"The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon"
About this Quote
There is a sly cruelty in Walpole’s phrasing: “love” isn’t admiration so much as appetite. The “big sinners” are not merely souls in peril; they’re prize specimens, “proper subjects” for religious labor, like raw material that makes the Methodist project look effective. Walpole compresses a whole critique of evangelical publicity into one cool sentence: some forms of piety don’t just seek redemption, they seek demonstrable results.
The key is the clinical, almost workshop-like diction. “Subjects” turns people into case studies. “Work upon” suggests treatment, manipulation, even a kind of social engineering. Walpole isn’t arguing that sin is attractive in itself; he’s implying that conspicuous vice is strategically useful. A notorious drunk, rake, or gambler who “turns” makes a better advertisement than a mildly wayward parishioner. Big sin yields big conversion narratives, and big narratives draw crowds.
Context matters. In mid-18th-century England, Methodism (and the wider revivalist surge around Wesley and Whitefield) unnerved the polite Anglican establishment. It was loud, emotional, and aggressively mission-minded, often aimed at people outside genteel respectability. Walpole, the urbane connoisseur and political letter-writer, writes from the vantage point of a class that mistrusted religious enthusiasm as tasteless at best and destabilizing at worst. His jab is less theological than cultural: he frames Methodist zeal as a kind of moral theater, where the sinner’s fall and rescue become the showpiece that justifies the show.
The key is the clinical, almost workshop-like diction. “Subjects” turns people into case studies. “Work upon” suggests treatment, manipulation, even a kind of social engineering. Walpole isn’t arguing that sin is attractive in itself; he’s implying that conspicuous vice is strategically useful. A notorious drunk, rake, or gambler who “turns” makes a better advertisement than a mildly wayward parishioner. Big sin yields big conversion narratives, and big narratives draw crowds.
Context matters. In mid-18th-century England, Methodism (and the wider revivalist surge around Wesley and Whitefield) unnerved the polite Anglican establishment. It was loud, emotional, and aggressively mission-minded, often aimed at people outside genteel respectability. Walpole, the urbane connoisseur and political letter-writer, writes from the vantage point of a class that mistrusted religious enthusiasm as tasteless at best and destabilizing at worst. His jab is less theological than cultural: he frames Methodist zeal as a kind of moral theater, where the sinner’s fall and rescue become the showpiece that justifies the show.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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