The use of "prudential" in John Wesley

Though not every last one of the following is, the idea was to find every occurrence relevant to the concept of "the prudential means of grace" in what is currently searchable (the 19th-century Jackson edition of the Works, the 1909-1916/1938 Curnock edition of the Journal (no relevant hits that are non-duplicative), the 1931 Telford edition of the Letters, etc. (this will all, of course, need to be re-done upon the completion of The Wesley Works Digitization Project)).

• 1731 Jun 11:  "prudential means" (Letter to his mother; Curnock 8, 270; Jackson 12, 11; Telford 1, 86)
• [1731] Jul 19:  "prudential means" (Letter to Mrs. Pendarves; Telford 1, 93)
• 1731 Nov 17:  "prudential means" (Letter to his brother Samuel; Jackson 12, 21; Telford 1, 114) 
• 1732 Feb 28;  "prudential means" (Letter to his mother; Jackson 12, 14)
• 1733 Aug 17:  "prudential means" (Letter to his mother; Jackson 12, 11; Telford 1, 138)
• 1733 Aug 17:  "prudential means" (Letter to his mother; Jackson 12, 14)
• 1734/1735 Feb 14:  "prudential rules" (Letter to his mother; Telford 8, 269) 
• 1735 Jan 13:  "prudential means" (Letter to his mother; Telford 1, 179)
• 1736 Nov 23:  "prudential rules" (Letter to his brother Samuel; Jackson 12, 27; Telford 1, 209)
• 1737 Mar 29:  "prudential rules" (Letter to Mrs. Chapman; Curnock 8, 308; Jackson 12, 45; Telford 1, 220)
• 1748:  "prudential regulation" (Letter to Vincent Perronet; Telford 2, 297)
• 1748:  "prudential helps" (Letter to Vincent Perronet; Telford 2, 298)
• 1748:  "merely prudential, not essential, not of divine institution" (Letter to Vincent Perronet; Telford 2, 298)
• 1748:  "prudential helps" (Letter to Vincent Perronet; Telford 2, 302) 
• 1749 [1744-1747]:  "either instituted or prudential" (Minutes of several conversations; Jackson 8, 310)
• 1749 [1744-1747]:  "prudential means"  (Minutes of several conversations; Jackson 8, 311)
• 1749:  "prudential regulation" (Plain account of the people called Methodists; Jackson 8, 244)
• 1749:  "prudential helps", "merely prudential, not essential, not of divine institution" (Plain account of the people called Methodists; Jackson 8, 245)
• 1749:  "prudential helps" (Plain account of the people called Methodists; Jackson 8, 250)
• 1749:  "prudential rules" (Short address to the inhabitants of Ireland; Jackson 9, 169)
• 1750 May 22:  "prudential helps" (Letter to Gilbert Boyce; Telford 3, 36) 
• 1758:  "prudential) rule" (Reasons against a separation from the Church of England; Jackson 13, 217)
• 1781 Mar 13:  "by a prudent mixture of reading, meditation, prayer, and conversation. . . . exercise. . . .  And . . . that truly Christian diversion, visiting the poor" (Letter to Elizabeth Morgan; Telford 7, 51)
• 1786:  "prudent means" (List of poetical works; Jackson 14, 326) 
• 1786:  "prudential regulations" (Thoughts upon Methodism; Jackson 13, 246)
• 1786 Jun 14:  "prudential helps" (Letter to Henry Brooke; Telford 7, 333) 

"Amid billows of mysteries have I fallen"

"This Jesus has made so many symbols | that I have fallen into the sea of them" (trans. Sebastian Brock, The harp of the Spirit:  eighteen poems of St. Ephrem, 2nd enlarged ed., Studies supplementary to Sobernost 4 (Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, 1983), 16).

"This Jesus has multiplied for us mysteries. Amid billows of mysteries have I fallen, which show me in parable the life of the dead, in all mysteries and in all types" (trans. Stopford, NPNF, 2nd ser., vol. 13 (1898), p. 202; CCEL).

"Hic Jesus multiplicavit nobis typos, incidi in mare typorum, qui mihi parabolizant resurrectionem mortuorum omnimodis figuris et imaginibus" (trans. Bickell, Carmina Nisibena (1866), 157; Syriac, 70 ff.).

ܗܢܐ ܝܫܘܥ ܐܣܓܝ ܠܢ ܪ̈ܙܐ
ܒܝܬ ܓ̈ܠܠܐ ܕܐܪ̈ܙܘܗܝ ܢܦܠܬ ܕܐܡܬܠ ܠܢ ܚܝܬ ܡ̈ܝܬܐ
ܒܟܠ ܪ̈ܙܝܢ ܘܒܟܠ ܛܘ̈ܦܗܝܢ

     St. Ephraem the Syrian, Carmina Nisibena 39.17.  Original Syriac (which I do not read, and, so, may well have mangled):  CSCO 240, Scriptores Syri 102.2, ed. Beck (1963), p. 27 l. 25-p. 28 l. 1.  Selectable.

"a fractious movement"

      "Others draw conclusions that set them apart from Lutherans and Zwinglians as well as at odds with Anabaptists[, not to mention, of course, the Catholic Church].  The lay nobleman Caspar Schenckfeld begins as a follower of Luther and helps to establish the Reformation in Liegnitz, Silesia, east of Saxony.  But the Eucharistic controversy leads him to his own sacramentarian understanding of the Lord’s Supper.  He believes Christians should refrain from receiving the Eucharist until a visible moral improvement in their lives makes them worthy of the sacrament.  Schwenckfeld stops receiving the Eucharistic bread in early 1526 and, as it turns out, never receives it again before his death in 1561.  Schenckfeld and others, collectively known as 'spiritualists,' simply take an either-or distinction between matter and spirit and the interior nature of faith to their logical extremes.  In various ways, they emerge from the evangelical movement of the 1520s as yet another expression that shows the diversity of the early Reformation."

     Brad Gregory, Rebel in the ranks:  Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the conflicts that continue to shape our world (New York:  HarperOne, 2017), chap. 3, A fractious movement.

'Orthodox' means orthodox in life as well as faith

"The Creed does not speak of the struggle of faithful living. It is for this reason that genetic orthodoxy, unlike creedal [(for many a merely aesthetic)] orthodoxy, has something to say about the contours of the Christian life, and what it says is traditional: male, female, nuptial union, sex, children, families, death, and generations—all under God’s dominion. Genetic orthodoxy learns from Genesis that faithful living is not stable and serene. It is filled with pitfalls, yearnings, failures, sterilities, confusions, unexpected joys, regrets, wandering loves, and the rest. There is a line, but it is one that wavers and wobbles, sometimes frays and dissolves, only to be wrenched back into its clarity of direction."

     Ephraim Radner, "Creedal orthodoxy won't save us," First things no. 366 (October 2026):  75 (76-75).  Image:  Wycliffe College.

Barba-Kay on "automation’s ineluctable need for [a] virtue ethics" that might call automation itself into question

"While the story of Stanislav Petrov – the Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who likely saved the world from nuclear holocaust in 1983 – is often trotted out to advocate for the view that human beings ought to be kept 'in the loop' of automated weapons’ responses, I argue that the episode in fact belies this reading. By attending more closely to the features of this event – to Petrov’s professional background, to his familiarity with the warning system, and to his decisions to defy his protocol – it becomes clear that Petrov was not seamlessly working 'in his loop,' but reassessing it entirely. I claim that this exhibits a paradox intrinsic to all automated loops: namely, that their optimum function in fact rests on unforeseen human interventions that cannot be reliably codified ex ante, that is, that good judgment cannot simply be 'programmed into' their protocols. This dependence, moreover, reveals automation’s ineluctable need for virtue ethics – not in the usual sense (whereby ethics deliberates about, say, possible damages and loss of life), but in the sense that ethical judgment, rightly understood, entails the reassessment of all of the conditions surrounding a decision, including whether a protocol should be followed at all."

     Antón Barba-Kay. "There Is No Ethical Automation: Stanislav Petrov’s Ordeal by Protocol." Journal of Military Ethics 23, no. 3/4 (2024):  Abstract (277–288).  I have yet to read the article itself.  Image.

Altars and relics

"Thus in the train of the impious heresy of the defamers of Christians, many other impieties appeared.  Just as those heretics removed the sight of venerable icons from the church, they also abandoned other customs, which should now be renewed and which should be in vigour in virtue of both written and unwritten legislation.  Therefore we decree that in venerable churches [(σεπτοὶ ναοὶ | venerabilis templa)] consecrated without relics of the holy martyrs, the installation of relics should take place along with the usual prayers.  And if in future any bishop is found out consecrating a church without relics, let him be deposed as someone who has flouted the ecclesiastical traditions."

     Second Council of Nicaea (787), Canon 7, as trans. Tanner (vol. 1, p. 144-145).

     1596:  "In 1596 Church law required a sepulcher for every altar" (NCE2 1, 315 < Bliley, Altars according to the Code of Canon Law (1927), 41 < Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII (below)).    

     Corpus juris canonici 

     Code of canon law (Codex juris canonici (1982- )), Can. 1237 §2:  "The ancient tradition of placing relics of martyrs or other saints under a fixed altar is to be preserved, according to the norms given in the liturgical books [(Antiqua traditio Martyrum aliorumve Sanctorum reliquias sub altari fixo condendi servetur, iuxta normas in libris liturgicis traditas)]."

     Image:  Enclosure of the relics, "Consecration of the altar [(Consecratio altaris)]," Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII (Rome:  [1596] 1595), p. 359 (pp. 322- ).

Simone Weil on (indirectly) pacifism (or, at least, the French pacifists of the 1930s)

     "Indirect mechanism of a crime.
     "My criminal error, before 1939, concerning pacifist circles and their activity, was due to incapacity caused by the devastation of physical pain for so many years.  Being in no state to observe their action at close quarters by meeting and talking with them, I failed to detect their propensity for treason.  But I could easily have reflected that the state I was in disqualified me from serious responsibilities and made it obligatory to refrain from them.  What prevented me from seeing this was the sin of laziness, the temptation of inertia.  I desired so intensely to refrain from that sort of responsibility that I dared not consider impartially the legitimate reasons for refraining; like a seminary pupil tortured by violent carnal desires who dare not so much as look at a woman.
     "I had so often succumbed to laziness and intertia in small things that when I was faced with something important I felt I must blindly resist the temptation of inertia—instead of coolly examining the possible advantages and disadvantages of action or inaction.
     "Thus the weakness of not writing a letter, or not making my bed one day when I felt tired, by accumulating in the course of many days, finally led me to the sin of criminal negligence towards my country."

          Simone Weil, "London notebook, 1943," in First and last notebooks, trans. Richard Rees, (London:  Oxford University Press, 1970), 345-346.