Save All You Can

This is an ad in an official publication from the General Board of Pensions and Health Benefits.
I weep for our church.

I've written to the Board of Pensions in the past, inquiring whether similar statements were intended as an inside joke. They appreciated my "interpretation" of Wesley, but stated that they believed their use of his words was consistent with his intent. I don't know if they were lying, or were truly that blinded by wealth, but Wesley's "Save all you can" is quite clear: he means we should not spend money on things that are not necessary. Decide for yourself: does he mean "stop wasting money," or "put it in the bank?" The following is excerpted from Sermon 50: The Use of Money:

"Save all you can."

Do not waste any part of [your income] merely in gratifying the desires of the flesh; in procuring the pleasures of sense of whatever kind; particularly, in enlarging the pleasure of tasting. There is a regular, reputable kind of sensuality, an elegant epicureanism, which cannot be maintained without considerable expense. Cut off all this expense!  

Do not waste any part of so precious a talent merely in gratifying the desire of the eye by superfluous or expensive apparel, or by needless ornaments. Waste no part of it in curiously adorning your houses; in superfluous or expensive furniture; in costly pictures, painting, gilding, books; in elegant rather than useful gardens.

Lay out nothing to gratify the pride of life. Men are expensive in diet, or apparel, or furniture, not barely to please their appetite, but their vanity too. So long as thou art "clothed in purple and fine linen, and farest sumptuously" every day, no doubt many will applaud thy elegance of taste, thy generosity and hospitality. But do not buy their applause so dear. Rather be content with the honour that cometh from God.

Who would expend anything in gratifying these desires if he considered that to gratify them is to increase them? Nothing can be more certain than this: Daily experience shows, the more they are indulged, they increase the more. Whenever, therefore, you expend anything to please your taste or other senses, you pay so much for sensuality. When you lay out money to please your eye, you give so much for an increase of curiosity, -- for a stronger attachment to these pleasures which perish in the using. While you are purchasing anything which men use to applaud, you are purchasing more vanity. Had you not then enough of vanity, sensuality, curiosity before? Was there need of any addition? And would you pay for it, too? What manner of wisdom is this? Would not the literally throwing your money into the sea be a less mischievous folly?

And why should you throw away money upon your children, any more than upon yourself, in delicate food, in gay or costly apparel, in superfluities of any kind? Why should you purchase for them more pride or lust, more vanity, or foolish and hurtful desires? They do not want any more; they have enough already; nature has made ample provision for them: Why should you be at farther expense to increase their temptations and snares, and to pierce them through with more sorrows?

[I have shortened the text liberally, without the use of ellipses. The cuts do not impact the meaning of what remains.]

What do you think?

Is Wesley off his rocker? Is he commending some kind of outdated asceticism, or is there wisdom in his claim that we are buying nothing but increased temptation?