 5 a.m. preaching services as in the past. He feared his followers had lost much of their love for their neighbors for he saw that they were not as ready as they had been to visit the sick and needy. He was convinced that this decline in the way they loved the Lord and their neighbors had grieved God’s Holy Spirit, and had driven him from their midst. He feared his lifetime of labor had been in vain.

Besides thinking that God had abandoned the Methodists, Wesley thought he knew the cause of this desertion: A particular sin had caused them to lose their first love and had separated them from God. Wesley said that not one Methodist in 100 obeyed the Lord in this regard. He complained that others never preached against this sin, and in later life he spoke against it frequently. In his last three years of life he published as many sermons against this sin as he had published against it in the previous fifty. In what he thought might be his final sermon, he rebuked his followers for their disobedience to the Lord in this area. He even told the Methodists in Dublin that they were personally responsible for the decline of Methodism. “Ye are the men, some of the chief men, who continually grieve the Holy Spirit of God, and in a great measure stop his gracious influence from descending on our assemblies.”

What had these men in Dublin done to merit this rebuke? What was the crime of the Methodists in London, Manchester, and Bristol whom Wesley found lacking? What was the sin that convinced him that God had abandoned them, and which he thought was hindering revival?

Wesley noted that in the old days of Methodism, the people were poor. But, he observed, in the 20, 30, or 40 years since they joined the society, many Methodists had become 20, 30, or even 100 times richer than they were at first. With this increase in wealth had come a decrease in godliness. It seemed to him the more money the Methodists had, the less they loved the Lord.

Wesley noted several instances of the decline of godliness among the Methodists. The first was a lessening of their love for God, shown by a lack of interest in sanctification. He told them they no longer had “the same vehement desire as you formerly had of ‘going on to perfection.’” A second instance was pride. Wesley warned his followers that increasing wealth had made them arrogant. They had become more confident of their own opinions and less willing to hear reproof: “You are not so teachable as you were, …; you have a much better opinion of your own judgment and are more attached to your own will.” (from the sermon Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity)

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