Secondly: by doing good

The Text

The first rule cleared the ground; the second builds. Having ceased from evil, the Methodist must now actively, deliberately, and universally do good — “of every possible sort,” “to all men,” “as they have opportunity.” It is the positive half of Isaiah’s “cease to do evil; learn to do well,” and its grammar is a series of deliberately uncomfortable universals fenced by two clauses of realism. But the rule’s real theological weight is not in the universals; it is in a phrase that comes a few lines later, in the particulars: doing good means “trampling under foot that enthusiastic doctrine that ‘we are not to do good unless our hearts be free to it.’” That sentence is the most pugnacious in the entire document, and it decides everything about how the rule is read: good works here are not the spontaneous overflow of a moved heart. They are a commanded means of grace, done because commanded.

Translation Notes

“by being in every kind merciful after their power.” Mercy is the governing virtue, not generic benevolence; the rule is the corporal and spiritual works of mercy (Matthew 25), not philanthropy. “After their power” — kata dynamin, according to ability — is the first realism fence: the rule scales to capacity. It does not ask the poor widow for the rich man’s gift; it asks each for their power, all of it.

“as they have opportunity… as far as possible, to all men.” The universals (every kind, every possible sort, all men) are Galatians 6:10 (“as we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith”). “As far as possible” is the second realism fence. Together the fences forbid not the scope of the command but the excuses against it: you cannot do all good to all people, but you may not use that to license doing convenient good to congenial people.

“trampling under foot that enthusiastic doctrine.” Enthusiastic in Wesley’s idiom is a hostile word — it means fanatical self-delusion, not zeal. The “doctrine” trampled is the quietist claim that one should wait for an inward freedom or prompting before acting. Trampling under foot is violent on purpose. Wesley does not say “we should gently set this idea aside.” He says stamp on it. No phrase in the General Rules carries more heat, and it is aimed at a position Wesley regarded as spiritually lethal.

Historical Context

The heat has a history: the stillness controversy. The Moravian quietists at Fetter Lane had taught that until one had full assurance one should “be still” — abstain not only from the ordinances but from active religion, since unprompted works were mere fleshly striving. Wesley broke with them over exactly this. The second rule’s “trampling” clause is that break written into the societies’ constitution. It is not abstract ethics; it is Wesley permanently closing, for his people, the door the Moravians had opened: you do good now, on command, whether or not your heart feels free, because the doing is itself a channel of the grace you are waiting for.

This is why the rule belongs structurally where it does. It is the second of the “fruits meet for repentance” (annotation 5) and, in Wesley’s mature theology, a means of grace in its own right — “works of mercy” alongside “works of piety.” The Newcastle examiner could see whether a member did good as visibly as whether they ceased harm; the rule is, again, evidential as well as formative.

Lines of Interpretation

The disputed question: are good works the fruit of grace, a means of grace, or — dangerously — a substitute for it?

Roman Catholic

Tradition: the corporal and spiritual works of mercy; Matthew 25

The Catholic tradition reads this rule on home ground: the works of mercy, bodily and spiritual, are how love of God is enacted toward Christ in the neighbor (Matthew 25:31–46), and they are obligatory, not optional. “Doing good of every possible sort” is the works of mercy without the medieval enumeration but with the same binding force.

Strengths

• Names the genre exactly: this is mercy, the Matthew 25 program, not philanthropy
• Holds the works as obligatory and Christ-directed, matching Wesley’s “trampling” of the optional reading

Weaknesses

• The merit framework the Reformation contested can shadow the reading; Wesley keeps the works as fruit/means, never ground
• The enumerated-works tradition can domesticate Wesley’s open-ended “every possible sort”

Reformed

Tradition: good works as the fruit of faith and the response of gratitude

The Reformed reading insists the rule is third use of the law and gratitude, not a return to merit: the believer does good because made alive, the works evidencing and exercising a faith that is never alone.

Strengths

• Guards the gospel order: grace first, works as its fruit and exercise
• Coheres with the document’s own “evidenced by its fruits” frame

Weaknesses

• Can so stress works-as-fruit that it underplays Wesley’s stronger claim — works as a means, instrumentally conveying grace
• The fear of merit can reproduce, in milder form, the very passivity Wesley trampled

Anglican

Tradition: active religion; Holy Living; the salt and the light

Wesley’s native key. Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount IV is his exposition of “ye are the salt of the earth… the light of the world,” and it is a sustained assault on “solitary religion.” Christianity, on this account, cannot be inward only; the second rule is the Holy Living tradition’s active devotion made mandatory.

Strengths

• Demonstrably Wesley’s own framing — the rule is Sermon on the Mount IV in one imperative
• Keeps inward and active religion welded, which is the whole point

Weaknesses

• The “active religion” emphasis can drift toward mere busyness if cut from the first rule and the ordinances
• Holy Living’s genteel origins can soften the rule’s universality (“all men,” not all suitable men)

Liberation / social holiness

Tradition: “no holiness but social holiness”; the Methodist social tradition

Read forward, the universals — every possible sort, to all men — are the seed of the Methodist social conscience: abolition, the Social Creed (1908), the labor and poverty witness. The rule refuses to let “do good” stay at private charity.

Strengths

• Honors the scope Wesley actually wrote: all men, not the deserving few
• Connects the rule to the tradition’s strongest public witness

Weaknesses

• Can collapse “do good” into program and policy and lose the personal, costly, hand-to-hand mercy the particulars specify
• Severed from the first rule and the ordinances, social action can become the substitute for grace the Reformed reading rightly fears

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley’s own commentary is Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount IV, and it is essentially an expansion of the second rule’s fighting clause. He stages the quietist objection in its own voice — “the trying to do good is but lost labour. What does it avail to feed or clothe men’s bodies… If these are changed, God doth it himself” — and then refuses it absolutely. To withhold good until the heart is free, or until success is assured, is for Wesley not humility but “that enthusiastic doctrine of devils.” The verb in the rule — trampling — is exactly the violence of the sermon. Wesley believed this teaching damned people while flattering them, and he would not let it survive inside a Methodist society.

The positive Wesleyan claim is the one the Reformed reading hesitates over and Wesley did not: works of mercy are a means of grace. In his mature theology the means divide into works of piety (prayer, Scripture, the Supper — the third rule) and works of mercy (the second rule), and both are channels through which sanctifying grace ordinarily comes. This is the structural reason the second rule is not optional and not merely evidential: you do good not only because a saved person will, but because in doing it grace meets you. The person waiting to feel holy before serving has the order backwards; Wesley’s instruction is to serve, on command, and find that the serving was one of the ways holiness arrived. The Good Steward supplies the frame that keeps this from becoming mere activism: everything done is done as a steward who will give an account — “after their power” means with all that was entrusted, to the Owner, not for the doer’s merit.

And the universals are not rhetorical excess; they are the second rule’s version of the first rule’s prophetic clause. “Every possible sort… to all men” forbids the natural contraction of mercy to the near, the like, and the grateful. Wesley’s own life — the Strangers’ Friend Society, the poor visited by name, the lending stock, the clinic — was the rule kept at scale, and the rule’s universality is why the Methodist tradition could not, when it was being faithful, keep “do good” indoors. It is also, read honestly beside the previous annotation, the standing rebuke of every period the church did “good of every possible sort” while exempting the people it found inconvenient to free.

Hymnody

The second rule’s hymn is the prayer to be spent. Charles Wesley’s “A charge to keep I have, a God to glorify, a never-dying soul to save, and fit it for the sky; to serve the present age, my calling to fulfil” is the rule turned into vocation — and notice it makes serving the age a charge, a duty owed, not a feeling indulged, exactly the rule’s anti-quietism sung. “Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go, my daily labour to pursue… the task thy wisdom hath assigned O let me cheerfully fulfil” is “as they have opportunity” set to a working day. And “Jesus, the gift divine I know… freely thou hast given to me, O let me give myself to thee” is “after their power” — all of it — as praise. There is no Wesleyan hymn that asks permission of the feelings before serving; the repertoire, like the rule, treats mercy as owed and finds joy in the owing, not before it.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

The first pastoral use is against the two evasions the rule names in one breath. To the respectable congregation that thinks “we don’t harm anyone” sufficient, the second rule says: not-harming is the first rule, and you have stopped at half the gospel; the desire of salvation, if real, does not merely refrain — it acts. To the sensitive believer waiting to feel called, moved, or adequate before serving, the rule says — with Wesley’s boot on the idea — do the good now; the freedom you are waiting for is on the far side of the obedience, not its precondition. Most congregations need to hear exactly one of these two; the pastor’s task is to know which.

The second use is the means-of-grace reframe, which changes everything about how service is preached. If works of mercy are a means of grace, then the visit to the sick, the meal to the hungry, the presence in the prison are not the church’s output after it has been fed; they are part of how the church is fed. A congregation taught this stops asking “do we have the spiritual energy to serve?” and starts expecting the service to be where the energy is given. That is not a motivational trick; it is Wesley’s settled theology, and it is the second rule’s deepest pastoral gift.

The third use is the universals, kept honest by the first rule’s ghost. “Every possible sort, to all men” is to be preached as it reads, with the realism fences (“after their power,” “as far as possible”) protecting the conscience from despair and refusing it the loophole. The pastoral discipline is to let the rule press outward — past the near and the grateful — while never letting “do good” become the public program that quietly replaces the prayer, the Scripture, and the Supper of the rule that comes next.

Further Reading

• Galatians 6:9–10 — “as we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men”
• Matthew 25:31–46 — the works of mercy as done to Christ
• Matthew 5:13–16 — salt and light; the active religion Wesley expounds
• James 2:14–17 — faith and works of mercy
• John Wesley, Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse IV — the assault on solitary religion and the quietist excuse
• John Wesley, On Visiting the Sick; The Good Steward — works of mercy as a means of grace and a stewardship
• John Wesley’s sermon on the means of grace, with the piety/mercy distinction — see [[general-rules/third-rule-the-ordinances-of-god]]
• Rebekah Miles and the Methodist social-witness tradition (the 1908 Social Creed) — the rule read forward
• The negative rule this completes: [[general-rules/first-rule-do-no-harm]]
• The particulars of this rule: [[general-rules/doing-good-to-bodies-and-souls]]