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Title: The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, Volume I (of 3): Founder of the Methodists
Author: Tyerman, L. (Luke)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, Volume I (of 3): Founder of the Methodists" ***
REV. JOHN WESLEY, VOLUME I (OF 3) ***
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. All
other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.
[Illustration: JOHN WESLEY, M.A.
AGED FORTY.
From a scarce Engraving published in 1743.
Engraved by J. Cochran.]
THE
LIFE AND TIMES
OF THE
REV. JOHN WESLEY, M.A.,
Founder of the Methodists.
BY THE
REV. L. TYERMAN,
AUTHOR OF “THE LIFE AND TIMES OF REV. S. WESLEY, M.A.,”
(_Father of the Revds. J. and C. Wesley_).
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1872.
PREFACE.
Six Lives of Wesley have been already published, besides sketches
almost innumerable. What then justifies the present writer in
publishing another?
Hampson’s, ready for the press when Wesley died, is extremely meagre,
and was the work of an angry writer. Coke and Moore’s, issued in 1792,
was a hasty publication, written _currente calamo_, to get possession
of the market; and, like most things done in haste, was exceedingly
imperfect. Whitehead’s, dated 1793-6, was composed in the midst of
disgraceful contentions, and was tinged with party feeling. Southey’s,
printed in 1820, has literary charms; but, unintentionally, is full
of errors, and, for want of dates and chronological exactitude, is
extremely confusing. Moore’s, published in 1824, is the fullest
and most reliable; but, to a great extent, it is a mere reprint of
Whitehead’s, given to the public about thirty years previously.
Watson’s, issued in 1831, was not intended to supersede larger
publications, but was “contracted within moderate limits, and” avowedly
“prepared with special reference to general readers.”
These are the chief Lives of Wesley. Smaller ones are too numerous to
be mentioned; and, besides that, they are not _lives_, but _sketches_.
The publications of Hampson, of Coke and Moore, of Whitehead, and
of Moore, have long been out of print. Two Lives are still on
sale,—Southey’s and Watson’s; but the former is defective in details,
and is incorrect and misleading; and the latter, as already stated, was
never meant to occupy the place of a larger work.
It has long been confessed that a Life of Wesley, worthy of the man,
is a desideratum. Hampson, Coke, Moore, and Whitehead used, with a
sparing hand, the materials which were already accessible to all, and
added a few original papers, for the preservation of which every one
feels grateful. Southey acknowledges that he “had no private sources
of information”; and, in the list of books from which his materials
were chiefly taken, we find nothing but what is in the hands of most
Methodist students. Watson says, he had “the advantage of consulting
unpublished papers”; but it is not injustice to Watson, to say that
very few of these “unpublished papers” were embodied in his book.
This is not ill natured depreciation of previous biographers, all of
whom I revere, and wish to honour. But any ordinary reader, who will
take the trouble, may easily perceive, that the Lives of Wesley that
have been published, during the last seventy-six years, have contained
no additional information worth naming.
In this interval, Wesley has yearly been growing in historic fame,
until he is now, among all parties,—Churchmen, Methodists and
Dissenters, papists, protestants and infidels, statesmen, philosophers
and men of letters,—one of the greatest and most interesting studies
of the age. The world wishes to know something more respecting the
man, who, under God, was the means of bringing about the greatest
reformation of modern times. Since the publications of Whitehead,
Coke and Moore—his literary executors—innumerable letters and other
manuscripts have come to light; but no subsequent biographer has used
them. Besides, in the magazines, newspapers, broadsheets, pamphlets,
tracts, and songs, published during Wesley’s lifetime, there is a mine
of biographical material incalculably rich; but, hitherto, no one has
taken the trouble to delve and to explore it.
Ought this apathy and negligence to continue longer? Is it right to
keep the world, the church, and especially the Methodists, in ignorance
of what exists concerning one of the most remarkable men that ever
lived? I think not; and, hence, as no one else attempted it, I have
done my best to collect these scattered facts, and to give them to the
public in the following volumes.
For seventeen years, materials have been accumulating in my hands.
My own mass of original manuscripts is large. Thousands of Methodist
letters have been lent to me. Hundreds, almost thousands, of
publications, issued in Wesley’s lifetime, and bearing on the great
Methodist movement, have been consulted. Many of Wesley’s letters,
hitherto published only in periodicals, or in scarce books, have been
used; and not a few that, up to the present, have never yet appeared
in print. To mention all who have rendered me generous assistance is
almost impossible; but I cannot deny myself the pleasure of naming the
late Rev. Joseph Entwisle, Mr. Joseph Miller, of Newcastle, Mr. George
Stevenson, of Paternoster Row, and last, but not least, the Rev. Elijah
Hoole, D.D., for the ready access he gave me to the collection of
manuscripts in the Wesleyan Mission House.
My greatest difficulty has been, not the want of materials, but that
of making selections, and of giving in a condensed form all that I
thought important. Nothing, likely to be of general interest, has been
withheld. Nothing, derogatory to the subject of these memoirs, has been
kept back. Whatever else the work may be, it is _honest_.
I have tried to make Wesley his own biographer. I have not attempted
what may be called the _philosophy_ of Wesley’s life. I leave that to
others. As a rule, intelligent readers wish only to be possessed of
facts. They can form their own conclusions; and care but little about
the opinions of those by whom the facts are collected and narrated.
The temptation to moralise has oft been great; but I have tried to
practise self denial. Wesley was not a _designing_ man: cunning he had
none: he was a man of one idea: his sole aim was to save souls. This
was the philosophy of his life. All his actions had reference to this.
He had no preconceived plans; and, hence, it is needless to speculate
about his motives. The man is best known by what he _did_; not by what
philosophers may suspect he _thought_. Holding these opinions, my one
object has been to collect, collate, and register unvarnished facts;
and I hope I have not altogether failed.
Much that is false, or erroneous, concerning Wesley, has been
published; and it would have been an easy task to have refuted not a
few of the statements which even Methodists as well as others have
been accustomed to receive without gainsaying; but I had no room for
this. Besides, I had no wish to assume the part of a controversialist.
Comparison will show, that, in several instances, I differ from
previous biographers; but I would rather that the reader should
discover this for himself, than that I should state it. It may savour
of unpardonable temerity to disagree with the distinguished men who
have gone before me; but, if attacked, I am prepared to defend the
ground that I have taken. To avoid encumbering the margin, I have
omitted thousands of references; but I have them, and can give them, if
required.
The work has been arduous; but it has been a work of love. I have not
done what I wished, but what I could. A more literary and philosophic
writer might have been employed; but no labour has been spared in
pursuit of facts, and there has been no tampering with honour and
honesty in stating them.
The Portrait inserted in Vol. I. is taken from an exceedingly scarce
engraving, published in 1743, and made from a painting by J. Williams.
It is more than probable that this was the first likeness of Wesley
ever taken.
I only add, that I hope the reader will find the general Index at the
end of Vol. III. to be accurate and useful.
L. TYERMAN.
CLAPHAM PARK,
_July 5th, 1870_.
GENERAL CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
Methodism, its Greatness—Christianity during the first two
centuries—Lutheran Reformation—Statistics of “_Wesleyan_”
Methodism—Welsh Calvinistic Methodists—Countess of Huntingdon’s
Connexion—Methodist New Connexion—Band Room Methodists—Primitive
Methodists—Bible Christians—Primitive Methodists in Ireland—United
Methodist Free Churches—Wesleyan Reform Union—Other Methodist
Bodies—Methodists in America—Other Churches benefited by
Methodism—Sunday Schools—Bible Society—London and Church Missionary
Societies—Tract Societies—Dispensaries—Strangers’ Friend
Society—Chapels—Newspapers—An immense Organisation, and its Results 1-13
CHAPTER I.
WESLEY AT HOME, AT SCHOOL, AND AT COLLEGE.
1703-1725.
Wesley’s Birth—The Wesley Family—Fire at Epworth—Teaching
of Wesley’s Mother—Wesley’s Seriousness—Wesley at the
Charterhouse—Ambition—Backsliding—Ghosts—Original Letter—Wesley at
Oxford—A thankful Janitor—Wesley Ill and in Debt—Original Letters—Dr.
Cheyne—Original Letters—Wesley wishes to become a Minister—Letters
respecting this—Wesley finds his _first religious_ Friend—Thomas à
Kempis and Jeremy Taylor—Wesley begins his Journal—Turning point in
Wesley’s history—Original Letter—Other Letters 15-41
CHAPTER II.
WESLEY’S ORDINATION, ETC.
1725-1729.
State of England—Dr. Potter—Wesley and Voltaire—Wesley’s First Sermon—A
Funeral Sermon—Elected Fellow of Lincoln College—Letter from his
Father—Letters to his Brother Samuel—At Epworth and Wroote—Writing
Poetry and Hymns—Elected Greek Lecturer—His _first_ Convert—Robert
Kirkham—Courtship—William Law—Methodist Doctrines—The Mystics—Wesley
becomes M.A.—Gets rid of unprofitable Friends—Plan of Studies—Becomes
his father’s Curate—Ordained a Priest—Wroote—Wesley recalled to Oxford
42-59
CHAPTER III.
OXFORD METHODISM, ETC.
1729-1735.
Distinguished Men—National Immorality—Methodism needed—Infidelity at
Oxford—First Methodists at Oxford—Their Daily Life—Nicknames—Gambold on
Wesley—A Starving Girl—Early Rising—Earnest Piety—Wesley has the offer
of a Curacy—His Correspondence with Mary Granville—A Query—Wesley’s
Walk to Epworth—Methodist Sacramentarian Theory—Letter from Mr.
Clayton—Methodism attacked in _Fogg’s Weekly Journal_—First printed
Defence of Methodism—Wesley’s Sermon before the University—First
Publication—Female Methodists at Oxford—High Churchism—Wesley
urged to become his father’s Successor—Correspondence respecting
this—Wesley’s last Letter from his Father—Application for Epworth
Rectory—Whitefield—Wesley’s Publications 60-107
CHAPTER IV.
MISSION TO GEORGIA.
1735-1737.
Dispersion of Oxford Methodists—James Hutton—Dr.
Burton—Oglethorpe—Emigrants to Georgia—Saltzburghers—Other
Georgian Emigrants—America in 1735—Wesley’s Reasons for going to
Georgia—Letter to his Brother Samuel—Fellow Voyagers—Daily Life on
Shipboard—Detention at Cowes—Covenant in the Isle of Wight—Ingham
on the Moravians—The Voyage—Savannah—Indians of Georgia—Spangenberg
meets Wesley—Tomo-Chichi—Wesley on the Moravians—Begins his Ministry
in Georgia—A large Parish—C. Wesley and Ingham in hot water—Wesley
and Delamotte at Frederica—C. Wesley returns to England—Original
Letters to Wesley from Richard Morgan, Sir John Thorold, and William
Chapman—Wesley on the Mystics—Delamotte’s School—Ingham’s Return
to England—Wesley on Missionaries—Oglethorpe in Trouble—Original
Letters to Wesley—Wesley’s cheerful Religion—Life at Savannah—A Bad
Woman—Wesley goes Barefoot—Whitefield thinks of becoming Bishop—Wesley
wants Helpers—Thomas Causton—Miss Hopkey—Unfriendly Rumours—Extracts
from Wesley’s unpublished Journal—Proposed Marriage—High Churchism—An
Excommunication—Wesley Arrested—Letter to Mrs. Williamson—Extracts
from Wesley’s private Journal—List of Grievances—Further Facts
from Wesley’s manuscript Journal—Findings of the Jury—Wesley
Superseded—Immense Labours—Great Excitement in Savannah—Wesley’s
Farewell Sermons—Departure—In a Swamp—Companions—Sets sail for
England—Storms encountered—Wesley on Conversion, Faith, etc.—Wesley’s
Mission to Georgia not a Failure 108-170
CHAPTER V.
WESLEY IN TRANSITION.
1738.
Whitefield goes to Georgia—He returns to England—Crime
and Criminals—Wesley’s Labours in 1738—Wesley _almost a
Christian_—Doctrines which Wesley was taught by Bohler—When and
how was Wesley converted?—Peter Bohler—Wesley in heaviness—His
Sermon on “Salvation by Faith”—Doctrines which gave birth
to Methodism—Wesley in search of Truth—A petulant Letter to
William Law—Further Correspondence—Moravian Follies—Mrs. Hutton
and her Lodgers—Correspondence with Samuel Wesley—Strange
Confessions—Wesley in a Labyrinth—He becomes a member of the
Moravian Society—Rules of Fetter Lane Society—Wesley goes to
Germany—Watteville—Cologne—Marienborn—Wesley, under Zinzendorf’s
management, turns gardener—Herrnhuth—Christian David—Experiences of
Herrnhuthers—Their Daily Life—Wesley returns to London—Letters to
the Herrnhuthers and Zinzendorf—Wesley and Bishop Gibson—William
Warburton—First Sermons against the Methodists—Wesley’s Rules for Band
Societies—His first Hymn-Book 171-211
PART II.
1739.
London in 1739—Moorfields—Metropolitan Depravity—Provincial
ditto—Religious Revival in New England—Howel Harris and the Revival
in Wales—Great Religious Movement in Scotland—Wesley shut out of
Churches—Unpublished Letter from Wesley to Whitefield—A _Fracas_ at St.
Margaret’s, Westminster—Whitefield begins Out-door Preaching—Remarkable
Lovefeast in Fetter Lane—A Conference at Islington—Haziness—Interviews
with Bishops—Wesley’s Labours in London—Answers to Prayer—Original
Letter from Whitefield to Wesley—Wesley becomes an Out-door
Preacher—Sermons preached by Wesley in 1739—Reasons assigned
for Out-door Preaching—Methodist Congregations—“Beau” Nash and
Wesley—Persecution—The _Scots Magazine_—Rev. Ralph Skerrett,
D.D.—Rev. John Wilder, M.A.—Rev. Charles Wheatley, M.A.—Rev.
Henry Stebbing, D.D.—Rev. Joseph Trapp, D.D.—Rev. Tristam Land,
M.A.—Whitefield Abused—Rev. Josiah Tucker—Bishop Gibson—Whitefield’s
Reply to Gibson—Wesley and the Bishop of Bristol—Another Attack on
Whitefield—The _Weekly Miscellany_—“The Methodists, a Burlesque
Poem”—Rev. James Bate, M.A.—Doddridge on the Methodists—Rev.
Joseph Williams, of Kidderminster, and C. Wesley—“Religious
Societies”—Strange Scenes at Bristol, Kingswood, and London—Whitefield
respecting them—C. Wesley Condemns them—Rev. Ralph Erskine and others,
concerning them—Wesley’s Opinion—Kingswood—Kingswood School—First
Methodist Chapel Built—The London Foundery—John Cennick, Methodism’s
first Lay Preacher—Lay Preaching—Partly unpublished Letter from
Whitefield to Wesley—Moravian Heresies—First Methodist Society
Founded—Adventures—Differences between Wesley and the Clergy—Wesley and
his Mother—Death of Wesley’s Brother, Samuel—Wesley’s Publications in
1739 213-291
1740.
Wesley Robbed—Visit to the Thieves—Strange Occurrences at
Bristol—Happy Deaths—The Wesleys at Bristol and Kingswood—Philip
Henry Molther—Letters by Molther and James Hutton—Work done by
the Moravians—Hutton attacks Wesley—Wesley and the Moravians—Rev.
George Stonehouse—Original Letter from Ingham to Wesley—Moravian
Disputes—Wesley Expelled from Moravian Pulpits—Wesley’s Letter to
the Herrnhuthers—Another Bone of Contention—Unpublished Letter
from Whitefield to Wesley—Calvinian Correspondence—Wesley’s Sermon
on “Free Grace”—Pamphlets for and against it—Howel Harris on
Calvinism—Whitefield’s Answer to “Free Grace”—Whitefield and Wesley
separate—Anti-Methodist Publications—Thomas Whiston, A.B.—Rev.
Zachary Grey, LL.D.—Aquila Smyth—The _Weekly Miscellany_—Rev.
Alexander Garden—“The Expounder Expounded”—“The Imposture of Methodism
Displayed”—Other Publications—Dr. Daniel Waterland—Μεθοδεια—Brutal
Treatment—Wesley’s Success and Activity—First Watch-night
Meeting—Wesley’s Publications in 1740 292-335
1741.
Whitefield Itinerating—C. Wesley and the Moravians—Wesley among the
Moravians in the Midland Counties—Interview with Zinzendorf—Lady
Huntingdon and C. Wesley—Methodism’s first Martyr—Whitefield in
Trouble—Wesley and John Cennick—The first Methodist Schism—The first
Methodist Newspaper—Wesley’s Calvinistic Concessions—Attempted
Reunion—Wesley and his Societies—Methodist Visitors—Methodist
Tickets—Triumphant Deaths—Persecution—The _Scots Magazine_—The
_Gentleman’s Magazine_—The _Weekly Miscellany_—Proposed Methodist
Edifice on Blackheath—Horrible Outrages—Wesley Preaches before
Oxford University—Seriously Ill—Pamphlets against Methodism—William
Fleetwood—Joseph Hart—Arthur Bedford, M.A.—Wesley’s
Publications in 1741 336-368
1742.
Wesley’s Defence of his Lay Preachers—Whitefield Preaching in
Moorfields—Wesley and Whitefield Reunited—Bitter Attacks on Whitefield
in Scotland—Rev. Henry Piers—Formation of Methodist Classes—Wesley’s
first Visit to the North—Miss Cooper—Wesley at Bristol—Newcastle
on Tyne in 1742—Wesley Preaching there—At Epworth—Wesley and John
Whitelamb—Death of Wesley’s Mother—Charles Caspar Graves—C. Wesley
forms a Methodist Society at Newcastle—Wesley’s “Orphan House”—Dross
mixed with Gold—Persecution—Wesley’s Publications in 1742—Methodist
Singing 369-400
1743.
Incidents in Wesley’s Travels—Organisation of Calvinistic
Methodists—Newcastle Circuit—Comedy turned into Tragedy—Wesley
repelled from the Lord’s Supper—A Magdalen at Grimsby—Terrible
Riots in Staffordshire—“Honest Munchin”—Cornwall—C. Wesley at St.
Ives—A Trine Conference proposed—Wesley Pastoralizing—Two more
London Chapels taken—Methodist Stewards—Methodist Income—Letter
from Wesley to his Sister Emily—Persecutions—Wesley to a northern
Pamphleteer—Rev. John Andrews, M.A.—“A fine Picture of Enthusiasm”—“The
Methodist Unmasked”—Rules of the Methodist Societies—“Thoughts on
Marriage”—“Instructions for Children”—“Earnest Appeal” 401-436
1744.
Whitefield’s Labours—Threatened French Invasion—Methodist
Loyalty—Troubles—First Methodist Conference—Wesley’s Last
Sermon before the Oxford University—Dr. Kennicott on Wesley—Cornish
Persecution—Bishop Gibson attacks the Methodists—The
Rev. Thomas Church’s “Expostulatory Letter”—Foul Foamings
of a “Gentleman of Pembroke College”—Bishop of Lichfield’s
“Charge against Enthusiasm”—Presentment at Brecon Assizes—A
Three Months’ Journey—Scene in Laneast Church—Strange and
stirring Incidents—Wesley’s Lay Preachers—Christian Perfection—Rules
of Band Societies—Wesley’s Publications in 1744—Wesley
on Revivals of Religion 437-469
1745.
Persecution in Cornwall—Persecution in other places—Rev. John Maud,
M.A.—The _Craftsman_—Rev. Dr. Stebbing—Dr. Zachary Grey again—The
Moravians publicly disown Wesley—Rev. Thomas Church, A.M.—Wesley on
the Moravians—William Cudworth—A Rough Journey—Wesley’s Manifesto
defining his relationship to Church and State—A Popish Priest becomes
Wesley’s Guest—Methodism in Osmotherley—A Cornish Termagant—Terrible
National Excitement—Panic at Newcastle—Wesley’s Letter to the
Mayor of Newcastle—Troops on Newcastle Moor—Wesley preaching to
Soldiers—Wesley’s High Churchism—Conference of 1745—Wesley’s
Publications in 1745—Wesley on the Sacrament, the Sabbath, Swearing,
Drunkenness, etc.—Wesley unawares becomes Rich 470-505
1746.
Whitefield ranging in American Woods—C. Wesley jubilant in
Labour and Danger—John Nelson at Nottingham—Lord King makes
Wesley a Dissenter—Wesley attends the Conference of the
Calvinistic Methodists—Vincent Perronet—A Ten Days’ Ride—Wesley
accused of Falsehood—Methodist Preachers—Books to be read by
them—Antinomianism—Settlement of Methodist Chapels—Wesley forms
a “Tea”-total Society—Twelve young men in Wales—Wesley opens a
Dispensary—Conference of 1746—An Autobiographical Hymn—Wesley’s
Publications in 1746 506-534
1747.
Letter from Whitefield to Wesley on Union—Howel Harris—Joseph
Williams—Thomas Adams—James Relly—Herbert Jenkins—John
Edwards—Persecution at Devizes—Wesley going North—Grace Murray—Jeannie
Keith—Methodism’s first “Theological Institution”—Wesley coming
South—William Darney’s Societies—Methodism begun in Manchester—John
and Alice Crosse—Methodism at Northwich—Rev. R. T. Bateman—Wesley’s
“Poor House”—Wesley’s Foundery School—Wesley’s Lending Society—Wesley’s
huge Income—Conference of 1747—Wesley in Cornwall—Methodism begun
in Ireland—Swaddlers—Poor Lodgings—Irish Hymn-Book—Westley Hall’s
Infamy—Wesley’s Publications in 1747 535-564
INTRODUCTION.
_METHODISM: ITS GREATNESS._
IS it not a truth that Methodism is the greatest fact in the history of
the church of Christ? Methodism has now existed one hundred and thirty
years. Is there any other system that has spread itself so widely in an
equal period? We doubt it.
In the first two centuries of the Christian era, during a great part
of which men were blessed with plenary inspiration, and miracles were
wrought, the Christian religion sprung up in Judæa, Samaria, and
Galilee. Churches were raised at Antioch, in the beautiful isle of
Cyprus, in the neighbouring provinces of Pamphylia, and Pisidia, and
Lycaonia, and Galatia, and Phrygia, and, in fact, throughout Asia Minor
in general. Berea, Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, and other
cities in Greece, were visited with the light of truth. Christianity
then spread through a large portion of other parts of the Roman empire,
and reached as far as even Lyons in France.
This was marvellous success; but, as it respects geographical extent,
the spread of Methodism is more marvellous. The Roman empire embraced
the whole of the places above mentioned. It extended three thousand
miles in length and two thousand miles in breadth, and comprised the
most fertile and best cultivated part of the known world. Its limits
were the Atlantic on the west; the Rhine and Danube on the north;
the Euphrates on the east; and the deserts of Arabia and Africa on
the south. This was a vast area; but, compared with that over which
Methodism has spread itself during the last hundred and thirty years,
it is insignificantly small. If Methodism does not exist in Palestine,
Asia Minor, Arabia, Greece, or Egypt, it exists in Britain, France,
Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and
Africa: and, passing to other regions which the Romans never trod,
it has long since entered India and Ceylon; it has already won its
triumphs in the flowery land of the Chinese; it has a vast multitude of
adherents in Australia, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean; in the
West Indies its converts are numbered by tens of thousands; while in
America it has diffused its blessings from the most remote settlements
of Canada in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south, and from
Nova Scotia in the east to California in the west.
“See how great a flame aspires,
Kindled by a spark of grace;
Jesu’s love the nations fires,
Sets the kingdoms on a blaze.”
Take another epoch of the church’s history—the Reformation, begun by
Luther, in the year 1517. This immense revival of truth and godliness,
in the midst of a corrupted church, established itself in many parts
of the German empire, where it continues to the present day. It was
propagated in Sweden by one of Luther’s disciples, Olaus Petri. In
Denmark, it was spread by Martin Reinard and Carlostadt. In France,
it found a patroness in Margaret, Queen of Navarre. In Switzerland,
John Calvin became famous as one of its great apostles. It made
considerable progress in Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland. In the
Netherlands, upwards of a hundred thousand persons were cruelly put to
death because of their embracing it. In all the provinces of Italy,
but more especially in the territories of Venice, Tuscany, and Naples,
great numbers of people, of all ranks, were led by it to express an
aversion to the Papal yoke. In Spain, not a few embraced it, and even
Charles V. himself is presumed to have died a Protestant. In England,
Henry VIII. unintentionally helped it forward by usurping the chair of
church supremacy, hitherto occupied by his holiness the Pope; while
his only son, King Edward VI., was its brightest ornament, and, in
some respects, its most effectual support. In Ireland, George Brown,
Archbishop of Dublin, pulled down images, destroyed relics, and purged
the churches within his diocese from superstitious rites. While in
Scotland, John Knox, a disciple of Calvin, launched his thunders
against the Vatican, until he shook it to its base; and, at last,
Queen Elizabeth, by an army, put an end to Popery in the whole of the
Caledonian kingdom.
This was a glorious and wide-spread work, the blessed results of which
will be felt to the latest generations. But compare it with Methodism,
and say which, in the same number of years, made the greater progress,
and established itself in the widest extent of country. It is no
disparagement to the Protestant Reformation to affirm that, in this
respect, Methodism is immensely its superior.
Look at this religious system as it now exists. The “Methodist,” or
parent “Conference,” employs in Great Britain and Ireland 1782 regular
ministers. Besides these, there were, in 1864, in England only, 11,804
lay preachers, preaching 8754 sermons every sabbath-day. In the same
year, the number of preaching places in England only, was 6718, and
the number of sermons preached weekly, by ministers and lay preachers
combined, was 13,852.[1] To these must be added the lay preachers,
preaching places, etc., in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Shetland, and the
Channel Islands. The number of church members in Great Britain and
Ireland is 365,285, with 21,223 on trial; and, calculating that the
hearers are three times as numerous as the church members, there are
considerably more than a million persons in the United Kingdom who are
attendants upon the religious services of the _parent_ Conference of
“the people called Methodists.” Some idea of their chapel and school
property may be formed from the fact that, during the last seven years,
there has been expended, in Great Britain only, in new erections and
in reducing debts on existing buildings, £1,672,541; and, towards
that amount of expenditure, there has been actually raised and paid
(exclusive of all Connexional collections, loans, and grants) the sum
of £1,284,498. During the ten years, from 1859 to 1868 inclusive, there
was raised for the support of the foreign missions of the Connexion
£1,408,235; and, if to this there be added the amount of the Jubilee
Fund, we find more than a million and a half sterling contributed
during the decade for the sustenance and extension of the Methodist
work in foreign lands. The missions now referred to are carried on
in Ireland, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Gibraltar, India,
Ceylon, China, South and West Africa, the West Indies, Canada, Eastern
British America, Australia, and Polynesia. In these distant places,
the committee having the management of the missions employ 3798 paid
agents, including 994 who are regularly ordained, and are wholly
engaged in the work of the Christian ministry. Besides these, there are
about 20,000 agents of the Society (as lay preachers, etc.), who are
rendering important service gratuitously; while the number of church
members is 154,187, and the number of attendants upon the religious
services more than half a million. Space prevents a reference to the
other institutions and funds of British Methodism, except to add that,
besides 174,721 children in the mission schools, the parent Connexion
has in Great Britain 698 day-schools, efficiently conducted by 1532
certificated, assistant, and pupil teachers, and containing 119,070
scholars; also 5328 Sunday-schools, containing 601,801 scholars, taught
by 103,441 persons who render their services gratuitously; and that the
total number of publications printed and issued by the English Book
Committee only, during the year ending June 1866, was four millions
one hundred and twenty-two thousand eight hundred, of which nearly two
millions were periodicals, and more than a quarter of a million were
hymn-books.
These statistics are significant of great facts. At a moderate
computation, there are at least two millions of persons regularly
worshipping in the chapels, schools, etc., of the original body of “the
people called Methodists.”
Leaving what is sometimes called the “Old Connexion,” we proceed to
glance at the _branches_ of the Methodist family.
_The Welsh Calvinistic Methodists._—The societies of this section of
Methodists were founded by Howel Harris, an early friend and companion
of Wesley and Whitefield, and principally exist in Wales. At the census
of 1851, they had 828 chapels, capable of accommodating about 212,000
persons, and which had cost nearly a million sterling. In 1853 they
had 207 ministers, 234 lay preachers, and 58,577 church members. _The
Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion._—In 1748 Whitefield became the
chaplain of the Countess of Huntingdon, who, by his advice, assumed
a kind of leadership over his followers, erected chapels, engaged
ministers or laymen to officiate in them, and afterwards founded
a college at Trevecca, in Wales, for the education of Calvinistic
preachers. At her death, the college was transferred to Cheshunt, and
there it still exists. Although the name “Connexion” continues to be
used, the Congregational polity is practically adopted; and, of late
years, several of the congregations have become, in name as well as
virtually, Congregational churches. The number of chapels, mentioned in
the census of 1851, as belonging to this Connexion, was 109, containing
accommodation for 38,727 persons, and the attendance on the census
Sunday was 19,159.[2]
_The Methodist New Connexion_ was formed in the year 1797; the
principal, if not only difference, between it and the parent body,
being the different degrees of power allowed in each communion to the
laity. At the Conference of 1869, the New Connexion had, at home and
abroad, 260 ministers, and 35,706 church members.
_The Band Room Methodists_ had their origin in Manchester, in 1806.
Their chief leaders were John and E. Broadhurst, Holland Hoole,
Nathaniel Williamson, and Thomas Painter. Of the earnestness of these
godly men there can be no question; but, as in the case of many who
have been called revivalists, their zeal was often boisterous and
irregular, and sometimes obstinate. Their meetings were chiefly held in
what was known as the Band Room, in North Street. Their chief faults
were admitting persons to band meetings without showing their society
tickets; having penitent benches and noisy prayer-meetings; holding
cottage services; and, lastly and especially, acting independently
of leaders’ meetings. The Band Room Methodists still exist; but are
now called, “The United Free Gospel Churches.” They hold annual
conferences; have fifty-nine churches, chiefly in Lancashire and
Yorkshire; and differ from the parent Connexion, not in doctrines, but
in having no paid ministers.
_The Primitive Methodists_ sprang up in Staffordshire in 1810. The
doctrines they teach are precisely similar to those of the original
Connexion. At the conference of 1868 they had, at home and abroad, 943
ministers, about 14,000 lay preachers, nearly 10,000 classleaders,
3360 connexional chapels, 2963 rented chapels and rooms for religious
worship, 3282 Sunday-schools, above 40,000 Sunday-school teachers,
258,857 Sunday-school scholars, and 161,229 church members.
_The Bible Christians_, sometimes called “Bryanites,” were founded
by William O’Bryan, a Wesleyan local preacher, in Cornwall, in 1815.
They principally exist in Cornwall and the West of England, but also
have mission stations in the Channel Islands, the United States,
Canada, Prince Edward’s Island, and Australia. Like the parent
Connexion they have class-meetings, circuits, district-meetings, and
a Conference. Their statistics, for 1869, are about 700 chapels and
300 other preaching places, 254 ministers, 1759 lay preachers, 44,221
Sunday-school scholars, 8913 Sunday-school teachers, and 26,241 full
and accredited church members.
_The Primitive Methodists in Ireland_ seceded from the parent body in
1817. At that time the Irish Conference, at the urgent request of many
of the Irish societies, agreed that the ministers in full connection
should administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, in
circuits making proper application to that effect. This occasioned
great commotion. A number of leaders and local preachers assembled at
Clones, in the beginning of 1817, and formed themselves into a separate
Connexion, the only difference between them and their quondam friends
being, that their ministers should not administer baptism and the
Lord’s supper, but should leave their societies at perfect liberty to
partake of those sacraments in the churches to which they respectively
belonged. In 1816 there were in Ireland 28,542 members of society;
but in two years, and in consequence of this senseless schism, that
number was reduced to 19,052. The new body took the name of Primitive
Methodists, and still continue a separated people on the one principle
already mentioned. In 1861, they had in Ireland, 61 circuits, 85
ministers, and 14,247 members of society.
_The United Methodist Free Churches_ are an amalgamation of three
different secessions from the original Connexion, 1. The Protestant
Methodists, who were formed into a distinct body in 1828, when upwards
of 1000 members separated from the Leeds societies, because of the
proceedings of the special district-meeting convened to settle the
disputes arising out of the introduction of an organ into Brunswick
Chapel. 2. The Wesleyan Methodist Association, which sprung out of
the controversy in 1834, concerning the then proposed Theological
Institution. 3. The Reformers, who were expelled, or who seceded,
during the terrible agitation which occurred in 1849. These amalgamated
bodies have, in 1869, ministers, 312; lay preachers, 3445; chapels,
1228; Sunday-scholars, 152,315; church members, 68,062.
_The Wesleyan Reform Union_ consists of those Reformers of 1849 who
refused to amalgamate with the United Methodist Free Churches. In
1868, the Union had 20 ministers, 608 lay preachers, 276 chapels and
preaching places, 580 classleaders, 18,475 Sunday-scholars, and 9393
church members.
The above comprise all the Methodist bodies now existing in the United
Kingdom. Some others have occasionally sprung up, such as the _Tent
Methodists_, the _Independent Methodists_, etc.; but they are now
either extinct or incorporated with other churches. Not reckoning the
Band Room Methodists, nor the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, and
making a moderate _estimate_ of the Sunday-school scholars belonging
to the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists and to the Primitive Methodists in
Ireland, we arrive at the following results.
┌─────────────────────────┬────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────────┐
│ │ │ Number of │ Number of │
│ │ Number of │ church │ Sunday-school │
│ Denomination. │ ministers. │ members. │ scholars. │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Wesleyan Methodists │ 3157 │ 557,995 │ 776,522 │
│ Welsh Calvinistic ditto │ 207 │ 58,577 │ 80,000 about│
│ New Connexion ditto │ 260 │ 35,706 │ 50,000 about│
│ Primitive ditto │ 943 │ 161,229 │ 258,857 │
│ Ditto (Ireland) ditto │ 85 │ 14,247 │ 20,000 about│
│ Bible Christians │ 254 │ 26,241 │ 44,221 │
│ United Methodist Free │ │ │ │
│ Churches │ 312 │ 68,062 │ 152,315 │
│ Wesleyan Reform Union │ 20 │ 9,393 │ 18,475 │
│ ├────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Totals │ 5238 │ 931,450 │ 1,400,390 │
└─────────────────────────┴────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────────┘
Marvellous, however, as the success of Methodism has been in the
United Kingdom, it has been far more marvellous in the United States.
There it holds and preaches precisely the same doctrines as are held
and preached in England. There, as here, it is intensely loyal; and,
during the late terrific war, sent a hundred thousand white, and
seventy-five thousand, black troops into the field of battle under the
loyal flag. It is dotting the whole of the vast American continent with
its church edifices, and has perhaps the most powerful religious press
of which the world can boast. Let the reader ponder the significance
of the following statistics for the year 1869, taken from the _New
York Christian Advocate_, and referring exclusively to _the Methodist
Episcopal Church North_.
Bishops 10
Travelling preachers 8,830
Local preachers 10,340
Total ministerial force 19,179
Lay members in full connection 1,114,712
Lay members on probation 184,226
Total lay membership 1,298,938
Number of church edifices 12,048
Number of parsonages 3,963
Value of church edifices $47,253,067
Value of parsonages $6,862,230
Total value of churches and parsonages $54,115,297
Number of Sunday-schools 16,393
Number of officers and teachers 184,596
Number of scholars 1,179,984
In connection with its schools, there are libraries containing more
than two millions and a half of books. Its Book Concern has about
thirty cylinder power-presses in constant operation; and about 2000
different books on its catalogue, besides tracts, etc., and 14
periodicals, with an aggregate circulation of more than twelve millions
every year. It also has a great Missionary Society, with prosperous
missions in China, India, Africa, Bulgaria, Germany, Switzerland,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and other places.
The returns for _the Methodist Episcopal Church South_, in 1869, are
2581 ministers, 3951 lay preachers, and 535,040 church members.
_The Methodist Episcopal Church_ in Canada has 216 ministers, 224 lay
preachers, and 20,000 members.
Besides the above, there are other Transatlantic Methodists, as:—1.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, which, in 1867, had 14
annual Conferences, 673 chapels, 509 travelling preachers, 727 local
preachers, 130,950 members, 33,134 Sunday-school scholars, and 40,716
volumes in Sunday-school libraries. 2. The Methodist Protestant Church,
with about 90,000 members. 3. The American Wesleyan Methodists, with
above 20,000 members. 4. The German Methodists, with 46,000 members.
5. Three or four smaller sects, which need no further notice. The
aggregate membership of these several Methodistic bodies may be fairly
estimated at about 300,000, and their ministers and preachers at 5000.
These are startling figures; put together in an abbreviated form, they
stand as follows:—
┌───────────────────────┬────────────────┬────────────┬───────────────┐
│ │ Ministers │ │ │
│ │ exclusive of │ Church │ Sunday-school │
│ │local preachers.│ members. │ scholars. │
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Great Britain, │ │ │ │
│ including Missions │ 5238 │ 931,450 │ 1,400,390 │
│ American Methodist │ │ │ │
│ Episcopal Church │ │ │ │
│ North │ 8840 │ 1,114,712 │ 1,179,984 │
│ Ditto South │ 2581 │ 535,040 │ say 500,000 │
│ Ditto Canada │ 216 │ 20,000 │ say 20,000 │
│ Other American │ │ │ │
│ Methodists │ 5000 │ 300,000 │ say 300,000 │
│ ├────────────────┼────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Totals │ 21,875 │ 2,901,202 │ 3,400,374 │
└───────────────────────┴────────────────┴────────────┴───────────────┘
Some of these figures are _estimated_ numbers, and are so given; the
others are statistics officially reported. Put the matter in another
form. Is it too much to calculate Methodist _hearers only_ at the rate
of twice the number of Methodist church members? If not, the estimated
result is as follows:
Church members throughout the world 2,901,202
Sunday scholars 3,400,373
Hearers only 5,802,404
─────────
Total 12,103,979
We thus make a total of more than twelve millions of persons receiving
Methodist instruction, and, from week to week, meeting together in
Methodist buildings for the purpose of worshipping Almighty God. The
statement is startling, but the statistics given entitle it to the
fullest consideration.
But rightly to estimate the results of Methodism during the last
hundred and thirty years, there are other facts to be remembered.
Who will deny, for instance, that Methodism has exercised a potent and
beneficial influence upon other churches: Episcopal, Presbyterian,
Independent, and Baptist churches have all been largely indebted
to Methodism, either directly or indirectly, for many of the best
ministers and agents they have ever had. It is a remarkable fact
that, during Wesley’s lifetime, of the 690 men who acted under him
as itinerant preachers, 249 relinquished the itinerant ministry.
These 249 _retirers_ included not a few of the most intelligent,
energetic, pious, and useful preachers that Wesley had. Some left him
on the ground of health; others began business, because as itinerant
preachers they were unable to support their wives and families; but a
large proportion became ordained ministers in other churches. In some
instances, the labours of these men, and their brother Methodists,
led to marvellous results. To give but one example,—David Taylor,
originally a servant of Lady Huntingdon, was one of Wesley’s first
preachers, but afterwards left the work. Taylor, however, was the
means of converting Samuel Deacon, an agricultural labourer; and the
two combined were the instruments, in the hands of God, of raising up
a number of churches in Yorkshire and the midland counties, which,
in 1770, were organised into the New Connexion of General Baptists;
and that Connexion, seventy years afterwards, in 1840, comprised 113
churches, having 11,358 members, a foreign missionary society, and two
theological academies.[3]
_Sunday-schools_ are now an important appendage of every church, and
have been a benefit to millions of immortal souls; but it deserves to
be mentioned that Hannah Ball, a young Methodist lady, had a Methodist
Sunday-school at High Wycombe fourteen years before Robert Raikes
began his at Gloucester; and that Sophia Cooke, another Methodist,
who afterwards became the wife of Samuel Bradburn, was the first who
suggested to Raikes the Sunday-school idea, and actually marched with
him, at the head of his troop of ragged urchins, the first Sunday they
were taken to the parish church.
The first _British Bible Society_ that existed, “The Naval and
Military,” was projected by George Cussons, and organised by a small
number of his Methodist companions. The _London Missionary Society_
originated in an appeal from Melville Horne, who, for some years, was
one of Wesley’s itinerant preachers, and then became the successor
of Fletcher as vicar of Madeley. The _Church Missionary Society_ was
started by John Venn, the son of Henry Venn the Methodist clergyman.
The first _Tract Society_ was formed by John Wesley and Thomas Coke,
in 1782, seventeen years before the organisation of the present great
Religious Tract Society in Paternoster Row—a society, by the way,
which was instituted chiefly by Rowland Hill, and two or three other
Calvinistic Methodists. It is believed that the first _Dispensary_ that
the world ever had was founded by Wesley himself in connection with the
old Foundery, in Moorfields. The _Strangers’ Friend Society_, paying,
every year, from forty to fifty thousand visits to the sick poor of
London, and relieving them as far as possible, is an institution to
which Methodism gave birth in 1785.
_Building churches_ is one of the great features of the age.
Unfortunately, England has had no religious worship census since
1851; but even then, according to the tables of Horace Mann, Esq.,
Methodism had, in England and Wales only, 11,835 places of worship,
with 2,231,017 sittings. In America, according to the census of 1860,
Methodism nine years ago provided church accommodation for 6,259,799,
which was two and a quarter millions more than was provided by any
other church whatever.
The _public press_ is one of the most powerful institutions of the
day. England has four Methodist newspapers; Ireland, one; France,
one; Germany, one; India, one; China, one; Australia, two; Canada and
British America, five; and the United States about fifty.
Let the reader think of twelve millions of people at present enjoying
the benefits of Methodist instruction; let him think of Methodism’s
21,875 ordained ministers, and of its tens of thousands of lay
preachers; let him think of the immense amount of its church property,
and of the well-nigh countless number of its church publications;
let him think of millions of young people in its schools, and of its
missionary agents almost all the wide world over; let him think of its
incalculable influence upon other churches, and of the unsectarian
institutions to which it has given rise; and then let him say whether
the bold suggestion already made is not strictly true, viz., that
“_Methodism is the greatest fact in the history of the church of
Christ_.”
Here we have an immensely ramified church organisation, everywhere
preaching the same momentous doctrines, and aiming at the same great
purpose. A day never passes without numbers of its converts being
admitted into heaven; and without many a poor wayward wanderer being
brought by it into the fold of Christ on earth. Thousands of its
temples are daily open; and “prayer,” by its churches, in one quarter
of the globe or in another, is “made continually.” It has belted the
entire planet with its myriad agents, who—in English, French, Dutch,
German, and Italian; in the various dialects and tongues of Africa,
India, and China; and in the newly formed languages of the Feegee and
the Friendly Islands—are calling to the nations, “Ho, every one that
thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye,
buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without
price.”
In England, it has had much to do with the almost incredible changes
that have taken place in English society during the last hundred
years. In Ireland, with Popery so rampant, a people so poor, and
emigration so vast, it has some five or six hundred chapels, besides
having many hundreds of small congregations in cottages, court-houses,
market-places, and village-greens. In Australia, it has more church
sittings than any other Christian community, the Church of England not
excepted; and has, at least, one twelfth of the colonists attending its
places of religious worship. In America, it has become the dominant
popular faith of the country, with its standard planted in every
city, town, and almost every village of the land, and is building
chapels at the rate of nearly two every day.[4] In the early period
of its history, it had its fair share of persecution, and was, to an
extent sufficient one would think to satisfy its founders, pelted and
hooted by vulgar mobs, mistreated by magistrates and courts, reviled
by religionists, and assailed by swarms of pamphleteers; it has had
no national endowments, and has had no favour from parliamentary
legislation; it has had no assistance from the State, and has been
looked upon with supercilious contempt by what, in England, is called
“the Church;” and yet despite all this, there is hardly a nation where
its influence has not been felt; and instead of finding it maimed and
lame and injured by fighting its past battles and winning its past
victories; or weak and palsied and inactive on account of approaching
age, it has never been more vigorous, by the blessing of God, than it
is at present; and is putting into motion an amount of machinery the
ultimate results of which no man’s mind can grasp.
Is all this concerning Methodism strictly true? We believe it is, and
hence we believe that the life of Methodism’s founder is a subject well
worth knowing. Who was he? What was he? Who were his companions? When
and where and how did he pass his time? We will try to show.
THE LIFE AND TIMES
OF
THE REV. JOHN WESLEY, M.A.
CHAPTER I.
_WESLEY AT HOME, AT SCHOOL, AND AT COLLEGE._
1703-1725.
[Sidenote: 1703]
JOHN WESLEY was born at Epworth, in the county of Lincoln, on the 17th
of June, 1703,[5] and was the son of Samuel and Susannah Wesley, the
former being the learned, laborious, and godly rector of the Epworth
parish from about the year 1696 to his death in 1735. The Wesley family
consisted of nineteen children, but, of these, nine died in infancy.
The name of one of the dead infants was John, and the name of another
Benjamin; and when the subject of this biography was born, his mother
united the two names by calling him John Benjamin. Second names are of
little use, and are often troublesome, and probably for this reason
Wesley’s second name was one which he never used.[6]
When Wesley was born, Queen Anne was commencing the twelve years of
English sovereignty which some have regarded as the Augustan age of
English learning. War was raging on the continent, and, at home, an
embittered fight was being fought between fiery Churchmen and fierce
Dissenters. Anne warmly favoured the high church party; and to augment
Church livings, gave out of the royal income “the first-fruits and the
tenths,” amounting to £16,000 a year. While Wesley was yet an infant,
the Whigs raised the cry of “the Church in danger,” but Parliament
passed a resolution that the cry was unfounded, and that those who gave
it birth were enemies to the queen, the Church, and the kingdom. Five
years after this, Dr. Sacheverell preached his firebrand sermon in St.
Paul’s Cathedral, and threw the nation into a state of unparalleled
excitement, the ultimate result of which was, the Tories became more
powerful than ever; and Queen Anne, in meeting her Parliament in 1710,
no longer condescended to use the word _toleration_ in reference to
Dissenters, but spoke of _indulgence_ to be allowed “to scrupulous
consciences,” while, after a long continued struggle, the high church
party succeeded in passing the obnoxious bill against occasional
conformity. All this occurred during Wesley’s childhood.
At the time of Wesley’s birth, his brother Samuel was a sprightly
boy, thirteen years of age, and a few months afterwards was sent to
Westminster School, where he became distinguished for his scholarship
and genius, and soon obtained a host of literary friends, from Lord
Oxford, the Mecænas of his age, down to Addison, Atterbury, Pope, and
Prior. Emilia Wesley, so gifted and so beautiful, was a year younger
than Samuel, and was developing her exquisite sensibility and taste
under the mental and moral cultivation of her mother. The ill-fated
Susannah was a frolicsome child, eight years old. Mary, already
deformed by an early sickness and the carelessness of her nurse, had
arrived at the age of seven, and was fast becoming the favourite of
her father’s family. The almost unequalled Mehetabel was six, and was
so advanced in learning that two years afterwards she read the New
Testament in Greek. Anne was yet an infant; and Martha, Charles, and
Keziah were still unborn.
In the year of Wesley’s nativity, his father was writing his “History
of the Old and New Testament, in Verse;” and also had the pleasure
or mortification (we hardly know which) of having his pamphlet on
Dissenting academies surreptitiously published by a man to whom it had
long before been sent as a private letter. Before Wesley was three
years old his father was ruthlessly thrust into gaol for debt; and
before he was six the parsonage was destroyed by fire. When the fire
occurred, his brother Charles was an infant not two months old, and he,
with John, three of their sisters, and their nurse, were all in the
same room, and fast asleep. Being aroused, the nurse seized Charles,
and bid the others follow. The three sisters did as they were bidden,
but John was left sleeping. The venerable rector counted heads, and
found John was wanting. At the same instant, a cry was heard. The
frantic father tried to ascend the burning stairs, but found it to be
impossible. He then dropped upon his knees in the blazing hall, and
despairing of the rescue of his child, commended him to God. Meanwhile
John had mounted a chest and was standing at the bedroom window. Quick
as thought, one man placed himself against the wall, and another stood
upon his shoulders, and just a moment before the roof fell in with a
fearful crash the child was rescued through the window, and safely
“plucked as a brand from the burning” house.
Our information respecting Wesley’s childhood is extremely limited. If
we strip off all the luxuriant verbiage in which imaginative writers
have indulged, the naked facts are the following.
Wesley, like all the other members of his father’s family, was indebted
for his elementary education to his mother. The principles upon which
she acted were unique. When the child was one year old, he was taught
to fear the rod, and, if he cried at all, to cry in softened tones.
Wesley long afterwards, in his sermon on the education of children,
enforces his mother’s practice, urging parents never to give a child
a thing for which it cries, on the ground that to do so would be a
recompence for crying, and he would certainly cry again.
Another of Mrs. Wesley’s principles of action was to limit her children
to three meals a day. Eating and drinking between meals was strictly
prohibited. All the children were washed and put to bed by eight
o’clock, and, on no account, was a servant to sit by a child till it
fell asleep.
The whole of the Wesley children were taught the Lord’s Prayer as
soon as they could speak, and repeated it every morning and every
night. Rudeness was never seen amongst them; and on no account were
they allowed to call each other by their proper names without the
addition of brother or sister, as the case might be. Six hours a day
were spent at school; and loud talking, playing, and running into the
yard, garden, or street, without permission, was rigorously forbidden.
None of them, except Kezzy, was taught to read till five years old,
and then only a single day was allowed wherein to learn the letters of
the alphabet, great and small—a task which all of them accomplished
except Mary and Anne, who were a day and a half before they knew them
perfectly. Psalms were sung every morning when school was opened, and
also every night when the duties of the day were ended. In addition to
all this, at the commencement and close of every day, each of the elder
children took one of the younger and read the Psalms appointed for the
day and a chapter in the Bible, after which they severally went to
their private devotions.
Mrs. Wesley, assisted by her husband, seems to have been the sole
instructor of her daughters, and also of her sons, until the latter
were sent to school in London; and never was there a family of children
who did their teacher greater credit.
From early childhood, John was remarkable for his sober and studious
disposition, and seemed to feel himself answerable to his reason and
his conscience for everything he did. He would do nothing without first
reflecting on its fitness and propriety. If asked, out of the common
way of meals, to have, for instance, a piece of bread or fruit, he
would answer with the coolest unconcern, “I thank you; I will think
of it.” To argue about a thing seemed instinctive, and was carried to
such a length that on one occasion his father almost chid him, saying,
“Child, you think to carry everything by dint of argument; but you
will find how little is ever done in the world by close reasoning.”
“I profess, sweetheart,” said the rector in a pet to Mrs. Wesley, “I
profess, sweetheart, I think our Jack would not attend to the most
pressing necessities of nature, unless he could give a reason for
it.”[7]
With all this meditative reasoning, there was mixed devotion. It is a
remarkable fact, scarce paralleled, that such was his consistency of
conduct, that his father admitted him to the communion table when he
was only eight years old;[8] and he himself informs us that, until he
was about the age of ten, he had not sinned away that “washing of the
Holy Ghost,” which he received in baptism.[9]
Between the age of eight and nine the small-pox attacked him; but he
bore the terrible affliction with manly and Christian fortitude. At the
time, his father was in London, and his mother writing him remarks:
“Jack has borne his disease bravely, like a man, and indeed like a
Christian, without complaint.”[10]
This is all that is known respecting Wesley during his childhood years
at Epworth. Imagination might conjure up his early thinkings, passions,
and attachments, the localities he loved to visit, and the sports, fun,
and frolic in which he occasionally indulged; but history, on such
subjects, is entirely silent; and for want of its honest statements we
look at him in the grave and sober aspect in which facts present him.
While yet a child, only ten and a half years old, Wesley passed
from under the tutelage of his accomplished mother, and became a
pupil at the Charterhouse, London. For his son’s admission into this
distinguished school, the Epworth rector was indebted to the friendly
services of the Duke of Buckingham, at that time the Lord Chamberlain
of the royal household.[11]
The privilege was great, and, to the day of his death, John Wesley
loved the place of his early education, and was accustomed to walk
through its courts and grounds once every year. He was not without
hardships; but he bore them bravely. Among other acts of cruelty, the
elder boys were accustomed, in addition to their own share of animal
food, to take by force that which was apportioned to the younger
scholars; and, in consequence of this, for a considerable part of the
five years that young Wesley spent at the Charterhouse, the only solid
food he got was bread. There was one thing, however, which contributed
to his general flow of health,—namely, his invariably carrying out a
strict command which his father gave him, to run round the Charterhouse
garden three times every morning. It is good for a man “to bear the
yoke in his youth,” and Wesley learned, as a boy, to suffer wrongfully
with a cheerful fortitude, and to submit to the cruel exactions of his
elder tyrants without acquiring either the cringing of a slave or a
despot’s imperious temper.
Wesley entered the school as the poor child of an impoverished parish
priest, and had to endure wrongs and insults neither few nor small;
but, though he was only sixteen years of age when he left, he had, by
his energy of character, his unconquerable patience, his assiduity, and
his progress in learning, acquired a high position among his fellows.
An old Methodist pamphlet[12] relates an anecdote, to the effect that
the Rev. A. Tooke,[13] master of the school, was struck with the fact
that, though Wesley was remarkably advanced in his studies, yet he
constantly associated with the inferior classes, and was accustomed
to harangue a number of the smaller boys surrounding him. On one
occasion Tooke broke in upon him in the midst of an oration, and
interrupted him, by desiring him to follow him into a private room.
Wesley reluctantly obeyed, and the master, addressing him, asked how
it was that he was so often found among the boys of the lower forms,
and sought not the company of the bigger boys, who were his equals? To
which the young orator replied, “Better to rule in hell than to serve
in heaven.”
This story was given by “an old member of society,” on what he calls
“the most authentic authority,” for the purpose of showing that Wesley,
even as a boy, was ambitious. Be it so. What then? Is ambition always,
and under all circumstances, a thing to be denounced? Ambition is
widely different from vanity, a paltry passion of petty minds; neither
is it necessarily accompanied with the use of improper means to attain
its object. Ambition is common to the human species. There are but few
without it, and who are not desirous of distinguishing themselves in
the circle in which they live. You see the passion in the aristocratic
noble toiling after a distinction which he desires to win; and you
equally see it in the poorest mechanic, who strives to surround himself
with poor admirers, and who delights in the superiority which he
enjoys over those who are, in some respects, beneath him. Besides, as
a rule, a man’s ambition is always in correspondence with his other
tastes, and faculties, and powers. Dr. Johnson wisely remarks, that
“Providence seldom sends any into the world with an inclination to
attempt great things, who have not abilities likewise to perform them;”
and Addison, an equally thoughtful student of human nature, observes
that “Men of the greatest abilities are most fired with ambition; and,
on the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the least actuated by it.”
To account for this may be difficult, but none will deny its truth.
Perhaps the difference may be occasioned by a man’s consciousness of
his own capacities making him despair of attaining positions which
others reach; or perhaps, which is more likely still, Providence, in
the very framing of his mind, has freed him from a passion, which would
be useless to the world, and a torment to himself.
On such grounds, then, we are quite prepared to argue that, even
allowing the above anonymous story to be strictly true, and allowing
also that it proves that Wesley as a boy was animated with ambition,
there is nothing in it which, for a moment, detracts from Wesley’s
honour and honest fame.
We wish that this were the only thing to be alleged against him during
his Charterhouse career. Unfortunately there is another fact far more
serious; for Wesley, while at this seat of learning, lost the religion
which had marked his character from the days of infancy. He writes
concerning this period of his history: “Outward restraints being
removed, I was much more negligent than before, even of outward duties,
and almost continually guilty of outward sins, which I knew to be such,
though they were not scandalous in the eye of the world. However, I
still read the Scriptures, and said my prayers morning and evening.
And what I now hoped to be saved by was,—1. Not being so bad as other
people. 2. Having still a kindness for religion. And, 3. Reading the
Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers.”[14]
Terrible is the danger when a child leaves a pious home for a public
school. John Wesley entered the Charterhouse a saint, and left it a
sinner.
It was during his residence at this celebrated school, that the
mysterious and preternatural voices were heard in his father’s house.
The often told story need not be repeated; but there can be no question
that its influence upon himself was powerful and important. He took
the trouble of obtaining minute particulars from his mother, from his
four sisters, Emily, Mary, Susannah, and Anne, and from Robin Brown.
He likewise transcribed his father’s diary, containing an account of
the disturbances;[15] thereby showing the intense interest he felt
in the affair. In fact, it would seem that, from this period, Wesley
was a firm believer in ghosts and apparitions. In his twentieth year,
we find him writing to his mother, in the gravest manner possible,
concerning what he calls “one of the most unaccountable stories he
had ever heard;”—namely, that of a lad in Ireland, who ever and anon
made an involuntary pilgrimage through the aerial regions, and feasted
with demigods _in nubibus_. In the same letter, Wesley relates an
adventure of his own; for, while walking a few days previously in the
neighbourhood of Oxford, he had observed a forlorn looking house,
which he found was unoccupied by mortals because it was haunted
by ghosts. Wesley tells his mother that he purposes to visit this
forsaken dwelling, and to assure himself whether what he had heard was
true. He further relates that a Mr. Barnesley, and two other of his
fellow-students, had recently seen an apparition in a field adjoining
Oxford, and that it had since been ascertained that Barnesley’s
mother died in Ireland at the very moment when the spectre had been
witnessed.[16]
Thus, at this early period of his history, Wesley’s mind, wisely or
unwisely, superstitiously or otherwise, was full of the supernatural;
and to the calm judgment of his philosophic mother he submits his
facts for her opinion. Three weeks afterwards she wrote:[17]—
“DEAR JACKY,—The story of Mr. Barnesley has afforded me many
curious speculations. I do not doubt the fact; but I cannot
understand why these apparitions are permitted. If they were
allowed to speak to us, and we had strength to bear such
converse,—if they had commission to inform us of anything
relating to their invisible world that would be of any use to
us in this,—if they would instruct us how to avoid danger,
or put us in a way of being wiser and better, there would be
sense in it; but to appear for no end that we know of, unless
to frighten people almost out of their wits, seems altogether
unreasonable.”
This was not a solution of Wesley’s difficulty. It was rather making
mystery more mysterious. The young student was full of anxious inquiry.
Isaac Taylor thinks that the strange Epworth episode so laid open
Wesley’s faculty of belief, that ever after a right of way for the
supernatural was opened through his mind; and, to the end of life,
there was nothing so marvellous that it could not freely pass where
“Old Jeffrey” had passed before it. Taylor adds: “Wesley’s most
prominent infirmity was his wonder-loving credulity; from the beginning
to the end of his course this weakness ruled him.” Other opportunities
will occur of testing the truthfulness of Taylor’s statement; but
here it may be observed, that for young Wesley to have regarded the
noises at Epworth with indifference would have been irreligious and
irrational. A metaphysician, vain of his philosophic powers, like
Isaac Taylor, may “deal with occult folk, such as Jeffrey, huffingly
and disrespectfully;” and may pretend to “catch in the Epworth
ghost a glimpse of an idiotic creature” belonging to some order of
invisible beings “not more intelligent than apes or pigs,” and which,
by some “mischance, was thrown over its boundary, and obtained leave
to disport itself among things palpable, and went to the extent of
its tether in freaks of bootless mischief;” but, in broaching such a
theory, Isaac Taylor, wishing to be witty, makes himself ridiculous.
John Wesley believed the noises to be supernatural; and Southey, as
great an authority as Taylor, defends his belief; and argues that such
occurrences have a tendency to explode the fine-spun theories of men
who deny another state of being, and to bring them to the conclusion
that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in
their philosophy. We have little doubt that the Epworth noises deepened
and most powerfully increased Wesley’s convictions of the existence of
an unseen world; and, in this way, exercised an important influence
on the whole of his future life. His notion,[18] that the disturbance
was occasioned by a messenger of Satan, sent to buffet his father for
a rash vow alleged to have been made fifteen years before, has been
shown to be utterly unfounded;[19] but the impressions it produced, or
rather strengthened, respecting invisible realities, were of the utmost
consequence in moulding his character, and in making him one of the
most earnest preachers of the Christian’s creed that ever lived.
During Wesley’s residence at the Charterhouse, his brother Samuel was
the head usher of Westminster School; and in 1719, Wesley seems, for
a time, to have become his brother’s guest. Charles was now a pupil
under Samuel’s tuition; and the latter, writing to his father, says:
“My brother Jack, I can faithfully assure you, gives you no manner of
discouragement from breeding your third son a scholar. Jack is a brave
boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can.”[20]
In the following year, Wesley was elected to Christ Church, Oxford,
one of the noblest colleges in that illustrious seat of learning, and
here he continued until after his ordination in 1725. In reference
to this period, he writes: “I still said my prayers, both in public
and private; and read, with the Scriptures, several other books of
religion, especially comments on the New Testament. Yet I had not
all this while so much as a notion of inward holiness; nay, went
on habitually and, for the most part, very contentedly, in some or
other known sin; though with some intermission and short struggles,
especially before and after the holy communion, which I was obliged to
receive thrice a year.”[21]
Such was Wesley during the first five years he spent at Oxford. He
maintained the reputation for scholarship which he had acquired
at school; but there was no alteration in his moral and religious
character. He said his prayers and read good books, as perhaps
most Oxford students did; but, like others, he lived in sin, even
habitually, except about thrice a year, when he was compelled to
receive the sacrament. No doubt, like all the Wesley family, he was a
gay and sprightly companion, and full of wit and humour. He began to
amuse himself occasionally with writing verses, a specimen of which is
given by Dr. Whitehead and is reproduced by Joseph Nightingale. The
verses are six in number, and are merely the translation of a Latin
poem respecting a young lady to whom he gives the name of Cloe. As
Juno had a favourite peacock and Venus a favourite dove, so Cloe had a
favourite flea, whose bliss in being allowed to crawl over the young
lady’s person the poet makes it his business to describe. Henry Moore
is angry with Dr. Whitehead for having given the verses publicity; but
certainly without a cause. Had the piece been written by Wesley in
advanced life it might have deserved censure; but being written when he
was scarcely beyond his teens, it is only what a smart young fellow,
full of vivacity, might be expected to produce.
When Wesley went to Oxford his health was far from being vigorous and
robust. He was frequently troubled with bleeding at the nose. In a
letter to his mother, in 1723, he tells her that lately, while walking
in the country, he had bled so violently that he was almost choked,
nor could he at all abate the hæmorrhage till he stripped himself and
leaped into the river.
He also had to struggle with financial difficulty, and was not
unfrequently in debt. He sometimes had to borrow; and, more than
once, when requesting that his sisters would write to him, playfully
remarks, that, though he was “so poor, he would be able to spare the
postage for a letter now and then.” His friends were kind to him, and
his tutors were considerate. Soon after his entrance, his tutor, Mr.
Wigan, retired to one of his country livings, and was succeeded by Mr.
Sherman, who kindly told him that he would make his fees as low as
possible.[22] Of course he had the £40 per annum, which belonged to
him as a Charterhouse scholar; but this, with the utmost economy, was
hardly sufficient to meet all the expenses of a young Oxford student.
These financial embarrassments are often referred to in the subsequent
correspondence.
The following is from an unpublished letter, written by his mother.
“WROOTE, _August 19, 1724_.
“DEAR JACK,—I am uneasy because I have not heard from you. I
think you don’t do well to stand upon points, and to write only
letter for letter. Let me hear from you often, and inform me of
the state of your health, and whether you have any reasonable
hopes of being out of debt. I am most concerned for the good,
generous man that lent you ten pounds, and am ashamed to beg a
month or two longer, since he has been so kind as to grant us
so much time already. We were amused with your uncle’s coming
from India; but I suppose these fancies are laid aside. I wish
there had been anything in it, for then perhaps it would have
been in my power to have provided for you. But if all things
fail, I hope God will not forsake us. We have still His good
providence to depend on, which has a thousand expedients to
relieve us beyond our view.
“Dear Jack, be not discouraged; do your duty; keep close
to your studies, and hope for better days. Perhaps,
notwithstanding all, we shall pick up a few crumbs for you
before the end of the year.
“Dear Jacky, I beseech Almighty God to bless thee!
“SUSANNAH WESLEY.”
The following also, from another unpublished letter by his mother,
refers to the same subject.
“WROOTE, _September 10, 1724_.
“DEAR JACKY,—I am nothing glad that Mr.—— has paid himself out
of your exhibition; for though I cannot hope, I do not despair,
of my brother’s coming, or, at least, remembering me where he
is.
“The small-pox has been very mortal at Epworth most of this
summer. Our family have all had it except me, and I hope God
will preserve me from it.
“I heartily wish you were in orders, and could come and serve
as one of your father’s curates. Then I should see you often,
and could be more helpful to you than it is possible to be at
this distance.”
We subjoin an extract from another letter, written shortly after the
above, and for the first time published in the _Wesleyan Times_ of
January 29, 1866.
JOHN WESLEY TO HIS MOTHER.
“OXON, _November 1, 1724_.
“DEAR MOTHER,—We are most of us now very healthy at Oxford,
which may be in some measure owing to the frosty weather we
have had lately. Fruit is so very cheap that apples may be
had almost for fetching; and other things are both plentiful
and good. We have, indeed, something bad as well as good, for
a great many rogues are about the town, insomuch that it is
exceedingly unsafe to be out late at night. A gentleman of my
acquaintance, standing at the door of a coffee-house about
seven in the evening, had no sooner turned about, but his cap
and wig were snatched off his head, and, though he followed
the thief a great distance, he was unable to recover them. I
am pretty safe from such gentlemen; for unless they carried me
away, carcass and all, they would have but a poor purchase.
“The chief piece of news with us is concerning the famous Jack
Sheppard’s escape from Newgate, which is indeed as surprising
as most stories I have heard.
“I suppose you have seen the famous Dr. Cheyne’s ‘Book of
Health and Long Life,’ which is, as he says he expected, very
much cried down by the physicians. He refers almost everything
to temperance and exercise, and supports most things with
physical reasons. He entirely condemns eating anything salt
or high-seasoned, as also pork, fish, and stall-fed cattle;
and recommends for drink two pints of water and one of wine in
twenty-four hours, with eight ounces of animal, and twelve of
vegetable food in the same time. The book is chiefly directed
to studious and sedentary persons.
“I should have writ before now had I not had an unlucky cut
across my thumb, which almost jointed it, but is now nearly
cured. I should be exceedingly glad to keep a correspondence
with my sister Emily if she were willing, for I believe I have
not heard from her since I have been at Oxford. I have writ
once or twice to my sister Sukey too, but have not had an
answer either from her or my sister Hetty, from whom I have
more than once desired the Poem of the Dog. I should be glad to
hear how things go on at Wroote, which I now remember with more
pleasure than Epworth; so true it is, at least in me, that the
persons, not the place, make home so pleasant.
“The scantiness of my paper obliges me to conclude with begging
yours and my father’s blessing on
“Your dutiful son,
“For Mrs. Wesley, at Wroote, “JOHN WESLEY.”
“To be left at the Post-office, in Bawtry, Nottinghamshire.”
Dr. Cheyne, mentioned in the preceding letter, was educated at
Edinburgh, where his habits were temperate and sedentary; but,
proceeding to London, he associated with a number of young gentry,
to retain whose friendship it was necessary to indulge to the utmost
in table luxuries. The result was, Cheyne became nervous, scorbutic,
short-breathed, lethargic and listless; and was so enormously fat
as to be nearly thirty-three stones in weight. His life became an
intolerable burden, and, to cure himself, he adopted a milk and
vegetable diet, by means of which he recovered his strength, activity,
and cheerfulness. He became the author of several interesting works,
one of which was the book just noticed. Wesley, to a great extent,
adopted Cheyne’s prescription, and forty-six years after he read his
book at Oxford, wrote: “How marvellous are the ways of God! How has
He kept me even from a child! From ten to thirteen or fourteen, I had
little but bread to eat, and not great plenty of even that. I believe
this was so far from hurting me, that it laid the foundation of lasting
health. When I grew up, in consequence of reading Dr. Cheyne, I chose
to eat sparingly, and to drink water. This was another great means
of continuing my health, till I was about seven-and-twenty. I then
began spitting of blood, which continued several years. A warm climate
[Georgia] cured this. I was afterwards brought to the brink of death by
a fever; but it left me healthier than before. Eleven years after, I
was in the third stage of a consumption; in three months it pleased God
to remove this also. Since that I have known neither pain nor sickness,
and am now healthier than I was forty years ago.”[23] Cheyne became
one of Wesley’s favourites, and no wonder. After reading his “Natural
Method of Curing Diseases,” he designates it one of the most ingenious
books he had ever seen; but adds, “What epicure will ever regard it?
for the man talks against good eating and drinking!”[24] Cheyne died
in 1745, calmly giving up his soul to God, says Wesley, without any
struggle, either of body or mind.
Except the statement, that his _carcass_ was the only property he had,
Wesley makes not the least allusion, in the foregoing letter, to his
pecuniary embarrassments. Naturally enough, his mother was more anxious
than himself. Hence the following letter, hitherto unpublished, written
within a month afterwards.
“WROOTE, _November 24, 1724_.
“DEAR JACKY,—I have now three of your letters before me
unanswered. I take it very kindly that you write so often. I
am afraid of being chargeable, or I should miss few posts, it
being exceeding pleasant to me, in this solitude, to read your
letters, which, however, would be pleasing anywhere.
“Your disappointment, in not seeing us at Oxon, was not of such
consequence as mine in not meeting my brother in London; not
but your wonderful curiosities might excite a person of greater
faith than mine to travel to your museum to visit them. It is
almost a pity that somebody does not cut the wezand of that
keeper to cure his lying so enormously.
“I wish you would save all the money you can conveniently
spare, not to spend on a visit, but for a wiser and better
purpose,—to pay debts, and make yourself easy. I am not without
hope of meeting you next summer, if it please God to prolong
my mortal life. If you then be willing, and have time allowed
you to accompany me to Wroote, I will bear your charges, as God
shall enable me.
“I hope, at your leisure, you will oblige me with some more
verses on any, but rather on a religious subject.
“Dear Jack, I beseech Almighty God to bless you.
“SUSANNAH WESLEY.”
Mrs. Wesley’s brother, referred to in the foregoing letter, was in the
service of the East India Company; and, the public prints having stated
that he was returning to England in one of the company’s ships, Mrs.
Wesley proceeded to London to await his arrival, and to welcome him.
The information, however, was untrue, and both she and her son John
were doomed to a disappointment. Samuel, at the time, had a broken leg,
and had invited John to meet his mother at Westminster. John jocosely
congratulates Samuel, that, like the Dutch seaman who broke his leg by
a fall from the mainmast of his ship, he might thank God that he had
not broken his neck also; and then he adds that his mother’s letter
had made him weep for joy, for the two things he most wished for of
almost anything in the world, were again to see his mother, and to see
Westminster.[25]
Wesley was still in debt, a fact which gave his mother great anxiety.
His father also, as usual, was embarrassed, and yet, though offended
at his son’s want of thrift, did his utmost to afford him help. The
following are painfully interesting letters, and one of them is now for
the first time published—
“_January 5, 1725._
“DEAR SON,—Your brother will receive £5 for you next Saturday,
if Mr. S—— is paid the £10 he lent you; if not, I must go to
H——, but I promise you I shan’t forget that you are my son, if
you do not that I am
“Your loving father,
“SAMUEL WESLEY.”
“WROOTE, _January 26, 1725_.
“DEAR SON,—I am so well pleased with your decent behaviour,
or, at least, with your letters, that I hope I shall have no
occasion to remember any more some things that are past; and
since you have now for some time bit upon the bridle, I will
take care hereafter to put a little honey upon it, as oft as
I am able; but then it shall be of my own mere motion, as the
last £5 was, for I will bear no rivals in my kingdom.
“Your affectionate father,
“SAMUEL WESLEY.”[26]
Some will blame the writer for publishing such letters, on the ground
that they cast shadows on young Wesley’s character; but it ought to be
borne in mind that the work of a biographer is not to hide facts, but
to publish them. Why such an unwillingness to look at the specks as
well as sunshine in John Wesley’s history? Is it necessary, in order
to establish the high position which has been assigned to Wesley, that
the reader should be made to think that from first to last he was _sui
generis_, and altogether free from the infirmities, faults, and sins
of ordinary men? If it were, we would rather lower the position than
pervert the facts; but we maintain, that no such necessity exists.
When we say, that from the age of eleven to the age of twenty-two,
Wesley made no pretensions to be religious, and, except on rare
occasions, habitually lived in the practice of known sin, we only say
what is equally true of many of the greatest, wisest, and most godly
men that have ever lived. The fact is humiliating, and ought to be
deplored; but why hide it in one case more than in another? Wesley soon
became one of the holiest and most useful men living; but, except the
first ten years of his childhood, he was up to the age of twenty-two,
by his own confession, an habitual, if not profane and flagrant sinner;
and to his sin, he added the inconvenient and harassing infirmity of
his honest but imprudent father, and thoughtlessly contracted debts
greater than he had means to pay. His letters are without religious
sentiments, and his life was without a religious aim. We yield to no
man living in our high veneration of Wesley’s character; but, at the
same time, we cannot hide it from ourselves and others, that, being
human, he was frail, and, like all his fellows, had need to repent as
in dust and ashes, and to seek, through Christ, the forgiveness of his
sins and a change of heart.
But leaving this, we turn to another important matter. There is no
evidence to show, that, when Wesley went to Oxford, he intended or
wished to become a minister of the Established Church; it might be so,
but it might be otherwise. It is true that, by obtaining ordination, he
would become entitled to one of the Church livings at the disposal of
the Charterhouse governors; but Wesley was far too noble and too high
principled to seek admission into so sacred an office as the Christian
ministry merely to secure for himself a crust of bread. He might intend
to devote himself, like his brother Samuel, to tutorship; or he might
contemplate some other mode of maintenance. Certain it is, that it was
not until about the beginning of 1725, when he had been more than four
years at college, that he expressed a wish to become a minister of
Christ. The matter was properly submitted to his parents, and both gave
him the best advice they could.
His father told him that his principal motive for entering the ministry
must be, not, “as Eli’s sons, to eat a piece of bread,” but the glory
of God, and the good of men; and that, as a qualification for its
sacred functions, he ought to have a thorough knowledge of the Holy
Scriptures in their original languages. He was, however, not in haste
for his going into orders, and would give him further advice at some
future time.
On February 23, 1725, his mother wrote to him as follows:—
“DEAR JACKY,—The alteration of your temper has occasioned me
much speculation. I, who am apt to be sanguine, hope it may
proceed from the operations of God’s Holy Spirit, that by
taking away your relish of sensual enjoyments, He may prepare
and dispose your mind for a more serious and close application
to things of a more sublime and spiritual nature. If it be so,
happy are you if you cherish those dispositions, and now, in
good earnest, resolve to make religion the business of your
life; for, after all, that is the one thing that strictly
speaking is necessary, and all things else are comparatively
little to the purposes of life. I heartily wish you would now
enter upon a serious examination of yourself, that you may
know whether you have a reasonable hope of salvation; that is,
whether you are in a state of faith and repentance or not,
which you know are the conditions of the gospel covenant on
our part. If you are, the satisfaction of knowing it would
abundantly reward your pains; if not, you will find a more
reasonable occasion for tears than can be met with in a tragedy.
“Now I mention this, it calls to mind your letter to your
father about taking orders. I was much pleased with it, and
liked the proposal well; but it is an unhappiness almost
peculiar to our family, that your father and I seldom think
alike. I approve the disposition of your mind, and think the
sooner you are a deacon the better; because it may be an
inducement to greater application in the study of practical
divinity, which I humbly conceive is the best study for
candidates for orders. Mr. Wesley differs from me, and would
engage you, I believe, in critical learning, which, though
accidentally of use, is in nowise preferable to the other.
I earnestly pray God to avert that great evil from you of
engaging in trifling studies to the neglect of such as are
absolutely necessary. I dare advise nothing: God Almighty
direct and bless you! I have much to say, but cannot write you
more at present. I long to see you. We hear nothing of H——
which gives us some uneasiness. We have all writ, but can get
no answer. I wish all be well—Adieu!
“SUSANNAH WESLEY.”[27]
Three weeks after this, his father wrote to him, saying that he was now
inclined to his entering orders without delay, and exhorting him to
prayer and study in reference to such a step, promising that he would
struggle hard to obtain the money for the needful expenses.
Meanwhile, his sister Emilia wrote him a long letter, from which the
following extracts are taken:—
“WROOTE, _April 7, 1725_.
“DEAR BROTHER,—Whether you will be engaged before thirty, or
not, I cannot determine; but, if my advice be worth listening
to, never engage your affections before your worldly affairs
are in such a posture that you may marry soon. The contrary
practice has proved very pernicious in our family. I know you
are a young man encompassed with difficulties, and have passed
through many hardships already, and probably must through many
more before you are easy in the world; but, believe me, if ever
you come to suffer the torment of a hopeless love, all other
afflictions will seem small in comparison of this.
“I know not when we have had so good a year, both at Wroote and
at Epworth, as this year; but instead of saving anything to
clothe my sister or myself, we are just where we were. A noble
crop has almost all gone, beside Epworth living, to pay some
part of those infinite debts my father has run into, which are
so many, that were he to save £50 a year, he would not be clear
in the world this seven years. One thing I warn you of: let not
my giving you this account be any hindrance to your affairs. If
you want assistance in any case, my father is as able to give
it now as any time these last ten years; nor shall we be ever
the poorer for it.
“I have quite tired you now; pray be faithful to me. Let me
have one relation that I can trust. Never give a hint to any
one of aught I write to you; and continue to love your unhappy
but affectionate sister,
“EMILIA WESLEY.”[28]
Wesley now began to apply himself with diligence to the study of
divinity. He writes: “When I was about twenty-two, my father pressed
me to enter into holy orders. At the same time the providence of God
directing me to Kempis’s ‘Christian’s Pattern,’ I began to see that
true religion was seated in the heart, and that God’s law extended to
all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was, however, angry at
Kempis for being too strict; though I read him only in Dean Stanhope’s
translation. Yet I had frequently much sensible comfort in reading
him, such as I was an utter stranger to before. Meeting likewise with
a religious friend, which I never had till now, I began to alter
the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a new
life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I
communicated every week. I watched against all sin, whether in word or
deed. I began to aim at, and to pray for, inward holiness. So that now,
doing so much and living so good a life, I doubted not that I was a
good Christian.”[29]
What a confession! It was eleven years since Wesley left the parental
roof; but he never had a _religious friend_ till now. No wonder he had
gone astray.
Having written to his mother, stating some of the difficulties which
he had found in Kempis, she, on the 8th June, 1725, sent him a long
letter, which, however adapted to an enlightened Christian, was
useless, if not misleading, to an anxious inquirer not yet converted.
The entire letter is before us, containing, besides a large amount of
Christian casuistry, some family affairs of painful interest. These we
pass over, and merely give an extract in reference to Kempis:—
“I have Kempis by me; but have not read him lately. I cannot
recollect the passages you mention; but, believing you do him
justice, I do positively aver that he is extremely in the wrong
in that impious, I was about to say blasphemous, suggestion,
that God, by an irreversible decree, has determined any man to
be miserable even in this world. His intentions, as Himself,
are holy, just, and good; and all the miseries incident to men
here or hereafter proceed from themselves. I take Kempis to
have been an honest weak man, that had more zeal than knowledge.
“Your brother has brought us a heavy reckoning for you and
Charles. God be merciful to us all! Dear Jack, I earnestly
beseech Almighty God to bless you. Adieu!
“SUSANNAH WESLEY.”
Ten days after the date of his mother’s letter, he wrote to her again,
as follows:—
“_June 18, 1725._
“You have so well satisfied me as to the tenets of Thomas à
Kempis, that I have ventured to trouble you again on a more
dubious subject. Dr. Taylor, in his ‘Holy Living and Dying,’
says, ‘Whether God has forgiven us or no, we know not;
therefore, be sorrowful for ever having sinned.’ This seems to
contradict his own words in the next section, where he says
that ‘by the Lord’s supper all the members are united to one
another, and to Christ the Head. The Holy Ghost confers on us
the graces necessary for, and our souls receive the seed of, an
immortal life.’ Now surely these graces are of not so little
force as that we cannot perceive whether we have them or not.
If we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us (which He will not do
unless we are regenerate), certainly we must be sensible of it.
If we can never have any certainty of our being in a state of
salvation, good reason it is that every moment should be spent,
not in joy, but in fear and trembling; and then, undoubtedly,
in this life we are of all men the most miserable. God deliver
us from such a fearful expectation as this!”[30]
We thus find young Wesley carefully reading Thomas à Kempis and Jeremy
Taylor, and groping after two of the great doctrines which afterwards
distinguished his ministry: God’s love to _all_, and the privilege
of living in a state of conscious salvation. These and other topics
puzzled him, and yet he seemed to have an almost instinctive knowledge
of what is truth. We have seen his mother’s sentiments concerning
Kempis. His father, on the 14th of July following, observes that
though Kempis has gone to an extreme in teaching the doctrine of
self-mortification, yet, considering the age in which he wrote, there
was no need to be surprised at this. And then he adds: “Making some
grains of allowance, he may be read to great advantage. Notwithstanding
all his superstition and enthusiasm, it is almost impossible to peruse
him seriously, without admiring, and in some measure imitating, his
heroic strains of humility and piety and devotion.”
The books of Kempis and Taylor seem to have been the first on practical
divinity that Wesley read, and, to the day of his death, were held
in high esteem. Kempis’s “Pattern” was one of the first books that
Wesley published; and an extract from Taylor’s work forms a part of
his “Christian Library.” In his estimation, Taylor was a man of the
sublimest piety, and one of the greatest geniuses on earth;[31] and
Kempis is always spoken of in terms of high respect. What were the
results of Wesley’s reading?
1. To this incident we are indebted for Wesley’s long continued record
of the events and exercises of his daily life. In the preface to his
first journal, dated September 20, 1740, he states, that about fifteen
years ago (1725), in pursuance of an advice given by Bishop Taylor in
his “Rules for Holy Living and Dying,” he began to take a more exact
account than he had done before of the manner wherein he spent his
time, writing down how he had employed every hour. The practice thus
begun was uninterruptedly continued until his death, and issued in
giving to the world one of the most interesting works in the English
language; a work not only containing the best history of the great
reformer, and of the rise and growth of the Methodist movement, but
sparkling with the most racy remarks respecting men, books, places,
science, witches, ghosts, and almost everything with which the writer
came in contact.
2. Another, and far more important result of reading Kempis and
Taylor, was an entire change of life. He writes respecting Kempis’s
“Pattern:” “When I met with it in 1726,[32] the nature and extent of
inward religion, the religion of the heart, now appeared to me in a
stronger light than ever it had done before. I saw that giving even all
my life to God (supposing it possible to do this, and go no further)
would profit me nothing, unless I gave my heart, yea, all my heart, to
Him. I saw that simplicity of intention, and purity of affection, one
design in all we speak and do, and one desire ruling all our tempers,
are indeed the wings of the soul, without which she can never ascend to
God. I sought after this from that hour.”[33]
Again, in reference to Taylor’s “Holy Living and Dying,” he observes:
“In reading several parts of this book, I was exceedingly affected;
that part in particular which relates to purity of intention. Instantly
I resolved to dedicate all my life to God,—all my thoughts, and words,
and actions,—being thoroughly convinced there was no medium; but that
every part of my life (not some only) must either be a sacrifice to
God, or myself, that is, in effect, the devil.”[34]
Here, then, we have the turning-point in Wesley’s history. It was not
until thirteen years after this, that he received the consciousness of
being saved through faith in Christ; but from this time, his whole aim
was to serve God and his fellowmen, and to get safe to heaven. No man
could be more sincere, earnest, devout, diligent, and self-denying; and
yet, during this lengthened period, he lived and laboured in a mist.
His father was £350 in debt; but was now resolved to do his utmost to
obtain ordination for his son. He urged him to master St. Chrysostom
and the articles; and sent his “Letter to a Curate,” in manuscript, to
assist him in his preparations; and also wrote to the Bishop of Lincoln
in his favour.[35] Meanwhile his mother tried to solve some of his
scruples respecting the article on predestination;[36] and wrote him a
long letter, not hitherto published, from which we give the following
extracts:—
“Wroote, _July 21, 1725_.
“DEAR JACKEY,—Though I have a great deal of unpleasant
business, am infirm, and but slow of understanding, yet it is
a pleasure to me to correspond with you on religious subjects;
and, if it be of the least advantage to you, I shall greatly
rejoice. I know little or nothing of Dr. Taylor’s ‘Holy Living
and Dying,’ having not seen it for above twenty years; but
I think it is generally well esteemed. I cannot judge of
the rules you suppose impracticable; but I will tell you my
thoughts of humility as briefly as I can.”
Here follow her remarks on humility. She continues:—
“He is certainly right, that there is but one true repentance,
for repentance is a state not a transient act; and this state
begins in a change of the whole mind from evil to good, and
contains, in some sense, all the parts of a holy life.[37]
Repentance, in Scripture, is said to signify the whole of
obedience, as faith often includes repentance, and all the
subsequent acts of religion: ‘Repent, and thy sins shall be
forgiven thee;’ ‘Believe, and thou shalt be saved.’ If, after
this change, we fall into the contrary state—a state of wilful
impenitence—which is nothing less than a total apostasy—the
Scripture is plain; ‘There remaineth no more sacrifice for
sin;’ no place is left for repentance; for, by this formal
renunciation of our most holy faith, we ‘crucify afresh the Son
of God, and put Him to an open shame.’ But this is not the case
of those who never were converted; or of such who, having been
converted, fall nevertheless sometimes into their old sins,
through the fault of their nature, or the stress of temptation.
“I don’t well understand what he means by saying, ‘Whether
God has forgiven us or no, we know not.’ If he intends such
a certainty of pardon as cannot possibly admit of the least
doubt or scruple, he is infallibly in the right; for such an
absolute certainty we can never have till we come to heaven.
But if he means no more than that reasonable persuasion of
the forgiveness of sins, which a true penitent feels when he
reflects on the evidences of his own sincerity, he is certainly
in the wrong, for such a firm persuasion is actually enjoyed by
man in this life.
“The virtues which we have by the grace of God acquired, are
not of so little force as he supposes; for we may surely
perceive when we have them in any good degree. But when our
love to God, and faith in the Lord Jesus are weak (for there
is a great inequality in our lives); when, though we strive
against our sins, we have not so far overcome but that we
sometimes relapse into them again,—in such a case we shall be
often doubtful of our state. But when, by the assistance of the
Holy Spirit, we have made a considerable progress in religion,
and when habits of virtue are confirmed; when we find little
disturbance from any exorbitant appetite, and can maintain
an even tenour of life,—we shall be easy, and free from all
torment, doubts, or fears of our future happiness; for perfect
love will cast out fears.
“I am entirely of your opinion, that whenever we worthily
communicate, with faith, humility, etc., our sins are forgiven,
and will never rise in judgment against us if we forsake them.
The Scripture is so clear and express in this case, that I
think none can question the pardon of his sins if he repent,
except such as do not believe it.
“But if you would be free from fears and doubts concerning your
future happiness, every morning and evening commit your soul
to Jesus Christ, in a full faith in His power and will to save
you. If you do this seriously and constantly, He will take
you under His conduct; He will guide you by His Holy Spirit
into the way of truth, and give you strength to walk in it.
He will dispose of the events of God’s general providence to
your spiritual advantage; and if, to keep you humble and more
sensible of your dependence on Him, He permit you to fall into
lesser sins, be not discouraged; for He will certainly give you
repentance, and safely guide you through all the temptations of
this world, and, at the last, receive you to Himself in glory.
“Your father has written lately to you about your business. I
heartily wish you success, for I am greatly troubled at your
unhappy circumstances. I can do nothing at present but pray for
you. Dear Jack, I beseech Almighty God to bless you.
“SUSANNAH WESLEY.”
Part of Wesley’s reply to his mother’s letter is as follows:—
“_July 29, 1725._
“That we can never be so certain of the pardon of our sins as
to be assured they will never rise up against us, I firmly
believe. We know that they will infallibly do so if ever we
apostatize, and I am not satisfied what evidence there can be
of our final perseverance, till we have finished our course.
But I am persuaded we may know if we are now in a state of
salvation, since that is expressly promised in the Holy
Scriptures to our sincere endeavours, and we are, surely, able
to judge of our own sincerity.
“What shall I say of predestination? An everlasting purpose of
God to deliver some from damnation, does, I suppose, exclude
all from that deliverance who are not chosen. And if it was
inevitably decreed from eternity that such a determinate part
of mankind should be saved, and none beside them, a vast
majority of the world were only born to eternal death, without
so much as a possibility of avoiding it. How is this consistent
with either the Divine justice or mercy? Is it merciful to
ordain a creature to everlasting misery? Is it just to punish
man for crimes which he could not but commit? That God should
be the author of sin and injustice (which must, I think, be the
consequence of maintaining this opinion), is a contradiction
to the clearest ideas we have of the Divine nature and
perfections.”[38]
If the ideas of Wesley and his mother, on the way of attaining
salvation, had been as scriptural as his ideas on general redemption,
both would have been in a holier and happier frame of mind.
Wesley’s religion already made him the subject of contemptuous sneers.
Hence the following from his father:—
“WROOTE, _August 2, 1725_.
“DEAR SON,—If you be what you write I shall be happy. As to
the gentlemen candidates you mention, does anybody think the
devil is dead, or asleep, or that he has no agents left? Surely
virtue can bear being laughed at. The Captain and Master
endured something more for us before He entered into glory, and
unless we track His steps, in vain do we hope to share that
glory with Him.
“Nought else but blessing from your loving father,
“SAMUEL WESLEY.”
Wesley was still in doubt in reference to several matters which had
occurred to him during his late religious reading; and to relieve his
doubts, his mother sent him some of the ablest letters she ever penned.
The subjoined is taken from a long epistle now before us, and only part
of which has heretofore been published:—
“WROOTE, _August 18, 1725_.
“DEAR JACKEY,—Divine faith is an assent to whatever God has
revealed to us, because He has revealed it. And this is that
virtue of faith which is one of the two conditions of our
salvation by Jesus Christ. But this matter is so fully and
accurately explained by Bishop Pearson (under ‘I Believe’) that
I shall say no more of it.
“I have often wondered that men should be so vain as to amuse
themselves with searching into the decrees of God, which no
human wit can fathom, and do not rather employ their time and
powers in working out their salvation. Such studies tend more
to confound than to inform the understanding, and young people
had better let them alone. But since I find you have some
scruples concerning our article, Of Predestination, I will tell
you my thoughts of the matter. If they satisfy not, you may
desire your father’s direction, who is surely better qualified
for a casuist than I.
“The doctrine of predestination, as maintained by the rigid
Calvinists, is very shocking, and ought to be abhorred, because
it directly charges the most high God with being the author of
sin. I think you reason well and justly against it; for it is
certainly inconsistent with the justice and goodness of God
to lay any man under either a physical or moral necessity of
committing sin, and then to punish him for doing it.
“I firmly believe that God, from eternity, has elected some to
eternal life; but then I humbly conceive that this election
is founded on His foreknowledge, according to Romans viii.
29, 30. Whom, in His eternal prescience, God saw would make
a right use of their powers, and accept of offered mercy,
He did predestinate and adopt for His children. And that
they may be conformed to the image of His only Son, He calls
them to Himself, through the preaching of the gospel, and,
internally, by His Holy Spirit; which call they obeying,
repenting of their sins and believing in the Lord Jesus, He
justifies them, absolves them from the guilt of all their sins,
and acknowledges them as just and righteous persons, through
the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ. And having thus
justified, He receives them to glory—to heaven.
“This is the sum of what I believe concerning predestination,
which I think is agreeable to the analogy of faith; since it
does in nowise derogate from the glory of God’s free grace,
nor impair the liberty of man. Nor can it with more reason
be supposed that the prescience of God is the cause that so
many finally perish, than that one knowing the sun will rise
to-morrow is the cause of its rising.”
John Wesley substantially adopted his mother’s predestinarian views,
as may be seen in his sermon on the text which she expounds in the
foregoing letter; but his notions of that faith by which a sinner
is justified were, at present, like those of his mother, vague and
general, and far from being clear.
The time for Wesley’s ordination was now approaching, and the money
question again rose up like a spectre, and required attention. His
father writes:—
“BAWTRY, _September 1, 1725_.
“DEAR SON,—I came hither to-day because I cannot be at rest
till I make you easier. I could not possibly manufacture any
money for you here sooner than next Saturday. On Monday I
design to wait on Dr. Morley, and will try to prevail with
your brother to return you £8 with interest. I will assist you
in the charges for ordination, though I am myself just now
struggling for life. This £8 you may depend on the next week,
or the week after.
“Your affectionate father,
“SAMUEL WESLEY.”[39]
Difficulties were overcome, and Wesley, having prepared himself with
the most conscientious care for the ministerial office, was ordained
deacon on Sunday, September 19th, 1725.
CHAPTER II.
_WESLEY’S ORDINATION, ETC._
[Sidenote: 1725 Age 22]
What was the state of things about the time of Wesley’s ordination?
Wesley entered the Charterhouse in the year Queen Anne died. George
I., Elector of Hanover, took her place. Endless intrigues in favour of
the Pretender sprung up; and Bolingbroke fled to him on the Continent,
and became his Secretary of State. Ormond gave magnificent fêtes at
Richmond, and gathered around him the most fiery of the Jacobites,
and the most intolerant of the high church party, till he also found
it expedient to follow Bolingbroke’s example, and secretly escape to
France. The clergy, in many instances, preached sermons and published
pamphlets in which the temper, orthodoxy, and religion of King George
were not painted in the brightest colours, and in which they hesitated
not to say that England would soon be eaten up by Hanoverian rats and
other foreign vermin. Rumours of invasion and of insurrection became
general, and, about a year after George’s coronation, the Chevalier
landed in Scotland, to take possession of what he called his kingdom.
The history of this adventure is too well known to be repeated here.
Suffice it to observe, that Parliament set a price on the Pretender’s
head, by offering a reward of £100,000 for his arrest. In Scotland,
King George’s troops were put to live in free quarters, in the houses
and upon the estates of Jacobites. In England, gaols were crowded with
nonjuring Protestants, high church divines, and Popish squires, monks,
and priests; while the Chevalier, like his poltroon father, fled from
danger, and left thousands of his hot-headed followers to pay a fearful
penalty for their rash adherence to him. Plotters, however, still
plotted; among the chief of whom was Bishop Atterbury, the friend and
patron of Wesley’s brother Samuel. The prelate was arrested, was tried
in the House of Lords, was deprived of his bishopric, was banished from
his country, entered the service of the Pretender, and became his
confidential agent.
These were times of terrible upheaving, and, surrounded by such
commotions, young Wesley quietly pursued his scholastic studies, first
in the Charterhouse, London, and afterwards in Christ Church College,
Oxford. In the year in which Wesley went to Oxford, the South Sea
bubble burst, and, by its gambling, knavish madness, the nation was
involved in the most disgraceful kind of bankruptcy. About the same
period, Parliament were discussing bills to authorize bishops and
county magistrates to summon Dissenting ministers to quarter sessions
to subscribe to a declaration of the Christian faith; and, upon their
refusal, to deprive them of the benefit of the Act of Toleration;
while, oddly enough, at the same time, Walpole, the prime minister,
was endeavouring to satisfy the squeamish demand to omit from the
“affirmation” of the Quakers the words,—“In the presence of Almighty
God”—a demand which Atterbury resisted to the uttermost, insisting that
such an indulgence was not due to “a set of people who were hardly
Christians.”
Wesley was ordained a deacon by Bishop Potter, the son of a Yorkshire
linen-draper; a man of great talent, and immense learning,—somewhat
haughty and morose, and yet highly esteemed by a great portion of his
contemporaries,—a high churchman, who maintained that episcopacy was
of Divine institution, and yet one who cherished a friendly feeling
towards the first Methodists, saying concerning them, “These gentlemen
are irregular; but they have done good; and I pray God to bless them.”
To the day of his death, Wesley held Potter in high esteem, calling
him “a great and good man”; and, in a sermon written as late as the
year 1787, mentioning an advice which the bishop had given him half
a century before, and for which he had often thanked Almighty God,
namely, “That if he wished to be extensively useful, he must not spend
his time in contending for or against things of a disputable nature,
but in testifying against notorious vice, and in promoting real,
essential holiness.”[40]
It is a somewhat remarkable circumstance that, just about the time
of Wesley’s ordination, Voltaire was expelled from France, and fled
to England, where he published his celebrated “Henriade,” a work
which was patronized by George I., and which yielded a profit that
laid the foundation of the infidels future fortune. During a long
life, he and Wesley were contemporaneous, and, perhaps, of all
the men then living, none exercised so great an influence as the
restless philosopher and the unwearied minister of Christ. No men,
however, could be more dissimilar. Wesley, in person, was beautiful;
Voltaire was of a physiognomy so strange, and lighted up with fire so
half-hellish and half-heavenly, that it was hard to say whether it
was the face of a satyr or a man. Wesley’s heart was filled with a
world-wide benevolence; Voltaire, though of gigantic mind, scarcely had
a heart at all,—an incarnation of avaricious meanness, and a victim to
petty passions. Wesley was the friend of all and the enemy of none;
Voltaire was too selfish to love, and when forced to pay the scanty
and ill-tempered homage which he sometimes rendered, it was always
offered at the shrine of rank and wealth. Wesley had myriads who loved
him; Voltaire had numerous admirers, but probably not a friend. Both
were men of ceaseless labour, and almost unequalled authors; but while
the one filled the land with blessings, the other, by his sneering and
mendacious attacks against revealed religion, inflicted a greater curse
than has been inflicted by the writings of any other author either
before or since. The evangelist is now esteemed by all whose good
opinions are worth having; the philosopher is only remembered to be
branded with well-merited reproach and shame.
Wesley’s first sermon was preached at South Leigh, a small village
three miles from Witney. Forty-six years afterwards he preached in the
same place, when there was one man present who had been a member of his
first congregation.[41]
Another of his early sermons was delivered at Epworth, January 11,
1726, at the funeral of John Griffith, a hopeful young man, son of
one of the Epworth parishioners. The text was 2 Samuel xii. 23, and
the subject of the brief sermon was the folly of indulging grief,
except on account of sin. Funeral sermons, in the common acceptation
of the word, the young preacher denounces, for they had been so often
prostituted to a mere flattery of the dead that now they were no longer
capable of serving good purposes. “It is of no service to the dead,”
says he, “to celebrate his actions, since he has the applause of God
and His holy angels, and his own conscience. And it is of little use
to the living, since he who desires a pattern may find enough proposed
as such in the sacred writings.” For such reasons, Wesley, already
laconic, reduces all that he has to say of John Griffith into a single
sentence. “To his parents he was an affectionate, dutiful son; to his
acquaintance an ingenuous, cheerful, good-natured companion; and to me
a well-tried, sincere friend.”[42]
In a little more than two months after the delivery of this sermon,
Wesley was elected fellow of Lincoln College.[43] The election took
place March 17th, 1726. In this affair, his brother Samuel rendered
him considerable assistance; his mother, with a full heart, thanked
Almighty God for his “good success;”[44] and his father wrote him as
follows:—
“DEAR MR. FELLOW ELECT OF LINCOLN,—I have done more than I
could for you. On your waiting on Dr. Morley[45] with this,
he will pay you £12. You are inexpressibly obliged to that
generous man. The last £12 pinched me so hard, that I am forced
to beg time of your brother Sam till after harvest, to pay him
the £10 that you say he lent you. Nor shall I have as much as
that, perhaps not £5, to keep my family till after harvest; and
I do not expect that I shall be able to do anything for Charles
when he goes to the university. What will be my own fate God
only knows. _Sed passi graviora._ Wherever I am, my Jack is
fellow of Lincoln. I wrote to Dr. King, desiring leave for you
to come one, two, or three months into the country, where you
shall be gladly welcome. Keep your best friend fast; and, next
to him, Dr. Morley; and have a care of your other friends,
especially the younger. All at present from your loving father,
“SAMUEL WESLEY.”[46]
Writing to his brother Samuel, Wesley says:—
“LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXON, _April 4, 1726_.
“DEAR BROTHER,—My father very unexpectedly, a week ago, sent me
a bill on Dr. Morley for £12, which he had paid to the rector’s
use at Gainsborough; so that now all my debts are paid, and
the expenses of my treat defrayed; and I have still above £10
remaining. If I could have leave to stay in the country till
my college allowance commences, this money would abundantly
suffice me till then.
“I never knew a college besides ours, whereof the members
were so perfectly well satisfied with one another, and so
inoffensive to the other part of the university. All the
fellows I have yet seen are both well-natured and well-bred;
men admirably disposed as well to preserve peace and good
neighbourhood among themselves, as to preserve it wherever else
they have any acquaintance.
“I am, etc.,
“JOHN WESLEY.”[47]
The following, which was also addressed to his brother Samuel, is
amusing. Wesley was so poor that he could ill afford to employ a barber
to cut and dress his hair, even when his mother wished it, and when he
himself thought it might improve his personal appearance.
“My mother’s reason for my cutting off my hair is because she
fancies it prejudices my health. As to my looks, it would
doubtless mend my complexion to have it off, by letting me get
a little more colour, and perhaps it might contribute to my
making a more genteel appearance. But these, till ill health
is added to them, I cannot persuade myself to be sufficient
grounds for losing two or three pounds a year. I am ill enough
able to spare them.
“Mr. Sherman says there are garrets, somewhere in Peckwater, to
be let for fifty shillings a year; that there are some honest
fellows in college, who would be willing to chum in one of
them; and that, could my brother but find one of these garrets,
and get acquainted with one of these honest fellows, he might
possibly prevail upon him to join in taking it; and then if he
could but prevail upon some one else to give him £7 a year for
his own room, he would gain almost £6 a year clear, if his rent
were well paid. He appealed to me whether the proposal was not
exceedingly reasonable? But as I could not give him such an
answer as he desired, I did not choose to give him any at all.
“Leisure and I have taken leave of one another. I propose to be
busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged me. In
health and sickness I hope I shall ever continue with the same
sincerity,
“Your loving brother,
“JOHN WESLEY.”[48]
Charles Wesley had just removed from Westminster School to the
university, being elected to the same college as that in which his
brother had spent the last six years. John obtained leave of absence
from Lincoln College, and spent the summer at Epworth and Wroote with
his venerated parents. Here he usually read prayers and preached twice
every sabbath; pursued his studies with the greatest diligence; and
conversed with his father and mother on many of the chief topics of
practical religion, noting in his diary such of their rules and maxims
as appeared to him important.[49] While here, he wrote his paraphrase
on the 104th Psalm,—a production of genius fully showing that if Wesley
had cultivated his poetic talents he might easily have attained to
no inferior position among the bards of Britain. The following is an
extract:—
“Thou, brooding o’er the realms of night,
The’ unbottomed infinite abyss,
Bad’st the deep her rage surcease,
And saidst, _Let there be light!_
Ethereal light Thy call obeyed,
Glad she left her native shade,
Darkness turned his murmuring head,
Resigned the reins, and trembling fled.”[50]
“Make poetry your diversion,”[51] said Wesley’s mother, “but not your
business;” and because he acted on this advice his poetical pieces are
comparatively few. It is well known, however, that some of the noblest
hymns in the Wesleyan hymn-book were written by John Wesley’s pen. What
can exceed, in poetic grandeur, the three hymns beginning with the
line:—
“Father of all, whose powerful voice,” etc.
Or the two hymns commencing with:—
“O God, Thou bottomless abyss,” etc.
Or the hymn beginning:—
“O God, of good the’ unfathomed sea,” etc.
Or again:—
“O God the Son, in whom combine,” etc.
Or again:—
“Jesus, whose glory’s streaming rays,” etc.
“Now I have found the ground wherein,” etc.
“Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness,” etc.
“Thee will I love, my strength, my tower,” etc.
Or again, the two hymns commencing with:—
“Commit thou all thy griefs,” etc.
Or again:—
“Thou hidden love of God, whose height,” etc.
Let it be granted that these and others were translations; but still
it must be ceded that the words, if not the thoughts, are Wesley’s;
and that never, in uninspired language, is God adored and praised in
loftier or more sacred strains than in the singing of the hymns above
mentioned. Apart from his numerous hymn-books, Wesley, at different
times, published five volumes of poetry, and, to the day of his death,
read it with the richest relish.
Wesley returned to Oxford on the 21st of September, 1726, and resumed
his studies. His literary character was now established at the
university. All parties acknowledged him to be a man of talents and
of learning; while his skill in logic was known to be remarkable. The
result was, though he was only in the twenty-third year of his age, and
had not yet taken a master’s degree, he was, within two months after
his return from Epworth, on November 7th, elected Greek lecturer and
moderator of the classes.
At the commencement of the year 1727, Wesley, in a letter,[52] tells
his mother that he had drawn up for himself a scheme of studies, and
had “perfectly come over to her opinion, that there are many truths it
is not worth while to know. If we had a dozen centuries of life allowed
us, we might, perhaps, be pardoned for spending a little time upon such
curious trifles; but, with the small pittance of life we have, it would
be great ill husbandry to spend a considerable part of it in what makes
neither a quick nor a sure return.” Wesley adds, that, about the time
of his ordination, he had, while watching with a college friend a young
lady’s funeral, attempted to make his friend a Christian. From that
time this youth was exceedingly serious; and a fortnight ago had died
of consumption. Wesley was with him three days before his decease, and
on the Sunday following, in accordance with his friend’s desire while
living, he did him the last good office that he could by preaching his
funeral sermon. Here was _Wesley’s first convert_.
Another friend must be introduced, not so serious as the sight of a
funeral has a tendency to make us, but a sprightly young collegian,
more vivacious than religious, who, in 1729, became one of the first
four Methodists that met together to read the Greek Testament,[53] and
whose portrait occupies a place in the large and beautiful engraving
of “The Rev. John Wesley and his Friends at Oxford.” The following
letter is valuable only as it tends to show that Wesley, and some of
his college friends, were not yet so intensely religious as they became
soon after.
“STANTON, _February 2, 1727_.
“With familiarity I write, Dear Jack.—On Friday night last I
received your kind accusation. You generously passed by, or
pardoned, all insipid or impertinent expressions; but I am
condemned for brevity before I could put forth my defence.
My plea is, I writ yours, as likewise one to Harry Yardley,
of equal importance, in the space of three hours. My letter
was really longer than yours by Scripture proof; for you writ
scarce much out of your abundance of thoughts; whereas I writ
all that I thought of, and thought of all I could write. I
have not the presumption to compare my expressions or style
with yours, because there I am excelled beyond all degrees of
comparison.
‘For when you write, smooth elocution flows;
But when Bob scrawls, rough ignorance he shows.’
I am just going down to a dinner of calves’ head and bacon,
with some of the best green cabbages in the town. I wish I
could send you a plate of our entertainment while it is hot. We
have just tapped a barrel of admirable cider.
“2 o’clock. I am come up again with a belly-full, _sufficit_.
Your most deserving, queer character,—your worthy personal
accomplishments,—your noble endowments of mind,—your little and
handsome person,—and your obliging and desirable conversation,
have been the pleasing subject of our discourse for some
pleasant hours. You have often been in the thoughts of M. B.,
which I have curiously observed, when with her alone, by inward
smiles and sighs and abrupt expressions concerning _you_. Shall
this suffice? I caught her this morning in an humble and devout
posture on her knees. I am called to read a _Spectator_ to my
sister Capoon. I long for the time when you are to supply
my father’s absence. Keep your counsel, and burn this when
perused. You shall have my reasons in my next. I must conclude,
and subscribe myself, your most affectionate friend, and
_brother_ I wish I might write,
“ROBERT KIRKHAM.”[54]
The above somewhat frothy epistle indicates an important fact, that
Wesley was in love with Miss Betty, Kirkham’s sister, or, at all
events, that Kirkham wished to have him for a brother. Nothing more is
known of this incipient courtship, except that in a letter to Wesley,
dated five days after Kirkham’s, and written by Martha Wesley, it is
said, “When I knew that you were just returned from Worcestershire,
where I suppose you saw your _Varanese_, I then ceased to wonder at
your silence, for the sight of such a woman, ‘so known, so loved,’
might well make you forget me. I really have myself a vast respect for
her, as I must necessarily have for one that is so dear to you.” Wesley
soon became far too much immersed in more serious things to have time
to think of wooing. He writes:—
“Removing to another (Lincoln) college, I began to see more and more
the value of time. I applied myself closer to study. I watched more
carefully against actual sins. I advised others to be religious,
according to that scheme of religion by which I modelled my own life.
But meeting now with Mr. Law’s ‘Christian Perfection’ and ‘Serious
Call,’ although I was much offended at many parts of both, yet they
convinced me more than ever of the exceeding height and breadth and
depth of the law of God. The light flowed in so mightily upon my
soul, that everything appeared in a new view. I cried to God for
help, resolved, as I had never done before, not to prolong the time
of obeying Him. And by my continued endeavour to keep His whole law,
inward and outward, to the utmost of my power, I was persuaded that
I should be accepted of Him, and that I was even then in a state of
salvation.”[55]
William Law will have to be noticed hereafter. Suffice it to remark
now, that, after obtaining a fellowship at Emanuel College, Cambridge,
and officiating as a curate in the metropolis, he refused to take the
oaths prescribed by parliament on the accession of George I., lost
his fellowship, left the pulpit, and became tutor to Edward Gibbon,
father of the renowned historian. He was now resident at Putney, and
is described as rather above the middle size, stout but not corpulent,
with broad shoulders, grey eyes, round visage, well-proportioned
features, an open countenance, and rather inclined to be merry than
mournful. His “Christian Perfection” was first published in 1726,
just before Wesley read it; and, in strong, clear, racy language,
maintains that Christianity requires a change of nature, a renunciation
of the world and worldly tempers, self-denial and mortification, in
short, a life perfectly devoted to the service of God. Clergymen are
reminded that it is far more important to visit the poor and sick,
and to be wholly occupied in the cure of souls, than in studying the
old grammarians. Vain books and stage entertainments are denounced in
the strongest terms; and a close imitation of the life and example
of Christ Jesus is enforced with the utmost earnestness. The work
throughout is one of the most intensely religious books in the English
language; and had it shown the way of attaining holiness as clearly
as it enforces the practice of it, it would in all respects have
been unequalled. The “Serious Call” is a kindred book, and written
in the same earnest and pungent style. “It is,” wrote Wesley, within
eighteen months of his decease,—“It is a treatise which will hardly be
excelled, if it be equalled, in the English tongue, either for beauty
of expression, or for justness and depth of thought.”[56]
The effect produced upon Wesley,[57] by reading these two invaluable
books, was immense. “I was convinced,” says he “more than ever of
the impossibility of being half a Christian, and determined to
be all devoted to God, to give Him all my soul, my body, and my
substance.”[58]
Wesley’s intentions were as sincere and pure as grace could make them;
but his ideas of Christian truth were confused, misty, erroneous. He
was spending several hours every day in reading the Scripture in the
original tongues; and yet he tells us that it was not until years
after this that he became convinced of the great truths, which, above
all other truths, gave rise to the societies of the people called
Methodists. These truths he himself has specified in the following
terms:—“The justification, whereof our articles and homilies speak,
means present forgiveness, pardon of sins, and consequently acceptance
with God. I believe the condition of this is faith; I mean, not
only that without faith we cannot be justified, but also that, as
soon as any one has true faith, in that moment he is justified.
Good works follow this faith, but cannot go before it; much less
can sanctification, which implies a continued course of good works,
springing from holiness of heart.
“Repentance must go before faith, and fruits meet for it, if there be
opportunity. By repentance, I mean conviction of sin, producing real
desires and sincere resolutions of amendment; and by ‘fruits meet for
repentance,’ I mean forgiving our brother, ceasing from evil and doing
good, using the ordinances of God, and in general obeying Him according
to the measure of grace which we have received. But these I cannot as
yet term good works; because they do not spring from faith and the love
of God.
“By salvation I mean, not barely deliverance from hell, or going to
heaven, but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the
soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery of the
Divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in
righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth. This
implies all holy and heavenly tempers, and by consequence, all holiness
of conversation.
“Faith is the sole condition of this salvation. Without faith we cannot
thus be saved; for we cannot rightly serve God unless we love Him. And
we cannot love Him unless we know Him; neither can we know Him unless
by faith.
“Faith, in general, is a Divine, supernatural evidence, or conviction
of things not seen; that is, of things past, future, or spiritual.
Justifying faith implies, not only a Divine evidence, or conviction,
that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself; but a sure
trust and confidence that Christ died for my sins; that He loved me and
gave Himself for me. And the moment a penitent sinner believes this,
God pardons and absolves him.
“And as soon as his pardon or justification is witnessed to him by the
Holy Ghost, he is saved. He loves God and all mankind. He has the mind
that was in Christ, and power to walk as He also walked. From that time
(unless he makes shipwreck of the faith) salvation gradually increases
in his soul.
“The Author of faith and salvation is God alone. He is the sole Giver
of every good gift, and the sole Author of every good work. There is
no more of power than of merit in man; but as all merit is in the Son
of God, in what He has done and suffered for us, so all power is in
the Spirit of God. And therefore every man, in order to believe unto
salvation, must receive the Holy Ghost. This is essentially necessary
to every Christian, in order to have faith, peace, joy, and love. Whoever
has these fruits of the Spirit cannot but know and feel that God has
wrought them in his heart.”
The reader has here, in Wesley’s own words, a summary of all the
doctrines which technically may be termed the doctrines of the _first
Methodists_. It was the preaching of these doctrines, and of these
only, that created Methodism in 1739. And, to be faithful to the
principles of their founder, the Methodists of this, and of every age
succeeding, _must_, MUST make these the _chief_ doctrines of their
ministry. Wesley preached other truths besides these: but these were
the truths which distinguished him from his fellows; which gave birth
to the system that bears his name; and which he always made _prominent_
in his sermons and in his books, to the end of life. Methodism will
sink and deservedly become extinct, when it ceases to proclaim, as its
_greatest_ dogmas, the above summary of Methodistic doctrines, drawn up
by Wesley himself in 1744.
This summary is introduced here because, notwithstanding his deep
religious feeling, his pure intentions, and his strict morality, the
doctrines it embraces were doctrines of which Wesley remained strangely
ignorant for nearly thirteen years after his ordination, in 1725. He
writes: “It was many years after I was ordained deacon, before I was
convinced of the great truths above recited. During all that time, I
was utterly ignorant of the nature and condition of justification.
Sometimes I confounded it with sanctification (particularly when I
was in Georgia); at other times I had some confused notion about the
forgiveness of sins; but then I took it for granted the time of this
must be either the hour of death, or the day of judgment. I was equally
ignorant of the nature of saving faith; apprehending it to mean no more
than a ‘firm assent to all the propositions contained in the Old and
New Testaments.’”[59]
Such, at this period, were Wesley’s views of Christian truth,
principally derived from his mother, from Thomas à Kempis, Jeremy
Taylor, and William Law. Some have charged him with embracing the
mystic divinity, but, except so far as the mystic writers denied the
doctrine of justification by faith, the charge is unfounded. In reply
to this accusation, Wesley writes: “It is true that, for a while, I
admired the _mystic writers_. But I dropped them, even before I went to
Georgia; long before I knew or suspected anything as to justification
by faith. Therefore all that follows of my ‘making my system of
divinity more commodious for general use,’ having no foundation,
falls to the ground at once. I never was ‘in the way of mysticism’ at
all.”[60]
Wesley took his degree of Master of Arts, on February 14, 1727. In his
disputation for this he acquired considerable reputation; delivering
three lectures on the occasion, one “De Anima Brutorum;” a second, “De
Julio Cæsare;” and a third, “De Amore Dei.” These early orations seem
to be entirely lost.
Another step taken by Wesley, about the same period, was to rid himself
of unprofitable friends. He writes: “When it pleased God to give me
a settled resolution to be not a _nominal_, but a _real_ Christian
(being then about twenty-two years of age), my acquaintance were as
ignorant of God as myself. But there was this difference: I knew my
own ignorance; they did not know theirs. I faintly endeavoured to
help them, but in vain. Meantime, I found, by sad experience, that
even their _harmless_ conversation, so called, damped all my good
resolutions. I saw no possible way of getting rid of them, unless it
should please God to remove me to another college. He did so, in a
manner utterly contrary to all human probability. I was elected fellow
of a college where I knew not one person. I foresaw abundance of people
would come to see me, either out of friendship, civility, or curiosity;
and that I should have offers of acquaintance new and old: but I had
now fixed my plan. I resolved to have no acquaintance by chance, but by
choice; and to choose such only as would help me on my way to heaven.
In consequence of this, I narrowly observed the temper and behaviour of
all that visited me. I saw no reason to think that the greater part of
these truly loved or feared God: therefore, when any of them came to
see me, I behaved as courteously as I could; but to the question, ‘When
will you come to see me?’ I returned no answer. When they had come a
few times, and found I still declined returning the visit, I saw them
no more. And, I bless God, this has been my invariable rule for about
three-score years. I knew many reflections would follow; but that did
not move me, as I knew full well it was my calling to go through evil
report and good report.”[61]
Thus did Wesley free himself from trifling companions. About the same
time, some one proposed to him a well endowed school in Yorkshire, and
suggested, as an inducement for him to accept it, that it was situated
“in a little vale, so pent up between two hills” that it was scarcely
accessible; a place where he could “expect little company from without,
and within none at all.”[62] This school was either never offered, or,
if it was, the offer was declined.
Wesley now laid down a plan of study, and closely followed it. Mondays
and Tuesdays he devoted to the Greek and Roman classics, historians and
poets; Wednesdays, to logic and ethics; Thursdays to Hebrew and Arabic;
Fridays to metaphysics and natural philosophy; Saturdays to oratory and
poetry, chiefly composing; and Sundays, to divinity. In intermediate
hours, he perfected himself in the French language, which he had
begun to learn two or three years before; sometimes amused himself
with experiments in optics; and in mathematics studied Euclid, Keil,
and Sir Isaac Newton. First, he read an author regularly through, and
then transcribed into a commonplace book such passages as he thought
important or beautiful. In this way he greatly increased his stock of
knowledge and inured himself to hard working.
His father was now sixty-five years of age, and was already palsied;
his mother also was in exceedingly ill health; and hence, in August,
1727, he removed to Lincolnshire, for the purpose of officiating as his
father’s curate at Epworth and at Wroote; and here, with the exception
of about three months, he remained until November, 1729.
The details of this period of two years and a quarter in Wesley’s
history are few. His life at Epworth and Wroote was doubtless the
ordinary every-day sort of life of an earnest country parish clergyman.
Fortunately, one of his sermons, preached during the time that he was
his father’s curate, has been preserved, and is important as showing
how, from the very commencement of his ministry, he rigidly adhered to
the principle of preaching the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth. The text is 2 Corinthians ii. 17, and the subject of the
sermon is that of “corrupting the word of God.” Among corrupters he
notices:—1. Those who introduce “into it human mixtures, and blend with
the oracles of God impure dreams, fit only for the mouth of the devil.”
2. Those who mix it “with false interpretations.” 3. Those who do not
add to it but take from it, “washing their hands of stubborn texts,
that will not bend to their purposes, or that too plainly touch upon
the reigning vices of the places where they live.” Those who do not
corrupt the word of God “preach it genuine and unmixed,” unimpaired and
in all its fulness. “They speak with plainness and boldness, and are
not concerned to palliate their doctrine to reconcile it to the tastes
of men. They will not, they dare not, soften a threatening so as to
prejudice its strength; neither represent sin in such mild colours as
to impair its native blackness.”[63]
Here we have Wesley, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, displaying
the same conscientious fidelity and unflinching boldness, which so
strikingly characterized the whole of his future ministry.
In July, 1728, Wesley repaired to Oxford, where, on Sunday, September
22, he was ordained priest by Dr. Potter, who had ordained him deacon
in 1725. Nine days afterwards, he returned to his curacy at Wroote,
where, as already stated, he continued preaching and fulfilling other
ministerial duties until November 22, 1729.
What were the results of Wesley’s preaching? Wesley himself shall tell
us. He writes: “I preached much, but saw no fruit of my labour. Indeed,
it could not be that I should; for I neither laid the foundation of
repentance, nor of believing the gospel; taking it for granted that
all to whom I preached were believers, and that many of them needed
no repentance.”[64] Let Christian ministers be admonished. Is it not
a fact—a general, if not universal fact—that where these doctrines
are not preached all other preaching is almost, if not altogether,
useless? Christ’s ministry throughout was in perfect accordance with
its commencement, when following John the Baptist, as His high herald,
He cried, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” This kind of preaching
is always useful. Would to God we had more of it at the present day!
Wroote was a wretched place. Wesley says it was “surrounded with
bogs;”[65] and, according to Samuel, his brother, the parsonage was
roofed with thatch and made lively by the mingled music of “kittens
and whelps,” “pigs and porkets,” “bellowing kine and bleating lambs,
quacking ducks and fluttering hens.” Describing his father’s presence
there, he writes:—
“Methinks I see you striving all
Who first shall answer to his call,
Or lusty Nan or feeble Moll,
Sage Pat, or sober Hetty;
To rub his cassock’s draggled tail,
Or reach his hat from off the nail,
Or seek the key to draw his ale,
When damsel haps to steal it;
To burn his pipe, or mend his clothes,
Or nicely darn his russet hose,
For comfort of his aged toes,
So fine they cannot feel it.”[66]
The church was a small brick building, and the population, even as
late as 1821, was under three hundred. The people were, says Mehetabel
Wesley, “unpolished wights,” as “dull as asses,” and with heads “as
impervious as stones.”
Such were Wesley’s parish and parishioners—not exactly the place where
a poetical genius and classic scholar was likely to luxuriate; and
yet there is no reason to entertain a doubt that Wesley was happy in
his new sphere of labour. He loved retirement, and here he had it. It
is not improbable that, for many a long year, Wroote would have been
his residence, had not the rector of Lincoln College wished to have
him back to Oxford. This gentleman had rendered such service to the
Wesley family that the venerable father used to say, “I can refuse him
nothing.”[67] Accordingly, the following letter, by Dr. Morley, was
irresistible.
“_October 21, 1729._
“At a meeting of the society, just before I left college, to
consider the proper method to preserve discipline and good
government, it was, in the opinion of all present, judged
necessary that the junior fellows, who should be chosen
moderators, shall in person attend the duties of their office,
if they do not prevail with some of the fellows to officiate
for them. We all thought it would be a great hardship on Mr.
Fenton to call him from a perpetual curacy; yet this we must
have done, had not Mr. Hutchins been so kind to him and us as
to engage to supply his place in the hall for the present year.
Mr. Robinson would as willingly supply yours, but the serving
of two cures, about fourteen miles from Oxford, makes it, he
says, impossible to discharge the duty constantly. We hope
it may be as much for your advantage to reside at college as
where you are, if you take pupils, or can get a curacy in the
neighbourhood of Oxon. Your father may certainly have another
curate, though not so much to his satisfaction; yet we are
persuaded that this will not move him to hinder your return to
college, since the interests of the college and obligation to
statute require it.”
And so, because Fenton had a perpetual curacy, too good to be given
up; and because Robinson, in his two parishes, had as much work as he
could do, Wesley was forcibly removed from Wroote, and brought back
to Oxford to fulfil his functions as a fellow. No time was lost. He
returned to Oxford on November 22, 1729, and here continued until he
embarked for Georgia on the 14th of October, 1735.
CHAPTER III.
_OXFORD METHODISM, ETC._
[Sidenote: 1729 Age 26]
Wesley returned to Oxford shortly after the coronation of George II.
In some respects this was an age of giants. Bolingbroke, though a rake
and an infidel, was a man of exalted powers and of splendid eloquence.
Walpole, more than any other man, was the means of keeping the British
crown on the heads of the house of Hanover. The Earl of Granville, by
his brilliant talents, raised himself to the highest offices of state;
though, thinking ignorance the best security for obedience, he opposed
the education of the poor, and disliked the propagation of Christ’s
religion in the colonies. Chesterfield was a gambler and a _roué_, but,
as Johnson said, “he was also a wit among lords, and a lord among wits.”
In the Church, Atterbury, though a Jacobite, passionate, ambitious,
and double dealing, was also talented, learned, and eloquent. Whiston,
though extremely heterodox, was a man of great ability. Gibson, Bishop
of London, was one whose piety was equal to his erudition. Hoadly,
Bishop of Winchester, has, not without reason, been pronounced “the
greatest dissenter that ever wore a mitre.” Sherlock was famous for his
pulpit power. The head of Waterland was “an immense library, where the
treasures of learning were arranged in such exact order that whatever
he or his friends wanted he could produce at once.” To these might be
added Butler, Secker, Warburton, and others.
Among the Dissenters we find Edmund Calamy, Isaac Watts, Nathaniel
Lardner, and Philip Doddridge.
Among men of science and of letters, Edmund Halley was exploring the
starry heavens; and Sir Hans Sloane was revelling among the plants
and flowers of earth. Nicholas Saunderson, blind from childhood, was
lecturing upon optics; Roubiliac was making marble almost breathe, and
Handel composing his immortal oratorios. Tindal was pouring out his
streams of erudite infidelity. Daniel De Foe was still living. Bentley
was at the zenith of his literary fame. Jonathan Swift was playing the
part of a clever ecclesiastical buffoon. Edward Young was pondering
poetry among the tombs of his own churchyard. Pope was employing his
accomplished genius, surrounded by the beauties of his lovely retreat
at Twickenham. Gay was composing comedies with more ability than
ambition. Richardson, afterwards the novelist, was writing “indexes,
prefaces, and honest dedications.” Savage was penning beautiful ideas
amid tavern riots and cellar filth. Thomson, so lazy as to be a fit
occupant for his own “Castle of Indolence,” was suffering his eye to
roll in a fine frenzy among the beauties of the “Seasons;” and Samuel
Johnson was preparing himself to be the Jupiter of letters, and to rule
the literary world.
Greatness unfortunately does not always give birth to goodness.
“Never,” says a modern writer,[68] “has century risen on Christian
England so void of soul and faith as that which opened with Queen Anne,
and which reached its misty noon beneath the second George—a dewless
night succeeded by a sunless dawn. There was no freshness in the
past, and no promise in the future. The Puritans were buried, and the
Methodists were not born. The philosopher of the age was Bolingbroke,
the moralist was Addison, the minstrel was Pope, and the preacher was
Atterbury. The world had the idle, discontented look of the morning
after some mad holiday, and, like rocket-sticks and the singed paper
from last night’s squibs, the spent jokes of Charles and Rochester lay
all about, and people yawned to look at them. The reign of buffoonery
was past, but the reign of faith and earnestness had not commenced.”
Let it not be said that this is modern imagination. Bishops are, or
ought to be, sober minded men, and to one of these we refer the reader
for a testimony concerning the moral and religious state of England
during the period of which we are now writing. The Bishop of Lichfield,
in 1724, in a sermon before the Society for the Reformation of Manners,
said:—
“The Lord’s day is now the devil’s market day. More lewdness, more
drunkenness, more quarrels and murders, more sin is contrived and
committed on this day than on all the other days of the week together.
Strong liquors are become the epidemic distemper of this great city.
More of the common people die of consumptions, fevers, dropsies,
cholics, palsies, and apoplexies, contracted by the immoderate use of
brandies and distilled waters, than of all other distempers besides,
arising from other causes. Sin, in general, is grown so hardened
and rampant, as that immoralities are defended, yea, justified on
principle. Obscene, wanton, and profane books find so good a market as
to encourage the trade of publishing them. Every kind of sin has found
a writer to teach and vindicate it, and a bookseller and hawker to
divulge and spread it.”
These were not rash and random statements. From the report of the
society before which the bishop preached, it appears that in that very
year, 1724, the society had prosecuted not fewer than 2723 persons
for lewd, profane, drunken, and gambling practices; and that during
the last thirty-three years the number of their prosecutions had been
89,393.
From the literature of the period, we learn that gin-drinking in
the great towns of England had become a mania; the sellers of this
pernicious spirit announcing on their signboards that they would make
a man drunk for a penny, and find him straw on which to lie till he
recovered the use of his lost faculties. In 1736 every sixth house in
London was a licensed grogshop, and parliament, to check the evil,
enacted that all intoxicating spirits should pay a duty of £1 per
gallon, and every victualler £50 per annum for his licence.
In the higher classes of society, the taint left by Charles II and his
licentious court still festered. Among the lower classes, laziness
and dishonesty were next to universal. Superstition flourished almost
as vigorously as it had done in the middle ages, and nearly every
old mansion in England was haunted by a ghost, and almost every
parish tormented by a witch. In the metropolis, Ranelagh and Vauxhall
were the resorts of thousands, of the upper strata of society; and
puppetshows, hops, balls, prize-fights, merry meetings, cockfights, and
badger-baitings furnished entertainment for the masses. In the rural
districts, rustic squires found their greatest enjoyment in hunting
foxes, and in gorging venison, and guzzling sack; while the peasantry
relieved the monotony of their daily toils at wakes and fairs, and in
wrestling, cudgel playing, and foot racing.
Extravagance was the order of the day. Scarcely one family in ten
kept within its income. The grand controversy then, as now, was, who
should _out-dress_, _out-drink_, or _out-eat_ his neighbour. Citizens
and young tradesmen, whose ancestors would have fainted at the sight
of drawing-rooms, were the chief visitors at plays and masquerades;
and even shopkeepers were seen wearing long wigs and swords, velvet
breeches and hunting caps. Families, who were oftentimes resolved
into committees on ways and means to pay a butcher’s bill, paraded
themselves in attire the most pompous, and adorned with the richest
brocades and jewels. London swarmed with ruined rakes and broken
traders, who contrived to live in the best society by reciting scraps
of poetry, singing licentious songs, and retailing drunken puns and
quibbles. In fact, all ranks and classes seemed to be corrupted to the
core. “A sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil
doers; children that are corrupters; the whole head is sick, and the
whole heart faint; from the sole of the foot even unto the head, there
is no soundness in it, but wounds, bruises, and putrifying sores.”
What was done to improve this state of things? From a report of the
charity schools, we learn that, in 1715, there were, throughout the
kingdom, 1193 schools for the education of the children of the poor,
containing 26,920 scholars. In other words, and to say nothing of other
churches, there are at present in the Wesleyan-Methodist day-schools of
England four times more scholars than there were in all the schools for
primary education throughout the kingdom in 1715.
Turning from schools to churches, there is no amelioration of the dark
picture. The Church, which ought to have reformed the nation, needed
to be reformed itself. The Dissenters complained of their ministers
conforming to the Establishment, but comforted themselves with thinking
that the apostates were mainly young fops and dandies. The three
Dissenting denominations, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists,
considered themselves the great barriers to the doctrine of passive
obedience to the crown, and of submission to the priestly encroachments
of the Church. They maintained that they had greatly contributed to
the interests of the Protestant succession, and had promoted a better
observance of the sabbath, and the more frequent preaching of the high
church clergy; but still they lamented that numbers of their ministers
were immoral, negligent, and insufficient; that they devoted too much
time to the fashionable study of the classics, and read their sermons
instead of preaching them. They also complained of their children
being sent to high church schools, and of the artful caballing of
their congregations in appointing ministers to vacant pastorates. (See
“Observations upon the Present State of the Dissenting Interest.”
London: 1731.)
The clergy of the Established Church! What of them? Bishop Burnet, in
1713, wrote: “Our ember weeks are the burden and grief of my life. The
much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a
degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it.
The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest
strangers; I mean the plainest parts of the Scriptures. They can give
no account, or at least a very imperfect one, of the contents even of
the gospels, or of the catechism itself.”
This is a doleful picture, but there was more than this. The
dissensions in the Church of England then were quite as violent as
dissensions now. The high church clergy were moral, and many of them
talented and learned, but they were as intolerant as intolerance could
make them. Of course, they held that none were ministers of Christ
except those who had been _episcopally_ ordained; and hence they held
that all sacraments administered by Dissenters were invalid, and all
Dissenting churches in a state of sin and damnation. They boldly
preached the doctrine of a proper sacrifice being made in the Christian
eucharist, and most furiously contended for the Divine right of kings,
and the kindred dogma of passive obedience. Many of them, in heart at
least, were Jacobites, and, while promising allegiance, regarded King
George as a usurper, and branded those of their brethren who differed
from them with opprobrium. Endless were the pamphlets published, and
fierce were the feuds of those who ought to have dwelt together in
unity. The foulest sins were made sinless by intemperate zeal for the
Pretender, and the fairest virtues were besmeared in those who showed a
friendly feeling for Dissenters. A man might be drunken and quarrelsome
all the week, but if on Sunday he bowed to the altar and cursed King
William he was esteemed a saint. He might cheat everybody, and pay
nobody, but if he drank health to the royal orphan, hated King George,
and abhorred the Whigs, his want of probity was a peccadillo scarce
worth noticing. On the other hand, a man might be learned, diligent,
devout, and useful, but if he opposed the Pretender and Popery, or if
he thought the Dissenters should not be damned, he was at once set down
as heterodox, and, according to his importance, became a target for the
poisoned shafts of high church malice.
Such, in brief, was the state of things when God raised up the
Methodists. The court of England was corrupt to its very core, and
the people were too faithful imitators of a bad example. Popery was
intriguing, Dissenters were declining, and the Church was full of fiery
and drunken feuds. Reformers, like the Methodists, were needed. Without
them, or others of a kindred spirit, the nation must have sunk into an
inconceivable depth of depravity, and social and political degradation.
In estimating the benefits which have accrued from the great Methodist
movement, the reader must think not only of the good effected but of
the ill averted.
Methodism arose in Oxford, and not before it was needed, even there.
When Wesley returned to the university in 1729, the vice-chancellor,
the heads of houses and proctors, issued an edict, which was posted in
most of the college halls, to the effect that certain members of the
university had of late been in danger of being corrupted by the wicked
and blasphemous notions of the advocates of pretended human reason
against Divine revelation; and that therefore it was a matter of the
utmost consequence that the college tutors should use double diligence
in explaining to their respective pupils the articles of religion and
their Christian duty, and in recommending to them the frequent and
careful reading of the Scriptures, and such other books as might serve
more effectually the orthodox faith and sound principles.
The Dean of Christ Church, however, where Charles Wesley was a tutor,
was so much a friend to infidelity, that he forbade the posting of this
edict in his college hall, forgetting that there was One higher than
himself, who, in that very college, had already begun to raise one of
the strongest barriers against the spread of this pernicious evil.
A few months afterwards, on the 4th of July, 1730, it was announced
in _Fogg’s Weekly Journal_, that one of the principal colleges in
Oxford had of late been infested with Deists, and that three Deistical
students had been expelled, and a fourth had had his degree deferred
two years, during which he was to be closely confined in college, and,
among other things, was to translate Leslie’s “Short and Easy Method
with the Deists.”
Wesley was now a tutor in Lincoln College, and presided in the hall
as Moderator in the disputations, six of which were held weekly; and,
by this, he acquired the remarkable expertness in arguing, and in
discerning and pointing out well concealed and plausible fallacies,
which distinguished him to the end of life. He writes: “In November,
1729, the then Rector of Lincoln College, Dr. Morley, sent for me
to Oxford, to take pupils, eleven of whom he put under my care
immediately. In this employ I continued[69] till 1735, when I went as
a _missioner_ to Georgia.” Several of Wesley’s pupils were among the
first Oxford Methodists.
The Methodist movement, however, was begun not by Wesley, but by his
brother Charles. When the latter was elected to Christ Church, in 1726,
he was a sprightly, rollicking young fellow, with more genius than
grace; John spoke to him about religion, but Charles answered, “What,
would you have me to be a saint all at once!” This was an unfavourable
beginning; but, while John was serving as his father’s curate at
Epworth and at Wroote, Charles began to attend the weekly sacrament,
and induced two or three other students to attend with him. On John’s
return from Lincolnshire, he heartily united with his brother and his
friends. The regularity of their behaviour led a young collegian to
call them Methodists; and “as the name,” says Wesley, “was new and
quaint, it clave to them immediately, and, from that time, all that had
any connection with them were thus distinguished.”[70]
The name was not new. Wesley says “it was given in allusion to an
ancient sect of physicians, of the time of the Emperor Nero, who taught
that almost all diseases might be cured by a specific _method_ of diet
and exercise.”[71] This might be so, and yet it is a curious fact that
the name was in use in England long before it was applied to Wesley and
his friends. In 1693 a pamphlet was published with the title, “A War
among the Angels of the Churches: wherein is shewed the Principles of
the New Methodists in the great point of Justification. By a Country
Professor of Jesus Christ.” And even as early as 1639, in a sermon
preached at Lambeth the following perfumed eloquence occurs:—“Where are
now our Anabaptists, and plain pack-staff Methodists, who esteem all
flowers of rhetoric in sermons no better than stinking weeds, and all
elegance of speech no better than profane spells?”
The two young gentlemen who, with Wesley and his brother Charles, were
first called Methodists, were Robert Kirkham, already mentioned on
a previous page, and William Morgan.[72] To these were subsequently
added, George Whitefield, John Clayton, J. Broughton, Benjamin Ingham,
James Hervey, John Whitelamb, Westley Hall, John Gambold, Charles
Kinchin, William Smith, and Messrs. Salmon, Wogan, Boyce, Atkinson, and
others.[73]
What shall we say of these Oxford Methodists?
William Morgan’s career was brief and painful; he was the first
Methodist who passed the pearly gates of the celestial city. Charles
Kinchin, a lovely character, soon followed him. Charles Wesley, in
his incomparable hymns, left behind him one of the noblest legacies
that an uninspired man ever bequeathed to the Christian church. George
Whitefield was the prince of preachers—a glorious emblem of the
apocalyptic angel flying through the midst of heaven with the good
tidings of great joy unto all people. And James Hervey will be loved
and honoured as long as there are men to appreciate the highest order
of Christian piety and the most mellifluent compositions in the English
language.
The history of the Oxford Methodists is not, however, an unspotted
one. Clayton’s high churchism was not an excellency to be admired.
Broughton’s usefulness was crippled and cut short by his imperfect,
stunted, stereotyped views of Christian truth. Westley Hall, though
we hope he died a penitent, was, throughout the greatest part of his
vicious life, an unmitigated scamp. John Whitelamb sunk down into an
ecclesiastical village drone. Gambold, though good, was visionary, and
throughout life was injured by his Moravian maggots. And Ingham, for
many years one of the most successful of evangelists, through the ill
judged connections that he formed, died beneath a cloud. But, with
all these drawbacks, the reader is challenged to produce a band of
godly friends, whose lives and labours have, upon the whole, issued
in such an amount of blessing to mankind as that which has resulted
from the lives and labours of the students who, in 1735, were known
as “Oxford Methodists.” They were widely scattered; their views were
different; they were often brought into painful collision with each
other; but, with the one or two exceptions mentioned, they were all
sincere, earnest, laborious, successful ministers of Christ; and five
or six of them must for ever occupy a high position in the history of
the Christian church. Clayton shunned the Wesleys; Broughton opposed
them; Ingham left them; Hervey, though with Christian courtesy, wrote
against them; Gambold, at one period, hesitated not to say that he was
ashamed of them; and even Whitefield, for a little while, was alienated
from them; but we earnestly hope and have little doubt that they have
all long been re-united in that blessed world where friends are free
from misconceptions, and where the din of controversial strife does not
exist—a world where all churches are merged into one grand Church, the
members of which make one vast, happy, and harmonious family, and sing
in the same ceaseless tune the same great song for ever—the song of
Moses and of the Lamb.
Of the Methodists, three were tutors in colleges; and the rest were
bachelors of arts, or undergraduates. All were of one judgment and
of one heart; and all tenacious of order to the last degree, and
observant, for conscience sake, of every rule of the Church, and every
statute both of the university and of their respective colleges. They
all thought themselves orthodox in every point, firmly believing, not
only the three creeds, but whatsoever they judged to be the doctrine
of the Church of England, as contained in her articles and homilies.
Practically, they had all things common; and no one was allowed to want
what another had the ability to spare.[74] Wesley was nicknamed “the
Curator of the Holy Club,” and not a few branded him a “crack-brained
enthusiast”; and yet others acknowledged that though his views and
doctrines were peculiar his piety was unimpeachable; and Mr. Gerard,
the bishop’s chaplain, dared to express an opinion to George Lascelles,
one of his revilers, that he “would one day be a standard-bearer of
the Cross, either in his own country or beyond the seas.”[75] Charles
Wesley paid the utmost deference to his brother, and all the Methodists
acknowledged his fitness to be their chief director. This was not
surprising, for, confessedly, he had more learning and experience than
the others; and was blessed with such activity and steadiness that
he was always gaining ground, and losing none. Every affair was well
considered before he propounded it, and all his decisions were made in
the fear of God, without passion, or self-confidence. His countenance
also wore an air of authority; and yet there was no assumption of
super-eminence; but all were allowed to speak their minds with the
utmost freedom, and no one was a more respectful listener than himself.
Hence it was, that, whatever proposals he submitted, they were readily
adopted, and the brotherhood was as perfect as unity of sentiment and
feeling could make it.
Every night they met together,[76] to review what each had done
during the day, and to consult what should be done the day following;
their meetings always commencing with prayer, and ending with a frugal
supper. Their plans of action were various. Some conversed with young
students, and endeavoured to rescue them from evil company, and to
encourage them in a sober and studious life. Others undertook the
instruction and relief of impoverished families; others the charge of
some particular school, and others of the parish workhouse. Some or
other of them went daily to the Castle, and to the city prison, reading
in the chapel, to as many of the prisoners as would attend, books
like the “Christian Monitor” and the “Country Parson’s Advice to his
Parishioners,” and then summing up the reading in a few sentences easy
to be remembered. On the introduction of a new prisoner, they would
subject him to the most searching examination as to whether he bore
malice towards his prosecutors or others, and whether he repented of
his sins, and used private prayer, and received the sacrament. Out of
their own scanty means, and by quarterly contributions from others,
they raised a fund to purchase books, medicines, and other necessaries
for the prisoners, and to release those who were confined for debts
of small amount. They read prayers at the Castle on most Wednesdays
and Fridays, preached a sermon to the prisoners every Sunday, and
administered the sacrament once a month. One of the schools which they
visited was a school which Wesley himself had founded, the mistress
of which he paid, and some, if not all, of the children of which he
clothed.
In all this the world saw nought but oddity and folly, and called these
hardworking and godly students “Bible bigots,” and “Bible moths;”
but, in the midst of all, Wesley calmly pursued the path which he had
marked out for himself and his friends. Gambold, in a letter written
whilst Wesley was in Georgia, tells us that Wesley at Oxford was always
cheerful but never arrogant. By strict watchfulness, he beat down the
impetuosity of his nature into a childlike simplicity. His piety was
nourished by continual communion with God, for he thought prayer to
be his greatest duty; and often did Gambold see him come out of his
closet of devotion with a serenity of countenance that was next to
shining. The secret consolations of God seldom left him, and never
but in a posture of strong and longsuffering faith. In him there were
no idle cravings, no chagrin or sickliness of spirit. Slanders never
ruffled him, and his chief fear was lest he should grow proud of this
conformity to his great Master. Coming home from long journeys, where
he had been in different companies, he would calmly resume his usual
employments, as if he had never left them. Himself setting an example,
he urged upon his associates method, diligence, and early rising. His
hours for private devotion were from five to six o’clock every morning
and every night. Every day he noted in a diary what had been his chief
employments; and one day every week he set apart for writing letters to
his friends.[77]
His charity to the poor was limited only by the means at his command.
One cold winter’s day, he tells us, a young girl, whom the Methodists
kept at school, called upon him in a state nearly frozen, to whom he
said, “You seem half-starved; have you nothing to wear but that linen
gown?” The poor girl said, “Sir, this is all I have.” Wesley put his
hand in his pocket, but found it nearly empty. The walls of his chamber
however were hung with pictures, and these now became his accusers.
“It struck me,” says he, “will thy Master say, ‘Well done, good and
faithful steward’? thou hast adorned thy walls with the money which
might have screened this poor creature from the cold! O Justice! O
Mercy! Are not these pictures the blood of this poor maid?”[78] To
say the least, this story shows the intense conscientiousness of the
man, and his dread of spending anything upon himself which might have
been spent more properly upon the poor. He says it was the practice of
all the Oxford Methodists to give away each year all they had after
providing for their own necessities; and then, as an illustration, he
adds, in reference to himself, “One of them had thirty pounds a year.
He lived on twenty-eight, and gave away forty shillings. The next year
receiving sixty pounds, he still lived on twenty-eight, and gave away
thirty-two. The third year he received ninety pounds, and gave away
sixty-two. The fourth year he received a hundred and twenty pounds;
still he lived as before on twenty-eight, and gave to the poor all the
rest.”[79]
Wesley at Oxford was as conscientious in the use of time as he was in
the use of money. Finding that he awoke every night about twelve or
one o’clock, he concluded that this arose from his lying longer in bed
than nature needed; and, to satisfy himself, he procured an alarum
which aroused him next morning at seven, an hour earlier than he rose
the day previous; but still he lay awake again at night. The second
morning his alarum roused him up at six; and the third at five; but
notwithstanding this he still lay awake when he ought to have been fast
asleep. The fourth morning, by means of his alarum, he got up at four,
and now wakefulness was unknown to him. Sixty years after adopting this
expedient to ascertain how much sleep his nature needed, he wrote, “By
the grace of God, I have risen at four o’clock ever since; and, taking
the year round, I don’t lie awake a quarter of an hour together in a
month.”[80]
The Bible now, as ever afterwards, was Wesley’s book of books.
He writes: “In 1729, I began not only to read, but to study, the
Bible, as the one, the only standard of truth, and the only model
of pure religion. Hence, I saw, in a clearer and clearer light, the
indispensable necessity of having ‘the mind which was in Christ,’
and of ‘walking as Christ also walked.’ I considered religion as an
entire inward and outward conformity to our Master. Nor was I afraid of
anything more than of bending this rule to the experience of myself, or
of other men; or of allowing myself in any the least disconformity to
our grand Exemplar.”[81]
Such was Wesley in 1729. What about his friends? To some extent,
their principles and practice may be learnt from the scheme of
self-examination they adopted. They tried to act upon the principle
of doing nothing without a previous perception that it was the will
of God. Every morning and every evening they spent an hour in private
prayer. They always prayed in going in and out of church. Three days
every week, though separate from each other, they, at the same hour,
prayed in concert. In secret devotion they frequently stopped short to
observe if they were using proper fervour, and, before concluding in
the name of Christ, they adverted to the Saviour now interceding on
their behalf at the right hand of God, and offering up their prayers.
They habituated themselves to the use of ejaculations for humility,
faith, hope, and love; used a collect every day at nine, twelve, and
three o’clock; and each one said aloud, in his own room, a grace
before and after eating. They embraced every possible opportunity of
doing good, and of preventing, removing, or lessening evil. They tried
to spend an hour every day in speaking to men directly on religious
things, never relinquishing the objects of their attention till
they were positively repelled, and always, before addressing them,
trying to learn, as far as possible, their tempers, way of life, and
peculiar hindrances. In order to converse usefully, they planned every
conversation before they went into company; and considered what subject
would be most useful, and how to prosecute it.[82] They persuaded all
they could to attend public prayers, sermons, and sacraments; and,
in general, to obey the laws of the church catholic, the Church of
England, the state, the university, and their respective colleges.
They refrained from thinking or speaking unkindly of any one; and used
intercession for their friends on Sundays, for their pupils on Mondays,
for those who particularly desired it on Wednesdays and Fridays,
and for the family with whom they lodged every day.[83] They also
communicated at Christ Church once a week.[84]
They had one, and only one, rule of judgment, with regard to all their
tempers, words, and actions—namely, the oracles of God, and were one
and all determined to be Bible Christians. The book which, next to the
holy Scripture, was of the greatest use to them, in settling their
judgment as to the grand point of justification by faith, was the Book
of Homilies.[85]
They were tenacious, not only of all the doctrines of the Church of
England, but of all her discipline, to the minutest points, and were
scrupulously strict in observing the rubrics and canons. In short,
“they were,” says Wesley, “in the strongest sense, high churchmen.”[86]
Many of their proceedings were ecclesiastically irregular, though
religiously right; and Wesley, fearful of doing evil even while doing
good, wrote to his brother Samuel and to his father for advice. Samuel
replied that, though there might be some things concerning which he was
dubious, yet he would choose to follow his two brothers to the grave
rather than they should abandon their course of piety, and especially
that relating to the prisoners in the Castle.[87] The venerable rector,
in his reply, said, “As to your designs and employments, what can I say
less than _Valde probo_; and that I have the highest reason to bless
God that He has given me two sons together at Oxford, to whom He has
granted grace and courage to turn the war against the world and the
devil?” At the same time, however, he advised them to obtain consent
to visit the prisoners from the chaplain, who had charge of them, and
likewise to seek the approbation of their bishop. This advice was
adopted; the chaplain commended their design; and the bishop expressed
himself as highly pleased with their undertaking.[88]
At the commencement of the year 1730, Wesley had the offer of a curacy,
eight miles from Oxford, for three or for six months, at the rate of
£30 a year; and this he readily accepted, not only because it opened to
him a field of usefulness, but also because it enabled him to retain
his horse, when he began to feel that he must sell it; for if he had
not a horse of his own he must hire one to ride to his cure on Sundays,
and the _hire_ would be quite as expensive as the _keep_.[89]
It was in the same year that he begun his remarkable correspondence
with Mary Granville, afterwards the celebrated wife and widow of the
Very Rev. Dr. Delany, Dean of Down, in Ireland. Mary Granville, while
living in Gloucestershire, became acquainted with Sarah, daughter of
the Rev. Lionel Kirkham, of Staunton; and, ever after, the two ladies
were the most devoted friends.[90] We have already seen that Wesley was
a visitor of the Kirkhams; and that, in 1726, a warm-hearted intimacy
existed between him and one of the young ladies of that family, whose
pet name, among her friends, was “Varanese.” It is almost certain
that it was here Wesley was first introduced to the remarkable woman
above-mentioned. Their correspondence with each other was conducted
in feigned names, Wesley calling himself “Cyrus,” and Mary Granville
calling herself “Aspasia,” that being the name by which she was often
designated by her most intimate acquaintance.[91] The first letter from
“Aspasia” is dated “August 28th, 1730.” She writes:—
“SIR,—I think myself extremely obliged to you for the favour of
the sermon and the letters. I received them safe last week, and
should sooner have made my acknowledgments for them, but that
I have been engaged with so much company since my return from
dear, delightful Staunton, that, till this moment, I have not
had time to express my gratitude for the elegant entertainment
I have had, not only from the manuscripts, but in recollecting
and repeating the conversation you and your brother made so
agreeable, which I hope will soon be renewed. If you have any
affairs that call you to Gloucester, don’t forget that you have
two pupils, who are desirous of improving their understanding;
and that friendship has already taught them to be, sir, your
most sincere, humble servants. My companion joins me in all I
have said, as well as in service to Araspes.”[92]
The companion referred to was probably Mary Granville’s mother (with
whom also Wesley corresponded),[93] or her beloved friend, Sarah
Kirkham. Araspes was most likely a feigned name for Wesley’s brother
Charles. On the fly-leaf of the letter there is a postscript, in the
handwriting of Mary Granville’s sister, whose pet name was Selina,
telling Wesley that Aspasia was about to visit Bath, and that, if he
designed to wait upon her, he had best write to her to ascertain her
movements. He is further told that “Varanese” (see Robert Kirkham’s
letter, p. 50) had sent him a letter by the carrier about a fortnight
ago, and wished to know whether it had come safe to hand.
Mary Granville, at this period, was the widow of Alexander Pendarves,
Esq., and was three years older than Wesley. As a member of the
Lansdowne family, she had moved in the most fashionable circles
of London society, and was now a frequent attendant at ridottos,
masquerades, operas, and other amusements: but, in the midst of all,
she maintained an unblemished character; evinced talents and virtues of
an exceedingly high order; was received at court during each successive
reign; and, to the day of her death, was honoured with the notice and
confidence of George III. and his Queen Charlotte. Are we justified
in inferring, from the language employed in the postscript of the
above letter, that Wesley was thinking of making Mary Granville (or
rather Mrs. Pendarves) his wife? Or that there was some intrigue among
his friends, to bring about an interview at Bath, and to initiate a
correspondence which might ripen into something more than an ordinary
intimacy between friends? A correspondence was now begun which lasted
for four years, from August 1730 to July 1734. Mrs. Pendarves, however,
remained in widowhood until 1743, when she married Dr. Delany. A few
extracts, from some of Wesley’s letters to this distinguished lady, may
cast some light upon the questions we have ventured to suggest, and
will also help to illustrate his character at this important period of
his history.
“_November 25, 1730._
“O that our friendship (since you give me leave to use that
dear word) may be built on a firm foundation. For want of
humility, I cannot follow you as I would. I must be left behind
in the race of virtue. I am sick of pride: it quite weighs my
spirit down. O, pray for me, that I may be healed. I have the
greater dependence on your intercession, because you know what
you ask. Every line of your last shows the heart of the writer,
where, with friendship, dwells humility. Ours, dear Aspasia,
it is to make acknowledgments; upon us lie the obligations of
gratitude. If it be a fault to have too harmonious a soul,
too exquisite a sense of elegant, generous transports, then,
indeed, I must own there is an obvious fault both in Selina
and Aspasia. If not, I fancy one may easily reconcile whatever
they think or act to the strictest reason; unless it be their
entertaining so favourable a thought of their most obliged and
most faithful—CYRUS.”
“_Innocents’ Day, 1730._
“Should one, who was as my own soul, be torn from me, it would
be best for me. Surely if you were called first, mine eyes
ought not to overflow because all tears were wiped away from
yours. But I much doubt whether self-love would not be found
too strong for a friendship, which I even now find to be less
disinterested than I hitherto imagined. Is it a fault to desire
to recommend myself to those who so strongly recommend virtue
to me? Tell me, Aspasia,—tell me, Selina,—if it be a fault that
my heart burns within me, when I reflect on the many marks of
regard you have already shown.”
Aspasia made an inquiry of Wesley, couched in the following terms:—
“Every Sunday evening, a gentleman in this town has a concert
of music. I am invited there to-night, and design to go. I
charge you, on the friendship you have professed for me, to
tell me your sincere opinion about it, and all your objections.
For, if I am in error by going, you ought to prevent my doing
so again.”
Wesley replied:—
“Far be it from me to think that any circumstance of life
shall ever give the enemy an advantage over Aspasia. He, who
has overcome the world and its princes, shall give His angels
charge over her to keep her in all her ways.
“To judge whether any action be lawful on the sabbath or no,
we are to consider whether it advances the end for which the
sabbath was ordained. Now, the end for which the sabbath was
ordained is the attainment of holiness. Whatever, therefore,
tends to advance this end is lawful on this day. Whatever does
not tend to advance this end is not lawful on this day.”
Mary Granville spent the summer of 1731 principally in London, and, to
a great extent, in the family of Richard Colley, Esq., who, three years
before, had succeeded to the estates of his cousin Garrett Wesley,
Esq., of the county of Meath, and had assumed the name and arms of
Wesley, and who, in 1746, was created Baron of Mornington. One day
would be spent in boating upon the Thames, the Duchess of Ancaster
affording them high amusement by singing, or rather catterwauling,
a piece out of the “Beggars’ Opera”; the next day in witnessing the
working of her friend Wesley’s orrery, and in representing Lady
Shelburn at the baptism of a baby; another day in a jaunt to Greenwich.
Then we find her attending court; and then sitting by the side of
Hogarth, while painting a picture of the Wesley family, and obtaining a
promise that he would give her instructions in drawing. In the midst of
all this fashionable, fluttering kind of life, John Wesley, at Oxford,
was writing her frequent letters.
Under the date of June 19, he says:—
“If Providence has used me as an instrument of doing any good
to Aspasia, I had almost said, ‘I have my reward.’ The thought
of having added anything to your ease will make many of my
hours the happier. I am extremely glad to find you among those
few who are yet concerned for the honour of their Master; and
cannot but congratulate you upon your wise choice. ‘If we
suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him,’”
A month later, he writes:—
“I have been charged with being _too strict_; with carrying
things too far in religion, and laying burdens upon myself,
if not on others, which are neither necessary nor possible
to be borne. Do not blame me, Aspasia, for using every means
to find whether I am thus guilty or no; and particularly for
appealing to the judgment of one who, in this, is not likely
to be prejudiced in my favour. Those among whom your lot is
chiefly cast are not accused of too much strictness. Whatever
other ill weeds may flourish there, a court is not a fit soil
for these. Give me leave, then, to lay freely before you what
my sentiments in this point are, and to conjure you to tell me
which of them you disapprove.”
By return of post, on July 21, Aspasia answers:—
“The imputation thrown upon you is a most extraordinary one.
But such is the temper of the world, when you have no vice to
feed their spleen with, they will condemn the highest virtue.
O Cyrus, how noble a defence you make! and how are you adorned
with the beauty of holiness! You really are in a state to be
envied. How ardently do I wish to be as resigned and humble
as yourself. As you say, my lot is fallen among those who
cannot be accused of too much strictness in religion; so far
from that, they generally make an open profession of having no
religion at all; and I cannot observe my fellow-creatures in
such manifest danger without feeling an inexpressible concern.”
Three days later, on July 24, Wesley writes:—
“I am extremely happy in having your approbation, where I am
most careful to be approved. Give me the censure of the many,
the praise of the few. I have all the advantages that outward
circumstances can afford. _I_ spend, day by day, many hours
in those employments that have a direct tendency to improve
me. _You_ can rarely have one, wherein to pursue that great
work with the full bent of your mind. _I_ have scarce any
acquaintance in the world, who is not either apt to teach or
willing to learn. _You_ are entangled among several who can
plead for themselves little more than that they do no hurt. And
would to God even that plea would hold! I much fear it will
not. Is it no hurt to rob you of your time, for which there is
no equivalent but eternity? Must Aspasia ever submit to this
insupportable misfortune? Every time a gay wretch wants to
trifle away a part of that invaluable treasure which God has
lent him, shall he force away also a part of hers? Surely there
is a way to escape. The God whom you serve point it out to
you!”[94]
Aspasia, in other words Mrs. Delany, spent the winter of 1731 in
Ireland. On the 11th of March, 1732, writing to her sister from Dublin,
she says:—
“Cyrus, by this time, has blotted me out of his memory, or,
if he does remember me, it can only be to reproach me. What
can I say for myself, in having neglected so extraordinary a
correspondent? I only am the sufferer, but I should be very
sorry to have him think my silence proceeded from negligence. I
declare it is want of time.”[95]
Twelve months after this, while still in Ireland, in another letter to
her sister, she remarks:—
“As for the ridicule Cyrus has been exposed to, I do not at all
wonder at it. Religion, in its plainest dress, suffers daily
from the insolence and ignorance of the world; then how should
that person escape, who dares to appear openly in its cause? He
will meet with all the mortifications such rebels are able to
give, which can be no other than that of finding them wilfully
blinding themselves, and running headlong into the gulf of
perdition; a melancholy prospect for the honest-hearted man who
earnestly desires the salvation of his fellow-creatures.”[96]
Here we close these specimens of correspondence. How are they to be
interpreted? When begun, John Wesley was a young man, twenty-seven
years of age, a fellow and tutor of a college, profoundly pious, and
the leader of the Oxford Methodists. His fair correspondent was a
young widow, only three years older than himself, the niece of Lord
Lansdowne, opulent, talented, accomplished, beautiful, a favourite at
court, and an intimate friend of the gentleman who had succeeded to
the estates of Garrett Wesley, who had wished to make Wesley’s brother
Charles his heir.[97] Did Wesley correspond with Aspasia merely for the
improvement of himself in piety and knowledge? And did she correspond
with Wesley merely because she sympathised with the principles and
practices of the Oxford Methodists? To say the least, this is extremely
doubtful. Mary Granville was a talented and accomplished woman, but,
in that respect, Wesley was greatly her superior. She was moral,
and, upon the whole, religious; but her life, among her aristocratic
friends, was fluttering and empty when compared with the intensely
religious life of Wesley and his friends at Oxford. The correspondence
is a puzzle. There is nothing that is sickly or merely sentimental;
but, on both sides, there is an endearment which perplexes. Was Wesley
enamoured? And was he groping his way to something else than ordinary
friendship? Did Mary Granville experience a reciprocity of feeling? And
was the reproach, which began to be heaped upon the Oxford Methodists,
the means of quenching it? We know not. But, supposing such conjectures
to be true, what then? Was Wesley inconsistent with his principles, or
unpardonably ambitious in longing for such an alliance? Or did Mary
Granville at all demean herself in reciprocating Wesley’s feelings?
We think otherwise. Mary Granville ultimately married Patrick Delany,
who, except that he had become rich by already marrying a wealthy
widow, was, in no respect, the superior of John Wesley; and, in point
of birth, was greatly his inferior; for, while the one was a son of an
eminently learned clergyman of the Established Church, the other was
the son of a servant to an Irish judge. The suspicions above mentioned
are reasonable, though perhaps not true; and they naturally lead the
contemplative reader to inquire, if Cyrus had married Aspasia, would
Oxford Methodism have grown into what it afterwards became? If, to use
Wesley’s words, Charles Wesley had “a fair escape” when he declined to
become Garrett Wesley’s heir, had not Wesley himself “a fair escape”
when his letters to the intimate friend of Garrett Wesley’s successor
ended as they did?
This is an episode. We return to the Methodism of the Oxford Methodists.
In 1731, Wesley and his brother began the practice of conversing with
each other in Latin when by themselves, and this they continued to the
end of life. In the same year, a meeting was held by several of the
senior graduates, to consult on the readiest way to stop the progress
of the Methodist movement; and it was soon publicly reported that the
censors were about to blow up the _Godly Club_. In April, Wesley,
accompanied by his brother, set out on foot for Epworth; and, after
a three weeks’ visit walked the same distance back, having made two
discoveries: 1. That four or five and twenty miles is an easy and safe
day’s journey in hot weather as well as cold; and, 2. That it was easy
to read as they walked, for a distance of ten or a dozen miles, without
feeling either faint or weary. By this lengthened pedestrian tour they
had been freed from all superfluous humours, and were not now in the
slightest danger of an attack of gout. During their brief absence,
however, their “little company” had “shrunk into almost none at all;
for Mr. Morgan was sick at Holt; Mr. Boyce at his father’s house at
Barton; Mr. Kirkham was about to leave to become his uncle’s curate;
and another young gentleman of Christ Church had returned to the ways
of the world, and studiously shunned their company.”[98]
In August, Wesley, writing to one of his pupils, says:—
“You, who have not the assurance of a day to live, are not
wise if you waste a moment. The shortest way to knowledge
seems to be this: 1. To ascertain what knowledge you desire
to attain. 2. To read no book which does not in some way tend
to the attainment of that knowledge. 3. To read no book which
does tend to the attainment of it, unless it be the best in
its kind. 4. To finish one before you begin another. 5. To
read them all in such order, that every subsequent book may
illustrate and confirm the preceding.”[99]
In the meantime Wesley had begun observing the Wednesday and Friday
fasts, commonly observed in the ancient church, tasting no food
whatever till three in the afternoon. Some of his friends had left
him; but he still diligently strove against all kinds of sin; omitted
no sort of self-denial which he thought lawful; carefully used, both
in public and in private, all the means of grace; and embraced every
opportunity of doing good.[100]
In 1732, he wrote a sermon on the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, for
the use of his pupils, in which he shows the duty of all Christians
to communicate as often as they can. He asserts that, with “the
first Christians, the Christian sacrifice was a constant part of the
Lord’s day service; and that, for several centuries, they received
it almost daily; four days a week always, and every saint’s day
beside.” He further asserts that the Church of England has taken “all
possible care that the sacrament be duly administered, wherever the
Common-Prayer is read, every Sunday and holiday in the year;” and that
those who do not receive it, at least thrice in a year, are liable to
excommunication.[101]
In the same month (February) in which Wesley wrote his sermon, his
mother addressed to him a letter from which we extract the following:—
“The young gentleman you mention seems to me to be in the right
concerning the real presence of Christ in the sacrament. I
own, I never understood by the _real presence_ more than what
he has elegantly expressed, that ‘the Divine nature of Christ
is then eminently present, to impart, by the operation of His
Spirit, the benefits of His death to worthy receivers,’ And
surely, the Divine presence of our Lord, thus applying the
virtue and merits of the great atonement to each true believer,
makes the consecrated bread more than a sign of Christ’s body;
since, by His so doing, we receive not only the sign, but with
it the thing signified—all the benefits of His incarnation and
passion. But still, however this Divine institution may seem to
others, to me it is full of mystery.”[102]
To this Wesley replied as follows:—
“_February 28, 1732._
“One consideration is enough to make me assent to your judgment
concerning the holy sacrament; which is, that we cannot allow
Christ’s human nature to be present in it, without allowing
either con- or trans-substantiation. But that His Divinity is
so united to us then, as He never is but to worthy receivers,
I firmly believe, though the manner of that union is utterly a
mystery to me.”[103]
Such was the sacramentarian theory of the high church Oxford Methodists
in 1732.
In the same letter, Wesley introduces another subject, showing that,
after all, his earnest piety was not unmixed with morbidness. He
continues:—
“To all who give signs of their not being strangers to the mind
of Christ, I propose this question,—and why not to you rather
than any? shall I quite break off my pursuit of all learning
but what immediately tends to practice? I once desired to
make a fair show in language and philosophy; but it is past;
there is a more excellent way; and, if I cannot attain to any
progress in the one, without throwing up all thoughts of the
other, why, fare it well! Yet a little while, and we shall all
be equal in knowledge, if we are in virtue.”
This was simply silly and absurd; for, on the same principle, a man
ought to give up business, because business does not “immediately tend
to the practice of piety.”
It has been already stated that, during Wesley’s brief visit to
Epworth, in 1731, the Oxford Methodists were greatly scattered. In
the spring of 1732, their forces were recruited by the adhesion of
Mr. Clayton, and Mr. Broughton, and half-a-dozen pupils belonging to
himself, his brother, and Mr. Clayton. Six evenings every week were
spent, from six to nine o’clock, partly in reading and considering the
Greek Testament, and partly in close conversation.[104]
In the month of July, Wesley, being in London, paid a visit to the
Rev. William Law, at Putney, and commenced a friendship which lasted
for several years. From this period, he began to read the “Theologia
Germanica,” and other mystic writings, with what results will be seen
hereafter. On the 3rd of August, he was made a member of “The Society
for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge;” and, during his stay in
London, received from Mr. Clayton a long letter, which will help to
give the reader an insight into the difficulties and daily life of
the Oxford Methodists. It was first published in the _Wesleyan Times_
newspaper, of September 24, 1866.
“OXON, _August 1, 1732_.
“REV. AND DEAR SIR,—I cannot but think it an extraordinary
providence, that, when we had lost our best advocate and
patron, all opposition against us should immediately cease.
Since you left us, nobody has thought it worth while to attack
either Mr. Smith or me, or to endeavour to remove us from those
principles wherein you, by the grace of God, have fixed us. Mr.
Smith goes out of town to-morrow, and so will be entirely out
of danger from the fellows of Lincoln. He seems to be forearmed
against the temptations which may possibly arise from strange
company and from travelling. My little flock at Brazenose are,
God be praised, true to their principles. Bocardo,” [a room
over the north gate of the city used as a debtors’ prison,]
“I fear, grows worse upon my hands: they have done nothing
but quarrel ever since you left us. They carried matters so
high on Saturday, that the bailiff was sent for, who ordered
Tomlyn to be fettered, and put into the dungeon. The Castle
is, I thank God! in much better condition. All the felons were
acquitted, except Salmon, who is to be tried at Warwick; and
the sheep-stealer, who is burnt in the hand and is a great
penitent. Jempro is discharged, and I have appointed Harris to
read to the prisoners in his stead. Two of the felons likewise
have paid their fees and are gone out, both of them able to
read mighty well. There are only two in the gaol who want this
accomplishment,—John Clanville, who reads but moderately, and
the horse-stealer who cannot read at all, though he knows all
his letters and can spell most of the monosyllables. I hear
them both read three times a week; and, I believe, Salmon
hears them so many times daily. The woman, who was a perfect
novice, spells tolerably; and so does one of the boys; and
the other makes shift to read with spelling every word that
is longer than ordinary. They can both say their catechism
to the end of the commandments, and can likewise repeat the
morning and evening prayers for children in Ken’s Manual. I
have been twice at the school, namely, on Tuesday and Saturday
last; and intend to go again as soon as I have finished this
letter. The children all go on pretty well, except one, who,
I find, truants till eleven o’clock in a morning. I have
obtained leave to go to St. Thomas’s workhouse twice a week. I
am sure the people much need instruction, for there is hardly
a soul can read in the whole house. Pray, do not forget a few
Common-Prayer Books for the Castle.
“You cannot imagine the pleasure it is for me to know that you
are engaged every morning in prayer for me. I wish for nine
o’clock more eagerly than ever I did before; and, I think, I
begin to perceive what is meant by that union of souls which
is so much talked of in Pere Malebranche and Madam Bourignon.
Mr. Hall is not yet come home; so that I am pretty much taken
up with the poor people and the prisoners. I thank God, I
have fully conquered my affection for a morning nap, and rise
constantly by five o’clock, and have the pleasure to see
myself imitated by the greatest part of my pupils. I have made
Mr. Clements a proselyte to early rising, though I cannot to
constant communion. May God prosper all your designs of doing
good in London.
“I am, Rev. and dear Sir,
“Your affectionate friend and obedient humble servant,
“J. CLAYTON.”
The lull in the opposition to the Oxford Methodists was of short
continuance. A month after the date of Mr. Clayton’s letter, Wesley had
to mourn the death of his friend Morgan, and to defend himself against
the accusation that Morgan had hastened his death by the rigorous
fasting, which he had practised at Wesley’s recommendation.[105]
Wesley’s long letter fully satisfied Morgan’s father, who expressed
himself as almost wishing to be one of the Oxford Methodists himself,
and as ready to vindicate them from any calumny or aspersion that might
be cast upon them.[106] There were others, however, of a different
mind, for a fortnight after Mr. Morgan wrote thus to Wesley, an article
appeared in _Fogg’s Weekly Journal_, to the effect that there were,
in the Oxford University, a number of persons who, in order “to live
up to the principles of Christianity had doomed themselves to absurd
and perpetual melancholy;” and that “these sons of sorrow designed
to make the whole place a monastery.” The writer continues: “These
Methodists pretend to great refinements, as well as to what regards
the speculative, as the practical part of religion; and have a very
near affinity to the Essenes among the Jews, and the Pietists in
Switzerland. The chief hinge, on which their whole scheme of religion
turns, is, that no action whatever is indifferent; and hence they
condemn several actions as bad, which are not only allowed to be
innocent, but laudable, by the rest of mankind. They avoid, as much
as possible, every object that may affect them with any pleasant or
grateful sensations. All social entertainments and diversions are
disapproved of; and, in endeavouring to avoid luxury, they not only
exclude what is convenient, but what is absolutely necessary for the
support of life; fancying, (as is thought,) that religion was designed
to contradict nature. They neglect and voluntarily afflict their
bodies, and practise several rigorous and superstitious customs, which
God never required of them. All Wednesdays and Fridays are strictly
to be kept as fasts; and blood let once a fortnight, to keep down the
carnal man. At dinner, they sigh for the time they are obliged to spend
in eating. Every morning to rise at four o’clock, is supposed a duty;
and to employ two hours a day in singing of psalms and hymns, is judged
an indispensable requisite to being a Christian. In short, they
practise everything contrary to the judgment of other persons, and
allow none to have any (religion) but those of their own sect, which is
the farthest from it.
“As these Methodists have occasioned no small stir in Oxford, so there
has not been wanting a variety of conjectures about them. Some are
apt to ascribe their gloomy and disconsolate way of life to want of
money; thus being denied the enjoyment of those pleasures they chiefly
desire, they are weighed down by an habitual sorrow; and it is certain
that their founder took formerly no small liberty in indulging his
appetites. Others tax their characters with hypocrisy, and suppose them
to use religion only as a veil to vice; and, indeed, if we should give
credit to the several tales related of them, their greatest friends
would be ashamed to stand in their defence. Others judge that their way
of life is owing to enthusiasm, madness, and superstitious scruples.
Among their own party, they pass for religious persons, and men of
extraordinary parts; but they have the misfortune to be taken by all,
who have ever been in their company, for madmen and fools.”
Such are some of the scandalous charges contained in this precious
epistolary morsel,—we believe the first attack ever made upon the
Methodists in the public prints. The entire letter is before us; but
only a part of it is quoted,—first because there is a great amount of
empty and ungrammatical verbiage unworthy of being admitted into what
was, at that period, perhaps the most literary and respectable paper
published—_Fogg’s Weekly Journal_; and secondly because there is one
paragraph, which, despite its verbosity, is so loathsomely impure, that
it would be a sin against both God and man to reproduce it.
The letter was published in _Fogg’s Journal_, on December 9th, 1732;
and, within two months after, it was answered in an octavo pamphlet of
thirty pages, entitled, “The Oxford Methodists: Being some account of a
society of young gentlemen in that city, so denominated; setting forth
their rise, views, and designs; in a letter from a gent, near Oxford,
to his friend in London. Printed for J. Roberts, price 6_d._” The
second edition of this first defence of Methodism, published in 1738
“with very great alterations and improvements,” is that from which the
following extracts are taken.
The writer says that he knew nothing of the Methodists till his friend
requested him to make inquiry concerning them. On doing this, he was
first of all told that they were “miserable enthusiasts and zealots;”
and he found that almost every one, with whom he conversed, had a
prejudice against them; and yet, notwithstanding this, he was unable
to learn that the least slur had been cast upon their moral behaviour,
except that “they pretended to be more pious than their neighbours,”
and that “they put a gloomy and melancholy face upon religion, and
affected greater austerities and exemplariness than the doctrines of
the gospel demanded.”
The writer continues; after he “had heard all that could be said
against them by their enemies,” he “thought it was but fair to inquire
of their friends what could be said in their favour.” He found it,
however, difficult to meet with any who would acknowledge himself to be
a friend; and hence he was obliged to seek his information from one of
the Methodists themselves. It is probable that Wesley was the Methodist
thus consulted; but, be that as it may, a full account was given of the
origin of Methodism at the end of the year 1729, and of its progress
to the present time. The writer adds: “The gentleman assured me, that
they” (the Methodists) “were so diffident of themselves, especially
when they found a spirit of contemptuous raillery stirred up against
them, that they took advice from time to time of a worthy and venerable
gentleman, a near relation of one of them, who had much knowledge and
experience of the world; and that they formed their conduct upon his
advice; and, upon the encouragement he gave them, they were determined,
at all events, to persevere in the course they had begun.”
The “near relation,” referred to in this extract, was Wesley’s father;
and the extract is of vast importance as tending to confirm the
opinion that the “father of the Wesleys”—the noble-hearted rector of
Epworth—deserves more credit for the organisation and establishment
of Oxford Methodism than the Methodists and the Church have ever yet
awarded him. Several of his “encouraging epistles” were shown to the
inquiring writer of the pamphlet before us, and gave him “a high
notion of the piety and good sense of the venerable author.” “How
happy,” he writes, “are these sacramentarians, these Methodists, these
enthusiasts, as their enemies call them, to have so very excellent a
director! and how much are they to be commended for submitting their
conduct and designs to so pious and experienced a judge.”
He then proceeds: “There are three points to which these gentlemen
think themselves obliged to adhere—1. That of visiting and relieving
the prisoners and the sick, and giving away Bibles, Common-Prayer
Books, and the ‘Whole Duty of Man’; and of explaining the catechism to
the children of poor families, and of dropping a shilling or so to such
families where they deem it needful. 2. That of weekly communion. 3.
That of observing strictly the fasts of the Church, which has caused
some to call them ‘Supererogation Men.’”
After this, the writer proceeds to notice the accusations contained
in the letter published in _Fogg’s Weekly Journal_, and, as far as
necessary, replies to them.
Such is an outline of the first defence of Methodism ever published.
Wesley, in 1733, composed two sermons full of a great doctrine, which
had well-nigh been forgotten—the absolute need of the influences of
the Holy Ghost to convert the soul. It is a gross mistake to imagine
that this, with its cognate truths, was not discovered and embraced by
Wesley until his meeting with Peter Bohler in 1738. Take the following
extracts from the first of the sermons above mentioned, and which was
preached at St. Mary’s, Oxford, before the university, on January 1st,
1733.[107]
“The circumcision of the heart is that habitual disposition of soul,
which, in the sacred writings, is termed holiness; and which directly
implies the being cleansed from sin, from all filthiness both of flesh
and spirit; and, by consequence, the being endued with those virtues
which were also in Christ Jesus; the being so renewed in the image of
our mind, as to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.”
Here we have propounded, in the plainest terms, as early as the year
1733, Wesley’s famous doctrine of Christian perfection. “This sermon,”
said he, in 1765, “contained all that I now teach concerning salvation
from all sin, and loving God with an undivided heart.”[108]
In the same sermon he tells us that, “without the Spirit of God we
can do nothing but add sin to sin; it being as impossible for us even
to think a good thought without His supernatural assistance, as to
create ourselves, or to renew our whole souls in righteousness and true
holiness. He alone can quicken those who are dead unto God, and breathe
into them the breath of Christian life.”
We are further taught that this holiness of heart is to be obtained
“alone by faith, which is not only an unshaken assent to all that
God hath revealed in Scripture, but in particular to those important
truths,—‘Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,’—‘He bare
our sins in His own body on the tree,’—‘He is the propitiation for our
sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.’”
Then follows: “Those who are thus, by faith, born of God, have also
strong consolation through hope. This is the next thing which the
circumcision of the heart implies; even the testimony of their own
spirit, with the Spirit which witnesses in their hearts, that they are
the children of God.”
Then, as if intended to answer one of the false accusations which had
appeared in _Fogg’s Weekly Journal_ only three weeks before, and to
justify one of the practices there condemned, he tells his reverend
and learned auditors that this heart religion “does not forbid us, as
some have strangely imagined, to take pleasure in anything but God;
to suppose this, is to suppose the Fountain of holiness is directly
the author of sin; since He has inseparably annexed pleasure to the
use of those creatures which are necessary to sustain the life He has
given us.” But, at the same time, “every good soldier of Christ will
not only renounce the works of darkness, but every appetite too, and
every affection, which is not subject to the law of God. Vain hope!
that a child of Adam should ever expect to see the kingdom of Christ
and of God, without striving, without agonizing first, to enter in at
the strait gate,—without a constant and continued course of general
self-denial.”
“This,” adds Wesley, “is God’s short and plain account of true religion
and virtue. Other sacrifices from us He would not; but the living
sacrifice of the heart He hath chosen. Let it be continually offered
up to God through Christ, in flames of holy love. And let no creature
be suffered to share with Him; for He is a jealous God. His throne
will He not divide with another; He will reign without a rival. Be no
design, no desire admitted there, but what has Him for its ultimate
object. This is the way wherein those children of God once walked, who,
being dead, still speak to us.”[109]
Such then were the principles held by Wesley and the Oxford Methodists,
in 1733. From these he never varied; and dark will be the day when they
are either abandoned or forgotten by his followers.
The other sermon, written in 1733, was founded upon the text, “Grieve
not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of
redemption.” Here again we are told that the Holy Spirit “is the great
Fountain of holiness to His church. From Him flows all the grace and
virtue, by which the stains of guilt are cleansed, and we are renewed
in all holy dispositions, and again bear the image of our Creator. He
is the immediate Minister of God’s will upon earth, and transacts all
the great affairs of the church of Christ.”[110]
Precious truths are truths like these. Without them the church, no
matter how learned, rich, respectable, and ritualistic, is utterly
powerless in converting men. With them, nothing is impossible; for, in
such a case, the church has, for the accomplishment of its purposes,
not only the resources of man, but the omnipotence of God.
In the same year, 1733, Wesley issued his first printed production, “A
Collection of Forms of Prayer for every day in the Week.” These prayers
were originally intended for the use of his college pupils; but the
reader may also gather from them some of the principles and aims of the
Oxford Methodists.
They longed for the love of God to be the sole actuating power in the
use they made of their understanding, affections, senses, health, time,
and talents; that God might always be present to their minds; that they
might ever have awful thoughts of Him, and never mention His holy and
reverend name, unless on just, solemn, and devout occasions; nor even
then, without acts of adoration; and that they might glorify Him by
every thought of their hearts, every word of their tongues, and every
work of their hands, and by professing His truth, even to the death, if
it should please Him to call them to it.
They wished to be made all kindness and benignity, all goodness and
gentleness, all meekness and longsuffering; and to be filled with the
whole spirit of humility, and to have it the constant, ruling habit
of their minds. They dreaded applause, and desired never to speak a
word that might tend to their own praise, unless the good of others
required it. They endeavoured to abstain from all pleasures which did
not prepare them for taking pleasure in God.
They acted upon the principle of excluding none from their charity,
who were the objects of God’s mercy. They embraced all occasions to
assist the needy, to protect the oppressed, to instruct the ignorant,
to confirm the wavering, to exhort the good, and to reprove the wicked.
They wished to look upon the failings of their neighbours as if they
were their own; and never revealed them but when charity required, and
then with tenderness and compassion.
Space forbids further reference to these prayers. Suffice it to say
that, for reverential feeling, simplicity and beauty of expression,
scriptural sentiment, Christian benevolence, and earnest longings for
the highest holiness; for adoration, penitence, deprecation, petition,
thanksgiving, and intercession,—they have no superiors, perhaps hardly
any equals, in the English language. They are little known, and less
used; but would be of great service to thousands of Methodists, if
sometimes employed as an aid in their private devotions.
In January, 1733, Wesley set out on horseback for Epworth, to see his
father, whose health was failing; and, on his way, had a narrow escape,
by his horse falling over a bridge, not far from Daventry. His parents
suggested to him the propriety of using means to obtain the Epworth
living; but he was deterred from acquiescing in the proposal, by a
conviction that, “if he could stand his ground at Oxford, and approve
himself a faithful minister of Christ, through evil report and good
report, there was no place under heaven where he was so likely to make
improvement in every good work.”[111]
In May, he again went to Epworth, visiting, on the way, his friend
Clayton, at Manchester, where he spent a sabbath, and preached thrice,
in three different churches. On his return to Oxford, in June, he
found the ill effects of his absence; for three of his own pupils and
the whole of Mr. Clayton’s had abandoned the Methodists; and, instead
of finding seven-and-twenty communicants at St. Mary’s, he now found
not more than five. His friends were deserting him, and his enemies
triumphing over him; but, in the midst of all, he stood unmoved. “My
friends,” says he, “were either trifling or serious: if triflers, fare
them well; a noble escape: if serious, those who are more serious are
left, whom the others would rather have opposed than forwarded in the
service they have done, and still do, us. As for reputation, though
it be a glorious instrument of advancing our Master’s service, yet
there is a better than that—a clean heart, a single eye, a soul full
of God.”[112] “The thing that gives offence here is the being singular
with regard to time, expense, and company. Ill men say all manner of
evil of me, and good men believe them. There is a way, and there is
but one, of making my peace. God forbid I should ever take it. I have
as many pupils as I need, and as many friends; when more are better
for me, I shall have more. If I have no more pupils after these are
gone from me, I shall then be glad of a curacy near you; if I have, I
shall take it as a signal to remain here. What I do is this; when I am
entrusted with a person who is first to understand and practise, and
then to teach, the law of Christ, I endeavour to show him what that
law is. When he appears seriously sensible of this, I propose to him
the means God hath commanded him to use, in order to that end; and a
week, or a month, or a year after, as the state of his soul seems to
require it, the several prudential means recommended by wise and good
men. Only two rules it is my principle to observe in all cases; first,
to begin, continue, and end all my advices in the spirit of meekness;
and secondly, to add to meekness long suffering; in pursuance of a rule
which I fixed long since, never to give up any one till I have tried
him at least ten years.”[113]
These are significant facts. Methodism at Oxford was organised in
1729. Two years after, while Wesley and his brother were at Epworth,
it dwindled into almost nothing; and two years later still, when it
had increased to seven-and-twenty communicants, during another brief
Epworth visit it was almost utterly destroyed, for the seven-and-twenty
were reduced to five. All this goes to show that Wesley was the soul of
this mighty movement, and that without him it would have been dissolved
and become extinct.
It is far from certain that the seven-and-twenty communicants, just
mentioned, were all collegians. On the contrary, there is strong
presumptive proof that they were not; and, indeed, that some of them
were ladies. One of them seems to have been Miss Potter, probably the
bishop’s daughter, concerning whom Clayton writes to Wesley, in a
letter dated “Manchester, September 10, 1733,” as follows:—
“Poor Miss Potter! I wonder not that she is fallen. Where
humility is not the foundation, the superstructure cannot be
good. And yet I am sorry to hear the tidings of her, especially
that she has a great man for her confessor, who dissuades her
from constant communion. I am sure she has great occasion to
use all the means of grace which Providence provides for her.
I would not persuade you to leave off reading with her. Who
knows whether you may not raise her again to the eminence
from which she has fallen? At least, though she neglect the
weightier matters of the law, yet keep up in her that reverend
respect she bears it, even by the ‘tithing of mint and anise
and cummin.’”[114]
Whether there were other ladies besides this one, included in the
seven-and-twenty Methodist communicants, it is impossible to say; but
none were included in the five. The five poor Methodists remaining,
not reckoning Wesley himself, nor Morgan who was dead, nor Clayton who
was removed to Manchester, nor Whitelamb who was gone to Wroote, were
doubtless Charles Wesley, Benjamin Ingham[115] and James Hervey (both
of whom joined them in 1733), John Gambold, and, probably, Charles
Kinchin. All honour to such names! They kept the fire burning when it
was in danger of going out. Wesley was their master spirit; but they
were faithful and willing co-workers.
Mr. Clayton, in the letter just quoted, refers to confession and to
constant communion. Did the Oxford Methodists recommend confession?
It would seem they did; hence the following extract from a long,
unpublished letter, written at this period, and addressed to Wesley, by
his sister Emily:—
“To lay open the state of my soul to you, or any of our clergy,
is what I have no inclination to at present; and, I believe, I
never shall. I shall not put my conscience under the direction
of mortal man, frail as myself. To my own master I stand or
fall. Nay, I scruple not to say, that all such desire in you,
or any other ecclesiastic, seems to me like church tyranny, and
assuming to yourselves a dominion over your fellow-creatures,
which was never designed you by God.... I farther own that I do
not hold frequent communion necessary to salvation, nor a means
of Christian perfection. But do not mistake my meaning; I only
think communing every Sunday, or very frequently, lessens our
veneration for that sacred ordinance, and, consequently, our
profiting by it.”
Two other extracts from letters, belonging to this period, may be
useful as illustrative of Oxford Methodism. In the month of July, 1733,
Mr. Clayton, then resident in Manchester, wrote to Wesley as follows:—
“As to your question about Saturday, I can only answer it by
giving an account of how I spend the day. I do not look upon
it as a preparation for Sunday, but as a festival itself;
and, therefore, I have continued festival prayer, for the
three primitive hours, and for morning and evening, from the
Apostolical Constitutions, which, I think, I communicated
to you whilst I was at Oxford. I look upon Friday as my
preparation for the celebration of both the sabbath and the
Lord’s day; the first of which I observe much like a common
saint’s day, or as one of the inferior holidays of the Church.
I have, I bless God! generally contrived to have the eucharist
celebrated on Saturdays as well as other holidays, for the use
of myself and the sick people whom I visit.
“I was at Dr. Deacon’s when your letter came to hand, and we
had a deal of talk about your scheme of avowing yourselves as
a society, and fixing upon a set of rules. The Doctor seemed
to think you had better let it alone; for to what end would
it serve? It would be no additional tie upon yourselves; and
perhaps would be a snare for the consciences of those weak
brethren who might chance to come among you. Observing the
stations” [the fast on Wednesdays and Fridays] “and weekly
communion are duties which stand upon a much higher footing
than a rule of society; and they who can set aside the command
of God and the authority of the Church will hardly, I doubt, be
tied by the rules of a private society.
“As to the mixture” [of water with sacramental wine] “Mr.
Colley told me it was constantly used at Christ Church.
However, if you have reason to doubt it, I would have you
inquire; but I cannot think the want of it a reason for not
communicating. If I could receive where the mixture was used,
I would; and, therefore, I used to prefer the Castle to Christ
Church; but if not I should not think myself any further
concerned in the matter than as it might be in my power to get
it restored.”[116]
Again, in another letter, dated “Manchester, September 10, 1733,” Mr.
Clayton writes:—
“How should I direct my instructor in the school of Christ!
However, I must be free to tell you my sentiments of what
you inquire about. On Wednesdays and Fridays I have, for
some time past, used the Office for Passion Week, out of
Spinckes’s Devotions, and bless God for it. I have found it
very useful to excite in me that love of God, and that sorrow
for having offended Him, which make up the first main branch
of repentance. Refer your last question to Mr. Law; I dare not
give directions for spending that time which I consume in bed,
nor teach you, who rise at four, when I indulge myself in sleep
till five.”[117]
These are important letters, not only as exhibiting the religious
earnestness of Wesley and his friends, but as affording a glimpse
of the high churchism of the Oxford Methodists. Wesley seriously
contemplated the formation of a society, who should strictly observe
saint days, holidays, and Saturdays, besides other ritualistic
practices, down to superstitious admixture of sacramental wine with
water. In truth, these were ardent spirits. Visiting prisons, and
teaching children; rising at five every morning; praying for each
other and for their friends; and observing the weekly communion, are
things which all will regard with commendation: but the other were
silly, popish practices, not only unauthorised and useless, but too
much resembling the pernicious nonsense of the high church party of
the present day to receive the approval of those who have learned to
be thankful for the inestimable blessings of the great Protestant
reformation.
The health of Wesley’s father was now extremely feeble; and it became
an anxiously discussed family question whether Wesley should be his
father’s successor. Samuel was first urged to use means to obtain
the next presentation of the Epworth rectory; but he positively
declined doing so, and directed his father’s attention to John. The
correspondence on this subject extends over the whole of the year
1734. The Epworth living was valuable, as may be judged by the fact
that, though then worth only £200 per annum, it is now, through the
relative changes that have taken place in the value of money and the
price of food, worth near £1000.[118] The dying rector had been at
great expense in improving the parsonage and its premises. Here he had
diligently and faithfully laboured as an earnest parish minister for
nearly forty successive years. Here most of his nineteen children had
been born. Here he was about to die himself; and here he was anxious
that his wife should die. John was pressed to secure the living, and
thereby secure a continuance of the old homestead for his mother and
his unmarried sisters. His brother Samuel allowed that at Oxford he
would have “more friends, more freedom from care, and more Divine
ordinances than he could have elsewhere;” but then at Oxford he was
“despised,” and therefore could “do no good there.” To this John
answered: “1. A Christian will be despised anywhere. 2. No one is a
Christian till he is despised. 3. His being despised will not hinder
his doing good, but much further it, by making him a better Christian.
4. Another can supply my place at Epworth better than at Oxford, and
the good done here is of a far more diffusive nature; inasmuch as it is
a more extensive benefit to sweeten the fountain than to do the same to
particular streams.”[119]
In writing to his father, he put the case thus: “The question is not
whether I could do more good to others there or here; but whether
I could do more good to myself: seeing wherever I can be most holy
myself, there I can most promote holiness in others. But I can improve
myself more at Oxford than at any other place,” etc.
To this his father properly replied that our main consideration in
choosing a course of life “is not dear self, but the glory of God, and
the different degrees of promoting it.”[120]
John agreed to this; but argued that “that course of life tends most
to the glory of God, wherein we can most promote holiness in ourselves
and others;” and that at Oxford he had several advantages for doing
this which were almost peculiar to the place. 1. He could always have
at hand half-a-dozen friends, nearly of his own judgment, and engaged
in the same studies; persons who had wholly and absolutely devoted
themselves to God, and who denied themselves and took up their cross
daily. 2. He could not only have as much, but as little company as
he pleased; for he had no trifling visitors, except about an hour in
a month, when he invited some of the fellows to breakfast. 3. He was
entirely free from worldly cares, for his income was ready for him on
stated days, and all he had to do was to count it and carry it home.
4. He had the privilege of public prayer twice a day, and of weekly
communion. 5. At Oxford there was room for charity in all its forms;
poor families to be relieved; children to be educated; workhouses and
prisons to be visited; and the schools of the prophets, where tender
minds were to be formed and strengthened. 6. He had the joint advice
of many friends in any difficulty that might arise; the good bishop
and vice-chancellor to supply his want of experience; and a fund,
which this year would amount to near £80, to supply the bodily wants
of the poor, and thereby prepare their souls to receive instruction.
In addition to all this, he alleges that the care of two thousand
souls at Epworth would crush him; and that, were he to abandon all
his Oxford advantages, he would not be able to stand his ground for a
single month against intemperance in sleeping, eating, and drinking;
against irregularity in study; against a general lukewarmness in
his affections, and remissness in his actions; against softness and
self-indulgence, directly opposite to that discipline and hardship
which become a soldier of Jesus Christ.[121]
The letter from which the above is taken is dated December 10, 1734.
His brother Samuel wrote a fortnight later, saying that his father
had told him John was unalterably resolved not to accept the living,
even if he could get it. Samuel protests against the decision, and
says that in Wesley’s arguments he can see his love to himself, but he
cannot see his love to his neighbour. Besides, he was not at liberty
to resolve against undertaking a cure of souls, having been solemnly
engaged to do this at his ordination. Charles might be silly enough to
vow he would not depart from Oxford, and thereby avoid orders; but the
faith of John was already plighted to the contrary; and the idea scarce
ever entered the head of any Christian but his own, that a parish
priest cannot attain to the highest perfection possible on this side
heaven.[122]
Wesley’s reasons and arguments were doubtless well intended; but they
were feeble, sophistical, and inconclusive. It is easy to imagine that
they would be painful both to his father and family; and it seems
impossible to excuse them except upon the ground that God had elected
him for another kind of work, and that by an unseen power he was
prevented realising his father’s wishes. Wesley’s father died April
25, 1735, and the Epworth living passed into other hands; but before
proceeding farther, we give the last letter Wesley received from him.
The venerable rector was now anxiously employed in the publication of
his grand folio volume of 600 pages, “_Dissertationes in Librum Jobi_,”
and had requested his son to assist him with the engravings for it.
“EPWORTH, _January 21, 1735_.
“DEAR SON,—About an hour since, your letter of the 13th
instant came to hand, and indeed not before I had need of it,
especially when I considered how extremely weak I was, and
found myself grow sensibly weaker every day. My people have
been very kind to me during my long illness, which has brought
me now so low that I cannot walk half-a-dozen times about my
chamber; but then I am often refreshed with seeing Mr. Hale’s
noble present of books to me lying in my window, near half of
which I have already spread in my parish, some to those who
came to see me, and to others I have sent them, and with very
good effect, many having read them, and some lent them to
others. A spirit of Christianity, beyond what I have hitherto
known, seems to be raised among them; one proof of which is in
the greater frequency of the sacraments. Nor is Mr. Whitelamb
wanting in any part of his duty, though I am not able to preach
or give the sacrament to them myself, except one day, and that
with his assistance.
“And now let us go on to matter of less moment, though I hope
not quite frivolous. Had I had all Mr. Rivington’s advice at
first, all my plates and cuts would have been done before
this, and that with less expense, and to greater perfection.
The agreement you have made with the engraver seems to be
very reasonable. Whether the cuts are to be done on sheets
or half sheets I leave to you and Mr. Rivington; but I would
have leviathan’s rival, that is, the whale, as well as the
crocodile. As for the elephant, he is so common that he need
not be added. I am glad the tombs want no more than retouching,
and especially that Mr. Garden is not ill pleased with them.
‘Job in Adversity’ I leave to your direction, as likewise the
frontispiece, which Mr. Virtue is doing, who now duns me pretty
hard for money for it; and I have writ him lately to send me
word what he will charge for the whole when it is finished,
and what he desires in part, with a promise to send him some
money by the first opportunity I have of doing it. As for poor
Pentapolis, it must even shift as it can, though my heart is
pretty much in it, and I have taken a little pains about it.
This I must likewise leave with you; but cannot you send me a
copy of the drawings before they are engraven, that I may weigh
them, as is proper? As for Job’s horse, I cannot for my life
imagine how I shall get him into my Lord Oxford’s stable,—I
mean, get liberty to inscribe it to him, unless you yourself
would speak to my Lord Duplin about it. Have you yet found any
news of ‘_De Morbo Jobi_,’ which has been so long incognito?
Or, is there anything else that you find wanting? I heartily
commend you and your brother to God, and am this evening
Your affectionate father,
SAMUEL WESLEY.”[123]
Wesley endorsed this characteristic letter from his father with the
words, “The last I received from him.” Thirteen weeks afterwards, the
venerable man rested from his cares and earthly labours.
On June 11, 1734, Wesley preached before the university what his
brother Charles calls “his Jacobite sermon,” for which he was “much
mauled and threatened.” He was prudent enough, however, before
preaching it, to get the vice-chancellor to read and approve of it,
and hence was able to set “Wadham, Merton, Exeter, and Christ Church”
objectors at defiance.
He then set out for Epworth, accompanied by Westley Hall, who proposed
marriage to his sister Keziah, greatly to the satisfaction of all the
parties concerned, except Hall’s own mother. On his return to Oxford,
he spent some time in London, chiefly in consulting Mr. Law about one
of his pupils, referred to in Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 46; but
also partly in putting through the press his father’s “Dissertations on
the Book of Job.”[124]
About the same period, he began the practice of reading as he rode on
horseback,—a practice he continued nearly forty years. He also made
frequent excursions to different parts of the country, often on foot;
and, during the year, walked more than a thousand miles, constantly
preaching on the sabbath, and already acting the part of an itinerant.
His walking, preaching, reading, studying, visiting, and fasting
began to affect his health; he lost his strength, and frequently spat
blood.[125] On the 16th of July, while asleep in bed, he had such an
attack of bleeding as led him to exclaim: “O God, prepare me for Thy
coming, and then come when Thou wilt!” His friends became alarmed;
and his mother wrote letters blaming him for neglecting his health. A
physician was called in, his advice adopted, and gradually the well
worn devotee regained his lost vigour.[126]
Though Wesley’s letter to his father, dated December 10, 1734, seemed
to decide the question respecting his seeking to obtain the Epworth
living, his brother Samuel, during the correspondence arising out
of it, started an idea which, ghost like, haunted Wesley for months
afterwards, and which, we incline to think, had considerable influence
in inducing him to change his views, and ultimately to go to Georgia.
Samuel, on Christmas-day, 1734, wrote as follows:—“You are not at
liberty to resolve against undertaking a cure of souls. You are
solemnly engaged to do it before God, and His high-priest, and His
Church. Are you not ordained? Did you not deliberately and openly
promise to instruct, to teach, to admonish, to exhort those committed
to your charge? Did you equivocate then with so vile a reservation, as
to purpose in your heart that you would never have a charge? It is not
a college, it is not an university; it is the _order of the Church_,
according to which you were called.”[127]
This was touching Wesley in a tender place. On conscientious grounds,
he had already refused to apply for the Epworth living; and yet here
his brother Samuel maintains that on conscientious grounds, he is bound
not to bury himself at Oxford, but to undertake a cure of souls, either
at Epworth or somewhere else. His faith is plighted. Before God and His
Church he has sworn to be, not a tutor, but a minister of Christ. What
was the effect of this? In December, 1734, Wesley refused to apply for
his father’s living; and yet, ten months afterwards, he left Oxford and
set sail to Georgia. What occurred during this brief interval?
In January, 1735, Wesley wrote to Samuel, saying:—“I do not, nor ever
did, resolve against undertaking a cure of souls. There are four
cures belonging to our college, and consistent with a fellowship. I
do not know but I may take one of them at Michaelmas. Not that I am
clearly assured that I should be false to my engagement, were I only to
instruct and exhort the pupils committed to my charge. But of that I
should think more. I desire your full thoughts upon the whole, as well
as your prayers.”[128]
To this Samuel replied, February 8, 1735:—“_The order of the Church_
stakes you down, and the more you struggle you will be held the faster.
If there be such a thing as truth, I insist upon it, you must, when
opportunity offers, either perform that promise, or repent of it.”[129]
In answer, five days afterwards, John remarked:—“Your last argument is
either _ignoratio elenchi_, or implies these two propositions: 1. ‘You
resolve against any parochial cure of souls.’ 2. ‘The priest who does
not undertake the first parochial cure that offers is perjured.’ Let us
add a third: ‘The tutor who, being in orders, never accepts of a parish
is perjured.’ And then I deny all three.”[130]
Samuel’s reply was as follows:—“An ordained tutor, who accepts not a
cure, is perjured; alter the term into ‘who resolves not to accept,’
and I will maintain it, unless you can prove either of these two: (1)
there is no such obligation at taking orders; (2) this obligation is
dispensed with. Both which I utterly deny.”[131]
On the 4th of March John replied:—“I had rather dispute with you,
if I must dispute, than with any man living; because it may be done
with so little expense of time and words. You think I engaged myself
at my ordination to undertake the cure of a parish. I think I did
not. However, I own I am not the proper judge of the oath I then
took; accordingly, the post after I received yours, I referred it to
‘the high-priest of God,’ before whom I contracted that engagement,
proposing this single question to him,—Whether I had, at my ordination,
engaged myself to undertake the cure of a parish or no. His answer runs
in these words: ‘It doth not seem to me that, at your ordination, you
engaged yourself to undertake the cure of any parish, provided you can,
as a clergyman, better serve God and His Church in your present or some
other station.’ Now, that I can, as a clergyman, better serve God and
His Church in my present station, I have all reasonable evidence.”[132]
Wesley’s father died within two months after this; and yet, during
this short interval, Wesley seems to have been induced to lay aside
his scruples and to apply for the Epworth living. He applied, but he
was not successful. This is a bold assertion to be made in the teeth
of statements directly opposite; statements made and repeated and
re-repeated, without dispute, for more than the last seventy years: but
before the reader rejects it, let him ponder the significance of the
following letter, written by Wesley’s friend, Broughton, and published,
for the first time, in the _Wesleyan Times_, of October 28, 1861:—
“LONDON, _April 15, 1735_.
“REV. AND DEAR SIR,—The same evening I received the favour of
yours, I waited on St. John, promising myself a kind reception.
He rejoiced with me to hear that your father was yet alive; but
did not close readily with me in attempting what, if crowned
with success, might prove a means of making our declining
friend end his days in peace. What shall we say for so sudden,
so unwished for a change? Oh, put not your trust in princes!
St. John disowns his giving me any encouragement to promise
you hopes of success. Did I then write you an untruth? If his
charge be just, I did; but his words were, ‘though he had
solicited the Bishop of London and Sir Robert on behalf of
another, not for Epworth, yet he would be glad to serve Mr.
Wesley.’ But where is the obstacle? Why, my lord of London,
who is usually consulted by the minister of state on such
occasions, spoke some disadvantageous things of you once in
the presence of St. John. But I could not but observe to our
friend that the misrepresented strictness of life, which gave
occasion for these disadvantageous things to be spoken of you,
was so far from being an objection to your being favoured by
a Christian bishop, that I humbly hoped it would turn to your
good account, inasmuch as over exactness of behaviour was the
sign of a tender and well regulated mind. But I cannot here
help thinking, ‘_Tros Tyriusve illi nullo discrimine agetur_.’
St. John thinks the Bishop of Oxford can be your friend. Yes,
I told him, my lord might give you a favourable word, if
asked; but I did not think the interest in his lordship was
so prevalent as to make him bestir himself on your behalf.
However, if you judge it proper to write to the bishop, I will
wait upon him, and do the best I can to serve my dear friend.
“Could your father’s book be presented to the queen soon? It
might do good. Do you know any great man about the court? The
king is not so difficult (I hope), if one could get a hearty
friend to espouse you. My interest in the speaker is not
powerful enough to bring about so desired a work; yet if there
was any other great man to befriend you, a serviceable hint
might be dropped. I doubt not but our good and loving God will
order this and everything else for your great and best good.
This is the wish and prayer of, dear sir,
“Yours most sincerely,
“J. BROUGHTON.”
Broughton was now curate at the Tower, in London.[133] Henry St.
John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was a politician of great ability and
power. Sir Robert Walpole was prime minister. The Bishop of London was
the celebrated Edmund Gibson. The Epworth living was a gift of the
crown. Bear these facts in mind, and the above epistle will be easily
interpreted.
Wesley’s objections to leave Oxford being overcome, probably by the
hard facts and logic of his brother Samuel, he took steps to become his
father’s successor. Broughton, who was evidently a man of influence
and position, was employed to secure the help of Bolingbroke; and
Bolingbroke had promised to use his endeavours to serve Wesley; but,
on being pressed to fulfil his promise, shrank from doing so, on the
ground that he had heard Gibson speak disparagingly of Wesley in
Walpole’s presence; and, as the next presentation of the Epworth living
was, _ipso facto_, at the disposal of these two dignitaries, it was
almost useless to bring before them Wesley’s wish.
Broughton suggests two other steps to be taken, which might be of
service in securing the living: (1) that the good services of the
Bishop of Oxford be solicited; and (2) that the dying rector’s
“Dissertations on the Book of Job,” dedicated to Queen Caroline, might
be presented to her majesty as soon as possible. To adopt the second of
these suggestions was impracticable, as the work was only in the course
of being printed, and the first opportunity of presenting a copy to the
queen did not occur until six months after the rector’s death. Whether
the first was carried out we have no means of knowing.
The reader will excuse these lengthy observations, on the ground
that they help to clear up what has always been a somewhat painfully
mysterious chapter in Wesley’s history. It is not true that he could
not be induced to apply for his father’s living. Indirectly, at least,
he did apply, but failed; and, remembering this, the wonder is not so
great that a few months afterwards he embarked for Georgia.[134]
Little more remains to be said before accompanying Wesley on his
mission.
It was in the midst of this correspondence respecting the Epworth
rectory, that George Whitefield was introduced to Wesley’s
acquaintance, and became one of the Oxford Methodists.[135] Three years
before, Whitefield had been admitted a servitor of Pembroke College,
and had begun to pray and sing psalms five times every day. He longed
to be acquainted with the Methodists, and often watched them passing,
through ridiculing crowds, to receive the sacrament at St. Mary’s; but
he was a poor youth, the servitor of other students, and shrunk from
obtruding himself upon their notice. At length, a woman, in one of
the workhouses, attempted to cut her throat; and Whitefield sent an
apple-seller, attached to Pembroke College, to inform Charles Wesley
of her condition; and this led Charles to invite him to breakfast
next morning. He was now introduced to the rest of the Methodists,
and adopted all their rules. The master of his college threatened to
expel him. Some of the students shot at him their shafts of ridicule;
others threw dirt at him; and others took away their pay from him.
Being in great distress about his soul, he lay whole days prostrate
on the ground, in silent or vocal prayer; he chose the worst sort of
food; he fasted twice a week; he wore woollen gloves, a patched gown,
and dirty shoes; and, as a penitent, thought it unbecoming to have his
hair powdered. Like all his brother Methodists, he observed Lent with
the greatest severity, eating no flesh during the six weeks, except
on Saturdays and Sundays. On the other days, his only food was coarse
bread, and sage tea without sugar. Abstinence and inward conflicts
brought on illness; but, after about seven weeks, he was enabled
to lay hold on Christ by a living faith, was filled with peace and
joy, and became probably by far the most happy member of the Oxford
brotherhood.[136]
Mention has been already made of the first of Wesley’s
publications,—his “Forms of Prayer,” printed in 1733. In 1735 he issued
three others.
First, “A Sermon on the Trouble and Rest of Good Men, preached at St.
Mary’s, Oxford, on Sunday, September 21st, and published at the request
of several of the hearers.” London: C. Rivington. 1735. This sermon,
in two respects, is remarkable; (1) for its un-Wesleyan theology; (2)
for its boldly bearding Methodist persecutors in their head-quarters.
The preacher tells his hearers that “perfect holiness is not found
on earth; but death will destroy, at once, the whole body of sin,
and therewith its companion—pain.” Two years before, in his sermon
on “The Circumcision of the Heart,” Wesley had given a beautiful
definition of “holiness;” but here he teaches that this holiness is not
attainable in life; not until the hour of death; a different doctrine
this to that which he afterwards embodied in his “Plain Account of
Christian Perfection.” But however much the preacher lacked theological
correctness, there was no lack of heroic daring: remembering that, for
six years past, he and his associates had been the constant butt of
collegiate scorn and ridicule, and that his present congregation, in
a great degree, consisted of those who had thought it a privilege to
make themselves witty at his expense; one cannot but admire his pluck
in telling them, face to face, that, “as at first, he that was born
after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so
it is now, and so it must be, till all things are fulfilled. Despisers
were now multiplied upon the earth, who feared not the Son, neither the
Father; but blasphemed the Lord and His Anointed; either reviling the
whole of His glorious gospel, or making Him a liar as to some of the
blessed truths revealed therein. But in heaven good men are hid from
the scourge of the tongue. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the prophets
do not revile, or separate them from their company. They are no longer
despitefully used, and persecuted; neither do they groan under the hand
of the oppressor. In a word, in heaven there is no earthly or sensual,
no devilish spirit; none who do not love the Lord their God with all
their heart.”
The second of Wesley’s publications, in 1735, was “The Christian’s
Pattern; or, a Treatise of the Imitation of Christ. Written originally
in Latin by Thomas à Kempis. With a Preface containing an Account
of the Usefulness of this Treatise. Compared with the original, and
corrected throughout. By John Wesley, M.A.” London: C. Rivington. Of
this work he, at the same time, published two editions,—one in 8vo, 319
pages, with five engravings; and the other in 24mo, 344 pages, with a
frontispiece.
His third publication was a manuscript written by his father, and was
entitled, “Advice to a Young Clergyman. By a Divine of the Church of
England.” 12mo, 76 pages.
We now bid adieu to Oxford. We have seen Methodism at its
fountain-head; we must hereafter trace it, in its streams of blessing,
all the wide world over. The principles and practices of Oxford
Methodism may easily be gathered from the present chapter. Nothing has
been omitted, nothing exaggerated, and nothing altered. The system was
cradled in a storm, and more than once, even at Oxford, was in danger
of perishing. At least twice, during Wesley’s absence, it was all but
wrecked; and, from names casually mentioned, we incline to think its
permanently established converts were much less numerous than its
timid, time serving backsliders. At all events, but for the ministry of
the two Wesleys, of Whitefield, Ingham, Hervey, and Gambold, the memory
of Oxford Methodism might, without public loss, have been buried in
oblivion. As it is, no English historian can ignore it. In its results
it is one of the greatest facts in church annals. At Oxford, it was far
from perfect. It was misty, austere, gloomy, and forbidding; but it was
intensely sincere, earnest, and self denying. Its principles and its
aims may substantially be summed up in the words of Wesley himself,
written forty years afterwards:—
“Two young men, without a name, without friends, without either power
or fortune, set out from college with principles totally different
from those of the common people, to oppose all the world, learned and
unlearned; and to combat popular prejudices of every kind. Their first
principle directly attacked all the wickedness; their second, all
the bigotry in the world. Thus they attempted a reformation, not of
opinions (feathers, trifles not worth naming), but of men’s tempers and
lives; of vice in every kind; of everything contrary to justice, mercy,
or truth. And for this it was, that they carried their lives in their
hands; and that both the great vulgar and the small looked upon them as
mad dogs, and treated them as such.”[137]
Let us follow them.
CHAPTER IV.
_MISSION TO GEORGIA. 1735‒””””1737._
[Sidenote: 1735 Age 32]
WESLEY’S father died on the 25th of April, 1735.
Immediately after that event, the chief of the Oxford Methodists were
widely scattered: Gambold was a clergyman at Stanton-Harcourt; Ingham
became a curate in Essex; Whitefield, though not ordained, went on
an evangelistic tour to Gloucester, Bristol, and other places;[138]
Broughton was chaplain at the Tower; and the two Wesleys repaired to
the metropolis, where they were the guests of James Hutton, or rather
of James Hutton’s father, in Westminster.
Mr. Hutton was now in the twentieth year of his age. At Oxford he had
met with the Wesley brothers, and had invited them to visit him. His
father was an ordained clergyman of the Church of England; but, not
being able to take the oaths at the accession of George I., he had
resigned his Church preferments, and now kept a boarding school in a
house next door to that of Wesley’s brother Samuel. Here, on Sunday
evenings, the venerable man held meetings, at which he read, and
prayed, and sung with penitents; and here Wesley preached a sermon on
“One thing is needful,” which was the means of converting both James
Hutton and his sister.[139]
Just at this juncture, Dr. John Burton, of Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, was evincing great interest in the colonisation of Georgia.
Three years before, he had preached and published a sermon, with an
appendix on the state of the Georgian settlement. He now met with
Wesley in London, and introduced him to Oglethorpe, who strongly urged
the high church Methodist to undertake a mission to the infant colony.
Wesley took counsel with his brother Samuel; asked the advice of
William Law; and went to Manchester to consult his friends Clayton and
Byrom. Thence he proceeded to Epworth, and laid the proposal before his
widowed mother, who replied: “Had I twenty sons, I should rejoice if
they were all so employed.”
On September 8 Dr. Burton wrote to him pressing him to consent to go.
The doctor told him that “plausible and popular doctors of divinity
were not the men wanted for Georgia; for the ease, luxury, and levity
in which they were accustomed to indulge disqualified them for such a
work.” He and the Georgian trustees wished for men who were “inured
to contempt of the ornaments and conveniences of life, to bodily
austerities, and to serious thoughts;” and such he considered Wesley.
Ten days after the date of this letter Wesley accepted the proposal,
and Burton expressed his pleasure, and added, “You have too much
steadiness of mind to be disturbed by the light scoffs of the idle
and profane.”[140] In another long letter (hitherto unpublished),
dated Eton College, September 28, 1735, Dr. Burton, after reminding
Wesley that he will have a fine opportunity for usefulness during
the voyage to Georgia, proceeds to recommend him, on his arrival, to
visit from house to house, and preach everywhere. He tells him that
“some of the colonists are ignorant, and most of them are disposed to
licentiousness.” He adds: “You will find abundant room for the exercise
of patience and prudence, as well as piety. One end for which we were
associated was the conversion of negro slaves. As yet, nothing has been
attempted in this way; but a door is opened. The Purisburghers have
purchased slaves; they act under our influence; and Mr. Oglethorpe will
think it advisable to begin there. You see the harvest truly is great.
With regard to your behaviour and manner of address, you will keep in
mind the pattern of St. Paul, who became ‘all things to all men that he
might gain some.’ In every case, distinguish between what is essential
and what is merely circumstantial to Christianity; between what is
indispensable and what is variable; between what is of Divine and what
is of human authority. I mention this, because men are apt to deceive
themselves in such cases; and we see the traditions and ordinances of
men frequently insisted on with more vigour than the commandments of
God to which they are subordinate.”
This was good advice, and, in Wesley’s case, not unneeded. Sixteen days
after the date of Dr. Burton’s letter, Wesley embarked, taking with
him five hundred and fifty copies of a treatise on the Lord’s Supper,
besides other books,—“the gift of several Christian friends for the use
of the settlers in Georgia.”[141]
James Edward Oglethorpe was the third son of Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe,
of Godalming, Surrey. At a suitable age he entered the army, and became
secretary and aide-de-camp to Prince Eugene. In 1722 he succeeded
to his father’s estate, and obtained a seat in parliament, which he
retained nearly thirty years. From the first, he showed himself to be
a steady and faithful friend of humanity. These were days of harsh
government. The gallows was the penalty for petty thefts; and each
year, at least four thousand unhappy men in Great Britain were immured
in prison for the misfortune of being poor. A small debt was quite
enough to expose a struggling man to a perpetuity of imprisonment; and
an indiscreet bargain doomed many a well-meaning, miserable dupe to
lifelong confinement. Oglethorpe obtained a parliamentary committee, to
inquire into the state of prisons; the result of which was that a large
number of debtors were released from confinement, and restored to light
and to liberty. Being released, it was a serious question what to do
with them.
It so happened that, though the whole of the eastern seaboard of
America seemed to be already parcelled out among companies and
colonists, there was still remaining a comparatively small strip of
country, intervening between South Carolina and Florida, and situated
between the river Alatamaha on the south and the river Savannah on
the north, and having a sea-coast stretching a distance of sixty or
seventy miles. This strip of land was a wilderness over which England
held only a nominal jurisdiction; but it occurred to Oglethorpe and
his friends to plant in this sunny clime those children of misfortune
whom they had released from prison, but who were still without food
and shelter. Accordingly, on the 9th of June, 1732, a charter was
obtained from George II., erecting this thin slice of America into
the province of Georgia, and appointing Oglethorpe and twenty other
gentlemen (of whom Dr. Burton was one) trustees to hold the same
for a period of one and twenty years, “in trust for the poor.” The
benevolence of England was aroused. The trustees set an example of
princely liberality by their private subscriptions; the Bank of England
presented a donation of £10,000; an equal amount was voted by the House
of Commons; and the total sum raised, with but little effort, and
almost without solicitation, was £36,000. Within five months after the
signing of the charter, the first company of emigrants, one hundred
and twenty in number, set sail, with Oglethorpe as their commander,
and the Rev. Henry Herbert, a clergyman of the Established Church, as
their minister. At the commencement of the month of February, 1733,
the colonists reached the high bluff on which Savannah is now erected,
and encamped near the edge of the river. The streets of the intended
town were laid out with the greatest regularity; and the houses were
to be constructed on one model,—each a frame of sawn timber, measuring
sixteen feet by twenty-four, its sides to be enclosed with unplaned
boards, and its floor to be of rough deals, and its roof of shingle.
Each freeholder was allotted fifty acres of ground, five of which were
near Savannah, and the remaining forty-five farther off. Thus began
the commonwealth of Georgia. The humane reformer of prison life was
already the father of a state. A large number of Indians met him to
make an alliance with his colony; the meeting was friendly; to each
chief he gave a laced coat, a hat, and a shirt; and to their attendants
gunpowder, bullets, linen, tobacco, pipes, tape, and eight kegs of rum,
to carry home as presents to their respective towns. In a letter,
dated June 9, 1733, Oglethorpe states that a door was opened for the
conversion of the Indians; and nothing seemed to be wanting but a
minister who understood their language: in action and expression, they
were masters of eloquence, and many of their speeches were equal to
those which scholars most admire in the Greek and Roman writings.[142]
The next company of emigrants belonged to a different class. About
a year before the charter for the Georgian colony was granted, a
remarkable revival of religion took place at Saltzburg, in Germany.
By merely reading the Bible, above twenty thousand people were led
to renounce Popery and to embrace the Reformed religion. The popish
priests complained to the Archbishop of Saltzburg that these Protestant
converts assembled in various places, and sang hymns and offered
prayers. The archbishop published an edict prohibiting such assemblies,
upon pain of fines, corporal punishments, and even death itself. The
new converts, however, still assembled as before; and now his serene
highness the archbishop let loose his partisans, and commenced a
murderous persecution, which drove thousands of innocent, unoffending,
godly people into exile. Numbers were dragged to prison; some were led
about with ropes round their necks; others had their hands so tightly
tied with cords behind their backs that the blood spurted from their
finger ends. The archbishop’s soldiers struck some of them in the face
with their fists, calling them “heretic dogs and hell-hounds.” One poor
fellow was fined seventy florins for singing a Protestant psalm of
praise. Protestant preachers were called “murderers, buffle-heads, and
children of the devil;” and the Protestant doctrine was stigmatised as
“faith for swine and stinking goats.” Every one who embraced Luther’s
doctrines “would be roasted in hell;” and the moment any one read his
books the reader “became an offering to the devil.”[143]
What was the result? The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in Foreign Parts heard of these poor persecuted Protestants, and
proposed to them to emigrate to Georgia. Thousands of them had fled
from Saltzburg; and others were still in prison there, fed with bread
and water, and employing themselves in praying and singing psalms.
Large numbers were taken into service by Protestants at Augsburg and
other places; and one section of the fugitives embraced the proposal
just mentioned, and on October 31, 1733, set out for Georgia. After a
discourse, prayer, and benedictions, and well supplied with Bibles,
hymns, catechisms, and books of devotion, they began their pilgrimage,
one wagon conveying all the chattels that they had, and two others
their feebler companions and their little ones. We need not stop to
tell the charities that cheered them on their journey,—how they entered
Frankfort, two by two, in solemn procession, singing sacred songs,—and
how they were joined at Rotterdam by the preachers Bolzius and Gronau,
both disciplined in piety at the Orphan House of Professor Francke. Six
days brought them to Dover, where several of the Georgian trustees met
them and provided for their wants; and on January 8, 1734, they set
sail, singing the “Te Deum” and praising God with both lips and hearts.
The Saltzburghers arrived in Georgia in the month of March, met with
Oglethorpe, and chose a settlement twenty-one miles from Savannah,
where there were “rivers, little hills, clear brooks, cool springs,
a fertile soil, and plenty of grass.” At Charlestown, where they
first landed, they ascertained that in the province of Carolina there
were thirty thousand negroes, all of them slaves, working six days
in the week for their owners without pay, and allowed to work on the
Sundays for themselves. Near Savannah, they found a beautiful garden
of ten acres, already planted with thriving orange-trees, olives,
mulberries, figs, peaches, cabbages, peas, and pulse. The spot which
they had chosen as their settlement, and to which they gave the name of
Ebenezer, was surrounded by vast forests of cedars, walnuts, cypresses,
and oaks, with wild vines running to the top of the highest trees.
As to game, there were eagles, turkeys, roebucks, goats, deer, wild
cows, horses, hares, partridges, and buffaloes without number. The
Saltzburghers built tents made of the bark of trees, constructed roads
and bridges, set up religious services, were furnished with domestic
utensils and with cattle, and were soon a prosperous community.
In April Oglethorpe returned to England, bringing with him Tomo-chichi
and other Indians, to invigorate the confidence of England in the
destiny of Georgia. Parliament continued its benefactions, the king
expressed interest in a province which bore his name, and the youngest
child of England’s colonial enterprise won universal favour.
The next company of emigrants were a number of Scotch Highlanders,
who founded New Inverness, in Darien; the next a number of Moravians,
of whom more anon; and the next after that, the company with whom
Wesley sailed. Wesley’s predecessor in Georgia was the Rev. Samuel
Quincy,[144] a native of Massachusetts, but educated in England. Mr.
Quincy wishing to return to England, the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent Wesley as his successor, at a salary
of £50 a year.[145] The chief object in founding the colony was to grow
flax and hemp, to breed silkworms, and to raise raw silk.[146] The
common seal of the corporation had on one side a group of silkworms at
their toils, with the motto, _Non sibi, sed aliis_; and on the other,
two figures reposing on urns, emblematic of the boundary rivers; and
between them the genius of “Georgia Augusta,” with the cap of liberty
on her head, a spear in one hand, and the horn of plenty in the other.
It must be added that in this young community ardent spirits were
prohibited, and the introduction of slavery forbidden.
The Transatlantic colonies existing in 1735 were nothing more than a
mere fringe skirting the eastern coast of that vast continent. The
Spaniards were in Florida; the English in Georgia, the Carolinas,
Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New England; and the French in
Canada. This was all. Excepting these few feeble colonial settlements,
the whole of the immense American continent—which, measuring from New
York to California, and from Lake Superior to New Orleans, extends in
one direction 3300 miles and in the other 1300 miles—was one vast,
rich, but uncultivated wilderness, the home of myriads of birds and
beasts, and sparsely inhabited by savage Indians. Bancroft enumerates
above forty Indian tribes, or nations, embracing about 180,000 souls,
whose wigwams and hunting grounds were all situated on the eastern side
of the Mississippi. The men were warriors, and the women labourers.
Their education was acquired solely in the school of nature, and their
chief almanac was the flight of birds, announcing the progress of the
seasons. They kept no herds, and were never shepherds, but depended
for their food on the chase, the fisheries, and a little farming.
Their scanty clothing was made of skins, and their feet protected by
soft mocassins. Their principal ornaments were strings of shells, the
fairest feathers of the turkey, the skin of the rattlesnake, and an
enemy’s scalp. Their skins were oft tattooed; and, when making visits,
they painted themselves gloriously, delighting especially in vermilion.
They worshipped an unseen power pervading everything, which they called
the Great Spirit, and had their sorcerers, medicine men, and prophets.
Faith in the spirit world, as revealed by dreams, was universal; and
festivals in honour of the dead were frequent.
What became of these Indians? and where are their descendants? To
answer these questions would be to pass through scenes of horror
without a parallel, and to write a history of blood.
Such was America in 1735. What is it now, and what is likely to be its
future? Who could have imagined that, in one hundred and thirty years,
this huge wilderness would be transformed into one of the greatest
nations upon earth; and that the Methodism, begun at Savannah, would
pervade the continent, and, ecclesiastically considered, become the
mightiest power existing? But we must now return to Wesley and his
Georgian mission.
In a letter, dated October 10, 1735, Wesley gives his reasons for going
to Georgia. He writes:—
“My chief motive is the hope of saving my own soul. I hope to
learn the true sense of the gospel of Christ by preaching it
to the heathen. They have no comments to construe away the
text; no vain philosophy to corrupt it; no luxurious, sensual,
covetous, ambitious expounders to soften its unpleasing truths.
They have no party, no interest to serve, and are therefore fit
to receive the gospel in its simplicity. They are as little
children, humble, willing to learn, and eager to do, the will
of God.
“A right faith will, I trust, by the mercy of God, open the way
for a right practice; especially when most of those temptations
are removed which here so easily beset me. It will be no small
thing to be able, without fear of giving offence, to live on
water and the fruits of the earth. An Indian hut affords no
food for curiosity, no gratification of the desire of grand, or
new, or pretty things. The pomp and show of the world have no
place in the wilds of America.
“Further: I hope from the moment I leave the English shore,
under the acknowledged character of a teacher sent from God,
there shall be no word heard from my lips but what properly
flows from that character; and the same faithfulness I hope
to show in dispensing my Master’s goods, if it please Him to
send me to those who, like His first followers, have all things
common. What a guard is here against that root of evil, the
love of money, and all the vile attractions that spring from it!
“I then hope to know what it is to love my neighbour as
myself, and to feel the powers of that second motive to visit
the heathens, even the desire to impart to them what I have
received,—a saving knowledge of the gospel of Christ. I have
been a grievous sinner from my youth up, and am yet laden with
foolish and hurtful desires; but I am assured, if I be once
converted myself, God will then employ me both to strengthen my
brethren, and to preach His name to the gentiles.
“I cannot hope to attain the same degree of holiness here,
which I may there. I shall lose nothing I desire to keep. I
shall still have food to eat, and raiment to put on; and, if
any man have a desire of other things, let him know that the
greatest blessing that can possibly befall him is, to be cut
off from all occasions of gratifying those desires which,
unless speedily rooted out, will drown his soul in everlasting
perdition.”[147]
Exception may fairly be taken to some of the sentiments contained in
this letter. The Indians were not the docile children that Wesley
imagined; nor is it true that life in heathendom is more favourable to
the attainment of holiness than life in Christendom: but we neither
have space nor wish to criticise Wesley’s views, our chief object being
to represent him as he represents himself.
Wesley went on board the _Simmonds_, off Gravesend, on October 14,
1735; and, the day following, he wrote a characteristic letter,
(probably his last before leaving the English waters,) to his brother
Samuel, who was now head master of the school at Tiverton. After
telling him that, two days before, he had presented to the queen his
father’s “Dissertations on the Book of Job,” and had received “many
good words and smiles,” he continues:—
“Elegance of style is not to be weighed against purity of
heart; therefore, whatever has any tendency to impair that
purity is not to be tolerated, much less recommended, for
the sake of that elegance. But of this sort are most of the
classics usually read in great schools: many of them tending
to inflame the lusts of the flesh, and more to feed the lust
of the eye and the pride of life. I beseech you therefore,
by the mercies of God, who would have us holy as He is holy,
that you banish all such poison from your school; and that you
introduce, in their place, such Christian authors as will work
together with you in building up your flock in the knowledge
and love of God. For assure yourself, dear brother, you are
even now called to the converting of heathens as well as I. So
many souls are committed to your charge by God, to be prepared
for a happy eternity. You are to instruct them, not only in the
beggarly elements of Greek and Latin; but much more, in the
gospel. You are to labour with all your might to convince them,
that Christianity is not a negation, or an external thing, but
a new heart, a mind conformed to that of Christ, ‘faith working
by love,’”[148]
Two days after writing the above, Wesley, in order to converse with
his German fellow-passengers, began to study that language; and three
days later, believing that self-denial might be helpful to his piety,
he wholly left off the use of flesh and wine, and confined himself to
a vegetable diet, chiefly rice and biscuit. This he continued during
the whole of his residence in Georgia; but on his return to England,
for the sake of some who thought he made it a point of conscience, he
resumed his former mode of living, and practised it to the end of life,
except during a two years’ interim, when he again became vegetarian and
teetotaler, because Dr. Cheyne assured him that this was the only way
to “be free from fevers.”[149]
Wesley is on board—who are the chief of his fellow voyagers? His
brother Charles, Benjamin Ingham, James Edward Oglethorpe, Charles
Delamotte, and David Nitschmann. Two others had intended going, namely,
Westley Hall and Matthew Salmon; and both had been recently ordained
with reference to the Georgian mission. At the last moment, however,
Salmon’s friends pounced upon him, and sent him, almost forcibly, to
his parental home in Cheshire; while Hall, who had actually hired
a coach to carry him and his wife (Wesley’s sister) to Gravesend,
where the ship was lying, received, as he was about to start, the
intelligence that his family were not only opposed to his embarking,
but had procured him a Church benefice. This so changed his missionary
views and feelings, that he instantly countermanded the order for the
coach, put aside all his luggage and preparations for the mission,
and, hastening to General Oglethorpe, told him he had resolved not to
go.[150]
Of Charles Wesley nothing need be said; his fame is everywhere.
Benjamin Ingham was a young Yorkshireman, twenty-three years of age,
and, for the last three months, had been preaching in the villages
surrounding the metropolis with singular success. “Fast, and pray,”
wrote Wesley at the beginning of September: “fast and pray; and then
send me word whether you dare go with me to the Indians.” Ingham at
first thought there were heathens enough at home; but, a fortnight
after, he acceded to Wesley’s proposal; and, with as pure and devoted a
heart as ever throbbed in missionary’s bosom, away he went to convert
the Indians in America.
Oglethorpe has been already mentioned. Suffice it to add, that though
chivalrous in the highest degree, and the very soul of benevolence and
honour,—though brave and loyal, and full of enthusiastic feeling,—he
was irascible and sometimes rash, talkative, tinged with vanity, and
somewhat boastful. Like many other public men, he became the victim
of unmerited censure and injudicious praise. The last thirty years of
his life were chiefly spent in the society of literary and learned
men. He died in 1785; and Hannah More, in a letter dated a year before
his death, spoke of him thus: “He is much above ninety years old, and
the finest figure you ever saw. He perfectly realises all my ideas of
Nestor. His literature is great, his knowledge of the world extensive,
and his faculties as bright as ever. He is quite a _preux chevalier_,
heroic, romantic, and full of the old gallantry.”
Charles Delamotte was a young man of twenty-one, the son of a Middlesex
magistrate; and was so attached to Wesley, that when he heard he was
about to embark for Georgia he determined to go with him, and to act
as his servant. His father, naturally enough, strongly objected,
and offered to settle him in a handsome business; but the youth was
obstinate, and after obtaining a partial consent from his parents and
family, set sail with Wesley, lived with him, served under him as a son
in the gospel, did much good, and endured great hardships for the sake
of Christ. On his return to England, he became a Moravian, settled at
Barrow-upon-Humber, where he spent a long life of piety and peace, and
died in 1796.[151]
David Nitschmann was born in Moravia, and was now in the sixtieth year
of his age. In 1720 a remarkable revival of religion took place in the
town where David lived; but, by the intervention of the Jesuits, the
meetings of the new converts were prohibited, and many who attended
them were imprisoned in stables, cellars, and other offensive places.
A police officer entered Nitschmann’s house, where one hundred and
fifty of these godly people were assembled, and seized all the books
within his reach. The congregation at once struck up a stanza of one of
Luther’s hymns:—
“If the whole world with devils swarmed,
That threatened us to swallow,
We will not fear, for we are armed,
And victory will follow.”
Twenty persons, including David, all heads of respectable families,
were arrested and sent to gaol. For three days David was deprived of
food, and was so cruelly ironed that the blood spurted from his nose
and mouth, and oozed from his very pores. After some time, he escaped
from his horrid dungeon, and fled for safety to his Moravian friends at
Herrnhut. David was now a Moravian bishop, and, accompanied by about
thirty Moravians, was on his way to visit the congregations of the
Brethren in Georgia.
Such were the chief of Wesley’s fellow voyagers. As already stated,
they embarked at Gravesend on October 14, 1735; but it was not
until December 10 that they fairly started.[152] First of all, they
encountered a storm in the Downs; then, on arriving at Cowes, they had
to await the man-of-war that was to be their convoy.
The rules which Wesley and his friends observed during their long
voyage were as follows:—From four in the morning till five, they
employed in private prayer. From five to seven, they read the Bible
together, carefully comparing what they read with the writings of the
earliest ages. At seven, they breakfasted. At eight, they had public
prayers and expounded the lesson. From nine to twelve, Wesley usually
learned German, Delamotte studied Greek and navigation, Charles Wesley
wrote sermons, and Ingham gave instruction to the twelve children on
board. At twelve, they met together for mutual prayer, and to report
progress. About one, they dined; and from the time of dinner till four
in the afternoon, they read or spoke to certain of the passengers of
whom they had respectively taken charge. At four, they had evening
prayers, and either expounded the lesson, or catechized and instructed
the children in the presence of the congregation. From five to six was
again spent in private prayer. From six to seven they read, each in his
own cabin, to three different detachments of the English passengers, of
whom about eighty were on board. At seven, Wesley joined the Moravians
in their public service; while Ingham read, between the decks, to as
many as desired to hear. At eight, the four faithful friends met in
private to exhort and instruct each other; and, between nine and ten,
they went to bed without mats and blankets, where neither the roaring
of the sea nor the rocking of the ship could rob them of refreshing
rest.[153]
While detained at Cowes, Wesley, after careful instruction, baptized
four unbaptized Quakers.[154] Charles Wesley, being known to the
minister of the town, preached several times in the parish church
to large congregations; and, in the house of a poor woman, read to
the crowds which flocked to hear him. In other respects also their
detention was productive of good; for a gentleman who scoffed at
religion left the ship; the second mate, who was an insolent and ill
natured fellow, was expelled; and a young man was received on board,
who, for his piety, had been turned adrift by his rich parents, and had
been praying incessantly that he might be directed to a place where he
could have the advantage of public prayers and the holy sacrament.
On November 3, while walking in the Isle of Wight, the four friends
agreed upon the following resolutions, which they solemnly subscribed:—
“IN the name of God, Amen! We, whose names are underwritten,
being fully convinced that it is impossible, either to
promote the work of God among the heathen, without an entire
union among ourselves, or that such a union should subsist,
unless each one will give up his single judgment to that of
the majority, do agree, by the help of God:—first, that none
of us will undertake anything of importance without first
proposing it to the other three;—secondly, that whenever our
judgments differ, any one shall give up his single judgment
or inclination to the others;—thirdly, that in case of an
equality, after begging God’s direction, the matter shall be
decided by lot.
JOHN WESLEY,
CHARLES WESLEY,
BENJAMIN INGHAM,
CHARLES DELAMOTTE.”[155]
Of the Moravians on board, Ingham, in a long letter to his mother,
wrote as follows:—“They are a good, devout, peaceable, and
heavenly-minded people; and almost the only time you know they are in
the ship is when they are harmoniously singing the praises of the great
Creator, which they constantly do twice a day. Their example was very
edifying. They are more like the primitive Christians than any church
now existing, for they retain both the faith, practice, and discipline
delivered by the apostles. They have regularly ordained bishops,
priests, and deacons. Baptisms, confirmation, and the eucharist are
duly administered. Discipline is strictly exercised, without respect
of persons. They all submit themselves to their pastors in everything.
They live together in perfect love and peace, having for the present
all things common. They are more ready to serve their neighbours
than themselves. In business they are diligent, in all their dealings
strictly just; and in everything they behave themselves with meekness,
sweetness, and humility.”
From the same letter we learn that, on October 18, Wesley and Ingham
began to read the Old Testament together; and, at the rate of between
nine and ten chapters daily, finished it before they arrived at
Georgia. On the day following, Wesley commenced preaching without
notes; and during the passage, in a series of sermons, he went through
the whole of our Saviour’s sermon on the mount, and, every sabbath, had
a weekly sacrament.
The voyage, from Cowes to the Savannah river, was made in fifty-seven
days. Oglethorpe seems to have acted with great kindness. On one
occasion, when some of the officers and gentlemen on board took
liberties with Wesley and his friends, Oglethorpe indignantly
exclaimed, “What mean you, sirs? Do you take these gentlemen for
tithe-pig parsons? They are gentlemen of learning and respectability.
They are my friends, and whoever offers an affront to them insults
me.”[156] This was quite enough, and, ever after, the poor Methodists
were treated with respect. Oglethorpe was irritable, but noble-hearted
and generous. Wesley, hearing an unusual noise in the general’s cabin,
entered to inquire the cause; on which the angry soldier cried: “Excuse
me, Mr. Wesley; I have met with a provocation too great to bear. This
villain, Grimaldi, an Italian servant, has drunk nearly the whole
of my Cyprus wine, the only wine that agrees with me, and several
dozens of which I had provided for myself. But I am determined to be
revenged. The rascal shall be tied hand and foot, and be carried to
the man-of-war; for I never forgive.” “Then,” said Wesley with great
calmness, “then I hope, sir, you never sin.” Oglethorpe was confounded,
his vengeance was gone, he put his hand into his pocket, pulled out a
bunch of keys, and threw them at Grimaldi, saying, “There, villain!
take my keys, and behave better for the future.”[157]
The voyage to Georgia was not without danger. On the 17th of January,
the sea broke over the ship, and, shaking it from stem to stern,
brought down the mainyard upon the decks, and dashed through the cabin
windows. Six days after, an immense wave vaulted over Wesley’s head,
and drenched him to the skin. Two days later, the winds roared, and
the ship rocked to and fro with the utmost violence. The sea sparkled
and smoked as if on fire, and the air literally blazed with lightning.
The mainsail was torn to tatters, and the companion swept away.[158]
Just at the time this occurred, the Moravians were engaged in their
evening service, and were singing a psalm of praise. As usual, Wesley
was with them. The English passengers began screaming; but the Germans
calmly continued singing. Wesley was struck with this, and asked one
of them, after the service was concluded, “Were you not afraid?” He
answered, “I thank God, no.” Wesley asked again, “But were not your
women and children afraid?” “No,” replied the Moravian, “our women and
children are not afraid to die.” From the Moravians Wesley went among
the terror-struck English, and pointed out the difference between him
that feareth God and him that feareth Him not; and then concludes his
account of the storm by saying, “This was the most glorious day which
I had ever seen.” Eleven days after, on February 5, 1736, they safely
cast anchor in the Savannah river, and were welcomed by the firing
of cannon, and by all the freeholders, constables, and tithingmen,
presenting arms; while Oglethorpe’s first act was to give orders to
provide materials to build a church.[159]
Savannah was now a town of about forty houses,[160] standing on a flat
bluff, rising forty or fifty feet above the crescent river flowing at
its base. On the eastern side of the town was a swamp, on the west a
wood, and on the south a forest of pines, fourteen miles in length. The
principal buildings were a courthouse, which served also for a church,
a log-built prison, a storehouse, a public mill for grinding corn,
and a residence for the trustees’ steward. All the houses were of the
same size. There were still standing the four beautiful pines, under
which Oglethorpe encamped when he landed with the first settlers, and
which for nearly a twelvemonth he used as a sleeping place. At the
distance of about half a mile was a small Indian town, in which large
numbers of the Creek nation were occasionally accustomed to assemble.
The climate was exceedingly salubrious, the land rich, and the water
good.[161] Every male emigrant was allowed a watch coat, a musket, a
bayonet, a hatchet, a hammer, a hand saw, a shovel, a hoe, a gimlet,
a knife, an iron pot, a pair of pothooks, and a frying-pan: also for
his maintenance, during the first year, 312 lbs. of beef or pork, 104
of rice, 104 of Indian corn or peas, 104 of meal, one pint of strong
beer per day, 52 quarts of molasses, 16 lbs. of cheese, 12 of butter,
eight oz. of spice, 12 lbs. of sugar, four gallons of vinegar, 24 lbs.
of salt, 12 quarts of lamp oil, one lb. of cotton thread, and 12 lbs of
soap. Proportionate allowances were made to women and children.[162]
Such facts will help the reader to imagine the kind of home and society
which Wesley had in Georgia.
The only other towns in Georgia, even when Wesley came back to England,
were Frederica, in St. Simon’s Island, one hundred miles south of
Savannah; Darien, the settlement of the Scotch Highlanders, at a
distance of about eighty miles; New Ebenezer, consisting of sixty huts,
nineteen miles; Highgate and Hampstead, with fourteen families, four
or five miles southwest, and Thunderbolt, with three families, six
miles southeast. Such were the English settlements in Georgia. All the
rest of that large territory was woods, swamps, and prairies, the home
of savage Indians, and of savage beasts. The Georgian Indians had no
literature, no religion, and no civil government. Every one did what
was right in his own eyes; and, if his neighbour felt aggrieved, he
would warily do his best to shoot him, scalp him, or cut off his ears.
All of them, except perhaps the Choctaws, were gluttons, drunkards,
thieves, and liars; implacable, unmerciful, murderers of fathers,
murderers of mothers, murderers of their own children. Husbands,
strictly speaking, the women had none, for the men left their so called
wives at pleasure; and the wives, in return for such desertion, would
cut the throats of all the children they had had by their faithless
swains. The Choctaws possessed a large extent of land, eight or nine
hundred miles west of Savannah, had many well inhabited towns, and six
thousand warriors. The Chicasaws, dwelling among meadows, springs, and
rivers, six or seven hundred miles in the interior, had ten towns, and
about nine hundred fighting men,—all of them eating, drinking, and
smoking almost day and night, extremely indolent except in war, and
torturing and burning their prisoners with the most fiendish cruelty.
The Cherokees lived in a mountainous, fruitful, and pleasant country,
three or four hundred miles from Savannah, had fifty-two towns, and
above three thousand men of war. The Uchees had only one small town,
near two hundred miles distant from the Savannah settlement, and were
hated by most and despised by all the other Indian tribes, for their
cowardice and superlative diligence in thieving. The Creeks were
located at a distance of about four hundred miles, had a well watered
country, and fifteen hundred fighting men, and, of all the Indians,
were the most infected with the insatiate love of drink, as well
as other European vices. In such a country John Wesley lived, from
February 5, 1736, to December 2, 1737.
One of the first to meet Wesley on the shores of Georgia was the well
known Moravian elder, August Gottlieb Spangenberg. Wesley asked his
advice how to act in his new sphere of labour. Spangenberg replied,
“My brother, I must first ask you one or two questions. Have you the
witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with
your spirit, that you are a child of God?” Wesley was surprised at
such questions. They were new to him. He was at a loss how to answer.
Spangenberg continued, “Do you know Jesus Christ?” This was easier,
and Wesley answered, “I know He is the Saviour of the world.” “True,”
said Spangenberg; “but do you know He has saved _you_?” Wesley was
again perplexed, but answered, “I hope He has died to save me.”
Spangenberg only added, “Do you know yourself?” Wesley replied, “I
do.” An odd conversation, leaving Spangenberg in doubt respecting the
real conversion of the Oxford priest, and leading Wesley to think of
doctrines which took him more than the next two years to understand.
Nine days after his arrival, Wesley and his friends were visited by
Tomo-Chichi (whom Oglethorpe had brought to England some time before)
and half-a-dozen other Indians. Informed of their arrival, the young
clergymen met them in their gowns and cassocks. The chief bid them
welcome, said he would assemble the great men of his nation, and
expressed a wish that they would teach his children; while his wife
gave them a jar of milk, as emblematic of her wish that they might feed
the Indians with milk, for they were but children, and a jar of honey,
with the hope that the missionaries would be sweet to them.[163]
Ingham and Charles Wesley went off with Oglethorpe to lay out the town
of Frederica; and Wesley and Delamotte, having no house of their own to
live in, lodged, during the first month, with Spangenberg, Nitschmann,
and other Moravian friends. Thus, from morning to night, were they
mixed up with these godly people, and had ample opportunity to observe
their spirit and behaviour. Wesley writes: “They were always employed,
always cheerful themselves, and in good humour with one another;
they had put away all anger, and strife, and wrath, and bitterness,
and clamour, and evil speaking; they walked worthy of the vocation
wherewith they were called, and adorned the gospel of our Lord in all
things.” Wesley was present at the election and ordination of Anton
Seifart[164] as a bishop for Georgia, the simplicity and solemnity
of the service making him almost forget the seventeen hundred years
between, and imagine himself in one of those assemblies where form and
state were not, but Paul the tentmaker or Peter the fisherman presided,
with the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Who can estimate the
influence of such intercourse in moulding the subsequent character and
life of this inquiring missionary?
Mr. Quincy, Wesley’s predecessor, having now removed to Carolina,
Wesley took possession of the wood-built rectory, and, on March 7th,
commenced his ministry at Savannah by preaching a sermon from 1
Corinthians xiii. 3, in which he introduced two death-bed scenes,—that
of his father at Epworth, and another which he had witnessed at
Savannah, and which was “a spectacle worthy to be seen of God and
angels and men.”[165] He officiated at nine in the morning, at twelve,
and again in the afternoon;[166] and announced his design to administer
the sacrament on every Sunday and on every holiday.
A few days subsequent to this, writing to his mother, he remarked:—“We
are likely to stay here some months. The place is pleasant beyond
imagination, and exceeding healthful. I have not had a moment’s illness
of any kind since I set my foot upon the continent; nor do I know any
more than one of my seven hundred parishioners who is sick at this
time. Many of them indeed are, I believe, very angry already; for a
gentleman, no longer ago than last night (March 17), made a ball; but
the public prayers happening to begin about the same time, the church
was full, and the ballroom so empty that the entertainment could not
go forward. I should be heartily glad if any poor and religious men or
women of Epworth or Wroote would come over to me. General Oglethorpe
would give them land enough, and provisions gratis, till they could
live on the produce of it.”[167]
Wesley, in this letter, evidently considers the whole of the Georgian
settlements as his parish; for, so far from Savannah having at this
time a population of seven hundred souls, there was scarcely that
number in the whole of the settlements put together. Georgia was his
parish; for, Mr. Quincy being gone, he was the only minister of the
Church of England inducted into ministerial work in the Georgian
territory. Charles Wesley was Oglethorpe’s secretary; and though
Benjamin Ingham had gone with a few colonists to where Frederica was to
stand, Frederica itself as yet did not exist. Besides, Ingham’s visit
was intended to be but temporary, his mind being fully fixed upon a
mission to the Indians. Indeed, this was Wesley’s purpose also. Their
only object in quitting England was, not to preach to the colonists,
but to the Indians; and the reason why Wesley had begun to preach to
the English at Savannah was because Mr. Quincy, the minister of the
English, had left the colony, and they were now as sheep without a
shepherd; and also because, through the French on the one hand and the
Spaniards on the other, the Indians were at present in great confusion,
and had become so excited by French and Spanish plots and treachery
that it was not only dangerous to go among them, but, as Tomo-Chichi
told Wesley and his friends at the interview already mentioned, they
seemed determined not to hear “the great word” which the white man had
to teach.[168] In these two facts we find the reason, and the only
reason, why Wesley’s object in going to Georgia was not fulfilled; and
why, instead of preaching to the Indians in the woods, he spent his
time in preaching to the English at Savannah.
The commencement of Wesley’s ministry was auspicious. A fortnight after
preaching his first sermon, he wrote to his brother Charles as follows:
“I have hitherto no opposition at all; all is smooth, and fair, and
promising. Many seem to be awakened; all are full of respect and
commendation. We cannot see any cloud gathering. But this calm cannot
last: storms must come hither, too; and let them come, when we are
ready to meet them.”[169]
Wesley had lived so long in the tempest of opposition that it is no
wonder he felt it strange to find himself in the midst of an unbroken
calm, surrounded by nothing but “respect and commendation.” This was a
new experience, but it was soon ended.
Charles Wesley and Ingham were already in hot water at Frederica, and
the latter hurried off to Savannah for advice. It was only three weeks
since Wesley had there commenced his ministry; yet he had already
established daily morning and evening public prayers, and a weekly
communion; he had also formed a society, which met on Wednesday,
Friday, and Sunday nights, to read and pray and sing psalms together;
and Delamotte had begun to teach a few orphan children.[170] This was
a vigorous beginning, but now Wesley and Delamotte had to hasten to
Frederica, leaving Ingham to supply their place in the best way he
could.
Charles had been baptizing children by trine immersion, and
endeavouring to reconcile scolding women. Some of these termagants
had prejudiced Oglethorpe against him, and the poor secretary was now
treated with coldness, and even charged with mutiny. A woman, whose
husband had been put into confinement, blamed him for being the cause
of it, and threatened to be revenged upon him, by “exposing his d——d
hypocrisy and his prayers four times a day by beat of drum.”[171] While
all the others were provided with boards to sleep upon, he was left to
sleep upon the ground. His few well-wishers became afraid to speak to
him, and even his washerwoman refused in future to wash his linen.
Wesley and Delamotte left Savannah on April 4, and returned on April
20; having spent ten days on the voyage, and six in settling the
miserable squabbles that had sprung up among the palmetto huts of
Frederica.
On the day of his arrival, Wesley wrote to Oglethorpe as follows:—
“SAVANNAH, _April 20, 1736_.
“SAVANNAH never was so dear to me as now. I found so little
either of the form or power of godliness at Frederica, that I
am sincerely glad I am removed from it. There is none of those
who did run well whom I pity more than Mrs. Hawkins.[172] Her
treating me in such a manner would indeed have little affected
me, had my own interests only been concerned. I have been used
to be betrayed, scorned, and insulted, by those I had most
laboured to serve. But when I reflect on her condition, my
heart bleeds for her.”
Wesley then refers to the accusation against his brother, to the effect
that, by the frequency of his public prayers, he prevented the men
attending to their proper work, and interrupted the progress of the
town and colony. He shows the absurdity of this, by stating that, both
at Frederica and Savannah, not more than seven minutes were spent in
reading the public morning and evening prayers. Fourteen minutes daily,
in two public services, could hardly be considered an unreasonable
taxation of the people’s time. Wesley writes: “These cannot be termed
long prayers: no Christian assembly ever used shorter.” And then he
naively informs Oglethorpe that these short prayers had no repetitions
in them! We should think not![173]
Within a month after his return to Savannah, Wesley began to carry
out his high church principles. He refused to baptize a child of Mr.
Parker’s, second bailiff of the town, because the parents objected to
its being dipped. On Sundays, he divided the public prayers, according
to the original appointment of the Church; reading the morning service
at five; the communion office and a sermon at eleven; and the evening
service at three. He also commenced visiting his parishioners in order,
from house to house, setting apart for this purpose three hours every
day.
He had no sooner begun, however, than his brother, wearied with his
life at Frederica, and full of abhorrence at the false-heartedness of
the people,[174] unexpectedly presented himself at Savannah. Places
were exchanged, and John and Delamotte instantly started off to the
forsaken flock. They arrived at Frederica on May 22nd, and remained
until June 23rd. During this brief visit, Wesley read the commendatory
prayer over Mrs. Germain, at the point of death; made Mr. Lassel’s
will; arranged a small society-meeting, like that which had been
organised at Savannah; and reproved an officer of a man-of-war for
swearing. One of his congregation said to him: “I like nothing you do;
all your sermons are satires upon particular persons. Besides, we are
Protestants: but as for you, we cannot tell what religion you are of.
We never heard of such a religion before; we know not what to make of
it. And then your private behaviour: all the quarrels that have been
here since your arrival have been because of you; and there is neither
man nor woman in the town who minds a word you say.” The next day
Wesley returned to Savannah.
He was no sooner back than a large party of Indians came, including
several chiefs and an interpreter, with whom he had several interviews.
He now hoped that a door was opened for the fulfilment of his intention
to be a missionary among the heathen; but when he informed Oglethorpe
of his purpose, the general objected, on the ground that there was
great danger of his being taken or killed by the French, and that it
was inexpedient to leave Savannah without a minister. Wesley answered
that, though the trustees of Georgia had appointed him to the office of
minister of Savannah, this was done without his solicitation, desire,
or knowledge; and that he should not continue longer than until his way
was opened to go among the Indians. And so the matter ended.
On the 26th of July, after spending a little more than five months
in Georgia, his brother Charles embarked for England. At the same
time, Wesley went again to ill-natured Frederica, where he spent the
next twelve weeks. Here he read, with Delamotte, Bishop Beveridge’s
“_Pandectæ Canonum Conciliorum_,” and became more convinced than ever
that both particular and general councils may err. He set up a small
library; and as several Germans, through not understanding the English
tongue, were unable to join in the public service, he agreed to meet
them every day at noon, in his own house, where, in their own language,
he expounded to them a chapter of the New Testament, and prayed with
them. Finding, however, that his prospects of doing good at Frederica
became less and less, he returned to Savannah on the 31st of October,
where he continued until the beginning of 1737.
Meanwhile, Wesley’s friends in England did not forget him. The
following was from his old acquaintance, Mr. Morgan, and is now for the
first time given to the public.
“OXON, _November 27, 1735_.
“DEAR SIR,— ... Be pleased to let Mr. Ingham know that I
intend going to Yorkshire, if not hindered by my father. God
has made Mr. Dickison the instrument of awakening his landlord
and landlady. I read to them at Mr. Fox’s an hour every other
day, in the Bishop of Man’s Catechism. Mr. Fox and his wife,
especially the former, are most zealous Christians; and are
earnestly bent on going to Georgia. So is Mr. Dickison, who
is ‘an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile.’ I do not
doubt but we shall be able to send you a colony of thorough
good Christians. I have undertaken the care of Bocardo. I go
there three days in the week, and Mr. Broughton a fourth. I
read every Sunday night to a cheerful number of Christians at
Mr. Fox’s. I could say a great deal respecting our meetings,
etc.; but I am obliged to steal even this time from the holy
Scriptures, in which I find more and more comfort every day.
Indeed, the Lord’s kingdom increaseth apace. My love to your
brother, and Mr. Ingham, and Mr. Delamotte; and best respects
to Mr. Oglethorpe. I should be very glad if you could spare me
some of your prayers, or anything else which may be of service
to me.
“I am, your brother in Christ Jesus,
“RICHARD MORGAN.
“To the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, in Georgia.”
Another unpublished letter lies before us, written by Sir John Thorold,
and breathing a most Christian spirit. Omitting what is purely
sentimental, we give the following extracts:—
“LONDON, ST. JAMES’S PALACE, _May 24, 1736_.
“DEAR SIR,—I am unwilling to lose the opportunity of writing
to you, by Capt. Thompson, and inquiring after the welfare of
yourself, your brother, Mr. Ingham, Mr. Delamotte, and the
whole colony of Georgia. I have read the journal of your voyage
to that new settlement, and can, with pleasure, discern the
footsteps of Divine Providence towards you.... Our dear friend
Mr. Broughton is curate at the Tower, and has undertaken to
preach to the poor prisoners in Ludgate every Tuesday in the
afternoon. Mr. Whitefield and Mr. Hervey propose to enter into
holy orders this next ordination. May they become burning and
shining lights in the Church! Sir John Phillips has been, for
several weeks, hindered from attending the societies, by reason
of sickness and infirmities. He piously allows Mr. Whitefield
£20 per annum. Several of Mr. Broughton’s late parishioners at
Cowley forget not the assembling of themselves together. Your
friends at Oxford continue to exhort and edify one another.
Tell me what progress you make in spiritualizing your flock;
and what probability there is of the Lord opening the door of
faith to the Indians.... May the God of love keep you all knit
together in the bond of charity, and may you at last receive a
beautiful crown at the Lord’s hand, and enter amongst angels
and archangels, to sing everlasting songs of praise to the Lord
Almighty. I desire your prayers for me and mine.
“J. THOROLD.”
The next was from James Hutton:—
“_September 3, 1736._
“DEAR SIR,—I am this day twenty-one years old. Mr. Whitefield
has taken orders, and is in town to supply Mr. Broughton’s
places at the Tower and Ludgate prison. Mr. Broughton reads
prayers every night to a religious society that meet in Wapping
chapel. Mr. Morgan is obliged by his father’s orders to study
physic at Leyden, where the name of Wesley stinks as well as
at Oxford. I had the happiness of seeing your good mother,
who came to town, in her way from Gainsborough, to Mr. Hall
first, and thence very soon to Tiverton. Mr. Law visited her
at Gainsborough, and again at London. Your mother desired her
blessing to you, and would have wrote, but had no time. She
prayed for you and blessed you. If all matters relating to
receiving your fellowship are not exact, write fresh ones,
and send over. Take care to inquire carefully and strictly
concerning the mission of the Moravian bishop. I will make what
inquiries I can. A great deal depends upon the validity of
ordinations.”[175]
At the same time, Hervey at Oxford wrote:—“I am still a most weak
corrupt creature. But, blessed be the unmerited mercy of God, and
thanks be to your never-to-be-forgotten example, that I am what I am!
You have been both a father and a friend to me. I heartily thank you,
as for all other favours, so especially for teaching me Hebrew.”[176]
William Chapman, a student of Pembroke College, wrote as follows:—“Your
kind concern and repeated endeavours for my spiritual good, while
at Oxford, will not suffer me to think that you have utterly lost
all remembrance of me. I sit every evening with Mr. Hervey, that
great champion of the Lord of hosts, and read five times a week to
a religious society in St. Ebbs’ parish. God and the angels be with
you!”[177]
Wesley, before leaving England, had begun to read the mystics, and
on November 23, 1736, addressed a long letter to his brother Samuel,
showing that, though he had been in danger of embracing their
bewildering heresies, he had now abandoned them. He writes:—
“I think the rock on which I had the nearest made shipwreck of
the faith was the writings of the mystics: under which term I
comprehend all, and only those, who slight any of the means of
grace. I have drawn up a short scheme of their doctrines, and
beg your thoughts upon it, as soon as you can conveniently.
Give me them as particularly, fully, and strongly as your time
will permit. They may be of consequence, not only to all this
province, but to nations of Christians yet unborn.
“‘All means are not necessary for all men: therefore each
person must use such means, and such only, as he finds
necessary for him. When the end is attained the means cease.’
“‘Men utterly divested of free will, of self-love, and
self-activity, are entered into the passive state, and enjoy
such a contemplation as is not only above faith, but above
sight—such as is entirely free from images, thoughts, and
discourse, and never interrupted by sins of infirmity, or
voluntary distractions. They have absolutely renounced their
reason and understanding; else they could not be guided by a
Divine light. They seek no clear or particular knowledge of
anything, but only an obscure, general knowledge, which is far
better.’
“‘Having thus attained the end, the means must cease. Hope is
swallowed up in love. Sight, or something more than sight,
takes the place of faith. All particular virtues they possess
in the essence, and therefore need not the distinct exercise
of them. They work likewise all good works essentially, not
accidentally, and use all outward means, only as they are moved
thereto.’
“‘Public prayer, or any forms, they need not; for they pray
without ceasing. Sensible devotion in any prayer they despise;
it being a great hindrance to perfection. The Scripture
they need not read; for it is only His letter, with whom
they converse face to face. Neither do they need the Lord’s
supper; for they never cease to _remember_ Christ in the most
acceptable manner.’”
Such was the mystified balderdash which Wesley had been in danger of
adopting. He concludes his letter thus:—
“May God deliver you and yours from all error, and all
unholiness! My prayers will never, I trust, be wanting for you.
I am, dear brother, my sister’s and your
“Most affectionate brother,
“JOHN WESLEY.”[178]
At the end of the year 1736, Wesley and Delamotte set out, on foot,
to Cowpen, missed their way, walked through a cypress swamp, with the
water breast high, and slept on the ground in their wet clothes, which
during the night were frozen, and in the morning were white as snow.
They then started for Frederica, fell short of provisions, used bear’s
flesh, and proved it to be wholesome. Arriving on January 5, 1737, they
found the people, as they expected, cold and heartless. Wesley’s life
was repeatedly threatened; and, after spending twenty more days in this
unhappy place, he departed from Frederica for ever. In his passage to
Savannah he read a volume containing the works of Nicholas Machiavel,
and formed the deliberate opinion, “that if all the other doctrines of
devils, which have been committed to writing, were collected together
in one volume, it would fall short of this; and that should a prince
form himself by this book, so calmly recommending hypocrisy, treachery,
lying, robbery, oppression, adultery, whoredom, and murder of all
kinds, Domitian or Nero would be an angel of light compared to that
man.”
Wesley had now been fifty-two weeks in America, twenty-four of which
he had spent at Savannah, and the rest at Frederica and at other
places between the two. He remained forty-six weeks longer. How was he
occupied? And what were his troubles?
Delamotte was teaching between thirty and forty children at Savannah
to read, write, and cast accounts, and Wesley catechized them every
Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Every sabbath he had three public
services, at five in the morning, twelve at mid-day, and three in the
afternoon; and then at night as many of his parishioners as desired it
met at his house, with whom he spent an hour in prayer, singing, and
mutual exhortation. A similar meeting was held in the same place every
Wednesday night, and selecter ones on all the other evenings of the
week.
There being no immediate prospect of commencing a mission among the
heathen, Wesley, Delamotte, and Ingham consulted together, and agreed
that the last mentioned should return to England; and accordingly,
after spending exactly fifty-five weeks in Georgia, he embarked for
home, having literally done next to nothing either for the colonists or
the Indians, with the exception of composing, in Dr. Byrom’s shorthand,
a catalogue of half the words in the Indian language,[179] in a house
built for him near the Indian town, a few miles from Savannah. The
chief object of sending Ingham to England was to obtain more help for
the colonists. In a letter dated February 16, 1737, and addressed to a
friend in Lincoln College, Oxford, Wesley writes:—
“There is great need that God should put it into the hearts of
some, to come over to us, and labour with us in His harvest.
But I should not desire any to come unless on the same views
and conditions with us; without any temporal wages, other than
food and raiment, the plain conveniences of life. For one or
more, in whom was this mind, there would be full employment in
the province: either in assisting Mr. Delamotte or me, while we
were present here; or in supplying our places when abroad; or
in visiting the poor people in the smaller settlements as well
as at Frederica, all of whom are as sheep without a shepherd.
“By these labours of love might any that desired it be trained
up for the harder task of preaching the gospel to the heathen.
The difficulties he must then encounter God only knows;
probably martyrdom would conclude them. But those we have
hitherto met with have been small. Persecution, you know, is
the portion of every follower of Christ, wherever his lot is
cast; but it has hitherto extended no farther than words with
regard to us, unless in one or two inconsiderable instances.
Still, every man that would come hither ought to be willing and
ready to embrace the severer kinds of it.”[180]
Meanwhile, Oglethorpe’s troubles had begun. From a letter which Wesley
wrote to him, on February 24, 1737, we learn that Sir Robert Walpole
had turned against the general, and parliament had resolved to make
a strict scrutiny into Georgian affairs. The trustees had charged
Oglethorpe with misapplying moneys, and with abusing his entrusted
power. Wesley adds: “Perhaps in some things you have shown you are but
a man: perhaps I myself may have a little to complain of: but oh what
a train of benefits have I received to lay in the balance against it!
I bless God that ever you was born. I acknowledge His exceeding mercy
in casting me into your hands. I own your generous kindness all the
time we were at sea. I am indebted to you for a thousand favours here.
Though all men should revile you, yet will not I.”[181]
Sinister rumours were circulated in reference to Wesley, as well as
Oglethorpe. Hence the following hitherto unpublished letter, endorsed
by Wesley thus:—“The Trustees’ Letter, June 17, 1737, fully acquitting
me:”—
“_Trustees of Georgia to the Rev. J. Wesley._
“GEORGIA OFFICE, _June 15, 1737_.
“SIR,—The Rev. Mr. Burton has this day laid before the trustees
a letter from you to them, dated Savannah, March 4, 1737,
wherein you express a concern that they should receive an
accusation of your embezzling any part of their goods, and
likewise a desire to know the name of your accuser.
“The trustees have ordered me to assure you, that they are very
much surprised at any apprehensions you have of such accusation
being brought before them. No complaint of any kind has been
laid before them relating to you. They have never as a board,
nor has any of them privately, heard of one; nor have they the
least suspicion of any ground for one. They would not (if they
had received any) form a judgment of you without acquainting
you with the accusation, and the name of the accuser. At
the same time, they believe you will think it reasonable to
let them know who has informed you that any such accusation
has been brought before them, and that, for the future, you
will not believe nor listen to any private informations or
insinuations, that must make you uneasy, and may lead you to
distrust the justice of the trustees, and the regard they have
for you.
“The trustees are very sensible of the great importance of
the work you have engaged in; and they hope God will prosper
the undertaking, and support you in it; for they have much at
heart, not only the success of the colony in general, but the
progress of piety among the people, as well as the conversion
of the Indians. They are very glad to find that Mr. Causton
has seconded your endeavours to suppress vice and immorality,
and that a reformation gains ground, as you observe it does.
The trustees will take into consideration your application in
favour of Robert Haws, and have a regard to it.
“I am, sir, your most obedient servant,
“BENJAMIN MARTIN, _Secretary_.”
The following letter, also now first published, refers to the same
subject, besides containing other information which we hope will be
found not devoid of interest. It was addressed to “The Rev. Mr. John
Wesley, at Savannah, in Georgia:”—
“OSSET, _October 19, 1737_.
“DEAR BROTHER,—By your silence one would suspect that you
were offended at my last letter. Am I your enemy because I
tell you the truth? But perhaps I was too severe. Forgive me
then. However, I am sure that, by soaring too high in your own
imaginations, you have had a great downfall in your spiritual
progress. Be lowly, therefore, in your own eyes. Humble
yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up. I do assure
you it is out of pure love, and with concern, that I write. I
earnestly wish your soul’s welfare. O pray for mine also. The
Lord preserve you!
“Could you, think you, live upon the income of your fellowship?
If you can, do. The trustees are indeed very willing to support
you, and they take it ill that anybody should say you have been
too expensive. But the Bishop of London (as I have heard),
and some others, have been offended at your expenses. And not
indeed altogether without reason, because you declared at your
leaving England that you should want scarcely anything. I just
give you these hints. Pray for direction, and then act as you
judge best.
“Charles is so reserved: I know little about him: he neither
writes to me, nor comes to see me: what he intends is best
known to himself. Mr. Hutton’s family go on exceedingly well.
Your friend Mr. Morgan (I hear) either has, or is about
publishing a book, to prove that every one baptized with water
is regenerate. All friends at Oxford go on well. Mr. Kinchin,
Mr. Hutchins, Mr. Washington, Bell, Turney, Hervey, Watson,
are all zealous. Mr. Atkinson labours under severe trials in
Westmoreland; but is steady, and sincere, and an excellent
Christian. Dick Smith is weak, but not utterly gone. Mr.
Robson, and Grieves, are but indifferent: the latter is married
to a widow, and teaching school at Northampton. Mr. Thompson,
of Queen’s, has declared his resolution of following Christ.
“Remember me to Mr. Wallis, Mark Hind, and the Davison family,
Mrs. Gilbert Mears, Mr. Campbell, Mr. and Mrs. Burnside, Mr.
and Mrs. Williamson.
“Yours in Christ,
“BENJAMIN INGHAM.”
Wesley’s ideas of religion, at this period, may be gathered from the
following extracts from a letter, dated “Savannah, March 28, 1737,” and
addressed to “William Wogan, Esq., in Spring Gardens, London.”[182]
“I entirely agree with you, that religion is love, and peace,
and joy in the Holy Ghost; that, as it is the happiest, so
it is the cheerfulest thing in the world; that it is utterly
inconsistent with moroseness, sourness, severity, and indeed
with whatever is not according to the softness, sweetness, and
gentleness of Christ Jesus. I believe it is equally contrary
to all preciseness, stiffness, affectation, and unnecessary
singularity. I allow, too, that prudence, as well as zeal, is
of the utmost importance in the Christian life. But I do not
yet see any possible case wherein trifling conversation can be
an instance of it. In the following scriptures I take all such
to be flatly forbidden: Matt. xii. 36; Eph. v. 4, and iv. 29;
Col. iv. 6.
“That I shall be laughed at for this, I know; so was my Master.
I am not for a stern, austere manner of conversing. No: let all
the cheerfulness of faith be there, all the joyfulness of hope,
all the amiable sweetness—the winning easiness of love. If we
must have art, ‘_Hic mihi erunt artes_.’”
Again, in another letter, written to Mrs. Chapman a day later, he says:—
“You seem to apprehend that I believe religion to be
inconsistent with cheerfulness, and with a social friendly
temper. So far from it, that I am convinced, as true religion
cannot be without cheerfulness, so steady cheerfulness cannot
be without true religion. I am equally convinced that religion
has nothing sour, austere, unsociable, unfriendly in it; but
on the contrary, implies the most winning sweetness, the most
amiable softness and gentleness. Are you for having as much
cheerfulness as you can? So am I. Do you endeavour to keep
alive your taste for all the truly innocent pleasures of life?
So do I. Do you refuse no pleasure but what is a hindrance to
some greater good, or has a tendency to some evil? It is my
very rule. In particular, I pursue this rule in eating, which
I seldom do without much pleasure. I know it is the will of
God, that I should enjoy every pleasure that leads to my taking
pleasure in Him, and in such a measure as most leads to it. We
are to do nothing but what, directly or indirectly, leads to
our holiness; and to do every such thing with this design, and
in such a measure as may most promote it.
“I am not mad, my dear friend, for asserting these to be the
words of truth and soberness; neither are any of those, either
in England or here, who have hitherto attempted to follow
me. I am and must be an example to my flock; not indeed in
my prudential rules, but, in some measure, in my spirit and
life and conversation. Yet all of them are, in your sense of
the word, unlearned, and most of them of low understanding;
and still not one of them has been, as yet, in any case of
conscience which was not solved. As to the nice distinctions
you speak of, it is you, my friend, who are lost in them.
We have no need of nice distinctions; for I exhort all, and
dispute with none. I feed my brethren in Christ, as He giveth
me power, with the pure, unmixed milk of the word; and those
who are as little children receive it, not as the word of man,
but as the word of God.”[183]
These are important letters, as tending to refute the commonly received
opinion, that, at this period of his history, Wesley was morose, sour,
gloomy, and in fact thought that cheerfulness was inconsistent with
religion. His views and some of his practices might seem to many to be
peculiar; but he was a cheerful and happy man, even amid the vigils,
fastings, and solitudes of Georgia. Some of his views were novel, but
they were not incompatible with happiness. He writes: “When I first
landed at Savannah, a gentlewoman said, ‘I assure you, sir, you will
see as _well dressed_ a congregation on Sunday as most you have seen
in London.’ I did so; and soon after I took occasion to expound those
scriptures which relate to dress; and all the time that I afterward
ministered at Savannah, I saw neither gold in the church, nor costly
apparel, but the congregation in general was almost constantly clothed
in plain clean linen or woollen.”[184] This wears an aspect of
anchorite severity, but still Wesley and his plain-robed followers were
happy.
In April, 1737, Wesley began to learn the Spanish language, in order to
converse with his Jewish parishioners. Easter being in the same month,
he “had every day in this great and holy week a sermon and the holy
communion.” Finding that a clergyman in Carolina had been marrying some
of his (Wesley’s) parishioners, without either banns or licence, he set
out for Charlestown to put a stop to such proceedings. Mr. Garden, the
Bishop of London’s commissary, assured him he would take care no such
irregularity should be committed for the future. At Garden’s request,
Wesley preached a sermon on, “whatsoever is born of God overcometh the
world”; which led a man of education and character to object—“Why if
this be Christianity, a Christian must have more courage than Alexander
the Great.”
Returning to Savannah, in the month of May, Wesley found one of his
congregation, who had been exemplarily religious, turned a deist; and
expressed the opinion that bad a religion as Popery is, no religion is
worse; and that a baptized infidel is twofold worse than even a bigoted
papist. This was only one of Wesley’s trials. A wicked woman, whom he
had offended, decoyed him into her house, threw him down, and, with her
scissors, cut off from one side of his head the whole of those long
locks of auburn hair, which he had been accustomed to keep in the most
perfect order. After this, he preached at Savannah with his hair long
on one side and short on the other, those sitting on the side which
had been cut observing, “What a cropped head of hair the young parson
has.”[185]
At Whitsuntide, four of his scholars, after being instructed daily
for several weeks, were admitted to the Lord’s table, and many of the
other children evinced a remarkable seriousness in their behaviour
and conversation. This was doubtless a cause of great joy both to
Wesley and his friend Delamotte, each of whom taught a school, and,
like all schoolmasters, met with discouragements. A part of the boys
in Delamotte’s school wore stockings and shoes, and the others not.
The former ridiculed the latter. Delamotte tried to put a stop to this
uncourteous banter, but told Wesley he had failed. Wesley replied, “I
think I can cure it. If you will take charge of my school next week I
will take charge of yours, and will try.” The exchange was made, and on
Monday morning Wesley went into school barefoot. The children seemed
surprised, but without any reference to past jeerings Wesley kept them
at their work. Before the week was ended, the shoeless ones began to
gather courage; and some of the others, seeing their minister and
master come without shoes and stockings, began to copy his example,
and thus the evil was effectually cured.”[186]
In the early summer of 1737, Whitefield wrote to Wesley, telling him
of his success in England. A young country lad had brought him a peck
of apples seven miles upon his back, as a token of gratitude for the
benefit he had derived from Whitefield’s ministry, and had such a sense
of the Divine presence that he walked, for the most part, with his hat
off his head. God was also moving on the hearts of some young ladies.
Whitefield continues:—
“The devil, I find, has a particular spite against weekly
communion; but I am in hope we shall have the sacrament
administered every Sunday at the cathedral. It would have been
mentioned to the bishop ere now, but Oxford friends advised to
defer it till next summer.
“But now I have mentioned the bishop: alas! how should I
tremble to tell you how I have been continually disturbed with
thoughts, that I, a worm taken from a common public-house,
should, ere I die, be one myself. Your earnest prayers, surely,
will not be wanting for me, that I may not split on that most
dangerous of all rocks—worldly ambition. Parsonages, I believe,
are providing for me; but I trust Satan will never catch me by
pluralities, or induce me to take upon me anything inconsistent
with the duty of a disciple of Jesus Christ. I hope our friends
all continue steadfast and zealous at Oxford. My love to the
young merchant, whose example I hope we shall all be enabled
to follow, if God requires our assistance in Georgia. O may
you go on and prosper, and, in the strength of God, make the
devil’s kingdom shake about his ears! I received benefit by
your father’s ‘Advice to a Young Clergyman.’”[187]
Whitefield’s dream about being made a bishop is amusing; and yet
Providence and grace made him greater than a bishop.
Wesley still felt intensely anxious respecting the heathen. In July he
met a Frenchman, who had lived several months among the Chicasaws, and
wrote to Dr. Humphreys as follows:—[188]
“Concerning the conversion of the heathen, where is the seed
sown, the _sanguis martyrum_? Do we hear of any who have sealed
the faith with their blood in all this vast continent? Or do
we read of any church flourishing in any age or nation without
this seed first sown there? Give me leave, sir, to speak my
thoughts freely. When God shall put it into the hearts of some
of His servants, whom He hath already delivered from earthly
hopes and fears, to join hand in hand in this labour of love;
when out of these He shall have chosen one or more, to magnify
Him in the sight of the heathen by dying, not with a stoical
or Indian indifference, but blessing and praying for their
murderers, and praising God in the midst of flame with joy
unspeakable and full of glory, then the rest, waxing bold by
their sufferings, shall go forth in the name of the Lord God,
and by the power of His might cast down every high thing that
exalteth itself against the faith of Christ. Then shall ye see
Satan, the grand ruler of this New World, as lightning fall
from heaven!”
Oh for missionaries like these! Wesley’s notions are right. Men going
merely because others send them, or men going merely to obtain a
livelihood, are not the men to convert the inhabitants of lands like
Africa, India, Japan, and China. To make an impression there, men must
be animated with the martyrs’ spirit. Church history, including the
history of missions, affords abundant proof of this. Mere duty-doing
ministers are bad enough in England, but they are vastly worse when
among the heathen. Money spent upon them there is worse than wasted;
for their cold perfunctory labours produce, upon the whole, a bad
effect instead of good. The greatest boon the church could now receive
from the hands of God would be a multiplication of ministers and
missionaries like those which Wesley was sighing for in Georgia.
From Wesley’s private manuscript journal, we learn that in July, by
going from house to house, he took a census of his parishioners, and
computed that there were in Savannah 518 inhabitants, of whom 149
were under sixteen years of age. Frederica was without a minister,
though three hundred acres of land had been granted by the trustees
for a church establishment in that unhappy town.[189] Other places
with scanty populations were equally destitute. New Ebenezer had the
Moravians; and Darien had Mr. M’Leod, a serious, resolute, and pious
Presbyterian: but this seems to have been all the ministerial agency
existing in Georgia. Hence the following letter, addressed by Wesley to
his friends at Oxford:—
“SAVANNAH, _September 8, 1737_.
“... Long since, I begun to visit my parishioners in order,
from house to house; but I could not go on two days longer. The
sick were increasing so fast as to require all the time I had
to spare—from one to five in the afternoon. Nor is even that
enough to see them all, as I would do, daily. In Frederica and
all the smaller settlements here are above five hundred sheep
almost without a shepherd. What a single man can do is neither
seen nor felt. Where are ye who are very zealous for the Lord
of hosts? Who will rise up with me against the wicked? Whose
spirit is moved within him to prepare himself for publishing
glad tidings to those on whom the Sun of Righteousness never
yet arose? Do you ask what you shall have? Why, all you desire:
food to eat, raiment to put on, a place where to lay your head,
and a crown of life that fadeth not away! Do you seek means
of building up yourselves in the knowledge and love of God? I
know of no place under heaven where there are more than in this
place. Does your heart burn within you to turn many others to
righteousness? Behold, the whole land, thousands of thousands
are before you! I will resign to any of you all or any part of
my charge. Choose what seemeth good in your own eyes. There are
within these walls children of all ages and dispositions. Who
will bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,
till they are meet to be preachers of righteousness? Here are
adults from the farthest parts of Europe, and Asia, and the
inmost kingdoms of Africa; add to these the known and unknown
nations of this vast continent, and you will indeed have a
great multitude which no man can number.”[190]
While Wesley was thus longing for help, events were transpiring, by
which he himself within three months was driven out of Georgia, and
obliged to return to England. This was the closing scene in Wesley’s
missionary life, and though a painful one it must not be shirked. All
the facts in the writer’s possession shall be given, and the reader
shall have materials to form his own opinion. The chief actors in the
scene, besides Wesley himself, were Sophia Christiana Hopkey, Thomas
Causton, and William Williamson.
Causton was one of the first company of emigrants, and landed in
Georgia with Oglethorpe, in February, 1733. He was a man of no
substance, and his character was not as good as it might have been.
In fact, he left England in disgrace, having practised a fraud upon
the public revenue. He was naturally proud, covetous, cunning,
and deceitful. By his clever rascality he wriggled himself into
Oglethorpe’s favour, and, on the arrival of the few emigrant gaol-birds
in the Savannah river, was appointed a sort of dictator of the infant
settlement, and had charge of the stores which the trustees sent over
for the use of the colonists. We have already seen that, even when
Wesley left for England at the end of the year 1737, the inhabitants of
Savannah were not more than 518 in number, of whom only 369 were adult
males and females. This was no large kingdom; but Thomas Causton was
a large man, because he was at the head of it. Indeed, the molehill
empire seems to have magnified itself to the utmost extent possible, by
the introduction of law, the establishment of courts, the appointment
of officers, the election of juries, and the adoption of everything
else within its power which was likely to make it a pompous minikin
miniature of the great system of government at home. Causton was “chief
magistrate,” and of course a “chief” had subordinates under him. There
was a recorder, also a bailiff. There were constables, and tithingmen,
and other great functionaries, all armed with solemn authority to
rule, govern, and keep in order, first themselves, and then about five
hundred men, women, and children, including John Wesley the Oxford
priest, and Charles Delamotte the merchant master of almost a ragged
school.
“The ocean is in tempest tossed,
To waft a feather and to drown a fly.”
Of all the great powers, however, in this log-built village of five
hundred souls, Thomas Causton, in his own estimation, and in fact, was
greatest. The other Tom Thumb magistrates were ciphers in his august
presence. Sometimes, indeed, he would ask their opinion in public on
the state matters of the great city of Savannah; but it was principally
to have the pleasure of uttering an opinion of his own, directly
opposite to theirs. Juries he threatened without the least compunction,
and especially when their verdicts disagreed with his inclinations.
As his power increased, so did his pride, haughtiness, and cruelty.
The court in which this fraudulent refugee—we beg his pardon, this
“chief magistrate”—expounded law and dispensed justice, was guarded
by eight freeholders, with an officer to direct their movements, all
armed with guns and bayonets. Seated, in such high dignity, and so far
above his fellows, upon the judicial bench, it was beneath his office
to sit uncovered; and hence he almost invariably wore his hat, even
when administering an oath. Should any foolish wight be bold enough
to oppose, in the least degree, his arbitrary proceedings, the “chief
magistrate” at once threatened the impudent recusant with the stocks,
the whipping-post, and a lodging in the log-house prison. Even his
fellow officials were treated with scant respect. In December, 1734,
the trustees sent a Mr. Gordon from England, to act as magistrate;
but Causton, not liking a compeer, refused him provisions from the
store, and he was obliged to leave. Indeed, Causton, who had sufficient
cleverness to induce Oglethorpe, despite his roguery in England, to
make him magistrate in Savannah, seems to have used the same worldly
cunning in allowing none to be his subordinates except those whom he
could, with the utmost ease, twist to his own purposes. Mr. Bailiff
Parker, mentioned in Wesley’s journal, had nothing to support himself
and his large family, except what he earned by his daily labour as a
sawyer. He was a man of no education, and was an absolute slave to
liquor. Another bailiff was a man of the name of Daru, nearly seventy
years old, and crazed in both body and mind; and another was R.
Gilbert, who could neither read nor write. Causton’s despotic career
was of short duration. The same grand jury which found, under Causton’s
guidance, ten bills against Wesley, immediately proceeded to examine
the official doings of their own illustrious “chief magistrate;” and
found charges against him, to the effect that he had grossly abused
his power as keeper of the public stores, and that he had hindered
people settling on the lands that the trustees had allotted them. These
and other charges, dated September 1, 1737, were sent to England; and
the result was—Causton, in October, 1738, was turned out of all his
offices, and the store was sold to pay the trustees’ debts; Causton’s
certified accounts were refused by the trustees as incorrect; William
Williamson was made recorder, and Henry Parker (the drunken uneducated
sawyer above mentioned) was made first magistrate; and, finally,
Causton, the great man who prosecuted Wesley, and drove him from
Georgia, settled down at Oxstead, three miles from Savannah; and there,
we hope, he lived a more honest life than he had done in England.[191]
Sophia Christiana Hopkey was the niece of Thomas Causton’s wife.
William Williamson, who became her husband, was a young adventurer, who
arrived in Georgia a short time after Wesley did.[192] And now, with
these explanations, let us look at the miserable business, which, in a
life of Wesley, cannot be omitted.
Wesley landed in Georgia on February 5, 1736, and seems at once to have
become acquainted with Miss Hopkey. Oglethorpe, Charles Wesley, Ingham,
and fifty other settlers set out immediately for Frederica. The young
lady went with them; and, on March 22, Wesley wrote to his brother
concerning her as follows: “I conjure you, spare no time, no address
or pains, to learn the true cause of the former distress of my friend.
I much doubt you are in the right. God forbid that she should again,
in like manner, miss the mark. Watch over her; keep her as much as
possible. Write to me, how I ought to write to her.”[193]
Miss Hopkey was a young lady of good sense, and elegant in person
and manners. She was introduced to Wesley as a sincere inquirer
after salvation, and soon took every possible opportunity of being
in his company, and requested him to assist her in studying French.
Oglethorpe also did his best to help on a courtship. Meanwhile, Wesley
was seized with fever, which confined him for nearly a week; and the
young lady (who would hardly allow Delamotte to do anything for his
friend) attended him night and day. She even consulted Oglethorpe what
kind of female dress Wesley liked the best, and therefore came always
dressed in white, neatly and simply elegant. Young Delamotte began
to be suspicious, and asked Wesley if he meant to marry Miss Hopkey.
Delamotte’s question puzzled Wesley, but, perceiving that Delamotte was
prejudiced against the lady, he waived an answer. The next step taken
was to consult David Nitschmann, the Moravian bishop. Nitschmann’s
answer was: “Marriage is not unlawful; but whether it is now expedient
for you, and whether this lady is a proper wife for you, ought to
be maturely weighed.” Wesley’s perplexity was increased, and he now
resolved to submit the matter to the elders of the Moravian church.
When he entered the house where they were met together, he found
Delamotte in the midst of them. On naming his business, Nitschmann
said: “We have considered your case; will you abide by our decision?”
After some hesitation, Wesley replied, “I will.” “Then,” said
Nitschmann, “we advise you to proceed no further in the matter!” Wesley
answered, “The will of the Lord be done!” “From this time,” says Henry
Moore, “he avoided everything that tended to continue the intimacy with
Miss Hopkey, and behaved with the greatest caution towards her.”[194]
The whole of this is painfully ludicrous. Mr. Moore, in a manuscript
letter before us, says that he had the account from Wesley’s own lips,
and that he is not aware that it was ever given to any one except
himself. He adds that Dr. Coke knew nothing of it, and that Wesley
refrained from publishing the whole of the affair in his printed
journal, _chiefly_ through tenderness to General Oglethorpe. It might
be so; but we greatly doubt the correctness of Moore’s assertion,
that, from the time Wesley consulted the Moravian elders, he “avoided
everything that tended to continue the intimacy.” Wesley was in love,
and, like all lovers, he did, not wicked, but foolish things. Let us
look at some other facts.
At this period, the summer of 1736, Wesley’s method of preaching, and
his manner of life, excited great attention in the small settlement
of Savannah; and there were not a few who charged him with making the
people idle by summoning them so frequently to public prayers. His more
than ordinary friendship with Miss Hopkey was also a subject of common
conversation.[195] He was looked upon as a Roman Catholic—(1) Because
he rigidly excluded all Dissenters from the holy communion, until they
first gave up their faith and principles, and, like Richard Turner
and his sons, submitted to be rebaptized by him; (2) Because Roman
Catholics were received by him as saints; (3) Because he endeavoured
to establish and enforce confession, penance, and mortification;
mixed wine with water at the sacrament; and appointed deaconesses in
accordance with what he called the Apostolic Constitutions.[196] He
was, in point of fact, a Puseyite, a hundred years before Dr. Pusey
flourished.
Miss Hopkey was put under his ghostly care. She was one of his early
morning congregation, and constantly went to his lodgings, in order
to be further instructed.[197] He fell in love with her; and there
can be little doubt that he made proposals to marry her, and, if his
own inclinations had been carried out, the marriage would have been
completed.[198] The following extracts are taken from his unpublished
journal.
1736. October 16.—Frederica. “Poor Miss Sophy was scarce the
shadow of what she was when I left her. I endeavoured to
convince her of it, but in vain. And to put it effectually out
of my power to do so, she was resolved to return to England
immediately. I tried to divert her from her fatal resolution
of going to England, and, after several fruitless attempts,
I at length prevailed. Nor was it long before she more than
recovered the ground she had lost.”
“October 25.—I took boat for Savannah with Miss Sophy.”
“In the beginning of December, I advised Miss Sophy to sup
earlier, and not immediately before she went to bed. She did
so, and on this little circumstance what an inconceivable train
of consequences depend. Not only—
‘All the colour of my remaining life’
for her; but perhaps all my happiness too, in time and in
eternity.”
“February 5, 1737.—One of the most remarkable dispensations of
Providence towards me began to show itself this day. For many
days after, I could not at all judge which way the scale would
turn; nor was it fully determined till March 4th, on which day
God commanded me to pull out my right eye; and, by His grace,
I determined to do so: but, being slack in the execution, on
Saturday, March 12th, God being very merciful to me, my friend
performed what I could not.”
What is the meaning of this? Two other extracts from the same journal
will show.
“March 7.—I walked with Mr. Causton to his country lot, and
plainly felt that, had God given me such a retirement with the
companion I desired, I should have forgot the work for which I
was born, and have set up my rest in this world.”
“March 8.—Miss Sophy engaged herself to Mr. Williamson, a
person not remarkable for handsomeness, neither for greatness,
neither for wit, or knowledge, or sense, and least of all for
religion; and on Saturday, March 12th” [four days after!] “they
were married at Purrysburg,—this being the day which completed
the year from my first speaking to her. What Thou doest, O God,
I know not now, but I shall know hereafter.”
Such is Wesley’s own statement. The disappointment was a most painful
blow. Forty-nine years after, he wrote, in reference to this event, “I
remember when I read these words in the church at Savannah, ‘Son of
man, behold, I take from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke,’
I was pierced through as with a sword, and could not utter a word more.
But our comfort is, He that made the heart can heal the heart.”[199] He
also wrote to his brother Samuel at the time, who replied, “I am sorry
you are disappointed in the match, because you are very unlikely to
find another.”[200]
With this evidence before us, it is difficult to give credence to Henry
Moore’s assertion, “that Wesley never allowed himself to _determine_
on a marriage with Miss Hopkey.”[201] But in addition to all this,
there is the testimony of the young lady herself, contained in her
affidavit, given to the Savannah court, and which Wesley inserts in
the private journal already mentioned. In that document she avers that
she was committed to the care of Mr. John Wesley, the missionary, by
her relatives; that he proposed marriage to her; and that he further
proposed that, as she might not like his present wandering way of life,
he would settle in Savannah. She adds that, about three days before
she married Williamson, she was visited by Wesley, who urged her to
tell him whether she had not been overpersuaded or forced to agree to
marry Williamson by her friends, and whether such a marriage might not
still be prevented. He also added that, if there was anything in his
way of life (by which she understood him to mean fastings and other
mortifications), which she disliked, he would make all these things
easy to her, in case she would consent to marry him.
Such is the substance of Sophy’s statement. How is it possible, in
the face of all this, to believe Henry Moore’s statement, that there
was no intimacy between Wesley and Miss Hopkey, from the time that he
consulted the Moravian elders?
We grudge the space that has been devoted to this subject; but perhaps
the following reasons will be accepted by the reader, as an apology for
the tax upon his patience.
1. The matter, though trivial in itself, has been made important by
the conflicting statements of the biographers. Mr. Moore says Wesley
never came to the determination to marry her. Dr. Whitehead says he did
intend to marry her. Southey agrees with Whitehead; Mr. Watson presumes
that Mr. Moore is a better authority than Dr. Whitehead; Mr. Jackson
seems to think the same. We have given all the facts within our reach,
and leave the reader to form his own opinion.
2. Though the courtship of young people is an ordinary, commonplace
sort of thing, inconceivably great events were dependent upon the
result of this. John Wesley was thirty-three years old, and was
perfectly justified in seeking to obtain a wife; neither is there
anything to be found fault with in his intercourse with Miss Hopkey,
unless it was his silly simplicity in asking the opinion, if not
consent, of the Moravians. The young lady, also, was beautiful, and
accomplished, and, to all human appearance, pious. Her uncle was a
respectable rascal; but that was no fault of hers. We know nothing to
her prejudice before she became a wife, except that it might have been
more decorously prudent if she had allowed Delamotte to nurse Wesley
in his fever instead of doing it, day and night, herself; and that
there was certainly an impetuous haste, not to be commended, in her
marrying Mr. Williamson only four days after he first proposed to her.
Excepting this, the friendship, courtship, or whatever else the reader
likes to call it, between Wesley and his “poor Sophy” seems to have
been sincere, pure, honourable, and, in the opinion of Oglethorpe, who
was not ill qualified to judge, desirable. But, supposing the courtship
had ended in marriage, is it likely that we should ever have heard of
Wesley at Bristol, Kingswood, Kennington Common, and Moorfields? Is
it likely that there would ever have been any “United Societies of
the People called Methodists”? Should we have ever heard of either the
Methodism of the past or present? Perhaps an equally great work might
have been witnessed; but the great Head of the church must have wrought
it by other agencies and means; for had John Wesley married Sophia
Christiana Hopkey, the probability is that, instead of returning to
England and beginning the greatest religious revival of modern times,
he would have settled in Georgia, and, like another Xavier, have spent
a most spiritual and devoted life in converting Indian and other kinds
of heathen. The results of such a life might have been glorious. Who
can tell what might have been its influence upon the civilisation and
perpetuation of the nobly formed aboriginal inhabitants of the vast
American continent? Would America, in the decline of the nineteenth
century, have been inhabited by European strangers, or by educated,
civilised, hardworking, prosperous descendants of the wild Indians
of the woods? These are useless questions, because questions none of
us can answer; but the mere suggestion of such points will serve to
show that Wesley’s courtship in Georgia was pregnant with infinite
momentousness. “The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the
multitude of isles be glad: clouds and darkness are round about Him;
righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne” (Ps.
xcvii. 1, 2).
3. Then a third reason, for dwelling at so great a length on Wesley’s
courtship, is, that the courtship was very improperly mixed up with the
subsequent troubles which led to his almost forceful departure from
the Georgian colony. But this brings us to the remainder of Wesley’s
Georgian history, which shall now be given as succinctly as possible.
We have already seen that Wesley was an extreme ritualist. He himself,
nearly a dozen years subsequent to his flight from Georgia, gives us a
specimen of his high church bigotry and intolerance. Having inserted in
his journal a beautiful letter written to him by John Martin Bolzius,
he, under the date of September, 1749, remarks: “What a truly Christian
piety and simplicity breathe in these lines! And yet this very man,
when I was at Savannah, did I refuse to admit to the Lord’s table,
because he was not baptized; that is, not baptized by a minister who
had been episcopally ordained. Can any one carry high church zeal
higher than this? How well have I been since beaten with mine own
staff!”[202]
Wesley still paid pastoral attentions to Mrs. Williamson as one of his
parishioners. Her not too accomplished husband took umbrage at this,
and, eight days after her marriage, forbade her attending his place
of worship, or ever to speak to him again.[203] Notwithstanding this
interdict, however, we find her on the 3rd of July at a sacramental
service, at the conclusion of which Wesley mentioned certain things
which he thought reprovable in her behaviour. This made her extremely
angry, and, three days later, Causton, accompanied by the bailiff
and the recorder, came to demand an explanation. Wesley gave his
visitors to understand that, in the execution of his office, and
acting without respect of persons, he might find it necessary to repel
one of Causton’s family from the holy communion. He further told the
“chief magistrate” what the people of Savannah were saying against
his magisterial proceedings.[204] All this made the coming storm more
threatening.
Some weeks elapsed; and then, on August 7, five months after her
marriage, Wesley refused to allow Mrs. Williamson to join in the
Lord’s supper. The next day, Mr. Recorder issued a warrant for the
apprehension of “John Wesley, clerk,” and commanding the constables
and tithingmen to bring him before one of the bailiffs of Savannah,
to answer the complaint of William Williamson for defaming his wife,
and refusing to administer to her the sacrament of the Lord’s supper,
in a public congregation, without cause; “by which the said William
Williamson was damaged one thousand pounds sterling.”
Wesley was arrested and brought before Mr. Bailiff Parker and Mr.
Recorder Christie. His answer to the charge was, “that the giving or
refusing the Lord’s supper being a matter purely ecclesiastical, he
could not acknowledge their power to interrogate him concerning it.”
The bailiff told him he must appear at the next Savannah court; and
Williamson demanded bail for his appearance, but the officials ruled
that Wesley’s word was in itself sufficient.
Two days later, Causton called on Wesley, and demanded that he should
send to Mrs. Williamson, in writing, “the reasons for repelling her
before the whole congregation.” Wesley complied, and wrote as follows:—
“_To Mrs. Sophia Williamson._
“At Mr. Causton’s request, I write once more. The rules whereby
I proceed are these:—
“‘So many as intend to be partakers of the holy communion shall
signify their names to the curate, at least some time the day
before.’ This you did not do.
“‘And if any of these have done any wrong to his neighbours, by
word or deed, so that the congregation be thereby offended, the
curate shall advertise him, that in anywise he presume not to
come to the Lord’s table until he hath openly declared himself
to have truly repented.’
“If you offer yourself at the Lord’s table on Sunday, I will
advertise you (as I have done more than once) wherein you have
done wrong. And when you have openly declared yourself to have
truly repented, I will administer to you the mysteries of God.
“_August 11, 1737._
“JOHN WESLEY.”
On receiving this, Causton began to read, to as many of the people
as he could collect together, extracts from the letters which Wesley
had written to himself or to his niece, from the beginning of their
acquaintance, adding comments of his own, to Wesley’s disadvantage.
Others of Causton’s family were assiduous in their endeavours to
convince their neighbours that Wesley had repelled Mrs. Williamson from
the communion because she had refused to marry him. In the midst of
all this Wesley writes: “I sat still at home, and, I thank God, easy,
having committed my cause to Him, and remembering His word, ‘Blessed is
the man that endureth temptation; for when he is tried he shall receive
the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love
Him.”[205]
Meanwhile, Causton desired Mr. Burnside, the trustees’ secretary, to
sign a certificate to the effect that Mrs. Williamson had been for
ten months past as constant a communicant as any other, and that she
had been of unblamable behaviour. Mr. Burnside said he could not sign
it with a safe conscience, knowing it to be false. Upon which Causton
severely reproached him, and discharged him from his employment.
However, a number of names were procured to the certificate, though,
Wesley adds, the first part of it was shamefully untrue, for Mrs.
Williamson had omitted communicating nine times in three months; in
other words, had only communicated once a month instead of once a
week.[206]
The Savannah court was to sit on August 22, a fortnight after
Wesley’s arrest; and Causton employed his utmost power, and art, and
application, in prejudicing the persons who were to form the grand
jury. His table was free to the whole of them. Whatever they desired
from the public stores was delivered to them. Old misunderstandings
were forgotten, and nothing was too much to be done or promised for men
who, a week before, were unable, from such a source, to procure even a
crust of bread.
Six days previous to the opening of the court, Wesley, at the request
of several of his communicants, read a short statement of the case,
after the evening prayers, in the open congregation.[207]
At length the great day of trial, in this Lilliputian kingdom, came.
The grand jury consisted of forty-four of the illustrious inhabitants,
about a fifth part of the adult male population of Savannah. One was
a Frenchman, ignorant of the English language; one a papist; one a
professed infidel; three were Baptists; sixteen or seventeen others
were Dissenters; and of the rest, several had personal quarrels against
Wesley, and had openly vowed revenge.
Causton gave a long and earnest charge to the jury, “to beware of
spiritual tyranny, and to oppose the new, illegal authority which was
usurped over their consciences.” Mrs. Williamson’s affidavit was read,
the substance of which has been already given, with the exception that,
after her marriage, Wesley took every opportunity to force upon her
his private discourse, and terrified her by telling her that her soul
would be in danger, if she did not spend her time, and converse with
him, in the same manner, as she did before her marriage.[208]
Causton then delivered to the grand jury a paper, entitled “A List of
Grievances,” pretending to show that the Rev. John Wesley “deviates
from the principles and regulations of the Established Church in many
particulars inconsistent with the happiness and prosperity of this
colony,” as:—
“1. By inverting the order and method of the liturgy.
“2. By altering such passages as he thinks proper in the
version of the psalms, publicly authorised to be sung in the
church.
“3. By introducing into the church, and service at the altar,
compositions of psalms and hymns not inspected or authorised by
any proper judicature.
“4. By introducing novelties, such as dipping infants, etc., in
the sacrament of baptism, and refusing to baptize the children
of such as will not submit to his innovations.
“5. By restricting the benefits of the Lord’s supper to a
small number of persons, and refusing it to all others who
will not conform to a grievous set of penances, confessions,
mortifications, and constant attendance at early and late hours
of prayer, very inconsistent with the labours and employment of
this colony.
“6. By administering the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to
boys ignorant and unqualified; and that notwithstanding of
their parents and nearest friends remonstrating against it, and
accusing them of disobedience and other crimes.
“7. By refusing to administer the holy sacrament to well
disposed and well living persons, unless they should submit to
confessions and penances for crimes, which they utterly refuse,
and whereof no evidence is offered.
“8. By venting sundry uncharitable expressions of all who
differ from him; and not pronouncing the benediction in church,
until all the hearers, except his own communicants, are
withdrawn.
“9. By teaching wives and servants that they ought absolutely
to follow the course of mortifications, fastings, and diets,
and two sets of prayers prescribed by him; without any regard
to the interests of their private families, or the commands of
their respective husbands and masters.
“10. By refusing the Office of the Dead to such as did not
communicate with him, or by leaving out such parts of the
service as he thought proper.
“11. By searching into and meddling with the affairs of private
families, by means of servants and spies employed by him for
the purpose, whereby the peace both of public and private life
is much endangered.
“12. By calling himself ‘ordinary,’ and thereby claiming
a jurisdiction which is not due to him, and whereby we
should be precluded from access to redress by any superior
jurisdiction.”[209]
How did the grand jury deal with these charges?
First of all, Mrs. Williamson was called, but acknowledged, in the
course of her examination, that she had no objection to Wesley’s
behaviour previous to her marriage. After her, Mr. and Mrs. Causton
were examined; the former confessing that, if Wesley had asked his
consent to marry his niece, he would not have refused it.[210] Ten
other witnesses were put into the box, and several of Wesley’s letters
to Mrs. Williamson were read.[211]
Some days were spent in sifting the business; and then, on September 1,
a majority of the jurymen agreed to the following indictments:—
1. That, after the 12th of March last, the said John Wesley did several
times privately force his conversation to Sophia Christiana Williamson,
contrary to the express desire and command of her husband; and did
likewise write and privately convey papers to her, thereby occasioning
much uneasiness between her and her husband.
2. That, on the 7th of August last, he refused the sacrament of the
Lord’s supper to Sophia Christiana Williamson, without any apparent
reason, much to the disquiet of her mind, and to the great disgrace and
hurt of her character.
3. That he hath not, since his arrival in Savannah, emitted any public
declaration of his adherence to the principles and regulations of the
Church of England.
4. That, for many months past, he has divided on the Lord’s day the
order of morning prayer, appointed to be used in the Church of England,
by only reading the said morning prayer and the litany at five or six
o’clock, and wholly omitting the same between the hours of nine and
eleven o’clock, the customary time of public morning prayer.
5. That, about the month of April, 1736, he refused to baptize,
otherwise than by dipping, the child of Henry Parker, unless the said
Henry Parker and his wife would certify that the child was weak and
not able to bear dipping; and added to his refusal, that, unless the
said parents would consent to have it dipped, it might die a heathen.
6. That, notwithstanding he administered the sacrament of the Lord’s
supper to William Gough, about the month of March, 1736, he did, within
a month after, refuse the sacrament to the said William Gough, saying
that he had heard that William Gough was a Dissenter.
7. That in June, 1736, he refused reading the Office of the Dead over
the body of Nathaniel Polhill, only because Nathaniel Polhill was not
of his opinion; by means of which refusal the said Nathaniel Polhill
was interred without the appointed Office for the Burial of the Dead.
8. That, on or about the 10th of August, 1737, he, in the presence of
Thomas Causton, presumptuously called himself “Ordinary of Savannah,”
assuming thereby an authority which did not belong to him.
9. That in Whitsun-week last he refused William Aglionby to stand
godfather to the child of Henry Marley, giving no other reason than
that the said William Aglionby had not been at the communion table with
him.
10. That, about the month of July last, he baptized the child of Thomas
Jones, having only one godfather and godmother, notwithstanding that
Jacob Matthews did offer to stand godfather.[212]
Such were the findings of the majority of the grand jury. The minority
of twelve, including three constables and six tithingmen, drew up and
signed a document, and transmitted it “to the honourable the trustees
for Georgia,” to the following effect:—
1. That they were thoroughly persuaded that the charges against Mr.
Wesley were an artifice of Mr. Causton’s, designed rather to blacken
the character of Mr. Wesley than to free the colony from religious
tyranny, as he had alleged.
2. That it did not appear that Mr. Wesley had either spoken in private
or written to Mrs. Williamson since the day of her marriage, except one
letter, which he wrote on the 5th of July, at the request of her uncle,
as a pastor, to exhort and reprove her.
3. That, though he did refuse the sacrament to Mrs. Williamson on the
7th of August last, he did not assume to himself any authority contrary
to law, for every person intending to communicate was bound to signify
his name to the curate, at least some time the day before; which
Mrs. Williamson did not do; although Mr. Wesley had often, in full
congregation, declared he did insist on a compliance with that rubric,
and had before repelled divers persons for non-compliance therewith.
4. That, though he had not in Savannah emitted any public declaration
of his adherence to the principles and regulations of the Church of
England, he had done this, in a stronger manner than by a formal
declaration, by explaining and defending the three creeds, the
thirty-nine articles, the whole Book of Common Prayer, and the
homilies; besides a formal declaration is not required, but from those
who have received institution and induction.
5. That though he had divided, on the Lord’s day, the order of morning
prayer, this was not contrary to any law in being.
6. That his refusal to baptize Henry Parker’s child, otherwise than by
dipping, was justified by the rubric.
7. That, though he had refused the sacrament to William Gough, the said
William Gough (one of the twelve jurors who signed the document sent
to the trustees) publicly declared that the refusal was no grievance
to him, because Mr. Wesley had given him reasons with which he was
satisfied.
8. That, in reference to the alleged refusal to read the burial service
over the body of Nathaniel Polhill, they had good reason to believe
that Mr. Wesley was at Frederica, or on his return thence, when Polhill
was interred; besides Polhill was an anabaptist, and desired, in his
lifetime, that he might not be buried with the office of the Church of
England.
9. That they were in doubt about the indictment concerning Wesley
calling himself “Ordinary of Savannah,” not well knowing the meaning of
the word.
10. That, though Mr. Wesley refused to allow William Aglionby to stand
godfather to the child of Henry Marley, and Jacob Matthews to stand
godfather to the child of Thomas Jones, he was sufficiently justified
by the canons of the Church, because neither Aglionby nor Matthews had
certified Mr. Wesley that they had ever received the holy communion.
Such were the findings of his foes and of his friends: the only
difference, as to fact, between the majority of thirty-two and the
minority of twelve, is that which relates to Mrs. Williamson and
Nathaniel Polhill. The minority declare that it is not true that Mr.
Wesley did _several times_ privately force his conversation to Sophia
Williamson after her marriage; and that they have good reason to
believe that it is not true that he refused to read the burial service
over Nathaniel Polhill, because, at the time of the burial, he was
absent from Savannah. All the other alleged facts are admitted, but are
also justified. How did Wesley meet the indictments?
On September 2, the day after they were presented and were read to
the people, he appeared in court, and spoke to this effect:—“As to
nine of the ten indictments against me, I know this court can take no
cognisance of them, they being matters of an ecclesiastical nature.
But that concerning my speaking and writing to Mrs. Williamson is of a
secular nature; and this, therefore, I desire may be tried here where
the facts complained of were committed.”[213]
In this Wesley was unquestionably right. His conduct as a priest of the
Church of England might be, as it doubtless was, arrogant, foolish,
offensive, intolerant; but the petty magisterial court at Savannah had
no more right to try him for his high church practices than an Old
Bailey judge and jury have to try the half-fledged papistical rectors,
curates, and incumbents, who are playing such fantastic tricks in the
Protestant churches of old England at the present day. They had a right
to try him on the matter mentioned by himself, inasmuch as it was
alleged that Mrs. Williamson had been injured in her character, and, on
that account, her husband demanded damages to the extent of £1000.
Wesley was prepared to answer this indictment, and moved for an
immediate hearing; but the court evaded his request, and postponed the
hearing to its next sitting. From September 1, when the indictments
were first presented, to the end of November, when Wesley made known
his intention to return to England, he seems to have attended not
fewer than seven different sittings of the court, asking to be tried
on the charge affecting the character of Mrs. Williamson; but all to
no purpose. The fact is, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, after having stabbed
him, were about to set sail to England,[214] and their contemplated
absence was made a pretext for not proceeding with the trial. There
can be little doubt that the whole affair was as the twelve jurors
believed, a device of Thomas Causton, to gratify his spite, and, by
annoyances, to drive Wesley from the colony.
Six days after the majority of the grand jury presented their
indictments, Mr. Dixon, chaplain to a company of soldiers at Frederica,
called on Wesley, and informed him that the magistrates of Savannah
had given him authority to perform ecclesiastical offices in the
town; and that he should begin to do so the day following, by reading
prayers, preaching, and administering the Lord’s supper. Accordingly,
on September 8, the bell was rung, and Mr. Dixon read prayers and
preached, in Wesley’s church, to Mr. Causton, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson,
and about half-a-score other persons. He announced that he had intended
to administer the holy communion, but some of his communicants were
indisposed. He would, however, read prayers and preach every Thursday,
and would administer baptism to as many children as might be brought
for that purpose. This was _ipso facto_ a setting aside of Wesley; or,
at all events, it was an arbitrary appointment of another clergyman to
fill his place.
On the Sunday following, September 11, Wesley preached from, “It must
needs be that offences come;” and then proceeded to read a paper which
he had read before, on the day he began his ministry at Savannah, and
in which he had apprised his congregation:—1. That he must admonish
every one of them, not only in public, but from house to house. 2. That
he could admit none to the holy communion without previous notice. 3.
That he should divide the morning service in compliance with the first
design of the Church. 4. That he should obey the rubric by dipping in
baptism all children who were well able to endure it. 5. That he should
admit none who were not communicants to be sureties in baptism. 6. That
though, in general, he had all the authority which was entrusted to
any one within the province, yet he was only a servant of the Church of
England,—not a judge, and therefore obliged to keep the regulations of
that Church in all things.[215]
On succeeding Sundays, he read to the congregations the homilies, and
then began reading Dr. Rogers’s eight sermons, as an antidote against
the poison of infidelity. Up to the present, he had no intention of
leaving the colony. Indeed, as lately as the 7th of June last, he had
written to his sister Keziah, and had made her an offer to come and
live with him at Savannah;[216] but, as soon as it was known that
Williamson and his wife were about to start for England, Delamotte
urged that Wesley ought to go as well, in order to prevent, or remove,
the misrepresentations which they were likely to make. This was on
September 9;[217] and, a month later, Wesley took counsel with his
friends on the same subject. They were unanimously of opinion “that he
ought to go, but not yet;” and accordingly he abandoned his purpose for
the present.
Meanwhile, he commenced three kinds of services which he had not before
attempted. He offered to read prayers, and to expound the Scriptures,
in French, every Saturday afternoon, to the French families settled
at Highgate, five miles from Savannah, which offer was thankfully
accepted. The French at Savannah heard of this, and requested he would
do the same for them, with which request he willingly complied. He also
began to read prayers and expound in German, once a week, to the German
villagers of Hampstead.
His Sunday labour, during the few weeks that he yet remained in
Savannah, was as follows:—1. English prayers from five o’clock to
half-past six. 2. Italian prayers at nine. 3. A sermon and the holy
communion, for the English, from half-past ten to about half-past
twelve. 4. The service for the French at one, including prayers,
psalms, and Scripture exposition. 5. The catechizing of the children at
two. 6. The third English service at three. 7. After this, a meeting in
his own house for reading, prayer, and praise. 8. At six, the Moravian
service began, which he was glad to attend, not to teach, but learn.
Thus things proceeded until November 22, when Causton sent for Wesley
and showed him an affidavit, sworn on September 15, to the effect that
he had called Causton a liar and a villain; but, with characteristic
duplicity, said he had not sent _this_ affidavit to the trustees,—a
statement, which, in fact, was both true and false, for although he
had not sent _this_ affidavit he had sent a _copy_ of it. Causton
bitterly added, that the last court held in Savannah had reprimanded
him as “an enemy to and a hinderer of the public peace.” “Both,” says
an eye-witness, “displayed warmth of temper; but Causton was most
vehement. They parted with mutual civilities.”[218]
This caused Wesley to again consult his friends about the propriety of
his leaving the colony. He saw that at present there was no possibility
of instructing the Indians; neither had he as yet found or heard of any
Indians who had the least desire of being instructed. Thus the great
reason of his leaving England was not realised. Then, as to Savannah,
he had never engaged himself, either by word or letter, to stay there a
day longer than he should judge convenient. And, further, he now saw a
probability of doing more service to the unhappy colonists by going to
England, than he could do by remaining in Georgia; for there he could,
without fear or favour, report to the trustees the state in which the
colony was placed. All his friends agreed with him; and accordingly,
next morning, he called on Causton, and told him he “designed to set
out for England immediately, and placarded an advertisement in the
great square” of the unbuilt town to the same effect.
Savannah was in great excitement. Causton had his partisans, and so had
Wesley his. Scandal was plentiful. Wesley’s congregations dwindled, and
were now extremely thin. Mr. Stephens, the secretary of the trustees at
Savannah, relates[219] that, in November, he heard Wesley preach on “Is
it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar or not?” from which he discoursed
largely on the duties of magistrates, and on the obedience which was
due to them; setting forth how far it was consistent with Christian
liberty for people to insist upon their rights, when they found
themselves oppressed by inferior magistrates exercising a discretionary
authority which exceeded their commission. Stephens adds, that the
congregation was very poor, and that he found that the magistrates
and many of the principal inhabitants had of late wholly absented
themselves from church.
On November 20, Wesley preached from the text, “Jesus wept.” Stephens
writes: “He showed himself a good casuist; but his metaphysical
discourse would have been better adapted to a learned audience than
such a poor thin congregation as his, who stood in need of plain
doctrine.”
On November 27, he preached from Acts xx. 26, 27. Stephens, who was
present, says: “He enforced the practice of all Christian duties most
pathetically, which he was well qualified to do. Some people imagined,
from the choice of the text, that he meant it as a sort of farewell
sermon; but it did not appear so from any particular expressions
employed.”
No sooner was it known that Wesley meant to embark for England, than
Williamson issued an advertisement that he had brought an action
against him for £1000 damages; and that if any one assisted his escape
from the colony, he would prosecute such accomplice with the utmost
rigour of the law.[220] The magistrates also sent for Wesley, and told
him he must not leave the province till he had answered the indictments
against him. Wesley replied that he had already attended seven sessions
of the court to answer them, and had not been permitted. They then
requested him to sign a kind of bond, engaging him, under a penalty of
£50, to appear at their court when he should be required; and added
that Mr. Williamson also demanded that he should give bail to answer
his action. Wesley replied that he would give neither any bond, nor any
bail at all; and so he left them. In the afternoon of the same day they
published an order requiring all the officers and sentinels to prevent
his leaving the province, and forbidding any person to assist him in
doing so.
He was now a prisoner at large, and the same evening, after public
prayers, he set out in a boat for Purrysburg, distant about twenty
miles, and thus left Savannah and Georgia for ever.[221]
Arriving at Purrysburg early in the morning of December 3, Wesley
and the four men who had assisted in his escape, and had rowed him
to Purrysburg, set out on foot to Port Royal. Tramping their way
through trackless forests, they came to a large swamp, around which
they wandered for three weary hours. Then they had to force their way
through an almost impassable thicket. They had now been trudging from
an hour before sunrise in the morning till nearly sunset at night, and
had not tasted food, except a gingerbread cake, which Wesley happened
to have in his pocket. They were faint and weary, and no wonder.
Thrusting a stick into the ground, and finding its end moist, two of
them set to work digging with their hands, and, at about three feet
depth, obtained water. They thanked God, drank, and were refreshed. The
month was December, and the night cold; but there was no complaining;
and, having commended themselves to God, they lay down on the ground,
close together, and Wesley, at least, slept till near six in the
morning.
The next day was Sunday; but the bewildered fugitives started again,
and after three more days of weary wandering reached Port Royal.
Delamotte joined them on Thursday, December 8, when, taking a boat,
they all set sail for Charlestown. This was no comfortable steamer,
but a small watercraft, without covering, and impelled by oars. Four
days were spent in making the passage, the winds were contrary, and
their provisions short; but, cold and hungry, they arrived in safety on
Tuesday, December 13.[222]
Wesley and Delamotte, with the exception of a few brief days, had not
been parted for the last six-and-twenty months: but on December 22
the former set sail for England; the latter, for a season, was left
behind. One of Wesley’s fellow passengers was a young gentleman, who
had been one of his parishioners at Savannah; and another was Eleanor
Hayes, who became one of the first Methodists in London, and of whom an
interesting notice may be found in the _Methodist Magazine_ for 1867.
It was impossible for Wesley to live an idle life. During the voyage,
he began instructing two negro lads and the cabin-boy in the principles
of the Christian religion. On Sundays, at least, he had morning and
evening prayers. He finished his abridgment of De Renty’s Life; and he
read and explained to a poor Frenchman a chapter in the New Testament
every morning. When in mid-ocean they encountered a terrific storm,
which gave Wesley an opportunity of speaking faithfully to all on board
about their eternal interests. On February 1 they landed at Deal, the
day after George Whitefield had set sail for the very settlement which
Wesley had been obliged to leave.
During the passage Wesley had ample time for self-examination, and
wrote as follows:—
“By the most infallible of proofs, inward feeling, I am
convinced—
“1. Of unbelief; having no such faith in Christ as will prevent
my heart being troubled.
“2. Of pride, throughout my life past; inasmuch as I thought I
had what I find I have not.
“3. Of gross irrecollection; inasmuch as in a storm I cry to
God every moment, in a calm not.
“4. Of levity and luxuriancy of spirit; appearing by my
speaking words not tending to edify, but most by my manner of
speaking of my enemies.”
He adds:—
“I went to America to convert the Indians; but oh, who shall
convert me? I have a fair summer religion. I can talk well;
but let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled.
I think, verily, if the gospel be true, I am safe: for I not
only have given, and do give, all my goods to feed the poor;
and not only give my body to be burned, drowned, or whatever
God shall appoint for me; but I follow after charity, if haply
I may attain it. I now believe the gospel is true. I show my
faith by my works,—by staking my all upon it. I would do so
again and again, a thousand times, if the choice were still to
make. Whoever sees me sees I would be a Christian. But in a
storm, I think, ‘What if the gospel be not true? Then thou art
of all men most foolish. For what hast thou given thy goods,
thy ease, thy friends, thy reputation, thy country, thy life?
For what art thou wandering over the face of the earth—a dream!
a cunningly devised fable?’ Oh, who will deliver me from this
fear of death? A wise man advised me some time since, ‘Be still
and go on.’ Perhaps this is best, to look upon it as my cross.”
After landing in England, he penned another remarkable paper, which
has often been cited without a quotation of the notes he appended in
after years.[223] He asserts that when he went to America, to convert
the Indians, he was not himself converted; but in the appended note he
adds, “I am not sure of this.” Neither are we. By his conscientious
severity in comparing himself with the standard of a perfect Christian,
as contained in the New Testament, and by his imperfect and mystified
views of the scriptural plan of salvation, he might deprive himself of
the filial confidence and joy belonging to a child of God; but we dare
not affirm that he was a child of wrath because he was without the joy.
On the same principle, thousands of us would be children one day, but
not the next. Wesley’s assertion was too strong; in after life he felt
it so; and those who quote it ought, in all fairness, to add what he
himself appended.
In another part of the same document he says of himself: “Alienated as
I am from the life of God, I am a child of wrath, an heir of hell.” But
the note he attached to this, in subsequent years, is, “I believe not”;
and if not a child of wrath, then in his opinion, and after mature
reflection, he had a right to think himself a child of grace and an
heir of heaven.
Another of his notes is: “I had even then the faith of a servant,
though not that of a son;” and that the reader may know what
interpretation to put upon such words, we give the following extract
from one of Wesley’s own sermons:—
“But what is the faith which is properly saving? It is such a
Divine conviction of God, and the things of God, as, even in
its infant state, enables every one that possesses it to fear
God and work righteousness. And whosoever, in every nation,
believes thus far, is accepted of Him. He actually is, at that
very moment, in a state of acceptance. But he is at present
only a _servant_ of God, not properly a _son_. Meanwhile let
it be well observed that the wrath of God no longer abideth
on him. Nearly fifty years ago, when the preachers, commonly
called Methodists, began to preach that grand scriptural
doctrine, salvation by faith, they were not sufficiently
apprised of the difference between a servant and a child of
God. In consequence of this, they were apt to make sad the
hearts of those whom God had not made sad. For they frequently
asked those who feared God, ‘Do you know that your sins are
forgiven?’ And upon their answering ‘No,’ immediately replied,
‘Then you are a child of the devil.’ No; that does not follow.
It might have been said (and it is all that can be said with
propriety), ‘Hitherto you are only a _servant_, you are not a
_child_ of God. You have already great reason to praise God
that He has called you to His honourable service. Fear not,
continue crying unto Him, and you shall see greater things than
these!’ And, indeed, unless the servants of God halt by the
way, they will receive the adoption of sons. They will receive
the _faith_ of the children of God, by His _revealing_ His only
begotten Son in their hearts. Thus, the faith of a child is,
properly and directly, a Divine conviction, whereby every child
of God is enabled to testify, ‘The life that I now live I live
by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for
me.’ And whosoever hath this, the Spirit of God witnesseth with
his spirit, that he is a child of God. This then it is, that
properly constitutes the difference between a servant of God
and a child of God.”[224]
Let those who have been accustomed to cite Wesley’s hasty and
incautious condemnation of himself, on his return from Georgia, read it
again in the light of his own appended notes, and in the light of this
extract from a sermon written by himself nearly fifty years afterwards;
and they will then have a more correct idea of Wesley’s religious state
at Oxford and in America, and will also be better fitted to understand
what is meant by what is called his conversion on the 24th of May,
1738. This matter, however, must be resumed in its proper place.
Wesley, in Georgia, was accepted of God through Christ; but, to cite
his own words at the conclusion of his own condemnatory document, he
wanted “a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of
Christ, his sins were forgiven.” “I want,” says he, “that faith which
none can have without knowing that he hath it.”
Wesley, according to his own explanation, had long been in a _saved_
state (though he knew it not); but he was far from being perfect,
either in spirit or behaviour. No man could be more sincere or earnest;
but it is hoped that few ministers of equal learning, wisdom, and
sanctity make greater blunders than were made by him at Savannah. There
can be little doubt that he had ecclesiastical authority for most,
if not all, his priestly practices; and so have the half papistical
priests and ritualists of the present day. But as England now is right
in resisting the introduction of rites and ceremonies, fasts and
feasts, confessions and penances, absolutions and interdicts, savouring
more of the man of sin than of the word of God,—so Savannah then was
right in resisting similar innovations attempted to be introduced by
the extremely high church priest, fresh from the society of the Oxford
Methodists. If we are right in denouncing _ritualism_ now, Savannah
was right in denouncing _ritualism_ then. If the thing is offensive
and obnoxious here, it was equally offensive and obnoxious there;
and if no other end had been answered by Wesley’s mission to America
than knocking out of him his high church nonsense, the good effected
would have been an ample compensation for two dangerous voyages of six
thousand miles, and for all the discomforts of living two-and-twenty
months, in a log-built hut, among almost homeless emigrants, who had
taken with them to the swamps and woods of Georgia more covetousness
than courtesy, more rudeness than rank, more quarrelsomeness than
quietude, and more conceit than common sense.
Wesley has been blamed for repelling Mrs. Williamson from the
communion; and if he had nothing more to allege against her than the
offence that, since her marriage, she had come to sacrament once a
month only, instead of once a week, he deserves to be blamed. It was a
rash proceeding, utterly unwarranted; and both she and her husband did
right in resisting it. So far we agree with Wesley’s censors; but we
cannot agree with them in saying that the great, if not only, reason
of his repelling her was revenge arising out of her refusal to marry
him. There is not a particle of evidence in proof of that. Five months
had elapsed since her marriage; and, again and again, during that
interval, he had administered to her the holy communion. The repulse
was, on his part, a strictly conscientious, not a revengeful act; but
though conscientious, it was, to say the least, mistaken, and deserves
censure instead of praise. Mr. Moore says that, about three months
after Mrs. Williamson’s marriage, Wesley saw things in her conduct
which induced him to bless God for his deliverance in not marrying her,
and that these things were noted in his private journal never printed.
We have not the slightest wish to defend the lady where she deserves
censure: but fairness compels us to say that we have seen the private
journal; but neither in it, nor elsewhere, have we met with anything
charged against her more serious than what has been already mentioned
in the present far too lengthy chapter. Dissimulation is the strongest
word Wesley has used concerning her; and this is used in reference to
something which happened three months after she was married, and of
which no explanation is given.[225] Miss Hopkey, like Wesley himself,
was not so good as she might have been; but that is not a sufficient
reason why Wesley’s biographers should insinuate, if not assert, that
she was worse than she really was.
Wesley’s mission to America seemed a failure! But was it so? When
Whitefield arrived, he wrote: “The good Mr. John Wesley has done in
America is inexpressible. His name is very precious among the people;
and he has laid a foundation that I hope neither men nor devils will
ever be able to shake. Oh that I may follow him as he has followed
Christ.”[226]
Wesley himself observes:—
“Many reasons I have to bless God for my having been carried
to America, contrary to all my preceding resolutions. Hereby,
I trust, He hath in some measure ‘_humbled me and proved me,
and shown me what was in my heart_.’ Hereby, I have been taught
to ‘_beware of men_.’ Hereby, God has given me to know many of
His servants, particularly those of the church of Herrnhuth.
Hereby, my passage is open to the writings of holy men, in
the German, Spanish, and Italian tongues. All in Georgia have
heard the word of God, and some have believed and begun to
run well. A few steps have been taken towards publishing the
glad tidings both to the African and American heathens. Many
children have learned how they ought to serve God, and to be
useful to their neighbour. And those whom it most concerns have
an opportunity of knowing the state of their infant colony,
and laying a firmer foundation of peace and happiness to many
generations.”[227]
These are no mean results to be realised in about two
years,—self-knowledge, caution, acquaintance with the church that was
to help him to clearer views of the plan of salvation, the acquisition
of three European languages, the unprecedented fact of preaching Christ
to _all_ the widely scattered inhabitants of an English colony, steps
taken to evangelise negroes and Indians, many children religiously
educated, and the way prepared for promoting the prosperity of Georgia
to the end of time!
CHAPTER V.
_WESLEY IN TRANSITION._ 1738.
[Sidenote: 1738 Age 35]
Whitefield left England the day before Wesley reached it. He landed
in Georgia on the 7th of May, 1738, and remained sixteen weeks; and
then set out again for his own country, where he arrived on November
30. A flying visit, but not a fruitless one. Having been ordained
by Bishop Benson in June, 1736, he began his unparalleled preaching
career with a sermon in the church of St. Mary de Crypt, Gloucester,
where he had been baptized, and where he first received the sacrament
of the Lord’s supper. Some of his congregation mocked, but most were
powerfully impressed. The bishop was informed that the sermon had
driven fifteen persons mad; the worthy prelate hoped the madness would
be abiding. Whitefield was a stripling of twenty-one; but wherever he
went crowds flocked to hear him. At Bristol, the whole city seemed
alarmed; Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, and sectarians of all kinds,
ran after him; and churches were as full on week days as they had used
to be on Sundays. Wesley wrote to his Oxford friends, asking help for
Georgia. Whitefield was preaching as often as four times a day, and
had become so famous that Raikes, of Gloucester, and others, thought
it an enrichment of their newspapers to insert accounts of his doings;
but his friend Wesley needed help, and that was quite enough to make
him treat as trifles the praises of the multitudes who ran after him.
Just at the time when Wesley was compelled to leave Georgia, Whitefield
repaired to London to embark for it. During his brief detention, in
less than three months, he preached in London above a hundred sermons,
and collected above a thousand pounds for charity schools and for the
poor. When he set sail, he read prayers and preached twice every day;
and such was his influence on board, that the very soldiers stood out
before him to say their catechism like little children.
The day after his arrival at Savannah, Causton and the magistrates sent
word that they would wait upon him; but he chose rather to wait upon
them, and was treated with as much deference as Wesley had been treated
with disrespect. He began to visit from house to house, catechized,
read prayers morning and evening, and expounded the two second lessons
every day. He found Tomo-Chichi, the Indian chief, on a blanket, thin
and meagre, and evidently dying. At Hampstead and Highgate he followed
Wesley’s example, and read prayers once a week, though the population
of the former village consisted of only three men, one woman, and seven
children. He also visited Thunderbolt, a village of three families
consisting of sixteen persons, and preached to them. He likewise opened
a girls’ school at Savannah. He paid a few days’ visit to Frederica,
where there was now a population of about one hundred and twenty; and
read prayers and preached, under a large tree, to more than could have
been expected. He also visited the Saltzburghers at Ebenezer, and found
two such pious ministers as he had not often seen.
Four months having been thus spent, he set out for England, the
Savannah people bidding adieu to him with tearful eyes, and begging
that he would soon return. He landed in Ireland in November, where
mayors and bishops vied with each other in inviting him to their
mansions and palaces, and where he also took the opportunity of
visiting the cabins of Irish peasants, in one of which, twenty feet
long and twelve broad, there were a man, his wife and three children,
two pigs feeding, two dogs, and several geese, a great fire, and the
master of the family threshing corn.
On reaching London, he found that those who had been awakened by
his preaching a year ago had “grown strong men in Christ, by the
ministrations of his dear friends and fellow labourers, John and
Charles Wesley.” The old doctrine of justification by faith only
had been much revived; societies had been instituted at Fetter Lane
and other places; and Whitefield ended the eventful year of 1738 by
preaching and expounding, during the last week of it, not fewer than
seven-and-twenty times.[228]
Let us now turn to Wesley. He landed at Deal early in the morning of
February 1; and at once resumed his work in England, by reading prayers
and preaching at the inn. After breakfast, he set out for London, and,
reaching Faversham at night, he again read prayers and expounded the
second lesson to a few who were called Christians, but who were more
savage in their behaviour than the wildest Indians he had ever met. His
next halting place was Blendon, where the family of his friend Charles
Delamotte gave him a hearty welcome. On the evening of February 3, he
arrived in London; and, without delay, visited Oglethorpe, and waited
upon the Georgian trustees; gave to them a written account why he had
left the colony; and returned to them the instrument whereby they had
appointed him minister of Savannah.
Wesley was too earnest to take a holiday. Time with him was too
important for any part of it to be spent in idleness. Reaching
London on Friday, he resumed preaching on Sunday; and, for the next
fifty-three years, never ceased, and never lagged, in this important
work, except when serious sickness occasionally laid upon him a brief
embargo.
And, certainly, if England ever needed earnest, enthusiastic labourers,
it was now. During this very year of 1738, not fewer than fifty-two
criminals were hanged at Tyburn; and within the last two years about
12,000 persons had been convicted, within the Bills of Mortality, of
smuggling gin, or of selling it without the £50 per annum licence.
Sunday traffic had become such a nuisance in London and its suburbs,
that even the court of aldermen interfered, and commanded the marshals,
and all constables, beadles, and other public officers, to use their
best endeavours to suppress it. They were also to apprehend all
shoeblacks cleaning shoes in the public streets; and to take notice
of all vintners, ale and coffee house keepers, barbers, and others,
who exercised their ordinary trades on Sundays. A committee of the
House of Lords “to examine into the causes of the present notorious
immorality and profaneness,” stated, in their report, that they had
sufficient grounds to believe that a number of loose and disorderly
persons had of late formed themselves into a club, under the name of
_Blasters_, and were using means to induce the youth of the kingdom to
join them. The members of this impious club professed themselves to be
votaries of the devil, offered prayers to him, and drank his health.
They also had been heard to utter “the most daring and execrable
blasphemies against the sacred name and majesty of God; and to use
such obscene, blasphemous, and before unheard of expressions as the
Lords’ committee think they cannot even mention, and therefore they
pass them over in silence.” The same committee further reported, that
“of late years there had appeared a greater neglect of religion and
of all things sacred—a greater neglect of Divine worship, both public
and private, and of the due observance of the sabbath, than had ever
before been known in England. There was a want of reverence to the laws
and to magistrates, and of a due subordination in the several ranks
and degrees of the community. There was an abuse of liberty, a great
neglect in education, and a want of care in training children, and in
keeping servants in good order; while idleness, luxury, gambling, and
an excessive use of spirituous and intoxicating liquors had grown into
an alarming magnitude.” The report concludes by recommending that the
bishops be desired, at their visitations, to particularly charge the
clergy to exhort the people to a more frequent and constant attendance
at Divine services; and that visitors of the universities and of
schools require the fellows and masters carefully to instruct the youth
committed to their care, in the principles of religion and morality; to
which recommendation the House of Lords agreed.
One month, in 1738, was spent by Wesley in his homeward voyage from
America. Three others were spent in Germany. During the remaining eight
he preached in various parts of England, at least, eighty times. One
of his sermons was delivered in the cabin of a ship, two were preached
in workhouses, eleven in Oxford castle, one in Oxford Bocardo, one
in Lincoln College chapel, one in Manchester, one at Windsor, one at
Stanton-Harcourt, two in Newgate prison, and the remainder principally
in twenty-six different churches in the metropolis. His sermon at St.
John the Evangelist’s “offended many of the best in the parish.” His
first discourse at St. Lawrence’s was “an open defiance of that mystery
of iniquity which the world calls ‘prudence,’” and gave great offence.
A sermon at Oxford castle was chiefly addressed to a man condemned
to die, and who, on the same day, found the forgiveness of his sins,
and shortly after went to the gallows “enjoying perfect peace.” At one
of his sermons in Newgate prison, nine persons were present who had
recently received sentence of death—two for murdering their wives, one
for filing guineas, two for burglary, and four for robberies. These
wretched creatures, and two others previously condemned, were all
executed at Tyburn, on November 8;[229] and, at their earnest desire,
Wesley and his brother, on the day of execution, went to Newgate “to do
the last good office” to them. Charles preached; the malefactors wept;
and some of them, at least, were filled with “the peace of God which
passeth all understanding.” Wesley writes: “It was the most glorious
instance I ever saw of faith triumphing over sin and death.”
The great event in Wesley’s history, during the year 1738, was his
conversion. Something has been said already on this momentous subject;
but other facts and explanations must now be given. Let us try to
answer the questions following:—
1. What was the religious state, and what were the religious views, of
Wesley previous to his conversion? 2. What were the doctrines he was
taught by Peter Bohler? 3. When was he converted? and how?
1. Wesley’s religious state and views previous to his conversion.
He was _almost a Christian_.[230] He most rigorously abstained from
everything which the gospel of Christ prohibits, and cheerfully
practised everything which it enjoins. He avoided every form of
profanity, and every word or look that, directly or indirectly, tended
to uncleanness. He equally avoided detraction, backbiting, talebearing,
evil speaking, and idle words. He was no railer, brawler, or scoffer
at the faults or infirmities of others, but continually endeavoured to
live peaceably with all men. He laboured and suffered for the benefit
of many. He reproved the wicked, instructed the ignorant, confirmed
the wavering, quickened the good, and comforted the afflicted. He used
all the means of grace, and at all opportunities: he attended public
service every day; he communicated every week; he constantly used
family prayer; he had set times daily for private devotions. All this
was done from a sincere and hearty desire to serve God and to do His
will. In all his conversation and in all his actions—in all he did
and in all he left undone, his only motive was a design to please and
honour God. He declares that he went thus far for many years, and yet
that all this time he was only _almost a Christian_.[231]
He held no principles but what he believed to be revealed in the word
of God; and, in the interpretation of that word he always judged the
most literal sense to be the best, unless when the literal sense of
one scripture contradicted some other. He firmly believed in a change
wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit, and called a person thus
changed “regenerated, born again, and a new creature.” In all other
cases, he endeavoured to express spiritual things in spiritual words,
though he was not ignorant that such words and their hidden meaning
were treated by the unconverted as jargon and cant.[232]
He had many remarkable answers to prayer, especially when he was in
trouble; and he had many sensible comforts—short anticipations of the
life of faith. He had a Divine conviction of God and of the things
of God; and firmly believed in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the
world.[233] He was, at least, a _servant_ of God, _and was accepted
of Him_;[234] and yet all this while he was beating the air, and was
seeking to establish his own righteousness, instead of submitting to
the righteousness of Christ which is by faith. He delighted in the law
of God, after the inner man; and yet he was carnal, sold under sin.
Every day he was constrained to cry out, “What I do I allow not: for
what I would I do not; but what I hate that I do. To will is present
with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not.” He was
fighting with sin continually, but not always conquering. Before,
he had _willingly_ served sin; now it was _unwillingly_; but still
he served it. He fell, and rose, and fell again. Sometimes he was
overcome, and in heaviness; sometimes he overcame, and was in joy.
Once he had foretastes of the terrors of the law; but now he had
foretastes of the comforts of the gospel. For above ten years there was
in him this struggle between nature and grace; and yet he was still
only striving with, not freed from, sin; neither had he the witness of
the Spirit with his spirit that he was a child of God; nor indeed could
he, for he “sought it not by faith, but, as it were, by the works of
the law.”[235]
Such is Wesley’s description of himself; and this, when added to what
has been previously said concerning his religious career at Oxford,
will be a sufficient answer to the first of the three questions
proposed.
2. The second is, what were the doctrines which Wesley was taught by
Peter Bohler?
In the storm which Wesley encountered in his voyage from Georgia, he
found himself in fear of death; and was convinced that the cause of it
was unbelief; and that the gaining a true living faith was the “one
thing needful” for him.
Peter Bohler told him that true faith in Christ was inseparably
attended by—(1) dominion over sin; and (2) constant peace, arising from
a sense of forgiveness. Wesley was amazed, and regarded this as a new
gospel; for if this was so, it was clear that he was without true faith
in Christ, because he was without its inseparable fruits. He was not
willing to be convinced of this. He disputed with all his strength,
and laboured to prove that there might be faith without the two fruits
mentioned, and especially the second. Bohler referred him to the Bible
and to experience. Wesley consulted the Bible, and when he had set
aside the glosses of men he was bound to acknowledge that Bohler was
correct. Still he hesitated to believe that any “experience” could be
adduced in favour of Bohler’s doctrine. The next day Bohler brought
to him three persons, all of whom testified of their own personal
experience that a true living faith in Christ is inseparable from a
sense of pardon for all past, and freedom from all present, sins. They
also added, with one mouth, that this faith is the gift, the free gift
of God; and that He will surely give it to every one who earnestly and
perseveringly prays for it.
At subsequent interviews with Bohler, another doctrine was forced
on Wesley, namely, that this saving faith in Christ is given in a
moment; and that in an instant a man is turned from sin and misery
to righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost. Wesley kicked against
this also; and Bohler again referred him to the Scriptures and
to experience. Wesley searched the Scriptures; and, to his utter
astonishment, he found there were scarcely any instances of other
than _instantaneous_ conversions. Still he had one retreat left,
and told Bohler that, though “God wrought thus in the first ages of
Christianity, times now were changed.” To meet this objection, Bohler,
the day after, turned to his _experience_ test, and brought to Wesley
several living witnesses, who testified that God had given them, in
a moment, such a faith in Christ as translated them out of darkness
into light, out of sin and fear into holiness and happiness. Wesley
writes: “Here ended my disputing. I could now only cry out, ‘Lord, help
Thou my unbelief.’ I was now thoroughly convinced; and, by the grace
of God, I resolved to seek this faith unto the end—(1) By absolutely
renouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my own works of
righteousness; on which I had really grounded my hope of salvation,
though I knew it not, from my youth up. (2) By adding to the constant
use of all the other means of grace continual prayer for this very
thing—justifying, saving faith, a full reliance on the blood of Christ
shed for me; a trust in Him as my Christ, as my sole justification,
sanctification, and redemption.”[236]
These then were the great doctrines which Peter Bohler brought to the
hearing of John Wesley. They were new to him; but finding them to be
scriptural, and also corroborated by living experience, he at once
believed them. He went to the Delamotte family at Blendon, and there
spake clearly and fully concerning them. Mr. Broughton and his brother
Charles were present. The former objected, and the latter became so
much offended, that in anger he left the room, telling his brother that
his newfangled doctrines were mischievous.[237] Wesley also wrote to
his brother Samuel on the same subject, on the 4th of April, declaring
that he had seen, so far as it could be seen, very many persons
changed, in a moment, from the spirit of horror, fear, and despair, to
the spirit of hope, joy, and peace; and from sinful desires, till then
reigning over them, to a pure desire of doing the will of God.[238]
We proceed to the third question,—
3. When and how was Wesley converted? His first interview with Bohler
was on February 7, 1738; and, from that time till the 4th of May,
when Bohler left London for Carolina, he embraced every opportunity
of conversing with him. They went in company to Oxford, and to Mr.
Gambold, at Stanton-Harcourt. The man of erudition, and of almost
anchorite piety, sat at the feet of this godly German like a little
child, and was content to be thought a fool that he might be wise.
“My brother, my brother,” said Bohler, “that philosophy of yours must
be purged away;” and purged away it was. Wesley thought that, being
without faith, he ought to leave off preaching. But Bohler replied:
“By no means. Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you
have it, you will preach it;” and, on the 6th of March, he began to
preach accordingly. Meanwhile several of his friends, as his brother
Charles, Mr. Gambold, and Mr. Stonehouse, vicar of Islington, had
embraced the doctrine of salvation by faith only; and two, Whitefield,
and Mr. Hutchins, of Pembroke College, had experienced it.[239] Charles
Wesley also, on Whit-Sunday, May 21, was made a partaker of the same
great blessing. At the time, he was ill of pleurisy, and his brother
and some other friends came to him, and sang a hymn of praise to the
Holy Ghost; and, after they were gone, he was enabled to exercise that
faith in Christ of the want of which he had been recently convinced,
and was filled with love and peace. Wesley himself was still a mourner.
His heart was heavy. He felt that there was no good in him; and that
all his works, his righteousness, and his prayers, so far from having
merit, needed an atonement for themselves. His mouth was stopped. He
knew that he deserved nothing but wrath; and yet he heard a voice,
saying, “Believe, and thou shalt be saved;” “he that believeth is
passed from death unto life.” Three more days of anguish were thus
passed; and then, on May 24, at five in the morning, he opened his
Testament on these words: “There are given unto us exceeding great
and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the
Divine nature.” On leaving home, he opened on the text, “Thou art
not far from the kingdom of God.” In the afternoon, he went to St.
Paul’s Cathedral, where the anthem was full of comfort. At night, he
went to a society-meeting in Aldersgate Street, where a person read
Luther’s preface to the epistle to the Romans, in which Luther teaches
what faith is, and also that faith alone justifies. Possessed of it,
the heart is “cheered, elevated, excited, and transported with sweet
affections towards God.” Receiving the Holy Ghost, through faith, the
man “is renewed and made spiritual,” and he is impelled to fulfil the
law “by the vital energy in himself.” While this preface was being
read, Wesley experienced an amazing change. He writes: “I felt my
heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone,
for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away
my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death; and I
then testified openly to all there, what I now first felt in my heart.”
Towards ten o’clock, a troop of friends took him to his brother; they
sang a hymn with joy; and then parted with a prayer.[240]
To add to this would be folly. The questions proposed have been
answered from Wesley’s own writings. For ten years he had believed
in Christ, but never believed as he did now. He had been intensely
pious; but now he possessed power over himself and sin which he had not
possessed before. He had practised religion; but now he experienced
its bliss. According to his own sermon, written nearly half a century
subsequent to this, he was, as a _servant_ of God, _accepted_, and was
_safe_; but now he _knew_ it, and was _happy_ as well as _safe_. There
was sunshine in his soul, which lit up his face, and which turned the
severe ascetic, for a season at least, into a joyful saint.
Having given, as briefly and as clearly as we can, an account of the
way in which Wesley, after ten years of earnest prayer, rigorous
fasting, and self-sacrificing piety, was brought into the blissful
enjoyment of a conscious salvation, this may be a fitting place to
notice the man, by whose instrumentality he was taught the nature and
fruits of saving faith.
Peter Bohler was born at Frankfort, on the last day of the year 1712.
He was educated in the university of Jena, where he also studied
theology. When sixteen years of age, he joined the Moravians; and
when twenty-five, he was ordained for the work of the ministry by
Count Zinzendorf, this being the first time that the count exercised
his episcopal functions. Immediately after his ordination, Bohler set
out for London, on his way to Carolina; and here it was that Wesley
first met him. Wesley introduced him to James Hutton, and procured him
lodgings. Charles Wesley began to teach him English; and a tailor, of
the name of Viney, interpreted his Latin addresses in the Moravian
meetings. Questions were asked him, and he simply answered them from
the Holy Scriptures. His exposition of saving faith was new, even to
the London Moravians; and, “to their astonishment, they saw, for the
first time, that he who believeth in Jesus hath everlasting life;
and it was with indescribable joy that they embraced the doctrine of
justification through faith in Christ, and of freedom by it from the
dominion and guilt of sin.”[241] Marvellous blessings attended Bohler’s
interpreted discourses; and a work was begun, says Wesley, “such as
will never come to an end, till heaven and earth pass away.”
“I travelled,” writes Bohler to Zinzendorf, “with the two brothers,
John and Charles Wesley, from London to Oxford. The elder, John,
is a good-natured man: he knew he did not properly believe on the
Saviour, and was willing to be taught. His brother, with whom you
often conversed a year ago, is at present very much distressed in his
mind, but does not know how he shall begin to be acquainted with the
Saviour. Our mode of believing in the Saviour is so easy to Englishmen,
that they cannot reconcile themselves to it; if it were a little more
artful, they would much sooner find their way into it. Of faith in
Jesus they have no other idea than the generality of people have. They
justify themselves; and, therefore, they always take it for granted,
that they believe already, and try to prove their faith by their works,
and thus so plague and torment themselves that they are at heart very
miserable.”[242]
These are weighty words on the simplicity of saving faith, and well
deserve pondering by both the ministers and members of the church at
the present day.
Wesley had found peace with God; but, for the encouragement of new
converts, let it be remembered that his joy in the Holy Ghost was not
unbroken. The same night, he “was much buffeted with temptations, which
returned again and again.” The day after, “the enemy injected a fear”
that the change was not great enough, and therefore that his faith was
not real. On May 26, his “soul continued in peace, but yet in heaviness
because of manifold temptations.” On the 27th, there was a want of joy,
which led him to resolve to spend the time of every morning, until
he went to church, in unceasing prayer. On the 31st, he “grieved the
Spirit of God, not only by not watching unto prayer, but likewise by
speaking with sharpness, instead of tender love, of one who was not
sound in the faith. Immediately God hid His face, and he was troubled
and in heaviness till the next morning.” But, in the midst of all, he
kept waiting upon God continually, read the New Testament, conquered
temptations, and gained increasing power to trust and to rejoice in God
his Saviour. He had to fight; but he was not, as formerly, subdued.
He went to Oxford; but the whole of his old Methodist friends were now
dispersed. Here he preached his celebrated sermon in St. Mary’s, before
the university, on the text, “By grace are ye saved, through faith;”
a sermon which, in November following, was published by James Hutton,
pp. 25, price threepence. In this discourse, he showed that the faith
through which we are saved is not barely the faith of a heathen, who
believes that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently
seek Him; nor, secondly, is it the faith of a devil, who, in addition
to the faith of a heathen, believes that Jesus is the Son of God, the
Christ, the Saviour of the world; nor, thirdly, is it barely the faith
which the apostles had while Christ was yet upon earth, although they
so believed in Christ as to leave all and follow Him, had power to
work miracles, and were sent to preach; but, fourthly, “it is a full
reliance on the blood of Christ,—a trust in the merits of His life,
death, and resurrection,—a recumbency upon Him as our atonement and our
life, as given for us and living in us; and, in consequence hereof, a
closing with Him and cleaving to Him, as our wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption, or, in one word, our salvation.”
The salvation obtained by such a faith is described as being a
salvation—(1) From the guilt of all past sin; (2) From servile fear;
(3) From the power of sin. The man having it is pardoned; he has the
witness of the Spirit that he is a child of God; he is born again; and
he lives without sin.
Wesley further answers objections to this doctrine, and shows that to
preach salvation by faith only is not to preach against holiness and
good works; neither does it lead men into pride, nor drive them to
despair. He maintains that never was the preaching of this doctrine
more seasonable than now, and that nothing else can effectually prevent
the increase of the popish delusion. It was this which drove Popery out
of the kingdom, and it is this alone that can keep it out.
This remarkable sermon was preached eighteen days after Wesley’s
conversion—not on June 18, as is stated in Wesley’s collected works,
but on June 11. Well would it be if, at the present day, the same great
doctrine were as plainly preached as Wesley preached it. For want of
it, the church is gliding into a sort of religious scepticism; and
this, above all things else, would prove a check to the spread of the
popish errors and practices, which are too successfully setting at
defiance all the wisdom and power of man to prevent their triumph.
In the same year Wesley published another sermon, “On God’s Free
Grace,”[243] in which he gave equal prominence to another great Bible
truth, namely, that “the grace or love of God, whence cometh our
salvation, is _free in all_, and _free for all_.” And then, in defence
of himself as a good Churchman, he issued a small 12mo pamphlet of
sixteen pages, entitled “The Doctrine of Salvation, Faith, and Good
Works: extracted from the Homilies of the Church of England.” Here he
shows that the doctrine of that Church is, that the sinner is justified
by faith only; and yet this faith does not exclude repentance,
hope, love, and fear of God; but shuts them out from the office of
justifying. “So that, although they be all present together in him
that is justified, yet they justify not altogether.” “Neither does
faith shut out good works, necessary to be done afterwards; but we are
not to do them with the intent of being justified by doing them.” He
further shows that “justification is the office of God only,—a blessing
which we receive of Him by His free mercy, through the only merits of
His beloved Son.” He adds: “the right and true Christian faith is not
only to believe that holy Scripture and the articles of our faith are
true, but also to have a sure trust and confidence to be saved from
everlasting damnation by Christ; whereof doth follow a loving heart
to obey His commandments.” He maintains further that, without this
true saving faith, the works we do cannot be good and acceptable in
the sight of God. “Faith giveth life to the soul, and they are as much
dead to God who want faith, as they are to the world whose bodies want
souls. Without faith all we do is but dead before God, be it ever so
glorious before man.”
Such then were the great doctrines which Wesley grasped, and began to
preach in 1738. It was the preaching of these doctrines that gave birth
to the greatest revival of religion chronicled in the history of the
church of Christ. From such doctrines Wesley never wavered; and God
forbid that they should ever be abandoned, or even partially neglected,
by any of Wesley’s successors. They are not Moravian whims, or the
fancies of fanatics. They are a great deal more than even Bible truths
of subordinate importance. They are essentially and vitally connected
with man’s salvation both here and hereafter, and no church has ever
prospered except in proportion as its ministers have prominently and
faithfully taught and enforced them in their congregations.
It may reasonably be asked how was it that Wesley—the son of a most
able divine of the Church of England, and himself a man of extensive
learning, and a devoted student of Christian truth—how was it, that
he lived so long without a knowledge of one of the greatest, and yet
most clearly taught doctrines of the holy Bible, the doctrine of the
sinner’s salvation by faith alone? Wesley himself tells us: from early
life he had been warned against the papistical error of laying too
much stress on outward works. After this, he read certain Lutheran
and Calvinist authors, whose confused and indigested expositions
magnified faith to such an amazing size that it quite hid all the
rest of the commandments. In this labyrinth he was bewildered. He
wished, on the one hand, to avoid the popish doctrine of salvation by
works; but, in doing this, he was beset, on the other hand, with an
uncouth hypothesis concerning salvation by faith, which he found it
impossible to reconcile either with Scripture or common sense. From
these well meaning but wrong headed writers, he turned to authors
like Beveridge, Nelson, and Jeremy Taylor, by whom his difficulties
were, to some extent, relieved; but even these he found interpreting
Scripture in different ways, and he was nearly as much confused as
ever. After this, he was taught that he ought to interpret the Bible
by the general teachings of the ancient church. Adopting this rule,
he, for a season, made antiquity a co-ordinate rather than subordinate
rule with Scripture, and, by extending his antiquity principle too far,
his confusion of mind became greater instead of less. He then became
acquainted with the Mystics, whose “noble descriptions of union with
God, and internal religion, made everything else appear mean and flat;”
yet here again, on reflection, he found that he was wrong. Mysticism
was nothing like the religion which Christ and His apostles lived and
taught.[244] Thus was this sincere and earnest inquirer after truth led
to and fro in a wilderness of perplexing entanglements, until Peter
Bohler took him by the hand, and led him as a contrite sinner to the
cross of Christ.
Ten days before his conversion, Wesley wrote a somewhat petulant letter
to William Law, telling him that he did so in obedience to what he
considered the call of God. He informs him that, for two years, he had
been preaching after the model of his “Serious Call,” and “Christian
Perfection,” and that the result had been to convince the people that
the law of God was holy, but that, when they attempted to fulfil it,
they found themselves without power. Wesley declares that he himself
was in this state, and might have groaned in it till he died if he had
not been directed to Peter Bohler. He then proceeds:—
“Now, sir, suffer me to ask, how will you answer it to our
common Lord, that you never gave me this advice? Did you never
read the Acts of the Apostles, or the answer of Paul to him
who said, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Or are you wiser than
he? Why did I scarce ever hear you name the name of Christ?
Never so as to ground anything upon faith in His blood? Who is
this who is laying another foundation? If you say you advised
other things as preparatory to this, what is this but laying a
foundation below the foundation? If you say you advised them
because you knew that I had faith already, verily you knew
nothing of me. I know that I had not faith, unless the faith of
a devil, the faith of Judas: that speculative, notional, airy
shadow, which lives in the head not in the heart. But what is
this to the living, justifying faith in the blood of Jesus?
the faith that cleanseth from sin, that gives us to have free
access to the Father; to rejoice in hope of the glory of God;
to have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost, which dwelleth in us, and the Spirit itself bearing
witness with our spirits that we are the children of God?
“I beseech you, sir, by the mercies of God, to consider deeply
and impartially whether the true reason of your never pressing
this upon me was not this—that you had it not yourself? Whether
that man of God [Bohler] was not in the right, who gave this
account of a late interview he had with you? ‘I began speaking
to him of faith in Christ: he was silent. Then he began to
speak of mystical matters. I spake to him of faith in Christ
again: he was silent. Then he began to speak of mystical
matters again. I saw his state at once.’”
Wesley then adds that Bohler thought the state of Law to be a dangerous
one; and intimates that Bohler’s opinion was of great consequence,
because he had the Spirit of God; and finally, he concludes his not too
courteous epistle with: “Once more, sir, let me beg you to consider
whether your extreme roughness, and morose and sour behaviour, at least
on many occasions, can possibly be the fruit of a living faith in
Christ?”[245]
This was an uncalled for, rough, morose attack upon a man of the
greatest ability, of distinguished though mistaken piety, whose works
Wesley had read with the highest admiration, whose advice Wesley
had sought, and who was nearly old enough to be Wesley’s father. Law
replied to it in a letter dated May 19, 1738. After some withering
sarcasm, in reference to Wesley having written his letter in obedience
to the call of God, Law proceeds to say:—
“You have had a great many conversations with me, and you never
were with me for half an hour without my being large upon that
very doctrine, which you make me totally silent and ignorant
of. The second time I saw you I put into your hands the little
book of the German theology, and said all that I could in
recommendation of the doctrine contained in it. If that book
does not plainly lead you to Jesus Christ, I am content to know
as little of Christianity as you are pleased to believe; or
if you are for stripping yourself naked of your own works, or
righteousness, further than that book directs, I had rather you
were taught that doctrine by any one else than by me. Above a
year ago, I published a book against the ‘Plain Account of the
Sacrament,’ etc. You may perhaps be too much prejudiced against
me to read it; but, as you have made yourself a judge of the
state of my heart, and of my knowledge in Christ, you ought to
have seen that book to help you to make a right judgment of my
sentiments. What I have there written I judge to be well timed
after my former discourses. I have been governed through all
that I have written and done by these two common, fundamental,
unchangeable maxims of our Lord: ‘_Without Me ye can do
nothing:_’ ‘_If any man will come after Me or be My disciple,
let him take up his cross and follow Me._’ If you are for
separating the doctrine of the cross from faith in Christ, or
following Him, you have numbers and names enough on your side,
but not me.”
Law continues: “Let me advise you not to be too hasty in believing that
because you have changed your language you have changed your faith. The
head can as easily amuse itself with a living and justifying faith in
the blood of Jesus as with any other notion; and the heart which you
suppose to be a place of security, as being the seat of self-love, is
more deceitful than the head.”
A lengthened correspondence followed, which Mr. Law concluded
thus:—“Who made me your teacher? or can make me answerable for any
defects in your knowledge? You sought my acquaintance; you came to me
as you pleased, and on what occasion you pleased, and to say to me what
you pleased. If it was my business to put this question to you, and if
you have a right to charge me with guilt for the neglect of it, may you
not much more reasonably accuse them who have authoritatively charge
over you? Did the Church in which you are educated put this question
to you? Did the bishop who ordained you either deacon or priest do this
for you? Did the bishop who sent you a missionary to Georgia require
this of you? Pray, sir, be at peace with me.”[246]
This was a miserable squabble, into which Wesley foolishly rushed,
and out of which he came not victorious, but vanquished. It was an
unfortunate commencement of a new Christian life, and led to an
estrangement between two great and good men, which ought never to have
existed. No doubt, the theology of William Law was defective; but to
charge him with the guilt of Wesley’s want of faith, and to accuse
him of extremely rough, morose, and sour behaviour, was a deplorable
outrage against good manners.
But this was not the only unpleasantness which now sprang up. The
Moravian movement and the new conversions began to attract great
attention and to create some alarm. As might naturally be expected,
amid so much excitement, there was a mixture of extravagance. The
sister of Mr. Bray dreamed that at night she heard a knock at her door,
and on opening it saw a person dressed in white. She asked him who he
was, and he answered, “I am Jesus Christ.” She awoke in a fright, but a
day or two after was filled with faith, and was commanded by an unseen
power to go to Charles Wesley, who was ill, and assure him from Christ
of his recovery of soul and body. In a prayer-meeting a Mr. Verding
declared that he had just seen, as it were, a whole army rushing by him
and bearing the broken body of Christ; a sight which was overpowering,
and cast him into a cold sweat. A young man, as he entered St.
Dunstan’s church to receive the sacrament, was met by Christ carrying
His cross in His hands: and a woman dreamed that a ball of fire fell
upon her, and fired her soul. Samuel Wesley, of Tiverton, to whom these
things were related, justly deemed them “downright madness;” and, in
his anger, went so far as to wish that those “canting fellows,” as he
called the Moravians, “who talked of _indwellings_, _experiences_,
_getting into Christ_,” etc., had been somewhere else.[247]
The chief cause of anxiety, however, arose from Mrs. Hutton’s
description of her two lodgers. She relates that, when the two Wesleys
returned from Georgia, she received and treated them with the utmost
love and tenderness; but John was now “turned a wild enthusiast.” While
her husband was reading to a number of people in his study a sermon of
Bishop Blackall’s, John Wesley stood up and told the company that, five
days ago, he was not a Christian. Mr. Hutton was thunderstruck, and
said, “Have a care, Mr. Wesley, how you despise the benefits received
by the two sacraments;” but Wesley repeated his declaration, upon which
Mrs. Hutton answered, “If you have not been a Christian ever since I
knew you, you have been a great hypocrite, for you made us all believe
that you were one.” To this Wesley replied that, “When we renounce
everything but faith and get into Christ, then, and not till then, have
we any reason to believe that we are Christians.”
Mrs. Hutton, in writing an account of all this to Samuel Wesley, adds
that her two children had so high an opinion of Wesley’s sanctity and
judgment that they were in great danger of being drawn into his “wild
notions;” that Wesley had “abridged the life of one Halyburton, a
Presbyterian teacher in Scotland,” and that her son had designed to
print it, but she and her husband had forbidden him to promote such
“rank fanaticism;” and that all his converts were “directed to get an
assurance of their sins being pardoned,” and to expect this in “an
instant.” She acknowledges that the two Wesleys “are men of great parts
and learning;” but they were now under a “strange delusion;” and she
entreats their brother Samuel to stop this “wildfire,” if he can.
Samuel Wesley’s reply is dated, “Tiverton, June 17, 1738.” He writes:—
“I am sufficiently sensible of yours and Mr. Hutton’s kindness
to my brothers, and shall always acknowledge it. Falling into
enthusiasm is being lost with a witness; and, if you are
troubled for two of your children, you may be sure I am so for
two whom I may, in some sense, call _mine_. What Jack means by
his not being a Christian till last month, I understand not.
Had he never been in covenant with God? Then, as Mr. Hutton
observed, baptism was nothing. Had he totally apostatized from
it? I dare say not; and yet he must either be unbaptized, or an
apostate, to make his words true.
“If renouncing everything but faith means rejecting all merit
of our own good works, what Protestant does not do that? Even
Bellarmine on his death-bed is said to have renounced all
merits but those of Christ. But if this renouncing regards
good works in any other sense, as being unnecessary, it is
wretchedly wicked.
“I hope your son does not think it as plainly revealed that
he shall print an enthusiastic book, as it is, that he should
obey his father and his mother. God deliver us from visions
that shall make the law of God vain! I pleased myself with the
expectation of seeing Jack; but now I am afraid of it. I know
not where to direct to him, or where he is. I will write to
Charles as soon as I can. In the meantime I heartily pray God
to stop the progress of this lunacy.”[248]
Samuel asked his brother what he meant by being made a Christian. John
replied:—
“By a Christian, I mean one who so believes in Christ as that
sin hath no more dominion over him; and, in this obvious sense
of the word, I was not a Christian till the 24th of May last
past. Till then sin had dominion over me, although I fought
with it continually; but, from that time to this, it hath not.
Such is the free grace of God in Christ. If you ask me, by what
means I am made free? I answer, by faith in Christ; by such
a sort or degree of faith as I had not till that day. Some
measure of this faith, which bringeth salvation or victory over
sin, and which implies peace and trust in God through Christ,
I now enjoy by His free mercy; though in very deed it is in me
but as a grain of mustard seed. For the ‘πληροφορια
πιστεως,—the seal of the Spirit, the love of God shed abroad
in my heart, and producing joy in the Holy Ghost, joy which
no man taketh away, joy unspeakable and full of glory,’—this
witness of the Spirit I have not; but I wait patiently for it.
I know many who have already received it; and, having seen and
spoken with a cloud of witnesses abroad,[249] as well as in my
own country, I cannot doubt but that believers who wait and
pray for it will find these scriptures fulfilled in themselves.
My hope is, that they will be fulfilled in me. I build on
Christ, the Rock of Ages.”[250]
The reader will observe here a strange confession, which has seldom,
if ever, been noticed. The letter, from which the above is taken, was
written October 23, 1738, five months after Wesley’s conversion; and
yet he here distinctly states that, as yet, he was not possessed of
the witness of the Spirit; but was waiting for it. This is contrary
to the commonly received notion, and yet it is in perfect accordance
with a remarkable entry in his journal, under the date of October
14. He there most carefully examines his religious state by comparing
it with the text, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old
things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” In many
respects, he judged himself a new creature; but, in others, he feared
that he was not. Earthly desires often arose within him, though he was
enabled to put them under his feet through Christ strengthening him.
To some extent, he possessed longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, and
temperance; but he had to complain of his want of love, peace, and joy.
He writes:—
“I cannot find in myself the love of God, or of Christ. Hence
my deadness and wanderings in public prayer: hence it is that,
even in the holy communion, I have frequently no more than a
cold attention. Again, I have not that joy in the Holy Ghost;
no settled, lasting joy. Nor have I such a peace as excludes
the possibility either of fear or doubt. When holy men have
told me I had no faith, I have often doubted whether I had
or no. And these doubts have made me very uneasy, till I was
relieved by prayer and the holy Scriptures. Yet, upon the
whole, although I have not yet that joy in the Holy Ghost,
nor the full assurance of faith,—much less am I, in the full
sense of the words, ‘in Christ a new creature,’—I nevertheless
trust that I have a measure of faith, and am ‘accepted in the
Beloved;’ I trust ‘the handwriting that was against me is
blotted out,’ and that I am ‘reconciled to God’ through His
Son.”
There is another entry, similar to this, under the date of December 16;
and again, on January 4, 1739, he uses even stronger language:—
“My friends affirm I am mad, because I said I was not a
Christian a year ago. I affirm, I am not a Christian now.
Indeed, what I might have been I know not, had I been faithful
to the grace then given, when, expecting nothing less, I
received such a sense of the forgiveness of my sins as till
then I never knew. But that I am not a Christian at this day, I
as assuredly know, as that Jesus is the Christ. For a Christian
is one who has the fruits of the Spirit of Christ, which (to
mention no more) are love, peace, joy. But these I have not. I
have not any love of God. I do not love either the Father or
the Son. Do you ask, how do I know whether I love God, I answer
by another question, ‘How do you know whether you love me?’
Why, as you know whether you are hot or cold. You feel this
moment that you do or do not love me. And I feel this moment
I do not love God; which therefore I know, because I feel it.
And I know it also by St. John’s plain rule, ‘If any man love
the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’ For I love
the world. I desire the things of the world, some or other of
them; and have done all my life. I have always placed some
part of my happiness in some or other of the things that are
seen, particularly in meat and drink, and in the company of
those I loved. For many years, I have been, yea, and still am,
hankering after a happiness, in loving and being loved by one
or another. And in these I have, from time to time, taken more
pleasure than in God.
“Again, joy in the Holy Ghost I have not. I have now and then
some starts of joy in God; but it is not that joy. For it is
not abiding. Neither is it greater than I have had on some
worldly occasions. So that I can in nowise be said to ‘rejoice
evermore;’ much less to ‘rejoice with joy unspeakable and full
of glory.’
“Yet again: I have not ‘the peace of God;’ that peace,
peculiarly so called. The peace I have may be accounted for
on natural principles. I have health, strength, friends, a
competent fortune, and a composed, cheerful temper. Who would
not have a sort of peace in such circumstances? But I have none
which can, with any propriety, be called ‘a peace which passeth
all understanding.’
“From hence I conclude, though I have given, and do give, all
my goods to feed the poor, I am not a Christian. Though I have
endured hardship, though I have in all things denied myself and
taken up my cross, I am not a Christian. My works are nothing;
my sufferings are nothing; I have not the fruits of the Spirit
of Christ. Though I have constantly used all the means of grace
for twenty years, I am not a Christian.”
This is extremely puzzling; but we are bound to give it as we find
it. It may be said that Wesley merely says, that “one who had had the
form of godliness many years wrote these reflections;” but, comparing
them with the two entries under the dates of October 14 and December
16, 1738, and with his letter to his brother Samuel, dated October
30, it would be folly to contend that he was not relating his own
experience. The reader must form his own opinion, and grapple with the
difficulties, thus presented, as he best can. Wesley acknowledges,
in the above extract, that, some months before, he “received such a
sense of the forgiveness of his sins as till then he never knew;” and
yet here we find him full of doubt, and writing the bitterest things
against himself.
Let us pursue his correspondence with his brother Samuel a little
farther. Wesley held the doctrine of the Spirit’s witness; though
he asserts he did not yet experience it. Samuel, in a letter dated
November 15, 1738, asks his brother “whether he will own or disown,
in terms, the necessity of a sensible information from God of
pardon?”[251] This was not a fair putting of the question. Wesley
had defined the πληροφορια πιστεως, or witness of the Spirit, as “the
love of God shed abroad in the heart, producing joy which no man
taketh away; joy unspeakable and full of glory:” but his brother here
changes the term _witness_, and what it meant, to the term “_sensible
information_,” that is, information received through the senses, thus
connecting with the witness visions and voices, and other Moravian
follies at that time rampant.
A fortnight later Wesley replied to this:—
“I believe every Christian, who has not yet received it, should
pray for the witness of God’s Spirit that he is a child of God.
This witness, I believe, is necessary for my salvation. How far
invincible ignorance may excuse others I know not. But this,
you say, is delusive and dangerous, because it encourages and
abets idle visions and dreams. It may do this accidentally, but
not essentially; but this is no objection against it; for, in
the same way, weak minds may pervert to an idle use every truth
in the oracles of God. Such visions, indeed, as you mention are
given up; but does it follow that visions and dreams in general
are bad branches of a bad root? God forbid. This would prove
more than you desire.”[252]
In answer, Samuel, on December 13, declares that his brother
misinterprets the witness of the Spirit, and refers him to a sermon
of Bishop Bull’s in proof. John replies, that Bishop Bull’s sermon is
full of gross perversions of Scripture; and adds: “I find more persons,
day by day, who experience a clear evidence of their being in a state
of salvation; but I never said this continues equally clear in all, as
long as they continue in a state of salvation.”[253]
Samuel’s answer is dated Tiverton, March 26, 1739, in which he argues
that the witness of the Spirit is not necessary to salvation; and
refers, in proof of this, to the case of baptized infants, and to
persons of a gloomy constitution.[254]
Nine days afterwards, Wesley re-asserted that he had seen many persons
changed in a moment from the spirit of horror, fear, and despair, to
the spirit of hope, joy, and peace; and from sinful desires, till
then reigning over them, to a pure desire of doing the will of God.
He also knew that this great change, in several persons, had been
wrought either in sleep, or during a strong representation, to the eye
of their minds, of Christ, either on the cross, or in glory. He also
argues, that his brother’s reference to infants and persons of a gloomy
constitution fails to sustain his point; because no kind of assurance
is essential to the salvation of infants; and persons of a gloomy
constitution, so far from being doomed to die without the assurance,
have, to his own certain knowledge, even when almost mad, been brought
in a moment into a state of firm, lasting peace and joy.[255]
Other letters might be quoted; but enough has been said to show the
views which Wesley now held concerning the witness of the Spirit. He
believed the witness was necessary to his own salvation; and, yet, he
declares he has it not. He asserts that he has known instances in which
it has been granted in dreams; but he does not insist that dreams are
an essential medium. The whole affair is puzzling. On May 24, 1738, he
“received such a sense of the forgiveness of sins as till then he never
knew;” and yet, months afterwards, he declares, in the most explicit
terms, that he was now living without the enjoyment of the Spirit’s
witness. How is this discrepancy to be explained? Had he lost the sense
of forgiveness which he received on May 24? Or was he attaching to
the witness of the Spirit a signification too high? If he had not the
witness at the beginning of 1739, when did he obtain it afterwards? All
these questions will naturally occur to the thoughtful reader; but they
are more easily asked than answered.
The simple truth seems to be, that while Wesley heard much among the
Moravians that was scriptural, he also heard much that was otherwise;
and paid more attention to their experiences, both in England and in
Germany, than was desirable, or for his good. His high opinion of the
people’s piety made it easy to believe even many of their foolish
statements. He got into a labyrinth, and could hardly tell where he
was. Months before, he had believed on Christ to the saving of his
soul; and yet now he bitterly exclaims that he is not a Christian.
He was, for a season, bewildered with the brightness of great truths
bursting for the first time on his vision, and with the distracting
glare of religious testimonies—new, but yet earnest and sincere—of
great importance, and yet mixed with much that was fanatical and
foolish. Out of such a maze this earnest man had to find his way as he
best could. We know his subsequent career, and we know the doctrines
that he taught. The mists of early education, and the vapours of
Moravian imagination, were soon scattered by the bright sunshine which
was shed upon him; and in the midst of which, to the end of his career,
he was wont to live, and to testify, “The testimony of the Spirit is
an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly
witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ hath
loved me, and given Himself for me; and that all my sins are blotted
out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.”[256]
Wesley had been brought into strange communion with Moravians in his
voyage to Georgia. At Savannah he had met with Spangenberg. On his
return to London he found Bohler, and was induced to become a member of
the first Moravian society, founded at Fetter Lane. The rules of that
society are before us, entitled, “Orders of a Religious Society meeting
in Fetter Lane; in obedience to the command of God by St. James, and
by the advice of Peter Boehler, May 1, 1738.” These rules provide for
a meeting of the members once a week, to confess their faults one to
another, and to pray for one another that they may be healed. A month
later, it was agreed that the persons thus meeting in _society_ should
be divided into _bands_, of not fewer than five or more than ten;
and that some one in each band should be desired to interrogate the
rest, and should be called the leader. Each band was to meet twice a
week; every person was to come punctually at the hour appointed; every
meeting was to begin and end with singing and prayer; and all the bands
were to have a conference every Wednesday night. Any person absenting
himself from his band-meeting, without some extraordinary reason,
was to be first privately admonished, and if he were absent a second
time, to be reproved before the whole society. Any member, desiring
or designing to take a journey, was first to have, if possible, the
approbation of the bands; and all who were in clubs were requested to
withdraw their names from such associations. Any one desiring to be
admitted was to be asked his reasons for this, and whether he would be
entirely open, using no kind of reserve, least of all in the case of
love or courtship. Every fourth Saturday was to be observed as a day
of general intercession, from twelve to two, from three to five, and
from six to eight o’clock; and, on one Sunday in every month, a general
lovefeast was to be held from seven till ten at night. In order to a
continual intercession, every member was to choose some hour, either of
the day or night, to spend in prayer, chiefly for his brethren; and, in
order to a continual fast, three of the members were to fast every day,
Sundays and holidays excepted, and spend as much of the day as possible
in retirement from business and in prayer. Each person was to pay to
the leader of his band, at least once a month, what he could afford
towards the general expenses; and any person not conforming to the
rules of the society, after being thrice admonished, was to be expelled.
Naturally enough, Wesley wished to know something more of the singular
people with whom he had been brought in contact; and accordingly, three
weeks after his conversion, he started for their chief settlement at
Herrnhuth, in Germany. One of his companions was his friend Ingham, and
another was John Toltschig,[257] one of the first fugitives who fled to
Herrnhuth from the fierce persecution in Moravia in 1724.
At Rotterdam, Dr. Koker, a physician, treated them with kindness; but
at Gondart several of the inns refused to entertain them, and it “was
with difficulty they at last found one which did them the favour to
take their money for their meat and drink, and the use of two or three
bad beds.”
On June 16, they arrived at Ysselstein, the home of Baron Watteville,
who had been a fellow student of Count Zinzendorf, and one of the young
gentlemen, at the academy in Halle, who about the year 1717 had formed
an association called “The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed,” the
object of which was to promote the conversion of Jews and heathen.
At the time of Wesley’s visit Watteville was at the head of “a few
German brethren and sisters, and about eight” English Moravians, who
were living in three or four small houses, till one should be built
large enough to contain them all. Wesley and his friends spent a day
with them “in hearing the wonderful work which God was beginning to
work over all the earth,” and in making prayer to Him, “and giving
thanks for the mightiness of His kingdom.”
Proceeding to Amsterdam, Wesley and his companions were received with
great courtesy by Mr. Decknatel, a minister of the Mennonists, and
Dr. Barkhausen, a Muscovite physician. Here they spent four days, and
attended several society meetings, where “the expounding was in high
Dutch.”
On Sunday, June 26, they reached Cologne, “the ugliest, dirtiest city”
Wesley had ever seen. The cathedral he describes as “mere heaps upon
heaps; a huge, misshapen thing, without either symmetry or neatness
belonging to it.” Some will doubtless differ from Wesley’s judgment
concerning this magnificent though unfinished pile, so venerated for
its sanctity, derived from the monkish stories of the reliques of the
eleven thousand virgins and of the three eastern kings. Coming out of
it, one of Wesley’s companions scrupled to take off his hat as a popish
procession passed, when a papist cried, “Knock down the Lutheran dog,”
a mandate which would probably have been put into execution if the
offender had not made a timely escape from the zealot’s fury.
Embarking on the majestic Rhine, four days and nights were spent in
reaching Mayence, the boat in which Wesley travelled being drawn
by horses. This, however, gave him ample time to admire the almost
unequalled beauties of one of the finest rivers in the world. Arriving
faint and weary at Frankfort, they were refused admittance, because
they had no passports. It so happened, however, that Peter Bohler’s
father was resident in the city; and, by his interposition, they
procured an entrance, and were treated in the most friendly manner.
On Tuesday, July 4, they came to Marienborn, (about thirty-five miles
from Frankfort,) in the neighbourhood of which Zinzendorf, two years
before, had taken up his residence in an old, ruinous castle called
Ronneburg, and where he had established schools for poor children,
whom he fed and clothed at his own expense. Here also he had formed
a missionary congregation, consisting of forty students from Jena,
most of whom became ministers either in Europe or in missions to the
heathen.[258] The Moravian family altogether consisted of about ninety
persons, all living in a large house rented by Zinzendorf. Here Wesley
spent a fortnight, conversing with the brethren in Latin or English,
listening to the sermons of the count, and attending conferences and
intercession meetings. Writing to his brother Samuel, he says: “God has
given me at length the desire of my heart. I am with a church whose
conversation is in heaven; in whom is the mind that was in Christ, and
who so walks as He walked. As they have all one Lord and one faith,
so they are all partakers of one Spirit—the spirit of meekness and
love, which uniformly and continually animates all their conversation.
I believe, in a week, Mr. Ingham and I shall set out for Herrnhuth,
about three hundred and fifty miles hence. Oh pray for us, that God
would sanctify to us all those precious opportunities.”[259] It is an
odd fact, however, that while Ingham was allowed to partake of the
holy communion, Wesley was not, because “the congregation saw him to
be _homo perturbatus_, and that his head had gained an ascendancy over
his heart”; and also because “they were desirous not to interfere with
his plan of effecting good as a clergyman of the English Church.”[260]
Peculiar reasons—but we give them as we find them. Hampson, in his
life of Wesley, relates that Zinzendorf, who regarded him as a pupil,
ordered him one day to dig in the garden; and after Wesley had been
there for some time working in his shirt, and when he was in a high
state of perspiration, the lordly count commanded him to enter a
carriage that was waiting, to pay a visit to a neighbouring noble.
Wesley naturally wished to wash his hands and to put on his coat; but
his preceptor forbade him, saying, “You must be simple, my brother!”
This was a full answer to all remonstrance, and Wesley was simple
enough to obey the mandate of a man who, while professing great
humility, sometimes allowed the pretensions of his feudal pride to set
aside the meekness of his professed piety.
On the 19th of July, Wesley again set out, and on reaching Weimar
was brought before the duke, who asked his object in journeying to
Herrnhuth. Wesley answered, “To see the place where the Christians
live;” upon which the duke looked hard, but permitted him to go. On
arriving at Halle, “the King of Prussia’s tall men,” who kept the
gates, sent him and his friends backwards and forwards, from one gate
to another, for nearly two long hours before they were admitted. Here
he inspected, with the greatest interest, the Orphan House of August
Herman Francke, in which six hundred and fifty children were wholly
resident, and three thousand taught. At Leipsig, the gentlemen of
the university treated him with respect and kindness. At Meissen,
two things surprised him—the extremely beautiful china ware; and the
congregation in the church, where the women wore huge fur caps in the
shape of Turkish turbans; the men sat with their hats on their heads at
the prayers as well as at the sermon, and the parson was decorated with
a habit bedecked with gold and scarlet, and with a vast cross on both
his back and breast. At Dresden, Wesley was carried from one official
to another, with impertinent solemnity, for above two hours, before he
was suffered to settle at his inn; and greatly wondered that common
sense and common humanity allowed such a senseless, inhuman usage of
strangers.
Wesley arrived at the Moravian settlement at Herrnhuth on August 1, and
found it consisting of about a hundred houses built on a rising ground.
The principal erection was the orphan house, in the lower part of which
was the apothecary’s shop, and in the upper the chapel, capable of
containing six or seven hundred people. Here he spent nearly the next
fortnight.
The day after his arrival, he attended a lovefeast of the married
women; and on every day, at eleven, a Bible conference, at which was
read a portion of Scripture in the original. He was also present
at a conference for strangers, when several questions concerning
justification were resolved. He embraced all opportunities of
conversing with the most experienced of the brethren, concerning the
great work which God had wrought within them; and with the teachers and
elders concerning their church discipline.
On the Sunday, after the evening service, all the unmarried women,
according to their usual custom, walked round the town, singing
praise, with instruments of music; and then, on a small hill, at a
little distance from it, knelt in a circle and joined in prayer; after
which they joyously repaired to their respective homes.
Four times Wesley heard Christian David preach, and also received from
his own lips his private history. The boyhood of this remarkable man
was spent in tending sheep, and his youth and early manhood partly
at the carpenter’s bench, and partly in the soldier’s tent. He was
a zealous papist, and crawled on his knees before images, performed
penances, invoked departed saints, and went the whole round of
Romish vagaries. He was twenty years old before he had even seen a
Bible; after this, it became nearly the only book he read. The Bible
convinced him of the errors of Popery, and he resolved to join the
Lutherans. At the age of twenty-seven, he began to preach to his
countrymen; numbers were converted by his artless sermons; persecution
followed; the converts fled; and Herrnhuth was founded. Christian
David continued preaching in Moravia, until his preaching became the
topic of conversation in houses, streets, roads, and markets, and
the whole country was thrown into a state of great excitement. The
people assembled at each other’s houses to sing hymns and to read the
Bible. Shepherds chanted the praises of their Redeemer as they kept
their flocks; servants at their work talked of nothing but His great
salvation; and children on village greens poured out their fervent
prayers before Him. Many were imprisoned; others were thrust into
cellars and made to stand in water till they were well-nigh frozen;
not a few were loaded with irons and obliged to work as convicts;
and a whole host were condemned to pay heavy fines. All this arose
out of the preaching of the unlettered preacher whom Wesley heard at
Herrnhuth,—the _Bush Preacher_, as he was called by the persecuting
priests and jesuits of Moravia,—the man who, five years previous to
Wesley’s present visit, conducted the first missionaries to Greenland,
and who, though but a poor mechanic, preached to the court of the
king of Denmark as he went,—an itinerant evangelist of no mean order,
having paid eleven gospel visits to Moravia, three to Greenland, and
many others to Denmark, England, and Holland, besides visiting all the
Moravian congregations throughout the whole of Germany,—a man who,
when he happened to be at home at Herrnhuth, and not engaged in active
services for the church, always followed his trade as a carpenter,
and secured the respect and love of both young and old,—a man who
often made mistakes, but was always ready to confess his errors when
pointed out to him,—deeply devoted to the work of Christ, and living
in the closest communion with Him,—shunning no toil, and fearing no
danger,—reading the Bible continually, and never tiring of its precious
truths,—his sermons wanting in polish, but not in power,—for more than
thirty years an itinerant, out-door German preacher,—and who in 1751,
at the age of sixty, went triumphantly to heaven.[261]
Such was the preaching mechanic whom Wesley, the scholar and the
priest, embraced every opportunity of hearing during his Herrnhuth
visit,—a fair specimen of scores in England whom Wesley, during the
next half-century, employed in the same glorious work. The philosopher
may sneer at the sight of one of the most distinguished fellows of
Lincoln College sitting in the Herrnhuth chapel and in the carpenter’s
cottage, to be taught by a man like this; but let it be remembered that
while the Oxford student, in letters, was immeasurably superior to the
German mechanic, the German mechanic was as much superior to the Oxford
student in the science of saving truth; and besides that, he spoke not
only from clear convictions, but from personal experience. Even now
many a man, profoundly learned in languages and in philosophy, might
receive knowledge more important than any he already has, if he would
condescend to imitate Wesley’s example, and stoop to be taught by some
poor itinerating preacher, who, though a wayfaring man, and in all
other things a fool, is yet “wise unto salvation through faith which is
in Christ Jesus.”
The four sermons which Wesley heard Christian David preach were
peculiarly appropriate to his present religious state. It is a notable
fact, however, that instead of instructing Wesley to expect the witness
of the Spirit immediately, he taught him “that many are children of
God and heirs of the promises, long before they are comforted by the
abiding witness of the Spirit, melting their souls into all gentleness
and meekness; and much more before they are pure in heart from all
self-will and sin.” Christian David told Wesley, in private, that he
had “the forgiveness of sins, and a measure of the peace of God, for
many years before he had that witness of the Spirit which shut out
all doubt and fear.” This is not _Wesleyan_ doctrine; but it was the
doctrine which Wesley was taught in Germany, and which helped to keep
him in that doubting and fearing state in which we have already seen
him.
Wesley elicited the religious experience of Michael Linner, the oldest
member of the church, which was to the effect that Michael believed to
the saving of his soul two years before he received the full assurance
of faith; though he admitted that the more usual method is for the
Holy Spirit “to give, in one and the same moment, the forgiveness of
sins, and a full assurance of that forgiveness.” David Nitschmann, one
of the four public teachers of the Herrnhuth community, told Wesley
that, for years after he was delivered from the bondage of sin, he was
troubled with doubts and fears. Martin Döber stated: “It is common for
persons to receive justification through faith in the blood of Christ
before they receive the full assurance of faith, which God many times
withholds till He has tried whether they will work together with Him in
the use of the first gift.” Augustine Neusser said he could not tell
the hour or day when he first received the full assurance that his sins
were pardoned; for it was not given at once, but grew within him by
degrees. David Schneider’s experience was substantially the same; but
it is right to add, that the experience of others was of a brighter
kind, and confirmative of the scriptural doctrine that, when sins are
forgiven, the Spirit, at the same moment, gives the assurance of it.
Wesley eagerly listened to the recital of these religious experiences
at Herrnhuth, and became bewildered; and hence those puzzling
declarations concerning his own religious state, even down to the
beginning of 1739, which have been already given. The truth is, both
Wesley and the Moravians seemed to confound the doctrine of the
Spirit’s witness with the doctrine of sanctification. Because they
were not, for a season, wholly sanctified, they declare that they had
not the witness of the Spirit or the full assurance of faith. The
following, for instance, is Arvid Gradin’s description of that witness
or assurance: “Repose in the blood of Christ; a firm confidence in God,
and persuasion of His favour; serene peace and steadfast tranquillity
of mind, with a deliverance from every fleshly desire, and from every
outward and inward sin.” This is a beautiful description of what the
Methodists mean by entire sanctification; but Wesley, taught by the
Herrnhuth Moravians, confounded it, for a time, with what he called
“the witness of the Spirit,—full assurance of faith;” the result being
the use of language, in reference to himself, quite sufficient to
perplex the modern Methodist, who, without paying attention to these
Moravian facts, contents himself with merely comparing the lucid
language of Wesley’s sermons with the confused and confusing language
of those parts of Wesley’s journal to which we are now adverting.
Wesley spent nearly a fortnight among the Herrnhuth Christians. He
writes:—“I would gladly have spent my life here. Oh when shall this
Christianity cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea?” The
population was divided into about ninety bands, each of which met twice
at least, but most of them three times, a week, to “confess their
faults one to another, and to pray for one another that they might
be healed.” The rulers of the church had a conference every week,
purely concerning the state of souls; and another every day on the
outward matters of the church. Once a week, there was a conference for
strangers; at which any one might be present, and propose questions
or doubts which he desired to have resolved. The children and young
people were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
French, English, history, and geography. Every morning at eight,
the community had singing, Scripture exposition, and commonly short
prayer; and the same at eight in the evening, concluding each service
with the kiss of peace. On Sundays, service began at six; at nine,
they had public worship at Bertholdsdorf; at one, the members of
the church were divided into fourteen classes, to each of which was
addressed a separate exhortation; at four, there was service again at
Bertholdsdorf; and at eight, the usual nightly service; after which the
young men went round the town singing songs of praise; and thus the
day was ended. On the first Saturday of every month, the Lord’s supper
was administered: when, from ten till two, the eldest spoke with each
communicant in private, concerning his or her spiritual experience;
at two, they dined, and then washed one another’s feet; after which
they sung and prayed; about ten at night, they received the communion
in silence without any ceremony; and continued without speaking, till
midnight, when they parted. The second Saturday was occupied as the
solemn prayer-day for the children. The third was a day of general
intercession and thanksgiving. And the fourth was the great monthly
conference of all the superiors of the church. For the last eleven
years, they had kept up a perpetual intercession, which had never
ceased day or night, by different companies spending in succession
an hour every day in prayer for themselves and for other churches.
Marriage was highly reverenced, and no young people were allowed to
be affianced without being placed for a time with married persons,
who instructed them how to behave in their contemplated new relation.
Casting lots was used both in public and private, to decide points
of importance, when the reasons on each side appeared to be of equal
weight. The time usually spent in sleep was from eleven at night till
four in the morning; three hours a day were allowed for meals; leaving
sixteen for work and sacred services.
Such was Herrnhuth in 1738, the cradle of the modern Moravian
church,—the Jerusalem of the United Brethren. At present it has about
a thousand inhabitants, is well built, well paved, and scrupulously
clean; having in its centre a large square, in which stands the hall
for worship, at the original consecration of which Zinzendorf offered
the striking prayer, “May God prevent this house standing longer than
it continues to be a dwelling place of love and peace to the praise of
the Redeemer!” On one side of the square is what was once the residence
of Zinzendorf, now the depôt of Moravian archives; on another, the
house of the unmarried brethren; and on a third, the village inn, the
property of the community. Connection with the brotherhood, except in
special cases conceded by their church authorities, is a condition of
residence in the town; and up to 1848, by the laws of Saxony, any one
who forsook the faith could be compelled to sell whatever property he
had within its boundaries. This is now altered, and the only compulsion
that can be exercised is of a moral character. Still, even yet, with
the exception of the government officials, and a few privileged
individuals, the entire community are members of the Moravian church.
Here sprang up that wondrous brotherhood, which, whilst other churches
were surrendering the great doctrines of the cross, devoted its life
and energies to their world-wide propagation, and, with a faith
which to some seemed presumption, and a love which approached to the
character of a reverential friendship, went among slumbering peoples
and savage races, insisting on the necessity of personal faith in a
personal Redeemer, and declaring that life in Christ is the highest
life of man.[262]
Wesley left Herrnhuth on August 12, and reached London on Saturday,
September 16. He at once resumed his work by preaching thrice the next
day, and afterwards expounding in the Minories. On Monday, he rejoiced
to meet with the Moravian society at Fetter Lane, which had increased
from ten members to thirty-two; and, on Tuesday, he went to the
condemned felons in Newgate, and preached to them a free salvation.
A month subsequent to his return, he wrote as follows to his Herrnhuth
friends:—
“To the church of God which is in Herrnhuth, John Wesley, an
unworthy presbyter of the church of God in England, wisheth
all grace and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ. Glory be to God,
even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! for giving me to be
an eye-witness of your faith and love and holy conversation in
Christ Jesus. We are endeavouring here to be followers of you,
as ye are of Christ. Fourteen have been added to us since our
return, so that we have now eight bands, all of whom seek for
salvation only in the blood of Christ. As yet, we have only
two small bands of women; the one of three, the other of five
persons. But here are many others, who only wait till we have
leisure to instruct them how they may most effectually build up
one another in the faith and love of Him who gave Himself for
them.
“Though my brother and I are not permitted to preach in most of
the churches in London, yet there are others left, wherein we
have liberty to speak the truth as it is in Jesus. Likewise,
every evening, and on set evenings in the week, at two several
places, we publish the word of reconciliation, sometimes to
twenty or thirty, sometimes to fifty or sixty, sometimes to
three or four hundred persons, met together to hear it. We
begin and end all our meetings with singing and prayer; and we
know that our Lord heareth prayer, having more than once or
twice received our petitions in that very hour.
“Nor hath He left Himself without other witnesses of His grace
and truth. Ten ministers I know now in England, who lay the
right foundation, ‘the blood of Christ cleanseth us from all
sin.’ Over and above whom I have found one Anabaptist, and one,
if not two, of the teachers among the Presbyterians here, who I
hope love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and teach the way
of God in truth.”[263]
There are three facts in the above quotation which deserve notice:—1.
That Wesley was thoroughly identified with the London Moravians. 2.
That there were other clergymen besides himself who were evangelical.
3. That he still retained his high church nonsense, and made a
difference between Church of England “_ministers_,” and Anabaptist and
Presbyterian “_teachers_.” This last was pitiable folly, perhaps not to
be wondered at, and yet deserving to be despised.
About the same time, Wesley wrote to Zinzendorf at Marienborn, thanking
him and his countess for their kindness, and then adding:—
“I did not return hither at all before the time; for though a
great door and effectual had been opened, the adversaries had
laid so many stumbling-blocks before it, that the weak were
daily turned out of the way. Numberless misunderstandings had
arisen, by means of which the way of truth was much blasphemed;
and, hence, had sprung anger, clamour, bitterness, evil
speaking, envyings, strifes, railings, evil surmises; whereby
the enemy had gained such an advantage over the little flock,
that ‘of the rest durst no man join himself to them.’ But it
has now pleased our blessed Master to remove, in great measure,
these rocks of offence. The word of the Lord again runs and is
glorified; and this work goes on and prospers. Great multitudes
are everywhere awakened, and cry out, ‘What must we do to
be saved?’ The love and zeal of our brethren in Holland and
Germany, particularly at Herrnhuth, have stirred up many among
us, who will not be comforted till they also partake of the
great and precious promises. I hope to see them at least once
more, were it only to speak freely on a few things which I did
not approve, perhaps because I did not understand them.”[264]
The last sentence requires explanation. Notwithstanding his general
admiration of the German Moravians, their sun was not without spots,
for there were sundry things with which Wesley was not satisfied. What
were they? Wesley himself shall answer. The following is an unfinished
letter, written to the Moravians at Marienborn and Herrnhuth, a few
days only after Wesley’s return from Germany, but which was never sent:—
“MY DEAR BRETHREN,—I cannot but rejoice in your stedfast faith,
in your love to our blessed Redeemer, your deadness to the
world, your meekness, temperance, chastity, and love of one
another. I greatly approve of your conferences and bands; of
your methods of instructing children; and, in general, of your
great care of the souls committed to your charge.
“But of some other things I stand in doubt, which I will
mention in love and meekness.
“Is not the count all in all among you?
“Do you not magnify your own church too much?
“Do you not use guile and dissimulation in many cases?
“Are you not of a close, dark, reserved temper and
behaviour?”[265]
These were weighty accusations, and will claim attention hereafter.
Within five weeks after Wesley had returned from Germany, he and his
brother Charles waited upon Dr. Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, to
answer the complaints he had heard against them, to the effect that
they preached an absolute assurance of salvation. Gibson was a man
of great natural abilities, a laborious student, and also pious; but
he was occasionally betrayed into intolerance, and sometimes evinced
more zeal for the rights of the Church than discretion. So great was
his ecclesiastical power, that Sir Robert Walpole was accustomed to be
reproached with allowing him the authority of a pope: “And a very good
pope he is,” replied the premier. The two Wesleys being introduced to
him, he said, “If by assurance you mean an inward persuasion, whereby
a man is conscious in himself, after examining his life by the law
of God, and weighing his own sincerity, that he is in a state of
salvation, and acceptable to God, I don’t see how any good Christian
can be without such assurance.” The Wesleys meant more by “assurance”
than this; but the doctrine, so far as it went, was one which they
themselves preached. The next point discussed was the charge that
they were Antinomians, because they preached justification by faith
only. To this they replied, “Can any one preach otherwise, who agrees
to our church and the Scriptures?” A third charge was that they had
administered baptism to persons dissatisfied with the lay baptism which
they had already received. Wesley answered, with more high church
bigotry than scriptural enlightenment, that “if a person dissatisfied
with lay baptism,” or, in other words, Dissenters’ baptism, “should
desire episcopal, he should think it his duty to administer it.”
Wesley next inquired of his lordship if “his reading in a religious
society made it a conventicle;” and whether “religious societies are
conventicles.” To the latter question the bishop answered, “I think
not; but I determine nothing;” and he recommended them to read the acts
and laws on the subject for themselves. They then requested that he
would not, in future, receive an accusation against them, but at the
mouth of two or three witnesses. He said, “No, by no means; and you may
have free access to me at all times.” They thanked his lordship, and
departed.[266]
This was the first muttering of the storm soon to burst upon them.
William Warburton was not yet a bishop, but he was already a vigorous
and well known writer, and rector of Brand Broughton, in Lincolnshire.
This hot-headed parson was one of the first to fall foul upon the poor
Methodists. Writing to Des Maizeaux, in 1738, he says:—
“What think you of our new set of fanatics, called the
Methodists? There is one Wesley, who told a friend of mine,
that he had lived most deliciously last summer in Georgia,
sleeping under trees, and feeding on boiled maize, sauced with
the ashes of oak leaves; and that he will return thither, and
then will cast off his English dress, and wear a dried skin,
like the savages, the better to ingratiate himself with them.
It would be well for virtue and religion if this humour would
lay hold generally of our overheated bigots, and send them to
cool themselves in the Indian marshes.”
In another letter, written in the same year to Dr. Birch, he says:—
“A couple of these Methodists, of whom Wesley was one,
travelling into this neighbourhood on foot, took up their
lodging with a clergyman of their acquaintance. The master of
the house going into their chamber in the morning to salute
them, perceived a certain vessel full of blood, and, on asking
the occasion, was told it was _their method_, when the blood
grew rebellious, to draw it off by breathing a vein; that they
had been heated with travel, and thought it proper to cool
themselves.”[267]
Such are specimens of the foul falsehoods which malignant men already
circulated concerning Wesley and his companions. But, besides this, the
Methodist movement began to be noticed by the pulpit. The Rev. Tipping
Silvester, M.A., Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Lecturer of
St. Bartholomew the Great, London, preached a sermon on regeneration
before the university of Oxford, at St. Mary’s, on February 26, which,
without mentioning the names of the Methodist leaders, was evidently
meant to be an antidote to one of their distinguished doctrines. The
sermon was published, 8vo, twenty-eight pages, and on the title page
was “recommended to the religious societies.” The chief point in the
sermon is that infants are born again in baptism.
Another sermon, on “The Doctrine of Assurance,” was delivered on August
13, in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, by the Rev. Arthur Bedford,
M.A., chaplain to his royal highness Frederick Prince of Wales. This
also, with an appendix, was published, 8vo, thirty-nine pages, and
had an extensive circulation. It was avowedly intended to refute the
doctrine of “those who had of late asserted that they who are not
assured of their salvation, by a revelation from the Holy Ghost, are
in a state of damnation.” The preacher argues that this assurance “is
given to very few, and perhaps only to such whom God calls either to
extraordinary services, or to extraordinary sufferings.” He further
argues that to profess to have received such an assurance savours of
spiritual pride, and cannot but produce bad results.
These were the first sermons published against the doctrines of
Methodism, and both of them were extremely temperate when compared with
others following.
At the end of the year 1738, Wesley drew up a set of rules for the
regulation of the Moravian band societies, some of which were
certainly more inquisitive than wise. Eleven questions, to be proposed
to candidates for admission, were, upon the whole, unexceptionable;
but five others, to be asked of every member at every weekly meeting,
savour far too much of the popish confessional to be admired. We give
them as an indication of the still unhealthy tone of Wesley’s piety:—
“1. What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?
“2. What temptations have you met with?
“3. How were you delivered?
“4. What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it
be sin or not?
“5. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?”[268]
No doubt, such questions were put with the best intentions; but the
thing looked like a prurient prying into secrets which properly belong
alone to a man and his Maker.
The whole of Wesley’s publications, during 1738, have been already
noticed, except “A Collection of Psalms and Hymns,” eighty-four pages,
12mo. This small volume was published without the name of either
printer or author; but it contains ample internal evidence of its
origin. Its publication was contemplated immediately after Wesley’s
return from Georgia; and hence the following extract from a letter
written by Dr. Byrom to Charles Wesley, on the 3rd of March, 1738.
“As your brother has brought so many hymns translated from the
French, you will have a sufficient number, and no occasion to
increase them by the small addition of Mademoiselle Bourignon’s
two little pieces. I desire you to favour my present weakness,
if I judge wrong, and not to publish them.
“I do not at all desire to discourage your publication. But
when you tell me you write, not for the critic, but for the
Christian, it occurs to my mind that you might as well write
for _both_; or in such a manner that the critic may, by your
writing, be moved to turn Christian, rather than the Christian
turn critic. I should be wanting, I fear, in speaking freely
and friendly upon this matter, if I did not give it as my
humble opinion that, before you publish, you might lay before
some experienced Christian critics the design which you are
upon. But I speak this with all submission. It is very likely
that, in these matters, I may want a spur more than you want a
bridle.”[269]
The book was probably intended for the use of the Moravian bands and
other religious societies’ meetings in London, with which Wesley was
more or less connected. It contains seventy psalms and hymns; but it is
a remarkable fact that not one of them seems to have been written by
Wesley’s brother Charles. One each is contributed by Addison, Dryden,
and Lord Roscommon. One is from the Church liturgy, and one anonymous.
Three are by Bishop Ken; four by Norris; six by Herbert; thirteen by
Tate and Brady; thirty-three by Watts; and six are translations by
Wesley himself. The book was never reprinted; but it formed the basis
of another hymn-book, published three years after, in which exactly
one-half of its psalms and hymns were embodied.[270] It was the
first[271] of about forty hymnologies published by the two brothers
during the next half-century, and which, as priceless gems, were
scattered broadcast among the first Methodists.
With Wesley’s first hymn-book we close the first section of his
history.
PART II.
1739.
[Sidenote: 1739 Age 36]
London in 1739 was widely different from what it is at present. The
population, including Westminster and all the parishes within the
Bills of Mortality, was about 600,000, or a fifth of the population
now. London Bridge was the only highway across the majestic Thames
that the Londoners possessed; and that was covered with antique
houses, from end to end, forming a sort of picturesque extension of
Gracechurch Street, from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore,—a narrow,
darksome, and dangerous thoroughfare with an arched gateway at each
end of it, generally bristling with spikes, and often adorned with
the heads of traitors. The site of the present Mansion House was
a fruit market, having on one side of it a row of shady trees and
on the other a conduit, surmounted by an equestrian statue of King
Charles II. Islington, Hoxton, Hackney, and Bethnal Green were country
villages. On the Surrey side, all beyond the King’s Bench prison was
fields and open country. The Elephant and Castle stands where the
small hamlet of Newington then stood. Walworth, Camberwell, Brixton,
Peckham, and Clapham were rural haunts, far from the hum and noise
of the great city. Even Lambeth was a vast conglomerated garden,
extending from Kennington Common to what is now Westminster Bridge.
Eastward—Blackwall, Poplar, Bow, and Stepney were somewhat distant
collections of scattered houses, surrounded respectively by fields and
gardens. Westward—Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Marylebone, and Tottenham
Court were all in open country. Even Belgravia was a farm of arable and
pasture land; while all the space, between Westminster and what is now
Vauxhall Bridge, was a dreary tract of stunted, dusty, trodden grass,
the resort of badgerbaiters and other rampant blackguards, and known
by the name of Tothill Fields.
Moorfields, the scene of Wesley’s earliest evangelistic labours, and
where he opened his Foundery meeting-house, was what would now-a-days
be called a park, laid out in grass plots, intersected by broad gravel
walks, and the favourite resort of citizens seeking exercise and
recreation. Beneath a row of well grown elms was what the promenaders
designated “the city mall,” and which in the smartness of its company
often rivalled the mall of St. James’s Park. Here might be seen wives
and daughters flaunting in all their finery and displaying their charms
to city maccaronis, whose hats were cocked diagonally, and who gave
themselves quite as many airs as the aristocratic coxcombs in the royal
grounds. Under the trees were booths, whose fans, toys, trinkets, and
confectionery found ready purchasers; while on the grass plots were
erected mountebank diversions for the amusement of the people.
What a contrast between London then and London now! And yet, even then,
London was thought to be dangerously too large. An able writer, in one
of the magazines for 1762, argued that great cities are perilous to a
nation’s welfare; and in proof quoted Nineveh, Babylon, Persepolis,
Tyre, Carthage, Rome, Athens, Memphis, Baalbec, Palmyra, Thebes,
Jerusalem, etc. He contended that it was pernicious policy to suffer
the eighth part of an entire nation to live in one crowded town; for
when so many myriads lived on ground which produced nothing they were
under the necessity of living by their wits—that is, by sharping and
over-reaching, and by inventing idle and vicious amusements. Hence
it was that in London there was such a multiplication of playhouses,
operas, ridottos, and masquerades; and that almost one-half of some of
the London parishes was converted into brothels by bawds and pimps. The
anonymous alarmist was doubtless treated with contempt, but his theory
deserves attention.
London was great, but it was wicked. And no wonder. Riches in the case
of nations, as in the case of individuals, often lead to extravagance
and luxury. Thus it was in England, in the reign of the second George.
Superb edifices rose up on every hand, almost vieing with the palaces
of princes. Carriages, glittering with gold and crystal, rattled
over city pavements with the utmost ostentation. Ridottos, balls,
masquerades, and midnight banquets, were of constant occurrence.
Every night innumerable lamps illuminated public gardens, where hosts
of fashionable and licentious fops might be seen lolling in gilded
alcoves, killing time, and lulling their senses into an indolent
oblivion. Arrayed in masks and the strangest dresses, gamblers, actors,
and prostitutes mingled with persons of riches and of rank, and, amid
the din of music and of dancing, conversed obscene discourse, and
whispered indecent slanders. All classes caught the contagion, and
even the tables of shopkeepers and mechanics were covered with costly
dainties. Clerks and apprentices, servant-maids and cooks, decked
themselves in apparel equal to that of their masters and mistresses;
and finical sparks deemed it their privilege and right to frequent
taverns, clubs, and theatres, adorned with the finest clothes, perukes,
and jewellery.
What resulted from all this? Extravagance created greater wants than
the people had means to meet. Patrimonial estates, and the gains of
honest business were not enough to satisfy newly engendered appetites;
and hence men appealed to an infernal sorceress, to correct, forsooth,
the errors made in distributing the gifts of Providence. To eke out
means which were found too scanty to gratify licentious and luxurious
passions, robbery was made polite, and gambling an every day duty.
Idleness threw the dice, and Folly built them into castles; Avarice
clutched at gold, but Fraud, with a sly and quick conveyance, snatched
it from his hand. Even ladies laid wagers at home, while their lords
gambled abroad; and dice began to rattle on the costermonger’s barrow
as well as upon the hazard tables of the noble and the rich. Money
was looked upon as omnipotent; and the more men got the more they
wanted, and especially when it was spent upon their own indulgences. An
avaricious, mercenary spirit became general, and chiefly for the sake
of vain display and sensual pleasures.
Poverty treads in the footsteps of extravagance. There were more
equipages kept, and yet more taxes for the poor imposed; more
diversions, and yet more want; more ladies of taste, and yet fewer
housewives; more pomp, and yet less hospitality; more expense, and yet
less frugality. In 1744, the grand jury of the county of Middlesex made
a presentment to the effect, that “the advertisements in the newspapers
were seducing the people to places for the encouragement of luxury,
extravagance, and idleness; and that, by this means, families were
ruined, and the kingdom dishonoured; and that, unless some superior
authority put a stop to such riotous living, they feared it would lead
to the destruction of the nation.”
The town abounded with men who regarded honour, honesty, and virtue
as the merest phantoms;—men with whom promises were not binding,
obligations were nullities, and impudence a duty;—dastards who might
slander their neighbours, ridicule their superiors, be saucy to their
equals, insolent to their inferiors, and abusive to all; to-day
spaniels, to-morrow bullies, and at all times cowards; to whom learning
was a burden, and books were baubles; vice being their delight, and
virtue their aversion; demons in disguise, all order and symmetry
without, and yet all rancour and rottenness within.
The country was an apt imitator of the vices of the town. There the
squire, having, by idleness and bad company, forgotten the little
learning he acquired at college, too often devoted himself to drinking
and debauchery; while the common people were ignorant, superstitious,
brutal, and bad behaved. Workmen entered into combinations to extort
higher wages than their labour merited, or than their masters could
afford; and even parliament had to pass enactments limiting the
salaries of tailors. Smuggling was enormous; and, in 1744, it was
calculated that, in the county of Suffolk only, not fewer than 4,500
horses were employed in carrying merchandise of a contraband character.
This dark picture might easily be enlarged, not from posterior
writings, or even from the religious publications of the period, but
from periodicals, magazines, and newspapers, which had no temptation to
represent the customs, manners, usages, and vices of the age in a worse
aspect than was warranted by facts. Wesley, as will be seen hereafter,
used strong and startling language; but there is nothing in Wesley’s
writings which exceeds the hideous delineations found in the popular
literature published contemporaneously by other impartial and mere
worldly writers, who are above suspicion. The _Weekly Miscellany_ for
1732 broadly asserts that the people were engulfed in voluptuousness
and business; and that a zeal for godliness looked as odd upon a man
as would the antiquated dress of his great grandfather. It states that
freethinkers were formed into clubs, to propagate their tenets, and to
make the nation a race of profligates; and that atheism was scattered
broadcast throughout the kingdom. It affirms that it was publicly
avowed that vice was profitable to the state; that the country would
be benefited by the establishment of public stews; and that polygamy,
concubinage, and even sodomy were not sinful.
In many respects the reign of the second George bore a striking
resemblance to the present day. There was unexampled wealth, followed
by luxury, display, dissipation, gambling, irreligion, and wickedness.
The pastoral letters of Bishop Gibson, published at this period, show
that most pernicious efforts were put forth to undermine religion,
and to make men infidels. One class of writers laboured to set aside
all Christian ordinances, the Christian ministry, and a Christian
church. Another so allegorized the meaning of the miracles of Christ,
as to take away their reality. Others displayed the utmost zeal for
natural religion in opposition to revealed; and all, or most, under the
pretence of pleading for the liberties of men, ran into the wildest
licentiousness. Reason was recommended as a full and sufficient guide
in matters of religion, and the Scriptures were to be believed only as
they agreed or disagreed with the light of nature.
The same causes give birth to the same effects. Things reproduce
themselves. The words of Solomon are as truthful now as when he wrote
them,—“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that
which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing
under the sun.”
By reviving religion, Methodism saved the nation more than a hundred
years ago; and now that the nation presents the same aspect, to a
great extent, as it presented then, and is threatened with the same
disasters, is it not certain that nothing but an agency analogous to
the Methodism then raised up will be found sufficient to check the
progress of antiquated errors now revived; to stem the aboundings of
licentiousness; and to make men feel that wealth is given, not to be
spent in display and luxury, but in honouring God, and in promoting the
happiness of the human race?
The revival of religion, which occurred about the time when Methodism
commenced its marvellous career, was a world-wide one.
The Moravian movement in Germany has been already noticed.
In America, the work began in 1729, the very year in which the Oxford
Methodists formed their first society. The Rev. Jonathan Edwards
fanned the fire into a holy flame by preaching the grand old doctrine
of “justification by faith alone.” In the town of Northampton, New
England, containing two hundred families, there was scarcely a single
person at the beginning of the year 1735 who was not deeply convinced
of sin, and earnestly seeking salvation; and from day to day, for
months, there were undeniable instances of genuine conversion. Almost
every house was a house of prayer, and, in all companies, Christ was
the theme of public conversation. The revival which commenced at
Northampton spread throughout the greater part of the colony. All sorts
of people,—high and low, rich and poor, wise and unwise, moral and
immoral,—simultaneously became the subjects of the Spirit’s strivings,
and were converted. This remarkable movement took place only a few
months before Wesley set sail for Georgia, and continued for several
years afterwards. Mr. Edwards published a narrative of its most
striking incidents; and also his “Thoughts” as to “the way in which it
ought to be acknowledged and promoted;” and from these two invaluable
treatises we collect the following facts.
In many instances, conviction of sin and conversion were attended with
intense physical excitement. Numbers fell prostrate on the ground,
and cried aloud for mercy. The bodies of others were convulsed and
benumbed. As chaos preceded creation, so in New England confusion went
before conversion. The work was great and glorious, but was accompanied
with noise and tumult. Men literally _cried_ for mercy; but the loudest
outcries were not so loud as the shrieks of Voltaire or Volney,
when the prospect of eternity unmanned them. Stout-hearted sinners
trembled; but not more than philosophers at the present day would do,
if they had equally vivid views of the torments of the damned to which
sin exposes them. There were groanings and faintings; transports and
ecstasies; zeal sometimes more fervid than discreet; and passion not
unfrequently more powerful than pious; but, from one end of the land
to the other, multitudes of vain thoughtless sinners were unmistakably
converted, and were made new creatures in Christ Jesus. Frolicking,
night walking, singing lewd songs, tavern haunting, profane speaking,
and extravagance in dress, were generally abandoned. The talk of the
people was about the favour of God, an interest in Christ, a sanctified
heart, and spiritual blessedness here and hereafter. The country was
full of meetings of persons of all sorts and ages to read, pray, and
sing praises. Oftentimes the people were wrought up into the highest
transports of love, joy, and admiration, and had such views of the
Divine perfections, and the excellencies of Christ, that, for five or
six hours together, their souls reposed in a kind of sacred elysium,
until the body seemed to sink beneath the weight of Divine discoveries,
and nature was deprived of all ability to stand or speak. Connected
with all this, there were no enthusiastic impulses, or supposed
revelations, but trembling reverence, the mildest meekness, and warmest
charity. To use Edwards’ own language, “The New Jerusalem, in this
respect, had begun to come down from heaven, and perhaps never were
more of the prelibations of heaven’s glory given upon earth.”
Of course there were men who opposed and maligned this blessed work of
God’s Holy Spirit; or, at all events, did their utmost to discredit
it by exposing, as they thought, the infirmities of those who were
the chief agents used in promoting it. Ministers were blamed for
their earnestness in voice and gesture, and for addressing themselves
rather to the passions of their hearers than their reason. Others were
censured for preaching the terrors of the law too frequently, and for
frightening the people with hell-fire discourses. Objections were
raised against so much time being spent in religious meetings; though
the objectors had been significantly silent when the selfsame persons
had formerly spent quite as much time, and even more, in taverns,
and in sinful pleasures. Some were disgusted at the new converts so
passionately warning, inviting, and entreating others to be saved. Some
found fault with so much singing, forgetting that singing is one of the
great employments of the beatified in heaven; and others found equal
fault with children being allowed to meet together to read and pray,
thus, unintentionally perhaps, resembling the priests and scribes,
who were sore displeased when the children saluted Christ by shouting
“Hosannah in the highest!” Thus did men mutter discontent when they
ought to have sung praises; and not a few fell into the sin of those
in olden times, who said concerning Christ, “He casteth out devils by
Beelzebub, the prince of devils.”
At the very time that this marvellous religious revival broke out in
America, a similar work was begun in Wales. Howel Harris was born at
Trevecca in 1714, and, a few months before the Wesleys went to Georgia,
found the forgiveness of sins, and was made unutterably happy by a
Divine assurance of his adoption into the family of God. The Wesleys,
however, had no acquaintance with him, nor he with them. While they
were on the ocean he left his home in Wales, and entered the university
from which they had so recently departed; but here he was so distressed
with collegiate immoralities, that, after keeping but a single term,
he returned to his native hills, and, without orders, began at once
to preach the salvation which he himself experienced. It is a curious
fact, not generally noticed, that the first lay preacher, in the great
Methodist movement, was Howel Harris. He commenced preaching in Wales
just when the Wesleys and Ingham commenced in Georgia; and, before
Wesley reached Bristol in 1739, had been the means of a most glorious
work being wrought in the neighbouring principality. Up to this period
the morals of the Welsh were deplorably corrupt; and in this respect
there was no difference between rich and poor, ministers and people;
gluttony, drunkenness, and licentiousness were general. In the pulpits
of parish churches the name of Christ was hardly ever uttered; and, in
1736, there were only six Dissenting chapels throughout the whole of
northern Wales.
Harris first commenced visiting from house to house in his own native
parish, and in neighbouring ones. Then the people flocked together,
and, almost without knowing it, he began to preach. The magistrates and
clergy threatened him; but their threats failed to silence him. For
a maintenance, he set up a school, and meantime continued preaching.
Numbers were convinced of sin, and these the young preacher, only
twenty-two years of age, formed into small societies analogous to
those of which he had read in Dr. Woodward’s History. At the end of
1737, persecuting malice ejected him from his school; but, as in other
instances so in this, it overshot its mark; for this, instead of
silencing the preacher, made him preach more than ever. He now gave
himself entirely to the work of an evangelist, and henceforth generally
delivered three or four, and sometimes five or six, sermons every day
to crowded congregations. A wide-spread reformation followed. Public
diversions became unfashionable, and religion became the theme of
common conversation. A few began to help him, of whom the venerable
Rev. Griffith Jones was the most prominent. In 1737, this devoted
clergyman instituted his movable free schools; and a letter published
in the _Glasgow Weekly History_, of 1742, describes him as “one of the
most excellent preachers in Great Britain.” Not a few of the teachers
in his peripatetic schools became Methodist preachers; and certainly
their travels as instructors, as well as his own preaching tours,
prepared the way for the Methodist itinerant ministry.
Thus was Howel Harris an itinerant preacher at least a year and a half
before Whitefield and Wesley were; and, as the brave-hearted herald
of hundreds more who were to follow after him, he met the fiercest
persecutions with an undaunted soul and an unflinching face. Parsons
and country squires menaced him, and mobs swore and flung stones and
sticks at him; but he calmly pursued his way, labouring almost alone
in his own isolated sphere until he met with Whitefield in the town of
Cardiff, in 1739. Whitefield says he found him “a burning and shining
light; a barrier against profanity and immorality; and an indefatigable
promoter of the gospel of Christ. During the last three years, he had
preached almost twice every day, for three or four hours together;
and, in his evangelistic tours, had visited seven counties, and had
established nearly thirty societies; and still his sphere of action was
enlarging daily.”
Almost contemporaneous with this marvellous work across the Atlantic
and in Wales, was another across the Tweed, in Scotland. The facts
following are taken from “A Faithful Narrative, written by James Robe,
A.M., Minister of the Gospel at Kilsyth,” and printed in 1742.
For years past, there had been a sensible decay in the life and power
of godliness in Scotland; but, in 1740, Mr. Robe began to preach
upon the doctrine of regeneration. Meanwhile, a glorious revival of
the work of God occurred at Cambuslang; and, on April 25, 1741, at
Kilsyth. Sixteen children began to hold prayer-meetings in the town of
Kirkintilloch, and the godly excitement became general. On every hand
were heard cries, groans, and the voice of weeping. On the 16th of May,
above thirty persons were awakened under the ministry of Mr. Robe,
and, in a short time after, hundreds were converted in the country
round about. Drunkenness, and swearing, and other flagrant sins were
instantly abandoned; family worship was set up; meetings for prayer
were established; and the people generally flocked to the house of God.
Young converts held prayer-meetings in fields, barns, schoolhouses,
and the manses of their ministers. Cambuslang, Kilsyth, Campsie,
Kirkintilloch, Auchinloch, St. Ninians, Gargunnock, Calder, Badernock,
Irvine, Long Dreghorn, Kilmarnock, Larbert, Dundee, Bothwell, Muthill,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other towns, villages, and parishes were
visited with a most gracious outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit; and
scenes of mercy were witnessed quite as striking as those which were
occurring simultaneously both in England and America. Not a few of the
converts, about one sixth of the whole, suffered such distress of mind,
and were under such powerful religious influence, that they not only
cried and shrieked aloud, but trembled, fainted, and were convulsed
in their bodies most mysteriously—exhibiting the same physical
affections as the converts in New England; and this evoked considerable
opposition, and led the Associate Presbytery at Dunfermline, to
pronounce the movement a “delusion, and the work of the grand
deceiver.” Some were seized with such trembling that their friends
had to render them support. Many of the females went into hysterics.
Numbers, on finding peace, broke forth into rapturous weeping, and
had their countenances so lit up with serenity and brightness, that
their neighbours declared they had obtained not only new hearts, but
new faces. A few, but not many, professed to have visions of hell, of
heaven, of the devil, and of Jesus.
The writer gives these facts as he finds them. Mr. Robe, in his
narrative, extending over hundreds of pages, endeavours to show that
such effects were not without precedents, and quotes a great number
of similar instances which had occurred, in different places, from
the time of the Reformation downwards. It is no part of our purpose
either to explain, justify, or condemn them. We shall shortly find the
same kind of effects following the preaching of Wesley in England. At
present, the reader is merely reminded of the wondrous and glorious
fact, that the great Methodist revival of religion, begun in 1739,
stood not alone; for God, in His sovereign mercy, was working works
quite as great in Germany, America, and Scotland. The revival in
Germany gave birth to the heroic, martyr-like Moravian church. That
in America greatly prepared the way for Whitefield, and for the first
Methodist missionaries to that huge continent. That in Scotland
revived the almost expiring piety of the kirk across the border; and,
doubtless, greatly contributed to the devout and increasing energy and
zeal evinced by the different churches there from that day to this.
And that in Wales has issued in results equally remarkable. God the
Spirit is omnipresent, and can give a universal revival of truth and
godliness as easily as a local one. It is, also, a significant fact, of
vast importance, that the whole of these great revivals were begun by
preaching the same kind of truth. Christian David, the carpenter, begun
the work in Moravia by preaching the doctrine of salvation by simple
faith in Christ; and so did Jonathan Edwards in America. The revival at
Kilsyth sprang out of Mr. Robe’s sermons on regeneration; and no one
need be told that these were the doctrines which formed the staple of
Wesley’s and Whitefield’s sermons in Great Britain. This is the truth
pre-eminently needed by man, in all ages, and in all lands; and this
is the truth which, wherever preached, is always honoured, by being
made the means of man’s salvation.
At the close of the year 1738, Wesley was almost uniformly excluded
from the pulpits of the Established Church. During the whole of 1739,
the only churches in which he was allowed to preach, were Basingshaw,
Islington, St. Giles’, and St. Katherine’s churches, London; and the
churches at Dummer, Clifton, Runwick, and St. Mary’s in Exeter. The
first two months of the year were spent in the metropolis; but, with
the exception of expounding in a few private houses, Wesley had to
content himself with preaching not more than half-a-dozen sermons. In
the month of March, he set out for Oxford, and wrote the following
hitherto unpublished letter to his friend Whitefield. The letter is
long, but full of interest.
“_March 16, 1739._
“MY DEAR BROTHER,—On Thursday, the 8th instant, we breakfasted
at Mr. Score’s, Oxford, who is patiently waiting for the
salvation of God. Thence we went to Mrs. Campton’s, who has
set her face as a flint. After we had spent some time in
prayer, Mr. Washington came with Mr. Gibbs, and read several
passages out of Bishop Patrick’s Parable of the Pilgrim, to
prove that we were all under a delusion, and that we were to
be justified by faith and works. Charles Metcalfe withstood
him to the face. After they were gone, we again besought our
Lord, that He would maintain His own cause. Meanwhile, Mr.
Washington and Mr. Watson were going about to all parts, and
confirming the unfaithful; and at seven, when I designed to
expound at Mrs. Campton’s, Mr. Washington was got there before
me, and was beginning to read Bishop Bull against the witness
of the Spirit. He told me he was authorized by the minister of
the parish to do this. I advised all who valued their souls
to depart; and, perceiving it to be the less evil of the two,
that they who remained might not be perverted, I entered
directly into the controversy, touching both the cause and
fruits of justification. In the midst of the dispute, James
Mears’s wife began to be in pain. I prayed with her when Mr.
Washington was gone; and then we went down to sister Thomas’s.
In the way, Mrs. Mears’s agony so increased, that she could not
avoid crying out aloud in the street. With much difficulty, we
got her to Mrs. Shrieve’s, where God heard us, and sent her
deliverance, and where her husband also was set at liberty soon
after. Presently Mrs. Shrieve fell into a strange agony both
of body and mind; her teeth gnashed together; her knees smote
each other; and her whole body trembled exceedingly. We prayed
on; and, within an hour, the storm ceased; and she now enjoys
a sweet calm, having remission of sins, and knowing that her
Redeemer liveth.
“At my return to Mrs. Fox’s, I found our dear brother Kinchin
just come from Dummer. We rejoiced, and gave thanks, and
prayed, and took sweet counsel together; the result of which
was, that instead of setting out for London, as I designed, on
Friday morning, I set out for Dummer, there being no person to
supply the church on Sunday. At Reading I found a young man,
Cennick by name, strong in the faith of our Lord Jesus. He
had begun a society there the week before; but the minister
of the parish had now well-nigh overturned it. Several of the
members of it spent the evening with us, and it pleased God to
strengthen and comfort them.
“On Saturday morning, our brother Cennick rode with me, whom
I found willing to suffer, yea, to die for his Lord. We came
to Dummer in the afternoon: Miss Molly was weak in body, but
strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Surely
her light ought not thus to be hid under a bushel. She has
forgiveness, but not the witness of the Spirit; perhaps because
our dear brother Kinchin seems to think them inseparable.
“On Sunday morning we had a large and attentive congregation.
In the evening, the room at Basingstoke was full, and my mouth
was opened. We expected much opposition, but had none at all.
“On Monday, Mrs. Cleminger being in pain and fear, we prayed,
and her Lord gave her peace. About noon we spent an hour or two
in conference and prayer with Miss Molly; and then set out in a
glorious storm; but I had a calm within. We had appointed the
little society at Reading to meet us in the evening; but the
enemy was too vigilant. Almost as soon as we were out of the
town, the minister sent, or went, to each of the members, and
began arguing and threatening, and utterly confounded them, so
that they were all scattered abroad. Mr. Cennick’s own sister
did not dare to see us, but was gone out on purpose to avoid it.
“On Tuesday I came to Oxford again, and from Mrs. Fox’s went
to Mrs. Campton’s. I found the minister of the parish had been
there before me, to whom she had plainly declared, that she had
never had a true faith in Christ till a week ago. After some
warm and sharp expressions, he told her he must repel her from
the holy communion. Finding she was not convinced, even by that
argument, he left her calmly rejoicing in God her Saviour.
“At six in the evening, we were at Mrs. Fox’s society; about
seven at Mrs. Campton’s: the power of the Lord was present at
both, and all our hearts were knit together in love.
“The next day we had an opportunity to confirm most, if not
all, the souls which had been shaken. In the afternoon, I
preached at the Castle. We afterwards joined together in
prayer, having now Charles Graves added to us, who is rooted
and grounded in the faith. We then went to Mr. Gibbs’s room,
where were Mr. Washington and Mr. Watson. Here an hour was
spent in conference and prayer, but without any disputing. At
four in the morning I left Oxford. God hath indeed planted and
watered: O may He give the increase.
“I am, etc.,
“JOHN WESLEY.”
Thus did the expelled minister employ his time and energies. The
churches were shut against him; but he found work in cottages.
Half-a-dozen sermons in church pulpits in three months! No wonder that
Wesley escaped to Bristol. Silence to such a man was intolerable.
Priests and their parasites had gagged him in the metropolis, and he
now started for a new sphere of labour.
His friend Whitefield, during the first five weeks of the year,
was more fortunate, and managed to preach about thirty sermons in
consecrated edifices in and about London. How long this permission
might have lasted, it is difficult to determine; but, at the beginning
of February, Whitefield, like a flaming seraph, set off to Bath and
Bristol. Perhaps his departure thither was hastened by a fracas which
occurred only three days before at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, where
he yielded to the pressure of the crowd, and preached, despite the
opposition of the minister and his church officers.[272] Be that as it
may, the news of the disturbance, published in the _Weekly Miscellany_,
got to the west of England before him; and, on his arrival, all the
churches were closed against him. In a few days, however, Mr. Penrose
granted him the pulpit of St. Werburgh’s; and Mr. Gibbs the pulpit of
St. Mary Redcliff. The chancellor of Bristol interfered, and threatened
that, if he continued to preach or expound in the diocese without
licence, he should first be suspended and then expelled. This was
the turning point. To muzzle Whitefield was impossible; and hence,
being shut out of the Bristol churches, away he went, on February 17,
and preached, in the open air, to two hundred colliers at Kingswood.
This was the boldest step that any of the Methodists had yet taken;
and perhaps none of them but the impulsive, large-hearted Whitefield
would have had sufficient courage to be the first in such a shocking
departure from Church rules and usages. The Rubicon was passed. A
clergyman had dared to be so irregular as to preach in the open air,
and God had sanctioned the irregularity by making it a blessing. At the
second Kingswood service, Whitefield says he had two thousand people to
hear him; and at the third, four thousand; while, at the fifth service,
the four thousand were increased to ten. These were marvellous crowds
to assemble out of doors in the bleak months of February and March. No
wonder that Whitefield’s soul took fire. He declares he never preached
with greater power than now. One day, he would take his stand on Hannam
Mount; another, on Rose Green; and another at the Fishponds. Then he
ran off to Cardiff, and preached in the town hall; and then to Bath,
and preached on the town common. Then we find him preaching to about
four thousand at Baptist Mills; and, on March 18, his congregation at
Rose Green was estimated at not less than twenty thousand, to whom he
preached nearly an hour and a half.[273] A gentleman lent him a large
bowling-green in the heart of Bristol, and here he preached to seven
or eight thousand people. In the village of Publow, several thousands
assembled to hear him; and, at Coal-pit Heath and other places, the
crowds were quite as great. All this transpired within six weeks, and,
at nearly all these strange and enormous gatherings, Whitefield made a
collection for his orphan house in Georgia. His soul expanded with his
marvellous success. He wished to try the same experiment elsewhere; and
hence he sent for Wesley to act as his Bristol and Kingswood successor.
Wesley arrived at Bristol on Saturday, March 31; and, the next day,
heard Whitefield at the Bowling-green, Rose Green, and Hannam Mount,
and was thus introduced to the vast congregations which Whitefield
bequeathed to his godly care. He was once again ungagged, and, during
the nine months from March to December, preached and expounded almost
without ceasing.
Whitefield, on leaving Wesley at Bristol, made his way to London,
preaching to assembled thousands at Gloucester and other places. The
churches in the metropolis were all closed against him; but Moorfields
and Kennington Common were still open; and here, to congregations
consisting of tens of thousands, he rapturously proclaimed the glad
tidings of salvation. In one instance, he computed his Kennington
congregation at fifty thousand, to whom he preached an hour and a
half. Eighty coaches were present, besides great numbers of people on
horseback. On another occasion, his collection for the orphan house in
Georgia amounted to upwards of £47, of which £16 were in half-pence.
At another time, the concourse in Moorfields numbered nearly sixty
thousand; and, at every service, he seems to have made collections for
Georgia, himself acting as one of the collectors. He then made a short
preaching excursion to Hertford, Northampton, and Bedford, where the
stairs of a windmill served him for a pulpit. On returning to town,
he received letters from Scotland, telling him that Ralph Erskine had
turned field preacher, and had had a congregation of fourteen thousand
people. In June, Wesley came to London to see him, and preached at
Blackheath to twelve or fourteen thousand people, “the Lord giving
him,” writes Whitefield, “ten thousand times more success than He has
given me.” An embargo unexpectedly laid on shipping detained him in
England a few weeks longer, during which he visited Hertfordshire,
Essex, Gloucestershire, and other places. In July, he joined his friend
Wesley in Bristol, and acknowledged that the congregations were much
more serious and affected than when he had left them three months
before. The Kingswood colliers, instead of cursing and swearing, now
made the woods ring with their hymns of praise. At length, in the month
of August, Whitefield set sail for America, where we must leave him
until his return to England, in March, 1741.
Charles Wesley passed most of the year 1739 in London and its
neighbourhood. His brother and his friends urged him to settle at
Oxford; but he refused, without further direction from God. He preached
in churches as long as he was permitted; and, when prohibited, followed
the example of Whitefield and his brother.
For a moment, we must retrace our steps. As already stated, Wesley
himself spent the first two months of 1739 in London. How was he
occupied? On New Year’s day, he was present at a remarkable lovefeast
in Fetter Lane, which continued until three o’clock in the morning,
and which consisted of himself, his brother, his clerical friends
Whitefield, Ingham, Hall, Kinchin, and Hutchings, and about sixty
Moravians. At the hour mentioned, the power of God came upon them
so mightily, that many cried out for exceeding joy, others fell
prostrate on the ground, and all joined in singing, “We praise Thee,
O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.” But even this marvellous
manifestation of the majesty of God failed to remove Wesley’s doubts
and fears; for, three days afterwards, we find him writing the
bitterest things against himself, and concluding with the words,
“Though I have constantly used all the means of grace for twenty years,
I am not a Christian.”
The day after, January 5, seven of the despised Methodist clergymen
(probably the seven just mentioned), held a conference at Islington,
on several matters of great importance, and, after prayer and fasting,
determined what they were in doubt about, by casting lots. “We parted,”
says Whitefield, “with a full conviction that God was going to do great
things among us;”[274] a conviction which was soon verified.
On January 7, they held another lovefeast at Fetter Lane, and spent the
whole night in prayer and thanksgiving.[275]
January 25, Wesley baptized five adults at Islington, and makes a
strange distinction, which shows that his views of the scriptural
doctrine of salvation were still hazy and confused. He writes: “Of the
adults I have known baptized lately, only one was at that time born
again, in the full sense of the word; that is, found a thorough inward
change by the love of God filling her heart. Most of them were only
born again in a lower sense; that is, received the remission of their
sins.” Let the reader compare this with a passage in Wesley’s sermon on
“The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God,” and he will mark
the difference.
“It has been frequently supposed, that the being born of God
was all one with the being justified; that the new birth and
justification were only different expressions, denoting the
same thing: it being certain, on the one hand, that whoever is
justified is also born of God; and on the other, that whoever
is born of God is also justified; yea, that both these gifts
of God are given to every believer in one and the same moment.
In one point of time his sins are blotted out, and he is born
again of God. But though it be allowed, that justification and
the new birth are, in point of time, inseparable from each
other, yet are they easily distinguished, as being not the
same, but things of a widely different nature. Justification
implies only a relative, the new birth a real, change. God in
justifying us does something _for_ us; in begetting us again,
He does the work _in_ us. The one restores us to the favour,
the other to the image, of God. The one is the taking away the
guilt, the other the taking away the power, of sin; so that,
although they are joined together in point of time, yet they
are of wholly distinct natures.”
Nothing can be more scriptural, or more clearly expressed than this;
but comparison with the extract from his journal, above given, shows
that, even in 1739, Wesley was far from being “a scribe instructed unto
the kingdom of heaven.” He still had much both to learn and to unlearn;
but it was a happy fact, that he was docile and eager to be taught.
Four days after baptizing the adults at Islington, he sat up till near
one in the morning with Whitefield and two other clergymen, earnestly
listening to a midnight discussion concerning the doctrine of the new
birth.[276]
During the month of February, he had three separate interviews
with bishops of the Established Church. On the 6th, he went with
Whitefield to the Bishop of Gloucester, to solicit a subscription
for Georgia.[277] On the 21st, he and his brother Charles waited on
Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury, who showed them great affection;
spoke mildly of Whitefield; cautioned them to give no more umbrage
than necessary; to forbear exceptionable phrases; and to keep to the
doctrines of the Church. They told him they expected persecution; but
would abide by the Church till her articles and homilies were repealed.
From Potter, they proceeded direct to Gibson, Bishop of London, who
denied that he had condemned them, or even heard much about them.
Whitefield’s Journal, he said, was tainted with enthusiasm, though
Whitefield himself was a pious, well meaning youth. He warned them
against Antinomianism, and dismissed them kindly.[278]
On the day after their interview with the Bishop of Gloucester,
Whitefield, shut out of the London churches, set off on his tour
to Bristol. Three weeks later, Wesley wrote him an account of his
proceedings in London.
“_February 26, 1739._
“MY DEAR BROTHER,—Our Lord’s hand is not shortened amongst us.
Yesterday I preached at St. Katherine’s, and at Islington,
where the church was almost as hot as some of the society rooms
used to be.[279] The fields, after service, were white with
people praising God. About three hundred were present at Mr.
S——’s; thence I went to Mr. Bray’s; thence to Fetter Lane;
and, at nine, to Mr. B——’s, where also we wanted room. To-day
I expound in the Minories at four; at Mrs. W——’s at six; and
in Gravel Lane, Bishopsgate, at eight. On Wednesday, at six, we
have a noble company of women, not adorned with gold or costly
apparel, but with a meek and quiet spirit. At the Savoy, on
Thursday evening, we have usually two or three hundred, most
of them, at least, thoroughly awakened. On Friday, Mr. A——’s
parlour is more than filled; as is Mr. P——’s room twice
over.”[280]
This extract will give the reader an idea of Wesley’s weekly labours
in London, up to the time that he set out for Bristol. Every day had
its day’s work. It was impossible for such a man to be idle: work was
essential to his happiness, and almost to his existence.
Already the people began to have faith in the power of his piety and
prayers. The parents of a lunatic besought his intercessions on behalf
of their afflicted son, who, for five years past, had been in the
habit of beating and tearing himself, putting his hands into the fire,
and thrusting pins into his flesh. Wesley and his friends yielded to
the request on February 17; and, from that time, the poor creature,
though not fully freed from his calamitous affliction, had more rest
than he had had for two years before. On the same day, a middle aged,
well dressed woman, at a society-meeting in Beech Lane, was seized as
with the agonies of death. For three years, her friends had accounted
her mad, and had bled and blistered her accordingly. Wesley prayed
with her, and, five days after, she was victoriously delivered, and
in a moment was filled with love and joy.[281] Within a fortnight, a
third instance, somewhat similar, took place at Oxford, whither Wesley
had gone for a brief visit. Hearing of a woman who was most violently
opposed to the Methodist revival, he went to her and argued with her.
This enraged her more and more. Wesley broke off the dispute, and began
to pray. In a few minutes, the woman fell into an extreme agony, both
of body and soul; and soon after cried out with the utmost earnestness,
“Now I know I am forgiven for Christ’s sake;” and, from that hour, set
her face as a flint to declare the faith which before she persecuted.
We have already seen that, at the beginning of the month of March,
Wesley made a tour to Oxford, and while there wrote to Whitefield the
long letter which has been already given. On his return to London, he
received a most urgent request from Whitefield to proceed to Bristol
without delay. Wesley hesitated; Charles objected; and the society at
Fetter Lane disputed; but, at length, the matter was decided by casting
lots. Wesley reached Bristol on March 31, and on April 2 Whitefield
left, summing up the results of his first six weeks of out-door
preaching thus: “Many sinners have been effectually converted, and all
the children of God have been exceedingly comforted. Several thousands
of little books have been dispersed among the people; about £200
collected for the orphan house; and many poor families relieved by the
bounty of my friend Mr. Seward. And what gives me the greater comfort
is the consideration that my dear and honoured friend Mr. Wesley is
left behind to confirm those that are awakened; so that I hope, when I
return from Georgia, to see many bold soldiers of Jesus Christ.”[282]
The next day he wrote to Wesley the following, which is now for the
first time given to the public:—
_“April 3, 1739._
“HONOURED SIR,—Yesterday I began to play the madman in
Gloucestershire, by preaching on a table in Thornbury Street.
To-day I have exhorted twice; and by-and-by shall begin a third
time; nothing like doing good by the way. Be pleased to go to
Kingswood, and forward the good work as much as possible. I
desire you would open any letters that come directed for me,
and send me a line to Gloucester. I wish you all the success
imaginable in your ministry; and I pray God that my Bristol
friends may grow in grace under it. Parting from them has
struck a little damp upon my joy; but God will quickly revisit,
“Honoured sir, your unworthy loving servant,
“GEORGE WHITEFIELD.
“The Rev. Mr. John Wesley, at Mr. Grevil’s,
“Wine Street, Bristol.”
On the day of Whitefield’s departure, at four in the afternoon, Wesley
ventured to follow his friend’s example, and for the first time in
England dared to preach in the open air. His text was appropriate and
striking, Isaiah lxi. 1, 2. The place was “a little eminence in a
ground adjoining to the city.” His feeling was deep. He says: “I could
scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in
the fields; having been all my life, till very lately, so tenacious of
every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought
the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.”
Such were the prejudices and the feelings of the man who, for between
fifty and sixty years proved himself the greatest out-door preacher
that ever lived.
With the exception of a brief visit to London in June, September,
and November, and of a short tour into Wales and another to Exeter,
Wesley spent the whole of his time, from April to the end of 1739, in
Bristol and its immediate neighbourhood. Though there are considerable
gaps in Wesley’s journal, during which we lose sight of his texts
and sermons, it is not too much to say that he delivered at least
five hundred discourses and expositions in the nine months of which
we speak; and it is a noticeable fact that only eight of these were
delivered in churches,—six in the church at Clifton, one at Runwick,
and one at Exeter. His preaching plan was as follows:—an exposition to
one or other of the Bristol societies every night, and preaching every
Sunday morning, and every Monday and Saturday afternoon. At Kingswood,
including Hannam Mount, Rose Green, and Two Mile Hill, he preached
twice every sabbath, and also every alternate Tuesday and Friday. At
Baptist Mills, he preached every Friday; at Bath, once a fortnight, on
Tuesday; and at Pensford, once a fortnight, on Thursday.
Another point is worth noticing. His chief, almost his only aim, was
to explain to the people the plan of scriptural salvation; for, as
may easily be seen, almost all his texts have an immediate bearing on
this the greatest of all pulpit topics. Saved himself, his whole soul
was absorbed in a grand endeavour to expound the truth which, above
all other truths, is the means of saving sinners. “The points,” he
writes, “I chiefly insisted upon were four: first, that orthodoxy, or
right opinions, is, at best, but a very slender part of religion, if
it can be allowed to be any part at all; that neither does religion
consist in negatives, in bare harmlessness of any kind; nor merely in
externals, in doing good, or using the means of grace, in works of
piety, or of charity: that it is nothing short of, or different from,
the mind that was in Christ; the image of God stamped upon the heart;
inward righteousness, attended with the peace of God and joy in the
Holy Ghost. Secondly, that the only way to this religion is repentance
towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Thirdly, that by
this faith, he that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth
the ungodly, is justified freely by His grace through the redemption
which is in Christ Jesus. And, lastly, that being justified by faith,
we taste of the heaven to which we are going; we are holy and happy;
we tread down sin and fear, and sit in heavenly places with Christ
Jesus.”[283]
He further tells us that the reasons which induced him to begin
preaching in the open air were—1. That he was forbidden, as by a
general consent, though not by any judicial sentence, to preach in any
church. 2. That the rooms in which he preached could not contain a
tenth part of the people that were earnest to hear. Hence, he adds, he
determined to do in England what he had often done in a warmer climate;
namely, when the house would not contain the congregation, to preach in
the open air; and never had he seen a more awful sight than when, on
Rose Green, or the top of Hannam Mount, some thousands of people were
calmly joined together in solemn waiting upon God. He had no desire or
design to preach in the open air till he was forbidden to preach in
churches. It was no matter of choice, neither of premeditation. Field
preaching was a sudden expedient, a thing submitted to rather than
chosen; and submitted to, because he thought preaching even thus better
than not preaching at all; first, in regard to his own soul, because a
dispensation of the gospel being committed to him, he did not dare not
to preach the gospel; and secondly, in regard to the souls of others,
whom he everywhere saw seeking death in the error of their life.[284]
Some of his friends urged him to settle in college, or to accept a cure
of souls: to whom he replied:—
“I have no business at college, having now no office and no
pupils; and it will be time enough to consider whether I
ought to accept a cure of souls when one is offered to me. On
scriptural grounds, I do not think it hard to justify what
I am doing. God, in Scripture, commands me, according to my
power, to instruct the ignorant, reform the wicked, confirm the
virtuous. Man forbids me to do this in another’s parish; that
is, in effect, not to do it at all, seeing I have now no parish
of my own, nor probably ever shall. Whom then shall I hear? God
or man? If it be just to obey man rather than God, judge ye. I
look upon all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that,
in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my
bounden duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the
glad tidings of salvation.”
Such was the position taken by Wesley and his friends. Their chief,
their only business was to save souls. For this they had a world-wide
commission. Nothing short of this could satisfy the yearnings of their
nature. Unlike the old Puritans and others, they had no attacks to make
on the despotic measures of the court and Church. “In their bosoms
there was no rankling grudge against authorities; there was no particle
of that venom which, wherever it lodges, infects and paralyses the
religious affections.”[285] Their sole quarrel was, not with church or
state authorities, but with sin and Satan; and their sole object was,
not to make proselytes, but to save sinners.
Their congregations, says James Hutton, “were composed of every
description of persons, who, without the slightest attempt at order,
assembled, crying ‘Hurrah!’ with one breath, and with the next
bellowing and bursting into tears on account of their sins; some
poking each other’s ribs, and others shouting ‘Hallelujah.’ It was a
jumble of extremes of good and evil; and so distracted alike were both
preachers and hearers, that it was enough to make one cry to God for
His interference. Here thieves, prostitutes, fools, people of every
class, several men of distinction, a few of the learned, merchants,
and numbers of poor people who had never entered a place of worship,
assembled in crowds and became godly.”[286]
Of course, persecution followed. “We continued,” says Wesley, “to
call sinners to repentance in London, Bristol, Bath, and a few other
places; but it was not without violent opposition, both from high and
low, learned and unlearned. Not only all manner of evil was spoken
of us, both in private and public, but the beasts of the people were
stirred up almost in all places to knock these mad dogs on the head at
once. And when complaint was made of their savage, brutal violence, no
magistrate would do us justice.”[287]
The following may be taken as specimens of the opposition met with in
1739. On one occasion, Wesley had obtained permission to preach in
Pensford church; but, just as he was setting out, he received a letter,
saying that the minister had been informed that he was mad, and that,
therefore, the permission was withdrawn. Not being allowed to occupy
the church, Wesley took his stand in the open air; but in the midst of
prayer, two men, hired for the purpose, began to sing ballads, which
obliged Wesley and his friends to begin to sing a psalm, so as to drown
one noise by another.
Another incident must be given. Bath, at that period, was perhaps the
most fashionable city in England; and the most renowned man in Bath
was Richard, commonly called “Beau,” Nash. This accomplished rake, now
sixty-five years old, was the son of a glass manufacturer in Wales, and
was expelled from Jesus College, Oxford, for his intrigues and wild
adventures. At the age of thirty, he was without a fortune, and without
talents for acquiring one; and hence, to the end of life, became a
gamester. The visit of Queen Anne to Bath, in 1703, had made the city
the favourite resort of people of distinction, and, ever after, the
amusements of the place were put under the direction of a master of
the ceremonies, this sovereignty of the city being decreed to Nash by
all ranks of residents and visitors. King of Bath, he had rules posted
in the pump-room, from which even royalty itself was not allowed to
deviate. He prescribed the dresses in which ladies and gentlemen were
to appear at balls, and imperatively fixed the number of dances to be
danced. He himself wore a monstrously large white hat, and usually
travelled in a post chaise, drawn by six grey horses, honoured with
outriders, footmen, French horns, and every other appendage of a
pretentious coxcomb. He lived by gambling, and scattered money with
as much indifference as he won it. The city of which he was the dandy
king was full of fashionable rogues. “Nothing,” says the _Weekly
Miscellany_ of that period, “nothing was to be seen in it but play and
the preparations for it. Persons of all characters, distinctions, and
denominations sat down to cards from morning till night, and from night
till morning; and those who disagreed in everything else agreed in
this.”
On visiting Bath, Wesley was told that Nash meant to interfere, and was
entreated not to attempt to preach. Wesley, however, was not the man
to yield to a swaggering rake. He had gone to preach, and preach he
would, and did; the threatenings of Nash having made his congregation
much larger than was expected. Besides the poor, he had many of the
rich and great. Soon after Wesley began his sermon, the “Beau,” in his
immense white hat, appeared, and asked by what authority he dared to
do what he was doing now. Wesley replied, “By the authority of Jesus
Christ, conveyed to me by him who is now Archbishop of Canterbury, when
he laid his hands upon me, and said, ‘Take thou authority to preach the
gospel.’” “But this,” said Nash, “is a conventicle, and contrary to
act of parliament.” “No,” answered Wesley, “conventicles are seditious
meetings; but here is no sedition: therefore, it is not contrary to act
of parliament.” “I say it is,” cried the man of Bath; “and, besides,
your preaching frightens people out of their wits.” “Sir,” said Wesley,
“did you ever hear me preach?” “No.” “How then can you judge of what
you never heard?” “I judge,” he answered, “by common report.” “Common
report,” replied Wesley, “is not enough. Give me leave to ask you, sir,
is not your name Nash?” “It is,” he said. “Sir,” retorted Wesley, “I
dare not judge of you by common report.” The master of ceremonies was
worsted, and, after a pause, simply asked what the people wanted; upon
which an old woman begged Wesley to allow her to answer him, and, amid
her taunts, the resplendent king of the pump-room sneaked away.
No wonder that the Methodists were opposed. Their preaching, their
doctrine, and their whole behaviour were novel. “Being convinced,”
writes Wesley, “of that important truth, which is the foundation of
all real religion, that ‘by grace we are saved through faith,’ we
immediately began declaring it to others. Indeed, we could hardly speak
of anything else, either in public or private. It shone upon our minds
with so strong a light, that it was our constant theme. It was our
daily subject, both in verse and prose; and we vehemently defended it
against all mankind. But, in doing this, we were assaulted and abused
on every side. We were everywhere represented as mad dogs, and treated
accordingly. We were stoned in the streets, and several times narrowly
escaped with our lives. In sermons, newspapers, and pamphlets of all
kinds, we were painted as unheard of monsters. But this moved us not;
we went on testifying salvation by faith both to small and great, and
not counting our lives dear unto ourselves, so we might finish our
course with joy.”[288]
Wesley here mentions the attacks made upon them by the press. The
following are specimens:—
The _Scots Magazine_, for 1739, remarks that “Whitefield and the two
Wesleys offend against the rules of the Christian church, by preaching
in opposition to the opinions and instructions of the bishops.” “The
Wesleys,” continues this Scottish censor, “are more guilty than
Whitefield, because they are men of more learning, better judgment,
and cooler heads. Let them go over to their proper companies, their
favourites, the Dissenters, and utter their extemporary effusions in a
conventicle; but not be suffered in our churches hypocritically to use
our forms, which they despise. Let them carry their spirit of delusion
among their brethren, the Quakers. Let them preach up their election
and reprobation doctrines among the Calvinists; and their solifidian
tenets among the Antinomians. Let not such bold movers of sedition, and
ringleaders of the rabble, to the disgrace of their order, be regularly
admitted into those pulpits which they have taken with multitude and
with tumult, or, as ignominiously, by stealth.”
The clergy also began to bestir themselves. On Trinity Sunday, a sermon
on regeneration was preached in the parish churches of Greenwich,
and of St. Peter the Poor, London, by the Rev. Ralph Skerret, D.D.,
chaplain to the Earl of Grantham. The sermon, in 8vo, thirty-six pages,
was published; but is scarcely worth noticing. The Methodists, however,
are spoken of as “restless deceivers of the people, who make it their
daily business to fill the heads of the ignorant and unwary with wild,
perplexive notions.”
Another sermon, preached before the university of Oxford, on August 5,
by the Rev. John Wilder, M.A., rector of St. Aldate’s, on “The Trial
of the Spirits,” brands the Methodists as “deceivers,” “babblers,”
“insolent pretenders,” “men of capricious humours, spiritual sleight,
and canting craftiness,” “novices in divinity,” casting “indecent,
false, and unchristian reflections on the clergy,” “newfangled
teachers, setting up their own fantastic conceits, in opposition to the
authority of God, and so bigoted to their wild opinions, and so puffed
up with pride and vanity at the success of their enthusiastic labours,
that they all appear fully disposed to maintain and defend their cause
by more than spiritual weapons, or to die martyrs for it.”
On the 14th of October, the Rev. Charles Wheatley, M.A., vicar of
Furneux Pelham, Herts, preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, a
sermon against the “new enthusiasts,” on “St. John’s test of knowing
Christ, and being born of Him.” The sermon, with notes, was published,
in 8vo, thirty-one pages, but was not calculated to augment the fame of
the honest and zealous churchman, who had already given to the public
two important ritualistic works, entitled, “A Rational Illustration
of the Book of Common Prayer,” and “An Historical Vindication of the
Fifty-fifth Canon.” Mr. Wheatley is less abusive than Mr. Wilder;
but yet he thinks it right to describe the Methodists as “rapturous
enthusiasts, preaching up unaccountable sensations, violent emotions,
and sudden changes;” and likewise “assuming to themselves, upon
all occasions, the peculiar language of the Holy Ghost; equalling
themselves to prophets and apostles; boasting of immediate
inspirations; and laying a blasphemous claim to greater miracles than
were ever wrought even by Christ Himself.”
Another opponent, in 1739, was Henry Stebbing, a doctor of divinity, a
royal chaplain, and preacher to the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn.
This gentleman published “A Caution against Religious Delusion,” in
the shape of “a sermon on the New Birth: occasioned by the pretensions
of the Methodists.” In this comparatively temperate production, the
Methodists are charged with “vain and confident boastings, and with
rash uncharitable censures;” with “gathering tumultuous assemblies to
the disturbance of the public peace, and with setting at nought all
authority and rule;” with “intruding into other men’s labours, and with
encouraging abstinence, prayer, and other religious exercises, to the
neglect of the duties of our station.” It is admitted that, when there
are “so many combinations for vice,” “religious societies for praying,
reading (if not expounding) the Scriptures, and singing psalms may be
of use for the encouragement of virtue;” but the danger is lest the
laymen, who were heads or leaders of these societies, should “grow
opinionated of themselves and fond of their own gifts, and should run
into wild fancies until the pale of the Church is too strait for them.”
Before the end of the year 1739, Stebbing’s sermon reached a sixth
edition.
Another antagonist, more violent than Stebbing, was Joseph Trapp, D.D.,
who published, in 1739, a pamphlet of sixty-nine pages, entitled, “The
Nature, Folly, Sin, and Danger of being Righteous over-much; with
a particular view to the Doctrines and Practices of certain Modern
Enthusiasts. Being the substance of four discourses lately preached in
the parish churches of Christ Church and St. Lawrence Jewry, London;
and St. Martin’s in the Fields, Westminster. By Joseph Trapp, D.D.”
In this notable production, it is stated that, “for laymen to officiate
in reading prayers to any assembly, except their own families,
is an encroachment upon the office of those who are ordained to
holy functions; and for them to expound or interpret Scripture is
neither laudable nor justifiable, but tends to the confirmation,
not the removal, of ignorance.” For “a raw novice, though in holy
orders” (like Whitefield), “to take upon him, at his first setting
out, to be a teacher, not only of all the laity, in all parts of
the kingdom, but of the teachers themselves, the learned clergy,
many of them learned before he was born, is an outrage upon common
decency and common sense; the height of presumption, confidence, and
self-sufficiency; so ridiculous as to create the greatest laughter,
were it not so deplorable and detestable as to create the greatest
grief and abhorrence; especially when vast multitudes are so sottish
and wicked as, in a tumultuous manner, to run madding after him.” Trapp
insinuates that the Methodists “teach such absurd doctrines, and second
them with such absurd practices, as to give countenance to the lewd
and debauched, the irreligious and profane. In their own imagination,
their errors are the height of wisdom, and their vices the most perfect
virtues. They think themselves the greatest saints, when, in truth,
they are under strong delusion, in the bond of iniquity, and in the
gall of bitterness. They have set the nearest and dearest relations
at variance; disturbed the quiet of families; and thrown whole
neighbourhoods and parishes into confusion. They were half-dissenters
_in_ the Church, and more dangerous _to_ the Church, than those who
were total dissenters _from_ it.” “Methodism was nothing but a revival
of the old fanaticism of the last century; when all manner of madness
was practised, and all manner of villainy committed in the name of
Christ.” Its disciples, “like Solomon’s madman, cast firebrands,
arrows, and death; and send to hell (only because they are not of
their own frantic persuasion) millions of Christians much better than
themselves.”
The author proceeds:—“For a clergyman of the Church of England to pray
and preach in the fields, in the country, or in the streets of the
city, is perfectly new, a fresh honour to the blessed age in which
we have the happiness to live. I am ashamed to speak upon a subject,
which is a reproach not only to our Church and country, but to human
nature itself. Can it promote the Christian religion to turn it into
riot, tumult, and confusion? to make it ridiculous and contemptible,
and expose it to the scorn and scoffs of infidels and atheists? To
the prevalence of immorality and profaneness, infidelity and atheism,
is now added the pest of enthusiasm. Our prospect is very sad and
melancholy. Go not after these impostors and seducers; but shun them as
you would the plague.”
Such are fair specimens of the four fiery sermons preached by Dr.
Trapp. Hypocrites, enthusiasts, novelists, ignes fatui, and glaring
meteors are the best names which this reverend divine could find for
the poor, peaceable, and persecuted Methodists.[289]
Another clerical adversary was “Tristam Land, M.A., late Fellow of
Clare Hall, in Cambridge, Curate of St. James, Garlickhith; and
Lecturer of the united parishes of St. Anthony and St. John Baptist.”
His sixpenny pamphlet of thirty pages was entitled, “A Letter to
the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, with a Letter addressed to the Religious
Societies.” Whitefield is attacked for teaching the doctrine, that
many are baptized without being born again; whereas Tristam Land
insists that, according to the teachings of the Church of England,
“all infants, at the time they are baptized, are sanctified with the
Holy Ghost; and that, though they may afterwards depart from the
grace given, and fall into sin, they are not to be commanded to be
baptized or born again a second time; for to be born more than once,
in a spiritual sense, is just as impossible as to be born twice in a
natural. All that can be done in this matter is to use the several
means of grace; or, in one word, as the Scripture expresses it, they
must be renewed again by repentance.”
This reverend gentleman then proceeds to describe the Methodists as
“young quacks in divinity, running about the city, and taking great
pains to distract the common people, and to break the peace and unity
of the Church. They are like vain persons, who think themselves
handsome, and are apt to despise others; for looking upon themselves
as exquisite pictures of holiness and as patterns of piety, they
represent us (the clergy) as dumb dogs, profane, and carnally minded.
They talk much of the pangs of the new birth, their inward feelings,
experiences, and spiritual miracles; but their faith is an ill grounded
assurance, their hope an unwarrantable presumption, and their charity a
censoriousness and a contempt of their brethren of different sentiments
to themselves.”
Good old Dr. Byrom, in a letter dated February 8, 1739, says, “The book
against Mr. Whitefield by Mr. Land is thought a weak piece.”[290] No
wonder.
Besides these, there was published “An Expostulatory Letter to the Rev.
Mr. Whitefield;” also an octavo pamphlet of forty pages, entitled,
“Observations and Remarks on Mr. Seagrave’s conduct and writings,
in which his answer to the Rev. Dr. Trapp’s four sermons is more
particularly considered.” In this latter production, it is asserted
that Whitefield sinks the house of God into a playhouse, and turns
religion to a farce; that prostitutes swarm at his meetings, and there
make merchandise as at a country fair; that his congregations are
such as crowd to a Smithfield show; and that Whitefield himself is an
enthusiast, a blasphemer, and a wavering, wandering preacher of no
establishment, but nearly attached to the Dissenting communion, and
blending his sermons with a spice both of the Papist and Mahommedan.
In a “Faithful Narrative” of Whitefield’s life and character, it is
stated that numberless lies and false reports have been raised in
London to vilify his character, and to stigmatise his followers; and
he was now branded as a mercenary knave. It was also reported that, in
Georgia, he had been imprisoned and personally chastised for making the
people mad with enthusiasm.
An “Expostulatory Letter” to Whitefield, “and the rest of his brethren,
the Methodists of the Church of England,” octavo, forty pages, and
signed “E. B.,” charges them with departing from the rubric in
_sprinkling children_ at baptism, thus prostituting a holy ordinance,
and substituting an insignificant, unavailing thing, neither worthy
of God, nor beneficial to men. It also urges them to be _dipped_
themselves, and thus become exemplars to others.
Besides all these, an attack was made by a young man of
eight-and-twenty, curate of All Saints’, Bristol, the Rev. Josiah
Tucker, afterwards a doctor of divinity, and Dean of Gloucester. In
a Letter, dated June 14, 1739, he accuses Whitefield of propagating
“blasphemous and enthusiastic notions, which struck at the root of all
religion, and made it the jest of those who sat in the seat of the
scornful.” Wesley replied to this, and concludes by advising Tucker
not to meddle with controversy, for his talents were not equal to its
management. It would only entangle and bewilder him more and more.
Besides, there was no pleasure in answering a man whose head was not
adapted to the right directing of disputes.[291]
The next onslaught was more authoritative and serious. On August 1,
1739, Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, published his “Pastoral Letter,”
of fifty-five pages, “to the People of his Diocese; especially those
of the two great cities of London and Westminster: by way of Caution
against Lukewarmness on one hand, and Enthusiasm on the other.”
Two-thirds of this prelatical pamphlet are on enthusiasm, and are
levelled against the Methodists. Numerous extracts are given from
Whitefield’s Journal, to show—1. That these enthusiasts claim to
have _extraordinary communications_ with God, and more than ordinary
assurances of a special _presence_ with them. 2. That they have a
special and immediate _mission_ from God. 3. That they think and act
under the immediate guidance of a _Divine inspiration_. 4. That they
speak of their preaching and expounding, and the effects of them, as
the sole work of a _Divine power_. 5. That they boast of sudden and
surprising effects as wrought by the _Holy Ghost_ in consequence of
their preaching. 6. That they claim the spirit of _prophecy_. 7. That
they speak of themselves in the language, and under the character,
of _apostles_ of Christ, and even of _Christ_ Himself. 8. That
they profess to plant and propagate a _new gospel_, as unknown to
the generality of ministers and people, in a Christian country. 9.
That they endeavour to justify their own _extraordinary_ methods of
teaching, by casting unworthy reflections upon the parochial clergy,
as deficient in the discharge of their duty, and not instructing their
people in the true doctrines of Christianity.
Thirteen days after the “Pastoral Letter” was published, Whitefield
wrote an answer to it, and, in a firm but quiet and respectful way,
replied to all the bishop’s allegations. He concludes by charging
Gibson with propagating a new gospel, because he asserts, that “good
works are a _necessary condition_ of our being justified in the sight
of God.” He maintains that _faith_ is the only necessary condition, and
that _good works_ are the necessary fruit and consequence. “This,” he
writes, “is the doctrine of Jesus Christ; this is the doctrine of the
Church of England; and it is, because the generality of the clergy of
the Church of England do not preach this doctrine, that I am resolved,
God being my helper, to continue instant in season and out of season,
to declare it unto all men, let the consequences, as to my own private
person, be what they will.”
If the bishop really believed his accusations to be true, his pastoral
is a model of meek writing. On the other hand, Whitefield’s answer is
one of the smartest productions of his pen; its pith and point somewhat
reminding us of the terseness which characterized his friend Wesley.
While Whitefield was skirmishing with the Bishop of London, Wesley
was having a brush with the Bishop of Bristol. First they discussed
the subject of faith as the only necessary condition of a sinner’s
justification before God. Then his lordship charged the Methodists
with “a horrid thing, a very horrid thing,” namely, “pretending
to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost.” The
conversation concluded thus:—
_Bishop._ “I hear you administer the sacrament in your societies.”
_Wesley._ “My lord, I never did yet; and I believe I never shall.”
_Bishop._ “I hear too, that many people fall into fits in your
societies, and that you pray over them.”
_Wesley._ “I do so, my lord, when any show, by strong cries and tears,
that their soul is in deep anguish; and our prayer is often heard.”
_Bishop._ “Very extraordinary indeed! Well, sir, since you ask my
advice, I will give it freely. You have no business here; you are not
commissioned to preach in this diocese. Therefore, I advise you to go
hence.”
_Wesley._ “My lord, my business on earth is, to do what good I can.
Wherever, therefore, I think I can do most good, there must I stay,
so long as I think so. At present, I think I can do most good here;
therefore, here I stay. Being ordained a priest, by the commission
I then received, I am a priest of the church universal; and being
ordained as fellow of a college, I was not limited to any particular
cure, but have an indeterminate commission to preach the word of God
in any part of the Church of England. I conceive not, therefore, that
in preaching here by this commission I break any human law. When I am
convinced I do, then it will be time to ask, shall I obey God or man?
But if I should be convinced in the meanwhile that I could advance the
glory of God and the salvation of souls, in any other place more than
in Bristol, in that hour, by God’s help, I will go hence; which till
then I may not do.”[292]
About the same time, a pamphlet of ninety-six pages was published,
entitled, “The Life of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, by an Impartial
Hand.” Impartiality is pretended, but hostility is seen. The object
of the Life is evidently to make the subject of it a mark for the
shafts of ridicule. Accounts are given of the fracas in St. Margaret’s
church, Westminster, on Sunday, February 4. There is also “a method of
confession drawn up for the use of the women Methodists,” professedly
taken from the original in Whitefield’s or Wesley’s own handwriting,
and with which, it is alleged, the Deists are delighted. Among other
questions, to be asked, as often as occasion required, were the
following: “Are you in love? Whom do you love just now, better than
any other person in the world? Is not the person an idol? Does any
court you? How do you like him? How do you feel yourself when he comes,
when he stays, and when he goes away?” A full account is, likewise,
furnished of Joseph Periam, a young clerk to an attorney, who had been
converted, partly by reading Whitefield’s sermons on the new birth, and
whom his friends had put into a madhouse—(1) Because he fasted for near
a fortnight. (2) Because he prayed so as to be heard several storeys
high. (3) Because he had sold his clothes and given the money to the
poor. The Methodists are further charged with attempting to take away
the liberty of the press; Wesley is accused of placing his converts,
when delivered from their violent agitations and distortions, on an
eminence, for others to behold them; and Whitefield is charged with
saying, that he could produce two cobblers in Bristol, that knew more
of true Christianity than all the clergy in the city put together. His
Journals are designated rhapsodies and repetitions of spiritual pride,
vanity and nonsense; he is accused of wilful and notorious falsehood,
and of taking pleasure in being abusive and scurrilous.
All this breathes fury; but the following taken from the _Weekly
Miscellany_ of July 21, 1739, surpasses it. The Methodist preacher
stands on an eminence with admiring and subscribing crowds about
him. He is young, which is good; looks innocent, which is better; and
has no human learning, which is best of all. He spreads his hands and
opens his lips as wide as possible. He talks of a sensible new birth;
good women around him come to his assistance; he dilates himself;
cries out; the hill swells into a mountain; and _parturiunt montes,
nascitur ridiculus mus_. Then there is a chorus of ten thousand sighs
and groans, deepened with the blowing of bassoons and horns. The
Methodists are mad enthusiasts who teach, for dictates of the Holy
Spirit, seditions, heresies, and contempt of the ordinances of God
and man. They are buffoons in religion, and mountebanks in theology;
creatures who disclaim sense and are below argument; visionary antics
in gowns and cassocks; so buffeted by the devil as to be qualified to
be confessors to the whole island; composing sermons as fast as they
can write, and speaking faster than they think; and forming societies
of females, who are to confess their love affairs one to another, and
to take care that there shall be a supply of new Methodists for future
generations.
In the same year, appeared a pamphlet, of twenty-eight pages, entitled
“The Methodists; an Humorous, Burlesque Poem, addressed to the Rev. Mr.
Whitefield and his followers.” The frontispiece represents the great
preacher addressing an immense crowd on Kennington Common, while, on
the outskirts of the congregation, are coaches of all descriptions, and
a gibbet on which three condemned felons are hanging. Describing the
Methodists, the poem says:—
“By rule they eat, by rule they drink,
Do all things else by rule, but think—
Accuse their priests of loose behaviour,
To get more in the laymen’s favour;
Method alone must guide ‘em all,
Whence Methodists themselves they call.”
After this, the devil is represented as making a tour from Rome to
Oxford, in the course of which he stole the bigoted madness of a Turk,
and the wit of a modern atheist, both of which he drenched, dull and
deep, in a literary Dutchman’s brain, and then, making them his own,
and pulling off his horns, and shoeing his cloven foot, dressing
himself in a student’s gown, and using for the nonce a distorted
face, and, because of the piety of its nasal tones, a Noncon parson’s
nose, he introduced himself to the Oxford Methodists, and gave them
instructions how to act, so as to effect their purposes,—instructions
too lascivious to be reprinted. As a _very mild_ specimen of this
foul-mouthed poem, we give another description of the Methodists:—
“All men of thought with laughter view,
Or pity, the mistaken crew;
Who, mad with Scripture, void of sense,
And thoughtless, novelists commence;
Swerve from the rules of mother Church,
And leave her basely in the lurch:
To holy _Holt_ they all repair,
There join in _folly_ and in prayer;
Next round the _gaols_ they hovering fly,
To plague the wretches ere they die;
And while the children lisp their praise,
‘Bless ‘em!’ each good old woman says.”
At the risk of exhausting the reader’s patience, we must notice another
anti-Methodist pamphleteer, who, in 1739, did his little best to
strangle the new-born system at its birth. This was a certain “James
Bate, M.A., Rector of St. Paul’s, Deptford; and formerly Chaplain to
His Excellency Horatio Walpole, Esq.”
First of all, the redoubtable author gave to the world a pamphlet
of thirty-eight pages, bearing the title, “Methodism Displayed; or
Remarks upon Mr. Whitefield’s Answer to the Bishop of London’s Pastoral
Letter.” In this production, Whitefield is charged with causing numbers
of poor tradesmen to leave their families to starve, only to ramble
after himself; in dividing the word of God, he violently divides
text from context, and makes arrant nonsense of both; he shuffles
and prevaricates; treats the bishop with saucy sneers; is guilty of
flat falsehoods, disingenuous quirks, and mean evasions; perfidiously
tramples upon the canons of the Church; and flies in the face of his
diocesan with unparalleled pride and impudence.
Not having exhausted all his wrath, the same reverend gentleman,
at the end of the year, issued another manifesto, of sixty-six
pages, entitled, “Quakero-Methodism; or a Confutation of the First
Principles of the Quakers and Methodists.” This was a dear shilling’s
worth, written in reply to a letter on Bate’s former pamphlet “by
T. S——y, Esq.” Bate asserts that the whole performance of the
“Quakero-Methodist” (as T. S——y is called) may be ranked under the
two heads of scurrility and sophistry; but as God, at whose altar he
serves, has forbid him to return railing for railing, he will give
no answer to the scurrility whatever. He then, notwithstanding this,
proceeds to accuse his adversary of having “troubled the public with
a load of stupidity, folly, and nonsense.” He alleges against him
“insipid sneers, like the grins of an idiot;” he tells him that “the
shortest cut for him to avoid writing nonsense is to lay down his pen;”
that his “whole stock of knowledge has been laid in at some expounding
house that was under the influence of the spirit of presumption,
ignorance, pride, and arrogance;” and that “his arguments have never
more than two gentle faults, false premises and a false conclusion.”
He says, Whitefield “chews” the charges of the Bishop of London, “just
as an ass mumbles a thistle, without either the courage to swallow it,
or the sense to lay it down;” and concludes by assuring his opponent
that he could have “goaded him with the sharpest, bitterest, and
severest sarcasms, and have scourged his spiritual pride with wholesome
severity;” but in mercy he has refrained from using such “a whip of
scorpions.”
The magazines and newspapers of the period were filled with similar
abuse of the poor Methodists. The writer has examined most of them,
and has been struck with two facts:—(1) of those admitting letters and
articles against the Methodists, the fairest and most moderate was the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_; and (2) the bitterest and most violent was the
professedly religious _Weekly Miscellany_, a weekly folio sheet of four
pages. The following is a mild specimen from the latter, and refers not
only to the movements of Wesley and Whitefield in the south of England,
but of Ingham in the north. After accusing Whitefield of “behaviour
disgraceful to the Christian religion and to the ministerial office,”
the journalist proceeds to say that—
“The clergy had all refused him their pulpits, and the lord mayor
the halls and markets of the city.” He was “a conceited boaster and
heterodox intruder; whose next performance was to be accompanied with
a chorus of ten thousand sighs and groans, deepened with bassoons. In
the approaching winter, the town would be entertained with harlequin
turned Methodist, by way of reprisals, since the Methodist had turned
harlequin. In Yorkshire, by the preaching of the Methodists, the spirit
of enthusiasm had so prevailed, that almost every man who could hammer
out a chapter in the Bible had turned an expounder of the Scripture,
to the great decay of industry, and the almost ruin of the woollen
manufacture, which seemed threatened with destruction for want of
hands to work it.” “Methodism has laid aside play-books and poems,
for Scripture phrases and hymns of its own composing. Its disciples
were never easy but when they were in a church, or expounding the
Bible, which they could do offhand, from Genesis to Revelation, with
great ease and power. They had given away their finery to tattered
beggars, resolving to wear the coarsest attire and to live upon the
most ordinary diet. They hired barns, where they met at six in the
evening; expounded, prayed, and sang psalms till towards ten; and then
had a lovefeast to communicate their experiences, especially as to love
affairs.” “Several fine ladies, who used to wear French silks, French
hoops of four yards wide, bob-wigs, and white satin smock petticoats,
were turned Methodists, and now wore stuff gowns, common night-mobs,
and plain bays for _Jennys_.”
Numbers of similar extracts might be given from the newspapers and
periodicals of 1739; but the reader has had enough of scurrilous and
lying hodge-podge to satisfy the cravings of the greatest gossip.
Such were the premonitory mutterings of the storm in which the
Methodist movement was cradled. Mobs threatened; newspapers, magazines,
and other periodicals fulminated their malicious squibs; prelates,
priests, and doctors of divinity became militant pamphleteers; but,
in the midst of all, Wesley and his friends calmly proceeded in their
glorious calling. Some even, who were animated with a friendly feeling
towards them, looked upon their course of conduct with alarm. Good Dr.
Doddridge, in a letter dated May 24, 1739, writes:—
“I think the Methodists sincere; I hope some may be reformed,
instructed, and made serious by their means. I saw Mr.
Whitefield preaching on Kennington Common last week to an
attentive multitude, and heard much of him at Bath; but,
supposing him sincere and in good earnest, I still fancy that
he is but a _weak_ man—much too positive, says rash things,
and is bold and enthusiastic. I am most heartily glad to hear
that any _real_ good is done anywhere to the souls of men; but
whether these Methodists are in a right way—whether they are
warrantable in all their conduct,—whether _poor_ people should
be urged, through different persons successively, to pray from
four in the morning till eleven at night, is not clear to me;
and I am less satisfied with the high pretences they make to
the Divine influence. I think what Mr. Whitefield says and
does comes but little short of an assumption of inspiration or
infallibility.”[293]
Another friend, Mr. T. Hervey, writing in the same month to Samuel
Wesley, at Tiverton, says, that he is anxious “to stop the spread
and prevalence of several very strange and pestilent opinions;” and
expresses the hope that this may be done effectually by the elder
brother of Wesley, whom he designates “the dear, but deluded man.” He
then proceeds to state that—
“These pestilent opinions are—1. That the method of education,
the distinction, order, degrees, and even robes and habits
of the university are all anti-Christian. 2. That nothing is
taught in it but learning which opposes the power of God. 3.
That whoso is born of God is also taught of God, not in any
limited sense, but so as to render the use of all natural means
of no effect. 4. That all human learning, however said to be
sanctified of God, entirely disqualifies a man from preaching
the true gospel of Jesus Christ. 5. That none have a right to
preach, but such as are immediately called to it by the Holy
Ghost. 6. That an established ministry is a mere invention of
man. 7. That the Church of England and all its authority are
founded on and supported by a lie; and that all who receive a
power of preaching from it are in a state of slavery.”[294]
This was a kind and well meant letter, but it was pregnant with
mistakes. Still it tends to show the enormous difficulties encountered
by the Methodists at the commencement of their history. Sometimes they
met a friend, though not often; and it is a pleasing duty to introduce
godly Joseph Williams, of Kidderminster, as one who sympathised with
their indefatigable endeavours to save the souls of their fellow men.
Under the date of September 17, 1739, he writes concerning the two
Wesleys, Whitefield, and Ingham:—
“The common people flock to hear them, and, in most places, hear them
gladly. They commonly preach once or twice every day; and expound
the Scriptures in the evening to religious societies, who have their
society rooms for that purpose.” He then proceeds to give an account
of his hearing Charles Wesley preach at Bristol. Standing on a table,
in a field, the preacher, with eyes and hands lifted up to heaven,
prayed with uncommon fervour and fluency. “He then preached about an
hour in such a manner as I scarce ever heard any man preach. Though
I have heard many a finer sermon, yet I think I never heard any man
discover such evident signs of vehement desire” [to benefit his
hearers]. “With unusual fervour, he acquitted himself as an ambassador
for Christ; and although he used no notes, nor had anything in his hand
but a Bible, yet he delivered his thoughts in a rich, copious variety
of expression, and with so much propriety, that I could not observe
anything incoherent through the whole performance, which he concluded
with singing, prayer, and the usual benediction.
“Afterward, I waited on him at Mr. Norman’s. He received me in a very
friendly manner. Before he would take any refreshment, he, with a
few friends that waited on him, sung a hymn, and then prayed for a
blessing, as at set meals. After tea, we sung another hymn; and then
I went with them to the religious society, and found the place so
thronged, that it was with great difficulty we reached the centre of
it. We found them singing a hymn; he then prayed; and proceeded to
expound the twelfth chapter of the gospel of St. John, in a sweet,
savoury, spiritual manner. This was followed by singing another hymn;
and he then prayed over a great number of bills presented by the
society, about twenty of which respected spiritual cases. Never did
I hear such praying. Never did I see or hear such evident marks of
fervency in the service of God. At the close of every petition, a
serious Amen, like a gentle, rushing sound of waters, ran through the
whole audience. Such evident marks of a lively fervent devotion, I was
never witness to before. If there be such a thing as heavenly music
upon earth, I heard it there. I do not remember my heart to have been
so elevated in Divine love and praise, as it was there and then, for
many years past, if ever. Notwithstanding some errors, which, as mere
men, they may be liable to, I cannot but believe that God is with them
of a truth, and hath raised them up in this day of general defection
from gospel purity, simplicity, and zeal, for signal service and
usefulness in His church.”[295]
In a letter to Charles Wesley, written in the month of September, 1739,
Williams adds: “I heartily wish you God speed. I bless you in the name
of the Lord. Fear not what men can do unto you. With Him your judgment
is, and your reward with your God.”[296]
Such a testimony from a man so devout, enlightened, and justly famed as
Joseph Williams, the Kidderminster carpet weaver, is quite as weighty
as any testimony of an opposite character from either Bishop Gibson, or
any priest or prelate then watching on the walls of Zion.
We must now return to Wesley at Bristol. Every night he expounded to
societies. These were small gatherings of religious people, which
had continued meeting for godly purposes for about the last fifty
years;[297] for it is important to remember that the “Religious
Societies” formed in the days of Dr. Horneck, previous to the
abdication of King James, and again revived in the reign of Queen Mary,
were not confined to London and Westminster, but existed in different
towns throughout the kingdom. We find them in Oxford, Nottingham,
Gloucester, Bristol, Newcastle, Dublin, Kilkenny, and other places; and
all acting substantially according to the same rules and regulations.
They met to pray, sing psalms, and read the Scriptures together; and to
reprove, exhort, and edify one another by religious conference. They
also carried out designs of charity, such as supporting lectures and
daily prayers in churches, releasing imprisoned debtors, and relieving
the poor and sending their children to school. In 1737, Whitefield
preached “a sermon before the “Religious Societies” at one of their
general quarterly meetings in Bow church, London, from the text,
Ecclesiastes iv. 9–12, in which he strongly advocated the practice of
Christians meeting together for religious fellowship. “As coals,” says
he, “if placed asunder, soon go out, but if heaped together, enliven
each other, and afford a lasting heat;” so it is with Christians.
Such were the “Religious Societies” which existed for more than
half-a-century before the formation of the “United Societies” of the
people called Methodists; and in whose rooms and meetings, in London,
Bristol, and elsewhere, Whitefield and the Wesley brothers, for a few
years, were accustomed to read and explain the Scriptures almost every
night. On arriving in Bristol, Wesley found such societies as these
assembling in Castle Street, in Gloucester Lane, in Weavers’ Hall, in
Nicholas Street, in the Back Lane, and in Baldwin Street, and at once
began expounding to them the Epistle to the Romans, and other portions
of the New Testament; and it is a remarkable fact that, with one or two
exceptions, all the scenes about to be mentioned took place in these
society meetings, or in private dwellings. We furnish them as we find
them.
April 17. At Baldwin Street, we called upon God to confirm His
word. Immediately, one that stood by cried out aloud, with
the utmost vehemence, even as in the agonies of death. But we
continued in prayer, till a new song was put into her mouth,
a thanksgiving unto our God. Soon after, two other persons
were seized with strong pain, and constrained to roar for the
disquietude of their heart. But it was not long before they
likewise burst forth into praise to God their Saviour. The
last who called upon God, as out of the belly of hell, was
a stranger in Bristol; and, in a short space, he also was
overwhelmed with joy and love, knowing that God had healed his
backslidings.
April 21. At Weavers’ Hall, a young man was suddenly seized
with a violent trembling all over, and, in a few minutes, sunk
to the ground. But we ceased not calling upon God, till He
raised him up full of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
April 24. At Baldwin Street, a young man, after a sharp though
short agony, both of body and mind, found his soul filled with
peace, knowing in whom he had believed.
April 26. At Newgate, I was led to pray that God would bear
witness to His word. Immediately one, and another, and another
sunk to the earth; they dropped on every side as thunderstruck.
One of them cried aloud. We besought God in her behalf, and
He turned her heaviness into joy. A second being in the same
agony, we called upon God for her also; and He spoke peace unto
her soul. In the evening, one was so wounded by the sword of
the Spirit, that you would have imagined she could not live a
moment. But immediately His abundant kindness was shown, and
she loudly sang of His righteousness.
April 27. All Newgate rang with the cries of those whom the
word of God cut to the heart; two of whom were in a moment
filled with joy, to the astonishment of those that beheld them.
April 30. While I was preaching at Newgate, a woman broke out
into strong cries and tears. Great drops of sweat ran down her
face, and all her bones shook; but both her body and soul were
healed in a moment.
May 1. At Baldwin Street, my voice could scarce be heard amidst
the groanings of some, and the cries of others calling aloud
to Him that is mighty to save; and ten persons then began to
say in faith, “My Lord and my God!” A Quaker, who stood by, was
very angry, and was biting his lips, and knitting his brows,
when he dropped down as thunderstruck. The agony he was in
was even terrible to behold. We prayed for him, and he soon
lifted up his head with joy, and joined us in thanksgiving. A
bystander, John Haydon, a weaver, a man of regular life and
conversation, one that constantly attended the public prayers
and sacrament, and was zealous for the Church, and against
Dissenters, laboured to convince the people that all this was
a delusion of the devil; but next day, while reading a sermon
on “Salvation by Faith,” he suddenly changed colour, fell off
his chair, and began screaming, and beating himself against
the ground. The neighbours were alarmed, and flocked together.
When I came in, I found him on the floor, the room being full
of people, and two or three holding him as well as they could.
He immediately fixed his eyes on me, and said, “Ay, this is
he I said deceived the people. But God has overtaken me. I
said it was a delusion of the devil; but this is no delusion.”
Then he roared aloud, “O thou devil! thou cursed devil! yea,
thou legion of devils! thou canst not stay in me. Christ will
cast thee out. I know His work is begun. Tear me in pieces, if
thou wilt; but thou canst not hurt me.” He then beat himself
against the ground; his breast heaving, as if in the pangs of
death, and great drops of sweat trickling down his face. We all
betook ourselves to prayer. His pangs ceased, and both his body
and soul were set at liberty. With a clear, strong voice, he
cried, “This is the Lord’s doing; and it is marvellous in our
eyes. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, from this time forth
for evermore.” I called again an hour after. We found his body
weak as that of an infant, and his voice lost; but his soul was
in peace, full of love, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of
God.[298] The women of our society met at seven, and, during
prayer, one of them fell into a violent agony; but soon after
began to cry out, with confidence, “My Lord and my God.”
May 12. In the evening, three persons, almost at once, sunk
down as dead, having all their sins set in array before them;
but, in a short time, they were raised up, and knew that the
Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world, had taken
away their sins.
May 16. While I was declaring at Baptist Mills, “He was wounded
for our transgressions,” a middle aged man began violently
beating his breast. During our prayer, God put a new song into
his mouth.
May 19. At Weavers’ Hall, a woman first, and then a boy, was
overwhelmed with sin, and sorrow, and fear. But we cried to
God, and their souls were delivered.
May 20. In the evening God spoke to three whose souls were all
storm and tempest, and immediately there was a great calm.
May 21. Although the people had seen signs and wonders, yet
many would not believe. They could not, indeed, deny the facts;
but they could explain them away. Some said, “These were
purely natural effects; the people fainted away only because
of the heat and closeness of the rooms.” Others were “sure it
was all a cheat; they might help it if they would. Else why
were these things only in their private societies?” To-day,
our Lord answered for Himself; for, while I was preaching,
He began to make bare His arm, not in a close room, neither
in private, but in the open air, and before more than two
thousand witnesses. One, and another, and another were struck
to the earth; exceedingly trembling at the presence of His
power. Others cried, with a loud and bitter cry, “What must
we do to be saved?” And, in less than an hour, seven persons,
wholly unknown to me till that time, were rejoicing, and
singing, and, with all their might, giving thanks to the God
of their salvation. In the evening, at Nicholas Street, I was
interrupted, almost as soon as I had begun to speak, by the
cries of one who strongly groaned for pardon and peace. Others
dropped down as dead. Thomas Maxfield began to roar out, and
beat himself against the ground, so that six men could scarcely
hold him. Except John Haydon, I never saw one so torn of the
evil one. Many others began to cry out to the Saviour of all,
insomuch that all the house, and, indeed, all the street for
some space, was in an uproar. But we continued in prayer, and
the greater part found rest to their souls. I think twenty-nine
in all had their heaviness turned into joy this day.
June 15. At Wapping (London), many of those that heard began to
call upon God with strong cries and tears. Some sunk down, and
there remained no strength in them; others exceedingly trembled
and quaked; some were torn with a kind of convulsive motion in
every part of their bodies; and that so violently, that often
four or five persons could not hold one of them. I have seen
many hysterical and many epileptic fits; but none of them were
like these, in many respects. One woman was greatly offended,
being sure they might help it if they would; but she also
dropped down in as violent an agony as the rest. Twenty-six of
those who had been thus affected were filled with peace and joy.
June 16. At Fetter Lane, some fell prostrate on the ground;
others burst out into loud praise and thanksgiving; and many
openly testified, there had been no such day as this since
January the first preceding.
June 22. In the society (Bristol) one before me dropped down
as dead, and presently a second, and a third. Five others sunk
down in half an hour, most of whom were in violent agonies.
In their trouble, we called upon the Lord, and He gave us an
answer of peace. All, except one, went away rejoicing and
praising God.
June 23. This evening another was seized with strong pangs; but
in a short time her soul was delivered.
June 24. In the evening, a girl and four or five other persons
were deeply convinced of sin; and, with sighs and groans,
called upon God for deliverance.
June 25. About ten in the morning J——e C——r, as she was
sitting at her work, was suddenly seized with grievous terrors
of mind, attended with strong trembling; but, at the society
in the evening, God turned her heaviness into joy. Five or six
others were also cut to the heart this day; and, soon after,
found Him whose hands made whole.
June 26. Three persons terribly felt the wrath of God abiding
on them at the society this evening. But, upon prayer being
made on their behalf, He was pleased soon to lift up the light
of His countenance upon them.
June 30. At Weavers’ Hall, seven or eight persons were
constrained to roar aloud; but they were all relieved upon
prayer, and sang praises unto our God, and unto the Lamb that
liveth for ever and ever.
July 1. A young woman sunk down at Rose Green in a violent
agony both of body and mind: as did five or six persons, in
the evening, at the new room, at whose cries many were greatly
offended. The same offence was given in the morning by one at
Weavers’ Hall; and by eight or nine others at Gloucester Lane
in the evening.
Here we pause. On June 25, Whitefield wrote to Wesley as follows:—
“HONOURED SIR,—I cannot think it right in you to give so
much encouragement to those convulsions which people have
been thrown into, under your ministry. Was I to do so, how
many would cry out every night? I think it is tempting God
to require such signs. That there is something of God in it,
I doubt not. But the devil, I believe, interposes. I think
it will encourage the French Prophets, take people from the
written word, and make them depend on visions, convulsions,
etc., more than on the promises and precepts of the
gospel.”[299]
Twelve days after, Whitefield was in Bristol, and Wesley wrote as
follows:—
“July 7. I had an opportunity to talk with Mr. Whitefield of
those outward signs which had so often accompanied the work
of God. I found his objections were chiefly grounded on
gross misrepresentations of matters of fact. But next day he
had an opportunity of informing himself better; for, in the
application of his sermon, four persons sunk down close to him,
almost in the same moment. One of them lay without either sense
or motion. A second trembled exceedingly. The third had strong
convulsions all over his body, but made no noise, unless by
groans. The fourth, equally convulsed, called upon God, with
strong cries and tears. From this time, I trust, we shall all
suffer God to carry on His own work in the way that pleaseth
Him.”
This was an important crisis. Without expressing any opinion respecting
these “signs,” as Wesley calls them, we cannot but admire Wesley’s
wish and hope that God may be allowed to work His own work in His own
way. Of all men living, Wesley was one of the least likely to desire
novelties like these; but he was wise enough, and reverent enough,
not to interpose when God was working, and to say, that, unless the
work was done after a certain fashion, he should object to its being
done at all. Some, in modern times, have been in danger of doing this.
Sinners have been undeniably converted; but because they have not been
converted at the times, or in the places, or by the instrumentalities
which men have chosen to commend, they have objected to such
conversions, and tacitly desired not to have them multiplied. This was
not Wesley’s way. He was one of the greatest sticklers for church order
and religious decorum; but he was not the man to protest, that, unless
God’s work was carried on in accordance with his own predilections, he
should object to it altogether. His words are golden ones, and worth
remembering by all his followers:—“_From this time, I trust, we shall
all suffer God to carry on His own work in the way that pleaseth Him._”
Whitefield’s objections were silenced. He came, he saw, and he was
conquered. He writes, under date of July 7:—
“I had a useful conference about many things with my honoured
friend Mr. John Wesley. I found that Bristol had great reason
to bless God for his ministry. The congregations I observed
to be much more serious and affected than when I left them;
and their loud and repeated Amens, which they put up to every
petition, as well as the exemplariness of their conversation
in common life, plainly show that they have not received the
grace of God in vain. Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face
of the sky; but how is it that ye cannot discern the signs of
these times? That good, great good, is done is evident. What
is it but little less than blasphemy against the Holy Ghost
to impute this great work to delusion, and to the power of the
devil?”[300]
We resume Wesley’s notices of what he designates the “signs” of the
work of God.
July 23. On several evenings this week many were deeply
convinced; but none were delivered from that painful
conviction. I fear we have grieved the Spirit of the jealous
God, by questioning His work; and that, therefore, He is
withdrawn from us for a season. But He will return and
abundantly pardon.
July 30. Two more were in strong pain, both their souls and
bodies being well-nigh torn asunder. But, though we cried unto
God, there was no answer. One of them cried aloud, though not
articulately, for twelve or fourteen hours; when her soul was
set at liberty. She was a servant, and her master forbid her
returning to his service, saying, he would have none in his
house who had received the Holy Ghost.
August 5. Six persons at the new room were deeply convinced of
sin; three of whom were a little comforted by prayer.
August 11. In the evening two were seized with strong pangs, as
were four the next evening, and the same number at Gloucester
Lane on Monday; one of whom was greatly comforted.
August 14. Three at the new room this evening were cut to the
heart; but their wound was not as yet healed.
A fortnight after this, Charles Wesley came to Bristol, and John
removed to London. The work still progressed at Bristol. In one
instance, a woman screamed for mercy, so as to drown Charles’s voice.
On another occasion, he “heard on all sides the sighing of them that
were in captivity.” “The Lord added to the church daily.”
In London, numbers had been converted under the ministry of Charles
Wesley, Whitefield, and others; but there is no evidence to show that
there had been any “convulsions” like those at Bristol. It is also a
curious fact, that, though Wesley’s preaching on Kennington Common, in
Moorfields, and in other places in the metropolis, was crowned with
great success, there were hardly any instances of paralysing paroxysms
analogous to those already mentioned. When he returned to Bristol, in
October, we find a renewal of such cases.
October 11. A woman showed the agony of her soul by crying
aloud to God for help. She continued in great torment all
night; but, while we were praying for her in the morning, God
delivered her out of her distress.
October 12. I was under some concern, with regard to one or two
persons, who were tormented in an unaccountable manner; and
seemed to be indeed lunatic, as well as sore vexed.
October 23. I was pressed to visit a young woman at Kingswood.
I found her on the bed, two or three persons holding her.
Anguish, horror, and despair, above all description, appeared
in her pale face. The thousand distortions of her whole body
showed how the dogs of hell were gnawing at her heart. The
shrieks intermixed were scarce to be endured. She screamed
out, “I am damned, damned; lost for ever! Six days ago you
might have helped me. But it is past. I am the devil’s now,
I have given myself to him: his I am, him I must serve, with
him I must go to hell; I will be his, I will serve him, I will
go with him to hell; I cannot be saved, I will not be saved.
I must, I will, I will be damned!” She then begun praying to
the devil. We began,—“Arm of the Lord, awake, awake!” She
immediately sank down as asleep; but, as soon as we left off,
broke out again, with inexpressible vehemence: “Stony hearts,
break! I am a warning to you. Break, break, poor stony hearts!
I am damned, that you may be saved. You need not be damned,
though I must.” She then fixed her eyes on the corner of the
ceiling, and said, “There he is. Come, good devil, come. You
said you would dash my brains out: come, do it quickly. I am
yours, I will be yours.” We interrupted her by calling again
upon God; on which she sunk down as before: and another young
woman began to roar out as loud as she had done. My brother now
came in, it being about nine o’clock. We continued in prayer
till past eleven; when God, in a moment, spoke peace into the
soul, first of the first tormented, and then of the other. And
they both joined in singing praise to Him who had “stilled the
enemy and the avenger.”
October 25. I was sent for to one in Bristol, who was taken ill
the evening before. She lay on the ground furiously gnashing
her teeth, and after awhile roared aloud. It was not easy for
three or four persons to hold her, especially when the name
of Jesus was named. We prayed; the violence of her symptoms
ceased, though without a complete deliverance. In the evening,
I was sent for to her again. She began screaming before I
came into the room; then broke out into a horrid laughter,
mixed with blasphemy. One, who apprehended a preternatural
agent to be concerned in this, asking, “How didst thou dare
to enter into a Christian?” was answered, “She is not a
Christian—she is mine.” This was followed by fresh trembling,
cursing, and blaspheming. My brother coming in, she cried out,
“Preacher! Field preacher! I don’t love field preaching.” This
was repeated two hours together, with spitting, and all the
expressions of strong aversion. We left her at twelve, and
called again at noon next day. And now it was, that God showed
He heareth prayer. All her pangs ceased in a moment: she was
filled with peace, and knew that the son of wickedness was
departed from her.
October 27. I was sent for to Kingswood again, to one of those
who had been so ill before. A violent rain began just as I set
out. Just at that time, the woman (then three miles off) cried
out, “Yonder comes Wesley, galloping as fast as he can.” When
I was come, she burst into a horrid laughter, and said, “No
power, no power; no faith, no faith. She is mine; her soul is
mine. I have her, and will not let her go.” We begged of God
to increase our faith. Meanwhile, her pangs increased more
and more; so that one would have imagined, by the violence of
the throes, her body must have been shattered to pieces. One,
who was clearly convinced this was no natural disorder, said,
“I think Satan is let loose. I fear he will not stop here,”
and added, “I command thee in the name of the Lord Jesus, to
tell if thou hast commission to torment any other soul.” It
was immediately answered, “I have. L——y C——r and S——h J——s.”
We betook ourselves to prayer again; and ceased not, till she
began, with a clear voice, and composed, cheerful look, to
sing, “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”
The reader must be told that L——y C——r and S——h J——s lived at some
distance, and, at the time, were in perfect health. The day after, they
were affected in the same way as the poor creature just delivered.
Wesley writes:—
October 28. I called at Mrs. J——s’, in Kingswood. L——y C——r
and S——h J——s were there. It was scarce a quarter of an hour
before the former fell into a strange agony; and, presently
after, the latter. The violent convulsions all over their
bodies were such as words cannot describe. Their cries and
groans were too horrid to be borne; till one of them, in a tone
not to be expressed, said, “Where is your faith now? Come, go
to prayers. I will pray with you.” We took the advice, and
poured out our souls before God, till L——y C——r’s agonies so
increased, that it seemed she was in the pangs of death. But,
in a moment, God spoke; and both her body and soul were healed.
We continued in prayer till past midnight, when S——h J——s’
voice was also changed, and she began to call upon God. This
she did for the greatest part of the night. In the morning, we
renewed our prayers, while she was crying continually, “I burn!
I burn! O what shall I do? I have a fire within me. I cannot
bear it. Lord Jesus! help! Amen, Lord Jesus!”
A few other cases occurred in 1739; and, notably, one on November
30, when seven persons were grievously tormented, and Wesley and his
friends continued in prayer from the time of evening service till nine
o’clock next morning, that is, for about fifteen hours, a case almost
unparalelled in the history of the church of Christ.
These are strange and mysterious facts; and, what adds to the
strangeness, is that, excepting the cases in London, on June 15,
16, and September 17, 18, all of them occurred in Bristol and its
immediate neighbourhood. During the space of time which these extracts
cover, Wesley preached at Bath, Kennington Common, Moorfields,
Blackheath, Gloucester, Bradford, Wells, Oxford, and in several towns
in Wales, and other places; but scenes like those above described were
never witnessed except in Bristol. It is also a curious circumstance,
that, though the preaching of Charles Wesley and of Whitefield was
quite as faithful as the preaching of Wesley himself, and was far more
impassioned, yet no such “signs” seem to have been attendant on their
ministry as were attendant on his. Similar effects sometimes followed
the preaching of Cennick, during Wesley’s absence in London, but these
occurred also either at Kingswood or in Bristol. Writing to Wesley
under date of September 12, 1739, he says:—
“On Monday night, I was preaching at the school on the
forgiveness of sins, when numbers cried out with a loud and
bitter cry. Indeed, it seemed that the devil and the powers of
darkness were come among us. My mouth was stopped. The cries
were terrifying. It was pitch dark; it rained much; and the
wind blew vehemently. Large flashes of lightning and loud claps
of thunder mingled with the screams and exclamations of the
people. The hurry and confusion cannot be expressed. The whole
place seemed to resemble the habitation of apostate spirits;
many raving up and down, and crying, ‘The devil will have me; I
am his servant! I am damned! My sins can never be pardoned! I
am gone, gone for ever!’ A young man was in such horrors, that
seven or eight persons could scarce hold him. He roared like a
dragon: ‘Ten thousand devils, millions, millions of devils are
about me!’ This continued three hours, and what a power reigned
amongst us! Some cried out with a hollow voice, ‘Mr. Cennick!
Bring Mr. Cennick!’ I came to all that desired me. They then
spurned me with all their strength, grinding their teeth, and
expressing all the fury that heart can conceive. Their eyes
were staring and their faces swollen, and several have since
told me, that when I drew near, they felt fresh rage, and
longed to tear me in pieces. I never saw the like, nor even the
shadow of it before. Yet I was not in the least afraid, as I
knew God was on our side.”[301]
Such are the facts; nothing has been distorted, and nothing kept back.
They were occasionally repeated after the year 1739, but not often. A
few cases subsequently occurred in Bristol, and also in London, and in
Newcastle; but nearly all related in Wesley’s Journals are contained in
the extracts already given.
What shall be said concerning them? For a hundred and thirty years,
they have been sneered at by Wesley’s enemies, and have also puzzled
Wesley’s friends. No such results attended Whitefield’s ministry, and
Whitefield himself regarded them with suspicion and dislike. Charles
Wesley, at Newcastle, in 1743, did his utmost to discourage them. He
writes:—
“Many, no doubt, were, at our first preaching, struck down,
both soul and body, into the depth of distress. Their _outward
affections_ were easy to be imitated. Many counterfeits I
have already detected. The first night I preached here, half
my words were lost through their outcries. Last night, before
I began, I gave public notice that whosoever cried, so as to
drown my voice, should be carried to the farthest corner of
the room. But my porters had no employment the whole night;
yet the Lord was with us, mightily convincing of sin and of
righteousness. I am more and more convinced, the fits were a
device of Satan to stop the course of the gospel.”[302]
Samuel Wesley was in great doubt respecting them, and, in a letter
dated September 3, 1739, asks:—“Did these agitations ever begin during
the use of any collects of the Church? or during the preaching of any
sermon that had before been preached within consecrated walls without
effect? or during the inculcating any other doctrine besides that of
your new birth?”[303]
The Rev. Ralph Erskine wrote to Wesley thus: “Some of the instances
you give seem to be exemplified, in the outward manner, by the cases
of Paul and the gaoler, as also Peter’s hearers (Acts ii.). The last
instance you give of some struggling as in the agonies of death, is to
me somewhat more inexplicable, if it do not resemble the child of whom
it is said, that ‘when he was yet a coming, the devil threw him down
and tore him.’ I make no question, Satan, so far as he gets power, may
exert himself on such occasions, partly to mar and hinder the beginning
of the good work, in the persons that are touched with the sharp arrows
of conviction; and partly also to prevent the success of the gospel
on others. However, the merciful issue of these conflicts, in the
conversion of the persons thus affected, is the main thing.”
Erskine proceeds to state, that they have something, in Scotland,
analogous to what had occurred in Bristol. Sometimes a whole
congregation, in a flood of tears, would cry out at once, so as to
drown the voice of the minister.[304]
The Rev. William Hales, D.D., in his “Methodism Inspected,” accounts
for these paroxysms on “natural grounds; the sympathetic nature of
all violent emotions being well known to those who have studied the
physical and moral constitution of man.”
Southey writes:—
“A powerful doctrine, preached with passionate sincerity,
produced a powerful effect upon weak minds, ardent feelings,
and disordered fancies. There are passions which are as
infectious as the plague, and fear itself is not more so than
fanaticism. When once these bodily affections were declared to
be the throes of the new birth, a free licence was proclaimed
for every kind of extravagance; and when the preacher
encouraged them to throw off all restraint, and abandon
themselves before the congregation to these mixed sensations of
mind and body, the consequences were what might be anticipated.”
Southey forgets that “powerful doctrine” was preached, with as
much “passionate sincerity,” by Whitefield and by Charles Wesley,
as by Wesley himself; but without the same effects. Besides, it is
untrue that Wesley ever “encouraged” the affected people “to abandon
themselves to these mixed sensations of mind and body.”
The Rev. R. Watson writes:—
“That cases of real enthusiasm occurred at this and subsequent
periods, is indeed allowed. There are always nervous, dreamy,
and excitable people to be found; and the emotion produced
among these would often be communicated by natural sympathy.
No one could be blamed for this, unless he had encouraged the
excitement for its own sake, or taught the people to regard
it as a sign of grace, which most assuredly Mr. Wesley never
did. Nor is it correct to represent these effects, genuine
and fictitious together, as peculiar to Methodism. Great and
rapid results were produced in the first ages of Christianity,
but not without ‘outcries,’ and strong corporeal as well as
mental emotions. Like effects often accompanied the preaching
of eminent men at the Reformation; and many of the Puritan
and Nonconformist ministers had similar successes in our own
country. In Scotland, and also among the grave Presbyterians of
New England, previous to the rise of Methodism, the ministry of
faithful men had been attended by very similar circumstances;
and, on a smaller scale, the same results have followed
the ministry of modern missionaries of different religious
societies in various parts of the world. It may be laid down as
a principle established by fact, that whenever a zealous and
faithful ministry is raised up, after a long, spiritual dearth,
the early effects of that ministry are not only powerful, but
often attended with extraordinary circumstances; nor are such
extraordinary circumstances necessarily extravagancies because
they are not common. It is neither irrational nor unscriptural
to suppose, that times of great national darkness and depravity
should require a strong remedy; and that the attention of the
people should be roused by circumstances which could not fail
to be noticed by the most unthinking. We do not attach primary
importance to secondary circumstances; but they are not to be
wholly disregarded. The Lord was not in the wind, nor in the
earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice; yet
that still small voice might not have been heard, except by
minds roused from their inattention by the shaking of the earth
and the sounding of the storm.”
Isaac Taylor writes:—
“These disorders resembled, in some of their features, the
demoniacal possessions mentioned in the gospel history. The
bodily agitations were perhaps as extreme in the one class
of instances as in the other; nevertheless, there is no real
analogy between the two. The demoniacs were _found_ in this
state by Christ where He went preaching; they did not _become
such_ while listening to Him. Besides, in no one instance
recorded in the Gospels or Acts, did demoniacal possession, or
any bodily agitations resembling it, come on as the initial
stage of conversion. How then are we to dispose of such cases?
Perhaps not at all to our satisfaction, except so far as this,
that they serve to render so much the more unambiguous the
distinction between themselves and those genuine affections
which the apostolic writers describe and exemplify.”
What says Wesley himself? With due deference to the great names
quoted, we respect his testimony more than theirs: first, because he
was, in sobriety of feeling, in depth of learning, and in clearness
of judgment, at least their equal; and secondly, because his opinion
was pronounced after being an eye-witness, whilst theirs is founded
entirely upon the representations of others, and their own ideas of how
things ought to be.
1. The cases were real, not pretended, and often ended in genuine
conversion. “You deny,” writes Wesley at the time, “You deny that
God does now work these effects; at least, that He works them in
this manner. I affirm both; because I have heard these things with
my own ears, and have seen them with my own eyes. I have seen very
many persons changed, in a moment, from the spirit of fear, horror,
despair, to the spirit of love, joy, and peace; and from sinful desire,
till then reigning over them, to the pure desire of doing the will of
God. I know several persons, in whom this great change was wrought in
a dream, or during a strong representation to the eye of their mind,
of Christ either on the cross, or in glory. This is the fact; let any
judge of it as they please.”[305]
2. Why were these things permitted? Wesley says: “Perhaps it might be
because of the hardness of our hearts, unready to receive anything
unless we see it with our eyes and hear it with our ears, that God, in
tender condescension to our weakness, suffered so many outward signs of
the very time when He wrought this inward change to be continually seen
and heard among us. But although they saw ‘signs and wonders’ (for so I
must term them), yet many would not believe. They could not indeed deny
the facts; but they could explain them away.”[306]
3. How were these extraordinary circumstances brought about? Wesley
again shall answer. Five years after—when he had heard all that
his enemies had to say—when such convulsive agitations no longer
happened—and when he had had sufficient time to test the genuineness
of these remarkable Bristol and Kingswood conversions, and to form a
calm judgment upon the whole, he wrote as follows:—“The _extraordinary_
circumstances that attended the conviction or repentance of the
people may be easily accounted for, either on principles of reason
or Scripture. First, on principles of reason. For how easy is it
to suppose, that a strong, lively, and sudden apprehension of the
heinousness of sin, the wrath of God and the bitter pains of eternal
death, should affect the body as well as the soul, during the present
laws of vital union;—should interrupt or disturb the ordinary
circulations, and put nature out of its course? Yea, we may question,
whether, while this union subsists, it be possible for the mind to
be affected, in so violent a degree, without some or other of those
bodily symptoms following. Secondly, it is likewise easy to account
for these things on principles of Scripture. For when we take a view
of them in this light, we are to add to the consideration of natural
causes the agency of those spirits who still excel in strength, and,
as far as they have leave from God, will not fail to torment whom they
cannot destroy; _to tear_ those that _are coming_ to Christ. It is also
remarkable that there is plain Scripture precedent of every symptom
which has lately appeared.”[307]
We have nothing more to add. Perhaps the reader will think that more
has been said than the thing deserved. We demur to that opinion. The
phenomena recorded are among the most remarkable in church history;
they are curious and mysterious; they have given rise to endless
critiques, both friendly and otherwise, and, for such reasons, merit
the space we have devoted to them. Dr. Hales’ doctrine of “the
sympathetic nature of all violent emotions,” though true, is not
sufficient to account for many of the instances related. Southey’s
opinion is flippant, and is based upon false assumptions. Watson’s is
of great importance, and, as contained at greater length in his Life of
Wesley, is the most elaborate discussion of the subject that has yet
been written. Isaac Taylor’s, to some extent, coincides with Wesley’s;
which, upon the whole, is the clearest, fullest, and the best.
Other events, belonging to the year 1739, must now be noticed.
Kingswood, so often mentioned, was formerly a royal chase, containing
between three and four thousand acres; but, previous to the rise of
Methodism, it had been gradually appropriated by the several lords
whose estates encircled it. The deer had disappeared, and the greater
part of the wood also; coal mines had been discovered, and it was now
inhabited by a race of people, as lawless as the foresters, their
forefathers, but far more brutal; and differing as much from the
people of the surrounding country in dialect as in appearance. They
had no place of worship; for Kingswood then belonged to the parish of
St. Philip, and was, at least, three miles distant from the parish
church.[308] The people were famous for neither fearing God nor
regarding man; and so ignorant of sacred things that they seemed but
one remove from the beasts that perish. They were utterly without
desire of instruction, as well as without the means of it. The place
resounded with cursing and blasphemy. It was filled with clamour
and bitterness, wrath and envyings, idle diversions, drunkenness,
and uncleanness;[309] a hell upon earth. Only fifteen weeks before
Whitefield’s first visit, the colliers had risen with clubs and
firearms, and gone from pit to pit threatening the lives of all the
workmen who would not join them in defeating the ends of justice, in
reference to a riot that had occurred a short time previously. At White
Hill, four mines were filled up; and carts, reels, and ropes belonging
to others were cut and burned. The soldiers were called out, and the
swarthy rioters ran away.[310]
Kingswood was Whitefield’s first field-pulpit, for here, on February
17, 1739, he began his glorious career of out-door preaching. Within
six weeks after this, the day before Wesley came to Bristol, Whitefield
dined with the colliers, who contributed upwards of £20 towards the
erection of a school. Four days after this, the miners prepared him
another hospitable entertainment, after which he laid the foundation
stone, knelt upon it, and offered prayer, to which the colliers said,
“Amen.”[311]
On the same day, Whitefield took his departure from Bristol, leaving
Wesley as his successor; and, with the exception of a visit of a week’s
duration in the month of July following, he was not at Kingswood
again during the next two years. Whitefield began the school at
Kingswood: the colliers gave upwards of £20; Whitefield collected
£40 in subscriptions; and, on two subsequent occasions, he made
collections for the same purpose, once when he preached his farewell
sermon at Bristol, on July 13, before embarking for America; and once
in Moorfields, when the sum of £24 9_s._ was contributed.[312] This
was all. The rest devolved on Wesley. He alone was responsible for the
payment of the debts incurred; and, for many months, wherever he went,
he begged subscriptions for the colliers’ school. The school itself
consisted of one large room, with four smaller ones for the teacher’s
residence, and was not completed till the spring of 1740.[313] The
object was to teach the children of the poor, first religion, and
then to read, write, and cast accounts; but Wesley also expected to
have “scholars of all ages, some of them grey-headed,” who were to
be taught, separate from the children, “either early in the morning,
or late at night,” so that their work might not be hindered by their
education.[314]
Within six weeks after Whitefield laid the first stone of Kingswood
school, Wesley took possession of a piece of ground in the Horse
Fair, Bristol, and began to build a room large enough to contain the
societies of Nicholas Street and Baldwin Street. This was done without
the least apprehension or design of his being personally engaged,
either in the expense of the work, or in the direction of it; he having
appointed eleven trustees, by whom he supposed the burdens would be
borne. He soon found that he had made a great mistake. In a short time,
a debt was contracted of more than £150, whereas the subscriptions
of the trustees and of the two societies were not a quarter of that
amount. This debt devolved upon him. He had no money, nor any human
prospect or probability of procuring any; but he knew “the earth is the
Lord’s, and the fulness thereof,” and he dared to trust Him. Besides
this, Whitefield and other friends in London most strongly objected to
the building being the property of trustees, on the ground that Wesley
would be under their control; and, unless his preaching pleased them,
they might eject him from the house he himself had built. Whitefield
declared that, unless the trustship was destroyed, neither he nor his
friends would contribute anything towards the expenses. Wesley yielded;
the trustees were summoned; all agreed to the alteration; the deed was
cancelled; and Wesley became the sole proprietor.
This, though insignificant at the time, was a matter of great
importance; for, in this manner, nearly all the chapels, erected in the
early part of his career, were vested in himself,—a thing involving
serious responsibility, which, however, was honourably fulfilled; for
trusts were afterwards created; and, by his “Deed of Declaration,” all
his interests in his chapels were transferred to his Legal Conference.
Thus we find Wesley, with no income whatever, except the small
amount arising out of his Oxford fellowship, involved in what, to
a poor man, were two serious undertakings. But even this was not
all the burden that he took upon himself. He spent the beginning of
November in London; and whilst there, two gentlemen, then unknown to
him, came again and again, urging him to preach in a place called
the Foundery, near Moorfields. With much reluctance he consented.
He writes:—“Sunday, November 11, I preached at eight to five or six
thousand, on the spirit of bondage and the spirit of adoption; and, at
five in the evening, to seven or eight thousand, in the place which
had been the king’s foundery for cannon.”[315] He was then pressed to
take the place into his own hands. He did so. The purchase-money was
£115; but the place being “a vast, uncouth heap of ruins,” a large
sum additional to this had to be expended in needful repairs, in
building two galleries for men and women hearers respectively, and in
enlarging a room for the society to almost thrice its present size.
To meet this large expenditure, Ball, Watkins, and other friends lent
him the purchase-money; and offered to pay subscriptions, some four,
some six, and some ten shillings a year towards the liquidation of
the debt. In three years, these subscriptions amounted to about £480,
leaving however a balance of nearly £300, for which Wesley was still
responsible.[316] From this it would seem that the entire cost of the
old Foundery was about £800.
This was the first Methodist meeting-house of which the metropolis
could boast, and a brief description of it may not be out of place.
It stood in the locality called “Windmill Hill,” now known by the name
of Windmill Street, a street that runs parallel with City Road, and
abuts on the north-west corner of Finsbury Square. The building was
placed on the east side of the street, some sixteen or eighteen yards
from Providence Row; and measured about forty yards in front, from
north to south, and about thirty-three yards in depth, from east to
west. There were two front doors, one leading to the chapel, and the
other to the preacher’s house, school, and bandroom. A bell was hung
in a plain belfry, and was rung every morning at five o’clock for
early service, and every evening at nine for family worship; as well
as at sundry other times. The chapel, which would accommodate some
fifteen hundred people, was without pews; but, on the ground floor,
immediately before the pulpit, were about a dozen seats with back
rails, appropriated to female worshippers. Under the front gallery were
the free seats for women; and, under the side galleries, the free seats
for men. The front gallery was used exclusively by females, and the
side galleries by males. “From the beginning,” says Wesley, “the men
and women sat apart, as they always did in the primitive church; and
none were suffered to call any place their own, but the first comers
sat down first. They had no pews; and all the benches for rich and poor
were of the same construction.”[317]
The bandroom was behind the chapel, on the ground floor, some eighty
feet long and twenty feet wide, and accommodated about three hundred
persons. Here the classes met; here, in winter, the five o’clock
morning service was conducted; and here were held, at two o’clock, on
Wednesdays and Fridays, weekly meetings for prayer and intercession.
The north end of the room was used for a school, and was fitted up
with desks; and at the south end was “The Book Room” for the sale of
Wesley’s publications.
Over the bandroom were apartments for Wesley, in which his mother
died;[318] and, at the end of the chapel was a dwelling house for his
domestics and assistant preachers; while attached to the whole was a
small building used as a coach-house and stable.[319]
Why was the building called the Foundery? Because, for a number of
years, it was used by the government in casting cannon. When Wesley
bought it, the edifice had been a ruin for about twenty years. In
1716, whilst recasting the injured guns taken from the French in the
successful campaigns of Marlborough, a terrible explosion blew off the
roof, shook the building, killed several of the workmen, burnt others,
and broke the limbs of not a few. This led to an abandonment of the
place, and the removal of the royal foundery to Woolwich.[320] The next
occupants were Wesley and the Methodists; and the echoes of prayer and
praise succeeded the clang of anvils and the roar of furnaces of fire.
When first opened, it was described by Silas Told as “a ruinous
place, with an old pantile covering,” the structure to a great extent
consisting of “decayed timbers,” and the pulpit being made of “a few
rough boards.”[321] It may be interesting, to the curious reader, to
add, that a few years ago, the old Foundery bell, used in calling the
people to the five o’clock preaching, was still in existence, and was
attached to the school at Friar’s Mount, London; that, at the present
moment, the old Foundery pulpit is preserved at Richmond, and is
used by the Richmond students every week; and that the old Foundery
chandelier is now in use in the chapel at Bowes, in Yorkshire.
This was really the cradle of London Methodism. Here Wesley began
to preach at the end of 1739. The character of the services held in
this rotten, pantile covered building may be learnt from Wesley’s
Works. Wesley began the service with a short prayer, then sung a hymn
and preached (usually about half an hour), then sung a few verses
of another hymn, and concluded with a prayer. His constant theme
was, salvation by faith, preceded by repentance, and followed by
holiness.[322] The place was rough and the people poor; but the service
simple, scriptural, beautiful. No wonder, that such a priest, shut out
of the elaborately wrought pulpits of the Established Church, and now
cooped up within a pulpit made of “_rough_ deal boards,” should be
powerful, popular, and triumphant.
Passing from pulpits to preachers, we must venture here to correct
an error, which, from the first, seems to have been current in the
Methodist community. All Methodist historians have assumed that Thomas
Maxfield was Methodism’s first lay preacher; that is, the first who was
allowed to expound the Scriptures without being formally ordained to
that holy service. This is a mistake. Thomas Maxfield was not converted
until the 21st of May, 1739; and yet, a month after this, we find John
Cennick, the converted land surveyor, employed with Wesley’s sanction,
in preaching to the Kingswood colliers.
Methodism’s first lay preacher deserves a passing notice. He has never
yet had justice done him, and we regret that limited space prevents
justice being rendered even here.
John Cennick was the son of Quakers, and, from infancy, was taught to
pray every night and morning. At thirteen years of age, he went nine
times, from Reading to London, to be apprenticed to a trade, but all
to no purpose, except that he was taken on trial by a carpenter, who
refused to retain his services when the time was come for his being
bound. In 1735, John was convinced of sin, while walking in Cheapside,
and, at once, left off song singing, card playing, and attending
theatres. Sometimes he wished to go into a popish monastery, to spend
his life in devout retirement. At other times, he longed to live in
a cave, sleeping on fallen leaves, and feeding on forest fruits. He
fasted long and often, and prayed nine times every day. He was afraid
of seeing ghosts, and terribly apprehensive lest he should meet the
devil. Fancying dry bread too great an indulgence for so great a
sinner as himself, he began to feed on potatoes, acorns, crabs, and
grass; and often wished he could live upon roots and herbs. At length,
on September 6, 1737, he found peace with God, and went on his way
rejoicing. Like Howel Harris, he, at once, commenced preaching; and
also began to write hymns, a number of which Charles Wesley, in July,
1739, corrected for the press.
We have already seen that, in March, 1739, Wesley and Cennick met at
Reading. Shortly after that, Whitefield proposed that Cennick should
become the master of the school in Kingswood, whose first stone was
laid in the month of May; and, on the 11th of June, off he set on
foot, from Reading to Bristol, sleeping all night in an old stable on
his way. On arriving there, he found that Wesley had gone to London;
but was invited to go to Kingswood to hear a young man (query, Thomas
Maxfield?) read a sermon to the colliers. The place for meeting was
under a sycamore tree, near the intended school. Four or five hundred
colliers were assembled, but the young reader had not arrived. Cennick
was requested to take his place; he reluctantly complied, preached
a sermon, and says, “The Lord bore witness with my words, insomuch
that many believed in that hour.” Cennick preached again on the day
following, and on the succeeding sabbath twice.
Meanwhile Howel Harris came; and, on the ensuing Tuesday, Wesley. How
did Wesley receive the two lay preachers? Harris went to Wesley’s
lodgings. They fell upon their knees; and Harris writes, “He was
greatly enlarged in prayer for me, and for all Wales.” Full of holy
feeling, the Welsh evangelist crossed the channel, and found wider
doors of usefulness than ever. Cennick too was not restrained. He tells
us, that many of the people desired Wesley to forbid him; but, so far
from doing so, he encouraged him; and, thus encouraged, he preached
constantly in Kingswood and the neighbouring villages for the next
eighteen months, and sometimes supplied Wesley’s place in Bristol, when
he was absent, preaching in other towns.[323]
Honour to whom honour is due. We repudiate the wish to take from
Maxfield a particle of fame, which of right belongs to him; but there
cannot be a doubt that John Cennick was one of Wesley’s lay preachers
before Maxfield was. Neither is there aught contradictory to this in
Wesley’s writings. It is true, that Wesley, after mentioning that the
first society was formed at the end of 1739, goes on to say: “After a
time, a young man, Thomas Maxfield, came and desired to help me as a
son in the gospel;”[324] but this is not opposed to the fact, that John
Cennick had already helped him at Kingswood, Bristol, and other places.
Myles thinks that it is probable, that Maxfield, Richards, and Westall
were all employed by Wesley in the beginning of the year 1740.[325]
Perhaps so; but we have already seen that Cennick was preaching, with
the approbation and encouragement of Wesley, as early as the month of
June, 1739.[326]
This is not the place to pursue the footsteps of Methodism’s first lay
preacher. Suffice it to remark, though his career was comparatively
short, in zealous and successful labour it is difficult to equal it.
Cennick had his weaknesses; but, in deadness to the world, communion
with God, Christian courage, and cheerful patience, he had few
superiors. Despite his Calvinism and his differences with Wesley, we
admire and love the man. He died in 1755.
Here then was another momentous step taken by the arch-Methodist.
Wesley had been bred within a strict ecclesiastical enclosure. He was
firm in his attachment to the principles and practices of the English
Church, and was far from being indifferent to the prerogatives of its
priests; but he was far too wise and reverent a man to say that the
salvation of the human family would be too dearly purchased if promoted
by a departure from church usages. Christianity, though conserved by
church order, does not exist for the sake of it. As a student of church
history, Wesley must have known that, again and again, unless order
had given way to a higher necessity, the gospel, instead of holding on
its way in its brightness and in its purity, would, long ere now, in
the hands of idolizers of ancient rules, have been extinguished in the
very path where it ought to have shed an unceasing flame. In no man was
there a greater combination of docility and courage; and hence, when
Wesley met with men like Cennick, full of fervent consciousness of the
reality, power, and blessedness of Christ’s religion; and employing a
style, terse from intensity of feeling, and copious from the fulness of
their theme,—no wonder that, instead of forbidding, he encouraged them
to preach the glorious truths, which they not merely understood, but
felt.
This was a startling innovation; and, doubtless, horrified the
stereotyped ministries and priesthoods existing round about; but the
fields were white to the harvest, and the labourers were few; and
Wesley could not, durst not, forbid an increase to the staff, because
the added workers had not been trained in colleges, and came not in all
the priestly paraphernalia of surplices and hoods, gowns and bands. No
doubt he would have preferred the employment of clerics like himself;
but, in the absence of such, he was driven to adopt the measure which
we think the salvation of his system, and, in some respects, its glory.
“I knew your brother well,” said Robinson, the Archbishop of Armagh,
when he met Charles Wesley at the Hotwells, Bristol: “I knew your
brother well; I could never credit all I heard respecting him and you;
but one thing in your conduct I could never account for, your employing
laymen.” “My Lord,” said Charles, “the fault is yours and your
brethren’s.” “How so?” asked the primate. “Because you hold your peace,
and the stones cry out.” “But I am told,” his grace continued, “that
they are unlearned men.” “Some are,” said the sprightly poet, “and so
the dumb ass rebukes the prophet.” His lordship said no more.[327]
The following letter of Whitefield has not been previously printed so
fully as at present. As it was written at the time when Cennick began
preaching, it may appropriately be inserted here. Its references to
other matters are also deeply interesting.
“LONDON, _June 25, 1739_.
“HONOURED SIR,—I suspend my judgment of Brother Watkins’ and
Cennick’s behaviour till I am better acquainted with the
circumstances of their proceeding. I think there is a great
difference between them and Howel Harris. He has offered
himself thrice for holy orders; him therefore and our friends
at Cambridge I shall encourage: others I cannot countenance in
acting in so public a manner. The consequences of beginning to
teach too soon will be exceeding bad—Brother Ingham is of my
opinion.
“I hear, honoured sir, you are about to print a sermon on
predestination. It shocks me to think of it; what will be the
consequences but controversy? If people ask me my opinion,
what shall I do? I have a critical part to act, God enable me
to behave aright! Silence on both sides will be best. It is
noised abroad already, that there is a division between you and
me. Oh, my heart within me is grieved!
“Providence to-morrow calls me to Gloucester. If you will be
pleased to come next week to London, I think, God willing, to
stay a few days at Bristol. Your brother Charles goes to Oxon.
I believe we shall be excommunicated soon. May the Lord enable
us to stand fast in the faith; and stir up your heart to watch
over the soul of, honoured sir,
“Your dutiful son and servant,
GEORGE WHITEFIELD.
“To the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, at Mrs. Grevil’s,
a Grocer in Wine Street, Bristol.”
We must proceed to another matter. Wesley writes:—
“In the latter end of the year 1739, eight or ten persons came
to me in London, who appeared to be deeply convinced of sin,
and earnestly groaning for redemption. They desired, I would
spend some time with them in prayer, and advise them how to
flee from the wrath to come. That we might have more time for
this great work, I appointed a day when they might all come
together, which, from thenceforward, they did every Thursday,
in the evening. To these, and as many more as desired to join
with them, (for the number increased daily,) I gave those
advices, from time to time, which I judged most needful for
them; and we always concluded our meeting with prayer suited
to their several necessities. This was the rise of the United
Society, first in London, and then in other places.”[328]
In another place, he writes:—
“The first evening about twelve persons came; the next week,
thirty or forty. When they were increased to about a hundred,
I took down their names and places of abode, intending, as
often as it was convenient, to call upon them at their houses.
Thus, without any previous plan, began the Methodist Society in
England,—a company of people associating together to help each
other to work out their own salvation.”[329]
No doubt the whole of this is strictly true; but there are other facts
to be remembered.
By the preaching of the two Wesleys and of Whitefield, a large number
of persons in London had been converted; and most of these had been
incorporated in the Moravian bands. When Wesley went to Bristol, at the
end of March, the work in London devolved, to a great extent, on his
brother Charles. Disputes soon sprung up. On Easter day, Charles had
a conversation with Zinzendorf “about motions, visions, and dreams,
and was confirmed in his dislike to them.” On April 28, Whitefield
preached in Islington churchyard; and, after he had done, Bowers, a
Moravian, got up to speak. Charles Wesley says: “I conjured him not;
but he beat me down, and followed _his impulse_.” On the 16th of
May, a dispute arose, in the Moravian meeting at Fetter Lane, about
lay preaching. Many were zealous for it; but Whitefield and Charles
Wesley declared against it. In June, another Moravian, John Shaw,
“the self-ordained priest,” as Charles Wesley calls him, “was brimful
of proud wrath and fierceness”; and two others, Bowers and Bray,
whom Whitefield designated “two grand enthusiasts,” followed Charles
to Blendon, “drunk with the spirit of delusion.” In the Moravian
society, Shaw “pleaded for his spirit of prophecy”; and charged Charles
Wesley “with love of pre-eminence, and with making his proselytes
twofold more the children of the devil than they were before.” Many
misunderstandings and offences had crept in; and Wesley came from
Bristol to put things right. A humiliation meeting was held at Fetter
Lane; and “we acknowledged,” says Wesley, “our having grieved God by
our divisions; ‘one saying, I am of Paul; another, I am of Apollos’; by
our leaning again to our own works, and trusting in them, instead of
Christ; by our resting in those little beginnings of sanctification,
which it had pleased Him to work in our souls; and, above all, by
blaspheming His work among us, imputing it either to nature, to the
force of imagination and animal spirits, or even to the delusion of
the devil.” Things seem to have proceeded more smoothly till about
September, when, in the absence of the two Wesleys, “certain men
crept in among them unawares, telling them, that they had deceived
themselves, and had no true faith at all. ‘For,’ said they, ‘none has
any justifying faith, who has ever any doubt or fear, which you know
you have; or who has not a clean heart, which you know you have not;
nor will you ever have it, till you leave off running to church and
sacrament, and praying, and singing, and reading either the Bible,
or any other book; for you cannot use these things without trusting
in them. Therefore, till you leave them off, you can never have true
faith; you can never till then trust in the blood of Christ.’”[330]
This was a serious heresy; and, on November 1, Wesley hurried up to
London to put a check to it. He acknowledges, that the Moravians
still held the grand doctrine of justification by faith; and that the
fruits of faith were “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
He testifies, that they were free from the sins of swearing, theft,
gluttony, drunkenness, and adultery; that they had no diversions but
such as become saints; that they regarded not outward adorning, and
were not slothful in business. He confesses, that they fed the hungry,
and clothed the naked; that their discipline was scarce inferior to
that of the apostolic age; and, that every one knew and kept his proper
place; but, despite all this, he found them far from perfect.
On first entering the society, he found Mr. Bray “highly commending
the being still before God; and speaking largely of the danger that
attended the doing of outward works, and of the folly of people running
about to church and sacrament.”
On Sunday, November 4, the “society met at seven in the morning, and
continued silent till eight.” In the evening, at Fetter Lane, “some
of the brethren asserted in plain terms: 1. That, till they had true
faith, they ought to be still; that is, to abstain from the means of
grace, the Lord’s supper in particular. 2. That the ordinances are not
means of grace, there being no other means than Christ.”
Three days later, Wesley had a long conference with Spangenberg, who
substantially avowed the same opinions. At night, the Fetter Lane
society sat an hour without speaking; and then there followed a warm
dispute, to prove that none ought to receive the Lord’s supper till
he had “the full assurance of faith.” Every day Wesley met with many
“who once knew in whom they had believed, but were now thrown into idle
reasonings, and were filled with doubts and fears. Many had left off
the means of grace, saying they must now cease from their own works,
and must trust in Christ alone; that they were poor sinners, and had
nothing to do but to lie at His feet.”
Wesley did his utmost to correct this state of things, and then, on
November 21, went back to Bristol. On his way, he came to Wycombe,
where he unexpectedly met Mr. Gambold and a Mr. Robson. He writes:
“After much consultation and prayer, we agreed—1. To meet yearly at
London on the eve of Ascension day. 2. To fix then the business to be
done the ensuing year; where, when, and by whom. 3. To meet quarterly
there, as many as can; viz., on the second Tuesday in July, October,
and January. 4. To send a monthly account to one another, of what
God hath done in each of our stations. 5. To inquire whether Messrs.
Hall, Sympson, Rogers, Ingham, Hutchins, Kinchin, Stonehouse, Cennick,
Oxlee, and Brown will join with us herein. 6. To consider whether there
be any others of our spiritual friends, who are able and willing so
to do.”[331] This arrangement is important as indicative of Wesley’s
purpose at this early period of his history; but it was never put into
execution. The rupture with the Moravians made it a dead letter.
Five weeks afterwards, he returned to London with a heavy heart.
“Scarce one in ten of the Moravians retained his first love; and most
of the rest were in the utmost confusion, biting and devouring one
another.” His soul was sick of their “sublime divinity.” He had a long
conversation with Molther, one of their ministers, and ascertained that
the difference between them was the following:—
1. The Moravians held that there are no degrees of faith; and that no
man has any degree of it, before he has the full assurance of faith,
the abiding witness of the Spirit, or the clear perception that Christ
dwelleth in him. Wesley dissented from this.
2. The Moravians taught that the way to attain faith is to wait for
Christ, and be still: that is, not to use the means of grace; not to go
to church; not to communicate; not to fast; not to use private prayer;
not to read the Scriptures; not to do temporal good; nor to attempt
doing spiritual good; because it was impossible for a man to use means
like these without trusting in them. Wesley believed just the opposite.
3. The Moravians thought that in propagating faith, guile might be
used: (1) By saying what we know will deceive the hearers, or lead them
to think the thing which is not; (2) by describing things a little
beyond the truth, in order to their coming up to it; (3) by speaking as
if we meant what we did not mean. Wesley denounced all this.
4. The Moravians believed that the fruits of their thus propagating
the faith in England were: (1) Much good had been done by it; (2) many
were unsettled from a false foundation; (3) many were brought into true
stillness; (4) some were grounded on the true foundation, who were
wrong before. Wesley, on the contrary, thought that very little good,
but much hurt, had been done, by such proceedings.
This was the state of things when Wesley “began the first Methodist
society in England.” He was dissatisfied with his old Moravian friends,
and well he might. He had been prominent in the formation of their
society at Fetter Lane, on the 1st of May, 1738; but his hopes and
aspirations concerning it were blighted; and hence he formed another
society of his own. Moravian heresies had, in London at least,
corrupted the Moravian bands; numbers were offended; these and others
repaired to Wesley; Wesley took down their names, and met them every
Thursday evening for spiritual advice and prayer; success followed; and
the Methodist society was instituted. We must return to this subject in
the next chapter.
Wesley spent most of the year 1739 in Bristol and the immediate
neighbourhood; but, at different times, he rendered important service
in other places. At Blackheath, he preached to twelve or fourteen
thousand people; and on Kennington Common to twenty thousand. In
Moorfields, he had a congregation of ten thousand. In Gloucester he
preached to seven thousand;[332] and in Bath, Bradford, and elsewhere,
to great multitudes. He also preached, at least once, in the mansion of
Lady Huntingdon, taking a bold text for such a fashionable audience:
“The cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the
desires of other things, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”
He also met with some adventures and incidents worth mentioning. In
riding to Rose Green, his horse suddenly fell, and rolled over and
over. A gentleman, at Bradford, who had wished him good luck in
the name of the Lord, told him that his fellow collegians at Oxford
always considered him “a little crack-brained.” In one instance, the
pressgang came when he was in the middle of his sermon, and seized one
of his hearers. While preaching in Turner’s Hall, London, the floor
gave way, but fortunately the vault below was filled with hogsheads of
tobacco, so that the crowded congregation only sunk a foot or two, and
he proceeded without further interruption. At Oxford, he was grieved
to find that none now visited the workhouse and the prison, and that
the Methodist little school was about to be given up. At Stanley, on
a little green, he preached for two hours amid the darkness of an
October night. At Newport, he addressed “the most insensible, ill
behaved people” he had seen in Wales; one old man cursing and swearing
incessantly, and taking up a great stone to throw at him. The people of
Wales generally he found as ignorant of gospel truth as the Cherokee
Indians; and asks, “What spirit is he of, who had rather these poor
creatures should perish for lack of knowledge than that they should
be saved, even by the exhortations of Howel Harris, or an itinerant
preacher?” Words these well worth pondering; for they are added proof,
that Wesley, even as early as 1739, was not opposed to the employment
of lay evangelists.
The principle upon which Wesley acted was to shrink from nothing that
he judged to be conducive to his being made a Christian.[333] On this
ground he went to Georgia, and to Germany; and says, “I am ready to
go to Abyssinia or China, or whithersoever it shall please God to
call me.” He was accused of being an enemy of the Church of England;
but maintained that he was not. The doctrines he preached were the
doctrines of the Church, as laid down in her prayers, articles, and
homilies. He allows that there were five points of difference between
him and many of the clergy; but he contends that _they_, not _he_,
were unfaithful to the Church. The points were these:—1. Those from
whom he differed spoke of justification, either as the same thing with
sanctification, or as something consequent upon it. He believed it to
be wholly distinct from sanctification, and necessarily antecedent
to it. 2. They spoke of good works as the cause of justification. He
believed the death and righteousness of Christ to be the whole and
sole cause of it. 3. They spoke of good works as existing previous to
justification. He believed that no good work is possible, previous to
justification, and therefore no good work can be a condition of it;
till we are justified we are ungodly, and incapable of good works; we
are justified by faith alone, faith without works, faith producing all
good works, yet including none. 4. They spoke of sanctification as if
it were an outward thing. He believed it to be an inward thing,—the
life of God in the soul of man; a participation of the Divine nature;
the mind that was in Christ. 5. They spoke of the new birth as
synonymous with baptism; or, at most, a change from a vicious to a
virtuous life. He believed it to be an entire change of nature, from
the image of the devil, wherein we are born, to the image of God;
a change from earthly and sensual to heavenly and holy affections.
“There is, therefore,” says he, “a wide, essential, fundamental,
irreconcilable difference between us. If they speak the truth as it is
in Jesus, I am found a false witness before God. But if I teach the way
of God in truth, they are blind leaders of the blind.”[334] He contends
that he “simply described the plain, old religion of the Church of
England, which was now almost everywhere spoken against, under the new
name of Methodism.”[335]
Wesley was a great reader; and some of the most interesting entries
in his Journals are his critiques on books; but, in 1739, he seems to
have been too busy preaching to have had time for reading. The only
notice of this kind is the following: “1739, October 23. In riding to
Bradford, I read over Mr. Law’s book on the new birth. Philosophical,
speculative, precarious; Behmenish, void, and vain! ‘O what a fall is
there!’” This is a harsh reflection upon an old friend; but, about a
year and a half before, there had been the unfortunate quarrel with
William Law, already mentioned. See pp. 185‒8.
Up to the present, Wesley’s mother had been his chief counsellor.
Immediately after his conversion in May, 1738, he went to Germany,
and returned to England in September. It so happened, that he and his
mother had no interview until nine months after this. Before he went to
Herrnhuth, he had related to her the particulars of his conversion, for
which “she heartily blessed God, who had brought him to so just a way
of thinking.” Meanwhile, however, she had been prejudiced against him,
and had entertained “strange fears concerning him, being convinced that
he had greatly erred from the faith.” This was not of long continuance.
Hence the following entry in Wesley’s journal:—
“1739, September 3.—I talked largely with my mother, who told
me that, till a short time since, she had scarce heard such
a thing mentioned as the having God’s Spirit bearing witness
with our spirit: much less did she imagine that this was the
common privilege of all true believers. ‘Therefore,’ said she,
‘I never durst ask for it myself. But two or three weeks ago,
while my son Hall was pronouncing these words, in delivering
the cup to me, “The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was
given for thee,” the words struck through my heart, and I knew
God, for Christ’s sake, had forgiven me all my sins.‘ “I asked
whether her father (Dr. Annesley) had not the same faith;
and whether she had not heard him preach it to others. She
answered, he had it himself; and declared, a little before his
death, that, for more than forty years, he had no darkness, no
fear, no doubt at all of his being accepted in the Beloved.
But that, nevertheless, she did not remember to have heard him
preach, no, not once, explicitly upon it: whence she supposed
he also looked upon it as the peculiar blessing of a few; not
as promised to all the people of God.”[336]
Ever after this, Susannah Wesley resided chiefly in London, and
attended the ministry of her sons John and Charles. She heartily
embraced their doctrines, and conversed with the members of their
society. Hence the following from one of her letters to Charles, dated
December 27, 1739:—
“Your brother, whom I shall henceforth call _Son Wesley_,
since my dear Sam is gone home, has just been with me, and
much revived my spirits. Indeed, I have often found that he
never speaks in my hearing without my receiving some spiritual
benefit. But his visits are seldom and short; for which I never
blame him, because I know he is well employed, and, blessed be
God, hath great success in his ministry. But, my dear Charles,
still I want either him or you; for, indeed, in the most
literal sense, I am become a little child, and need continual
succour. For these several days, I have had the conversation
of many good Christians, who have refreshed, in some measure,
my fainting spirits. I hope we shall shortly speak face to
face. But then, alas! when you come, your brother leaves me!
Yet that is the will of God, in whose blessed service you are
engaged; who has hitherto blessed your labours, and preserved
your persons. That He may continue so to prosper your work, and
protect you both from evil, and give you strength and courage
to preach the true gospel, in opposition to the united powers
of evil men and evil angels, is the hearty prayer of, dear
Charles,
“Your loving mother,
“SUSANNAH WESLEY.”[337]
Reference is made in the above extract to the death of Samuel Wesley,
which occurred on November 6, 1739, at the early age of forty-nine. Up
to the very last, he was strongly opposed to the Methodist movement of
his brothers. In a letter to his mother, written only seventeen days
before his death, he says:—
“My brothers are now become so notorious, that the world will
be curious to know when and where they were born, what schools
bred at, what colleges of in Oxford, and when matriculated,
what degrees they took, and where, when, and by whom ordained.
I wish they may spare so much time as to vouchsafe a little
of their story. For my own part, I had much rather have them
picking straws within the walls, than preaching in the area of
Moorfields.
“It was with exceeding concern and grief, I heard you had
countenanced a spreading delusion, so far as to be one of
Jack’s congregation. Is it not enough that I am bereft of both
my brothers, but must my mother follow too? I earnestly beseech
the Almighty to preserve you from joining a schism at the close
of your life, as you were unfortunately engaged in one at the
beginning of it. It will cost you many a protest, should you
retain your integrity, as I hope to God you will. They boast of
you already as a disciple.
“They design separation. They are already forbidden all the
pulpits in London; and to preach in that diocese is actual
schism. In all likelihood, it will come to the same all over
England, if the bishops have courage enough. They leave off the
liturgy in the fields; and though Mr. Whitefield expresses
his value for it, he never once read it to his tatterdemalions
on a common. Their societies are sufficient to dissolve all
other societies but their own. Will any man of common sense, or
spirit, suffer any domestic to be in a band, engaged to relate
to five or to ten people everything, without reserve, that
concerns the person’s conscience, howmuchsoever it may concern
the family? Ought any married persons to be there, unless
husband and wife be there together? This is literally putting
asunder whom God hath joined together.
“As I told Jack, I am not afraid the Church should
excommunicate him (discipline is at too low an ebb), but, that
he should excommunicate the Church. It is pretty near it.
Holiness and good works are not so much as _conditions_ of our
acceptance with God. Lovefeasts are introduced, and extemporary
prayers, and expositions of Scripture, which last are enough
to bring in all confusion; nor is it likely they will want any
miracles to support them. He only who ruleth the madness of the
people can stop them from being a formed sect. Ecclesiastical
censures have lost their terrors; thank fanaticism on the one
hand, and atheism on the other. To talk of persecution from
thence is mere insult. It is—
“To call the bishop, Grey-beard Goff,
And make his power as mere a scoff
As Dagon, when his hands were off.”[338]
Sixteen nights after writing the above, Samuel Wesley went to bed as
well as usual. At three next morning, he was seized with illness,
and, four hours afterwards, expired. John Wesley, at the time, was in
London, and Charles in Bristol; but, as soon as possible, they hastened
to Tiverton, where they rejoiced to hear that, several days before he
went hence, God had given to their brother a calm and full assurance of
his interest in Christ.
In reviewing the events of the year 1739, it only remains to notice
Wesley’s publications. These were the following:—
1. “An Abstract of the Life and Death of Mr. Thomas Halyburton. With
recommendatory Epistle by George Whitefield, and Preface by John
Wesley.” Oswald: London. 1739.
Halyburton was a Scotchman, and was born in 1674. At the age of
twenty-six, he became a Presbyterian minister. Ten years afterwards,
he was appointed Professor of Divinity in the college of St. Andrews;
but almost immediately was seized with pleurisy, and died in the
thirty-seventh year of his age.
Wesley’s preface is dated “London, February 9, 1739,” and the book
was published within a few weeks afterwards; for Wesley’s brother
Samuel, in a letter bearing date, April 16, 1739, says: “I have got
your abridgment of Halyburton; and, if it please God to allow me life
and strength, I shall demonstrate that the Scot as little deserves
preference to all Christians, as the book to all writings but those you
mention. There are two flagrant falsehoods in the very first chapter.
But your eyes are so fixed upon one point, that you overlook everything
else. You overshoot, but Whitefield raves.”[339]
Wesley’s abridged Life of Halyburton is a beautifully written, and
most edifying book. Why did Wesley publish it? There can be but
little doubt that his chief reasons were:—1. Because it contains a
living exemplification of real religion. And 2. Because Halyburton’s
struggles, doubts, fears, and general experience, previous to his
finding peace with God, through faith in Christ, bear a striking
resemblance to the case of Wesley himself. After describing that the
kingdom of God, within us, is holiness and happiness, and that the way
of attaining it is a true and living faith, Wesley, in his preface,
says: “This work of God in the soul of man is so described in the
following treatise, as I have not seen it in any other, either ancient
or modern, in our own or any other language; so that I cannot but value
it, next to the holy Scripture, above any other human composition,
except only the ‘Christian’s Pattern,’ and the small remains of Clemens
Romanus, Polycarp, and Ignatius.”
In the same preface, Wesley propounds thus early a doctrine, which
afterwards held a conspicuous place in the system of truth he taught.
In answering the objection, that “the gospel covenant does not promise
entire freedom from sin,” he writes: “What do you mean by the word
sin? Do you mean those numberless weaknesses and follies, sometimes
improperly termed sins of infirmity? If so, we shall not put off these
but with our bodies. But if you mean, it does not promise entire
freedom from sin, in its proper sense, or from committing it, this is
by no means true, unless the Scripture be false. Though it is possible
a man may be a child of God, who is not fully freed from sin, it does
not follow that freedom from sin is impossible; or that it is not to
be expected by all. It is described by the Holy Ghost as the common
privilege of all.”
2. Another of Wesley’s publications, in 1739, was entitled: “Nicodemus;
or, a Treatise on the Fear of Man. From the German of Augustus Herman
Francke. Abridged by John Wesley.” Bristol: S. and F. Farley. 1739.
The subject of the treatise was peculiarly adapted to Wesley’s present
position; and the whole is written in his best, nervous, clear, classic
style.
3. Wesley’s third publication was two treatises of ninety-nine pages,
12mo; the first on Justification by Faith only; the second on the
Sinfulness of Man’s Natural Will, and his utter inability to do works
acceptable to God until he be justified and born again of the Spirit
of God: by Dr. Barnes. “With Preface, containing some account of the
author, extracted from the Book of Martyrs. By John Wesley.”
This was another book congenial to Wesley’s present feelings; inasmuch
as it was full of the great doctrine, which was now the theme of his
daily ministry.
4. Towards the end of 1739,[340] Wesley published his tract, entitled
“The Character of a Methodist.” He states, that the name of Methodists
is not one which they have taken to themselves, but one fixed upon them
by way of reproach, without their approbation or consent. The tract was
written at the urgent request of numbers of people, who were anxious
to know what were “the principles, practice, and distinguishing marks
of the sect which was everywhere spoken against.” The distinguishing
marks of a Methodist are, not his opinions, though the Methodists
are fundamentally distinguished from Jews, Turks, and infidels; from
Papists; and from Socinians and Arians: neither are the marks of a
Methodist “words or phrases:” nor “actions, customs, or usages of an
indifferent nature:” nor the laying of the whole stress of religion on
any single part of it. “A Methodist is one who has the love of God shed
abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him; one who loves
the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with
all his mind, and with all his strength. He rejoices evermore, prays
without ceasing, and in everything gives thanks. His heart is full of
love to all mankind, and is purified from envy, malice, wrath, and
every unkind or malign affection. His own desire, and the one design of
his life is not to do his own will, but the will of Him that sent him.
He keeps not only some, or most of God’s commandments, but all, from
the least to the greatest. He follows not the customs of the world;
for vice does not lose its nature through its becoming fashionable. He
fares not sumptuously every day. He cannot lay up treasures upon earth
any more than he can take fire into his bosom. He cannot adorn himself,
on any pretence, with gold or costly apparel. He cannot join in any
diversion that has the least tendency to vice. He cannot speak evil of
his neighbour, no more than he can tell a lie. He cannot utter unkind,
or idle words. No corrupt communication ever comes out of his mouth.
He does good unto all men; unto neighbours and strangers, friends and
enemies.” “These,” says Wesley, “are the principles and practices of
our sect; these are the marks of a true Methodist. By these alone do
Methodists desire to be distinguished from other men.”
Such were Methodists when Methodism was first founded in 1739. No
wonder God was with them, and honoured them with such success. Is John
Wesley’s Character of a Methodist descriptive of all the Methodists
living now? Would to God it were!
5. Another of Wesley’s publications, in 1739, was entitled: “Hymns
and Sacred Poems. Published by John Wesley, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln
College, Oxford; and Charles Wesley, M.A., Student of Christ Church,
Oxford.” London: 12mo, pages 223.
As this book has recently been reprinted by the Methodist Conference
Office, (“Wesley Poetry,” vol. i.,) a detailed description of its
contents is not necessary. Suffice it to remark, that, besides the
productions of his brother, the volume contains at least twenty
translations from the German by Wesley himself, and that these are
among the finest hymns the Methodists ever sing. In fact, with a few
exceptions, the hymns of the two Wesleys are the only productions in
the book worth having. Many are devout but literary rubbish, and
utterly unworthy of being used in public worship. Some of the poems are
passable; a few are beautiful; but others might have been left, without
any loss to the Christian public, in the limbo of oblivion. Had the
publication consisted only of John and Charles Wesley’s hymns, it would
have been one of the choicest productions ever printed; as in other
things, so in this, an admixture made it weak.
6. It may be added, that it was probably in 1739 that Wesley published
an extract of his journal, from his embarking for Georgia, October 14,
1735, to his return to London, February 1, 1737; but of this we are not
certain, the first edition being without date.
The substance of this has been already given, and hence we pass, at
once, to the year 1740.
1740.
[Sidenote: 1740 Age 37]
The Moravian wranglings brought Wesley to the metropolis in 1739; and,
on the 3rd of January following, he left his friends, still “subverting
one another’s souls by idle controversies and strife of words;” and
came to Bristol on January 9.
Here he purposed to remain; but within a month he was back to London. A
young surgeon, of the name of Snowde, had met in Bristol a man of the
name of Ramsey, who in a state of destitution and distress had applied
to Wesley for relief. Wesley employed him in writing and in keeping
accounts for him, and afterwards in teaching a school instituted by the
Bristol society.[341] Ramsey brought the young surgeon to hear Wesley
preach. Both were rascals, and availed themselves of an opportunity of
stealing £30 that had been collected towards building Kingswood school.
Snowde went off to London; fell in with his old acquaintance; committed
highway robbery; was arrested, tried, and condemned to die. While in
Newgate, awaiting the execution of his sentence, he wrote to a friend,
adjuring Wesley, “by the living God,” to come and see him before his
death. Wesley, who had been robbed so sacrilegiously, started off,
on a journey of more than two hundred miles, purposely to visit the
convict thief. He found him apparently penitent, and having only a week
to live. On the day before his sentence was to be executed, the poor
creature wrote:—“I trust God has forgiven me all my sins, washing them
away in the blood of the Lamb.” Next morning a reprieve was sent, and,
six weeks afterwards, he was ordered for transportation. Whether Wesley
assisted in obtaining the commutation of his sentence we have no means
of knowing;[342] but as soon as the affair was settled he returned
to Bristol; where, with the exception of a brief interval of about a
week’s duration, he continued until the month of June. The rest of the
year, excepting about three weeks, was spent in London.
In Bristol, the work, in its outward aspects, was greatly altered.
Wesley writes:—“Convictions sink deeper and deeper; love and joy are
more calm, even, and steady.”
Still there were a few instances similar to those that had occurred
in the previous year. On January 13, while he was administering the
sacrament at the house of a sick person in Kingswood, a woman “sunk
down as dead.” A week after, she was “filled with the love of God,
and with all peace and joy in believing.” On January 24, after he had
preached in Bristol, another woman caught hold of him, crying:—“I
have sinned beyond forgiveness. I have been cursing you in my heart,
and blaspheming God. I am damned; I know it; I feel it; I am in hell;
I have hell in my heart.” On April 3, the congregations in Bristol
were remarkably visited; and “the cries of desire, joy, and love
were on every side.” Five weeks after, another phase of excitement
was presented. The people began to laugh; and, though it was a great
grief to them, the laughing spirit was stronger than they were able
to resist. One woman, who was known to be no dissembler, “sometimes
laughed till she was almost strangled; then she broke out into
cursing and blaspheming; then stamped and struggled with incredible
strength, so that four or five could scarce hold her; then cried out,
‘O eternity, eternity! O that I had no soul! O that I had never been
born!’ At last, she faintly called on Christ to help her,” and her
excitement ceased. Most of the society were convinced, that those
who laughed had no power to help it; but there were two exceptions:
Elizabeth B—— and Anne H——. At length, says Wesley, “God suffered
Satan to teach them better. Both of them were suddenly seized in the
same manner as the rest, and laughed whether they would or no, almost
without ceasing. Thus they continued for two days, a spectacle to all;
and were then, upon prayer made for them, delivered in a moment.”
What are we to think of this? Wesley attributes it to Satan, and, in
confirmation of his opinion, recites an instance which had occurred in
his own history while at Oxford. According to their custom on Sundays,
he and his brother Charles were walking in the meadows, singing psalms,
when all at once Charles burst into a loud fit of laughter. Wesley
writes:—“I asked him if he was distracted; and began to be angry.
But presently I began to laugh as loud as he; nor could we possibly
refrain, though we were ready to tear ourselves in pieces. We were
forced to go home without singing another line.”
Amidst all this, however, there were happy deaths at Bristol. Margaret
Thomas died in the highest triumph of faith, her will swallowed up in
the will of God, and her hope full of immortality.[343] And one of the
Kingswood converts “longed to be dissolved and to be with Christ;” some
of her last words being, “I know His arms are round me; for His arms
are like the rainbow, they go round heaven and earth.” These were among
the first Methodists that entered heaven; and, no doubt, it was deaths
like theirs which prompted not a few of the triumphant funereal hymns
that gushed so exultingly from the poetic soul of Wesley’s brother.
The New Room at Bristol, as the first Methodist meeting-house was
called, was now opened. Wesley expounded and preached daily, choosing
for exposition the Acts of the Apostles, and for sermons the greatest
texts of the New Testament. He was also one of the most active of
philanthropists. The severity of the frost in January threw hundreds
out of work, and reduced them to a state bordering on starvation; but
Wesley made collections, and fed a hundred, and sometimes a hundred
and fifty, hungry wretches in a day. He visited Bristol Bridewell, and
tried to benefit and to comfort poor prisoners, till the commanding
officer gave strict orders that neither Wesley nor any of his followers
should in future be admitted, because he and they were all atheists.
Of these same Bristol “atheists,” Wesley himself writes, “They were
indeed as little children, not artful, not wise in their own eyes, not
doting on controversy and strife of words; but truly determined to know
nothing save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” Such they were when
Wesley left them at the beginning of the month of June; and such his
brother found them. “O what simplicity,” remarks Charles Wesley, “is in
this childlike people! O that our London brethren would come to school
at Kingswood! These _are_ what they _pretend_ to be. God knows their
poverty; but they are rich.”[344]
Unfortunately broils generally broke out where Charles was pastor.
This was his affliction, if not his fault. Before June was ended, he
began to “rebuke sharply” some who thought themselves elect. He also
read his journal to the bands “as an antidote to stillness.” When
some of the people cried out, he “bade them to be quiet.” He reproved
Hannah Barrow before the assembled society at Kingswood; and exercised
discipline upon others. All this might be proper and expedient; but it
was evidently of little use; for, when his brother returned to Bristol
on September 1, his first sermon was addressed to backsliders. He met
with one who had become wise far above what is written; and another who
had been lifted up with the abundance of joy God had given her, and
had fallen into blasphemies and vain imaginations. Later in the year,
he found many “lame and turned out of the way.” There were “jealousies
and misunderstandings.” There had been a Kingswood riot, on account
of the dearness of corn. Charles Wesley rushed into the midst of it,
and, finding a number of his converted colliers, who had been forced to
join the disturbers of the public peace, he “gleaned a few from every
company,” and “marched with them singing to the school,” where they
held a two hours’ prayer-meeting, that God would chain the lion. He
had to warn the people against apostasy. Some could not refrain from
railing. John Cennick, in December, told Wesley that he was not able
to agree with him, because he failed to preach the truth respecting
election. The predestinarians formed themselves into a party, “to
have a church within themselves, and to give themselves the sacrament
in bread and water.”[345] So that when Wesley, on December 26, went to
Kingswood, in order to preach at the usual hour, there was not more
than half-a-dozen of the Kingswood people to hear him, all the others
having become the followers of Calvinistic Cennick.
There were other troubles in Bristol, in 1740. After several
disturbances in the month of March, the mob, on the 1st of April,
filled the street and court and alleys round the place where Wesley was
expounding, and shouted, cursed, and swore most fearfully. A number of
the rioters were arrested; and, within a fortnight, one of them had
hanged himself; a second was seized with serious illness, and sent to
desire Wesley’s prayers; and a third came to him, confessing that he
had been hired and made drunk to create disturbance, but, on coming to
the place, found himself deprived of speech and power.
Concurrent with this unpleasantness, other parties used their utmost
endeavours to prejudice the mind of Howel Harris, gleaning up
idle stories concerning Wesley, and retailing them in Wales. “And
yet these,” says Wesley, “are good Christians! these whisperers,
talebearers, backbiters, evil speakers! Just such Christians as
murderers or adulterers!” The curate of Penreul averred, upon his
personal knowledge, that Wesley was a papist. Another man, a popish
priest named Beon, while Wesley was preaching in Bristol, cried out,
“Thou art a hypocrite, a devil, an enemy to the Church. This is
false doctrine. It is not the doctrine of the Church. It is damnable
doctrine. It is the doctrine of devils.” At Upton, the bells were rung
to drown his voice. At Temple church, the converted colliers, and even
Wesley’s brother Charles, were repelled from the sacramental table,
and threatened with arrest. William Seward, the friend and travelling
companion of George Whitefield, came to Bristol, and renounced the
friendship of the two Wesleys, “in bitter words of hatred;” and Mr.
Tucker preached against them, and condemned their irregularities in
reforming and converting men.
So much respecting Bristol: let us turn to London. For the first five
months, in 1740, Charles Wesley was the pastor of the London Moravians
and Methodists, but conjoined with him was Philip Henry Molther, who
was the Moravian favourite.
Molther was a native of Alsace, and a divinity student in the
university of Jena. In 1737, he became the private tutor of
Zinzendorf’s only son, and instructed him in French and music. On
the 18th of October, 1739, he arrived in London, on his way to
Pennsylvania. Bohler had left England; and the society in Fetter Lane
was under the care of the two Wesleys.[346] Being an ordained Moravian
minister, the people were anxious to hear Molther preach. At first, he
spoke to them in Latin, with the help of an interpreter; but shortly
was able to make himself understood in English. He was not satisfied
with the Fetter Lane Moravians, for, says he, they had “adopted many
most extraordinary usages.” The first time he entered their meeting, he
was alarmed and almost terror stricken at “their sighing and groaning,
their whining and howling, which strange proceeding they called the
demonstration of the Spirit of power.” Molther, however, soon became
extremely popular. Not only was the meeting-house in Fetter Lane filled
with hearers, but the courtyard as well. Within a fortnight after his
arrival, Wesley came from Bristol, “and the first person he met with
was one whom he had left strong in faith, and zealous of good works;
but who now told him, that Molther had fully convinced her she never
had any faith at all, and had advised her, till she received faith, to
be still, ceasing from outward works.” This was on November 1; and what
followed, to the end of 1739, has been related already.
In January, 1740, Molther requested Wesley to furnish him with a
translation of a German hymn; and the magnificent one beginning, “Now I
have found the ground wherein,” was the result. For this, Molther, in a
letter dated January 25, 1740, thanks the translator, and says, “I like
it better than any other hymn I have seen in English.” He then adds:—
“MY DEAR BROTHER,—I love you with a real love in the wounds of
my Redeemer; and whenever I remember England, and the labourers
in the kingdom of our Saviour therein, you come in my mind; and
I can but pray our Lord, that He may open to you the hidden
treasures of the mysteries of the gospel, which, as I have seen
by two of your discourses, you want to know and to experience
a little more in its depths. It is a blessed thing to preach
out of that fulness, and by experimental notions of the blood
of Christ. If you seek for this as an empty, poor sinner, it
undoubtedly will be given you, because it is only for such; and
when we cannot reach it with our desires, we may surely believe
that our hearts are not empty vessels. This is a very great and
important thing, and a mystery as well as all other things,
unless the Lord hath revealed them unto us. I wish that our
Saviour, for His own sake, may give you an entire satisfaction
in this matter, and fill up your heart with a solid knowledge
of His bloody atonement. My love to your brother Charles and
all your brethren. I am your affectionate and unworthy brother,
“P. H. MOLTHER.”[347]
From this vague and misty epistle, it is evident that the views of
Molther were not entertained by Wesley. For this we are thankful. Who
can tell what is meant by loving a man “in the wounds of the Redeemer”?
and by having the heart filled “up with a solid knowledge of His bloody
atonement”? With all his imperfections, Wesley had learned to express
his ideas in language much preferable to this.
Molther remained in the metropolis till about September, 1740, when,
instead of proceeding to Pennsylvania as he intended, he was recalled
to Germany. During this ten months‘residence, his diligence was
exemplary, but its results disastrous. In the daytime, he visited from
house to house. At nights, he met the bands, and often preached. James
Hutton, in a letter to Zinzendorf, dated March 14, 1740, writes:—
“MOST BELOVED BISHOP AND BROTHER,—
“My heart is poor, and I feel continually, that the blood of
Christ will be a great gift, when I can obtain it to overstream
my heart.
“At London, Molther preaches four times a week in English to
great numbers; and, from morning till night, he is engaged in
conversing with the souls, and labouring to bring them into
better order. They get a great confidence towards him, and many
of them began to be in great sorrow when they expected him to
be about to go away. I humbly beg you would leave him with
us, some time longer at the least. He continues very simple,
and improves exceedingly in the English language. The souls
are exceedingly thirsty, and hang on his words. He has had
many blessings. The false foundation many had made has been
discovered, and now speedily the one only foundation, Christ
Jesus, will be laid in many souls.
“John Wesley, being resolved to _do_ all things himself, and
having told many souls that they were justified, who have since
discovered themselves to be otherwise, and having mixed the
works of the law with the gospel as _means_ of grace, is at
enmity against the Brethren. Envy is not extinct in him. His
heroes falling every day almost into poor sinners, frightens
him; but, at London, the spirit of the Brethren prevails
against him. In a conference lately, where he was speaking
that souls ought to go to church as often as they could, I
besought him to be easy and not disturb himself, and I would
go to church as often as he would meet me there; but he would
not insist on it. He seeks occasion against the Brethren, but
I hope he will find none in us. I desired him simply to keep
to his office in the body of Christ, _i.e._ to awaken souls in
preaching, but not to pretend to lead them to Christ. But he
will have the glory of doing all things. I fear, by-and-by, he
will be an open enemy of Christ and His church. His brother
Charles is coming to London, determined to oppose all such as
shall not use the means of grace, after his sense of them. I
am determined to be still. I will let our Saviour govern this
whirlwind. Both John Wesley and Charles are dangerous snares to
many young women. Several are in love with them. I wish they
were married to some good sisters; though I would not give them
one of mine, even if I had many.
“In Yorkshire, Ingham and W. Delamotte are united to the
Brethren. Some thousand souls are awakened. They are a very
simple people. Some months will be necessary to bring them into
order, and Toltschig will not hurry as we Englishmen do.
“At Oxford, some good souls at first could not be reconciled
with lay teaching, stillness, etc.; but now some will come to
Christ. About six are in a fine way. Fifty, or thereabouts,
come to hear Viney three times a week, and he gets their hearts
more and more. He is poor in spirit, and gradually returns to
first principles.
“At Bristol, the souls are wholly under C. Wesley, who leads
them into many things, which they will find a difficulty
to come out of; for, at present, I believe, it will not be
possible to help them. First their leader must feel his heart,
or the souls must find him out.
“In Wales, some thousands are stirred up. They are an
exceedingly simple and honest people, but they are taught the
Calvinistic scheme. However, the young man, Howel Harris, who
has been the great instrument in this work, is very teachable
and humble, and loves the Brethren.
“My father and mother are in the same state, or rather in a
worse. My sister is much worse than ever. But, when grace can
be received, they will be blessed instruments, and bring great
glory to Him in whose heart’s blood I desire to be washed.
“I am your poor, yet loving brother, and the congregation’s
child,
“JAMES HUTTON.”[348]
This is a long, loose letter; but important, as descriptive of the
Wesleys and of the work of God in general, from the standpoint of the
Moravians. They evidently thought themselves the prime, if not the
only, instruments in the present great revival; and this, excepting
Scotland, Wales, and Bristol, to a great extent, was true. The work
they had already done and contemplated was marvellous. A curious
letter, dated December, 1739, is published in Doddridge’s Diary and
Correspondence, vol. iii., p. 265, in which Zinzendorf addresses
Doddridge as “the very reverend man, much beloved in the bowels of the
blessed Redeemer, pastor of Northampton, and vigilant theologian.”
Recounting the triumphs of the gospel, he tells the Northampton pastor
that Switzerland has heard the truth; Greenland resounds with the
gospel; thirty Caffrarians had been baptized; and a thousand negroes in
the West Indies. Savannah, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Berbice, and
Surinam were expecting fruit; ten or fifteen heathen tribes in Virginia
were about to be visited; Ceylon and Lapland had both been reached;
the gospel was being preached in Russia; Wallachia was succoured;
Constantinople was blessed; through the whole of Germany the churches
were preparing for Christ; and the Brethren were about to go to the
East Indies, to Persian Magi, and to New York savages. All this had
been done within the last twenty years. The Moravians, like a hive of
bees, were all workers. By the grace of God, they had accomplished
wonders; and yet, in London at least, through false teaching, they
were in danger of being wrecked. The Wesleys tried to keep them right;
but, in doing so, incurred censure instead of receiving thanks. A long
extract from one of James Hutton’s letters has just been given; and
another must be added. He writes:—
“John Wesley, displeased at not being thought so much of as
formerly, and offended with the easy way of salvation as
taught by the Brethren, publicly spoke against our doctrines
in his sermons, and his friends did the same. In June, 1740,
he formed his Foundery society, in opposition to the one which
met at Fetter Lane, and which had become a Moravian society.
Many of our usual hearers consequently left us, especially
the females. We asked his forgiveness, if in anything we had
aggrieved him, but he continued full of wrath, accusing the
Brethren that they, by dwelling exclusively on the doctrine
of faith, neglected the law, and zeal for sanctification. In
short, he became our declared opponent, and the two societies
of the Brethren and Methodists thenceforward were separated,
and became independent of each other.”[349]
This is a painful subject; and hitherto, by both Moravian and Methodist
historians, has been touched with a tender hand; but men have a right
to know the foibles and follies of the good and great, as well as
the virtues and victories for which they have been wreathed with
honour. Besides, the recent publication of the memoirs of James Hutton
renders it requisite that something more should be said respecting the
squabbles of 1740.
In the extracts just given, Hutton accuses Wesley of telling men that
they were justified when they were not; of envy; of being at enmity
against the Moravians; of being able to awaken sinners, but not to lead
them to the Saviour; of being a dangerous snare to young females; and
of being displeased at the decline of his popularity, and offended with
the Brethren’s easy method of salvation. Is all this true? Let us see.
The Moravian statements have been given with the utmost honesty; let
the reader take the Methodist statements on the other side.
Be it borne in mind, that Wesley was one of the original members of
the Fetter Lane society, founded on the 1st of May, 1738; whereas
Molther was first introduced among them in the month of October, 1739.
Uneasiness and cavils sprung up immediately after Molther’s arrival;
and, before the year was ended, Wesley had to come twice from Bristol
to try to check germinating evils, and to put wrong things right.
On New Year’s day, 1740, he writes: “I endeavoured to explain to
our brethren the true, Christian, scriptural stillness, by largely
unfolding these words, ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’” The day
after, he “earnestly besought them to ‘stand in the old paths.’ They
all seemed convinced, and cried to God to heal their backslidings.”
Wesley adds: “He sent forth such a spirit of peace and love, as we had
not known for many months before.” Next day, January 3, Wesley set out
for Bristol, and returned a month afterwards. He now found his old
friends pleading for “a reservedness and closeness of conversation,”
which perplexed him. He was told that “many of them, not content
with leaving off the ordinances of God themselves, were continually
troubling those that did not, and disputing with them, whether they
would or no.” He “expostulated with them, and besought them to refrain
from perplexing the minds of those who still waited for God in the ways
of His own appointment.”
Thus he left them on the 3rd of March. Meanwhile, “poor perverted
Mr. Simpson” declared to Charles Wesley, that no good was to be
got by what he called the _means of grace_, neither was there any
obligation to use them; and that most of the Brethren had cast them
off. Charles, accompanied by Thomas Maxfield, called on Molther, who
talked “against running after ordinances. They parted as they met,
without prayer or singing; for the time for such exercises was past.”
Maxfield was scandalized, and Charles Wesley foresaw that a separation
was unavoidable. On Easter day, when preaching at the Foundery, he
appealed to the society, and asked, “Who hath bewitched you, that
you should let go your Saviour, and deny you ever knew Him?” A burst
of sorrow followed; but, on going to Mr. Bowers’, in the evening, to
meet the bands, the door was shut against him; and proceeding to Mr.
Bray’s, the brazier, he was threatened with expulsion from the Moravian
society. The day after, at Fetter Lane, Simpson reproved him for
mentioning himself in preaching, and for preaching up the ordinances.
He answered, that he should not ask him, or any of the Brethren, how
an ambassador of Christ should preach. He adds: “I went home, weary,
wounded, bruised, and faint, through the contradiction of sinners;
_poor_ sinners, as they call themselves,—these heady, violent, fierce
contenders for stillness. I could not bear the thought of meeting them
again.” Simpson said, “‘No soul _can_ be washed in the blood of Christ,
unless it first be brought to one in whom Christ is fully formed. But
there are only _two such ministers_ in London, Bell and Molther.’
Is not this robbing Christ of His glory, and making His creature
_necessary_ to Him in His peculiar work of salvation? First perish
Molther, Bell, and all mankind, and sink into nothing, that Christ may
be all in all. A new commandment, called ‘_stillness_,’ has repealed
all God’s commandments, and given a full indulgence to corrupted
nature. The _still_ ones rage against _me_; for my brother, they _say_,
had consented to their pulling down the ordinances, and here come I,
and build them up again.”
During the week, Simpson called upon Charles Wesley, and “laid down
his two postulatums:—1. The ordinances are not commands. 2. It is
impossible to doubt after justification.” In a society meeting, at
the Foundery, he further stated that “no unjustified person ought
to receive the sacrament; for, doing so, he ate and drank his own
damnation;” and J. Bray declared, that it was “impossible for any one
to be a true Christian out of the Moravian church.”
Simpson wrote to Wesley wishing him to return to London; and, on
April 23, he came, and found confusion worse confounded than ever.
“Believers,” said Simpson, “are not subject to ordinances; and
unbelievers have nothing to do with them. They ought to be still;
otherwise they will be unbelievers as long as they live.” Wesley
writes: “After a fruitless dispute of about two hours, I returned home
with a heavy heart. In the evening, our society met; but it was cold,
weary, heartless, dead. I found nothing of brotherly love among them
now; but a harsh, dry, heavy, stupid spirit. For two hours, they looked
one at another, when they looked up at all, as if one half of them was
afraid of the other.” “The first hour passed in dumb show; the next in
trifles not worth naming.”[350]
The two Wesleys went to Molther, who explicitly affirmed, that no one
has any faith while he has any doubt; and that none are justified till
they are sanctified. He also maintained, that, until men obtain clean
hearts and are justified, they must refrain from using the means of
grace, so called; but, after that, they are at perfect liberty to use
them, or to use them not, as they deem expedient. They are _designed
only_ for believers; but are not _enjoined_ even upon them.
Wesley was at his wits’ end; numbers came to him every day, once full
of peace and love, but now plunged into doubts and fears. Just at this
juncture, his brother printed his fine hymn, of twenty-three stanzas,
entitled “The Means of Grace,” and circulated it “as an antidote to
stillness.”[351] “Many,” said Charles, “insist that a part of their
Christian calling is liberty _from_ obeying, not liberty _to_ obey.
‘The unjustified,’ say they, ‘are _to be still_; that is, not to search
the Scriptures, not to pray, not to communicate, not to do good, not to
endeavour, not to desire; for it is impossible to use means, without
trusting in them.’ Their practice is agreeable to their principles.
Lazy and proud themselves, bitter and censorious towards others, they
trample upon the ordinances, and despise the commands of Christ.”
Wesley preached from the text, “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is
not quickened, except it die;” and “demonstrated to the society, that
the ordinances are both means of grace, and commands of God.”[352]
It was also probably at this period that he preached his able and
discriminating sermon on the same subject, and which is published in
his collected works. He specifies as the chief _means of grace_:—1.
Prayer. 2. Searching the Scriptures; which implies reading, hearing,
and meditating thereon. 3. Receiving the Lord’s supper. He allows,
however, that, if these _means_ are used as a kind of _commutation_
for the religion they were designed to serve, it is difficult to find
words to express the enormous folly and wickedness of thus keeping
Christianity out of the heart by the very means which were ordained to
bring it in. All outward means whatever, if separate from the Spirit
of God, cannot profit the man using them. They possess no intrinsic
power; and God is equally able to work by any, or by none at all.
Wesley then proceeds to prove from Scripture, that, “all who desire the
grace of God are to wait for it in the means which He hath ordained;
in using, not in laying them aside.” He likewise answers the following
objections:—1. You cannot use these means without _trusting_ in them.
2. This is seeking salvation by works. 3. Christ is the only means of
grace. 4. The Scripture directs us to _wait_ for salvation. 5. God has
appointed another way—“Stand _still_, and see the salvation of God.”
Finally, Wesley concludes thus:—“1. Retain a lively sense that God
is above all means, and can convey His grace, either in or out of any
of the means which He hath appointed. 2. Be deeply impressed with the
fact, that there is no _power nor merit_ in any of the means. The _opus
operatum_, the mere work done, profiteth nothing. Do it because God
bids it. 3. In and through every outward thing, seek God alone, looking
singly to the _power_ of His Spirit, and the _merits_ of His Son.”
The whole sermon is intensely _Wesleyan_; full of keenly defined and
powerfully enforced Scripture truths. Let the reader read it: it will
benefit both his head and heart; and, perused in the light of these
painful facts, it possesses historic interest of great importance. Such
a sermon must have had a powerful influence at such a time, and bold
was the man, who, in the midst of such disputers, had the fidelity to
preach it.
It was a time of great anxiety. The work in London was in danger of
being wrecked; and, more than that, some of Wesley’s oldest and most
trusted friends, in this afflictive emergency, proved unfaithful.
The Rev. George Stonehouse, vicar of Islington, was converted in 1738,
chiefly through the instrumentality of Charles Wesley, who, for a time,
officiated as his curate. Many were the warm-hearted meetings, held,
by the first Methodists, in the vicar’s house. His affection for the
two Wesleys was great; and, in November 1738, when they were forsaken
by all their friends, and well-nigh penniless, he offered to find
them home and maintenance; and yet, six months afterwards, he yielded
to his churchwardens, and allowed Charles Wesley to be excluded from
his church. Imbibing Molther’s heresies, Stonehouse sold his living,
married the only daughter of Sir John Crispe, joined the Moravians,
and retired to Sherborne, in the west of England, where he fitted up a
place capable of accommodating five hundred people, in which to hold
Moravian meetings. In 1745, he had a lovefeast, the room being grandly
illuminated with thirty-seven candles adorned with flowers; and all the
sisters present being dressed in German fashion. Shortly after this, he
abandoned the Brethren altogether,[353] and appears henceforth to have
spent his days in inglorious _stillness_, enjoying the benefits of a
_quiet_ religion and a harmless life.[354]
Wesley sought counsel of his friend Ingham, and received in reply the
following letter, full of piety and mistiness, and now for the first
time published.
“OSSET, _February 20, 1740_.
“MY DEAR BROTHER,—You ask, what are the marks of a person that
is justified, but not sealed?
“I cannot give you any certain, infallible marks. One to whom
the Lord has given the gift of discerning could tell; but
without that gift none else can know surely. However, it may be
said, that justified persons are meek, simple, and childlike;
they have doubts and fears; they are in a wilderness state;
and, in this state, they are to be kept _still and quiet_, to
search more deeply into their hearts, so that they may become
more and more humble. They are likewise to depend wholly upon
Christ; and to be kept from confusion; for, if they come into
confusion, they receive inconceivable damage.
“On the other hand, if they continue meek, gentle, still,—if
they search into their hearts, and depend on Christ, they will
find their hearts to be sweetly drawn after Him; they will
begin to loathe and abhor sin, and to hunger and thirst after
righteousness; they will get strength daily; Christ will begin
to manifest Himself by degrees; the darkness will vanish, and
the day-star will arise in their hearts. Thus they will go on
from strength to strength, till they become strong; and then
they will begin to see things clearly; and so, by degrees, they
will come to have the assurance of faith.
“You ask whether, in this intermediate state, they are
‘children of wrath,’ or ‘heirs of the promises’?
“Without doubt, they are children of God, and in a state
of salvation. A child may be heir to an estate, before it
can speak, or know what an estate is; so we may be heirs of
heaven before we know it, or are made sure of it. However, the
assurance of faith is to be sought after. It may be attained;
and it will be, by all who go forward.
“We must first be deeply humble and poor in spirit. We must
have a fixed and abiding sense of our own weakness and
unworthiness, corruption, sin, and misery. This it is to be a
_poor sinner_.
“If I were with you, I would explain things more largely; but I
am a novice; I am but a beginner; a babe in Christ. If you go
amongst the Brethren, they are good guides; but, after all, we
must be taught of God, and have experience in our own hearts.
May the Spirit of truth lead us into all truth!
“I am your poor, unworthy brother,
“B. INGHAM.
“Rev. John Wesley, at Mr. Bray’s, Brazier,
in Little Britain, London.”
This is a curious letter, and will help to cast light on some of
the expressions which Wesley himself had used concerning his own
experience. As yet, the Methodists had much to learn. Meanwhile, Ingham
and Howel Harris came to London. Charles Wesley says, the latter, in
his preaching, proved himself a son of thunder and of consolation.
Cavilling, however, followed. Honest, plain, undesigning James Hutton
“was all tergiversation, and turned into a subtle, close, ambiguous
Loyola;” while Richard Bell, watch-case maker, seemed to think, that he
and Molther and another were all the church that Christ had in England.
A man of the name of Ridley rendered himself famous by saying, “You
may as well go to hell for praying as for thieving;” and John Browne
asserted, “If we read, the devil reads with us; if we pray, he prays
with us; if we go to church or sacrament, he goes with us.”[355]
Ingham also, as well as Harris, “honestly withstood the deluded
Brethren; contradicted their favourite errors; and constrained them to
be _still_.” In the Fetter Lane society, he bore a noble testimony for
the ordinances of God; but the answer was, “You are blind, and speak
of the things you know not.” Wesley preached a series of sermons—1.
On the delusion, that “weak faith is no faith.” 2. On the bold
affirmation, that there is but one commandment in the New Testament,
namely, “to believe.” 3. On the point, that Christians are subject to
the ordinances of Christ. 4. On the fact, that a man may be justified
without being entirely sanctified. These discourses were followed by
five others, on reading the Scriptures, prayer, the Lord’s supper, and
good works.
The result was increased commotion. Some said, “We believers are no
more bound to obey, than the subjects of the king of England are bound
to obey the laws of the king of France.” Bell declared that, for a
man not born of God to read the Scriptures, pray, or come to the
Lord’s table, was deadly poison. And Wesley, after a short debate, was
prohibited preaching at Fetter Lane.
This brought matters to a crisis. Wesley had done all he could to
correct the growing errors; but Molther was a greater favourite than
Wesley; and the man, who had founded Fetter Lane society, was now, by
Moravian votes, commanded to go about his business, and to leave the
pulpit to his German superiors.
The thing had become an intolerable evil; and, at all hazards, the
heresies must be checked. Substantially they may be reduced to two:—1.
That there are no degrees of faith; or, in other words, that there is
no justifying faith where there is any doubt or fear; or, in other
words (for we feel it difficult to gripe such an abortive dogma),
no man believes and is justified, unless, in the full sense of the
expression, he is sanctified, and is possessed of a clean heart. 2.
That to search the Scriptures, to pray, or to communicate, before we
have faith, is to seek salvation by works; and such works must be laid
aside before faith can be received.
This is not the place to confute such errors. Suffice it to say, that,
before half-a-dozen years had passed, the London Moravians dropped the
very doctrines, for opposing which Wesley was expelled from preaching
in Fetter Lane. Their _stillness_ was declared to mean, that “man
cannot attain to salvation by his own wisdom, strength, righteousness,
goodness, merits, or works. When he applies for it, he must cast away
all dependence upon everything of his own, and, trusting only to the
mercy of God, through the merits of Christ, he must thus _quietly wait_
for God’s salvation.”[356] This is a doctrine to which Wesley raised
no objection; but it was not the doctrine of Molther, Browne, Bell,
Bray, and Bowers, in 1740. Then as to the doctrine concerning degrees
in faith, it is right to add, that such a dogma was never taught by
the general authorities of the Moravian _church_; but it was taught by
Spangenberg, Molther, Stonehouse, and other Moravians in London,[357]
the result being the disastrous confusion to which we are now
adverting. Indeed, it is a notable fact, that, only two months after
the Fetter Lane disruption, Wesley himself clears the Moravian _church_
from the aspersion, that it held such heresies. They were the spawn of
foolish fanatics, who regarded themselves Moravians, but were hardly
worthy of the name. On September 29, 1740, Wesley having stated what
the errors were, observes:—“In flat opposition to this, I assert: 1.
That a man may have a degree of justifying faith, before he is wholly
freed from all doubt and fear; and before he has, in the full, proper
sense, a new, a clean heart. 2. That a man may use the ordinances of
God, the Lord’s supper in particular, before he has such a faith as
excludes all doubt and fear, and implies a new, a clean heart. 3. I
further assert, that I learned this, not only from the English, but
also from the Moravian church; and I hereby openly and earnestly call
upon that church, and upon Count Zinzendorf in particular, to correct
me, and explain themselves, if I have misunderstood or misrepresented
them.” Wesley thus puts the blame on the right shoulders. It was not
the Moravian _church_, but a few of its foolish ministers and members,
at Fetter Lane, that circulated these heresies.
What was the result? If the Fetter Lane society did not exclude Wesley
from their membership, they, on the 16th of July, expelled him from
their pulpit; and hence, four days afterwards, he went with Mr. Seward
to their lovefeast, and, at its conclusion, read a paper stating the
errors into which they had fallen, and concluding thus:—“I believe
these assertions to be flatly contrary to the word of God. I have
warned you hereof again and again, and besought you to turn back to the
‘law and the testimony.’ I have borne with you long, hoping you would
turn. But, as I find you more and more confirmed in the error of your
ways, nothing now remains, but that I should give you up to God. You
that are of the same judgment, follow me.”
Without saying more, he then silently withdrew, eighteen or nineteen of
the society following him.
Two days afterwards, he received a letter from one of the Brethren in
Germany, advising him and his brother to deliver up the “instruction
of poor souls” to the Moravians; “for you,” adds the writer, “only
instruct them in such errors, that they will be damned at last. St.
Peter justly describes you, who ‘have eyes full of adultery, and cannot
cease from sin;’ and take upon you to guide unstable souls, and lead
them in the way of damnation.”
The day following, the seceding society, numbering about twenty-five
men and fifty women, met for the first time, at the Foundery, instead
of at Fetter Lane; and so the Methodist society was founded on July 23,
1740.
A fortnight later, Wesley, “a presbyter of the church of God in
England,” wrote a long letter “to the church of God at Herrnhuth,” in
which he states, that, though some of the Moravians had pronounced him
“a child of the devil and a servant of corruption,” yet, he was now
taking the liberty of speaking freely and plainly concerning things
in the Moravian church which he deemed unscriptural. He enumerates
the heresies which have been so often mentioned. He tells them, that
a Moravian preacher, in his public expounding, said: “As many go to
hell by praying as by thieving.” Another had said, “I knew a man who
received a great gift while leaning over the back of a chair; but
kneeling down to give God thanks, he lost it immediately through doing
so.” He charges the Moravians with exalting themselves and despising
others, and declares, that he scarce ever heard a Moravian owning his
church or himself to be wrong in anything. They spoke of their church
as if it were infallible, and some of them set it up as the judge of
all the earth, of all persons and of all doctrines, and maintained that
there were no true Christians out of it. Like the modern Mystics, they
mixed much of man’s wisdom with the wisdom of God, and philosophised on
almost every part of the plain religion of the Bible. They talked much
against mixing nature with grace, and against mimicking the power of
the Holy Ghost. They cautioned the brethren against animal joy, against
natural love of one another, and against selfish love of God. “My
brethren,” concludes Wesley, “whether ye will hear, or whether ye will
forbear, I have now delivered my own soul. And this I have chosen to do
in an artless manner, that if anything should come home to your hearts,
the effect might evidently flow, not from the wisdom of man, but from
the power of God.”
On September 1, Charles Wesley wrote to Whitefield in America, as
follows:—
“The great work goes forward, maugre all the opposition of
earth and hell. The most violent opposers of all are our
own brethren of Fetter Lane, that were. We have gathered up
between twenty and thirty from the wreck, and transplanted
them to the Foundery. The remnant has taken root downward,
and borne fruit upwards. A little one is become a thousand.
They grow in grace, particularly in humility, and in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus. Innumerable have been the devices
to scatter this little flock. The roaring lion is turned a
_still_ lion, and makes havoc of the church by means of our
spiritual brethren. They are indefatigable in bringing us off
from our ‘carnal ordinances,’ and speak with such wisdom from
beneath, that, if it were possible, they would deceive the very
elect. The Quakers, they say, are exactly right; and, indeed,
the principles of the one naturally lead to the other. For
instance, take our poor friend Morgan. One week he and his wife
were at J. Bray’s, under the teaching of the _still_ brethren.
Soon after, he turned Quaker, and is now a celebrated preacher
among them. All these things shall be for the furtherance of
the gospel.”[358]
Whitefield’s reply to this is unknown; but on November 24 he wrote as
follows to James Hutton:—
“I have lately conversed closely with Peter Bohler. Alas!
we differ widely in many respects; therefore, to avoid
disputations and jealousies on both sides, it is best to
carry on the work of God apart. The divisions among the
Brethren sometimes grieve, but do not surprise me. How can it
be otherwise, when teachers do not think and speak the same
things? God grant we may keep up a cordial, undissembled love
towards each other, notwithstanding our different opinions. O,
how I long for heaven! Surely, there will be no divisions, no
strife there, except who shall sing with most affection to the
Lamb that sitteth upon the throne. Dear James, there I hope to
meet thee.”[359]
Here, for the present, we leave the London Moravians. We say, for the
present, for unfortunately we shall have to recur to them.
The year 1740 was a year of troubles. A month previous to the Fetter
Lane secession, a man of the name of Acourt bitterly complained, that
he had been refused admission to the society-meeting, by order of
Charles Wesley, because he differed from the Wesleys in opinion. “What
opinion do you mean?” asked Wesley. He answered, “That of election. I
hold, a certain number is elected from eternity; and these must and
shall be saved; and the rest of mankind must and shall be damned; and
many of your society hold the same.” Here we have another bone of
contention.
Up to the time of Whitefield’s visit to America, he and the Wesleys
had laboured in union and harmony, without entering into the discussion
of particular opinions; but now, across the Atlantic, Whitefield
became acquainted with a number of godly Calvinistic ministers, who
recommended to him the writings of the puritan divines, which he
read with great avidity, and, as a consequence, soon embraced their
sentiments. Secrecy was no part of Whitefield’s mental or moral nature.
With the utmost frankness, he wrote to Wesley, informing him of his new
opinions.[360]
Wesley was the son of parents who held the doctrines of election and
reprobation in abhorrence. While at college, he had thoroughly sifted
the subject for himself, and, in letters to his mother, expressed his
views in the strongest language. Whitefield, on the contrary, was no
theologian. His heart was one of the largest that ever throbbed in
human bosom; but his logical faculties were small. When he read the
Calvinistic theory, he was not conversant with the arguments against
it; and hence, with his characteristic impulsiveness, he adopted
a creed, which far more powerful minds than his had not been able
to defend. Southey remarks, with great truthfulness, that, “at the
commencement of his career, Wesley was of a pugnacious spirit, the
effect of his sincerity, his ardour, and his confidence.” No wonder
then that these two devoted friends were soon at variance.
One of Whitefield’s letters, dated June 25, 1739, has been already
given. The following is another, hitherto unpublished, written a week
later:—
“GLOUCESTER, _July 2, 1739_.
“HONOURED SIR,—I confess my spirit has been of late sharpened
on account of some of your proceedings; my heart has been quite
broken within me. I have been grieved from my soul, knowing
what a dilemma I am reduced to. How shall I tell the Dissenters
I do not approve of their doctrines, without wronging my
own soul? How shall I tell them I do, without contradicting
my honoured friend, whom I desire to love as my own soul?
Lord, for Thy infinite mercy’s sake, direct me so to act, as
neither to injure myself nor my friend! Is it true, honoured
sir, that brother Stock is excluded the society because he
holds predestination? If so, is it right? Would Jesus Christ
have done so? Is this to act with a catholic spirit? Is it
true, honoured sir, that the house at Kingswood is intended
hereafter for the brethren to dwell in, as at Herrnhuth? Is
this answering the primitive design of that building? Did the
Moravians live together till they were obliged by persecution?
Does the scheme at Islington succeed? As for brother Cennick’s
expounding, I know not what to say. Brother Watkin I think no
way qualified for any such thing.
“Dear, honoured sir, if you have any regard for the peace of
the church, keep in your sermon on predestination. But you have
cast a lot. Oh! my heart, in the midst of my body, is like
melted wax. The Lord direct us all! Honoured sir, indeed, I
desire you all the success you can wish for. May you increase,
though I decrease! I would willingly wash your feet. God is
with us mightily. I have just now written to the bishop. Oh,
wrestle, wrestle, honoured sir, in prayer, that not the least
alienation of affection may be between you, honoured sir, and
your obedient son and servant in Christ,
“GEORGE WHITEFIELD.
“To the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, at Mrs. Grevil’s,
a grocer, in Wine Street, Bristol.”
This was within three months from the time when Wesley, at Whitefield’s
request, began his career of out-door preaching at Bristol. Two months
later, Whitefield was, a second time, on his way to America. Wesley
wrote to him, opposing the doctrine of election, and also enforcing
the doctrine, that, though Christians can never be freed from “those
numberless weaknesses and follies, sometimes improperly termed sins of
infirmity,” yet it is the privilege of all to be saved “entirely from
sin in its proper sense, and from committing it.”[361]
In reply, Whitefield wrote as follows:—
“SAVANNAH, _March 26, 1740_.
“MY HONOURED FRIEND AND BROTHER,—For once hearken to a
child, who is willing to wash your feet. I beseech you, by
the mercies of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, if you would
have my love confirmed towards you, write no more to me
about misrepresentations wherein we differ. To the best of
my knowledge, at present, no sin has _dominion_ over me; yet
I feel the strugglings of indwelling sin day by day. I can,
therefore, by no means, come into your interpretation of the
passage mentioned in your letter, and as explained in your
preface to Mr. Halyburton. If possible, I am ten thousand times
more convinced of the doctrine of _election_, and the _final_
perseverance of those that are truly in Christ, than when I
saw you last. You think otherwise. Why then should we dispute,
when there is no probability of convincing? Will it not, in
the end, destroy brotherly love, and insensibly take from us
that cordial union and sweetness of soul, which I pray God may
always subsist between us? How glad would the enemies of the
Lord be to see us divided! How many would rejoice, should I
join and make a party against you! How would the cause of our
common Master suffer by our raising disputes about particular
points of doctrines! _Honoured sir_, let us offer salvation
freely to all by the blood of Jesus; and whatever light God has
communicated to us, let us freely communicate to others. I have
lately read the life of Luther, and think it in nowise to his
honour, that the last part of his life was so much taken up in
disputing with Zuinglius and others, who, in all probability,
equally loved the Lord Jesus, notwithstanding they might differ
from him in other points. Let this, dear sir, be a caution to
us. I hope it will to me; for, provoke me to it as much as you
please, I intend not to enter the lists of controversy with
you on the points wherein we differ. Only, I pray to God, that
the more you _judge me_, the more I may _love you_, and learn
to desire no one’s approbation, but that of my Lord and Master
Jesus Christ.”[362]
Two months after this, Whitefield wrote again:—
“CAPE LOPEN, _May 24, 1740_.
“HONOURED SIR,—I cannot entertain prejudices against your
conduct and principles any longer, without informing you. The
more I examine the writings of the most experienced men, and
the experiences of the most established Christians, the more
I differ from your notion about not committing sin, and your
denying the doctrines of election and final perseverance of
the saints. I dread coming to England, unless you are resolved
to oppose these truths with less warmth than when I was there
last. I dread your coming over to America, because the work of
God is carried on here (and that in a most glorious manner),
by doctrines quite opposite to those you hold. Here are
thousands of God’s children, who will not be persuaded out of
the privileges purchased for them by the blood of Jesus. There
are many worthy experienced ministers, who would oppose your
principles to the utmost. God direct me what to do! Sometimes,
I think it best to stay here, where we all think and speak
the same thing. The work goes on without divisions, and with
more success, because all employed in it are of one mind. I
write not this, honoured sir, from heat of spirit, but out of
love. At present, I think you are entirely inconsistent with
yourself, and, therefore, do not blame me, if I do not approve
all you say. God Himself teaches my friends the doctrine of
election. Sister H—— hath lately been convinced of it; and,
if I mistake not, dear and honoured Mr. Wesley hereafter will
be convinced also. Perhaps I may never see you again, till we
meet in judgment; then, if not before, you will know, that
sovereign, distinguishing, irresistible grace brought you
to heaven. Then will you know, that God loved you with an
everlasting love; and therefore with lovingkindness did He draw
you. Honoured sir, farewell!”[363]
A fortnight later, on the 7th of June, Whitefield, writing to James
Hutton, says:—
“For Christ’s sake, desire dear brother Wesley to avoid
disputing with me. I think I had rather die, than see a
division between us; and yet how can we walk together, if we
oppose each other?”[364]
He wrote again to Wesley as follows:—
“SAVANNAH, _June 25, 1740_.
“MY HONOURED FRIEND AND BROTHER,—For Christ’s sake, if
possible, never speak against election in your sermons. No
one can say, that I ever mentioned it in public discourses,
whatever my private sentiments may be. For Christ’s sake, let
us not be divided amongst ourselves. Nothing will so much
prevent a division as your being silent on this head. I am glad
to hear, that you speak up for an attendance on the means of
grace, and do not encourage persons who run, I am persuaded,
before they are called. The work of God will suffer by such
imprudence.”[365]
On the 16th of July, Howel Harris wrote to Wesley:—
“DEAR BROTHER JOHN,—Reports are circulated that you hold _no
faith_ without a full and constant assurance, and, that there
is no state of salvation without being wholly set at liberty
in the fullest sense of perfection. It is also said, that I
am carried away by the same stream, and, that many of the
little ones are afraid to come near me. Letters have likewise
informed me, that, the night you left London, you turned a
brother out of the society, and charged all to beware of him,
purely because he held the doctrine of election. My dear
brother, do not act in the stiff, uncharitable spirit which
you condemn in others. If you exclude him from the society and
from the fraternity of the Methodists, for such a cause, you
must exclude brother Whitefield, brother Seward, and myself. I
hope I shall contend with my last breath and blood, that it is
owing to special, distinguishing, and irresistible grace, that
those that are saved are saved. O that you would not touch on
this subject till God enlighten you! My dear brother, being a
public person, you grieve God’s people by your opposition to
electing love; and many poor souls believe your doctrine simply
because you hold it. All this arises from the prejudices of
your education, your books, your companions, and the remains of
your carnal reason. The more I write, the more I love you. I
am sure you are one of God’s elect, and, that you act honestly
according to the light you have.”[366]
On the 9th of August, Wesley addressed Whitefield as follows:—
“MY DEAR BROTHER,—I thank you for yours of May the 24th. The
case is quite plain. There are bigots both for predestination
and against it. God is sending a message to those on either
side. But neither will receive it, unless from one who is of
their own opinion. Therefore, for a time, you are suffered to
be of one opinion, and I of another. But when His time is come,
God will do what man cannot, namely, make us both of one mind.
Then persecution will flame out, and it will be seen whether we
count our lives dear unto ourselves, so that we may finish our
course with joy. I am, my dearest brother, ever yours,
“JOHN WESLEY.”[367]
In the same month, Whitefield wrote to Wesley:—
“CHARLESTOWN, _August 25, 1740_.
“MY DEAR AND HONOURED SIR,—Give me leave, with all humility,
to exhort you not to be strenuous in opposing the doctrines of
election and final perseverance; when, by your own confession,
you have not the witness of the Spirit within yourself, and
consequently are not a proper judge. I remember brother E——
told me one day, that he was convinced of the perseverance of
saints. I told him, you were not. He replied, but ‘he will be
convinced when he has got the Spirit himself.’ Perhaps the
doctrines of election and of final perseverance have been
abused; but, notwithstanding, they are children’s bread, and
ought not to be withheld from them, supposing they are always
mentioned with proper cautions against the abuse of them. I
write not this to enter into disputation. I cannot bear the
thought of opposing you; but how can I avoid it, if you go
about, as your brother Charles once said, to drive John Calvin
out of Bristol. Alas! I never read anything that Calvin wrote.
My doctrines I had from Christ and His apostles. I was taught
them of God; and as God was pleased to send me out first, and
to enlighten me first, so, I think, He still continues to do
it. I find, there is a disputing among you about election and
perfection. I pray God to put a stop to it; for what good end
will it answer? I wish I knew your principles fully. If you
were to write oftener, and more frankly, it might have a better
effect than silence and reserve.”[368]
A month later he wrote again as follows:—
“BOSTON, _September 25, 1740_.
“HONOURED SIR,—I am sorry to hear, by many letters, that you
seem to own a _sinless perfection_ in this life attainable. I
think I cannot answer you better, than a venerable minister
in these parts answered a Quaker: ‘Bring me a man that hath
really arrived to this, and I will pay his expenses, let him
come from where he will.’ I know not what you may think, but
I do not expect to say indwelling sin is destroyed in me,
till I bow my head and give up the ghost. There must be some
Amalekites left in the Israelites’ land to keep his soul in
action, to keep him humble, and to drive him continually to
Jesus Christ for pardon. I know many abuse this doctrine, and
perhaps wilfully indulge sin, or do not aspire after holiness,
because no man is perfect in this life. But what of that?
Must I assert, therefore, doctrines contrary to the gospel?
God forbid! Besides, dear sir, what a fond conceit is it to
cry up _perfection_, and yet cry down the doctrine of _final
perseverance_. But this, and many other absurdities, you will
run into, because you will not own _election_. And you will not
own _election_, because you cannot own it without believing the
doctrine of _reprobation_. What then is there in _reprobation_
so horrid? I see no blasphemy in holding that doctrine, if
rightly explained. If God might have passed by all, He may
pass by some. Judge whether it is not a greater blasphemy to
say, ‘Christ died for souls now in hell.’ Surely, dear sir,
you do not believe there will be a general gaol _delivery_ of
damned souls hereafter. O that you would study the covenant of
grace! But I have done. If you think so meanly of Bunyan and
the puritan writers, I do not wonder that you think me wrong. I
find your sermon has had its expected success. It has set the
nation a disputing. You will have enough to do now to answer
pamphlets. Two I have already seen. O that you would be more
cautious in casting lots! O that you would not be too rash and
precipitant! If you go on thus, honoured sir, how can I concur
with you? It is impossible. I must speak what I know. About
spring you may expect to see,
“Ever, ever yours in Christ,
“GEORGE WHITEFIELD.”[369]
Wesley’s sermon was already published. Let us look at it. It was
preached at Bristol; and, in some respects, was the most important
sermon that he ever issued. It led, as we shall shortly see, to the
division which Whitefield so devoutly deprecates; and also to the
organisation of Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion, and to the founding of the
Calvinistic Methodists in Wales; and, finally, culminated in the fierce
controversy of 1770, and the publication of Fletcher’s unequalled
“Checks;” which so effectually silenced the Calvinian heresy, that its
voice has scarce been heard from that time to this. Viewed in such a
light, the difference between Wesley and Whitefield was really one of
the greatest events in the history of Wesley and even of the religion
of the age.
Wesley’s sermon, entitled “Free Grace,” was founded upon Romans viii.
32, and was printed as a 12mo pamphlet in twenty-four pages. Annexed
to it was Charles Wesley’s remarkable “Hymn on Universal Redemption,”
consisting of thirty-six stanzas of four lines each.[370] It is also a
noteworthy fact, that, notwithstanding its importance, it was never
included by Wesley in any collected edition of his sermons; and, in
his own edition of his works, it is placed among his controversial
writings. There is likewise a brief address to the reader, as follows:—
“Nothing but the strongest conviction, not only that what is
here advanced is ‘the truth as it is in Jesus,’ but also that
I am indispensably obliged to declare this truth to all the
world, could have induced me openly to oppose the sentiments of
those whom I esteem for their works’ sake; at whose feet may I
be found in the day of the Lord Jesus!
“Should any believe it his duty to reply hereto, I have only
one request to make,—let whatsoever you do be done in charity,
in love, and in the spirit of meekness. Let your very disputing
show, that you have ‘put on, as the elect of God, bowels of
mercies, gentleness, longsuffering,’ that even according to
this time it may be said, ‘See how these Christians love one
another.’”
Having laid down the principle that God’s “free grace is free in all,
and free for all,” Wesley proceeds, with great acuteness, to define the
doctrine of predestination; namely, “Free grace in all is not free for
all, but only for those whom God hath ordained to life. The greater
part of mankind God hath ordained to death; and it is not free for
them. Them God hateth; and therefore, before they were born, decreed
they should die eternally. And this He absolutely decreed, because it
was His sovereign will. Accordingly, they are born for this, to be
destroyed body and soul in hell. And they grow up under the irrevocable
curse of God, without any possibility of redemption; for what grace
God gives, He gives only for this, to increase, not prevent, their
damnation.”
Having effectually answered the objections of well meaning people,
who, startled at a doctrine so spectral, say, “This is not the
predestination which I hold, I hold only the election of grace,” he
sums up as follows:—
“Though you use softer words than some, you mean the selfsame
thing; and God’s decree concerning the election of grace,
according to your account of it, amounts to neither more nor
less than what others call, ‘God’s decree of reprobation.’
Call it therefore by whatever name you please, ‘election,
preterition, predestination, or reprobation,’ it comes in the
end to the same thing. The sense of all is plainly this,—by
virtue of an eternal, unchangeable, irresistible decree of
God, one part of mankind are infallibly saved, and the rest
infallibly damned; it being impossible that any of the former
should be damned, or that any of the latter should be saved.”
This presents the doctrine in all its naked, hideous deformity; but it
is fair, and no Calvinian dexterity can make it otherwise.
Wesley then proceeds to state the objections to such a doctrine:—
1. It renders all preaching vain; for preaching is needless to them
that are elected; for they, whether with it or without it, will
infallibly be saved. And it is useless to them that are not elected;
for they, whether with preaching or without, will infallibly be damned.
2. It directly tends to destroy that holiness which is the end of all
the ordinances of God; for it wholly takes away those first motives to
follow after holiness, so frequently proposed in Scripture, the hope of
future reward and fear of punishment, the hope of heaven and fear of
hell.
3. It directly tends to destroy several particular branches of
holiness; for it naturally tends to inspire, or increase, a sharpness
of temper, which is quite contrary to the meekness of Christ, and leads
a man to treat with contempt, or coldness, those whom he supposes to be
outcasts from God.
4. It tends to destroy the comfort of religion.
5. It directly tends to destroy our zeal for good works; for what
avails it to relieve the wants of those who are just dropping into
eternal fire!
6. It has a direct and manifest tendency to overthrow the whole
Christian revelation; for it makes it unnecessary.
7. It makes the Christian revelation contradict itself; for it is
grounded on such an interpretation of some texts as flatly contradicts
all the other texts, and indeed the whole scope and tenour of Scripture.
8. It is full of blasphemy; for it represents our blessed Lord as a
hypocrite and dissembler, in saying one thing and meaning another,—in
pretending a love which He had not; it also represents the most holy
God as more false, more cruel, and more unjust than the devil; for,
in point of fact, it says that God has condemned millions of souls to
everlasting fire for continuing in sin, which, for want of the grace He
gives them not, they are unable to avoid.
Wesley sums up the whole thus:—
“This is the blasphemy clearly contained in _the horrible
decree_ of predestination. And here I fix my foot. On this
I join issue with every asserter of it. You represent God
as worse than the devil. But you say, you will prove it by
Scripture. Hold! what will you prove by Scripture? that God is
worse than the devil? It cannot be. Whatever that Scripture
proves, it never can prove this; whatever its true meaning be,
this cannot be its true meaning. Do you ask, ‘What is its true
meaning then?’ If I say, ‘I know not,’ you have gained nothing;
for there are many scriptures, the true sense whereof neither
you nor I shall know till death is swallowed up in victory. But
this I know, better it were to say it had no sense at all, than
to say it had such a sense as this.”
In Whitefield’s letter, already given, and dated September 25, 1740,
he states that already he had seen two pamphlets published against
Wesley’s sermon. One of these probably was the following: “Free Grace
Indeed! A Letter to the Reverend Mr. John Wesley, relating to his
sermon against absolute election, published under the title of Free
Grace. London: 1740. Price sixpence.”
In a subsequent advertisement, Wesley writes, “Whereas a pamphlet,
entitled, ‘Free Grace Indeed!’ has been published against this sermon,
this is to inform the publisher that I cannot answer his tract till he
appears to be more in earnest; for I dare not speak of ‘the deep things
of God’ in the spirit of a prizefighter or a stageplayer.”
With great respect for Wesley, we feel bound to say, that this is not
worthy of him. The pamphlet referred to is before us, and is written
with great ability, earnestness, and good temper. Wesley was not bound
to answer it; but he had no right thus to brand it.
About the same time, another pamphlet was published, on the other side,
entitled, “The Controversy concerning Free-will and Predestination;
in a Letter to a Friend. Recommended to Mr. Whitefield and his
followers.” 8vo, pages 36. As the controversy continued, it waxed
warmer. Here Whitefield is spoken of as a man of “heated imagination,
and full of himself”; “very hot, very self-sufficient, and impatient of
contradiction”; “dogmatical and dictatorial” in his way of speaking,
and wont to finish his oracular deliverances “with his assuming air,
_Dixi_.”
The pamphlet concludes with a verse which contains the pith of the
whole production:—
“Why is this _wrangling world_ thus _tossed_ and _torn_?
_Free-grace_, Free-will, are both together born;
If God’s free grace rule _in_, and _over_ me,
His will is mine, and so my will is _free_.”
In the month of October, Howel Harris took up the question, and wrote
to Wesley, telling him that preaching electing love brings glory to
God, and benefit and consolation to the soul. He adds: “Oh, when will
the time come when we shall all agree? Till then, may the Lord enable
us to bear with one another! We must, before we can be united, be
truly simple, made really humble and open to conviction, willing to
give up any expression that is not scriptural, dead to our names and
characters, and sweetly inclined towards each other. I hope we have,
in some measure, drank of the same Spirit, that we fight the same
enemies, and are under the same crown and kingdom. We travel the same
narrow road, and love the same Jesus. We are soon to be before the
same throne, and employed in the same work of praise to all eternity.
While, then, we are on the road, and meet with so many enemies, let us
love one another. And if we really carry on the same cause, let us not
weaken each other’s hands.”[371]
In another letter, addressed to John Cennick, and dated October 27,
Harris writes in less temperate language:—
“DEAR BROTHER,—Brother Seward tells me of his dividing with
brother Charles Wesley. He seems clear in his conviction,
that God would have him do so. I have been long waiting to
see if brother John and Charles should receive further light,
or be silent and not oppose election and perseverance; but,
finding no hope of this, I begin to be staggered how to act
towards them. I plainly see that we preach two gospels. My dear
brother, deal faithfully with brother John and Charles. If you
like, you may read this letter to them. We are free in Wales
from the hellish infection; but some are tainted when they come
to Bristol.”[372]
In November, Whitefield wrote to Wesley as follows:—
“PHILADELPHIA, _November 9, 1740_.
“DEAR AND HONOURED SIR,—I received yours, dated March 11, this
afternoon. Oh that we were of one mind! for I am persuaded
you greatly err. You have set a mark you will never arrive at,
till you come to glory. O dear sir, many of God’s children are
grieved at your principles. Oh that God may give you a sight of
His free, sovereign, and electing love! But no more of this.
Why will you compel me to write thus? Why will you dispute? I
am willing to go with you to prison, and to death; but I am not
willing to oppose you. Dear, dear sir, study the covenant of
grace, that you may be consistent with yourself. Oh build up,
but do not lead into error, the souls once committed to the
charge of your affectionate, unworthy brother and servant, in
the loving Jesus,
“G. WHITEFIELD.”[373]
A fortnight later he wrote again to Wesley:—
“BOHEMIA, MARYLAND, _November 24, 1740_.
“DEAR AND HONOURED SIR,—Last night brother G—— brought me
your two kind letters. Oh that there may be harmony, and very
intimate union between us! Yet, it cannot be, since you hold
_universal redemption_. The devil rages in London. He begins
now to triumph indeed. The children of God are disunited
among themselves. My dear brother, for Christ’s sake, avoid
all disputation. Do not oblige me to preach against you; I
had rather die. Be gentle towards the——. They will get great
advantage over you, if they discover any irregular warmth in
your temper. I cannot for my soul unite with the _Moravian
Brethren_. Honoured sir, adieu!
“Yours eternally in Christ Jesus,
“GEORGE WHITEFIELD.”[374]
Just at this time, Wesley was expounding Romans ix. at Bristol, where
Calvinism was becoming rampant in the society. Charles Wesley writes:
“Anne Ayling and Anne Davis could not refrain from railing. John
Cennick never offered to stop them. Alas, we have set the wolf to keep
the sheep! God gave me great moderation toward him, who, for many
months, has been undermining our doctrine and authority.”[375]
The difference was continued by Whitefield writing his “Letter to the
Reverend Mr. John Wesley; in answer to his sermon, entitled ‘Free
Grace’;” with the motto attached, “When Peter was come to Antioch, I
withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.”
The “Letter” is dated, “Bethesda, in Georgia, December 24, 1740.”
After reiterating his reluctance to write against Wesley, he proceeds
to state, that he now did so at the request of a great number of
persons, who had been benefited by his ministry. He accuses Wesley
of having propagated the doctrine of universal redemption, both in
public and private, by preaching and printing, ever since before his
last departure for America. He says that Wesley, while at Bristol,
received a letter, charging him with not preaching the gospel, because
he did not preach election. Upon this, he drew a lot; the answer
was, “_preach and print_;” and, accordingly, he preached and printed
against election. At Whitefield’s desire, he deferred publishing the
sermon until after Whitefield started for America, when he sent it out.
Whitefield asserts, that, if any one wished to prove the doctrine of
election and of final perseverance, he could hardly wish for a text
more fit for his purpose than that (Romans viii. 32) which Wesley
had chosen to disprove it. He charges him with giving an “equivocal
definition of the word _grace_,” and a “false definition of the word
_free_;” and adds: “I frankly acknowledge, I believe the doctrine of
reprobation, in this view, that God intends to give saving grace,
through Jesus Christ, only to a certain number; and that the rest
of mankind, after the fall of Adam, being justly left of God to
continue in sin, will at last suffer that eternal death, which is its
proper wages.” In reply to Wesley, he argues that, because preachers
know not who are elect, and who reprobate, they are bound to preach
promiscuously to all; that holiness is made a mark of election by all
who preach it; that the seventeenth article of the English Church
asserts, that the doctrine of “predestination and election in Christ is
full of unspeakable comfort to godly persons;” that dooming millions
to everlasting burnings is not an act of injustice, because God, for
the sin of Adam, might justly have thus doomed all; that God’s absolute
purpose of saving His chosen does not preclude the necessity of the
gospel revelation, or the use of any of the means through which He has
determined the decree shall take effect; that the doctrine of election
does not make the Bible contradict itself, for though it asserts, that
“the Lord is loving to every man, and His mercy is over all His works,”
the reference is to His _general_, not His _saving_ mercy; that it is
unjust to charge the doctrine of reprobation with blasphemy; and that,
on the other hand, the doctrine of universal redemption, as set forth
by Wesley, “is really the highest reproach upon the dignity of the Son
of God, and the merit of His blood;” and Whitefield challenges Wesley
to make good the assertion, “that Christ died for them that perish,”
without holding, as Peter Bohler had lately confessed in a letter,
“that all the damned souls would hereafter be brought out of hell;” for
“how can all be universally redeemed, if all are not finally saved?”
In conclusion, he writes:—
“Dear sir, for Jesus Christ’s sake, consider how you dishonour
God by denying election. You plainly make man’s salvation
depend not on God’s _free grace_, but on man’s _free will_.
Dear, dear sir, give yourself to reading. Study the covenant
of grace. Down with your carnal reasoning. Be a little child;
and then, instead of pawning your salvation, as you have done
in a late hymn-book, if the doctrine of _universal redemption_
be not true; instead of talking of _sinless perfection_, as
you have done in the preface to that hymn-book; and instead
of making man’s salvation to depend on his own _free will_,
as you have in this sermon, you will compose a hymn in praise
of sovereign, distinguishing love; you will caution believers
against striving to work a perfection out of their own hearts,
and will print another sermon the reverse of this, and entitle
it ‘Free Grace _Indeed_’—free, because not free to all; but
free, because God may withhold or give it to whom and when He
pleases.”[376]
About three weeks after the date of this letter, Whitefield set sail
for England, bringing his manuscript with him. On his arrival in
London, in March, 1741, he submitted it to Charles Wesley, who returned
it to the author, endorsed with the words: “Put up again thy sword into
its place.” The pamphlet, however, was published; and Whitefield gave
Wesley notice, that he was resolved publicly to preach against him and
his brother wherever he went. Wesley complained to Whitefield—1. That
it was imprudent to publish his letter, because it was only putting
weapons into the hands of those who hated them. 2. That, if he really
was constrained to bear his testimony on the subject, he might have
done it by issuing a treatise without ever calling Wesley’s name in
question. 3. That what he had published was a mere burlesque upon an
answer. 4. That he had said enough, however, of what was wholly foreign
to the question, to make an open, and probably irreparable, breach
between them. Wesley added:—
“You rank all the maintainers of _universal redemption_ with
Socinians. Alas, my brother! Do you not know even this, that
Socinians allow no redemption at all? that Socinus himself
speaks thus, ‘_Tota redemptio nostra per Christum metaphora_’?
How easy were it for me to hit many other palpable blots, in
what you call an answer to my sermon! And how, above measure,
contemptible would you then appear to all impartial men,
either of sense or learning! But, I assure you, my hand shall
not be upon you. The Lord be judge between me and thee! The
general tenour, both of my public and private exhortations,
when I touch thereon at all, as even my enemies know, if they
would testify, is ‘Spare the young man, even Absalom, for my
sake!’”[377]
David and Jonathan were divided. An immediate schism followed. Wesley
writes:—“In March, 1741, Mr. Whitefield, being returned to England,
entirely separated from Mr. Wesley and his friends, because he did not
hold the decrees. Here was the first breach, which warm men persuaded
Mr. Whitefield to make merely for a difference of opinion. Those who
believed universal redemption had no desire to separate; but those
who held particular redemption would not hear of any accommodation,
being determined to have no fellowship with men that were ‘in such
dangerous errors.’ So there were now two sorts of Methodists: those for
particular, and those for general, redemption.”[378]
Here, for the present, we leave the subject; and turn to other matters.
In 1740, as in 1739, the pamphlets published against Methodism were
many and malignant. One was entitled: “The important Doctrines of
Original Sin, Justification by Faith, and Regeneration, clearly stated
and vindicated from the misrepresentations of the Methodists. By Thomas
Whiston, A.B.” London: 1740. Pp. 70. Mr. Whiston is unknown to fame.
Wesley never noticed him; and, though his production is now before us,
an analysis of its contents would weary the reader without instructing
him.
Another was, “The Quakers and Methodists compared. By the Rev. Zachary
Grey, LL.D., Rector of Houghton Conquest, in Bedfordshire,”—the
laborious author of more than thirty different publications, a man of
great ingenuity and research, but an acrimonious polemic, who died at
Ampthill, in 1766.[379]
It is a curious fact, that Whitefield was far more violently attacked
than the Wesleys were. “Aquila Smyth, a layman of the Church of
England,” accuses him of having published two letters against
Archbishop Tillotson, “in the spirit of pride, envy, and malice;” and
of having “detracted the most valuable works of other men, in order to
aggrandize himself, and gain credit for his own weak, impudent, and
wicked performances.” His “behaviour exposes him to the scorn of every
reader;” and his “consummate impudence” is unequalled in the Christian
world. There “is a juggle between him and Wesley to deceive their
followers, and to prevent an inquiry into their corrupt and abominable
doctrine;” and, finally, after calling him “a brainsick enthusiast,”
Smyth declares, that Whitefield has taken up five thousand acres in
America, under the pretence of educating and maintaining such negroes
as may be sent to him; but really because he hopes to realise from
the transaction a more plentiful fortune than he could have gained in
England by five thousand years of preaching.
So much for the spleen of Aquila Smyth. In the _Weekly Miscellany_,
edited by Mr. Hooker, there appeared, in several successive numbers,
fictitious dialogues between Whitefield and a country clergyman, the
object of which was to make Whitefield contemptible; and the whole
were finished with a promise from the editor, that he would abridge,
for the benefit of his subscribers, the history of the Anabaptists,
and would show that there is a near resemblance between them and their
descendants, the Methodists.
The Rev. Alexander Garden, the Bishop of London’s commissary at
Charlestown, in America, published a series of six letters on
justification by faith and works, in which he accused Whitefield of
“self contradiction,” of “arrogant and wicked slander,” and of being
“so full of zeal that he had no room for charity.” He contemptuously
speaks of Whitefield’s “apparent shuffles,” “miserable distinctions,”
“mob harangues,” and “false and poisoned insinuations.” Whitefield
“deceives the people, and has no talent at proving anything”; he is “a
hare-brained solifidian, and runs about a mouthing”; he has “kindled
a fire of slander and defamation, which no devil in hell, nor jesuit
on earth, will ever make an effort to extinguish, but will fagot and
foment it with all their might”; “he dispenses to the populace in a
vehicle of cant terms, without sense or meaning”; and “in a mountebank
way, he fancies himself a young David, and that he has slain Goliath.”
Whitefield was again severely handled “by a presbyter of the Church of
England,” in an able pamphlet of forty-four pages, entitled “A modest
and serious Defence of the Author of the Whole Duty of Man, from the
false charges and gross misrepresentations of Mr. Whitefield, and the
Methodists his adherents”; but this was a castigation which Whitefield
merited, for his ill judged and unneeded letter, published in the
_Daily Advertiser_ of July 3, 1740.
The most violent attack of all was in an octavo pamphlet of
eighty-five pages, with the title, “The Expounder Expounded, by R——ph
J——ps——n, of the Inner Temple, Esq.” London. Some parts of this
disgraceful production are too filthy to be noticed; they must be
passed in silence. In other parts, Whitefield, for publishing his
journal, is charged with “saddling the world with one of the grossest
absurdities and impositions, that folly or impudence could invent”;
“his book is nothing but a continued account of his intimate union
and correspondence with the devil”; and he himself may be seen “upon
the hills and house-tops, like another Æolus, belching out his divine
vapours to the multitude, to the great ease of himself, and emolument
of his auditors.” “Charles Wesley lent him books at Oxford, which threw
his understanding off the hinges, and rendered him _enthusiastically_
crazy”; at college he “deemed a lousy pate _humility_, foul linen was
_heavenly contemplation_, woollen gloves were _grace_, a patched gown
was _justification by faith_, and dirty shoes meant a _walk with God_.
In short, with him, religion consisted wholly in _nastiness_, and
heaven was easiest attacked from a _dunghill_.” These are the mildest
specimens we have been able to select from this cesspool of a perverted
intellect and a polluted heart.
Another pamphlet, published in 1740, and consisting of eighty-four
pages, was entitled “The Imposture of Methodism displayed; in a letter
to the inhabitants of the parish of Dewsbury. Occasioned by the rise
of a certain modern sect of enthusiasts, called Methodists. By William
Bowman, M. A., vicar of Dewsbury and Aldbrough in Yorkshire, and
chaplain to the Right Honourable Charles, Earl of Hoptoun.” As yet,
neither the Wesleys nor Whitefield had been in Yorkshire; but Ingham
and William Delamotte were there, and had been the means of converting
a large number of the almost heathenised inhabitants of the west
riding. The reverend vicar tells his parishioners, that “an impious
spirit of enthusiasm and superstition has crept in among them, and
threatens a total ruin of all religion and virtue.” He himself has been
“an eye-witness of this monstrous madness, and religious frenzy, which,
like a rapid torrent, bears down everything beautiful before it, and
introduces nothing but a confused and ridiculous medley of nonsense and
inconsistency.” It was matter of thankfulness, “that the contagion,
at present, was pretty much confined to the dregs and refuse of the
people,—the weak, unsteady mob, always fond of innovation, and never
pleased but with variety;” but, then, the mob was so numerous in the
west of Yorkshire, that the danger was greater than was apprehended.
The author declines to determine whether “these modern visionaries,
like the Quakers, are a sect hatched and fashioned in a seminary of
Jesuits; or whether, like the German Anabaptists, they are a set of
crazy, distempered fanatics;” but certain it is, that their “enthusiasm
is patched and made up of a thousand incoherencies and absurdities,
picked and collected from the vilest errors and most pestilent follies,
of every heresy upon earth.” “Their teachers inculcate, that they are
Divinely and supernaturally inspired by the Holy Ghost, to declare
the will of God to mankind; and, yet, they are cheats and impostors,
and their pretended sanctity nothing but a trick and a delusion.”
They had been allowed to use the pulpits of the Church, “till, by
their flights and buffooneries, they had made the church more like a
bear-garden than the house of prayer; and the rostrum nothing else but
the trumpet of sedition, heresy, blasphemy, and everything destructive
to religion and good manners.” It was high time for the clergy to put
an end to their “pulpits being let out, as a stage, for mountebanks and
jack-puddings to play their tricks upon, and from thence to propagate
their impostures and delusions.” “These mad devotionalists held, that
it is lawful and expedient for mere laymen, for women, and the meanest
and most ignorant mechanics, to minister in the church of Christ, to
preach, and expound the word of God, and to offer up the prayers of the
congregation in the public assemblies.” They also taught, that “the
new birth consists in an absolute and entire freedom from all kind of
sin whatsoever;” and likewise “denounced eternal death and damnation
on all who cannot conform to their ridiculous ideas.” “Whilst adopting
to themselves the reputation of being the chief favourites of heaven,
the confidants and imparters of its secrets, and the dispensers of its
frowns and favours, they were really furious disciples of antichrist,
reverend scavengers of scandal, and filthy pests and plagues of
mankind.” Such are specimens of the meek language used by the reverend
vicar of Dewsbury.
We have already noticed one production of the fiery and furious
Joseph Trapp, D.D., published in 1739. The publication of that
produced others, in 1740. One was entitled, “The true Spirit of the
Methodists, and their Allies, fully laid open; in an answer to six
of the seven pamphlets, lately published against Dr. Trapp’s sermons
upon being ‘Righteous over much’”: pp. 98. The anonymous author says,
that one of these six pamphlets is full of “false quotations, lies,
and slanders,” and concludes with “an ungodly jumble of railing and
praying.” The Methodists are branded as “crack-brained enthusiasts and
profane hypocrites.” “The criterions of modern saintship are the most
unchristian malice, lying, slander, railing, and cursing.” Whitefield
is pronounced “impious and ignorant.” The “false doctrines and
blasphemies of the Methodists, their field assemblies and conventicles
in houses, are contrary to the laws of God and man, of church and
state, and are tending to the ruin of both.”
Another pamphlet, of 127 pages, was by Dr. Trapp himself, and entitled,
“A Reply to Mr. Law’s earnest and serious Answer (as it is called)
to Dr. Trapp’s discourse on being righteous over much.” The reverend
doctor, as inflammable as ever, pronounces the Methodists “a new sect
of enthusiasts, or hypocrites, or both; whose doctrines and practices
tend to the destruction of souls, are a scandal to Christianity,
and expose it to the scoffs of libertines, infidels, and atheists.”
This is not an unfair specimen of the whole 127 pages. William Law,
however, was far too stout an antagonist to be silenced by Dr. Trapp.
His “Serious Answer” to Trapp’s sermons, and his “Animadversions”
on Trapp’s reply, whilst written in the highest style of Christian
courtesy, are witheringly severe. They may be found in Wesley’s
collected publications, edit. 1772, vol. vi.
Another doughty anti-Methodistic champion was the celebrated Dr. Daniel
Waterland, chaplain in ordinary to his majesty, canon of Windsor,
archdeacon of Middlesex, and vicar of Twickenham; one of the greatest
controversialists of the age, who died at the end of the year of which
we are writing, and whose collected works have since been published in
eleven octavo volumes.
A few months before his death, Waterland preached two sermons, first
at Twickenham, and next at Windsor, on regeneration, which, without
mentioning the Methodists, were undeniably meant to serve as an
antidote to the doctrines they preached. These he published in the
form of an octavo pamphlet of fifty-six pages, accompanied by a mass
of notes in Latin, Greek, and English, from all sorts of authors. The
title of the pamphlet is, “Regeneration Stated and Explained, according
to Scripture and Antiquity, in a Discourse on Titus iii. 4, 5, 6;”
and its subject may be inferred from the following definition:—“The
new birth, in the general, means a spiritual change, wrought upon
any person by the Holy Spirit, in the use of baptism; whereby he is
translated from his natural state in Adam, to a spiritual state in
Christ.” Written from such a standpoint, the pamphlet of course was a
tacit condemnation of the doctrines of the Methodists. It is immensely
learned, but far from luminous; full of talent, but likewise full of
error; exceedingly elaborate, but, to an equal extent, bewildering.
We shall mention only one other attack on Methodism and the Methodists
made at this period. This was a pamphlet of fifty-five pages, with
the title, “The Trial of Mr. Whitefield’s Spirit, in some remarks
upon his fourth Journal.” The author makes himself merry with the
discovery, that this new sect of enthusiasts, by taking to themselves
the name of _Methodist_, have unintentionally stigmatised themselves
with a designation which is branded in Scripture as evil. “The
word Μεθοδεια, or Methodism, is only used twice throughout the New
Testament (Ephesians iv. 14, and vi. 11), and in both places denotes
that cunning craftiness whereby evil men, or evil spirits, lie in
wait to deceive.” It is alleged that Wesley, Whitefield, and their
followers, “have taken an appellation, perhaps through a judicial
inadvertence, which the Spirit of God has peculiarly appropriated to
the adversary of mankind, and to those who are leagued with him in
enmity to the interests of righteousness and true holiness.” This was
an ingenious hit; the writer, however, forgetting or misstating the
fact, that the name of Methodists was not self-assumed, but imposed by
others. “Μεθοδευσαι δε εστι το απατησαι—to be a Methodist, says St.
Chrysostom, is to be beguiled.” And, from this, the author wishes the
inference to be deduced, that, because the new sect of enthusiasts were
called Methodists, they were all beguiled, and, of course, Wesley and
Whitefield were the great beguilers. The remainder of the pamphlet is
a critique on Whitefield’s Journals, which, it must be admitted, were
unguardedly expressed, and which, before being printed, ought to have
been revised by a kindred spirit, possessed of a soberer judgment than
Whitefield had.
The Methodist persecutions of 1740 were chiefly of a literary kind. It
is true that Charles Wesley met with a rough reception at Bengeworth,
where Henry Seward called him “a scoundrel and a rascal”; directed
the mob to “take him away and duck him”; and actually seized him by
the nose and wrung it. This was bad enough, but the treatment of John
Cennick and his friends was even worse. While he was preaching at
Upton, in Gloucestershire, the mob assembled with a horn, a drum, and
a number of brass pans, and made a most horrid hubbub; the brass pans
being also used in beating the people’s heads. A man likewise put a
cat into a cage, and brought a pack of hounds to make them bark at it.
Another fellow and his wife, who kept an alehouse at Hannam, rode
through the congregation, thrashing the people with their whips, and
trampling them beneath their horses’ hoofs. Little children collected
dust, which their upgrown patrons cast upon Cennick, who was also
struck violently on the nose, and became a target at which to hurl dead
dogs and stones.[380] But even violent and contemptuous treatment like
this was not near so painful as the scurrilous attacks encountered
through the press. In this way, the persecution of the Methodists was
something more than a localised outburst of spleen and hate; for, in
all sorts of squibs, they were gibbeted, and exposed to ridicule,
throughout the kingdom.
Wesley’s trials were not trifles; but, in the midst of all, he bravely
pursued the path of duty; and, after the final separation from his
foolish, fanatical friends at Fetter Lane, his labours in London were
attended with considerable success. On August 11, while forty or fifty
were praying and giving thanks at the Foundery, two persons began to
cry to God with a loud and bitter cry, and soon found peace. Five
days after, a woman, at Long Lane, fell down and continued in violent
agonies for an hour. In September, a great number of men forced their
way into the Foundery, and began to speak big, swelling words; but,
“immediately after, the hammer of the word brake the rocks in pieces.”
A smuggler rushed in and cursed vehemently; but, when Wesley finished
preaching, the man declared, before the congregation, that, henceforth,
he would abandon smuggling and give God his heart.
Wesley’s efforts to do good were various. In London, he induced his
friends to contribute the clothing they could spare, and distributed it
among the poor of the Foundery society. In Bristol, besides visiting
numbers of people “ill of the spotted fever,” he took into his
Broadmead meeting-house twelve of the poorest people he could find,
who were out of work; and, to save them at once from want and from
idleness, employed them for four months in carding and spinning cotton.
Wesley concluded this eventful year at Bristol, by holding a
watchnight meeting, proposed by James Rogers, a Kingswood collier,
noted among his neighbours for his playing on the violin, but who,
being awakened under the ministry of Charles Wesley, went home, burnt
his fiddle, and told his wife that he meant to be a Methodist. To
his death, James was faithful, and, besides many other important
services, was the first Methodist preacher that preached at Stroud in
Gloucestershire.[381]
This was the first watchnight meeting among the Methodists. The people
met at half-past eight; the house was filled from end to end; and “we
concluded the year,” says Wesley, “wrestling with God in prayer, and
praising Him for the wonderful work which He had already wrought upon
the earth.”
The meeting soon became a favourite one, and was held monthly. Wesley
writes: “Some advised me to put an end to this; but, upon weighing the
thing thoroughly, and comparing it with the practice of the ancient
Christians, I could see no cause to forbid it. Rather, I believed
it might be made of more general use.”[382] ‘The church, in ancient
times, was accustomed to spend whole nights in prayer, which nights
were termed _vigiliæ_, or vigils; and, sanctioned by such authority,
Wesley appointed monthly watchnights, on the Fridays nearest the full
moon, desiring that they, and they only, should attend, who could do it
without prejudice to their business or families.
Little more remains to be said concerning 1740. During the entire year,
Wesley preached in only three churches, namely at Newbury, and at
Lanhithel, and Lantarnum, in Wales. His favourite text was Ephesians
ii. 8, showing that his mind and heart were still full of the glorious
truth, salvation by grace through faith in Christ.
One of his publications has been already noticed. Another was a third
volume of hymns, pp. 209, by no means inferior to its predecessors in
poetic excellence, or Christian character. The book is also possessed
of considerable historic interest, containing, as it does, a long hymn
of twenty-two verses, descriptive of Charles Wesley’s history up to
this period; and likewise several hymns addressed to Whitefield; and
one “for the Kingswood colliers.” The volume consists of ninety-six
hymns and poems, only four of which are selected from other authors.
The preface is remarkable, giving a description of the man possessed
of a clean heart. He is freed from pride, self will, evil thoughts,
wandering thoughts, doubts, fears, etc. Wesley, a quarter of a century
afterwards, declared that this preface contains the strongest account
that he ever gave of Christian perfection; and admitted, that some
of the statements needed correction; especially, that the perfect
Christian is so “freed from self will as not to desire ease in pain;”
that, “in prayer, he is so delivered from wanderings, that he has no
thought of anything past, or absent, or to come, but of God alone,”
etc. Wesley never taught anything respecting Christian perfection, but
what was, either directly or indirectly, contained in this preface; but
some of its strong assertions he wished to modify.[383]
Another publication, issued in 1740, was entitled, “Serious
Considerations concerning the Doctrines of Election and Reprobation.
Extracted from a late author.” 12mo, twelve pages. It is a condensed,
well argued tract on what had become a bone of contention between
Wesley and his friend Whitefield. The address to the reader is
beautiful: “Let us bear with one another, remembering it is
the prerogative of the great God to pierce through all His own
infinite schemes with an unerring eye, to surround them with an
all-comprehensive view, to grasp them all in one single survey, and to
spread a reconciling light over all their immense varieties. Man must
yet grapple with difficulties in this dusky twilight; but God, in His
time, will irradiate the earth more plentifully with His light and
truth.”
Another of Wesley’s publications was a 12mo tract of nineteen pages,
with the title, “The Nature and Design of Christianity, extracted from
a late author” (Mr. Law); and another was Wesley’s second Journal,
extending from February 1 to August 12, 1738. 12mo, pp. 90.
The year 1740, in Wesley’s history, was not marked with great
religious success; but it was one of the most eventful years in
his chequered life. There was a full and final separation from the
Moravians; there was the separate organisation of the Methodist society
at Moorfields; and there was the controversy with Whitefield. All these
matters will again demand attention.
1741.
[Sidenote: 1741 Age 38]
With the exception of a week spent in the midland counties, about a
month at Oxford, and three weeks in Wales, Wesley divided the year
1741, in almost equal proportions, between London and Bristol.
Whitefield arrived in England, from America, in the month of March;
and, finding his congregations at Moorfields and Kennington Common
dwindled down from twenty thousand to two or three hundred, he started
off to Bristol, where he remained till the end of May; when he came
back to London, and, on July 25, sailed thence to Scotland, writing
six-and-twenty pastoralizing letters on the way, and arriving at Leith
on July 30. The next three months were spent with the Erskines and
others, the leaders of the Seceders, who, in the year preceding, had
been solemnly expelled by the General Assembly, and had had their
relation to the national church formally dissolved. Whitefield’s career
of out-door preaching, and his success in Scotland, were marvellous.
All the time, however, he was burdened with an enormous debt, incurred
on account of his orphan house in Georgia, and was sometimes threatened
with arrest. On leaving Scotland, he proceeded direct to Wales, where,
on the 11th of November, he married a widow of the name of James, and
set up housekeeping with borrowed furniture, though, according to an
announcement in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_,[384] his wife had a fortune
of £10,000. The rest of the year he spent chiefly in Bristol and the
west of England.[385]
Charles Wesley, of course, alternated with his brother, though he
preached far more at Bristol than in London. Ever and anon he composed
one of his grand funereal hymns, and not unfrequently met with amusing
adventures. In a Kingswood prayer-meeting, while he and others were
praying for an increase of spiritual children, a wild collier brought
four of his black-faced little ones, and threw the youngest on the
table, saying, “You have got the mother, take the bairns as well.” In
another instance, a woman came to him about her husband, who had been
to hear the _predestinarian_ gospel, returned home _elect_, and, in
proof of it, _beat his wife_.
For some months, in the year 1741, Charles Wesley was in danger of
subsiding into Moravian _stillness_; and his brother wrote to him, “The
Philistines are upon thee, Samson, but the Lord is not departed from
thee.” Gambold also, and Westley Hall, were inoculated with the same
pernicious poison. Charles went off to Bristol, and on April 21 Wesley
addressed to him the following:—
“I rejoice in your speaking your mind freely. O let our love be
without dissimulation!
“As yet, I dare in nowise join with the Moravians: 1. Because
their whole scheme is mystical, not scriptural. 2. Because
there is darkness and closeness in their whole behaviour, and
guile in almost all their words. 3. Because they utterly deny
and despise self denial and the daily cross. 4. Because they,
upon principle, conform to the world, in wearing gold or costly
apparel. 5. Because they extend Christian liberty, in this and
many other respects, beyond what is warranted in holy writ.
6. Because they are by no means zealous of good works; or, at
least, only to their own people. And, lastly, because they
make inward religion swallow up outward in general. For these
reasons chiefly, I will rather stand quite alone, than join
with them: I mean till I have full assurance, that they will
spread none of their errors among the little flock committed to
my charge.
“O my brother, my soul is grieved for you; the poison is in
you: fair words have stolen away your heart. ‘No English man or
woman is like the Moravians!’ So the matter is come to a fair
issue. Five of us did still stand together a few months since;
but two are gone to the right hand, Hutchins and Cennick; and
two more to the left, Mr. Hall and you. Lord, if it be Thy
gospel which I preach, arise and maintain Thine own cause!
Adieu!”[386]
In the month of May, a reunion of Wesley’s London society with the
Moravians at Fetter Lane was solemnly discussed; and all the bands
met at the Foundery, on a Wednesday afternoon, to ask God to give
them guidance. “It was clear to all,” writes Wesley, “even those who
were before the most desirous of reunion, that the time was not come:
(1) because the brethren of Fetter Lane had not given up their most
essentially erroneous doctrines; and, (2) because many of us had found
so much guile in their words, that we could scarce tell what they
really held, and what not.”
Wesley entertained no bitterness towards the Moravians. He readily
acknowledges, that they had a sincere desire to serve God; that many
of them had tasted of His love that they abstained from outward sin;
and that their discipline, in most respects, was excellent: but, after
reading all their English publications, and “waiving their odd and
affected phrases; their weak, mean, silly, childish expressions; their
crude, confused, and undigested notions; and their whims, unsupported
either by Scripture or sound reason,”—he found three grand, unretracted
errors running through almost all their books, namely “universal
salvation, antinomianism, and a kind of new, reformed quietism.” No
wonder that the thought of reunion was abandoned.
A month after the above meeting, at the Foundery, Wesley made a tour
among the Moravians, in the midland counties. Here Ingham had preached
with great success; and here Mr. Simpson, one of the Oxford Methodists,
had settled as a sort of Moravian minister. During the journey, Wesley
made an experiment which he had often been urged to make, namely that
of speaking to no one on sacred things, unless his heart was free to
it. The result was, that, for eighty miles together, he had no need to
speak at all; and he tells us that, instead of having crosses to take
up and bear, he commonly fell fast asleep; and all behaved to him, as
to a civil, good-natured gentleman. On reaching Ockbrook, where Simpson
lived, he found that though, a few months before, there had been a
great awakening all round about, three-fourths of the converts were
now backsliders. Simpson had drawn the people from the Church, and
had advised them to abandon devotion. He said, there was no Church of
England left; and that there was no scriptural command for family or
private prayer. The sum of his teaching was: “If you wish to believe,
be still; and leave off what you call the means of grace, such as
prayer and running to church and sacrament.” Mr. Graves, the clergyman
of the parish, having offered the use of his church to Wesley, the
latter preached two sermons, one on “the true gospel stillness”, and
the other from his favourite text—“By grace are ye saved, through
faith.”
From Ockbrook, Wesley went to Nottingham, where he found further
evidences of backsliding. The room, which used to be crowded, was now
half empty; and the few who did attend the services, instead of praying
when they entered, sat down without any religious formality whatever,
and began talking to their neighbours. When Wesley engaged in prayer
among them, none knelt, and “those who stood chose the most easy and
indolent posture which they conveniently could.” One of the hymn-books,
published by the Wesleys, had been sent from London to be used in the
public congregations; but both that and the Bible were now banished;
and, in the place of them, lay the Moravian hymns and Zinzendorf’s
sixteen sermons. Wesley preached twice in this Moravian meeting; and
once in the market place, to an immense multitude, all of whom, with
two or three exceptions, behaved with great decorum.
After spending a week at Markfield, Ockbrook, Nottingham, Melbourn, and
Hemmington, and also probably becoming acquainted with the Countess of
Huntingdon, who lived in this locality, Wesley returned to town, on the
16th of June, and, a fortnight after, went to Oxford, where he met his
old friend Mr. Gambold, who honestly told him, he was ashamed of his
company, and must be excused going to the Moravian meeting with him.
At the beginning of September, Zinzendorf wished to have an interview,
and, at his request, Wesley went to Gray’s-inn Walk, a public
promenade, to meet him. Zinzendorf charged him with having changed his
religion; with having quarreled with the Brethren; and with having
refused to be at peace with them, even after they had asked his
forgiveness. In reference to Wesley’s doctrine of Christian perfection,
the count became furious. “This,” said he, “is the error of errors. I
pursue it through the world with fire and sword. I trample upon it. I
devote it to utter destruction. Christ is our sole perfection. Whoever
follows inherent perfection, denies Christ. All Christian perfection
is faith in the blood of Christ; and is wholly imputed, not inherent.”
Wesley asked, if they were not striving about words; and, by a series
of questions, got the obfuscated German to admit, “that, a believer
is altogether holy in heart and life,—that he loves God with all his
heart, and serves Him with all his powers.” Wesley continued: “I
desire nothing more. I mean nothing else by perfection, or Christian
holiness.” Zinzendorf rejoined: “But this is not the believer’s
holiness. He is not more holy if he loves more, or less holy, if he
loves less. In the moment he is justified, he is sanctified wholly;
and, from that time, he is neither more nor less holy, even unto death.
Our whole justification, and sanctification, are in the same instant.
From the moment any one is justified, his heart is as pure as it
ever will be.” Wesley asked again: “Perhaps I do not comprehend your
meaning. Do we not, while we deny ourselves, die more and more to the
world and live to God?” Zinzendorf replied: “We reject all self denial.
We trample upon it. We do, as believers, whatsoever we will, and
nothing more. We laugh at all mortification. No purification precedes
perfect love.”[387] And thus the conference ended.
“The count,” said Mr. Stonehouse after reading the conversation, “is a
clever fellow; but the genius of Methodism is too strong for him.”[388]
Zinzendorf accused Wesley of refusing to live in peace, even after the
Brethren had humbled themselves and begged his pardon. Wesley says
there is a mistake in this. Fifty or more Moravians spoke bitterly
against him; one or two asked his pardon, but did it in the most
careless manner possible. The rest, if ashamed of their behaviour at
all, managed to keep their shame a profound secret from him.[389]
As to the count’s theory, that a man is wholly sanctified the moment
he is justified—a theory held by the Rev. Dr. Bunting, at all events,
at the commencement of his ministerial career[390]—we say nothing; but
there can be no question, that his sentiments respecting self denial,
and the right of believers to do or not to do what they like, are, in
a high degree, delusive and dangerous. We have here the very essence of
the antinomian heresy, and are thus prepared for an entry in Charles
Wesley’s journal:—
1741. September 6.—“I was astonished by a letter from my
brother, relating his conference with the apostle of the
Moravians. Who would believe it of Count Zinzendorf, that he
should utterly deny all Christian holiness? I never could, but
for a saying of his, which I heard with my own ears. Speaking
of St. James’s epistle, he said: ‘If it was thrown out of the
canon, I would not restore it.’”
The heresy of such a man was of vast importance; for, in this same year
and month, September, 1741, Zinzendorf told Doddridge, that he had
“sent out, from his own family of Moravians, three hundred preachers,
who were gone into most parts of the world; and that he himself was now
become the guardian of the Protestant churches in the south of France,
sixty of which were assembling privately for worship.”[391]
As already stated, Charles Wesley was in danger of falling into the
Moravian heresy. The following is an extract from a letter addressed to
Wesley by the Countess of Huntingdon, and dated October 24, 1741.
“Since you left us, the _still ones_ are not without their
attacks. I fear much more for your brother than for myself,
as the conquest of the one would be nothing in respect to the
other. They have, by one of their agents, reviled me very much,
but I have taken no sort of notice of it. I comfort myself,
that you will approve a step with respect to them, which your
brother and I have taken: no less than his declaring open war
against them. He seemed under some difficulty about it at
first, till he had free liberty given him to use my name, as
the instrument, in God’s hand, that had delivered him from
them. I rejoiced much at it, hoping it might be the means of
working my deliverance from them. I have desired him to enclose
to them yours on Christian perfection. The doctrine therein
contained, I hope to live and die by; it is absolutely the most
complete thing I know. Your brother is also to give his reasons
for separating. I have great faith God will not let him fall;
for many would fall with him. His natural parts, his judgment,
and the improvement he has made, are so very far above the very
highest of them, that I should imagine nothing but frenzy had
seized upon him.
“We set out a week ago for Donnington, and you shall hear from
me as soon as I arrive, and have heard how your little flock
goes on in that neighbourhood.”[392]
Methodists will learn, from this interesting letter, that they owe a
debt of gratitude to the noble and “elect lady” of the midland counties.
We turn to Whitefield. On his arrival from America, in the month of
March, he found his position far from pleasant.
First of all, there was the melancholy death of his friend, William
Seward—really Methodism’s first martyr—a man of considerable property,
but of meagre education and inferior talent; Whitefield’s travelling
companion in his second voyage to Georgia, and who, at the time of
his being murdered, in Wales, was itinerating with Howel Harris in
Glamorganshire. At Newport, the mob had torn Harris’s coat to tatters,
stolen his wig, and pelted him and his companion with apples, stones,
and dirt. At Caerleon, rotten eggs were thrown in all directions,
Seward’s eye was struck, and, a few days after, he was entirely blind.
At Monmouth, their treatment was of the same kind as at Newport and
Caerleon; but Seward bravely cried, “Better endure this than hell.”
At length, on reaching Hay, a villain hit him on the head; the blow
was fatal; and William Seward went to inherit a martyr’s crown, at the
early age of thirty-eight, on October 22, 1741.
Besides the death of Methodism’s protomartyr, there were other troubles
which Whitefield had to carry. He had an orphan family of nearly a
hundred persons to maintain; was above a thousand pounds in debt for
them; and was threatened with arrest on account of a bill for £350,
drawn, in favour of the orphan house by his dead friend, William
Seward, but which had not been met by him. James Hutton, who had been
his publisher, refused to have any further transactions with him.
“Many of my spiritual children,” he writes, “who, when I last left
England, would have plucked out their own eyes to have given me, are
so prejudiced by the dear Messrs. Wesleys’ dressing up of election in
such horrible colours, that they will neither hear, see, nor give me
the least assistance. Yea, some of them send threatening letters, that
God will speedily destroy me. As for the people of the world, they
are so embittered by my _injudicious_ and _too severe_ expressions
against Archbishop Tillotson, the author of the old Duty of Man, that
they fly from me as from a viper; and, what is worst of all, I am
now constrained, on account of our differing in principles, publicly
to separate from my dear, dear old friends, Messrs. John and Charles
Wesley.”[393]
During his passage to England, Whitefield wrote to Charles Wesley as
follows: “My dear, dear brother, why did you throw out the bone of
contention? Why did _you_ print that sermon against predestination?
Why did you, in particular, affix your hymn and join in putting out
your late hymn-book? How can you say you will not dispute with me about
election, and yet print such hymns?” And then he proceeds to state,
that he had written an answer to Wesley’s sermon on free grace, and was
about to have it printed in Charlestown, Boston, and London.[394]
About six weeks before his arrival in England, some one obtained a
copy of the letter he had sent to Wesley, under the date of September
25, 1740,[395] (an extract of which is given in the previous chapter,
page 316,) and had printed it without either his or Wesley’s consent,
and circulated it gratuitously at the doors of the Foundery. Wesley
heard of this; and, having procured a copy, tore it in pieces before
the assembled congregation, declaring that he believed Whitefield would
have done the same. The congregation imitated their minister’s example,
and, in two minutes, all the copies were literally torn to tatters.
Three weeks after this, Wesley had to hurry off to Kingswood to allay
the turmoils there. He met the bands, but it was a cold uncomfortable
meeting. Cennick and fifteen or twenty of his friends had an interview
with Wesley, who accused them of speaking against him behind his
back. They replied that they had said nothing behind his back which
they would not say before his face; namely, that he preached up the
faithfulness of man, and not the faithfulness of God.
After a lovefeast, held in Bristol on Sunday evening, February 22,
Wesley related to the Bristol Methodists, that many of their brethren
at Kingswood had formed themselves into a separate society, on account
of Cennick preaching doctrines different to those preached by himself
and his brother. Cennick, who was present, affirmed, that Wesley’s
doctrine was false. Wesley charged him with supplanting him in his own
house, stealing the hearts of the people, and, by private accusations,
dividing very friends. Cennick replied, “I have never privately accused
you.” Wesley, who, by some means, was possessed of a letter which
Cennick had recently addressed to Whitefield, answered: “My brethren,
judge;” and then began to read as follows:—
“_January 17, 1741._
“MY DEAR BROTHER,—That you might come quickly, I have written
a second time. I sit solitary, like Eli, waiting what will
become of the ark. My trouble increases daily. How glorious did
the gospel seem once to flourish in Kingswood! I spake of the
everlasting love of Christ with sweet power; but now brother
Charles is suffered to open his mouth against this truth,
while the frighted sheep gaze and fly, as if no shepherd was
among them. O, pray for the distressed lambs yet left in this
place, that they faint not! Brother Charles pleases the world
with universal redemption, and brother John follows him in
everything. No atheist can preach more against predestination
than they; and all who believe election are counted enemies to
God, and called so. Fly, dear brother. I am as alone; I am in
the midst of the plague. If God give thee leave, make haste.”
Cennick acknowledged the letter was his, that it had been sent to
Whitefield, and that he retracted nothing in it. The meeting got
excited, and Wesley adjourned the settlement of the business to
Kingswood on Saturday next ensuing.
Here he heard all that any one wished to say, and then read the
following paper:—
“BY many witnesses, it appears that several members of the
band society in Kingswood have made it their common practice
to scoff at the preaching of Mr. John and Charles Wesley;
that they have censured and spoken evil of them behind their
backs, at the very time they professed love and esteem to their
faces; that they have studiously endeavoured to prejudice other
members of that society against them; and, in order thereto,
have belied and slandered them in divers instances.
“Therefore, not for their opinions, nor for any of them
(whether they be right or wrong), but for the causes above
mentioned, viz. for their scoffing at the word and ministers of
God, for their talebearing, backbiting, and evil speaking, for
their dissembling, lying, and slandering:
“I, John Wesley, by the consent and approbation of the band
society in Kingswood, do declare the persons above mentioned
to be no longer members thereof. Neither will they be so
accounted, until they shall openly confess their fault, and
thereby do what in them lies, to remove the scandal they have
given.”
This is a remarkable document It was hardly two years since Whitefield
and Wesley began to preach at Kingswood, and yet here we have a large
number of their converts charged with backbiting, lying, slandering,
and other crimes. “How is the gold become dim!” Were the former days
better than these? We doubt it.
Here we also have the first Methodist expulsion; not for opinions, but
for sins; not by the sole authority and act of John Wesley, but “by the
consent and approbation” of the society, whose refractory members were
to be put away. Such was Methodism, at its beginning.
Cennick, and those who sympathised with his sentiments, refused
to own that they had done aught amiss; and declared that, on many
occasions, he had heard both Wesley and his brother preach Popery.
Wesley gave them another week to think the matter over. They were still
intractable; and alleged that the _real_ cause of their expulsion was
their holding the doctrine of election. Wesley answered, “You know in
your conscience it is not. There are several predestinarians in our
societies both at London and Bristol, nor did I ever put any one out
of either because he held that opinion.” The result of the whole was,
Cennick and fifty-one others at once withdrew, and the remainder,
numbering about a hundred, still adhered to Wesley.[396]
Such was the first schism in Methodist history,—John Cennick the
leader,—fifty of the Kingswood members its abettors,—and John Wesley
and a majority of the Kingswood society, the court enacting their
expulsion.
The writer’s chief object is to furnish facts, and therefore he
refrains from comment on these transactions. No doubt Cennick was
sincere. After the risks he ran in preaching Christ, no one can doubt
his Christian earnestness: but, having come to Kingswood at Wesley’s
invitation, and having been employed by him as the teacher of his
school, and also as an evangelist among the surrounding colliers, it
would, at least, have been more courteous to have quietly retired from
his present sphere of action, when he found his views different from
those of his patron and his friend, than it was for him to pursue the
controversial and divisive course he did. John Cennick had a lion’s
courage and a martyr’s piety; but his passions sometimes mastered his
prudence, and, for want of the serpent’s wisdom, he often failed in
exhibiting the meekness of the dove.
Whitefield arrived in London a few days after the Kingswood expulsion;
and Wesley, on the 25th of March, hastened off to meet him. Whitefield
told him they preached two different gospels, and that he was resolved
to preach against him and his brother wherever he preached at all. A
weekly publication, of four folio pages, entitled “The Weekly History;
or An Account of the most remarkable Particulars relating to the
present Progress of the Gospel,” was immediately started by J. Lewis,
Whitefield promising to supply him with fresh matter every week. This
was really the first Methodist newspaper ever published. Of course,
Calvinism was its inspiring genius. The principal contributors were
Whitefield, Cennick, Howel Harris, and Joseph Humphreys.
The last mentioned was employed by Wesley as a sort of Moravian lay
preacher, as early as the year 1738,[397] and was greatly attached to
him. At this period, he was acting as Moravian minister at Deptford,
and wrote to Wesley as follows:—
“DEPTFORD, _April 5, 1741_.
“DEAR AND REVEREND SIR,—I think I love you better than ever.
I would not grieve you by any means, if I could possibly help
it. I think I had never more power in preaching than I had
this morning. And, if this is the consequence of electing
everlasting love, may my soul be ever filled with it!”[398]
In another letter, of three weeks later date, addressed to “Mr. M——,”
he avows his belief in the doctrine of final perseverance, and proceeds
to say:—
“The doctrine of sinless perfection in this life, I utterly
renounce. I believe the preaching of it has led many souls
into darkness and confusion. I believe those that hold it,
if children of God at all, are in a very legal state. I
believe those who pretend to have attained it are dangerously
ignorant of their own hearts. I also see that, if I incline
towards universal redemption any longer, I must also hold with
universal salvation.”
He then adds: “Last Saturday I sent the following letter to the Rev.
Mr. J. Wesley.”
“REVEREND SIR,—I would have been joined with you to all
eternity if I could; but my having continued with you so long
as I have has led me into grievous temptation; and I now think
it my duty no longer to join with you, but openly to renounce
your peculiar doctrines. I have begun to do it at London; and,
as the Lord shall enable me, will proceed to do it here at
Bristol. I feel no bitterness in my spirit, but love you, pray
for you, and respect you.
“I am, sir, your humble servant and unworthy brother,
“JOSEPH HUMPHREYS.”
The above letter was sent to the editor of the _Weekly History_ by
Whitefield, accompanied by the following note:—
“I would have you print this letter with my last. If you
think it best, I would also have it printed in the _Daily
Advertiser_. I see the mystery of iniquity, that is working,
more and more.
“Ever yours,
“G. WHITEFIELD.“[399]
Humphreys and Cennick were now both at Kingswood, which was, for the
time being, the head quarters of the Calvinistic schism. Here, in the
month of April, the separatists got, from an old man, his copy of
Wesley’s treatise against predestination, and burnt it.[400] About
the same time, however, Wesley distributed a thousand copies among
Whitefield’s congregation, and a thousand more at the Foundery;[401]
and, in the same month, addressed the following characteristic letter
to his friend.[402]
“_April, 1741._
“Would you have me deal plainly with you? I believe you would;
then, by the grace of God, I will.
“Of many things I find you are not rightly informed; of others
you speak what you have not well weighed.
“‘The society room at Bristol,’ you say, ‘ is adorned,’ How?
Why, with a piece of green cloth nailed to the desk; and two
sconces for eight candles each in the middle. I know no more.
Now, which of these can be spared I know not; nor would I
desire more adorning, or less.
“But ‘lodgings are made for me and my brother,’ That is, in
plain English, there is a little room by the school, where I
speak to the persons who come to me; and a garret, in which a
bed is placed for me. And do you grudge me this? Is this the
voice of my brother, my son, Whitefield?
“You say further, ‘that the children at Bristol are clothed
as well as taught,’ I am sorry for it, for the cloth is not
paid for yet, and was bought without my consent, or knowledge.
‘But those at Kingswood have been neglected,’ This is not so,
notwithstanding the heavy debt that lay upon it. One master and
one mistress have been in the house ever since it was capable
of receiving them. A second master has been placed there some
months since; and I have long been seeking for two proper
mistresses; so that as much has been done, as matters stand, if
not more, than I can answer to God and man.
“Hitherto, then, there is no ground for the heavy charge
of perverting your design for the poor colliers. Two years
since, your design was to build them a school. To this end,
you collected some money more than once; how much I cannot
say, till I have my papers. But this I know, it was not near
one-half of what has been expended on the work. This design you
then recommended to me, and I pursued it with all my might,
through such a train of difficulties as, I will be bold to
say, you have not met with in your life. For many months, I
collected money wherever I was, and began building, though
I had not then a quarter of the money requisite to finish.
However, taking all the debt upon myself, the creditors were
willing to stay; and then it was that I took possession of it
in my own name; that is, when the foundation was laid; and I
immediately made my will, fixing you and my brother to succeed
me therein.
“But it is a poor case, that you and I should be talking thus.
Indeed, these things ought not to be. It lay in your power to
have prevented all, and yet to have borne testimony to what you
call ‘the truth.’ If you had disliked my sermon, you might have
printed another on the same text, and have answered my proofs,
without mentioning my name; this had been fair and friendly.”
The two friends were thus at variance; but every candid reader must
honestly acknowledge, that Wesley triumphantly refutes Whitefield’s
petulant objections.
Meanwhile, Whitefield’s adherents in the metropolis, within a few
days after his arrival, set to work to erect him a wooden building
near the Foundery, which they called “a Tabernacle, for morning’s
exposition.”[403] On April 25, he went to Bristol, where Charles
Wesley was officiating; and, three weeks after, wrote to a friend,
saying, “The doctrines of the gospel are sadly run down, and most
monstrous errors propagated. They assert, ‘that the very in-being of
sin must be taken out of us, or otherwise we are not new creatures,’
However, at Bristol, error is in a great measure put a stop to.”[404]
So Whitefield thought, and yet, at this very time, Charles Wesley was
preaching at Bristol and Kingswood, if possible, with greater power
than ever. In June, however, Whitefield began to collect money for a
rival meeting-house at Kingswood, and wished John Cennick to lay the
foundation immediately, but to take care not to make the building
either too large or too handsome.[405]
Wesley and Whitefield were divided; but Howel Harris, with his warm
Welsh heart, tried to reunite them. In the month of October, Harris
had loving interviews with both Wesley and his brother, and wrote to
Whitefield, then in Scotland. Whitefield, easily moved in the path of
Christian love, immediately addressed to Wesley the letter following:—
“ABERDEEN, _October 10, 1741_.
“REVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,—This morning I received a letter
from brother Harris, telling me how he had conversed with
you and your dear brother. May God remove all obstacles that
now prevent our union! Though I hold particular election,
yet I offer Jesus freely to every individual soul. You may
carry sanctification to what degrees you will, only I cannot
agree with you that the in-being of sin is to be destroyed
in this life. In about three weeks, I hope to be at Bristol.
May all disputings cease, and each of us talk of nothing but
Jesus and Him crucified! This is my resolution. I am, without
dissimulation,
“Ever yours,
“G. WHITEFIELD.”[406]
It was nearly two years after this that Wesley wrote the piece, in his
collected works, entitled, “Calvinistic Controversy” (vol. xiii., p.
478). He says:—
“Having found for some time a strong desire to unite with Mr.
Whitefield, as far as possible, to cut off needless dispute, I wrote
down my sentiments, as plain as I could, in the following terms:—
“There are three points in debate: 1. Unconditional election. 2.
Irresistible grace. 3. Final perseverance.”
With regard to the first, Wesley expresses his belief, that God has
unconditionally elected certain persons to do certain work, and certain
nations to receive peculiar privileges; and allows, though he says
he cannot prove, that God “has unconditionally elected some persons,
thence eminently styled ‘the elect,’ to eternal glory;” but he cannot
believe, that all those, not thus elected to glory, must perish
everlastingly; or, that there is a soul on earth but what has the
chance of escaping eternal damnation.
With regard to irresistible grace, he believes, that the grace which
brings faith, and, thereby, salvation, is irresistible at that moment;
and, that most believers may remember a time when God irresistibly
convinced them of sin, and other times when He acted irresistibly upon
their souls; but he also believes, that the grace of God, both before
and after these moments, may be, and hath been resisted; and that, in
general, it does not act irresistibly, but we may comply therewith, or
may not. In those eminently styled “the elect” (if such there be), the
grace of God is so far irresistible, that they cannot but believe, and
be finally saved; but it is not true, that all those must be damned
in whom it does not thus irresistibly work, or, that there is a soul
living who has not any other grace than such as was designed of God to
increase his damnation.
With regard to final perseverance, he believes, “that there is a state
attainable in this life, from which a man cannot finally fall; and that
he has attained this, who can say, ‘Old things are passed away; all
things in me are become new;’ and, further, he does not deny, that all
those eminently styled ‘the elect’ will infallibly persevere to the
end.”[407]
In reference to “the elect,” Henry Moore adds, that Wesley told him,
that, when he wrote this, he believed, with Macarius, that all who are
perfected in love are thus elect.
The document from which the above is taken, was written in 1743. As
Mr. Jackson says, it “evidently leans too much towards Calvinism.”
It is valuable chiefly because it shows Wesley’s anxiety to be at
peace with Whitefield. The latter writes as though all the blame, in
reference to the rupture in their friendship, lay with Wesley; whereas
this was far from being true. Wesley honestly and firmly believed
the doctrine of general redemption; and, because he preached it, and
published a sermon in condemnation of the doctrines opposed to it,
Whitefield worked himself into a fume, and wrote his pamphlet, in which
he not only tries to refute Wesley’s teaching, but unnecessarily makes
a personal attack on Wesley’s character, and taunts him about casting
lots,—a wanton outrage, for which, in October, 1741, he humbly begged
his pardon.[408] The intolerant, excessive zeal was altogether on the
side of Whitefield. Wesley believed and preached general redemption;
but raised no objection to Whitefield believing and preaching election
and final perseverance. Instead of reciprocating this, Whitefield,
in his pamphlet, blustered; and, in his letters, whined, until the
difference of opinion disturbed their friendship, and led them to
build separate chapels, form separate societies, and pursue, to
the end of life, separate lines of action. One of Wesley’s friends
wished him to reply to Whitefield’s pamphlet. Wesley answered, “You
may read Whitefield against Wesley; but you shall never read Wesley
against Whitefield.”[409] In private, Wesley opposed Whitefield, but
in public never. On one occasion, when the two friends met in a large
social gathering, Whitefield mounted his hobby, and spoke largely and
valiantly in defence of his favourite system. Wesley, on the other
hand, was silent till all the company were gone, when, turning to the
spurred and belted controversial knight, he quietly remarked, “Brother,
are you aware of what you have done to-night?” “Yes,” said Whitefield,
“I have defended truth.” “You have tried to prove,” replied Wesley,
“that God is worse than the devil; for the devil can only _tempt_ a man
to sin; but, if what you have said be true, God _forces_ a man to sin;
and therefore, on your own system, God is worse than the devil.”[410]
Thus the gulf between Wesley and Whitefield was immense. “It was
undesirable—indeed, it was impossible—that they should continue to
address, in turn, the same congregations; for such congregations would
have been kept in the pitiable condition of a ship, thrown on its beam
ends, larboard and starboard, by hurricanes driving alternately east
and west.”[411]
Being separated from Whitefield and the Moravians, Wesley began to
purge and to organise the societies, which were now purely and properly
his own. At Bristol, he took an account of every person—(1) to whom
any reasonable objection was made; and (2) who was not known to and
recommended by some, on whose veracity he could depend. To those who
were sufficiently recommended, he gave tickets. Most of the rest he
had face to face with their accusers; and such as appeared to be
innocent, or confessed their faults and promised better behaviour,
were then received into the society. The others were put upon trial
again, unless they voluntarily expelled themselves. By this purging
process, about forty were excluded.[412] He also appointed stewards,
to receive and expend what was contributed weekly; and, finding the
funds insufficient, he discharged two of the Bristol schoolmasters,
retaining still, at Kingswood and Bristol unitedly, three masters and
two mistresses for the two schools respectively.
In London, he adopted the same process, and set apart the hours from
ten to two, on every day but Saturday, for speaking with the bands and
other persons, that no disorderly walker, nor any of a careless or
contentious spirit, might remain among them; the result of which was
the society was reduced to about a thousand members.[413] Ascertaining
that many of the members were without needful food, and destitute
of convenient clothing, he appointed twelve persons to visit every
alternate day, and to provide things needful for the sick; also to
meet once a week to give an account of their proceedings, and to
consult what could be done further. Women, out of work, he proposed
to employ in knitting, giving them the common price for the work they
did, and then adding gratuities according to their needs. To meet
these expenses, he requested those who could afford it, to give a penny
weekly, and to contribute any clothing which their own use did not
require.
Here we have a new Methodist agency employed. Wesley had already
permitted laymen to exhort and preach; he now authorised them to
pay pastoral visits among his people. At present, they were _mere
visitors_, and meetings analogous to the class-meetings of the present
day did not exist. The two Wesleys often addressed the societies apart,
after they had dismissed the general congregation. They also fixed
certain hours for private conversation; and now they appointed visitors
to visit those who through sickness, poverty, or other causes, were
not able to avail themselves of such assistance. This, as yet, was
all. In the present sense, bands and classes there were none, except
that each society, after the manner of the Moravians, was divided into
male and female, and, perhaps, married and unmarried, bands, all of
them watched over by Wesley or by his brother; and the sick and poor
among them visited by persons appointed to that office. In Bristol,
several members applied to Wesley for baptism, and he gave the bishop
notice to that effect, adding, that they desired him to baptize them
by immersion.[414] The Kingswood society, having been repelled from
the sacramental table at Temple church, Charles Wesley gave them the
sacrament in their own humble school; and, notwithstanding his high
churchism, declared that, under the circumstances, if they had not had
the school, he should have felt himself justified in administering
it in the wood. In London, some of the members communicated at St.
Paul’s, or at their own parish churches; but, during the autumn, on
five successive Sundays, Wesley availed himself of the offer of Mr.
Deleznot, a French clergyman, and used his small church, in Hermitage
Street, Wapping, in administering the Lord’s supper to five successive
batches of about two hundred members of his society (as many as the
place could well contain), until all the society, consisting of about a
thousand persons, had received it.[415]
To the members at Bristol, and doubtless also at London, Wesley
gave _tickets_. On every ticket he wrote, with his own hand, the
member’s name, “so that,” says he, “the ticket implied as strong a
recommendation of the person to whom it was given as if I had wrote at
length, ‘I believe the bearer hereof to be one that fears God and works
righteousness.’”
Wesley regarded these tickets as being equivalent to the επιστολαι
συστατικαι, “commendatory letters,” mentioned by the apostle, and
says they were of use: (1) because, wherever those who bore them
came, they were acknowledged by their brethren, and received with all
cheerfulness; (2) when the societies had to meet apart, the tickets
easily distinguished who were members and who were not; (3) they
supplied a quiet and inoffensive method of removing any disorderly
member; for, the tickets being changed once a quarter, and, of course,
no new ticket being given to such a person, it was hereby immediately
known that he was no longer a member of the community.[416]
The writer is possessed of nearly a complete set of these society
tickets, from the first, issued about 1742, to those given a hundred
years afterwards. Many of them bear the autographs of John and Charles
Wesley, William Grimshaw, and other old Methodist worthies. The
earliest are wood and copper-plate engravings, printed on cardboard,
without any text of Scripture: some bearing the emblem of an angel
flying in the clouds of heaven, with one trumpet to his mouth, and a
second in his hand; and others of the Sun of Righteousness shining on a
phœnix rising out of fire. Some have a dove encircled with glory; and
others have no engraving whatever, but simply an inscription, written
by Charles Wesley, “August, 1746.” Some merely have the word “Society”
imprinted, with the member’s name written underneath; others have a
lamb carrying a flag; and others a tree with a broken stem, Jehovah
as a sun shining on it, and at its foot two men, one planting a new
cutting, and the other watering one already planted. Some represent
Christ in the clouds of heaven, with the cross in one hand and a crown
in the other; and others represent the Christian kneeling before an
altar, inscribed with the words, “Pray always and faint not.” One
represents Christ as washing a disciple’s feet; and another, with
a text of Scripture at the top, has four lines below, in which are
printed, “March 25, June 25, September 29, December 25,” with space
left opposite to each for writing the member’s name, and so making one
ticket serve for the four quarters of a year. One bears the impress
of an anchor and a crown; and another the image of old father Time,
hurrying along, with a scroll in his hand, inscribed with “Now is the
accepted time.” Some are printed with black ink, some with red, and
some with blue. About 1750, emblems gave place to texts of Scripture,
which have been continued from that time to this.
The Methodist societies, as organised by Wesley, were thus fairly
started in 1741. Meanwhile, Methodism on earth began to swell the
inhabitants of heaven. At the very commencement of the year, Elizabeth
Davis, of London, after she was speechless, being desired to hold up
her hand if she knew she was going to God, immediately held up both.
Anne Cole, on being asked by Wesley, whether she chose to live or die,
answered: “I choose neither, I choose nothing. I am in my Saviour’s
hands, and I have no will but His.” Another of the London members, when
visited by Wesley, said: “I am very ill,—but I am very well. O, I am
happy, happy, happy! My spirit continually rejoices in God my Saviour.
Life or death is all one to me. I have no darkness, no cloud. My body
indeed is weak and in pain, but my soul is all joy and praise.” Jane
Muncy exclaimed: “I faint not, I murmur not, I rejoice evermore, and in
everything give thanks. God is ever with me, and I have nothing to do
but praise Him.” In Bristol, a woman in her dying agonies cried out:
“O, how loving is God to me! But He is loving to every man, and loves
every soul as well as He loves mine.” The last words of another were,
“Death stares me in the face, but I fear him not.” Hannah Richardson,
who was followed to her grave by the whole of the Bristol society, the
procession being pelted in the streets with dirt and stones, said: “I
have no fear, no doubt, no trouble. Heaven is open! I see Jesus Christ
with all His angels and saints in white. I see what I cannot utter or
express.” Sister Hooper cried, “I am in great pain, but in greater
joy.” Sister Lillington exclaimed, “I never felt such love before;
I love every soul: I am all love, and so is God.” Rachel Peacock
sang hymns incessantly, and was so filled with joy that she shouted:
“Though I groan, I feel no pain at all; Christ so rejoices and fills my
heart.”[417] And to all these may be added Keziah Wesley. In a letter
to his brother, dated March 9, 1741, Charles Wesley writes: “Yesterday
morning, sister Kezzy died in the Lord Jesus. He finished His work, and
cut it short in mercy. Full of thankfulness, resignation, and love,
without pain or trouble, she commended her spirit into the hands of
Jesus, and fell asleep.”[418]
These were triumphs in the midst of troubles; for, besides the anxiety
and pain arising out of the differences with Whitefield and the
Moravians, Wesley, in 1741, had to encounter no inconsiderable amount
of unprincipled persecution. At Deptford, while he was preaching,
“many poor wretches were got together, utterly devoid both of common
sense and common decency, who cried aloud, as if just come from ‘among
the tombs.’” In London, on Shrove Tuesday, “many men of the baser
sort” mixed themselves with the female part of his congregation, and
behaved with great indecency. “A constable commanded them to keep the
peace, in answer to which they knocked him down.” In Long Lane, while
Wesley was preaching, the mob pelted him with stones, one of great
size passing close past his head. In Marylebone fields, in the midst
of his sermon, out of doors, missiles fell thick and fast on every
side. In Charles Square, Hoxton, the rabble brought an ox which they
endeavoured to drive through the congregation. A man, who happened to
be a Dissenting minister, after hearing him preach at Chelsea, asked,
“_Quid est tibi nomen?_” and, on Wesley not answering his impertinence,
the pedantic puppy turned in triumph to his friends, and said, “Ah! I
told you he did not understand Latin.” Among other slanders concerning
him, it was currently reported that he had paid a fine of £20, for
selling Geneva gin; that he kept in his house two popish priests;
that he had received large remittances from Spain, in order to make
a party among the poor; and that, as soon as the Spaniards landed,
he was to join them with twenty thousand men. It was also rumoured,
that, in Bristol, he had hanged himself, and had been cut down just
in time to save his life. The _Scots Magazine_, for August, had a
scurrilous article to the following effect. Above thirty Methodists
had been in Bedlam, and six were there at present. Wesley had set up,
at his Moorfields meeting-house, a number of spinning wheels, where
girls who had absconded from their homes, and servants who had been
discharged for neglecting their master’s business, were set to work,
and were allowed sixpence daily, the overplus of their earnings going
into Wesley’s pocket. Boys and girls mixed together, and were taught to
call each other brother and sister in the Lord. They had to greet each
other with a holy kiss, and to show the utmost affection and fondness,
in imitation of the primitive Christians. In the rooms adjoining the
spinning wheels were several beds, and when persons, in the Foundery
congregation, fell into fits, either pretended or real, they were
carried out and laid upon these beds, that Wesley might pray the evil
spirits out of them, and the good spirit into them, and thus convert
them.
In refutation of this tissue of unmingled falsehoods, a writer says,
in the same magazine, that he had visited the Foundery, and found it
“an old open house, like the tennis court at Edinburgh;” but there were
no bedchambers, and no spinning wheels; and, consequently, no runaway
girls nor discarded menials. And, so far from above thirty Methodists
having been sent to Bedlam, the writer had made inquiry in London, and
was unable to hear of one.[419]
The _Gentleman’s Magazine_, for the same year (page 26), has a
ridiculous letter, purporting to be from a Methodist to a clergyman,
in which the clergyman is charged with turning “the _Scripters_ upside
down,” and with calling the Methodists “_expownding infildelfels_.”
Appended to the letter are annotations, stating that, in a certain
barn, twenty or thirty Methodists rendezvous to hear a young
schoolmaster preach, pray, and sing Wesley’s hymns; and that, recently,
a mob of juveniles had chastised his ambition by throwing snowballs
at him; but the preaching pedagogue, instead of ceasing, had cheered
himself by singing hymns suitable to such adventurers; and a cobbler’s
wife had been so excited by his dissertations upon the pangs of the
new birth, that she imagined herself pregnant with devils, had been
delivered of two or three, but still felt others struggling within her.
The _Weekly Miscellany_ tells its readers that, in the assemblies of
the expounding houses, lately erected in the outskirts of London by the
Methodists, any one, who conceits himself inwardly moved, immediately
sets up for a Scripture expounder. In a long article, it pretends to
show that the Methodist preachers are like the German Anabaptists—1.
Because they act contrary to the oaths they have taken. 2. Because
of their invectives against the clergy. 3. Because they are against
all rule and authority. 4. Because they let laymen and also women
preach. 5. Because they preach in the streets. 6. Because they denounce
vengeance and damnation against sinners. 7. Because they contend for
absolute perfection in this life. 8. Because they pretend to be always
guided by the Holy Ghost. And, 9. Because they hold the doctrine of
community of goods.
The same abusive but vigorously written paper contains an attack
upon the poor Methodists, by Hooker, the editor, begun in the number
for March 14, and continued weekly until June 27, when this scolding
periodical came to a well deserved termination. The following are a few
selections:—
March 28.—Wesley pretends to cast out spirits from those whom he
declares possessed of them; but he is “a grand, empty, inconsistent
heretic; the ringleader, fomenter, and first cause of all the
divisions, separations, factions, and feuds that have happened in
Oxford, London, Bristol, and other places where he has been.”
April 25.—Wesley rebaptizes adults, on the ground that, _really_ they
have never been baptized before, the baptism of infants by sprinkling
being no true baptism in his esteem. When Whitefield returned from
Georgia, he preached at the Foundery, taking for his text, “O foolish
Galatians, who hath bewitched you?” For this he was immediately
excommunicated from the Foundery pulpit, lest the people should think
that Wesley was a conjuror. “Everybody allows that there are above
twenty, and some say forty, spinning wheels at the Foundery.” “Wesley
well knows how to breakfast with one of his devotees, dine with
another, and sup with a third, all of which retrenches the charges
of housekeeping at home. Those who sit in his gallery must subscribe
five shillings a quarter, and those who stand, a penny a week. He who
advances half-a-crown a quarter is admitted into the close society; and
he who doubles that amount becomes a member of the bands, where men and
women stay all night, but for what purpose is known only to God and to
themselves. The price for resolving cases of conscience is threepence
each. Wesley makes at least £50 by every edition of the hymns he
publishes; and thus, by his preaching, his bookselling, his workhouse,
his wheedling, and his sponging, it is generally believed that he gets
an income of £700 a year, and some say above £1000. This,” adds the
mendacious editor, “is priest-craft in perfection.”
May 9.—The writer speculates concerning what is likely to be the end
of the Methodist movement. 1. Some think if the Methodists are let
alone, they will, as a matter of course, fall to pieces. 2. Others
think that the irreconcilable differences between Wesley and Whitefield
will effect their ruin; for Whitefield has set up a conventicle of
boards not far from Wesley’s Foundery; and while one calls the other
schismatic, the other in requital calls him a heretic. 3. Some think
that their congregations, by neglecting their business and their work,
will be reduced to beggary, and this, of course, will ruin all. 4.
Lastly, others think their conduct will be such that the government
will find it necessary to suppress them.
June 13.—Proposes the erection of a Methodist edifice on Blackheath.
The foundation stone is to be the tombstone that prevented the
resurrection of Dr. Emes, the famous French prophet. The principal
entrance is to be adorned with statues of the most eminent
field-preachers. The hall is to be decorated with a piece, in which the
principal figure is to be Enthusiasm, sitting in an easy chair, and
just delivered of two beauteous babes, the one called Superstition,
and the other Infidelity. On her right hand must be a grisly old
gentleman with a cloven foot, holding the new born children in a
receiver, which the Pope has blessed, and gazing upon them with most
fatherly affection. The _pang room_ of the building is to be for the
accommodation of those seized with the pangs of the new birth. All
who run mad about election must be lodged in the _predestination
room_,—which, by the way, is likely to be well peopled, and therefore
must be large, as well as dark and gloomy, and must be adorned with
the evolutions, intricacies, and involutions of a rusty chain, held
at one end by the Methodistic founder, and at the other by the devil.
The _disputation room_ is, like a cockpit, to be round as a hoop, so
that the disputants may have the pleasure of disputing in a circle.
The _expounding room_ is to be adorned with a picture of the founder,
with a pair of scissors in one hand and a Bible in the other; a motto
over his reverend head, “Dividing the word of God;” and all round about
scraps of paper supposed to be texts newly clipped from the sacred
Scriptures. The _refectory_ is to have a painting to represent Wesley,
Whitefield, and C. Graves at supper, with Madam Bourignon presiding.
Near her must be an ass’s head boiled with sprouts and bacon; and,
at the other end of the table, a dish of owls roasted and larded.
Having already helped Whitefield to the jaw bone of the ass’s head,
and Wesley to the sweet tooth, she now gives Mr. Graves a spoonful
of the brains and a bit of tongue, which he receives with a grateful
bow. The foundation stone is to be laid on the first of April; and the
procession to the site are to sing, not the psalms of David, for they
are not half good enough, but a hymn of Wesley’s own composing.
Ridicule like this was even worse than being pelted with brickbats and
rotten eggs.
The two Wesleys and Whitefield were often roughly treated; and so
also was John Cennick, the Methodist Moravian. At Swindon, the mob
surrounded his congregation, rung a bell, blew a horn, and used a fire
engine in drenching him and them with water. Guns were fired over the
people’s heads, and rotten eggs were plentiful.[420] At Hampton, near
Gloucester, the rabble, chiefly soldiers, to annoy him, beat a drum
and let off squibs and crackers. For an hour and a half, hog’s wash
and fœtid water were poured upon him and his congregation, who all the
while stood perfectly still, in secret prayer, with their eyes and
hands lifted up to heaven.[421] At Stratton, a crowd of furious men
came, armed with weapons, clubs, and staves. Cudgels were used most
unmercifully. Some of his congregation had blood streaming down their
faces; others, chiefly women, were dragged away by the hair of their
head. Sylvester Keen spat in the face of Cennick’s sister, and beat
her about the head, as if he meant to kill her. The mob bellowed and
roared like maniacs; but Cennick kept on preaching and praying till he
was violently pulled down; when he and his friends set out for Lineham,
singing hymns, and followed by the crowd, who bawled—“You cheating dog,
you pickpocketing rogue, sell us a halfpenny ballad!”[422]
In the midst of such treatment, Methodism went on its way, and
prospered. It is a remarkable fact, that, during 1741, there were no
_stricken_ cases, like those which occurred in 1739, excepting two
at Bristol; but there were many signal seasons of refreshing from
the presence of the Lord. A man, who had been an atheist for twenty
years, came to the Foundery to make sport, but was so convinced of sin,
that he rested not until he found peace with God. At Bristol, on one
occasion, “some wept aloud, some clapped their hands, some shouted, and
the rest sang praise.” In Charles Square, London, while a violent storm
was raging, “their hearts danced for joy, praising ‘the glorious God
that maketh the thunder.’”
Two or three other important events, occurring in the year 1741, must
be noticed.
At midsummer, Wesley spent about three weeks in Oxford. Here he
inquired concerning the exercises requisite in order to become a
Bachelor in Divinity. The Oxford Methodists were scattered. Out of
twenty-five or thirty weekly communicants, only two were left; and
not one continued to attend the daily prayers of the Church. Here he
met with his old friend, Mr. Gambold, who told him he need be under
no concern respecting his sermon before the university, which he
had come to preach, for the authorities would be utterly regardless
of what he said. Here also he had a conversation with Richard Viney,
originally a London tailor, but now the Oxford Moravian minister,—a
man, as James Hutton tells us, whose person, delivery, and bearing
prevented his sermons being acceptable to many, and yet a man, who, in
this same year, was elected president of the society in Fetter Lane.
Ultimately he removed to Broad Oaks, Essex, as the superintendent of
the Moravian school; then, by casting lots, was condemned as an enemy
of the work of God; and then joined Wesley’s society at Birstal, which
he so perverted, that they “laughed at all fasting, and self denial,
and family prayer,” and treated even John Nelson slightingly.[423]
Wesley preached his sermon at St. Mary’s, on Saturday, July 25, to
one of the largest congregations he had seen in Oxford. His text
was: “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian;” and his two
divisions, (1) what is implied in being _almost_; and (2) what in being
_altogether_, a Christian. The sermon is one of the most faithful that
Wesley ever preached. It was printed by W. Strahan, 12mo, pages 21, and
was sold at twopence.
It is almost certain, however, that this was not the sermon that Wesley
_meant_ to preach. After his decease, a mutilated manuscript in English
was found among his papers, dated “July 24, 1741” (a month before he
preached at Oxford), and also a copy of the same in Latin. This was a
discourse on the text, “How is the faithful city become an harlot!”
There can be no question that the sermon was written with the design
of being delivered before the university, and that, for some reason,
the design for the present was abandoned. The sermon, if preached, must
inevitably have brought upon the preacher the ire of his hearers. While
admitting that the university had some who were faithful witnesses of
gospel truth, Wesley alleges that, comparatively speaking, they were
very few. To say nothing of deists, Arians, and Socinians, some of the
chief champions of the faith were far from being faultless. Tillotson
had published several sermons expressly to prove that, not _faith
alone_, but _good works_, are necessary in order to justification; and
the great Bishop Bull had taken the same position. Wesley then proceeds
to attack the members of the university in a way, perhaps, not the most
prudent. He asks if it is not a fact, that many of them “believe that a
good moral man, and a good Christian, mean the same?” He continues:—
“Scarcely is the form of godliness seen among us. Take any one
you meet; take a second, a third, a fourth, or the twentieth.
Not one of them has even the appearance of a saint, any more
than of an angel. Is there no needless visiting on the sabbath
day? no trifling, no impertinence of conversation? And, on
other days, are not the best of our conversing hours spent in
foolish talking and jesting, nay, perhaps, in wanton talking
too? Are there not many among us found to eat and drink with
the drunken? Are not even the hours assigned for study too
commonly employed in reading plays, novels, and idle tales? How
many voluntary blockheads there are among us, whose ignorance
is not owing to incapacity, but to mere laziness! How few, of
the vast number, who have it in their power, are truly learned
men! Who is there that can be said to understand Hebrew? Might
I not say, or even Greek? O what is so scarce as learning, save
religion!”[424]
The remainder of this remarkable sermon is in the same strain. Its
allegations, we are afraid, were true; but the sermon was far too
personal to be prudent, and Wesley exercised a wise discretion in
exchanging it for the other.
During the year 1741, while in Wales, Wesley was seized with a serious
illness. Hastening to Bristol, he was ordered, by Dr. Middleton, to go
to bed,—“a strange thing to me,” he writes, “who have not kept my bed
a day for five-and-thirty years.” A dangerous fever followed, and the
Bristol society held a fast and offered prayer. For eight days, he hung
between life and death; and, for three weeks, he was kept a prisoner,
when, contrary to the advice given him, he resumed his work, and began
to preach daily.
This was a long interval of enforced retirement for a man of Wesley’s
active temperament; but it was not unprofitably spent. As soon as
he could, he began to read, and during his convalescence devoured
half-a-dozen works. He read “the life of that truly good and great man,
Mr. Philip Henry;” and “the life of Mr. Matthew Henry,—a man not to
be despised, either as a scholar or a Christian, though not equal to
his father.” He read “Mr. Laval’s ‘History of the Reformed Churches in
France;’ full of the most amazing instances of the wickedness of men,
and of the goodness and power of God.” He likewise read “Turretin’s
‘History of the Church,’ a dry, heavy, barren treatise.” He gave a
second perusal to “Theologia Germanica,” and asks, “O, how was it that
I could ever so admire the affected obscurity of this unscriptural
writer?” He also “read again, with great surprise, part of the
‘Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius,’” and says, “so weak, credulous,
thoroughly injudicious a writer have I seldom found.”
Among the pamphlets published against Wesley, during 1741, was one
entitled: “The Perfectionists Examined; or, Inherent Perfection in
this Life, no Scripture Doctrine. By William Fleetwood, Gent.” 8vo, 99
pages. Fleetwood asserts that, of all the open and professed enemies of
the gospel, the Methodists are the worst; “they are more destructive
to religion than the papists or Mahometans;” “by their artful
insinuations, and outward sanctity, they have drawn numbers of _silly
women_ after them; they plainly show themselves to be some of those of
whom the apostle Peter prophesied, ‘Such as bring in damnable heresies,
denying the Lord that bought them’”; “and are more like _French_
enthusiasts, or rank papists, than true Christians.” The reader must
guess the rest.
Another opponent was Joseph Hart, who published a small work on “The
Unreasonableness of Religion, being Remarks and Animadversions on Mr.
John Wesley’s Sermon on Romans viii. 32.” Of all the enemies Wesley
had, Joseph Hart was one of the most persisting, for he scarcely ever
preached without endeavouring, more or less, to explode Wesley’s
doctrines, as tending to lead the people into dangerous delusions.[425]
Another pamphlet, octavo, 75 pages, published during the year 1741, was
entitled: “The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, stated according
to the Articles of the Church of England. By Arthur Bedford, M.A.,
Chaplain to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.” This was written
at the request of “a member of the religious societies in London,” who
told the author, that, “there had been great disputes among them lately
concerning this doctrine; some having advanced faith so high, as to
make no necessity of a good life; and others having advanced works so
high, as to make faith to consist only in a general belief, that the
New Testament is the word of God.” The pamphlet is an able production,
and is temperately written. To most of its sentiments, Wesley himself
would have raised no objection.
It only remains to notice Wesley’s own publications during 1741.[426]
Probably the first was his sermon, entitled, “Christian Perfection.” He
writes: “I think it was in the latter end of the year 1740, that I had
a conversation with Dr. Gibson, then bishop of London, at Whitehall. He
asked me what I meant by perfection. I told him without any disguise
or reserve. When I ceased speaking, he said, ‘Mr. Wesley, if this be
all you mean, publish it to all the world,’ I answered, ‘My lord, I
will’; and accordingly wrote and published the sermon on Christian
perfection.”[427]
The two divisions of this important sermon are: (1) in what sense
Christians _are not_, and (2) in what sense they _are_, _perfect_.
Wesley shows that no one is so perfect in this life, as to be free
from ignorance, from mistakes, from infirmities, and from temptations.
On the other hand, he proves that the perfect Christian is freed from
outward sin; from evil thoughts; and from evil tempers. The sermon is
elaborate, and has affixed to it Charles Wesley’s hymn on “The Promise
of Sanctification,” consisting of twenty-eight stanzas, and beginning
with the line,—“God of all power, and truth, and grace.”
Another of Wesley’s publications was, “A Collection of Psalms and
Hymns.” Hitherto, all the hymn-books, except the first, had borne, on
the title-page, the names of both the brothers; but this has the name
of Wesley only.
A third was, “A Dialogue between a Predestinarian and his Friend.”
12mo, eight pages. The object of this short tract is to show,
from the writings of Piscator, Calvin, Zanchius, and others, that
predestinarianism teaches, that God causes reprobates to sin, and
creates them on purpose to be damned.[428]
Besides the above, Wesley published four abridgments from other works.
1. “The Scripture Doctrine concerning Predestination, Election, and
Reprobation.” 12mo, 16 pages.
2. “Serious Considerations on Absolute Predestination.” 12mo, 24 pages.
The tract proves, that the doctrine of absolute predestination is
objectionable: (1) because it makes God the author of sin; (2) because,
it makes Him delight in the death of sinners; (3) because, it is highly
injurious to Christ our Mediator; (4) because, it makes the preaching
of the gospel a mere mock and illusion; etc.
3. “An Extract of the Life of Monsieur De Renty, a late Nobleman
of France.” 12mo, pages 67. De Renty usually rose at five o’clock;
communicated every day; and spent his time in devotion and doing good.
For several years he ate but one meal a day, and even that was scanty
and always of the poorest food. He often passed the night in a chair,
instead of in bed, or would lie down upon a bench in his clothes and
boots. He parted with several books, because richly bound; and carried
no silver about him, but for works of charity. When his mother took
from him a large portion of his property, he caused the _Te Deum_ to
be sung, beginning it himself. He was wont to say, “I carry about with
me ordinarily a plenitude of the presence of the Holy Trinity.” In
visiting the sick, he would kindle their fires, make their beds, and
set in order their little household stuff. His zeal for the salvation
of men was boundless. “I am ready,” said he, “to serve all men, not
excepting one, and to lay down my life for any one.” He established
numbers of societies at Caen and other places, for the purpose of
Christians assisting one another in working out both their own and
their neighbours’ salvation. He died at Paris, in the thirty-seventh
year of his age, on April 24, 1649. De Renty was, in Wesley’s
estimation, a model saint.
4. The fourth and last abridgment published, in 1741, was entitled,
“Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life, with reference to Learning
and Knowledge.” 12mo, pages 36. This was extracted from a work written
by Dr. John Norris, an old friend of Wesley’s father, and one of the
principal contributors to the _Athenian Gazette_.[429]
The tract, throughout, is in a high degree rich and racy, and well
worth reading. It unquestionably contains the great principles which
guided Wesley in all his reading, writing, publishing of books, and
educational efforts in general. He considered all kinds of knowledge
useful; but, some being much more so than others, he devoted to them
time and attention accordingly; and made the whole subordinate to the
great purpose of human existence,—the glory of God, and the happiness
of man. We finish the present chapter with a few sentences culled from
the conclusion of this threepenny production:—
“I cannot, with any patience, reflect, that, out of so short a
time as human life, consisting, it may be, of fifty or sixty
years, nineteen or twenty shall be spent in hammering out a
little Latin and Greek, and in learning a company of poetical
fictions and fantastic stories. If one were to judge of the
life of man by the proportion of it spent at school, one would
think the antediluvian mark were not yet out. Besides, the
things taught in seminaries are often frivolous. How many
excellent and useful things might be learnt, while boys are
thumbing and murdering Hesiod and Homer? Of what signification
is such stuff as this, to the accomplishment of a reasonable
soul? What improvement can it be to my understanding, to
know the amours of _Pyramus_ and _Thisbe_, or of _Hero_ and
_Leander_? Let any man but consider human nature, and tell me
whether he thinks a boy is fit to be trusted with Ovid? And
yet, to books such as these our youth is dedicated, and in
these some of us employ our riper years; and, when we die,
this makes one part of our funeral eulogy; though, according
to the principles before laid down, we should have been as
pertinently and more innocently employed all the while, if we
had been picking straws in Bedlam. The measure of prosecuting
learning is its usefulness to good life; and, consequently, all
prosecution of it beyond or beside this end, is impertinent
and immoderate. For my own part, I am so thoroughly convinced
of the certainty of the principles here propounded, that I
look upon myself as under almost a necessity of conducting
my studies by them, and intend to study nothing at all but
what serves to the advancement of piety and good life. I have
spent about thirteen years in the most celebrated university
in the world, in pursuing both such learning as the academical
standard requires, and as my private genius inclined me to; but
I intend to spend my uncertain remainder of time in studying
only what makes for the moral improvement of my mind, and the
regulation of my life. More particularly, I shall apply myself
to read such books as are rather persuasive than instructive;
such as warm, kindle, and enlarge the affections, and awaken
the Divine sense in the soul; being convinced, by every day’s
experience, that I have more need of heat than light; though
were I for more light, still I think the love of God is the
best light of the soul of man.”
This is a long extract; but it is of some consequence, as furnishing
a key to the whole of Wesley’s literary pursuits—from this, the
commencement of his Methodist career, to the end of his protracted
life. His aim was not to shine in scholarship, but to live a life of
goodness.
1742.
[Sidenote: 1742 Age 39]
Wesley now began to enlarge the sphere of his operations. Hitherto,
his only stated congregations had been at Kingswood, at Bristol, and
at the Foundery, London. For these, the ministrations of himself and
his brother were sufficient; but, as the work increased, new preachers
became needful. Cennick and Humphreys had both left him; but others
supplied their places. John Nelson came to London, was converted, and,
at the end of the year 1740, returned to Birstal in Yorkshire, where,
impelled by the love of Christ, and almost without knowing it, he
began to preach to his unconverted neighbours. Thomas Maxfield also,
one of the first converts in Bristol, and who, for a year or two,
seems to have travelled with Charles Wesley, perhaps in the capacity
of servant, being left in London, to meet during Wesley’s absence the
Foundery society, pray with them, and give them suitable advice, was
insensibly led from praying to preaching,—his sermons being accompanied
with such power, that numbers were made penitent and were converted.
Wesley, hearing of this irregularity, hurried back to London, for the
purpose of stopping it. His mother, living in his house, adjoining the
Foundery, said: “John, take care what you do with respect to that young
man, for he is as surely called of God to preach, as you are. Examine
what have been the fruits of his preaching, and hear him yourself.” The
Countess of Huntingdon also wrote: “Maxfield is one of the greatest
instances of God’s peculiar favour that I know. He is my astonishment.
The first time I made him expound, I expected little from him; but,
before he had gone over one fifth part of his discourse, my attention
was riveted, and I was immovable. His power in prayer, also, is very
extraordinary.”[430]
Wesley was convinced, and the Rubicon was passed. “I am not clear,”
he writes under the date of April 21, 1741, “that brother Maxfield
should not expound at Greyhound Lane; nor can I as yet do without him.
Our clergymen” (Stonehouse, Hall, and others) “have miscarried full as
much as the laymen; and that the Moravians are other than laymen, I
know not.”[431] Wesley wrote again, about four years after employing
Maxfield:—
“I am bold to affirm, that these unlettered men have help
from God for the great work of saving souls from death. But,
indeed, in the one thing which they profess to know, they are
not ignorant men. I trust there is not one of them, who is
not able to go through such an examination, in substantial,
practical, experimental divinity, as few of our candidates for
holy orders, even in the university, are able to do. In answer
to the objection, that they are laymen, I reply, the scribes
of old, who were the ordinary preachers among the Jews, were
not priests; they were not better than laymen. Yea, many of
them were incapable of the priesthood, being not of the tribe
of Levi. Hence, probably, it was, that the Jews themselves
never urged it as an objection to our Lord’s preaching, that
He was no priest after the order of Aaron; nor, indeed, could
be; seeing He was of the tribe of Judah. Nor does it appear
that any objected this to the apostles. If we come to later
times, was Mr. Calvin ordained? Was he either priest or deacon?
And were not most of those whom it pleased God to employ in
promoting the Reformation abroad, laymen also? Could that great
work have been promoted at all, in many places, if laymen had
not preached? In all Protestant churches, ordination is not
held a necessary pre-requisite of preaching; for in Sweden, in
Germany, in Holland, and, I believe, in every Reformed church
in Europe, it is not only permitted, but required, that, before
any one is ordained, he shall publicly preach a year or more
_ad probandum facultatem_. And, for this practice, they believe
they have an express command of God; ‘let those first be
proved, then let them use the office of a deacon, being found
blameless’ (1 Tim. iii. 10). Besides, in how many churches, in
England, does the parish clerk read one of the lessons, and
in some the whole service of the Church, perhaps every Lord’s
day? And do not other laymen constantly do the same thing in
our very cathedrals? which, being under the inspection of
the bishops, should be patterns to all other churches. Nay,
is it not done in the universities themselves? Who ordained
that singing man at Christ Church; who is likewise utterly
unqualified for the work, murdering every lesson he reads; not
endeavouring to read it as the word of God, but rather as an
old song?”
Where is the priest, pretending that preaching belongs exclusively to
those in orders, who can answer such arguments as these? But Wesley’s
case was stronger than even this. He proceeds to relate that, after God
had used him and his brother clergymen, in several places, in turning
many from a course of sin to a course of holiness, the ministers of
these places, instead of receiving them with open arms, spoke of them
“as if the devil, not God, had sent them; and represented them as
fellows not fit to live,—papists, heretics, traitors, conspirators
against their king and country;” while the people, who had been
converted by their preaching, were “driven from the Lord’s table,
and were openly cursed in the name of God.” What could be done in a
case like this? “No clergyman would assist at all. The expedient that
remained was, to find some one among themselves, who was upright of
heart, and of sound judgment in the things of God; and to desire him
to meet the rest as often as he could, in order to confirm, as he was
able, in the ways of God, either by reading to them, or by prayer, or
by exhortation.”
This was done, and God blessed it. “In several places, by means of
these unlettered men, not only those who had already begun to run well
were hindered from drawing back to perdition; but other sinners also,
from time to time, were converted from the error of their ways.”
“This plain account,” continues Wesley, “of the whole proceeding, I
take to be the best defence of it. I know no scripture which forbids
making use of such help, in a case of such necessity. And I praise
God who has given even this help to those poor sheep, when ‘their own
shepherds pitied them not.’”
Brave-hearted Wesley! The step he took was momentous; but he was a
match for all opposers; and marvellous is the fact that the very
Church, which so branded him for such a departure from Church order,
is now actually copying his example. Notable, in future years, will be
the incident, which has almost passed without being noticed, that, in
the month of May, 1869, in his own private chapel, at London House,
Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London, formally authorised eight laymen “to
read prayers, and to read and _explain_ the Holy Scriptures,” and “to
conduct religious services for the poor in schools, and mission rooms,
and in the open air,” in the London diocese, with the understanding
and agreement that their labours will be rendered gratuitously.[432]
Thus are even bishops treading in the once hated footsteps of the great
Methodist.
In 1742, Wesley’s itinerating commenced in earnest. During the year,
he spent about twenty-four weeks in London and its vicinity; fourteen
in Bristol and the surrounding neighbourhood; one in Wales; and
thirteen in making two tours to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, taking, on his
way, Donnington Park, Birstal, Halifax, Dewsbury, Mirfield, Epworth,
Sheffield, and other towns and villages adjoining these.
Whitefield spent the first two months in Bristol, Gloucester, and the
west of England, and the three following in London. He then went to
Scotland, where he continued until the end of October, when he returned
to London for the remainder of the year.
Wesley and he were again friends. On April 23, Wesley writes: “I spent
an agreeable hour with Mr. Whitefield. I believe he is sincere in all
he says, concerning his earnest desire of joining hand in hand with all
that love the Lord Jesus Christ. But if, as some would persuade me, he
is not, the loss is all on his own side. I am just as I was. I go on my
way, whether he goes with me or stays behind.”
This interview took place at Easter, a season of the year which
Moorfields was wont to keep with uproarious hilarity. On this occasion,
the spacious rendezvous was filled, from end to end, with mountebanks,
players, drummers, trumpeters, merryandrews, and menageries. Whitefield
mounted his field pulpit, and from twenty to thirty thousand people
flocked around him. He became a target, at which were hurled dirt,
dead cats, stones, and rotten eggs. A fool belonging to one of the
puppetshows attempted to lash him with a whip; and a recruiting
sergeant, with his drum and other musical instruments, marched through
his congregation; but Whitefield, for three hours, continued praying,
preaching, and singing; and then retired to the Tabernacle, with his
pocket full of notes from persons who had been awakened by his sermon,
and which were read amid the praises and acclamations of assembled
crowds. A thousand such papers had been sent to him; and three hundred
and fifty of the inquiring penitents were received into church
fellowship in a single day.[433]
Wesley and Whitefield henceforth were divided, and yet united. Each
pursued his own separate course; but their hearts were one. Their
creeds were different; but not their aims. “Mr. Wesley,” writes
Whitefield in 1742, “I think is wrong in some things; but I believe he
will shine bright in glory. I have not given way to him, or to any,
whom I thought in error, no not for an hour; but I think it best not to
dispute, where there is no probability of convincing.”[434] And again,
in a letter to Wesley himself, on October 11, 1742, he says: “I had
your kind letter, dated October 5. In answer to the first part of it, I
say, ‘Let old things pass away, and all things become new.’ I can also
heartily say ‘Amen’ to the latter part of it—‘Let the king live for
ever and controversy die,’ It has died with me long ago. I thank you,
dear sir, for praying for me. I have been upon my knees praying for you
and yours, and that nothing but love, lowliness, and simplicity may be
among us!”[435]
To the day of his death, Whitefield breathed this loving spirit, and
rejoiced to find reciprocal affection in his friend Wesley. After
this, we shall refrain from adverting to his history more than we find
needful,—not for want of admiration of his character and labours, but
because it is impossible, in casual notices, to do him justice. He
was still hounded as much as ever by the dogs of persecution. Though
he was now in Scotland, where, if anywhere, his Calvinistic doctrines
were likely to gain him favour, yet even there he met with virulent
opposers. Among other extremely bitter pamphlets published against him,
in 1742, was one printed at Edinburgh, “by a true lover of the Church
and country,” who represented him as taking upon himself “the office
of a thirteenth apostle,” and concluded his courteous outpouring thus:
“Let all good people beware of this stroller, for he will yet find a
way to wheedle you out of your money. He is as artful a mountebank
as any I know.” Another pamphlet, entitled “The Declaration of the
True Presbyterians, within the Kingdom of Scotland, concerning Mr.
George Whitefield and the work at Cambuslang,” begun as follows:—“The
declaration, protestation, and testimony of the suffering remnant of
the anti-popish, anti-Lutheran, anti-prelatic, anti-Whitefieldian,
anti-Erastian, anti-sectarian, true Presbyterian church of Christ
in Scotland;” and then this windy performance, of thirty-two pages,
proceeds to say that Whitefield is “an abjured, prelatic hireling, of
as lax toleration principles as any that ever set up for the advancing
the kingdom of Satan. He is a wandering star, who steers his course
according to the compass of gain and advantage.” A third publication,
issued in 1742, was, “A Warning against countenancing the ministrations
of Mr. George Whitefield, wherein is shown that Mr. Whitefield is no
minister of Jesus Christ; that his call and coming to Scotland are
scandalous; that his practice is disorderly and fertile of disorder;
and that his whole doctrine is, and his success must be, diabolical.
By Adam Gib, minister of the gospel at Edinburgh.” In this sweet
effusion of seventy-five pages, poor Whitefield is solemnly pronounced
to be “one of those false Christs, of whom the church is forewarned,
Matt. xxiv. 24.” After reviewing some of Whitefield’s tenets, Mr.
Adam Gib deliciously remarks: “in raking through this dunghill of Mr.
Whitefield’s doctrine, we have raised as much _stink_ as will suffocate
all his followers, that shall venture to draw near without stopping
their noses.” “The complex scheme of his doctrine is diabolical; it
proceeds through diabolical influence, and is applied unto a diabolical
use, against the Mediator’s glory and the salvation of men.” This was
pretty strong for a young man, twenty-nine years of age, and who, four
years afterwards, became the leader of the party known by the name of
Anti-burghers. We are prepared, by such pious venom, for the fact,
that, in the year following, when the “associate presbytery met for
renewing the national covenant of Scotland, and the solemn league and
covenant of the three nations,” they drew up and printed “a confession
of the sins of the ministry,” in which they humble themselves before
God, for not “timeously” warning the people against Whitefield; for
being “too remiss in their endeavours to prevent the sad effects
of his ministrations;” for being “too little affected by the
latitudinarian principles and awful delusions which he had propagated;”
and for not “crying to God, that He would rebuke the devourer, and cast
the false prophet and the unclean spirit out of the land.”[436]
Despite all this, Whitefield cheerily pursued the path marked out by
Providence. Few men have been more entitled to the last beatitude in
our Saviour’s sermon, “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and
persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely,
for My sake.”
It was through the timely interposition of Howel Harris, that the
friendship between Wesley and Whitefield was resumed. Towards this
warm-hearted Welshman Wesley cherished the most sincere affection, and,
on the 6th of August, 1742, wrote to him as follows:—
“MY DEAR BROTHER,—I have just read yours, dated at Trevecca,
October 19, 1741. And what is it that we contend about? Allow
such a perfection as you have there described, and all further
dispute I account vain jangling and mere strife of words. As to
the other point, we agree: (1) that no man can have any power
except it be given him from above; (2) that no man can merit
anything but hell, seeing all other merit is in the blood of
the Lamb. For those two fundamental points, both you and I
earnestly contend; what need, then, of this great gulf to be
fixed between us? Brother, is thy heart with mine, as my heart
is with thine? If it be, give me thy hand. I am indeed a poor,
foolish, sinful worm; and how long my Lord will use me, I know
not. I sometimes think the time is coming when He will lay me
aside. For surely never before did He send such a labourer into
such a harvest. But, so long as I am continued in the work, let
us rise up together against the evil-doers; let us not weaken,
but strengthen one another’s hands in God. My brother, my soul
is gone forth to meet thee; let us fall upon one another’s
neck. The good Lord blot out all that is past, and let there
henceforward be peace between me and thee!
“I am, my dear brother, ever yours,
“JOHN WESLEY.”[437]
Another of Wesley’s friends, at this period, was the Rev. Henry Piers,
vicar of Bexley, a devoted man, who, through the instrumentality of
Charles Wesley and Mr. Bray, had found peace with God on the 10th of
June, 1738. He at once began to preach, with great fidelity, the
scriptural method of salvation; and such was his success, that in
August, 1739, Whitefield assisted him in administering the sacrament,
in Bexley church, to nearly six hundred communicants. Keziah Wesley
was an inmate of his house; and Wesley himself was a welcome visitor.
He was one of the six persons who composed Wesley’s first Conference,
in 1744; and one of the three who publicly walked with Wesley from the
church of St. Mary’s, Oxford, when he preached, for the last time,
before the university.
In 1742, the vicar of Bexley was appointed to preach at Sevenoaks,
“before the right worshipful the Dean of the Arches, and the reverend
the clergy of the deanery of Shoreham, assembled in visitation.” The
text chosen by Mr. Piers was 1 Corinthians iv. 1, 2; and his object
was to show what doctrines ministers ought to preach, and also what
ought to be their tempers and behaviour. A letter to Wesley, written
May 24, three days after the sermon was delivered, states that, at
the beginning of his discourse, Piers was listened to with gravity;
but, while dwelling upon the doctrines of the Church, his reverend
auditors began to indulge in “shrewd looks and indignant smiles”; this
was followed with “laughter and loud whispers,” some of them saying,
“Piers is mad, crazy, and a fool.” When he came to the application of
his discourse, and asked whether the clergy preached such doctrines,
possessed such tempers, and led such lives, the ordinary would endure
it no longer, but beckoned to the apparitor to open his pew door, and
to the minister of Sevenoaks church to command Piers to stop. The
minister made a sign to the preacher, but without effect. The ordinary
then publicly desired Piers to pronounce the benediction, as the
congregation had already heard quite enough. Piers, however, still went
on; all the clergy, except one or two, walked out; and the preacher,
without further interruption, finished his discourse to an attentive
audience.[438]
The sermon, though written by Mr. Piers, was, previous to its being
preached, revised by Wesley;[439] and, in September ensuing, was
published, price sixpence,[440] with a list of the books sold by Wesley
at the Foundery in Moorfields, inserted. The sermon, in point of fact,
was a joint production of Wesley and his friend. Any one, comparing
it with other sermons published by Mr. Piers, will perceive an
unmistakable difference in style, and force of expression. The sermon
was, to a great extent, Wesley’s; and, in this instance, Wesley was
almost preaching by proxy.
Wesley longed for helpers; but, conscious that none would be useful
unless converted, he was careful in accepting offers. Of his friend
Piers he could have no doubt; but it was otherwise with respect to a
clergyman from America, who called upon him at the beginning of the
year, and “appeared full of good desires.” Wesley writes: “I cannot
suddenly answer in this matter; I must first know what spirit he is
of; for none can labour with us, unless he ‘count all things dung
and dross, that he may win Christ.’” With Wesley, neither learning,
nor talent, nor even orders, nor all combined, were sufficient to
induce him to accept a helper, unless there was also piety. Purity in
preachers is of more importance than either scholarship, or genius, or
both united. The former is an essential, without which no man ought to
preach; the latter are, at the best, but useful in helping a preacher
to preach successfully.
In a certain sense, Methodist societies were begun in 1739; but it was
not until 1742 that they were divided into classes. In January, 1739,
the London society, which was really Moravian, and not Methodist,
consisted of about sixty persons. Three months after that, Wesley
went to Bristol, where “a few persons agreed to meet weekly, with the
same intention as those in London”; and these were soon increased
by “several little societies, which were already meeting in divers
parts of the city,” amalgamating with them. About the same time
similar societies were formed at Kingswood and at Bath.[441] These
religious communities grew and multiplied. At the beginning of 1742,
the London society alone, after repeated siftings, numbered about
eleven hundred members.[442] Hitherto, Wesley and his brother had
been their only pastors; but, on February 15, 1742, an accident led to
a momentous alteration. Nearly three years before, Wesley had built
his meeting-house in Bristol; but, notwithstanding the subscriptions
and collections made at the time to defray the expense, a large debt
was still unpaid. On the day mentioned, some of the principal members
of the Bristol society met together to consult how their pecuniary
obligations should be discharged. One of them stood up and said, “Let
every member of the society give a penny a week, till the debt is
paid.” Another answered, “Many of them are poor, and cannot afford to
do it.” “Then,” said the former, “put eleven of the poorest with me;
and if they can give anything, well; I will call on them weekly; and if
they can give nothing, I will give for them as well as for myself. And
each of you call on eleven of your neighbours weekly; receive what they
give, and make up what is wanting.” “It was done,” writes Wesley; “and
in a while, some of these informed me, they found such and such an one
did not live as he ought. It struck me immediately, ‘This is the thing,
the very thing, we have wanted so long.’”
What was the result? Wesley called together these weekly collectors
of money to pay the debt on the Bristol chapel, and desired each,
in addition to collecting money, to make particular inquiry into
the behaviour of the members whom they visited. They did so. Many
disorderly walkers were detected; and thus the society was purged of
unworthy members.[443]
Within six weeks after this, on March 25, Wesley introduced the
same plan in London; where he had long found it difficult to become
acquainted with all the members personally. He requested “several
earnest and sensible men to meet him,” to whom he explained his
difficulty. They all agreed that, “to come to a sure, thorough
knowledge of each member, there could be no better way than to divide
the society into classes, like those at Bristol.” Wesley, at once,
appointed, as leaders, “those in whom he could most confide”; and
thus, after an existence of three years, the Methodist societies were
divided into classes, in 1742. “This,” says Wesley, “was the origin
of our classes, for which I can never sufficiently praise God; the
unspeakable usefulness of the institution having ever since been more
and more manifest.”[444]
At first, the leaders visited each member at his own house; but this
was soon found to be inconvenient. It required more time than the
leaders had to spare; and many members lived with masters, mistresses,
or relations, where it was almost impossible for such visits to be
made. Hence, before long, it was agreed, that each leader should meet
his apportioned members all together, once a week, at a time and place
most convenient for the whole. The leader began and ended each meeting
with singing and prayer, and spent about an hour in conversing with
those present, one by one.[445]
Thus class-meetings began. Wesley writes, “It can scarce be conceived
what advantages have been reaped by this little prudential regulation.
Many now experienced that Christian fellowship, of which they had not
so much as an idea before. They began to bear one another’s burdens,
and naturally to care for each other’s welfare. And as they had daily
a more intimate acquaintance, so they had a more endeared affection
for each other. Upon reflection, I could not but observe, this is the
very thing which was from the beginning of Christianity. As soon as any
Jews or heathen were so convinced of the truth, as to forsake sin, and
seek the gospel of salvation, the first preachers immediately joined
them together; took an account of their names; advised them to watch
over each other; and met these κατηχουμενοι, _catechumens_, as they
were then called, apart from the great congregation, that they might
instruct, rebuke, exhort, and pray with them, and for them, according
to their several necessities.”[446]
Such is Wesley’s own account of the origin of these weekly meetings.
Some of the old members were, at first, extremely averse to this new
arrangement, regarding it, not as a privilege, but rather a restraint.
They objected, that there were no such meetings when they joined the
society, and asked why such meetings should be instituted now. To this
Wesley answered, that he regarded class-meetings not essential, nor of
Divine institution, but merely prudential helps, which it was a pity
the society had not been favoured with from the beginning. “We are
always open to instruction,” says he to these complainants, “willing to
be wiser every day than we were before, and to change whatever we can
change for the better.”
Another objection was, “There is no scripture for classes.” Wesley
replied, that there was no scripture against them; and that, in point
of fact, there was much scripture for them, namely, texts which
enjoined the substance of the thing, leaving indifferent circumstances
to be determined by reason and experience.
The most plausible objection of all, however, was that which is often
urged at the present day. Wesley writes: “They spoke far more plausibly
who said, ‘The thing is well enough in itself; but the leaders have
neither gifts nor graces for such an employment.’ I answer—(1) Yet such
leaders as they are, it is plain God has blessed their labour. (2) If
any of these is remarkably wanting in gifts or grace, he is soon taken
notice of and removed. (3) If you know any such, tell it to me, not
to others, and I will endeavour to exchange him for a better. (4) It
may be hoped they will all be better than they are, both by experience
and observation, and by the advices given them by the minister every
Tuesday night, and the prayers (then in particular) offered up for
them.”[447]
The appointment of these leaders was of vast importance; but it was
not sufficient. Wesley continues: “As the society increased, I found
it required still greater care to separate the precious from the vile.
In order to this, I determined, at least once in every three months,
to talk with every member myself, and to inquire at their own mouths,
whether they grew in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus
Christ. At these seasons, I likewise particularly inquire whether
there be any misunderstanding or difference among them; that every
hindrance of peace and brotherly love may be taken out of the way.”[448]
Nothing need be added to this full account of the origin of the
class-meeting and the quarterly visitation of the Methodists. Wesley,
from the beginning, “recognised the scriptural distinction between
the church and the world. The men who possessed religion, and the men
who possessed it not, were not for a moment confounded. They might be
neighbours in locality, and friends in goodwill; but they were wide as
the poles asunder in sentiment. The quick and the dead may be placed
side by side; but no one can, for ever so short a period, mistake dead
flesh for living fibre. The church and the churchyard are close by;
but the worshippers in the one and the dwellers in the other are as
unlike as two worlds can make them. The circle within the circle, the
company of the converted, Wesley always distinguished from the mass of
mankind, and made special provision for their edification in all his
organisms.”[449]
After the formation of classes, the next event in point of importance,
in the year 1742, was Wesley’s visit to the north of England. A
combination of circumstances led to this.
John Nelson had been converted among the Methodists in London, and had
returned to Birstal, in Yorkshire, where Benjamin Ingham had already
founded a number of flourishing Moravian brotherhoods. Nelson began to
preach in the towns of Yorkshire; his labours were greatly blessed;
and many of the greatest profligates, blasphemers, drunkards, and
sabbath-breakers were entirely changed. John had often invited Wesley
to visit Yorkshire, and this was one of the reasons of his setting
out.[450]
Another was, that the Countess of Huntingdon had earnestly urged him
to proceed to Newcastle, and to employ his best efforts to improve
the moral and religious condition of the colliers on the Tyne. The
letter, containing this request, has not been published, but is in the
possession of the Rev. James Everett.
The countess was now resident at Donnington Park, the favourite home of
her noble husband, the Earl of Huntingdon, who, like herself, treated
ministers of Christ with every mark of polite attention. His sisters,
Lady Betty Hastings, and Lady Margaret, (who afterwards became the
wife of Ingham,) had been converted through the instrumentality of the
Methodists, and were now sincere and earnest Christians. Donnington
became a sort of rallying place for Christian ministers and Christian
people. Mr. Simpson and Mr. Graves, two converted clergymen, resided
in the neighbourhood. David Taylor, one of the servants of the Earl
of Huntingdon, had commenced preaching in the surrounding hamlets
and villages, and had begun a work which resulted in the forming of
the New Connexion of General Baptists. Miss Fanny Cooper, residing
with the countess, and dying of consumption, was greatly beloved by
Wesley, and wished to see him.[451] All these circumstances had to do
with his setting out for the midland counties, for Yorkshire, and for
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
On the 9th of January, Lady Huntingdon wrote to him, saying, that Miss
Cooper was waiting for the consolation of Israel with an indescribable
firmness of faith and hope. She had read his Journal, which he had sent
for her perusal, and thought there was nothing in it which ought to be
left out; and that the manner in which he spoke of himself could not be
mended.[452]
In another letter, dated the 15th of March, she tells him that she is
sure he is a chosen vessel set for the defence of the gospel; that she
has given up the school at Markfield; that John Taylor is gone to be
an assistant to David Taylor, and to become a schoolmaster among the
people who had been converted; and that Mr. Graves had been blessed by
Wesley’s conversation, and greatly loved him.[453]
In a third letter, dated ten days later, Wesley is informed that John
Taylor is about to wait upon him, and to say that, unless David Taylor
(who had contracted an ill judged marriage, and fallen into the German
stillness) transferred his flock to Wesley and his brother Charles, the
countess would withdraw from him her support and countenance. She adds:
“I would not trust David with the guidance of my soul, no, not for
worlds. I find he is going to build himself a room, and to break with
the ministers, and become a lay preacher. He has more pride than I ever
saw in man. If he will commit his poor sheep into your hands, I will
assist in the room, school, etc.; but else will I do nothing. You are
much mistaken about the bishops not reading what you publish; I know
they do. Let me know in your next if you approve what I have done about
David.”[454]
Six weeks afterwards, Lady Huntingdon wrote again, saying that Miss
Cooper was at the point of death, and wished to see Wesley; and that
a horse had been ordered for John Taylor to go down with him.[455]
On receiving this, Wesley started almost immediately. He reached
Donnington Park on May 22; found Miss Cooper just alive; spent three
days with her and the countess, rejoicing in the grace of God; and then
set out for Birstal, still accompanied by John Taylor.[456] On arriving
at Birstal, Wesley went to an inn and sent for John Nelson; and John
came and carried him to his own humble home. Thus was the aristocratic
mansion exchanged for the mason’s cottage. Numbers had been converted
by John’s plain, blunt preaching; but, because he advised them to go to
church and sacrament, Ingham reproved him, and forbade the members of
his societies to hear him.
Ingham, to some extent at least, had fallen into the dangerous
delusions of the Moravians. He had also exposed himself to suspicions
of another kind. Dr. Doddridge, in a letter written a fortnight
before Wesley’s visit to Birstal, says: “I am much surprised with a
book, called the ‘Country Parson’s Advice to a Parishioner,’ which is
circulated, with extreme diligence, by Ingham, and other Methodists in
our part of the country. It artfully disguises, but most evidently
contains and recommends, almost all the doctrines of popery, and none
more than that fatal one of consigning conscience and fortune into the
hands of the priesthood.[457] I am not hasty to smell out a Jesuit,
and ever thought the Methodists had more honesty than wisdom; but this
certain fact surprises me, and I should be glad of a key to it. It may
be said, that they have generally appeared men of plain understandings,
void of that art and learning necessary for missionaries; but all
plots require tools, and have underparts, nor may these always be let
into the whole design. On the whole, while they are diffusing such
sentiments, Protestantism and our free constitution may have as little
reason to thank them as learning and reason have already.”[458]
Wesley preached, on May 26, at noon, on the top of Birstal hill; spent
the afternoon in conversing with Nelson’s converts; and, at eight
at night, preached on Dewsbury moor, two miles from Birstal, and,
in opposition to the Moravian tenets, “earnestly exhorted all who
believed, to wait upon God in His ways, and to let their light shine
before men.”
His labours were not without success. One of his hearers was Nathaniel
Harrison, a young man twenty-three years of age, who soon after was
made circuit steward, an office which he filled for more than twenty
years, and during a long life encountered no small amount of brutal
persecution for the sake of his great Master. His father turned him
out of doors; his eldest brother horsewhipped him; and the mob hurled
missiles at his head, and, on one occasion, were literally bespattered
with his blood. Nathaniel Harrison was a happy Christian, and attained
to the age of eighty years before he died; he was wont to say, “My soul
is always on the wing, I only wait the summons.”[459]
Another of Wesley’s hearers was John Murgatroyd, a weaver, who
became a member of the second class which was formed in Yorkshire;
was present when John Nelson was pressed for a soldier; and was one
of those brave-hearted Methodists who sang songs of praise at the
door of Nelson’s prison. He lived to have ten children, fifty-one
grandchildren, and twenty-one great grandchildren; and, after being
sixty-three years a Methodist, he peacefully breathed his last breath
at Wansford, in the east of Yorkshire, having, on the day before,
attended three public services, and sung the praises of his Saviour
with an animation which seemed to evince that he was exulting in the
hope of singing the new song in heaven.[460]
Leaving Birstal, Wesley and John Taylor came to Newcastle on Friday,
May 28.
This northern metropolis was then widely different to what it is at
present. Then the only streets, of any consequence, were Pilgrim
Street, Newgate Street, Westgate Street, the Side, and Sandgate. On
the south of Westgate Street there was nothing but open country.
Between Westgate Street and Newgate Street, the only buildings were the
vicarage and St. John’s church; whilst between Newgate Street and the
upper part of Pilgrim Street almost the only edifice was the house of
the Franciscan Friars. On the east of Pilgrim Street were open fields,
and on the north nothing but a few straggling houses. The town was
surrounded with a wall, having turrets, towers, and gates. On what is
now the centre of the town, stood the princely dwelling of Sir William
Blackett, environed with extensive pleasure grounds, adorned with trees
and statues. There were five churches: St. John’s, in which, besides
the Sunday services, there were public prayers three times every week;
St. Andrew’s, where, in addition to services on sabbaths, prayers were
read every Wednesday and Friday morning; Allhallows; St. Nicholas’s,
in which there was public service twice daily; and the church of
St. Thomas, at the entrance of the street on Newcastle bridge. The
Roman Catholics had a chapel at the Nuns; the Quakers a meeting-house
in Pilgrim Street, nearly opposite to the Pilgrim’s Inn; and the
Dissenters two or three chapels in different parts, and also a burial
ground near Ballast Hills.[461]
As already stated, Wesley reached Newcastle on Friday night, the 28th
of May. The public house, in which he lodged, belonged to a Mr. Gun,
and stood a few yards northward of the site on which he built his
Orphan House. This, at the time, was open country, and about a mile
from busy, dirty, degraded Sandgate on the river side. On walking out,
after tea, he was surprised and shocked at the abounding wickedness.
Drunkenness and swearing seemed general, and even the mouths of little
children were full of curses. How he spent the Saturday we are not
informed; but, on Sunday morning, at seven,[462] he and John Taylor
took their stand, near the pump, in Sandgate, “the poorest and most
contemptible part of the town,” and began to sing the old hundredth
psalm and tune. Three or four people came about them, “to see what
was the matter;” these soon increased in number, and, before Wesley
finished preaching, his congregation consisted of from twelve to
fifteen hundred persons. When the service was ended, the people still
“stood gaping, with the most profound astonishment,” upon which Wesley
said: “If you desire to know who I am, my name is John Wesley. At five
in the evening, with God’s help, I design to preach here again.”
Such was the commencement of Methodism in the north of England,—the
preacher the renowned John Wesley, doubtless dressed in full
canonicals, with plain John Taylor standing at his side,—the time seven
o’clock on a Sunday morning, in the beautiful month of May,—the place
Sandgate, crowded with keelmen and sailors, using, says Christopher
Hopper, “the language of hell, as though they had received a liberal
education in the regions of woe,”[463]—the song of praise the old
hundredth psalm, which, like the grand old ocean, is as fresh and as
full of music now as it was when it first was written,—and the text,
the very pith of gospel truth, “He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was
upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.”
Strict churchman as he was, there can be but little doubt, that Wesley
and his companion attended the morning and afternoon services in some
of the Newcastle churches; but at five o’clock, amid balmy breezes,
he again took his stand on the hill, by the side of the Keelman’s
Hospital. On one hand was the town with the fine old wall, fortified
with towers; on the other hand were fields, stretching away to Ouseburn
and Byker; behind him was the open country, dotted here and there with
fragrant gardens, Jesus’s Hospital, the workhouse, the charity school
of Allhallows church, and Pandon Hall, formerly the residence of the
Northumbrian kings; while just before him were the swarming hordes of
Sandgate, the crowded quay, and the river Tyne. The hill was covered
from its summit to its base. In Moorfields and on Kennington Common,
he had preached to congregations numbering from ten to twenty thousand
people; but his congregation here was the largest he had ever seen.
“After preaching,” he writes, “the poor people were ready to tread me
under foot, out of pure love and kindness.” With difficulty, he reached
his inn, where he found several of his hearers waiting his arrival.
They told him they were members of a religious society, which had
existed for many years, had a “fine library,” and whose “steward read
a sermon every Sunday.” They urged him to remain with them, at least,
a few days longer; but, having promised to be at Birstal on Tuesday
night, he was unable to consent. Accordingly, rising even before the
sun on Monday morning, he set out at three o’clock, rode about eighty
miles, and lodged at night at Boroughbridge. The next day, he came to
Birstal, holding a prayer-meeting at Knaresborough on the way; and at
night, surrounded by a vast multitude, conducted a religious service
of two hours and a half duration. In Birstal and its neighbourhood, he
spent the next three days, preaching at Mrs. Holmes’s, near Halifax, at
Dewsbury Moor, at Mirfield, and at Adwalton.
He then set out for Epworth, and went to an inn, where an old servant
of his father’s and two or three poor women found him. The next day
being Sunday, he offered to assist Mr. Romley, the curate, either by
preaching or reading prayers; but his offer was declined, and a sermon
was offensively preached by Romley against enthusiasts. After the
service, John Taylor gave notice, as the people were coming out, that
Mr. Wesley, not being permitted to preach in the church, designed
to preach in the churchyard, at six o’clock. Accordingly, at that
hour, he stood on his father’s tombstone, and preached to the largest
congregation Epworth had ever witnessed. The scene was unique and
inspiriting,—a living son preaching on a dead father’s grave, because
the parish priest refused to allow him to officiate in a dead father’s
church. “I am well assured,” writes Wesley, “that I did far more good
to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father’s
tomb, than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit.”[464]
Contrary to his intention, he remained eight days at Epworth, and every
night used his father’s tombstone as his rostrum. He also preached at
Burnham, Ouston, Belton, Overthorp, and Haxey. Here religious societies
had been formed; but two men, John Harrison and Richard Ridley, had
poisoned them with the Moravian heresy, telling them that “all the
ordinances are man’s inventions, and that if they went to church or
sacrament, they would be damned.” One of them, at Belton, who once ran
well, now said “he saw the devil in every corner of the church, and in
the face of every one who went to it.” Still, a great work had been
wrought among them, and some of them had suffered for it. “Their angry
neighbours,” says Wesley, “had carried a whole wagon-load of these new
heretics before a magistrate. But when he asked what they had done,
there was a deep silence, for that was a point their conductors had
forgotten. At length, one said ‘they pretended to be better than other
people, and prayed from morning to night;’ and another said, ‘they have
_convarted_ my wife. Till she went among them she had such a tongue!
and now she is as quiet as a lamb!’ ‘Take them back, take them back,’
replied the justice, ‘and let them convert all the scolds in the town.’”
As already intimated, Wesley’s preaching on his father’s grave was
attended with amazing power. On one occasion, the people on every side
wept aloud; and on another, several dropped down as dead; Wesley’s
voice was drowned by the cries of penitents; and many there and then,
in the old churchyard, found peace with God, and broke out into loud
thanksgiving. A gentleman, who had not been at public worship of any
kind for upwards of thirty years, stood motionless as a statue. “Sir,”
asked Wesley, “are you a sinner?” “Sinner enough!” said he, and still
stood staring upwards, till his wife and servant, who were both in
tears, put him into his chaise, and took him home.
John Whitelamb, Wesley’s brother-in-law, clergyman at Wroote, heard
him preach at Epworth, and wrote him, saying, “Your presence creates
an awe, as if you were an inhabitant of another world. I cannot think
as you do; but I retain the highest veneration and affection for you.
The sight of you moves me strangely. My heart overflows with gratitude.
I cannot refrain from tears, when I reflect, this is the man, who at
Oxford was more than a father to me; this is he, whom I have there
heard expound, or dispute publicly, or preach at St. Mary’s, with such
applause. I am quite forgotten. None of the family ever honour me with
a line! Have I been ungrateful? I have been passionate, fickle, a fool;
but I hope I shall never be ungrateful.”[465]
On receiving this, Wesley hastened to visit his old friend; preached,
on his way, at Haxey; then again in Whitelamb’s church; and again, at
night, on his father’s tomb, to an immense multitude, the last service
lasting for about three hours. He writes, “We scarce knew how to part.
Oh, let none think his labour of love is lost because the fruit does
not immediately appear! Near forty years did my father labour here; but
he saw little fruit of all his labour. I took some pains among this
people too; and my strength also seemed spent in vain: but now the
fruit appeared. There were scarce any in the town on whom either my
father or I had taken any pains formerly, but the seed, sown so long
since, now sprung up, bringing forth repentance and remission of sins.”
Thus, despite Mr. Romley’s railing at the enthusiast, his churchyard
became the scene of some of Wesley’s greatest triumphs. John Whitelamb,
writing to Charles Wesley, says: “I had the honour and happiness of
seeing and conversing with my brother John. He behaved to me truly like
himself. I found in him, what I have always experienced heretofore, the
gentleman, the friend, the brother, and the Christian.”[466]
Wesley’s visit to Epworth was a memorable one; and it is not surprising
that artists have vied with each other in portraying it. Thousands of
Methodist homes have pictures of Wesley preaching on his father’s tomb;
and the scene itself, throughout all time, will be regarded as one of
the most striking incidents in Wesley’s history. Here, at Epworth,
Wesley’s venerable father had toiled, with exemplary diligence and
fidelity, for the long space of nine-and-thirty years; a man who, for
strength of mind and godly earnestness, had few superiors; and yet, a
man whose life was a perpetual worry of poverty and persecution. Here,
Wesley’s almost unequalled mother, during the whole of that period,
had been the sharer of her husband’s joys and sorrows. Here had been
nurtured a family, who, for genius, talent, and romantic history, must
always stand high among the remarkable households of mankind. The
family was now scattered. Seven years had elapsed since the father’s
death. Samuel, the eldest, and Keziah, the youngest of the children,
(that survived the days of infancy,) had since expired. And what about
the widowed mother? We shall soon see.
Wesley left Epworth on the 14th of June; and, after preaching for four
days in Sheffield and the neighbourhood, he hastened to the Countess of
Huntingdon’s, and thence, by way of Coventry, Evesham, and Stroud, to
the city of Bristol, which he reached on June 28.
Within a month after this, his venerable mother exchanged earth for
heaven. Hearing of her illness, he hastened from Bristol to London
to see her. Charles was absent, but her five daughters were with
her. Wesley writes: “I found my mother on the borders of eternity;
but she had no doubt or fear; nor any desire but to depart and to be
with Christ.” She died of gout,[467] on Friday, July 23. Early in the
morning, on awaking out of sleep, she cried, “My dear Saviour! Art
Thou come to help me at my last extremity?” In the afternoon, as soon
as the intercession meeting at the Foundery was ended, Wesley went to
her, and found her pulse almost gone, and her fingers dead. Her look
was calm, and her eyes were fixed upward. Wesley used the commendatory
prayer, and, with his sisters, sang a requiem to her parting soul. She
was perfectly sensible, but gasping for life. Within an hour, she died
without a struggle, groan, or sigh; and Wesley and his sisters stood
round her bed, and fulfilled her last request, uttered a little before
she lost her speech: “Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm
of praise to God.” The remains of this sainted lady were interred on
Sunday, August 1, in Bunhill-fields. An immense multitude was present;
Wesley performed the service; and then preached from Revelation xx. 12,
13. “It was,” says he, “one of the most solemn assemblies I ever saw,
or expect to see on this side eternity.”[468]
Wesley spent the next three months in London and in Bristol, and in
journeying to and fro; his brother Charles labouring, at the same time,
at Newcastle and in the north.
On the 18th of August, he met his brother and Charles Caspar Graves in
Bristol. Mr. Graves had been a student of St. Mary Magdalen College,
Oxford, and was one of the Oxford Methodists. Two years after the
Wesleys left for Georgia, the friends of Graves believed him to be
“stark mad,” and removed him from his college. He found peace with God
in 1738, and became an exceedingly zealous out-door preacher; but,
in 1740, he was persuaded, and almost coerced, to sign a paper to
the effect, that he now renounced the principles and practice of the
Methodists; that he was heartily sorry he had occasioned scandal by
attending their meetings; and that, in future, he should avoid doing so.
For nearly two years, he acted accordingly; but, on meeting the Wesleys
in Bristol at the time above mentioned, he wrote to the fellows of St.
Mary Magdalen College, revoking the document he had been led to sign,
and declaring that he now looked upon himself “to be under no kind of
obligation to observe anything contained in that scandalous paper, so
unchristianly imposed upon him.”
Immediately after this, Charles Wesley and Mr. Graves set off for the
north of England. Having spent a few days with John Nelson and his
Methodist friends at Birstal, they proceeded to Newcastle. Mr. Graves
returned to Birstal in about a fortnight; but Charles Wesley continued
among the colliers of the Tyne, formed the Newcastle society, and did
not return to London until his brother was ready to take his place in
the month of November following.[469]
On his arrival, November 13, Wesley met, what he calls, “the wild,
staring, loving society;” he took them with him to the sacrament at
Allhallows church; he reproved some among them who walked disorderly;
and ascertained that few were thoroughly convinced of sin, and scarcely
any could witness that their sins were pardoned. Great power, however,
began to attend his preaching. On one occasion, six or seven dropped
down as dead; and, at another time, several of the genteel people were
constrained to roar aloud for the disquietness of their hearts.
He extended his labours to the surrounding villages. At Whickham he
“spoke strong, rough words;” but none of the people seemed to regard
his sayings. At Tanfield Leigh, he preached “to a dead, senseless,
unaffected congregation.” At Horsley, notwithstanding a bitter frost,
he preached in the open air, the wind driving upon the congregation,
and scattering straw and thatch among them in all directions.
In Newcastle, though the season was winter, he preached out of doors
as often as he could; and, at other times, in a room, in a narrow
lane, now Lisle Street, nearly opposite the site of Wesley’s Orphan
House. This “room,” or “tabernacle” (as it was also called) had been
built “by a fanatic of the name of Macdonald,” who had now removed to
Manchester.[470] It was the first Methodist meeting-house in the north
of England.
The work accomplished was marvellous. It was only eight months since
Wesley entered Newcastle as a perfect stranger; and, yet, there were
now above eight hundred persons joined together in his society,
besides many others in the surrounding towns and villages who had been
benefited by his ministry. He writes: “I never saw a work of God, in
any other place, so evenly and gradually carried on. It continually
rose step by step. Not so much seemed to be done at any one time, as
had frequently been done at Bristol or London; but something at every
time.”[471]
Among these northern converts, there were not a few, who subsequently
rendered important service to the cause of Christ; brave spirits who
deserve a niche in Methodistic history, but whom, for the present, we
are reluctantly obliged to pass in silence.
Such a society being formed, a place for meeting became imperative.
Several sites were offered; one outside the gate of Pilgrim Street
was bought; and, on December 20, the foundation stone was laid; after
which Wesley preached, but, three or four times during the sermon,
was obliged to stop, that the people might engage in prayer and give
thanks to God. The building was calculated to cost £700; Wesley had
just twenty-six shillings towards this expenditure;[472] many thought
it would never be completed; but Wesley writes: “I was of another mind;
nothing doubting but, as it was begun for God’s sake, He would provide
what was needful for the finishing it.”
This “clumsy, ponderous pile,” as John Hampson calls it, was then the
largest Methodist meeting-house in England. “Clumsy and ponderous”
we grant it was, but still a “pile” hallowed by associations far too
sacred to be easily forgotten. Here one of the first Sunday-schools
in the kingdom was established, and had not fewer than a thousand
children in attendance. Here a Bible society existed before the British
and Foreign Bible Society was formed. Here was one of the best choirs
in England; and here, among the singers, were the sons of Mr. Scott,
afterwards the celebrated Lords Eldon and Stowell.[473] Here was the
resting place of John Wesley’s first itinerants; and here colliers and
keelmen, from all parts of the surrounding country, would assemble,
and, after the evening service, would throw themselves upon the
benches, and sleep the few remaining hours till Wesley preached at five
next morning.[474] The “clumsy, ponderous” old Orphan House was the
head quarters of Methodism in the north of England.
Within the last four years Wesley had built “the room” at Bristol, and
the school at Kingswood; and he had bought, and repaired, and almost
rebuilt “that vast, uncouth heap of ruins,” called “the Foundery.” He
began in Bristol without funds, but money had been furnished as he
needed it; and now, with £1 6_s._, he begun to erect a building to cost
£700. Three months after laying the foundation stone, in the inclement
month of March, while the building was yet without roof, doors, or
windows, Wesley opened it by preaching from the narrative of the rich
man and Lazarus; and, afterwards, amid bricks, mortar, and a builder’s
usual _débris_, held a watchnight, the light of a full moon probably
being the only illumination the damp, cold, unfinished building had,
and equinoctial gales and winter winds wafting the watchnight hymns of
these happy Methodists to a higher and holier world than this. Truly
the cradle in which Methodism was rocked by the hand of Providence was
often rough.
Having begun the building, it was high time for Wesley to begin to find
means to pay for it. Accordingly, he arranged to leave his Newcastle
friends on the last day of 1742. He preached his farewell sermon—a
sermon of two hours’ continuance—in the open air; men, women, and
children hung upon him, and were unwilling to part with him; and, even
after he had mounted his horse and started on his journey, “a muckle
woman” kept her hold of him, and ran by his horse’s side, through thick
and thin, till the town was fairly left behind him.
We thus find Methodism firmly rooted in Bristol, Kingswood, London, and
Newcastle; and, besides this, Wesley writes: “In this year many other
societies were formed in Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire,
Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and Nottinghamshire, as well as the
southern parts of Yorkshire.”[475]
Not only were churches on earth multiplied, but additions were made
to the church in heaven. Mr. Dolman, who rarely failed to be at the
Foundery by five o’clock, died full of love, and peace, and joy in
believing. James Angel gave up his spirit to God in the full triumph of
faith. Mary Whittle cried out: “It is done, it is done! Christ lives
in me;” and died in a moment. Another female member of the London
society expired with the words, “I fear not death; it hath no sting
for me. I shall live for evermore.” Sarah Whiskin cried out, “My Lord
and my God!” fetched a double sigh, and died. John Woolley, a child of
thirteen years, threw his arms wide open, and said, “Come, come, Lord
Jesus! I am Thine;” and soon after breathed his last. And Lucy Godshall
died basking in the light of her Saviour’s countenance. All these
belonged to the London society.
The purest gold is sometimes mixed with dross; and so it was with
Methodism. Some of the Foundery society fanatically talked of feeling
the blood of Christ running upon their arms, their breasts, their
hearts, and down their throats. Wesley met them, and denounced their
folly as the empty dreams of heated imaginations. Good John Brown, of
Tanfield Leigh, two or three days after his conversion, came riding
through Newcastle, hallooing and shouting, and driving all the people
before him; telling them that God had revealed to him that he should
be a king, and should tread all his enemies beneath his feet. Wesley
arrested him, and sent him home immediately, advising him to cry day
and night to God, lest the devil should gain an advantage over him.
These were rare exceptions, and were promptly checked.
Two, who called themselves _prophets_, came to Wesley in London,
stating, that they were sent from God to say, he would shortly be
_born’d_ again; and that, unless he turned them out, they would stay
in the house till it was done. He gravely answered, that he would not
turn them out, and took them down into the room of the society. Here he
left them. “It was tolerably cold,” says he, “and they had neither meat
nor drink. However, there they sat from morning to evening, when they
quietly went away, and I have heard nothing from them since.”
In 1742, persecution by means of the public press had, to some extent,
abated;[476] but mobs and vulgar-minded men were as violent as ever. At
Long Lane, in London, they threw large stones upon the house in which
Wesley was preaching, which, with the tiles, fell among the people,
endangering their lives. At Chelsea, burning substances were cast into
the room till it was filled with smoke. At Pensford, near Bristol, a
hired rabble brought a bull, which they had been baiting, and tried to
drive it among the people; and then, forcing their way to the little
table on which Wesley stood, they “tore it bit from bit,” with fiendish
vengeance. A similar outrage was perpetrated in the neighbourhood of
Whitechapel. The mob did their utmost to force a herd of cattle among
the congregation; and then threw showers of stones, one of which struck
Wesley between the eyes; but, wiping away the blood, he continued the
service as if nought had happened. At Cardiff, while Charles Wesley was
preaching, women were kicked, and their clothes set on fire by rockets,
thrown into the room among them; the desk in which the preacher stood
was dashed to pieces, and the Bible wrested from his hands, one of the
brutal persecutors solemnly declaring that, if he went straight to hell
for doing it, he would persecute the Methodists to his dying day.[477]
In the midst of such violence, Wesley calmly pursued the path of duty,
praying, preaching, visiting the sick and dying, forming societies,
building chapels, reading, writing, and publishing.
During the year, he read Dr. Pitcairn’s works,—“dry, sour, and
controversial;” Jacob Behmen’s Exposition of Genesis, the “most sublime
nonsense, inimitable bombast, fustian not to be paralleled, all of a
piece with his inspired interpretation of the word _tetragrammaton_;
Madame Guyon’s “Short Method of Prayer,” and “Les Torrents
Spirituelles,” from which “poor quietist” the Moravians had taken many
of their unscriptural expressions; “The Life of Ignatius Loyola,” “a
surprising book,” concerning “one of the greatest men that ever engaged
in supporting so bad a cause;” and “The Life of Gregory Lopez,” “a good
and wise, though much mistaken man.”
Wesley’s publications, during 1742, were the following:—
1. “A Companion for the Altar. Extracted from Thomas à Kempis.” 12mo,
24 pages.
2. “An Extract of the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s Journal, from August 12,
1738, to November 1, 1739.” 12mo, 98 pages.
3. “A Treatise on Christian Prudence. Extracted from Mr. Norris.”[478]
12mo, 35 pages.
4. “A Collection of Hymns, translated from the German;” 36 pages. These
were twenty-four in number, and had previously been published in his
“Hymns and Sacred Poems.”
5. “A Narrative of the Work of God, at and near Northampton in New
England. Extracted from Mr. Edwards’s Letter to Dr. Coleman.” 12mo, 48
pages.
6. “A Collection of Tunes set to Music, as they are commonly sung at
the Foundery.” Duodecimo, of thirty-six pages, containing forty-three
tunes for one voice only, some set in the treble and some in the tenor
clef.[479]
Great revivals of religion have generally been attended by copious
productions of hymns of praise; and thus it was at the rise of
Methodism. This was emphatically the great era of hymn writing in the
English church. Watts, Doddridge, and Erskine poured forth the joys
of their converted hearts, and furnished lyric lines, which have been
used, in sacred worship, by millions. But of all the hymnists then
living, the Wesleys were the most remarkable. A competent authority
has estimated that, during Wesley’s lifetime there were published not
fewer than six thousand six hundred hymns from the pen of Charles
Wesley only.[480] Having furnished their societies with so many hymns,
no wonder that the Wesleys collected and furnished tunes. Their
religion made them happy; and happiness always finds vent in song.
The old Methodists were remarkable for their singing. Why? Because
their hearts throbbed with the “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
Make a man happy, and he is sure to sing. Thus it was with Wesley and
the thousands who looked to him as their great leader. Naturally, the
Wesleys were full of poetry; and religion, so far from extinguishing
the fire, fanned it into a holy flame. Their taste in music may be
gathered from Wesley’s directions to his preachers. “Suit the tune
to the words. Avoid complex tunes, which it is scarcely possible to
sing with devotion. Repeating the same words so often, especially
while another repeats different words, shocks all common sense,
necessarily brings in dead formality, and has no more religion in it
than a Lancashire hornpipe. Sing no anthems. Do not suffer the people
to sing too slow. In every society, let them learn to sing; and let
them always learn our own tunes first. Let the women constantly sing
their parts alone. Let no man sing with them, unless he understands
the notes, and sings the bass, as it is pricked down in the book.
Introduce no new tunes till they are perfect in the old. Let no organ
be placed anywhere, till proposed in the Conference. Recommend our
tune-book everywhere; and if you cannot sing yourself, choose a person
or two in each place to pitch the tune for you. Exhort every one in the
congregation to sing, not one in ten only.”[481]
Well would it be if Methodist ministers were to enforce such rules as
these, instead of leaving the most beautiful part of public worship,
as is too often done, to the irreligious whims and criminal caprice
of organists and choirs. No one can doubt the fact that, within the
last forty years, the singing in Methodist chapels has deteriorated
to an extent which ought to be alarming. The tunes now too generally
sung are intolerably insipid; and, as to any sympathy between them
and the inspiriting hymns of Charles Wesley, it would be preposterous
to say that a particle of such sympathy exists. Such singing may suit
the _classic_ taste of fashionable congregations assembled amid the
chilling influence of gothic decorations; but it bears no resemblance
whatever to the general outbursts of heartfelt praise, adoration, and
thanksgiving, which characterised the old Methodists. It is high time
for Methodist preachers to keep John Wesley’s rules respecting singing;
to substitute John Wesley’s tunes and others like them for the soulless
sounds now called classic music; and to feel that, before God and man,
they are as much responsible for the singing in sanctuaries as they are
for that part of public worship which consists of prayer.
7. Wesley’s last publication, in 1742, was “The Principles of a
Methodist,” 12mo, 32 pages. This was written in reply to a pamphlet of
the Rev. Josiah Tucker, who had tried to show that the Methodists, in
the first instance, had been the disciples of William Law the mystic,
and then of the Moravians; and, that now their principles were a
perfect “medley of Calvinism, Arminianism, Quakerism, Quietism, and
Montanism, all thrown together.”[482]
In reply to the charge of believing inconsistencies, Wesley remarks:—1.
That Mr. Law’s system of truth had never been the creed of the
Methodists. He himself was eight years at Oxford before he read any
of Mr. Law’s writings; and when he did read them, so far from making
them his creed, he had objections to almost every page. 2. That the
Germans, with whom he travelled to Georgia, infused into him no ideas
about justification, or anything else; for he came back with the same
notions he had when he went; but Peter Bohler’s affirmation that
true faith in Christ is always attended with “dominion over sin, and
constant peace from a sense of forgiveness,” and that “justification
was an instantaneous work,”—led him to make anxious inquiry, which
resulted in his conviction, that Bohler’s doctrine was true, and that,
notwithstanding all his past good performances, he himself was still
without true faith in Christ. 3. He repudiates the inconsistent creed
which Mr. Tucker puts into his mouth, and concludes as follows:—“I may
say many things which have been said before, and perhaps by Calvin
or Arminius, by Montanus or Barclay, or the Archbishop of Cambray;
but it cannot thence be inferred that I hold a ‘medley of all their
principles,—Calvinism, Arminianism, Montanism, Quakerism, Quietism,
all thrown together,’ There might as well have been added Judaism,
Mahommedanism, Paganism. It would have made the period rounder, and
been full as easily proved, I mean asserted; for no other proof is yet
produced.”
This was Wesley’s first battle. In his “address to the reader,” he
remarks:—
“I have often wrote on controverted points before; but not with
an eye to any particular person. So that this is the first time
I have appeared in controversy, properly so called. Indeed I
have not wanted occasion to do it before; particularly when,
after many stabs in the dark, I was publicly attacked, not by
an open enemy, but by my own familiar friend.” [Whitefield.]
“But I could not answer him. I could only cover my face and
say, Και συ εις εκεινων; και συ, τεκνον; ‘Art thou
also among them? art thou, my son?’
“I now tread an untried path, ‘with fear and trembling’; fear,
not of my adversary, but of myself. I fear my own spirit, lest
I ‘fall where many mightier have been slain.’ Every disputant
seems to think (as every soldier) that he may hit his opponent
as much as he can; nay, that he ought to do his worst to him,
or he cannot make the best of his own cause.”
Wesley then denounces this mode of conducting controversy, and declares
that he wishes to treat Mr. Tucker and all opponents as he would treat
his own brother. In such a spirit, Wesley began his long continued,
perhaps unparalleled, controversial life.[483]
1743.
[Sidenote: 1743 Age 40]
During the year 1743, Wesley spent about fourteen weeks in London,
ten in Bristol and its vicinity, thirteen in Newcastle and the
neighbourhood, three in Cornwall, and twelve in travelling chiefly to
the north of England. He was now a thorough itinerant; and itinerating
in England then was widely different from what it is at present.
Turnpike roads did not exist; and no stage coach went farther north
than the town of York.[484] Wesley travelled on horseback, reading as
he rode, and usually having one of his preachers with him. In a life
like this, there was much of both hardship and incident. For instance,
on New Year’s day, between Doncaster and Epworth, he met a man so
drunk that he could hardly keep his seat, but who, on discovering that
Wesley was his fellow traveller, cried out, “I am a Christian! I am a
Churchman! I am none of your Culamites!” And then, as if afraid that
Wesley might turn out to be the devil, away he went, as fast as his
horse could carry him. Twelve days after, on reaching Stratford upon
Avon, Wesley was requested to visit a woman of middle age, who, with
a distorted face, and a lolling tongue, had bellowed so horribly, in
the presence of the parish minister, that he pronounced her possessed
with demons. Wesley went, but, staring at her visitor, she said nothing
ailed her. After singing a verse or two, Wesley and his friends began
to pray. Just as he commenced, he felt as if he “had been plunged into
cold water,” and immediately there was a tremendous roar. The woman
was reared up in bed, her whole body moving, without bending either
joint or limb. Then it writhed into all kinds of postures, the poor
wretch still bellowing. Wesley, however, continued praying, until all
demoniacal symptoms ceased, and the woman began rejoicing and praising
God. On another occasion, in the month of April, while baiting his
horse at Sandhutton, he found sitting, in the chimney corner of the
public house, a good natured man, who was enjoying his grog with the
greatest gusto. Wesley began to talk to him about sacred things, having
no suspicion that he was talking to the parish priest. And yet so it
was; but the reverend tippler, instead of boiling over with offence,
begged his reprover to call upon him when he next visited his village.
In July, when he and John Downes reached Darlington, from Newcastle,
both their horses lay down and died; and, in August, when he was
leaving London for Bristol, his saddle slipped upon his horse’s neck;
he was jerked over the horse’s head; and the horse itself ran back to
Smithfield. Six days later, being in Exeter, he went to church both
morning and afternoon, and writes: “the sermon in the morning was quite
innocent of meaning; what that in the afternoon was, I know not; for
I could not hear a single sentence.” In October, when he was leaving
Epworth, he had to cross the Trent in a ferry boat; a terrible storm
was raging; and the cargo consisted of three horses and eight men and
women. In the midst of the river, the side of the boat was under water,
and the horses and men rolling one over another, while Wesley was laid
in the bottom, pinned down with a large iron bar, and utterly unable to
help himself. Presently, however, the horses jumped into the water, and
the boat was lightened, and came safe to land. Such were some of the
incidents Wesley met with in 1743.
One of the first events in this memorable year was the organisation
of the Calvinistic Methodists in Wales. At a meeting held at Watford
(near Cardiff), on January 5 and 6, and at which there were present
four clergymen—Whitefield, Rowlands, Powell, and Williams, and three
laymen—Howel Harris, Joseph Humphreys, and John Cennick, it was agreed
that “public exhorters” should be employed, and that each “public
exhorter,” with the assistance of “private exhorters,” should take the
oversight of twelve or fourteen societies. Each “private exhorter” was
to inspect only one or two societies, and was to follow his ordinary
calling. Howel Harris was to be a general travelling superintendent;
and the clergymen were to itinerate as much as they were able. Each
society was to have a box, under the care of stewards, to receive
weekly contributions towards the support of the general work; and the
clergymen and exhorters were to meet in conference once, or oftener,
every year.[485] Thus Whitefield, Harris, Humphreys, and Cennick began
to _organise_ their societies before the Wesleys did.
After an absence of seven weeks, Wesley returned to Newcastle, on
the 19th of February, and at once set to work to purge the society
of unworthy members. Since he left, on December 30, seventy-six had
forsaken the society; and sixty-four were now expelled, about eight
hundred still remaining. Of those who had voluntarily withdrawn
themselves, a large proportion were Dissenters, who left, because
otherwise their ministers refused to them the sacrament; thirty-three
because their husbands, wives, parents, masters, or acquaintance
objected; five because such bad things were said of the society; nine
because they would not be laughed at; one because she was afraid of
falling into fits; and fourteen for sundry other reasons. Among those
expelled, there were two for swearing; two for sabbath breaking;
seventeen for drunkenness; two for retailing spirituous liquors; three
for quarreling; one for beating his wife; three for wilful lying;
four for railing; one for laziness; and twenty-nine for lightness
and carelessness. Thus, within a few months after its formation, the
Newcastle society was purged of one hundred and forty of its members.
Joined with Newcastle were a number of country places, at each of which
Wesley preached every week, excepting Swalwell, where he went only
once a fortnight. These were Horsley, Pelton, Chowden, South Biddick,
Tanfield, Birtley, and Placey. At Chowden, he found he had got into
the very Kingswood of the north; twenty or thirty wild children, in
rags and almost nakedness, flocking round about him. At Pelton, in the
midst of the sermon, one of the colliers began to shout amain from an
excess of joy; but their usual token of approbation was clapping Wesley
on the back. At Placey, the colliers had always been in the first rank
for savage ignorance and all kinds of wickedness. Every Sunday men,
women, and children met together to dance, fight, curse and swear,
and play at chuck ball, span farthing, or whatever came to hand; but,
notwithstanding this, when Wesley went among them, on the 1st of April,
and preached amid wind, sleet, and snow till he was encased in ice,
“they gave earnest heed to the things which were spoken.”
In Newcastle, almost every night, there were scenes of great
excitement. Numbers dropped down, lost their strength, and were seized
with agonies. Some said, they felt as if a sword was running through
them; others thought a great weight upon them; others could hardly
breathe; and others felt as if their bodies were being torn to pieces.
“These symptoms,” says Wesley, “I can no more impute to any natural
causes, than to the Spirit of God. I can make no doubt, but it was
Satan tearing them, as they were coming to Christ. And hence proceeded
those grievous cries, whereby he might design both to discredit the
work of God, and to affright fearful people from hearing that word
whereby their souls might be saved.”
Wesley left on April 7, and on the 30th of May was succeeded by his
brother. Charles put an end to these annoying fits, and says, “I am
more and more convinced it was a device of Satan to stop the course of
the gospel.” He preached to “a thousand wild people” at Sunderland. At
South Shields, his congregation consisted of “a huge multitude; many of
them very fierce and threatening”; while the churchwardens and others
tried to interrupt him by throwing dirt, and even money among the
people. The mob at North Shields, led on by the parish priest, roughly
saluted him; his reverence commanding a man to blow a horn, and his
companions to shout.
Charles left on the 21st of June, and, eight days afterwards,
was succeeded by John. The society was further reduced, by fresh
backslidings, to about six hundred members. Wesley spent nearly three
weeks among them; formed a society out of “his favourite congregation
at Placey;” and then returned to London.
He came again on October 31st, and found the following advertisement
was published:—
“FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR. ESTE.
By the Edinburgh Company of Comedians, on Friday, November 4,
will be acted a Comedy, called
THE CONSCIOUS LOVERS;
To which will be added, a Farce, called,
TRICK UPON TRICK, OR METHODISM DISPLAYED.”
The day came; and about fifteen hundred people assembled in Moot Hall
to see the funny farce, some hundreds having to sit upon the stage.
Soon after the comedians began the first act of “The Conscious Lovers,”
the seats upon the stage broke down, and their occupants were left
sprawling in all directions. In the midst of the second act, all the
shilling seats gave a crack, and began to sink. The people shrieked,
and numbers ran away. When the third act was commencing, the entire
stage suddenly sunk about six inches, and the players precipitately
fled. At the end of the act, all the sixpenny seats, in a moment,
fell with an alarming crash, which caused cries on every side. Most
of the people had now left the hall, but, two or three hundred still
remaining, Este, who was to act the Methodist, came forward and told
them he was determined that the farce should be performed. While he was
speaking, the stage sunk six inches more; when the valorous comedian
and the remnant of his audience took to their heels in the utmost
confusion. The week after, however, the farce was acted, and hundreds
of people went again to see it.
One or two incidents in connection with Wesley’s northern journeys may
be noticed here.
While returning to the south, at the beginning of the year, he was, for
the first time in his life, repelled from the sacramental table. This
occurred at Epworth. Having preached, on his father’s tomb, to a large
congregation, gathered from the neighbouring towns, and it being the
sacramental Sunday, some of the people went to Romley, the curate, to
ask his permission to communicate; to whom the proud priest replied,
“Tell Mr. Wesley, I shall not give _him_ the sacrament; for he is not
_fit_.” Wesley writes, “How wise a God is our God! there could not have
been so fit a place under heaven, where this should befal me first,
as my father’s house, the place of my nativity, and the very place
where, ‘according to the straitest sect of our religion,’ I had so
long ‘lived a Pharisee.’ It was also fit, in the highest degree, that
he who repelled me from that very table where I had myself so often
distributed the bread of life, should be one who owed his all in this
world to the tender love which my father had shown to his, as well as
personally to himself.”
While on his third journey to Newcastle, in 1743, Wesley paid his first
visit to the town of Grimsby. Here a woman—a magdalen, who was parted
from her husband—offered him a convenient place for preaching, and,
under his sermon, became a penitent. Wesley, after hearing her domestic
history, told her she must return instantly to her forsaken spouse. She
replied, her husband was at Newcastle, and she knew not how to reach
him. Wesley said, “I am going to Newcastle to-morrow morning. William
Blow is going with me; and you shall ride behind him.” This was an odd
arrangement, and perhaps not too prudent; but it was carried out. The
poor creature rode to Newcastle, sad and sombre; there she met her
husband; and, a short time after, was drowned at sea, while on her way
to Hull.
The year 1743 will always be memorable for the riots in Staffordshire.
At this period, West Bromwich was an open common, covered with heath,
and burrowed with rabbit warrens. Wednesbury was a small country town,
irregularly built, the roads following ancient footways, and leaving
wide spaces unoccupied. One of these was called the “High Bullen,”
and was the place where bulls were baited. So extensively did this
barbarous sport prevail in the “black country,” that, in Tipton parish,
nineteen of these furious animals were baited at one of the annual
wakes. Wednesbury, however, was most celebrated for its cockfights.
Indeed, the Wednesbury “cockings,” as Charles Knight informs us, were
almost as famous as the races of the “Derby day” at the present time.
Recreations are an index to character, and sports, such as these,
reflected, as well as moulded, the moral condition of the people.
Charles Wesley, accompanied by Mr. Graves, was the first Methodist who
preached at Wednesbury. This was in November, 1742.[486] His brother
followed in January, 1743, and spent four days among the people,
preached eight sermons, and formed a society of about one hundred
members.[487] Mr. Egginton, the vicar, was extremely courteous, told
Wesley he had done much good already, and he doubted not would do
much more, invited him to his house, and said the oftener he came the
better.[488]
Wesley was followed by Mr. Williams, a Welshman, who, it is alleged,
vilified the clergy, and called them dumb dogs that could not bark.
After him came a bricklayer; then a plumber and glazier, both sent
from London; and, under their preaching, people fell down in fits,
and made strange hideous noises. Malice, spleen, and feuds sprung up.
The Methodists spoke ill natured things of their lawful minister, and
told the members of the Church of England, that they would all be
damned. These things, it is said, exasperated ignorant people, and
were the principal cause of the subsequent disturbances.[489] Wesley
paid a second visit to Wednesbury on the 15th of April, and says, “the
inexcusable folly of Mr. Williams had so provoked Mr. Egginton, that
his former love was turned into bitter hatred.” Wesley went to church,
where Egginton delivered, with great bitterness of voice and manner,
what Wesley pronounced, the most wicked sermon he ever heard; and, two
days afterwards, while he himself was preaching, a neighbouring parson,
who was extremely drunk, after using many unseemly and bitter words,
tried to ride over his congregation.
Charles Wesley came on the 20th of May, and found the society increased
to above three hundred. “The enemy,” he writes, “rages exceedingly, and
preaches against them. A few have returned railing for railing; but the
generality have behaved as the followers of Christ.” A Dissenter had
given a piece of ground upon which to build a chapel, and Charles says,
“I consecrated it by a hymn.” He went to Walsal, accompanied by many
of the brethren, singing songs of praise. He preached from the steps
of the market house, the mob roaring, shouting, and throwing stones
incessantly. Many struck him, but none hurt him.
Soon after this, while a small party of Wednesbury Methodists were
returning from Darlaston, singing hymns, the Darlaston mob began to
pelt them with stones and dirt; while the united mobs of Darlaston,
Walsal, and Bilston smashed the windows of most of the Methodist houses
in Wednesbury, Darlaston, and West Bromwich.[490] In some instances,
money was extorted, and in others furniture was broken, spoiled, or
stolen; and even pregnant women were beaten with clubs and otherwise
abused.[491] John Adams, John Eaton, and Francis Ward went to Walsal
for a warrant to apprehend the rioters. The magistrate, Mr. Persehouse,
told them they had themselves to blame for the outrage that had been
committed, and refused their application.[492] The mob hurled against
them all sorts of missiles, and when the magistrate was asked to quiet
these disturbers of the public peace, he swung his hat round his head,
and cried, “Huzza!” Mr. Taylor, the curate of Walsal, came, not to stop
the outrage, but to encourage the rioters in their violence. One of
them struck Francis Ward on the eye, and cut it so, that he expected
to lose his sight. He went into a shop and had it dressed, when the
ruffians again pursued him, and beat him most unmercifully. He escaped
into the public house, and was again fetched out, and dragged along the
street, and through the public kennels, till he lost his strength, and
was hardly able to stand erect.
Wesley writes, June 18th: “I received a full account of the terrible
riots which had been in Staffordshire. I was not surprised at all,
neither should I have wondered if, after the advices they had so often
received from the pulpit, as well as from the episcopal chair, the
zealous high churchmen had rose and cut all that were Methodists in
pieces.”
He immediately set out to assist the poor Methodists, as far as he
was able, and came to Francis Ward’s on the 22nd. After hearing the
statements of the people, he “thought it best to inquire whether there
could be any help from the laws of the land”; and rode to Counsellor
Littleton at Tamworth, to ask his opinion on the matter.
The mob were still as violent as ever. On the very day before Wesley’s
arrival at Francis Ward’s, a large crowd came to the house of John
Eaton, who was a constable. John went to the door, with his constable’s
staff, and began to read the act of parliament against riots; but
stones flew so thick about his head, that he was obliged to leave off
reading and to retire. They then broke all his windows, destroyed the
door of his dwelling, and smashed his clock to pieces. On the same
day, two or three of the Methodists were singing a hymn in John Adams’
house, when a pack of apprentices came and threw stones through the
windows. A mob destroyed Jonas Turner’s windows with a club, threw
three baskets full of stones to break his furniture, and ruthlessly
dragged him along the ground a distance of sixty yards. They went to
Mary Turner’s house, at West Bromwich, and hunted her and her two
daughters with stones and stakes, threatening to knock them on the
head, and to bury them in a ditch. They came to John Bird’s house,
felled his daughter, snatched money from his wife, and then broke ten
of his windows, besides destroying sash frames, shutters, chests of
drawers, doors, and dressers. They took Humphrey Hands by the throat,
swore they would be the death of him, gave him a great swing, and
hurled him on the ground. On rising, they struck him on the eye, and
again knocked him down. They then smashed all his windows, shivered
many of his household goods, and broke all the shelves, drawers, pots,
and bottles in his shop, and destroyed almost all his medicines. All
this happened within a day or two of Wesley’s coming to Francis Ward’s.
Indeed, at this very time, there were in and about Wednesbury more than
eighty houses, all of which had their windows damaged, and in many of
which not three panes of glass were left unbroken.[493]
Counsellor Littleton assured Wesley they might have an easy remedy, if
they resolutely prosecuted, as the law directed; and doubtless this
encouraged John Griffiths and Francis Ward to apply, at the end of
June, to another magistrate for protection and redress; but, having
stated their case to his worship, he talked to them roughly, made game
of them, refused a warrant, and said, “I suppose you follow these
parsons that come about. I will neither meddle nor make.”
For some time, preaching was suspended; and then came Messrs. Graves
and Williams, who, however, confined their preaching to private
houses.[494] At length, on October 20, Wesley himself again entered
this wild beasts’ den. At noon, he preached in the centre of the town,
and was not disturbed; but, two or three hours afterwards, while he
was writing at Francis Ward’s, the mob beset the house, and cried,
“Bring out the minister; we will have the minister!” At Wesley’s
request, three of the most furious came into the house, and, after the
interchange of a few sentences, were perfectly appeased. With these men
to clear the way, Wesley went out, and, standing in the midst of the
surging mob, asked them what they wanted with him. Some said, “We want
you to go with us to the justice.” Wesley replied, “That I will, with
all my heart”; and away they went. Before they had walked a mile, the
night came on, accompanied with heavy rain. Bentley Hall, the residence
of Mr. Lane, the magistrate, was two miles distant. Some pushed
forward, and told Mr. Lane, that they were bringing Wesley before his
worship. “What have I to do with Wesley?” quoth the magistrate; “take
him back again.” Presently the crowd came up, and began knocking for
admittance. A servant told them his master was in bed. The magistrate
declined to see them, but his son asked their business. A spokesman
answered, “To be plain, sir, if I must speak the truth, all the fault
I find with him is, that he preaches better than our parsons.” Another
said, “Sir, it is a downright shame; he makes people rise at five in
the morning to sing psalms.[495] What advice would your worship give
us?” “Go home,” said Lane, the younger, “and be quiet.”
Finding it impossible to obtain an audience of Mr. Lane, they then
hurried Wesley to Walsal, to Mr. justice Persehouse. It was now about
seven o’clock, and, of course, was dark. Persehouse, however, also
refused to see them, on the ground that, like magisterial Mr. Lane, he
was gone to bed; and hence there was nothing for it but to trudge back
again. About fifty of the crowd undertook to be Wesley’s convoy; but,
before they had gone more than a hundred yards, the mob of Walsal ran
after them; some were pelted; others fled; and Wesley was left, alone
and unbefriended, in the hands of the victorious ruffians. Some tried
to seize him by the collar, and to pull him down. A big lusty fellow,
just behind him, struck him several times with an oaken club. Another
rushed through the crowd, lifted his arm to strike, but, on a sudden,
let it drop, and only stroked Wesley’s head, saying “What soft hair he
has!” One man struck him on the breast; and another on the mouth, with
such force, that the blood gushed out. He was dragged back to Walsal;
and, attempting to enter a large house, the door of which was standing
open, he was seized by the hair of the head, and hindered. He was then
paraded through the main street, from one end of Walsal to the other.
Here he stood, and asked, “Are you willing to hear me speak?” Many
cried, “No, no! knock out his brains; down with him; kill him at once!”
Wesley asked, “What evil have I done? which of you all have I wronged
in word or deed?” Again they cried, “Bring him away, bring him away!”
Wesley began to pray; and now a man, who just before headed the mob,
turned and said, “Sir, I will spend my life for you; follow me, and no
one shall hurt a hair of your head.” Two or three of his companions
joined him; the mob parted; and these three or four brave ruffians, the
captains of the rabble on all occasions, and one of them a prizefighter
in a bear garden, took Wesley and carried him safely through the
infuriated crowd. He writes: “a little before ten o’clock, God brought
me safe to Wednesbury; having lost only one flap of my waistcoat, and a
little skin from one of my hands. From the beginning to the end I found
the same presence of mind, as if I had been sitting in my own study.
But I took no thought for one moment before another; only once it came
into my mind, that, if they should throw me into the river, it would
spoil the papers that were in my pocket. For myself, I did not doubt
but I should swim across, having but a thin coat and a light pair of
boots.”
It is right to add, that, in the midst of all these perils, there were
four brave Methodists who clung to Wesley, resolved to live or die with
him, namely, William Sitch, Edward Slater, John Griffiths, and Joan
Parks. When Wesley asked William Sitch, what he expected when the mob
seized them, William answered with a martyr’s spirit, “To die for Him,
who died for us.” And when Joan Parks was asked if she was not afraid,
she said: “No, no more than I am now. I could trust God for you, as
well as for myself.”
Such was the beginning of Methodism in the “black country.” “The
heathen raged, and the people imagined a vain thing. But He that
sitteth in the heavens laughed; the Lord had them in derision.”
Human justice there was none; but Divine protection was sufficient.
Wesley was carried to the houses of Lane and Persehouse, but these
two magisterial worthies refused to see him; and yet, only eight days
before, they had the effrontery to issue the following proclamation,
which Wesley justly calls one of the greatest curiosities, of the kind,
that England had ever seen:—
“_To all High Constables, Petty Constables, and other of His
Majesty’s Peace Officers, within the county of Staffordshire,
and particularly to the Constable of Tipton_:—
“Whereas, we, His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the said
county of Stafford, have received information, that several
disorderly persons, styling themselves Methodist preachers,
go about raising routs and riots, to the great damage of His
Majesty’s liege people, and against the peace of our Sovereign
Lord the King.
“These are in His Majesty’s name, to command you, and every
one of you, within your respective districts, to make diligent
search after the said Methodist preachers, and to bring him
or them before some of us His said Majesty’s Justices of the
Peace, to be examined concerning their unlawful doings.
“Given under our hands and seals, this 12th day of October,
1743.
“J. LANE,
“W. PERSEHOUSE.”[496]
It is a remarkable fact, however, that, notwithstanding Wesley’s rough
usage, and the pretentiously loyal proclamation of these two unjust
justices, Charles Wesley boldly bearded the lions in their den only
five days after his brother so miraculously escaped. He found the poor
Methodists “standing fast in one mind and spirit, in nothing terrified
by their adversaries.” He writes: “Never before was I in so primitive
an assembly. We sung praises lustily, and with a good courage; and
could all set our seal to the truth of our Lord’s saying, ‘Blessed are
they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.’ We assembled before
day to sing hymns of praise to Christ; and, as soon as it was light,
I walked down the town, and preached boldly on Revelation ii. 10. It
was a most glorious time. Our souls were satisfied as with marrow and
fatness, and we longed for our Lord’s coming to confess us before His
Father and His holy angels.”[497]
Even this is not all. The clergyman at Darlaston was so struck with
the meek behaviour of the Methodists, in the midst of suffering, that
he offered to join the Wesleys in punishing the rioters;[498] while
“honest Munchin,” as he was called, the captain of the rabble, who
first came to Wesley’s help and rescued him, was so impressed with his
spirit and behaviour, that he immediately forsook his gang of godless
companions, joined the Methodists, and was received, by Charles Wesley,
as a member on trial, only five days after Wesley’s deliverance. “What
thought you of my brother?” asked Charles Wesley of “honest Munchin.”
“Think of him!” said he, “I thought he is a _mon_ of God; and God was
on his side, when so _mony_ of us could not kill one _mon_.”
It may here be added, that “Munchin” was a nickname only,—a provincial
word expressive of coarse, brutal strength. The real name of Wesley’s
deliverer was George Clifton. He lived in a small house at the foot
of Holloway Bank, and never tired of telling, in after days, how
God stayed his hand, when he nearly took Wesley’s life. He died in
Birmingham, at the age of eighty-five, in the year 1789, and was buried
in St. Paul’s churchyard. It is a notable incident[499] that, while
Wesley’s persecutors passed quickly away, nearly all who took joyfully
the spoiling of their goods, lived, like “honest Munchin,” a long and
a peaceful life, and saw their children’s children walking in the fear
of God.
Unfortunately, the “Staffordshire riots” did not terminate in October,
1743; and, in order to complete the summary, we must trespass, for a
moment, on the events of 1744.
We learn from the pamphlet already quoted, “Papers giving an account of
the Rise and Progress of Methodism at Wednesbury and in other parishes
adjacent,” that, after the bold visit of Charles Wesley, Messrs. Graves
and Williams, who, for months past, had preached only in private
houses, now begun to preach publicly. At Christmas, Whitefield came
and spent several days in preaching in the streets with his accustomed
eloquence and power; and then, on February 2, 1744, Charles Wesley
again entered the field of action. Egginton, the Wednesbury vicar,
had drawn up a paper, and sent the crier to give notice, that all the
Methodists must sign it, or else their houses would be immediately
demolished. It was to this effect, “that they would never read, or
sing, or pray together, or hear the Methodist parsons any more.”
Several signed through fear; and every one who did was mulcted a penny
to assist in making the rabble drunk.[500]
This was not more than about a month before Charles Wesley’s visit.
When he came, however, Egginton was dead; but, in the meantime, not a
Methodist in Darlaston had escaped the renewed violence of the vicar’s
godless mob, except two or three who had bought exemption by giving
their purses to the lawless gang. The windows of all the Methodists
were broken, neither glass, lead, nor frames remaining. Tables, chairs,
chests of drawers, and whatever furniture was not easily removable,
were dashed in pieces. Feather beds were torn to shreds, and the
feathers strewed about the rooms[501] in all directions.
No craven-hearted parson would have ventured to preach to humanised
fiends like these; and yet these were pre-eminently the men whom the
Wesleys tried to benefit and save. At the risk of being murdered, they
fearlessly told them of their sin and danger. More than once they had
hazarded their lives; and now, Charles was in the midst of these
begrimed ruffians, as courageous as ever. He escaped, but the poor
Methodists were again made to suffer from the more than brutal violence
of their fiendish neighbours.
One man’s wife, about Candlemas, was abused in a manner too horrible
to relate; and, because he tried to bring some of the recreants to
justice, his windows were broken; his furniture and tools destroyed;
all his wife’s linen was torn to tatters; his bed and bedstead were
cut; and his Bible and Prayer-Book pulled to pieces. On Shrove Tuesday,
the house of Francis Ward was forcibly entered, and all his goods
were stolen. John Darby’s house was broken open, his furniture and
five stalls of bees destroyed, and his poultry filched. Other houses
were plundered and injured in like manner. Some of the mob were armed
with swords, some with clubs, and some with axes. The outrages, if
possible, were even worse than those some months before. One man cut
Mary Turner’s bible into fragments with his axe. Another swore he would
beat out Mrs. Sheldon’s brains with her fire shovel. Joshua Constable
was attacked by an outrageous gang, his house, in part, pulled down,
his goods destroyed and stolen, and his wife violently and brutally
assaulted. For six days, in the early part of 1744, this lawless
riot lasted, and the damage done to the property of the Wednesbury
Methodists amounted to a serious sum. Applications for redress were
made to not fewer than three magistrates, but to no purpose. The
document, containing many of the above facts, was drawn up on February
26, 1744 when the persecuted Methodists remark:—“We keep meeting
together morning and evening, are in great peace and love with each
other, and are nothing terrified by our adversaries. God grant we may
endure to the end!”[502]
Leaving the “black country,” we must pass to other scenes of fiendish
violence, and yet sacred triumph.
Cornwall, at this period, was as imbruted as Staffordshire. Smuggling
was considered an honourable traffic, and the plunder of shipwrecked
mariners was accounted a lawful prize. Drunkenness was general; and
cockfighting, bullbaiting, wrestling, and hurling were the favourite
amusements of the people. Francis Truscott relates that, at the time
when the Wesleys first went to Cornwall, there was a village, about
five miles from Helstone, which was literally without a Bible, and
which had, no religious book whatever, except a single copy of the Book
of Common Prayer, kept at the public house. On one occasion, during
a terrific storm, when the people feared that the world was ending,
they fled in consternation to the tavern, that Tom, the tapster, might
secure them protection by reading them a prayer. Having fallen upon
their knees, Tom hastily snatched a well thumbed book; and began, with
great pomposity, to read about storms, wrecks, and rafts, until his
mistress, finding that some mistake was made, cried out, “Tom, that is
‘Robin Cruso’!” “No,” said Tom, “it is the Prayer-Book;” and on he went
until he came to a description of man Friday, when his mistress again
vociferated that she was certain Tom was reading “Robin Cruso.” “Well,
well,” said Tom, “suppose I am; there are as good prayers in ‘Robin
Cruso’ as in any other book”; and so Tom proceeded, till the storm
abated, and the conscience stricken company dispersed, complacently
believing that they had done their duty.[503]
While the people, however, were thus generally sunk in ignorance and
vice, there were a few exceptions. Among these were Catherine Quick and
eleven others, at St. Ives, who frequently met together to pray, and
to read Burkitt’s Notes on the New Testament. This godly band of pious
people was visited by Captain Turner, a Methodist from Bristol; and
this led Catherine Quick and her associates to invite Wesley to visit
them.[504]
Charles Wesley was the first to come. Entering St. Ives, on July 16,
Mr. Shepherd met him; the boys of the place gave him a rough salute;
and Mr. Nance made him his welcome guest. The day after his arrival,
he went to church, where the rector preached a railing sermon against
the Methodists, or, as he called them, “the new sect, enemies to the
Church, seducers, troublers, scribes, pharisees, and hypocrites.”
Immediately after being thus religiously regaled, Charles and his
godly inviters went to the church at Wednock, where Mr. Hoblin, the
curate, poured out such a hotch-potch of railing and foolish lies as
might have made even the devil blush. Charles told the preacher, that
he had been misinformed; upon which his reverence replied, with more
coarseness than courtesy, “You are a liar,” and then left him. On the
day following, when Charles Wesley went to the market house, at St.
Ives, and commenced singing the hundredth psalm, the mob began to beat
a drum and shout. Four days later, when he had just named his text, the
same unruly ruffians rushed upon his congregation, and threatened to
murder them. The sconces of the room were broken, the windows dashed
in pieces, and the shutters, benches, and, indeed, everything except
the walls, destroyed. They asseverated, that Charles Wesley should not
preach again, and lifted up their hands and clubs to strike him. The
women were beaten, dragged about, and trampled on without mercy; until,
at length, the rascals fell to quarreling among themselves, broke the
town clerk’s head, and left the room. Two days after, while preaching
at Wednock, the minister’s mob fell upon the congregation, and _swore_
most horribly, that they would be revenged on them for their taking the
people from the church, and making such a disturbance on the sabbath
day. Sticks and stones were used, and ten cowardly ruffians attacked
one unarmed man, beat him with their clubs, and knocked him to the
ground. The day following, at St. Ives, the service was broken up by
the mob throwing eggs and stones, and swearing they would pull down the
walls of the room, whose windows, benches, and sconces they had already
ruthlessly destroyed. At Pool, on July 26, the churchwarden shouted,
and hallooed, and put his hat to Charles Wesley’s mouth to prevent his
preaching.
All these outrages were principally prompted by the parsons, who
continually spoke of the Methodists as popish emissaries, and who,
to use the Rev. Mr. Hoblin’s fisticuff language, “ought to be driven
away by blows, and not by arguments.” At length, the mayor of St. Ives
appointed twenty new constables to suppress the rioters by force of
arms, “and plainly told Mr. Hoblin, the fire and fagot minister, that
he would not be perjured to gratify any man’s malice.”
Charles Wesley came to St. Ives on the 16th of July, and set out, on
his return to London, on August 8, his brother having summoned him
to attend a conference with the adherents of Whitefield and with the
Moravians. In this way, his labours in Cornwall were interrupted;
but, a fortnight after, his brother, accompanied by John Nelson, John
Downes, and Mr. Shepherd, succeeded him. Nelson and Downes had but
one horse between them, and, hence, rode by turns. They reached St.
Ives on August 30, and found the society increased to about a hundred
and twenty, nearly a hundred of whom had found peace with God. John
Nelson began to work at his trade as a stonemason; and, as opportunity
permitted, preached at St. Just, the Land’s End, and other places. John
Downes fell ill of a fever, and was unable to preach at all. Wesley
and Nelson slept upon the floor, Wesley using Nelson’s top coat for
a pillow, and Nelson using Burkitt’s Notes on the New Testament for
his. One morning, at three o’clock, after using this hard bed for a
fortnight, Wesley turned over, clapped Nelson on the side, and jocosely
said: “Brother Nelson, let us be of good cheer, for the skin is off but
one side yet.” Their board also was as hard as their bed. They were
continually preaching; but “it was seldom,” says Nelson, “that any
one asked us to eat or drink. One day, as we returned from St. Hilary
Downs, Mr. Wesley stopped his horse to pick the blackberries, saying,
‘Brother Nelson, we ought to be thankful, that there are plenty of
blackberries; for this is the best country I ever saw for getting an
appetite, but the worst for getting food.’”[505]
Wesley spent three weeks in Cornwall, leaving Nelson behind him. Upon
the whole, he had been kindly treated. The mob at St. Ives, it is true,
welcomed him with a loud huzza; and serenaded him before his window
with the harmless ditty:—
“Charles Wesley is come to town,
To try if he can pull the churches down.”
But, during his stay, the only act of violence he met with was, on one
occasion, when the mob burst into the room at St. Ives, and a ruffian
struck him on the head.
On his way to Cornwall, and also on returning, Wesley preached at
Exeter, and visited a lad, and a clergyman in prison, both sentenced to
suffer death. His vast congregation “in that solemn amphitheatre,” as
he calls the castle yard, was such an one as he had rarely seen,—“void
both of anger, fear, and love.” He also preached at the cross in
Taunton, where a man, attempting to make disturbance, so exasperated
the congregation, that there was a general cry, “Knock the rascal
down, beat out his brains!” and Wesley had to interfere to prevent his
being roughly handled. He likewise paid a flying visit to the Isles
of Scilly, crossing the ocean in a fishing boat, and singing amid the
swelling waves:—
“When passing through the watery deep,
I ask in faith His promised aid;
The waves an awful distance keep,
And shrink from my devoted head,
Fearless their violence I dare;
They cannot harm,—for God is there.”
It has been already stated, that Charles Wesley was summoned from
Cornwall to attend a conference in London, consisting of the leading
men of the three communities,—the Arminian Methodists, the Calvinistic
Methodists, and the Moravians. The object of the conference was,
by mutual explanations and concessions, to cultivate a better
understanding with each other; so that the parties might avoid all
unnecessary collision, and unite, as far as was practicable, in
advancing what they believed to be the work of God. Wesley drew up a
statement of the questions at issue between himself and Whitefield,
with the concessions he was prepared to make.[506] Mr. Jackson says,
the project had its origin with Wesley,[507] and perhaps it had; but,
a year before this, John Cennick expressed a wish for the same sort
of meeting. In a letter to Whitefield’s wife, dated May 6, 1742, he
writes:—“I have had it much impressed upon my mind, that it would be
right in the sight of God, that all our preachers, all Mr. Wesley’s,
and all the Moravian brethren should meet together. Who knows but we
might unite? Or if not, we might consent in principles as far as we
can, and love one another. At least, I think all _our_ preachers
should meet, as the apostles did, often. I know it would be for good;
but I suspend my judgment to the elder brethren.”[508]
It may thus be doubtful whether the proposal for the conference
originated with Wesley or with Cennick; but, through no fault of
Wesley’s, the proposal was abortive. To be present at the conference,
Wesley travelled from Newcastle; his brother came all the way from
Cornwall; and John Nelson trudged from Yorkshire. But Whitefield, who
was in London, seems to have declined the invitation; the Moravians
refused to come; and, though Spangenberg had promised to attend, he
left England instead of doing so; while James Hutton said, his brethren
had orders not to confer at all, unless the archbishop of Canterbury,
or the bishop of London, were also present.[509]
This was the last attempt at union; but perhaps it suggested to
Wesley’s mind the idea of having conferences of his own, which he began
to hold twelve months afterwards.
Not a little of the time of the two Wesleys was now employed in
pastoralizing the societies they had formed in London, Bristol, and
other places. In Bristol, in the month of January, Wesley spoke to each
member of society, and rejoiced in finding them neither barren nor
unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. He did the same
at Kingswood, and remarks: “I cannot understand how any minister can
hope ever to give up his account with joy, unless (as Ignatius advises)
he knows all his flock by name; not overlooking the men servants and
maid servants.” In London, he and his brother began visiting the
society together, on February 2, which they continued from six in the
morning to six at night, until the visiting was completed. The same
practice was pursued at Newcastle.
The London society now consisted of nineteen hundred and fifty members;
and, before the year was ended, it numbered two and twenty hundred.
This was a large church, gathered within the last four years, and
needing a more than ordinary amount of pastoral attention. The members
only, to say nothing of children, servants, and outside hearers, were
almost sufficient to fill the Foundery chapel twice over. More room
became imperative. Without this, it seemed to be impossible to extend,
or even to conserve the work. London had one Methodist chapel already;
before the year was ended, it had two others.
In the month of May, Wesley had the offer of a chapel in West Street,
Seven Dials, which about sixty years before had been built by the
French Protestants. He accepted the offer, and opened the chapel, as
a Methodist place of worship, on Trinity Sunday, the first service
lasting from ten o’clock till three. At five, he preached again to
an immense congregation at the Great Gardens; then met the leaders;
and after them the bands; and yet, at ten o’clock at night, he was
less weary than when he began his enormous day’s work in the morning.
Here, when in London, he and his brother now regularly officiated on
Sunday mornings and evenings, read the liturgy, and administered the
sacraments. The Lord’s supper was celebrated at the morning service on
both the first and second Sundays of the month, and the attendance was
so numerous, that, in both instances, the service usually lasted at
least five hours. This was longer than even Wesley thought desirable,
and led him to divide the communicants into three divisions, so that
not more than about six hundred might communicate on the same occasion.
These were enormous gatherings, with which those of the present day
will hardly bear comparison.
Three months after he took possession of the West Street chapel, Wesley
became the occupier of a third, which had been built in Bermondsey,
Southwark, by a Unitarian. Being vacant, Wesley took it. Some objected
to this. “What!” said a zealous woman, “what! will Mr. Wesley preach at
Snowsfields? Surely not! there is not such another place in London. The
people there are not men, but devils!” This was just the sort of reason
to induce Wesley, not to stay away, but go. Accordingly, on August 8,
he opened Snowsfields chapel by preaching from the words—“Jesus said,
They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I came
not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Wesley did more than this for the London society. Visiting the sick
he regarded as an imperative Christian duty. Sending them help was not
enough. Besides, to neglect this was not only to neglect a duty, but
to lose a means of grace. “One great reason,” says Wesley, “why the
rich have so little sympathy for the poor, is, because they so seldom
visit them.” “All,” he adds, “who desire to escape the everlasting
fire, and to inherit the everlasting kingdom, are equally concerned,
according to their power, to practise this important duty.”[510]
Holding such sentiments, Wesley himself, throughout life, visited
the poor and the afflicted, to the utmost of his ability; but, of
course, as an itinerant evangelist, when he had done his best, much
was left untouched. Hence, in the year 1743, he appointed in London
visitors of the sick, as distinct office bearers in his society.[511]
Stewards had been appointed already, to receive the contributions of
the society, which amounted to nearly £8 per week; and to distribute
them, partly in repairing and paying for chapel premises, partly
in paying debts, partly in other necessary expenses, and partly in
relieving the afflicted and the poor. The stewards, seven in number,
were to be frugal; to have no long accounts; to give none, that asked
relief, either an ill word or an ill look; and to expect no thanks
from man. They met together every Thursday morning at six o’clock,
and distributed all the money paid to them up to the previous Tuesday
night; so that all receipts and disbursements were concluded within
the week. The stewards, however, soon found a difficulty with regard
to the afflicted. Some were ready to perish before they heard of them;
and, even when they became acquainted with their illness, being persons
generally employed in trade, they were unable to visit them as often as
they wished. To meet this deficiency, Wesley called together the whole
of the London society; showed how impossible it was for the stewards to
visit all the sick in all parts of the metropolis; desired the leaders
to be more careful in inquiring after sick cases, and in giving early
information concerning them; and then appealed to the assembled members
and asked for volunteers for this important work. Numbers cheerfully
responded, out of whom Wesley selected forty-six, whom he judged to
be of the most tender, loving spirit. He then divided London into
twenty-three districts, and arranged that the sick, in each district,
should be visited, by a couple of visitors, three times every week; and
that the visitors, besides inquiring into the state of the people’s
souls, should relieve those of them in want, and should present their
accounts to the stewards weekly. Wesley writes:—
“Upon reflection, I saw how exactly, in this also, we had
copied after the primitive church. What were the ancient
deacons? What was Phœbe, the deaconess, but such a visitor of
the sick?”
Four rules were to be observed:—
“1. Be plain and open in dealing with souls. 2. Be mild,
tender, patient. 3. Be cleanly in all you do for the sick. 4.
Be not nice.”
Wesley adds, five years afterwards:—
“We have ever since had great reason to praise God for His
continued blessing on this undertaking. Many lives have been
saved, many sicknesses healed, much pain and want prevented or
removed. Many heavy hearts have been made glad, many mourners
comforted; and the visitors have found, from Him whom they
serve, a present reward for all their labour.”[512]
The two thousand members of the London society contributed about £400 a
year, or, at the rate of a shilling per member per quarter. The Bristol
society consisted of seven hundred members, and, after the same ratio,
would contribute £140 per year. Eight hundred members at Newcastle
would raise £160; and the societies at Kingswood and other places
might give £100 additional: thus making the Methodist income, for
1743, something like £800. Out of this, all chapel expenses had to be
defrayed; a large proportion was given to the afflicted poor; something
was necessary for the contingent expenses of Wesley’s helpers; and the
remainder,—how much was it?—was perhaps given to the two Wesleys to
meet some of their own necessary wants. These were the men preying upon
the pockets of the poor, and making themselves a fortune out of other
people’s money! Such falsehoods were current, and were not entirely
disbelieved even by some of Wesley’s own relatives.
Poor Emily Wesley, a classical scholar, and no mean poet,—after
teaching in a boarding school where she was ill used and worse paid,
and after marrying a poor Quaker, who did little for her, and soon left
her—was now a penniless and dependent widow, maintained entirely by her
two brothers, and living at the Foundery. Emily, in a petulant humour,
wrote to her brother John, accusing him of the want of kindness and of
natural affection, notwithstanding his reputed riches. John, in reply,
wrote one of his most pungent letters, of which the following is a
copy:—
“NEWCASTLE, _June 30, 1743_.
“DEAR EMILY,—Once, I think, I told you my mind freely before;
I am constrained to do so once again. You say, ‘From the time
of my coming to London, till last Christmas, you would not do
me the least kindness.’ Do I dream, or you? Whose house were
you in for three months, and upwards? By whose money were you
sustained? It is a poor case, that I am forced to mention these
things.
“But, ‘I would not take you lodgings in fifteen weeks.’ No, nor
should I have done in fifteen years. I never once imagined,
that you expected _me_ to do this! Shall I leave the word of
God to serve tables? You should know I have quite other things
to mind; temporal things I shall mind less and less.
“‘When I was removed you never concerned yourself about me.’
That is not the fact. What my brother does, I do. Besides, I
myself spoke to you abundance of times, before Christmas last.
“‘When I was at preaching, you would scarce speak to me.’ Yes;
at least as much as to my sister Wright, or, indeed, as I did
to any else at those times.
“‘I impute all your unkindness to one principle you hold, that
natural affection is a great weakness, if not a sin.’ What is
this principle I hold? That natural affection is a sin? or that
adultery is a virtue? or that Mahommed was a prophet of God?
and that Jesus Christ was a son of Belial? You may as well
impute _all_ these principles to me as _one_. I hold one just
as much as the other. O Emmy, never let that idle, senseless
accusation come out of your mouth.
“Do you hold that principle, ‘that we ought to be just (_i.
e._ pay our debts) before we are merciful’? If I held it, I
should not give one shilling for these two years, either to
you or any other. And, indeed, I have, for some time, stayed
my hand; so that I give next to nothing, except what I give to
my relations. And I am often in doubt with regard to that, not
whether natural affection be not a sin; but whether it ought
to supersede common justice. You know nothing of my temporal
circumstances, and the straits I am in, almost continually; so
that were it not for the reputation of my great riches, I could
not stand one week.
“I have now done with myself, and have only a few words
concerning you. You are of all creatures the most unthankful
to God and man. I stand amazed at you. How little have you
profited under such means of improvement! Surely whenever
your eyes are opened, whenever you see your own tempers, with
the advantages you have enjoyed, you will make no scruple to
pronounce yourself, (whores and murderers not excepted,) the
very chief of sinners.—I am, etc.,
“JOHN WESLEY.”[513]
This is a caustic letter; and yet John Wesley was a loving brother.
For nearly thirty years afterwards, Emily Harper was a resident in
the preachers’ house at West Street, was a constant attendant on the
ministry of her brothers, and died in peace, at the age of eighty,
about the year 1772.
Much has been already related respecting the Methodist persecutions of
1743; but the whole has not been told. At Newcastle, three Dissenting
ministers agreed together to exclude all from the holy communion,
who would not refrain from attending Wesley’s ministry. One of them
publicly affirmed, that the Methodist preachers were all papists, and
that their doctrine was Popery. Another preached against them, and
said, “Many texts in the Bible are for them; but you ought not to mind
these texts; for the papists have put them in.” At Cowbridge, in Wales,
when Wesley attempted to preach, the mob shouted, cursed, blasphemed,
and threw showers of stones almost without intermission. At Bristol,
a clergyman preached, in several of the city churches, against the
_upstart_ Methodists; and was about to do so in the church of St.
Nicholas, when, after naming his text, he was seized with a rattling in
his throat, fell backward against the pulpit door, and, on the Sunday
following, expired. At Egham, Wesley went to church, and listened to
one of the most miserable sermons he ever heard; stuffed with dull,
senseless, improbable lies against those whom the parson complimented
with the title of “false prophets.”
At Sheffield, the ministers of the town so inflamed the people, that
they were ready to tear the Methodists to pieces. An army officer
drew his sword, and presented it at Charles Wesley’s breast. The
meeting-house was ruthlessly demolished, and the mob encouraged by the
constable. The windows of Mr. Bennett’s house, in which Charles Wesley
lodged, were smashed to atoms; and stones flew thick and fast in all
directions. Near Barley Hall, a few miles from Sheffield, Charles
Wesley and David Taylor were assaulted with a storm of stones, eggs,
and dirt; David was wounded in the head and lost his hat; and the
clothes of his companion were besmeared with filth.[514]
At Hampton, in Gloucestershire, the mob threatened to make aprons of
Whitefield’s gown; broke a young lady’s arm; threw Mr. Adams twice
into a pool of water; seized Whitefield for the purpose of casting
him into a pit of lime;[515] and, from four in the afternoon till
midnight, continued rioting, and declaring that no Anabaptists, etc.,
should preach there, upon pain of being first put into a skin-pit,
and afterwards into a brook. Women were pulled down the stairs by the
hair of their heads; Mr. Williams was twice thrown into a hole full of
noisome reptiles and stagnant water, and was beaten, and dragged along
the kennel; while the Methodists, in general, were mobbed to such an
extent, that many expected to be murdered, and hid themselves in holes
and corners, to avoid their enemies.
All this was bad enough; but there was something else, perhaps, quite
as painful. The press, in its attacks, became as virulent as ever.
Among other publications issued, was the following: “The Notions of
the Methodists fully disproved, with a Vindication of the Clergy of
the Church of England from their Aspersions. In two Letters to the
Rev. Mr. John Wesley. Newcastle: 1743.” In this precious morsel, of
near a hundred pages, the Methodists are branded as “conceited, vain
boasters,” and “ignorant, giddy, presumptuous enthusiasts.” Wesley is
accused of “compassing sea and land to gain proselytes”; of “making
unwarrantable dissensions in the Church”; and of “prejudicing the
people, wherever he came, against his brethren the clergy.” “You are,”
writes this northern pamphleteer, “guilty both of schism and rebellion,
which are two very grievous and damnable sins. You are the sower and
ringleader of dissension, endeavouring with unwearied assiduity to
set the flock at variance with their ministers and each other. You
assume to yourself great wisdom and high attainments in all spiritual
knowledge; but it requires no depth of understanding, to judge whether
your character and conduct suit that of the spiritually or carnally
wise man in St. James. You scruple not to accuse the clergy of almost
universally teaching devilish doctrine, and of being deceitful workers;
but, however you may boast of your conversions, you will in the end
render yourselves the ridicule of mankind. You go from one end of
the nation to another, lamenting the heresies of your brethren, and
instilling into the people’s minds, that they are led into errors
by their pastors; when the truth is, you are perverting them with
solifidian and antinomian blasphemies. Consider, sir, how wicked and
abominable in the sight of God it is for you to misrepresent your
brethren to the people, in this scandalous manner. The mischief is,
the giddy multitude, like the Athenians, love to spend their time in
nothing else but hearing some new thing. They are tired with the solid,
plain, and rational way of preaching they have been accustomed to in
the Church, and think it dry and insipid in comparison of the powerful
charms of that ecstatic eloquence, those highflown metaphors, those
pretty rhymes, those taking gestures, with which you tickle and bewitch
them. You give a deplorable account of the debt you have contracted
by the building of your meeting-houses; but unless you can bring
better proof than you have hitherto done, of the necessity there is to
give yourself all this trouble and expense, all wise and considerate
men, without any breach of charity, will look upon subscriptions for
carrying on your designs, as little less than picking the poor people’s
pockets, and robbing them of that which should maintain their families.”
Such is a specimen of the malignant slanders cast upon Wesley by this
northern clergyman.
It has been already stated, that the Rev. Henry Piers preached, in
1742, before the clergy of the deanery of Shoreham, a visitation
sermon, which Wesley revised, and which, at the time of its delivery,
gave great offence. The preacher chosen for this office, in 1743,
was of another stamp; and his sermon also was published, with the
following title: “Of Speaking as the Oracles of God. A Sermon,
preached before the Reverend the Clergy of the Deanery of Shoreham, at
the Visitation, held in the Parish Church of Farningham, on Thursday,
May 19, 1743. By John Andrews, M.A., Vicar of that Church.” 8vo, 30
pages. The world would have sustained no loss, if Mr. Andrews’ sermon
had not been printed. The preacher sneers at the fancies of theological
empirics, in one paragraph, and, in the next, speaks of the doctrines
of “justification and regeneration as questions and strifes of words,
which profit not.” Mr. Piers’ visitation sermon is attacked on the
subject of faith; and the assembled clergy of the deanery of Shoreham
are officially informed, that “every one, that is rightly and duly
baptized, not only receives the outward ordinance, but the inward and
spiritual grace annexed to it.”
Another pamphlet, published at this period, was, “A Fine Picture of
Enthusiasm, chiefly drawn by Dr. Scott; with an application to our
modern Methodists.” 40 pages. Dedicated to the Bishop of London. In
this miserable _morceau_, we are told, that “there are thousands
flocking after those enthusiasts, Whitefield and Wesley, who appear to
be deluding crowds of people into a passionate, mechanical religion.”
One of them, at least, is suspected to be a masked Jesuit; and both
have courted persecution, but have had a mortifying disappointment.
The singing of the Methodists is enchanting, and their tunes the most
melodious that ever were composed for church music; but their hymns
are irrational, and, like their prayers, dwell upon a word, or are
immediate addresses to the Son of God, and represent Him as much more
compassionate to the human race than God the Father ever was. “One of
these artful teachers,” says the writer, “has ordered the tickets for
his people to be impressed with the crucifix; and this, with their
_confessions_ and other customs, intimates a manifest fondness for the
orthodox institutions of the Church of Rome. These _modest_ teachers
have not failed to trumpet their own extraordinary piety and holiness,
as well as their extraordinary knowledge and illumination; and this
has been done with great effect among the people. Their doctrine has
very generally occasioned disorder in the passions of their hearers;
the screamings and convulsions common among them, in their public
assemblies, being called convictions. Vast numbers have gone melancholy
among them. Many have been led to quit their lawful and necessary
employment; to neglect their husbands, children, and families; and from
useful members in society have become mopes and visionaries, incapable
of pursuing their proper business, or of supporting themselves with
decency.”
A fourth publication, belonging to the year 1743, was “The Progress
of Methodism in Bristol; or, the Methodist Unmasked: wherein the
doctrines, discipline, policy, divisions, and successes of that
novel sect are fully detected and properly displayed in Hudibrastick
verse, by an Impartial Hand. To which is added, by way of appendix,
the Paper-Controversy between Mr. Robert Williams, supported by
Thomas Christie, Esq., Recorder of Savannah, and the Rev. Mr. Wesley,
supported only by his own integrity and assurance. Together with
authentic extracts, taken from a late narrative of the state of
Georgia, relating to the conduct of that gentleman during his abode in
that colony. Bristol: 1743.” 16mo, 72 pages.
Among other things, this mendacious pamphlet contains an affidavit,
sworn by Robert Williams before Stephen Clutterbuck, Mayor of Bristol,
to the effect, that two freeholders at Savannah became bail for
Wesley’s appearance at the sessions to take his trial, and that he
dishonourably escaped from the colony and left his bondsmen in the
lurch. To this Wesley replied: “Captain Robert Williams, you know in
your own soul, that every word of this is a pure invention, without
one grain of truth from the beginning of it to the end. What amends
can you ever make, either to God, or to me, or to the world? Into what
a dreadful dilemma have you brought yourself! You must either openly
retract an open slander, or you must wade through thick and thin to
support it, till that God, to whom I appeal, shall maintain His own
cause, and sweep you away from the earth.”[516]
Whitefield and Wesley, in this scurrilous production, are accused of
preaching to get money, and of placing men with plates at each gate
and stile of the fields in which they harangued the people, to gather
collections for the Orphan House in Georgia and the Room in Bristol.
Wesley is charged with pretending to work miracles; for, upon a company
of women falling down before him, he first of all prays over them, then
sings a hymn, and then exorcises devils. In the midst of a most severe
winter, he had taken his converts, early in the morning, through frost
and snow, to the river Froom, at Baptist Mills, where, on the ice being
broken, he and they went into the water, where, with “limbs shuddering
and teeth _hackering_,” he baptized or dipped them. Class-meetings are
described, the leaders of which note the sins of those who confess to
them, register them in a book, and, in due season, “report them to
John, who admonishes one, reprimands another, and expels a third.”
At first, each member gave a penny, but now the _lowest_ payment was
twopence weekly. At present there were forty-eight classes in Bristol,
each class containing “an even dozen.” After the watchnight meetings at
Kingswood,
“Men, boys, and girls, and women too,
Come strolling home at morning two:”
and at the nightly lovefeasts, “the ghostly father and all his sons
draw near—
“The pious sisters, wives, and misses,
And greet them well with holy kisses.”
But enough of this. What did Wesley himself publish in 1743?
1. “Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies,
in London, Bristol, Kingswood, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne: printed by John Gooding, on the Side. Price one
penny. 1743.” Twelve pages.
This, the first edition of the “Rules,” is signed by John Wesley only,
and bears date February 23, 1743. A second edition was issued, signed
by both John and Charles Wesley, and dated May 1, 1743. The first
edition has annexed “A Prayer for those who are convinced of Sin,”
consisting of eighteen stanzas of four lines each, and from which is
taken the beautiful hymn, numbered 462, in the Wesleyan Hymn-Book,
and beginning with the line, “O let the prisoners‘mournful’ cries”;
a production admirably appropriate to the circumstances in which the
members of the first Methodist societies were placed.
Societies cannot exist without rules. Up to the present, Wesley
had regulated his societies by _vivâ voce_ instructions and direct
authority; but, as the Methodists increased and multiplied, this became
more difficult, and hence the publication now mentioned. The Rules were
both written and published at Newcastle upon Tyne. Eleven days after
the date they bear, Wesley read them to the Newcastle society, and
desired the members seriously to consider whether they were willing
to observe them. The careful reader will remark the designation which
Wesley gives to his societies, as well as his description of their
“nature and design.” They are not “Wesleyan,” or “Methodist,” but
“United Societies.” As compared with the rules now in use, there are
a few variations in the original edition deserving of being noticed.
For instance, in the list of the leader’s duties, the first in order
was, to receive from each person in his class, once a week, what the
members were willing to give toward _the relief of the poor_. This
is now altered thus: “to receive what they are willing to give for
the _support of the gospel_.” The present rule forbidding “_brother_
going to law _with brother_,” in the first and several subsequent
editions, simply read, “going to law.” To the original rule, “the
giving or taking things on usury,” has been added the words, “that
is, unlawful interest;” and to the rule prohibiting “uncharitable or
unprofitable conversation,” there was added, in the fourth edition,
published in 1744, “especially, speaking evil of ministers or those in
authority,” words now changed for “magistrates or ministers.” In the
list of things forbidden in the present Rules, is the important one,
“borrowing without a probability of paying; or taking up goods without
a probability of paying for them;” this is not in the first editions.
And among the duties enjoined is “_family_ and private prayer”; but in
the first edition the word _family_ is not found, though, in the fourth
edition, published twelve months afterwards, it was inserted.
The curious reader will forgive these trifles. They are all the
variations found in the first edition of the Rules, as compared with
the Rules now in use. The Rules themselves are too well known to
require insertion.
2. Another of Wesley’s publications, in 1743, was “A Word in Season;
or, Advice to a Soldier.” 12mo, six pages. This is a model tract, and
shows that, from the first, soldiers excited Wesley’s sympathy.
3. “Thoughts on Marriage and Celibacy.” 12mo, twelve pages. A strange
production, substantially embodied in the piece in Wesley’s collected
works, entitled, “Thoughts on a Single Life” (see vol. xxiv., page
252, orig. edit.). What shall we say of this? Wesley admits, that
the popish doctrine forbidding to marry is a doctrine of devils, and
that a person may be as holy in a married as in a single state; but
he proceeds to show, that the happy few who have power to abstain
from marriage are free from a thousand nameless domestic trials which
are found sooner or later in every family. They are at liberty from
the greatest of all entanglements, the loving one creature above all
others; they have leisure to improve themselves; and, having no wife or
children to provide for, may give all their worldly substance to God.
Those highly favoured celibates are exhorted to prize the advantages
they enjoy, and to be careful to keep them; they are to avoid all
needless conversation, much more all intimacy with those of the other
sex; all softness and effeminacy; all delicacy and needless self
indulgence; and all sloth, inactivity, and indolence. They are to sleep
no more than nature requires; to use as much bodily exercise as they
can; to fast, and practise self denial; to wait upon the Lord without
distraction; and to give all their time and their money to God. On the
whole, without disputing whether the married or single life is the more
perfect state. Wesley concludes by adding, “We may safely say, Blessed
are they who abstain from things lawful in themselves, in order to be
more devoted to God.”
Thirty years afterwards, when Wesley was twitted for marrying, after
expressing such opinions, he averred, that his opinions with regard
to the advantages of a single life were still unchanged; and that he
entered the married state “for reasons best known to himself.”[517]
This was a lame reply to a reasonable reflection on inconsistency.
Wesley’s tract was a mistake; or, if not, Wesley ought to have adopted
his own principles, and have lived and died a celibate.
4. In July, 1743, Wesley wrote his “Instructions for Children,” which
reached a second edition in 1745, 12mo, 38 pages. Prefixed, was a
preface, addressed “to all parents and schoolmasters,” stating, that
a great part of the tract was translated from the French, and that it
contained “the true principles of the Christian education of children,”
and that these “should in all reason be instilled into them, as soon as
they can distinguish good from evil.”
The first twelve lessons are a catechism, respecting God, the creation
and the fall of man, man’s redemption, the means of grace, hell, and
heaven. Then follow lessons how to regulate our desires, understanding,
joy, and practices.
Repenting is defined as “being thoroughly convinced of our sinfulness,
guilt, and helplessness”; faith in Christ, as “a conviction that Christ
has loved _me_ and given Himself for _me_;” holiness, as “the love of
God and of all mankind for God’s sake.” Wesley asserts that “they who
teach children to love praise, train them for the devil”; and that
“fathers and mothers who give children everything they like, are the
worst enemies they have.”
Wesley considered these “Instructions for Children,” extracted from
Abbé Fleury and M. Poiret, superior, “for depth of sense and plainness
of language, to anything in the English tongue.”[518] The Church
Catechism he declared to be “utterly improper for children of six or
seven years old,” and thought “it would be far better to teach them the
short catechism, prefixed to the ‘Instructions.’”[519] Accordingly, he
requested all his preachers to give children the “Instructions,” and to
encourage them in committing the book to memory; while they themselves
were to make it the subject of special study.[520]
Wesley’s attention to children is proverbial. “When I was a child,”
said Robert Southey, “I was in a house, in Bristol, where Wesley was.
On running downstairs before him, with a beautiful little sister of my
own, he overtook us on the landing, when he lifted my sister in his
arms and kissed her. Placing her on her feet again, he then put his
hand upon my head, and blessed me; and I feel,” continued the bard, his
eyes glistening with tears, and yet in a tone of grateful and tender
recollection, “I feel as though I had the blessing of that good man
upon me still.”[521]
In Wesley’s well known sermon on “Family Religion,” he lays it down
that “the wickedness of children is generally owing to the fault or
neglect of their parents.” The souls of children ought to be fed as
often as their bodies. Methodists are exhorted not to send their sons
“to any of the large public schools (for they are nurseries of all
manner of wickedness), but to a private school, kept by some pious man,
who endeavours to instruct a small number of children in religion and
learning together.” He raises the same objection to “large boarding
schools” for girls; for “in these seminaries, the children teach one
another pride, vanity, affectation, intrigue, artifice, and, in short,
everything which a Christian woman ought not to learn.” He adds: “I
never yet knew a pious, sensible woman, that had been bred at a large
boarding school, who did not aver, one might as well send a young maid
to be bred in Drury Lane.”[522]
This is sweeping language; but at that period it was not without truth.
5. Another of Wesley’s publications, in 1743, was, “A Practical
Treatise on Christian Perfection. Extracted from a late author.” 12mo,
115 pages. This was an abridgment of William Law’s pungent book,
published in 1726.
6. Another was an abridgment of Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” 12mo, 49
pages, price fourpence. Little did Wesley think that, within a hundred
years, the whole of the glorious dreamer’s immortal work would be sold
for a fourth of the price charged for his own fragment.
7. Wesley’s last, and most important work, which reached a second
edition in the year it was published, was “An Earnest Appeal to Men of
Reason and Religion,” 12mo, 53 pages.[523]
This was a clarion cry which created greater consternation than
ever in the camp of Wesley’s enemies. First of all, he describes
religion—the faith by which it is attained—and its reasonableness.
Then, turning from those who do not receive the Christian system to
those who say they do, he charges them, in the name of God, either to
profess themselves infidels, or to _be_ Christians; either to cast
off the Bible, or their sins. “A common swearer, a sabbath breaker, a
whoremonger, a drunkard, who says he believes the Scripture is of God,
is a monster upon earth, the greatest contradiction to his own, as
well as to the reason of all mankind.” After this, Wesley replies to
the objections raised against Methodist doctrines, and to the calumny,
that he and his coadjutors were papists in disguise, undermining the
Church, and making preaching the means of replenishing their purses.
It had been reported, that he received £1300 a year at the Foundery
only, over and above what he received from Bristol, Kingswood,
Newcastle, and other places. To this he answers, that the moneys given
by the Methodists never come into his hands at all; but are received
and expended by the stewards, in relieving the poor, and in buying,
erecting, or repairing chapels; and that, so far from there being any
overplus when this was done, he himself, at this moment, was in debt
to the amount of £650, on account of the meeting-houses in London,
Bristol, and Newcastle. He had “deliberately thrown up his ease, most
of his friends, his reputation, and that way of life which of all
others was most agreeable both to his natural temper and education; he
had toiled day and night, spent all his time and strength, knowingly
destroyed a firm constitution, and was hastening into weakness, pain,
diseases, death,—to gain a debt of six or seven hundred pounds.” Then
addressing himself to his brother clergy, he asks:—
“For what price will you preach eighteen or nineteen times
every week; and this throughout the year? What shall I give you
to travel seven or eight hundred miles, in all weathers, every
two or three months? For what salary will you abstain from all
other diversions than the doing good, and the praising God? I
am mistaken if you would not prefer strangling to such a life,
even with thousands of gold and silver.
“I will now simply tell you my sense of these matters, whether
you will hear or whether you will forbear. Food and raiment
I have; such food as I choose to eat, and such raiment as I
choose to put on: I have a place where to lay my head: I have
what is needful for life and godliness: and I apprehend this is
all the world can afford. The kings of the earth can give me
no more. For as to gold and silver, I count it dung and dross;
I trample it under my feet; I esteem it just as the mire of
the streets. I desire it not; I seek it not; I only fear lest
any of it should cleave to me, and I should not be able to
shake it off before my spirit returns to God. I will take care
(God being my helper), that none of the accursed thing shall
be found in my tents when the Lord calleth me hence. Hear ye
this, all you who have discovered the treasures which I am to
leave behind me; if I leave behind me £10,—above my debts and
my books, or what may happen to be due on account of them,—you
and all mankind bear witness against me, that I lived and died
a thief and a robber.”
Wesley kept his word; for, within twelve months of his decease, he
closed his cash-book with the following words, written with a tremulous
hand, so as to be scarcely legible:—“For upwards of eighty-six years, I
have kept my accounts exactly; I will not attempt it any longer, being
satisfied with the continual conviction, that I save all I can, and
give all I can; that is, all I have.”
1744.
[Sidenote: 1744 Age 41]
Wesley spent more than half of the year 1744 in London and its
immediate neighbourhood. He made about half-a-dozen visits to Bristol;
and three months were occupied in a tour to Cornwall, thence to
Yorkshire and Newcastle, and thence to London.
Charles Wesley spent the year in London, Bristol, Cornwall,
Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, at Newcastle, Nottingham,
Sheffield, and other intervening places.
Whitefield commenced the year with rejoicing over the birth of his
firstborn,—a boy expected to be a minister, and publicly baptized in
the Tabernacle, where thousands, on the occasion, joined in singing
a doggrel hymn, written by an aged and doting widow. On the 8th of
February, this infant prodigy suddenly expired in the Bell Inn,
Gloucester, where Whitefield himself was born; and, after being taken
to the church in which Whitefield was baptized, first communicated, and
first preached, was then buried, Whitefield returning to London deeply
pondering the meaning of what he calls “this blessed riddle.” The next
four months were chiefly spent in the metropolis; after which he and
his wife repaired to Plymouth for the purpose of sailing to America.
Here they were detained for several weeks, waiting for the convoy in
whose company the voyage was to be attempted. During the interval,
Whitefield preached in the town and neighbourhood with great success,
and was nearly murdered by a villain, who beat him most unmercifully
with his golden-headed cane. At length, he set sail in company with
nearly one hundred and fifty ships; and, after not a few adventures,
landed in New England, at the end of October, but was so extremely ill,
that, for several weeks, he was almost incapable of preaching. In point
of fact, Whitefield preached but very little, during the year 1744,
except in London and in Plymouth, and in their respective vicinities.
One of the chief events of 1744 was the threat of a French invasion.
On the 15th of February, the king sent a message to the houses of
parliament, to the effect, that he had received undoubted intelligence,
that the eldest son of the pretender to his crown was arrived in
France, and that preparations were being made to invade England.
Parliament replied, that they looked upon such a design with the
greatest indignation and abhorrence, and would use every effort to
frustrate and defeat so desperate and insolent an attempt.
Great excitement followed. The coast was watched with the utmost care.
A double guard was mounted at the Tower, and also at St. James’s. All
military officers were ordered to their posts of duty. Workmen in the
king’s yards were directed to wear arms and accoutrements, and to be
exercised every morning; and instructions were given to the militia
of the county of Kent, to assemble at the earliest notice.[524] The
Habeas Corpus act was suspended, and a proclamation was issued for a
general fast. All papists and reputed papists were forbidden to remain
within ten miles of the cities of Westminster and London. The Earl of
Barrymore was arrested and committed to the Tower, on the charge of
enlisting men for the Pretender. Loyal addresses were presented to the
king by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, by the merchants
of London, by the convocation of the province of Canterbury, by the
Quakers, by the Protestant Dissenters, and by many others. The city
of Dublin offered a reward of £6000 for apprehending the Pretender,
or his son, either alive or dead, should they attempt to land in
Ireland; and sixty thousand fire arms and accoutrements were seized in
suspected houses in the southern parts of that island. War was declared
against France on the 29th of March, and the whole kingdom seemed to be
inflamed with martial ardour.
How did this affect Wesley? Two days after the king informed parliament
of the threatened invasion, Wesley and his London society held a day
of solemn fasting and prayer. When the proclamation was published
requiring all papists to leave London, though he had appointed to go
out of town, he determined to stay, so as to cut off all occasion
of reproach; but on the 2nd of March (the last day mentioned in the
proclamation), while he was at a house in Spitalfields, a magistrate
and the parish officers came in search of papists. Wesley was glad of
the opportunity to explain the principles and the practices of the
Methodists. The searchers were satisfied, and Wesley was allowed to
depart in peace, a large mob merely gaping, staring, and hallooing
as loud as they were able. Some of his friends pressed him to write
an address to the king, on behalf of the Methodists. He did so,
and described them as “a people scattered and peeled, and trodden
underfoot; traduced as inclined to Popery, and consequently disaffected
to his majesty.” They were, however, “a part of the Protestant Church
established in these kingdoms; they detested the fundamental doctrines
of the Church of Rome; and were steadily attached to his majesty’s
royal person and illustrious house, and ready to obey him to the
uttermost, in all things which they conceived to be agreeable to the
written word of God.” “Silver and gold,” he adds, “most of us must
own, we have none; but such as we have we humbly beg your majesty to
accept, together with our hearts and prayers.” Charles Wesley objected
to the sending of this address _in the name of the Methodists_, because
it would constitute them a sect, or at least would _seem to allow_
that they were a body distinct from the national Church. He wished his
brother to guard against this, and then, in the name of the Lord, to
address the king.[525] Upon further consideration the address was laid
aside.
Wesley’s troubles were not ended. On the 20th of March, he received
a summons from the Surrey magistrates, to appear at the court at St.
Margaret’s Hill. He did so, and asked, “Has any one anything to lay to
my charge?” None replied; but, at length, one of the magistrates said,
“Sir, are you willing to take the oaths to his majesty, and to sign
the declaration against Popery?” Wesley replied, “I am”; which he did
accordingly, and was permitted to depart in peace.
Why was this? Besides the general calumny cast upon the Methodists,
that they were papists, it was at this time currently reported, that
Wesley had recently been seen with the Pretender in France. Might not
this be the reason of the unnecessary and annoying summons to appear at
St. Margaret’s Hill?
In the same month, a warrant was issued, by a magistrate of the west
riding of Yorkshire, to compel the attendance of five witnesses to
give evidence at Wakefield, that they had heard Charles Wesley speak
“treasonable words, as praying for the banished, or for the Pretender.”
At the time appointed, March 15, Charles himself appeared in the
magisterial court, and engaged to prove, that all the Methodists, “to
a man, were true members of the Church of England, and loyal subjects
of his majesty, King George”; and then desired their worships to
administer to him the oaths. All the summoned witnesses retracted
their accusations; and yet the Methodist itinerant was insulted at
the door of the magistrates’ room, for eight long hours, when Mr.
justice Burton, with consummate coolness, told him he might go,
for they had nought against him. “Sir,” said Charles, “that is not
sufficient: I cannot depart till my character is cleared. It is no
trifling matter. Even my life is concerned in the charge.” At length,
their worships reluctantly acknowledged, in explicit terms, that his
“loyalty was unquestionable”; and he took his leave for Birstal, where
the Methodists of the neighbourhood met him on a hill, and joined him
in singing “praises lustily, and with a good courage.” All this arose
out of one of the witnesses having heard him praying, on the 12th of
February, that “the Lord would call home His banished”; the words being
used, of course, in a sense purely spiritual.
Other inconveniences and acts of violence arose out of the threatened
invasion of the French. John Slocomb, a poor baker’s boy, who was now
one of Wesley’s preachers in Cornwall, was arrested, under a press
warrant, and taken by his own uncle to prison, where he was kept a
week, and then brought before the commissioners, who, finding no
cause to punish or detain him, were obliged, at last, notwithstanding
all their threatenings, to let him go. In Nottingham, two other
preachers, John Healey and Thomas Westall, were similarly arrested,
the magistrates demanding their horses for the king’s service, and
refusing to believe they had none till they sent and searched. The
case of John Nelson is known to every one, and will ever stand as one
of the most sublime and tragic chapters in Methodistic history. John
Downes, another itinerant, while preaching at Epworth, was seized and
pressed for the king’s service, and sent as a prisoner to Lincoln
gaol. And then, to all these must be added the mournful case of Thomas
Beard, a quiet and peaceable man, who was torn from his trade, and wife
and children, in Yorkshire, and sent away as a soldier, for no other
crime, either committed or pretended, than that of calling sinners to
repentance; and who, while lodged in the hospital at Newcastle, died;
and, as one of the first martyrs among the Methodists, escaped from his
cruel enemies on earth, to the company of the beatified in heaven.
Thus did the hot-headed friends of King George II. do their utmost to
make leal Methodists disloyal to the throne and house of Hanover; but
the effort failed; for, from first to last, more faithful subjects
than Wesley’s followers the throne of England has never had. “It is
my religion,” wrote Wesley, more than thirty years after this, “which
obliges me to put men in mind to be subject to principalities and
powers. Loyalty is with me an essential branch of religion, and which I
am sorry any Methodist should forget. There is the closest connection,
therefore, between my religious and political conduct; the selfsame
authority enjoining me to fear God, and to honour the king.”[526]
Two events occurred, in the year 1744, which deserve special mention:
the first Methodist conference, and Wesley’s last university sermon.
The conference began on Monday, June 25, and continued the five
following days. It was held at the Foundery, London; and consisted
of the two Wesleys, and four other clergymen, namely, John Hodges,
Henry Piers, Samuel Taylor, and John Meriton; also of four lay
preachers—Thomas Richards, Thomas Maxfield, John Bennet, and John
Downes.[527]
Mr. Hodges was the rector of Wenvo, in Wales, a good man, who, from
the first, was friendly to the Methodists, and who showed his love for
Wesley, in 1758, by writing him a reproof for the tartness of some of
his controversial writings, and which Wesley had the honest manliness
to publish in his _Arminian Magazine_.
Mr. Piers has been already noticed. Samuel Taylor was the great
great grandson of the celebrated Dr. Rowland Taylor, of Hadleigh, in
Suffolk, who was forcibly ejected from his church; whom Gardiner, from
the woolsack, addressed as “a knave, a traitor, and a villain”; whom
Bonner was about to strike with his crosier, and was only hindered by
Taylor telling him he would strike again; and who, amid the tears and
prayers of his afflicted flock, was put into a pitch barrel, by the
bloodthirsty papists, on the 9th of February, 1555, and was set on
fire, one zealous vagabond flinging a fagot at his head, and another
impatient ruffian cleaving his skull with a halbert, while he was
singing in the flames, “In God have I put my trust, I will not fear
what man can do unto me.” The descendant of this brave-hearted martyr
partook of his ancestor’s zealous and heroic spirit. He was vicar of
Quinton in Gloucestershire; but his heart was larger than his parish.
Like Wesley, he went out into the highways and hedges, and was a sharer
in the brutal persecutions of Wednesbury, Darlaston, and other places.
Richard Whatcoat, one of the first Methodist bishops in America, when
a child, sat under his ministry, and received impressions which he
never lost.[528] As a preacher, Mr. Taylor was zealous, pathetic, and
powerful. He died about the year 1750.[529]
Mr. Meriton had been educated in one of the universities, and was now
a clergyman from the Isle of Man.[530] The last years of his life seem
to have been chiefly spent in accompanying the two Wesleys in their
preaching excursions, and in assisting them in the chapels they had
built. He died in 1753.
Of the four lay members of the first Methodist conference, three
afterwards left Wesley, and became ministers of other churches. John
Downes was the only one who lived and died a Methodist.
The day before the conference commenced was one to be remembered.
Besides the ordinary preaching services, a lovefeast was held, at which
six ordained ministers were present; and, during the day, the sacrament
was administered to the whole of the London society, now numbering
between two and three thousand members. At this grand sacramental
service five clergymen assisted.
On the day following, the conference was opened, with solemn prayer, a
sermon by Charles Wesley, and the baptism of an adult, who there and
then found peace with God.[531] The three points debated were:—1. What
to teach. 2. How to teach. 3. How to regulate doctrine, discipline, and
practice.
In reference to the first point, it was settled that, to be justified
is to be pardoned, and received into God’s favour; that faith,
preceded by repentance, is the condition of justification; that
repentance is a conviction of sin; that faith, in general, is a Divine,
supernatural _elenchos_ of things not seen; and that justifying faith
is a conviction, by the Holy Ghost, that Christ loved me, and gave
Himself for me; that no man can be justified and not know it; that the
immediate fruits of justifying faith are peace, joy, love, power over
all outward sin, and power to keep down inward sin; that wilful sin is
inconsistent with justifying faith; that no believer need ever again
come into condemnation; that works are necessary for the continuance
of faith, which cannot be lost but for want of them; and that St. Paul
and St. James do not contradict each other, when one says Abraham was
not justified by works, and the other that he was, because they do not
speak of the same justification, and because they do not speak of the
same works,—St. Paul speaking of works that precede faith, and St.
James of works that spring from it.
The Conference further agreed, that Adam’s sin is imputed to all
mankind in the sense, that in consequence of such sin—(1) our bodies
are mortal; (2) our souls disunited from God, and of a sinful, devilish
nature; and (3) we are liable to death eternal. It was further
agreed, that the Bible never expressly affirms, that God imputes the
righteousness of Christ to any, but rather, that faith is imputed
to us for righteousness. At the same time, the Conference conceived
that, by the merits of Christ, all men are cleared from the guilt
of Adam’s actual sin; that their bodies will become immortal after
the resurrection; that their souls receive a capacity of spiritual
life, and an actual spark or seed thereof; and that all believers are
reconciled to God and made partakers of the Divine nature.
Sanctification was defined, a renewal in the image of God, in
righteousness and true holiness; to be a _perfect Christian_ is to love
the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, implying
the destruction of all inward sin; and faith is the condition and
instrument by which such a state of grace is obtained.
Proceeding to other matters, the Conference resolved to defend the
doctrine of the Church of England both by their preaching and living;
to obey the bishops in all things indifferent, and to observe the
canons as far as they could with a safe conscience; and, finally, to
exert themselves to the utmost not to entail a schism in the Church,
by their hearers forming themselves into a distinct sect; though they
agreed that they must not neglect the present opportunity of saving
souls, for fear of consequences which might possibly or probably
happen, after they were dead.
The belief was expressed, that the design of God in raising up
the preachers, called Methodists, was to reform the nation, more
particularly the Church; and to spread scriptural holiness through
the land. It was decided that, wherever they preached, they ought to
endeavour to form societies, because where societies were not formed,
the preacher would not be able to give proper instructions to them
that were convinced of sin; nor the people to watch over one another
in love, bear one another’s burdens, and build up each other in faith
and holiness. It was stated, that the Methodists were divided into
four sections; namely, the united societies, the bands, the select
societies, and the penitents. The united societies, who were the most
numerous, consisted of awakened persons. The bands were selected from
these, and consisted of those who were supposed to have remission of
sins. The select societies were taken from the bands, and were composed
of those who seemed to walk in the light of God’s countenance. The
penitents were those who, for the present, were fallen from grace.
After this, the rules of the united societies, and of the bands, were
read. The rules of the select societies were the same as those of the
bands, with three additions:—1. That nothing spoken in their meetings
be spoken again. 2. That every member submit to his minister in all
indifferent things. 3. That, till they could have all things common,
every member should bring, once a week, all he could spare toward a
common stock. The penitents were left without rules.
It was agreed, that lay assistants were allowable only in cases of
necessity. They were to expound every morning and evening; to meet the
united societies, the bands, the select societies, and the penitents,
once a week; to visit the classes once a quarter; to hear and decide
all differences; to put the disorderly back on trial, and to receive on
trial for the bands or society; to see that the stewards, the leaders,
schoolmasters, and housekeepers faithfully discharged their several
offices; and to meet the leaders and the stewards weekly, and to
examine their accounts. They were to be serious; to converse sparingly
and cautiously with women; to take no step towards marriage without
first acquainting Wesley or his brother clergymen; and to do nothing
as a _gentleman_, for they had no more to do with this character than
with that of a dancing master. They were to be ashamed of nothing but
sin; not of fetching wood, or drawing water; not of cleaning their own
shoes, or their neighbour’s. They were to take no money of any one, and
were to contract no debts without Wesley’s knowledge; they were not to
mend the rules, but keep them; to employ their time as Wesley directed,
and to keep journals, as well for Wesley’s satisfaction as for profit
to themselves.[532]
It was decided, that they should preach most, where those of them
who were clergymen could preach in a church; where they could get
the greatest number of quiet and willing hearers; and where they had
most success. It was agreed, that field preaching had been used too
sparingly; that every alternate meeting of the society, in every place,
should be strictly private; and that at the other meeting strangers
might be admitted with caution, but not the same person above twice or
thrice. To improve the usefulness of classleaders, it was resolved that
each leader should be diligently examined, concerning his method of
meeting a class; that all of them should converse with the preachers,
as frequently and as freely as possible; that they should attend the
leaders’ meeting every week, bringing notes of all sick persons in
their classes; and that none should speak in the leaders’ meeting
but the preacher or the steward, unless in answer to a question. The
members were to be more closely examined, at the general visitation
of the classes; the married men and married women, and the single
men and single women were to be met apart once a quarter; and all
the members were to be visited at their own houses, at times fixed
for such a purpose. Tickets were to be given to none, till they were
recommended by a leader with whom they had met three months on trial;
and new members were to be admitted into the society only on the
Sunday following the quarterly visitation, their names being read on
the Sunday night previous. It was agreed, also that it was lawful for
Methodists to bear arms; and that they might use the law as defendants,
and perhaps in some cases as plaintiffs.[533]
Other regulations were adopted, either at this or ensuing conferences,
as follows: preachers were to meet the children in every place, and
give them suitable exhortations; they were to preach expressly and
strongly against sabbath breaking, dram drinking, evil speaking,
unprofitable conversation, lightness, gaiety, or expensiveness of
apparel, and contracting debts without sufficient care to discharge
them; they were to recommend to every society, frequently and
earnestly, the books that Wesley published, as preferable to any other;
they were to use their best endeavours to extirpate smuggling, and also
bribery at elections; they were to speak to any that desired it, every
day after the morning and evening preaching. As often as possible,
they were to rise at four o’clock; to spend two or three minutes
every hour in earnest prayer; to observe strictly the morning and
evening hour of retirement; to rarely employ above an hour at a time
in conversation; to use all the means of grace; to keep watchnights
once a month; to take a regular catalogue of the societies once a
year; to speak freely to each other, and never to part without prayer.
They were never to preach more than twice a day, unless on Sundays or
extraordinary occasions; to begin and end the service precisely at the
time appointed; to always suit their subject to their congregations;
to choose the plainest texts possible, and to beware of allegorizing
and rambling from their texts. They were to avoid everything awkward or
affected, either in phrase, gesture, or pronunciation; to sing no hymns
of their own composing; to choose hymns proper for the congregation;
not to sing more than five or six verses at a time, and to suit the
tune to the nature of the hymns. After preaching, they were recommended
to take lemonade, candied orange peel, or a little soft, warm ale; and
to avoid late suppers, and egg and wine, as downright poison.[534]
Here we find six clergymen and four lay preachers, not elaborating
an ecclesiastical structure, but carefully considering the greatest
truths of the Christian religion, and investigating the duties of its
preachers. Six days were spent in this important work. They desired
nothing, said Wesley, but to save their own souls and those that heard
them. Their doctrines, so simple and encouraging, were not the popular
theology of the age; but they were in the Scriptures, and what every
sinner needed. They little thought, that they were constructing a
platform which would survive their times, and originating a long series
of annual conferences which would become one of the most important
institutions in the world; a central power, conveying religious
benefits to every quarter of the globe, and serving as a model for
framing other similar institutions both at home and abroad. The
doctrines agreed upon are still the staple doctrines of the Methodist
communities, and the elements of Methodist discipline may be found in
the minutes of this the first Methodist conference.
Leaving Wesley’s first conference, we pass to his last sermon before
the university of Oxford.
The day appointed for the sermon was Friday, August 24, the anniversary
of St. Bartholomew, and occurred in Oxford race week. The duty came to
Wesley by rotation; and had he declined it, he must have paid three
guineas for a substitute. We have three accounts of this celebrated
sermon. From Charles Wesley we learn, that he and Mr. Piers and Mr.
Meriton were present at its delivery; that the audience was a large
one, and much increased by the racers; that the congregation gave the
utmost attention; that some of the heads of colleges stood during the
whole service, and fixed their eyes upon the preacher; and that, after
the sermon, the little band of four Methodist clergymen walked away in
form, none daring to join them.[535]
Wesley’s own account is as follows:—
“I preached, I suppose the last time, at St. Mary’s. Be it
so. I am now clear of the blood of these men. I have fully
delivered my own soul. The beadle came to me afterwards, and
told me the vice-chancellor had sent him for my notes. I sent
them without delay, not without admiring the wise providence of
God. Perhaps few men of note would have given a sermon of mine
the reading, if I had put it into their hands; but, by this
means, it came to be read, probably more than once, by every
man of eminence in the university.”[536]
“I am well pleased that the sermon was preached on the very
day on which, in the last century, near two thousand burning
and shining lights were put out at one stroke. Yet what a wide
difference is there between their case and mine! They were
turned out of house and home, and all that they had; whereas I
am only hindered from preaching, without any other loss; and
that in a kind of honourable manner; it being determined that,
when my next turn to preach came, they would pay another person
to preach for me; and so they did, twice or thrice, even to the
time that I resigned my fellowship.”[537]
The third account is by the celebrated Dr. Kennicott, who was, at this
period, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, and an undergraduate of
Wadham College. He had no sympathy with the Methodists, and yet he
appears to have been deeply impressed with Wesley’s sermon. He writes:—
“All that are masters of arts, and on the foundation of any
college, are set down in a roll, as they take their degree;
and, in that order, preach before the university, or pay three
guineas for a preacher in their stead; and as no clergyman can
avoid his turn, so the university can refuse none; otherwise
Mr. Wesley would not have preached. He came to Oxford some
time before, and preached frequently every day in courts,
public houses, and elsewhere. On Friday morning, having held
forth twice in private, at five and at eight, he came to St.
Mary’s at ten o’clock. There were present the vice-chancellor,
the proctors, most of the heads of houses, a vast number of
gownsmen, and a multitude of private people, with many of
Wesley’s own people, both brethren and sisters. He is neither
tall nor fat; for the latter would ill become a Methodist. His
black hair, quite smooth, and parted very exactly, added to
a peculiar composure in his countenance, showed him to be an
uncommon man. His prayer was soft, short, and conformable to
the rules of the university. His text was Acts iv. 31. He spoke
it very slowly, and with an agreeable emphasis.” [Here follows
a description of the sermon.] “When he came to what he called
his plain, practical conclusion, he fired his address with so
much zeal and unbounded satire as quite spoiled what otherwise
might have been turned to great advantage; for, as I liked
some, so I disliked other parts of his discourse extremely. I
liked some of his freedom, such as calling the generality of
young gownsmen ‘a generation of triflers,’ and many other just
invectives. But, considering how many shining lights are here,
that are the glory of the Christian cause, his sacred censure
was much too flaming and strong, and his charity much too weak
in not making large allowances. But, so far from allowances,
he concluded, with a lifted up eye, in this most solemn form,
‘It is time for Thee, Lord, to lay to Thine hand;’ words full
of such presumption and seeming imprecation, that they gave
an universal shock. This, and the assertion that Oxford was
not a Christian city, and this country not a Christian nation,
were the most offensive parts of the sermon, except when he
accused the whole body (and confessed himself to be one of the
number) of the sin of perjury; and for this reason, because,
upon becoming members of a college, every person takes an oath
to observe the statutes of the university, and no one observes
them in all things. Had these things been omitted, and his
censures moderated, I think his discourse, as to style, and
delivery, would have been uncommonly pleasing to others as well
as to myself. He is allowed to be a man of great parts, and
that by the excellent Dean of Christ Church (Dr. Conybeare);
for the day he preached, the dean generously said of him, ‘John
Wesley will always be thought a man of sound sense, though
an enthusiast.’ However, the vice-chancellor sent for the
sermon, and I hear the heads of colleges intend to show their
resentment.”[538]
This obnoxious sermon was published a few weeks after it was preached,
and was advertised in the October magazines, price sixpence.[539]
Another edition was issued in the same year, at Newcastle on Tyne,
12mo, eighteen pages.
In a preface to the reader, Wesley says, that he never intended to
print the latter part of the sermon; but “the false and scurrilous
accounts of it which had been published, almost in every corner of
the nation, now constrained him to publish the whole, just as it was
preached, that men of reason might judge for themselves.”
The sermon has three divisions, and considers Christianity under three
distinct aspects—(1) As beginning to exist in individuals. (2) As
spreading from one to another. (3) As covering the earth. Of these
nothing need be said. That which gave offence was the “plain, practical
application,” which is quite one third of the entire discourse. The
following extracts will show what it was that gave the offence which
Oxford authorities never pardoned; and also the fidelity and Christian
courage of the preacher in uttering such sentiments before such a
congregation.
“I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, if ye do
account _me_ a madman or a fool, yet _as a fool bear with me_.
It is utterly needful, that some one should use great plainness
of speech towards you. It is more especially needful at _this_
time; for who knoweth but it is the _last_? And who will use
this plainness, if I do not? Therefore I, even I, will speak.
And I adjure you, by the living God, that ye steel not your
hearts against receiving a blessing at _my_ hands.
“Let me ask you then, in tender love, and in the spirit of
meekness, Is this city a _Christian_ city? Is _Christianity,
scriptural Christianity_, found here? Are we, considered as a
community of men, so filled with the Holy Ghost as to enjoy in
our hearts, and show forth in our lives, the genuine fruits of
that Spirit? Are all the magistrates, all heads and governors
of colleges and halls, and their respective societies, (not to
speak of the inhabitants of the town,) of one heart and soul?
Is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts? Are our tempers
the same that were in Christ? And are our lives agreeable
thereto?
“In the fear, and in the presence of the great God, before
whom both you and I shall shortly appear, I pray you that are
in authority over us, whom I reverence for your office sake,
to consider, Are you filled with the Holy Ghost? Are ye lively
portraitures of Him whom ye are appointed to represent among
men? Ye magistrates and rulers, are all the thoughts of your
hearts, all your tempers and desires, suitable to your high
calling? Are all your words like unto those which come out of
the mouth of God? Is there in all your actions dignity and love?
“Ye venerable men, who are more especially called to form the
tender minds of youth, are you filled with the Holy Ghost? with
all those fruits of the Spirit, which your important office so
indispensably requires? Do you continually remind those under
your care, that the one rational end of all our studies is
to know, love, and serve the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom He hath sent? Do you inculcate upon them, day by day,
that without love all learning is but splendid ignorance,
pompous folly, vexation of spirit? Has all you teach an actual
tendency to the love of God, and of all mankind for His sake?
Do you put forth all your strength in the vast work you have
undertaken—using every talent which God hath lent you, and that
to the uttermost of your power?
“What example is set them” [the youth] “by us who enjoy
the beneficence of our forefathers,—by fellows, students,
scholars,—more especially those who are of some rank and
eminence? Do ye, brethren, abound in the fruits of the
Spirit,—in lowliness of mind, in self denial and mortification,
in seriousness and composure of spirit, in patience, meekness,
sobriety, temperance, and in unwearied, restless endeavours
to do good, in every kind, unto all men? Is this the general
character of fellows of colleges? I fear it is not. Rather,
have not pride and haughtiness of spirit, impatience and
peevishness, sloth and indolence, gluttony and sensuality, and
even a proverbial uselessness, been objected to us, _perhaps_
not always by our enemies, nor _wholly_ without ground?
“Many of us are more immediately consecrated to God, called
to minister in holy things. Are we then patterns to the rest,
in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in
purity? From what motives did we enter upon this office? Was it
with a single eye to serve God? Have we clearly determined to
give ourselves wholly to it? Do we forsake and set aside, as
much as in us lies, all worldly cares and studies? Are we apt
to teach? Are we taught of God, that we may be able to teach
others also? What are the seals of our apostleship? Who, that
were dead in trespasses and sins, have been quickened by our
word? Have we a burning zeal to save souls from death; so that,
for their sake, we often forget even to eat our bread?
“Once more, What shall we say concerning the youth of this
place? Have _you_ either the form or the power of _Christian_
godliness? Are you humble, teachable, advisable? or stubborn,
self willed, heady, and high-minded? Are you obedient to your
superiors as to parents? Or do you despise those to whom you
owe the tenderest reverence? Are you diligent in pursuing your
studies with all your strength, crowding as much work into
every day as it can contain? Rather, do you not waste day after
day, either in reading what has no tendency to Christianity, or
in gaming, or in—you know not what? Do you, out of principle,
take care to owe no man anything? Do you remember the sabbath
day to keep it holy? Do you know how to possess your bodies
in sanctification and in honour? Are not drunkenness and
uncleanness found among you? Yea, are there not of you, who
glory in their shame? Do not many of you take the name of God
in vain, perhaps habitually, without either remorse or fear?
Yea, are there not a multitude of you that are forsworn? Be
not surprised, brethren; before God and this congregation, I
own myself to have been of that number; solemnly swearing to
_observe all those customs_, which I then knew nothing of; and
_those statutes_, which I did not so much as read over, either
then or for some years after. What is perjury, if this is not?
“May it not be one of the consequences of this, that so many
of you are a generation of triflers? triflers with God, with
one another, and with your own souls? How few of you spend,
from one week to another, a single hour in private prayer?
How few have any thought of God in the general tenour of your
conversation? Can you bear, unless now and then, in a church,
any talk of the Holy Ghost? Would you not take it for granted,
if one began such a conversation, that it was either hypocrisy
or enthusiasm? In the name of the Lord God almighty, I ask,
What religion are you of? Even the talk of _Christianity_ ye
cannot, will not bear. O my brethren! What a Christian city is
this? It is time for Thee, Lord, to lay to Thine hand.
“For indeed, what probability, what possibility is there,
that Christianity, scriptural Christianity, should be again
the religion of this place? that all orders of men among us
should speak and live as men filled with the Holy Ghost? By
whom should this Christianity be restored? By those of you
that are in authority? Are you desirous it should be restored?
And do ye not count your fortune, liberty, life, dear unto
yourselves, so ye may be instrumental in restoring it? But
suppose ye have this desire, who hath any power proportioned
to the effect? Perhaps some of you have made a few faint
attempts, but with how small success? Shall Christianity then
be restored by young, unknown, inconsiderable men? I know not
whether ye yourselves would suffer it. Would not some of you
cry out, ‘Young man, in so doing thou reproachest us’? But
there is no danger of your being put to the proof; so hath
iniquity overspread us like a flood. Whom then shall God send?
The famine, the pestilence, or the sword, the last messengers
of God to a guilty land? The armies of the Romish aliens, to
reform us into our first love? Nay, rather, let us fall into
Thy hand, O Lord, and let us not fall into the hand of man!”
This is not only the substance, but nearly the whole of the “plain,
practical application,” that created so much offence. Who can find
fault with it? Rather, who will not commend the bold preacher,
who, in such yearning accents, gave utterance to truths of the
highest consequence, but which perhaps no one but himself, in such a
congregation, durst have uttered? Would to God that pulpits had more
of this courageous, pitying fidelity, at the present day! Is it not a
fact, that preaching now-a-days consists so much of polite and pious
platitudes, that, so far from saving souls, it is almost powerless? The
age is too refined to tolerate preachers of the stamp of Luther, Knox,
and Wesley. The words of the prophets are, in this pretentiously polite
period of the church’s history, well worth pondering: “They have healed
the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace;
when there is no peace.” “This is a rebellious people, lying children,
children that will not hear the law of the Lord; which say to the
seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things;
speak unto us smooth things; prophesy deceits.”
It was Wesley’s fidelity, far more than the novelty of his doctrines
and proceedings, that brought upon him the persecutions he encountered.
Of these, he and the Methodists had already had their share; but the
vials of the people’s wrath were far from being emptied. The outrages
in Staffordshire and other places have been already mentioned. “In
Cornwall,” says Wesley, “the war against the Methodists was carried
on with far more vigour than that against the Spaniards.” “At St.
Ives,” writes Henry Millard, “the word of God runs and is glorified;
but the devil rages horribly.” At Camborne, Thomas Westall was pulled
down while preaching in Mr. Harris’s house; was carried to Penzance,
where Dr. Borlase wrote a “mittimus” committing him to the house of
correction at Bodmin as a vagrant; and here he was kept till the next
quarter sessions, when the justices, then assembled, knowing a little
more of the laws of God and man than Dr. Borlase and his Penzance
_confrères_, declared his commitment to be illegal, and set him at
liberty. “For what pay,” asks Wesley, justly proud of his preachers,
“could we procure men to do this service,—to be always ready to go
to prison or to death?” Dr. Borlase was a man of unquestioned sense
and learning; but he was a bigot of the purest water. On his asking
Jonathan Reeves to point him out a man who had been the better for
hearing the Methodists, Jonathan pointed to John Daniel, then before
him. “Get along,” cried the doctor. “Get along; you are a parcel of
mad, crazy headed fellows;” and taking them by the shoulders, he thrust
them to the doors. After this, we find him issuing warrants for the
apprehension of Methodists; sending Thomas Maxfield to be a soldier;
and signing a warrant for the arrest of Wesley himself; yet all this
was not sufficient to prevent Wesley rendering to the Cornish bigot his
due share of literary praise. “I looked over,” writes Wesley, in 1757,
“Dr. Borlase’s Antiquities of Cornwall. He is a fine writer, and quite
master of his subject. He has distinguished, with amazing accuracy, the
ancient Saxon monuments from the more ancient Roman, and from those of
the Druids, the most ancient of all.”[540] The doctor died in 1772.
Dr. Borlase was not alone; for his brother clergymen raged against
the Methodists without measure, and, in their sermons, retailed the
grossest lies concerning them. A poor woman complained to the mayor of
St. Ives of some one throwing a huge stone into her house, which fell
on a pillow within a few inches of her suckling child. His worship
damned her, and said she might go about her business. One of the clergy
told Jonathan Reeves, he wished the Bible were in Latin only, so that
none of the common people could read it.[541] The mob at St. Ives
saluted Wesley with stones and dirt; and pulled down the meeting-house,
“for joy that Admiral Matthews had beat the Spaniards.” It was a
gratifying fact, however, that, notwithstanding the fierceness of the
Cornish persecution, not more than three or four of the Methodists
turned cowardly deserters, while the rest, instead of being shaken,
were confirmed in their principles by the violence of their enemies.
The press was still vigorously employed. An anonymous pamphlet,
entitled “Observations upon the Conduct and Behaviour of a certain
Sect usually designated by the name of Methodists,” 4to, pages 24, was
written by Dr. Gibson, and obtained considerable approval from his
brother bishops.[542] In this prelatical publication, the Methodists
are charged with setting government at defiance, by appointing public
places of religious worship, and by preaching in the open air, without
taking the prescribed oaths, and subscribing the declaration against
Popery. They broke the rules of the church of which they professed
themselves members, by going to other than their own parish churches to
receive the sacrament. Their doctrines and practices were a dis-service
to religion—1. Because they set the standard of religion so high,
that some were led to disregard religion altogether. 2. Because they
carried the doctrine of justification by faith alone to such a height,
as not to allow that the observance of moral duties is a condition of
being justified. 3. Because a due attendance on the public offices of
religion answered the purposes of devotion better than the “sudden
agonies, roarings, screamings, tremblings, ravings, and madness of
the Methodists.” 4. Because their exalted strains of religion led to
spiritual pride, and to contempt of their superiors. In short, the
irregular practices of the Methodists were of the like nature as those
which had so great a share in bringing in the religious confusions of
the last century.
Whitefield replied to this pamphlet in two small quarto tracts, of
fourteen and twenty-four pages respectively. This evoked “A Serious
and Expostulatory Letter,” by the Rev. Thomas Church, M.A., vicar of
Battersea, and prebendary of St. Paul’s;[543] and also another letter,
of fifty pages, “by a Gentleman of Pembroke College, Oxford.” In the
latter production, the Methodists are censured for “suffering their
heated imaginations to mount to such an exalted pitch, that it hurries
them out of their senses, evaporates the religious spirit, and leaves
nothing but sensuality in the heated machine.” Whitefield’s answer
to “Observations on the Conduct and Behaviour of the Methodists” is
politely said to be “stuffed with the coaxing and wheedling of the
_woman_, the daring of the _rebel_, the pertness of the _coxcomb_,
the evasions of the _jesuit_, and the bitterness of the _bigot_.”
It is unblushingly affirmed, that the Methodists “can curse, rail,
and _berogue_ their antagonists, though in Scripture language, so
as hardly to be exceeded by any pope, or _spiritual bully_, that
ever yet appeared in Christendom.” They are a “rag-tag mob,” using
“lascivious and blasphemously languishing expressions when they talk
of the Redeemer’s love.” “They cant and blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and
appeal to starts and sallies of flesh and blood for the inspiration of
the Holy One.” They are “a set of creatures of the lowest rank, most
of them illiterate, and of desperate fortunes; cursing, reviling, and
showing their teeth at every one that does not approve of their frenzy
and extravagance.” Whitefield was “crafty and malicious enough to be
suspected of any wicked enterprise,—a person of wicked principles,
travelling over all counties, to establish newfangled societies”; and
he and his friends were “heads and spiritual directors of hot-brained
cobblers, all big with venom against the clergy of the Established
Church.” The author “trembles and shudders,” lest the Methodists should
be “betrayed, by their feelings and stretchings, into a bed of eternal
fire and brimstone, appointed for the reception of the lewd, the
concupiscent, and the blasphemous.”
These are fair specimens of the foul foamings of this valiant defender
of Church and state.
Another pamphlet, published in 1744, was “A Charge against Enthusiasm,”
delivered, in several parts of his diocese, by the Bishop of Lichfield;
and the object of which was to prove that “the indwelling and inward
witnessing of the Spirit in believers’ hearts, as also praying and
preaching by the Spirit, are all the _extraordinary gifts_ and
operations of the Holy Ghost, belonging only to the apostolical and
primitive times, and that, consequently, all pretensions to such
favours in these last days are vain and enthusiastical.”
Another, published at a shilling, was “Remarks on Mr. J. Wesley’s last
Journal, by Thomas Church, A.M.,”[544] the prebendary of St. Paul’s
already mentioned. Mr. Church sums up his charges against Wesley thus:
“It is impossible for you to put an entire stop to the enormities of
the Moravians, while you still (1) too much commend these men; (2) hold
principles in common with them, from which these enormities naturally
follow; and, (3) maintain other errors more than theirs, and are
guilty of enthusiasm to the highest degree.” Mr. Church’s “Remarks,”
however, will have to be noticed in the next chapter.
In addition to all this foam and fury against the Methodists, must
be mentioned an equally vile attack of another kind. At the Brecon
assizes, held in the month of August, the grand jury deemed it their
duty to make a presentment to the presiding judge to the following
effect: “that the Methodists held illegal meetings,” and that
their “preachers pretended to expound the Scriptures by virtue of
inspiration”; that, by this means, “they collected together great
numbers of disorderly persons, very much endangering the peace of
our sovereign lord the king; and that, unless their proceedings were
timely suppressed, they might endanger the peace of the kingdom in
general.” At all events, “the pretended preachers, or teachers, at
their irregular meetings, by their enthusiastic doctrines, very much
confounded and disordered the minds of his majesty’s good subjects”;
and this, “in time, might lead to the overthrowing of our good
government, both in Church and state.” Finally, the judge is requested,
if the authority of the present court was not sufficient for the
purpose, to apply to some superior authority, in order to put an end to
the “villainous scheme” of “such dangerous assemblies.”[545]
Thus had Methodism to make its way through the opposition of vulgar
mobs, fiery priests, lampooning pamphleteers, unjust magistrates, and
grand juries. Gamaliel’s advice was set aside: “Refrain from these men,
and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will
come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply
ye be found even to fight against God.”
Wesley’s longest journey, in 1744, was from London to Cornwall, thence
to Newcastle, and thence to London. Nearly three months were spent
upon this evangelistic tour: many hundreds of miles were traversed,
not by rail, or even in stage coaches, but on horseback, over the most
miserable roads, the rider sometimes battered with rain and hail for
hours together, and at others plunging through drifts of snow enough
to engulf both man and beast. About a hundred sermons were preached:
some, at Gwennap and at St. Stithian, to thousands upon thousands of
attentive hearers; some in public houses; some on village greens; and a
few in parish churches.
One of the churches Wesley was permitted to occupy was at Laneast, in
Cornwall, of which Mr. Bennett was the aged clergyman. Another was at
Landau, in Wales. “Such a church,” says Wesley, “I never saw before.
There was not a glass window belonging to it; but only boards, with
holes bored here and there, through which a dim light glimmered. Yet
even here the light of God’s countenance has shone on many hearts.” In
the former of these churches a strange scene was witnessed in the month
of August. Charles Wesley was preaching “against harmless diversions,”
having three clergymen, Messrs. Meriton, Thompson, and Bennett, among
his auditors. “By harmless diversions,” exclaimed the preacher, “I
was kept asleep in the devils arms, secure in a state of damnation,
for eighteen years.” No sooner were the words uttered than Meriton
added aloud, “And I for twenty-five!” “And I,” cried Thompson, “for
thirty-five!” “And I,” said Bennett, the venerable minister of the
church, “and I for above seventy.”
Strange and stirring incidents came across Wesley’s path. In his
father’s church, at Epworth, he heard Mr. Romley preach two of the
bitterest and falsest sermons he ever listened to. On proceeding to
Syke House, some of his friends met him and said a drunken mob was
awaiting his arrival, who would press all the men in the congregation
for soldiers. Others declared, the mob was just about to fire the
meeting-house, or pull it to the ground. Wesley calmly answered,
“Our only way is to make the best use of it while standing;” and,
accordingly, he entered it at once, and expounded the tenth chapter
of Matthew. At Durham, he met John Nelson and Thomas Beard, at that
time with their regiment, and took them to his inn, and said, “Brother
Nelson, lose no time; speak and spare not, for God has work for you to
do in every place where your lot is cast; and when you have fulfilled
His good pleasure, He will burst your bonds asunder, and we shall
rejoice together.”[546] At Chinley, in Derbyshire, lived a poor widow,
of the name of Godhard, with a family of four small children. At her
request, Wesley made Chinley a resting place, and preached. Finding the
widow’s house too small, he stood upon a chair near to a miller’s dam.
The miller, enraged at Wesley and his congregation daring to worship
in such proximity to his premises, let off the water for the purpose
of drowning Wesley’s voice. The effort was a failure; truth triumphed;
Chinley became a Methodist preaching place; and, in order to provide
the preachers when they called with a cup of tea, the poor widow and
her children set apart the whole of every Friday night for winding
bobbins, depositing the earnings, as a sacred treasure, in an old pint
mug, and never touching them except to meet the necessities of Wesley’s
itinerants when paying their gospel visits.[547]
Already Wesley’s lay preachers had become a considerable host. In
different parts of the kingdom there were, at least, forty of these
devoted evangelists.[548] Some of them, as John Brown, of Newcastle,
David Taylor, John Downes, John Nelson, William Shepherd, John
Slocomb, Thomas Westall, Thomas Beard, John Haime, Thomas Richards,
John Bennet, and Thomas Maxfield, have been already mentioned. Besides
these, there were—John Haughton, originally a weaver, who, whilst
the mob, in the city of Cork, were burning Wesley in effigy, threw
up the window and began to preach to the people in the street; and
who, afterwards, obtained episcopal ordination and settled in the
sister country;—Jonathan Reeves, who was with Wesley when he laid the
first stone of the Orphan House at Newcastle, and who, after passing
through a great amount of persecution, became an ordained minister
of the Church of England, preached in London, and died in 1778,
testifying that all his hope was in Christ Jesus;—Enoch Williams,
pious, deeply devoted to his work, faithful and successful, and brought
to an untimely grave in 1744;—Thomas Williams, extremely popular as
a preacher; but haughty, revengeful, headstrong, and unmanageable; a
great favourite among the London young ladies; but a maligner of the
two Wesleys; expelled in 1744, but taken back on declaring, before
many witnesses, that the slanders he had propagated against Wesley
and his brother were grossly false; the man who introduced Methodism
into Ireland in 1747, but who was again expelled from the Methodist
society in 1755; and then, through the Countess of Huntingdon, obtained
episcopal ordination, and for several years acted as a clergyman in the
neighbourhood of High Wycombe;—Thomas Meyrick, a native of Cornwall,
educated for the law, a poet, but expelled from the Methodist connexion
in 1750, after which he became a clergyman of the Established Church,
and died, we fear, a drunkard, at Halifax, in 1770;—John Trembath,
one of Wesley’s most courageous preachers, though somewhat vain and
stubborn; then a farmer and a fibber; and, for a long series of years,
an impoverished vagabond, who died about 1794;—Alexander Coates, a
poor Scotch “laddie,” fond of books, who could speak in Gaelic, read
with fluency in Dutch and Danish, and had some acquaintance with
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; the honoured instrument in the conversion
of Mr. Crosse, the well known Bradford vicar; one of the best of
men, and a most useful preacher, who died, at Newcastle, in 1765,
in perfect peace;—William Darney, another Scotchman, honest, bold,
impetuous, a rhymer, and painfully eccentric, but who was used by
Providence in converting Grimshaw, and who prided himself upon never
“_dabbing_ people with untempered mortar”;—Nicholas Gilbert, a man
of deep piety, and of great simplicity, possessed of considerable
talents, and pronounced by Wesley “an excellent preacher”;—Samuel
Larwood, who in 1754 became a Dissenting minister in the borough of
Southwark;—James Jones, one of the first fruits of Wesley’s ministry in
Staffordshire, as bold as a lion, and who built, at his own expense,
the first Methodist chapel at Tipton Green;—Joseph Jones, who left
the itinerancy in 1760, became a farmer in the county of Somerset,
and acted as a local preacher to the end of life;—Herbert Jenkins,
who afterwards became one of Whitefield’s preachers, and laboured in
the Tabernacle connexion;—John Maddern, a man of genuine piety, and a
lively, zealous preacher;—Henry Millard, who, after narrowly escaping
a violent death at the hands of a Cornish mob, fell a victim to an
attack of small pox, in 1746;—William Prior, of whom Charles Wesley, in
a manuscript letter now before us, dated 1755, writes: “William Prior
is ordained, without learning, interest, or aught but Providence to
recommend him”;—Robert Swindells, a man of great benevolence, who was
never heard to speak an unkind word of any one, had no enemy, and died
full of days, riches, and honour in 1783;—James Wheatley, of Norwich
notoriety, where he was often dragged by the hair of his head through
the streets of the city, built a large chapel, and became immensely
popular, but who ultimately died, beneath a cloud, in Bristol;—Francis
Walker, a native of Tewkesbury, pious, honest, and upright, his talents
small, but his preaching lively, zealous, and useful, an instrument
of great good to souls wherever he went, and who settled in the city
of Gloucester, where he died in peace. And to all these must be added
William Biggs, Thomas Crouch, John Hall, Thomas Hardwick, Francis
Scott, David Tratham, Thomas Willes, and William Holmes.
Little more remains to be related concerning the year 1744. The
Newcastle society was increasingly earnest, there hardly being a
trifler left. The society at Bristol was not so perfect as it should
have been, many of the members crying out, “Faith, faith! Believe,
believe!” but making little account of the fruits of faith, either of
holiness or good works. The London society was poor, but generous. At
a single collection, in the month of February, they contributed nearly
fifty pounds to relieve the destitute around them, and which Wesley at
once laid out in buying clothes for those whom he knew to be diligent
and yet in want. A month later, they made a second collection of
about thirty pounds. A month later still, a third collection of about
six-and-twenty pounds; and to these three collections were added ninety
pounds more in the shape of private subscriptions; making altogether
£196 raised by the poor London Methodists, and employed in providing
clothing for three hundred and sixty persons.
Already some of Wesley’s people began to profess Christian perfection;
but he was extremely cautious in receiving their testimony. At the end
of the year, he writes:—
“I was with two persons who believe they are saved from all
sin. Be it so, or not, why should we not rejoice in the work
of God, so far as it is unquestionably wrought in them? For
instance, I ask John C——, ‘Do you always pray? Do you rejoice
in God every moment? Do you in everything give thanks? In loss?
In pain? In sickness, weariness, disappointments? Do you desire
nothing? Do you fear nothing? Do you feel the love of God
continually in your heart? Have you a witness in whatever you
speak or do, that it is pleasing to God?’ If he can solemnly
and deliberately answer in the affirmative, why do I not
rejoice and praise God on his behalf? Perhaps, because I have
an exceeding complex idea of sanctification, or a sanctified
man. And so, for fear he should not have attained all I include
in that idea, I cannot rejoice in what he has attained.”
This is significant language. Wesley preached the doctrine; but he was
slow to believe those who professed to experience it; and it is a fact
more remarkable, that, so far as there is evidence to show, Wesley
never, to the day of his death, professed as much as this himself.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of his followers did; perhaps he himself
was restrained from doing so, by a dislike to high profession, or by a
conscientious fear, that he hardly reached the standard above set up.
The thing occasioned him great anxiety. A short time before his death,
he wrote as follows:—
“Four or five and forty years ago, I had no distinct views of
what the apostle meant by exhorting us to ‘leave the principles
of the doctrine of Christ, and go on to perfection;’ but two
or three persons in London, whom I knew to be truly sincere,
desired to give me an account of their experience. It appeared
exceeding strange, being different from any that I had heard
before. The next year, two or three more persons at Bristol,
and two or three at Kingswood, coming to me severally, gave
me exactly the same account of their experience. A few years
after, I desired all those in London who made the same
profession, to come to me all together at the Foundery, that
I might be thoroughly satisfied. I desired that man of God,
Thomas Walsh, to give us the meeting there. When we met, first
one of us, and then another, asked them the most searching
questions we could devise. They answered every one without
hesitation, and with the utmost simplicity, so that we were
fully persuaded, they did not deceive themselves. In the years
1759 to 1762 their numbers multiplied exceedingly, not only in
London and Bristol, but in various parts of Ireland as well as
England. Not trusting to the testimony of others, I carefully
examined most of these myself; and, in London alone, I found
652 members of our society who were exceeding clear in their
experience, and of whose testimony I could see no reason to
doubt. I believe no year has passed since that time, wherein
God has not wrought the same work in many others; and every one
of these (without a single exception) has declared, that his
deliverance from sin was _instantaneous_; that the change was
wrought in a moment. Had half of these, or one third, or one
in twenty, declared it was _gradually_ wrought in _them_, I
should have believed this, with regard to _them_, and thought
that _some_ were gradually sanctified and some instantaneously.
But as I have not found, in so long a space of time, a single
person speaking thus, I cannot but believe, that sanctification
is commonly, if not always, an _instantaneous_ work.”[549]
This is a subject of vast importance, and will often recur in future
pages. Meanwhile, all will give Wesley credit for the utmost sincerity,
though some may doubt whether human experience is, in itself,
sufficient to settle and decide Christian doctrine.
Wesley’s pen was, if possible, more busily employed than ever; not so
much in composing original productions, as in abridging and revising
the works of others. During the year 1744, he published the following:—
1. The sermon preached before the Oxford university on August 24.
2. An Extract from his Journal, from November 1, 1739, to September
3, 1741. With prefatory Letter to the Moravian Church, dated June 24,
1744; and two hymns annexed, on “The Means of Grace,” and “The Bloody
Issue,” both having reference to the Moravian controversy.
3. The Rules of the Band Societies. These, as we have already seen,
were read at the conference held in June. During the year, they were
published in the form following:—“The Nature, Design, and General Rules
of the United Societies, in London, Bristol, Kingswood, and Newcastle
upon Tyne. The fourth edition. To which are subjoined the Rules of
the Band Societies. London: printed by William Strahan. 1744.” 12mo,
twelve pages. The _Rules_ of the band societies were the same as those
which Wesley had drawn up for the Moravian bands, in 1738. The band
society members were composed, as previously stated, of persons who
professed to have obtained the forgiveness of sins. They were middle
class Methodists; that is, in a more advanced state than the members of
the “United Societies,” but not so advanced as the “Select Societies.”
The questions to be proposed to every one before he was admitted were
to the following effect:—1. Have you forgiveness of sins? 2. Peace with
God? 3. The witness of the Spirit? 4. Is the love of God shed abroad
in your heart? 5. Has no sin dominion over you? 6. Do you desire to be
told of your faults? 7. Do you desire we should tell you whatsoever we
think, fear, or hear concerning you? 8. Is it your desire and design,
on this and all other occasions, to speak everything that is in your
heart, without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?
The propriety of such questions will be doubted, and especially of
other five which had to be proposed at every meeting, and which have
been given in a previous chapter. (See page 210.) It would have been
no loss to Methodism or to the religious world, if these queries,
first drawn up by Wesley on Christmas day, 1738, had been allowed to
slumber in the shades of Moravian oblivion. At present, they are never
used; and though, in the first instance, they might be adapted to the
Moravian brotherhood, they are far too inquisitorial for Methodists.
The bands had to meet once a week; and were bound to observe the
following “Directions”:—
I. To abstain from evil, especially buying or selling on the sabbath;
tasting spirituous liquors; pawning; backbiting; wearing needless
ornaments, as rings, earrings, necklaces, lace, and ruffles; and taking
snuff or tobacco.
II. To maintain good works,—especially almsgiving; reproving sin;
together with diligence, frugality, and self denial.
III. To use all the ordinances of God; especially service at church,
and sacrament once a week; likewise every public meeting of the bands;
the ministry of the word every morning; private prayer every day;
reading the Scriptures at every vacant hour; and observing all Fridays
in the year as days of fasting or abstinence.
4. Another of Wesley’s publications, in 1744, was “Modern Christianity
exemplified at Wednesbury, and other adjacent places in Staffordshire.”
12mo, twenty-eight pages. The substance of this pamphlet has been
already given in the account of the Staffordshire riots; but the prayer
at the end of it is too remarkable to be passed without notice. The
following is an extract:—
“Lo, I come, if this soul and body may be useful to anything,
to do Thy will, O God. If it please Thee to use the power
Thou hast over dust and ashes, here they are to suffer Thy
good pleasure. If Thou pleasest to visit me either with pain
or dishonour, I will humble myself under it, and, through Thy
grace, be obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Hereafter no man can take away anything from me, no life, no
honour, no estate; since I am ready to lay them down, as soon
as I perceive Thou requirest them at my hands. Nevertheless,
O Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from me; but if
not, Thy will be done.”
What was the spirit of the ancient martyrs if this was not?
5. A fifth publication, “Hymns for Times of Trouble and Persecution”
(12mo, forty-seven pages), was issued in the names of “John and Charles
Wesley” unitedly. It contains thirteen hymns for times of trouble;
sixteen for times of persecution; and four to be sung in a tumult.
The remainder of Wesley’s publications, during the present year, were
collections or abridgments of the works of other authors, namely:—
1. “A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems from the most celebrated
English authors.” Three volumes, 1024 pages, in 12mo. The work is
dedicated to “the right honourable the Countess of Huntingdon.” Wesley
truly observes, that there is nothing in the collection “contrary to
virtue; nothing that can in any way offend the chastest ear, or give
pain to the tenderest heart. Whatever is really essential to the most
sublime divinity, as well as the purest and most refined morality,
will be found therein. The most just and important sentiments are here
represented with all the ornaments both of wit and language, and in the
clearest, fullest, strongest light.”
“There is,” writes Mr. Marriott,[550] “a circumstance little known
regarding this ‘Collection.’ A few months after the publication
of these volumes, Dodsley (the publisher) called upon Wesley for
reparation of a piracy, which the latter had unwittingly committed, and
for which he agreed to pay him £50.” This was done on February 8, 1745,
by payment of a £20 bank note, and a cheque for £30, payable in three
months.
2. “A Brief Account of the occasion, process, and issue of a late
Trial at the Assize held at Gloucester, 3rd March, 1743. Between some
of the people called Methodists, Plaintiffs, and certain Persons of
Minchinhampton, in the said county, Defendants. Extracted from Mr.
Whitefield’s Letter. By John Wesley.” Twelve pages, 12mo.
This was a sort of companion tract to “Modern Christianity at
Wednesbury.” Appended is “a prayer for his majesty King George,” in ten
verses of four lines each, which, in a somewhat altered form, is now
the 465th hymn in the Methodist Hymn-Book.
3. “A Collection of Prayers for Families.” 12mo, 24 pages.
Wesley considered family religion as indispensable to the preservation
and extension of the work of God. Some of the first Methodists
neglected it; and, as a consequence, their children shook off all
religion and abandoned themselves to wickedness.[551] “Family
religion,” said Wesley, twenty years after this, “is the grand
desideratum among the Methodists.”[552]
To promote this, Wesley published his “Prayers for Families,” in 1744.
The prayers are only fourteen in number; that is, a prayer for every
morning and every evening during a single week; but anything more
devout, scriptural, appropriate, and religiously rich it would be
difficult to conceive.
4. “The Case of John Nelson, written by himself. Published by John
Wesley.” 12mo, 36 pages.
5. “An Extract of Count Zinzendorf’s Discourses on the Redemption of
Man by the Death of Christ.” 12mo, 78 pages.
These loosely worded “Discourses,” sixteen in number, were first
published in 1740, in 12mo, two hundred and two pages. They were
all founded upon Luther’s explanation of the second article of the
Apostles’ creed; “I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord.”
6. “A Serious Call to a Holy Life. Extracted from a late author.”
12mo, 230 pages. This was an abridgment of the well known work of
William Law, and was printed by John Gooding, of Newcastle upon Tyne.
It consists of nineteen chapters, dwelling on Christian devotion;
the duties of all orders and ranks of men and women, of all ages, to
practise it; the happiness arising from doing so; and recommendations
in reference to it.
It is impossible to give the reader, by any brief description here, an
adequate idea of this powerful and pungent book. He must read it for
himself. When will the young people of the present day, imbibing the
froth of sensational writing, learn that books, like wine, are none the
worse for being old?
7. “The Life of God in the Soul of Man; or, the Nature and Excellency
of the Christian Religion.” 12mo, forty-eight pages.
This was an extract from an excellent treatise, written by the Rev.
Henry Scougal, a Scottish minister, who died at the early age of
twenty-eight, in the year 1678. The book breathes the sublimest piety;
and, in style, is pure and elegant.
8. “The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. Extracted
from Mr. Edwards, minister of Northampton, in New England.” 12mo, 48
pages.
By publishing this calm, pointed, argumentative treatise, Wesley made
its sentiments his own; and, from it, the reader may easily infer what
were Wesley’s opinions respecting the religious revival with which he
and his contemporaries were connected. (See page 218.) The following is
a synopsis of the answers to objections.
It is no sign, that a work is not Divine, because it is carried on
in a way unusual and extraordinary. The Spirit is sovereign in His
operations. We ought not to limit God where He has not limited Himself.
Neither is a work to be judged by any effects on the bodies of men;
such as tears, trembling, groans, loud outcries, agonies, or faintings;
for there is reason to believe, that great outpourings of the Spirit,
both in the prophetic and apostolic ages, were not wholly without
these extraordinary effects. The same is true respecting religious
commotion among the people, for this is the natural result of such
a work. Further, though many of the converts may be guilty of great
imprudences and irregularities, neither is this a sign that the work
is not the work of God; for, in a mixed multitude of wise and unwise,
young and old, all under powerful impressions, no wonder that some
should behave themselves imprudently. It was thus in the apostolic
churches, and this is not unlikely to continue while weakness is one
of the elements of human nature. There may be errors in judgment, and
some delusions of Satan intermixed with the revival; but that is not
conclusive evidence, that the work in general is not the work of the
Holy Ghost. Some may fall away into scandalous practices; but, if we
look into church history, we shall find no instance of a great revival
of religion but what has been attended with such relapses. The work
may have been promoted by ministers strongly preaching the terrors of
the law; but what of that? If there really be a hell of dreadful and
never ending torments, ought not those exposed to it to be earnestly
warned of their fearful danger? For ministers to preach of hell, and
warn sinners to avoid it in a cold, careless, hesitating manner, is to
contradict themselves, and to defeat their own purposes. The manner in
which the thing is said is, in such a case, more effectual than the
words employed. It may be unreasonable to think of frightening a man to
heaven; but it is not unreasonable to endeavour to frighten him away
from hell.
Such, in substance, were the sentiments to which Wesley affixed his
_imprimatur_ in 1744,—sentiments still worth pondering, because always
true.
Great revivals may be, often are, and perhaps must be, attended with
circumstances which enlightened and sober minded Christians dislike;
but rather than be without revivals, where is the man who loves Christ
and the souls of sinners, who would not gladly crucify his own dislikes?
Twelve months after this, in the year 1745, Wesley, appealing to men
of reason and religion, who were in doubt, whether the revival then
vouchsafed was the work of God, observed:—“You have all the proof
of this you can reasonably expect or desire. That, in many places,
abundance of notorious sinners are totally reformed, is declared
by a thousand eye and ear witnesses both of their present and past
behaviour. What would you have more? What pretence can you have for
doubting any longer? Do you delay fixing your judgment till you see a
work of God, without any stumbling block attending it? That never was
yet, nor ever will. ‘It must needs be that offences will come.’ And
scarce ever was there such a work of God before, with so few as have
attended this.”[553]
1745.
[Sidenote: 1745 Age 42]
Whitefield, during the whole of the year 1745, was in America. Charles
Wesley spent about thirty-eight weeks in London; and about fourteen in
Bristol, Wales, and the west of England. Wesley himself was nearly five
months in London and its vicinity; about a month in Bristol and the
neighbourhood; two months were spent in a tour to Cornwall; and four
months in two journeys to Newcastle and the north of England.
Persecution somewhat abated, especially in the form of printed attacks
and scandals; not because Methodism was less hated, but because the
attention of the country was turned to the dangers arising from the
invasion of the popish Pretender.
In Cornwall, however, Thomas Maxfield was seized for a soldier, and
was put into the dungeon at Penzance. Edward Greenfield, of St. Just,
a tanner, with a wife and seven children, was arrested under a warrant
signed by Dr. Borlase. Wesley asked what objection there was to this
peaceable and inoffensive man. The answer was, “The man is well enough
in other things; but the gentlemen cannot bear his impudence. Why,
sir, he says he knows his sins are forgiven.” This Cornish persecution
was principally promoted by men like Borlase and Eustick. The latter
came with a warrant for Wesley’s arrest; but sneaked away from its
execution, like a blustering poltroon. While Wesley was preaching at
Gwennap, two men, raging like maniacs, rode into the midst of the
congregation, and began to lay hold upon the people. In the midst of
the disturbance, Wesley and his friends commenced singing; when Mr. B.
lost his patience, and bawled to his attendants, “Seize him, seize him.
I say, seize the preacher for his majesty’s service.” The attendants
not moving, he cursed them with the greatest bitterness, leaped off his
horse, caught hold of Wesley’s cassock, crying, “I take you to serve
his majesty.” Wesley walked with him for three quarters of a mile,
when the courage of the bumptious bravo failed him, and he was glad
to let the poor parson go. The day after this ignoble capture, Wesley
was at Falmouth, where the rabble surrounded the house in which he was
lodging, and roared, “Bring out the Canorum! Where is the Canorum?” (an
unmeaning word which the Cornish generally used instead of Methodist.)
They then forced open the outer door, and setting their shoulders to
the inner one, cried out, “Avast, lads, avast!” Away went all the
hinges; Wesley stepped into the midst of the privateering mob, and
asked one after another, “To which of you have I done any wrong? To
you? Or you? Or you?” All seemed speechless, until, thus questioning
his furious assailants, Wesley found himself in the open street, where
he cried to the assembled crowd, “Neighbours, countrymen! Do you desire
to hear me speak?” “Yes, yes,” they answered vehemently; “he shall
speak, he shall; no one shall hinder him!” Meanwhile, Mr. Thomas, the
clergyman, and some other gentlemen came up; Wesley was rescued; his
horse was sent before him to Penryn; he was despatched by water; and
an item of nine shillings and some odd pence appeared in the parochial
accounts “for driving the Methodists out of the parish.”[554]
Wesley’s troubles, however, were not ended. His enemies ran along the
shore to receive him at his landing. Wesley there confronted them, and,
speaking to their leader, said, “I wish you a good night;” to which
the wretch replied, “I wish you were in hell,” and then turned away
with his companions. Wesley mounted his horse, and hurried forward to
Tolcarn, where he had to preach the same evening. On the way, five
well dressed horsemen were awaiting him, with a special warrant, from
the Helstone magistrates, for his arrest. He rode into the midst of
them, and announced who he was. A friendly clergyman, Mr. Collins, of
Redruth, accidentally came by, and told the gentlemen that he had known
Wesley at the Oxford university. Conversation followed, and Wesley was
allowed to proceed upon his journey; one of those who had come out for
his arrest telling him, that the reason of all this annoyance was,
that all the gentlemen round about affirmed, that, for a long time, he
had been in France and Spain; was now sent to England by the Pretender,
and was raising societies to join him at his coming.
In the midst of all this, Wesley courageously rode to and fro,
preaching from, “Love your enemies;” “Watch and pray;” and, “All that
will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” At Tolcarn,
while he was preaching, the mob assembled, and suddenly pushed him
from the high wall on which he was standing. At Trevonan, just after
he had begun his sermon, the constable and others came, and read the
proclamation against riots. At Stithians, the churchwardens seized one
of his hearers, and pressed him for a soldier.
Whilst these outrages were being perpetrated in Cornwall, Richard Moss
was arrested at Epworth for preaching; but was delivered through the
interference of Mr. Maw, in whose house he prayed and sang hymns till
midnight; and then left for Robert Taylor’s, at Burnham, where he and
the Epworth Methodists continued praying and praising God, till about
four o’clock in the morning. At Betley, near Nantwich, a gentleman
threatened to hire a mob to pull down the Methodist meeting-house,
and to send all the Methodists for soldiers. At Bristol, a Methodist
backslider declared he would “make affidavit that he had seen Wesley
administer extreme unction to a woman, and give her a wafer, and say
that was her passport to heaven.”[555] At Woodley, in Cheshire, John
Bennet and three other Methodists were pressed for soldiers, most of
the press gang being Dissenters. The reverend Mr. Henry Wickham, one
of the magistrates for the west riding of Yorkshire, issued a warrant
to the constable of Keighley, “to convey the body of Jonathan Reeves
to his majesty’s gaol and castle of York;” the only crime of which
Jonathan was guilty being that of calling sinners to repentance;
though the reverend magistrate chose to describe him as “a spy among
us, and a dangerous man to the person and government of his majesty
King George.”[556] In Exeter, says _The London Evening Post_, for May
16, 1745, the Methodists had a meeting-house behind the Guildhall;
and, on May 6, the mob gathered at the door, and pelted those who
entered with potatoes, mud, and dung. On coming out, the congregation
were all beaten, without exception; many were trampled under foot;
many fled without their hats and wigs; and some without coats, or
with half of them torn to tatters. Some of the women were lamed, and
others stripped naked, and rolled most indecently in the kennel,
their faces being besmeared with lampblack, flour, and dirt. This
disgraceful mob consisted of some thousands of cowardly blackguards,
and the disturbance was continued till midnight. The same newspaper, in
its number issued on May 25, relates, with a sneer, that a Methodist
vagrant had been apprehended at Frome; that he was a person of “very
ill fame,” and was committed to prison; but another of the same sect,
“a Scotchman, a travelling apostle,” had succeeded him, and was meeting
with surprising success. He had already wrought several miracles, one
of which was making a deaf old woman hear angels playing on celestial
harps in the upper regions; and another was that of converting his
own oatmeal into cake, and transforming his water into wine. He also
cured distempers of the body as well as of the mind; though he often
killed the one with his drugs, to save the other with his doctrine. The
_Westminster Journal_ for June 8, 1745, narrates that a noted Methodist
preacher, named Tolly, had been pressed for a soldier in Staffordshire,
and had appeared before the magistrates, attended by many of his
“deluded followers of both sexes, who pretended he was a learned and
holy man; and yet, it appeared that he was only a journeyman joiner,
and had done great mischief among the colliers.” The poor luckless
joiner was, therefore, coupled to a sturdy tinker, and sent off to
Stafford jail. He had already been pressed once before, and the
Methodists had subscribed £40 to obtain his freedom, and were intending
to repeat the kindness; but the impeccable editor of the _Westminster
Journal_ hopes that the magistrates will be proof against golden
bribes; for “such wretches” as Tolly “are incendiaries in a nation,”
and greatly to be dreaded.
These were the chief acts of violence committed against the Methodists
in 1745. As already stated, the press was still employed, though it
was not so bitter as it had been previously. Newspapers and magazines
found that news about the Pretender’s invasion was more taking with the
public than elaborated diatribes against Wesley and his friends. During
the year, however, there was published, by a clergyman unknown to fame,
an octavo pamphlet of eighty pages, with the title:—“An Apology for
the Clergy, in a Letter to a Gentleman of Fortune and great Reading,
lately turned Methodist and Hermit; wherein is shown the weakness of
those Objections, which Separatists in general pretend first induced
them to leave the Established Church, and to look out for better guides
somewhere else. By J. Maud, M.A., vicar of St. Neots, in the county of
Huntingdon.” Mr. Maud alleges, that there is a powerful confederacy
against the Church,—“a mixed multitude of Socinians, Presbyterians,
Independents, Quakers, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Meer Moralists,
Jesuits, Free Thinkers, and Methodists, and an infinite tribe of
nameless sects, all hallooed on by the vicar of Jesus Christ and his
creatures, to tear Christians to pieces, and to make sport for infidels
and atheists.” The pamphlet is a spirited defence of the clergy, whom
the “Methodist and Hermit” had libelled, and an attempt to show, that
it was no trivial matter to be a faultless minister of Christ in an age
when it was considered “a rude affront to any polite audience to tell
men of their faults, or so much as to mention these harsh and dreadful
sounding words, hell, damnation, devil, without a canting paraphrase,
or a formal apology.”
A second pamphlet, published in 1745, was, “The Question, Whether it be
right to turn Methodist, considered in a Dialogue between two members
of the Church of England.” 8vo, 79 pages. The Methodists are branded as
“unskilful teachers, doing great mischief to the peace of the Church,
and to the souls of poor, ignorant people; by raising vain janglings
about regeneration; by resolving all religion into instantaneous faith,
and faith itself into impulses and mere animal sensations; by setting
aside all necessity for repentance; and by casting off _all_ works,
as unnecessary to salvation.” The pamphlet is ably written; but is
extremely false.
Another attack on Methodism was one published in the _Craftsman_, of
June 22, and copied in the _London Magazine_ and other periodicals of
the period. It was, in fact, an onslaught upon the government of the
day, entitled “Ministerial Methodism, or Methodists in Politics;” but,
in castigating ministers of state, it grossly calumniates ministers
of Christ. The Methodists are an “unaccountable strange sect, whose
religion is founded on madness and folly.” They “hold, that there is no
justification by good works, but by faith and grace only; and hereby
banish that Divine part of our constitution, reason; and cut off the
most essential recommendation to heaven, virtue.” By this “depraved
doctrine” of “weak and, perhaps, designing teachers, misguided souls
are dangerously led astray.” The “men are far gone in their mad
principles of religion, suspend the hand of industry, become inactive,
and leave all to Providence, without exercising either their heads or
hands.”
The article, though neatly written, was supremely silly: Wesley, at
the urgent request of his friends, answered it;[557] but the thing was
far more contemptible than some other attacks which had been allowed;
properly enough, to pass unnoticed.
Another anti-Methodist publication, issued in 1745, was entitled, “An
Earnest and Affectionate Address to the People called Methodists.”
12mo, 47 pages. This was published by the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, and was distributed gratuitously.[558] Its author,
an old antagonist, was the Rev. Dr. Stebbing.[559] Two editions
were exhausted in 1745, and a third sent out in 1746. It allows the
Methodists to be honest and well meaning; but they are “greatly imposed
upon,” and “ignorantly serve the designs of enthusiasm, and give
credit to the most extravagant and groundless pretences.” The writer
proceeds, with considerable ability, to examine the Methodist doctrines
of regeneration, justification by faith alone, and the operations of
the Holy Spirit; and concludes by saying that, though the Methodist
teachers at first were only distinguished by “a peculiar strictness
and regularity, and a decent observance of the rules of the Church,
it was not long that they kept within these bounds. Being admired
and followed, they became vain and conceited, and proceeded to open
censures and contempt of their brethren. They grew loud and furious in
their accusations and railings. They made most presumptuous pretences
to Divine communications and directions;” and, when “their errors
were pointed out, by some of the highest and most considerable of the
clergy, with all possible meekness and temper, their answers were saucy
and petulant. Fresh bitterness arose; more arrogant boasting; and more
uncharitable revilings. They seized a pulpit or two without leave; and,
in defiance of the law, exercised their ministry in fields and commons,
and other unlicensed places. They set aside and altered the liturgy at
their pleasure, and made use of extempore effusions of their own in the
public worship of God.”
Such were some of the allegations brought against Wesley and his
friends at the instance of the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge.
Another pamphlet, published in the same year, was “A Serious Address
to Lay-Methodists to beware of the false pretences of their Teachers.
With an Appendix containing an account of the fatal and bloody effects
of enthusiasm, in the case of the family of the Dutartres in South
Carolina, which was attended with the murder of two persons, and the
execution of four for those murders. By a Sincere Protestant.” 8vo, 29
pages.
This was a frothy composition, asserting that “the Methodist preachers
are wandering lights, gadding about with canting assurances, and
leading people into bogs of delusion.” Its author was Dr. Zachary
Grey, already mentioned (page 325) as the author of “The Quakers and
Methodists compared.”[560]
Besides all these attacks, Wesley had to endure much Moravian
annoyance. At the commencement of the year, desiring to see once more
his old friend Gambold, he called at James Hutton’s, and there met
Mr. Simpson, “extremely gay, easy, and unconcerned;” “a new creature
indeed! but not in the gospel sense.” Mr. Simpson, unhappily, was
a specimen of others. The Moravians meant well; but they held and
preached the grand old doctrine of salvation by _faith only_, so
unguardedly that, as a matter of course, the rank weed of antinomianism
sprung out of the soil of Christian truth. Antinomianism, according
to Wesley, was now a torrent; not only in London but out of it. At
Bristol, Wesley writes, “the Antinomians had taken true pains to
seduce those who were showing their faith by their works; but they
reaped little fruit of their bad labour; for, upon the most diligent
inquiry, I could not find that seven persons out of seven hundred
had been turned out of the old Bible way.” Whitefield, writing from
America, remarks: “Antinomianism, I find, begins to show its head,
and stalk abroad. May the glorious Redeemer cause it to hide its head
again; and prevent His children’s spirits being embittered against
each other.”[561] In August, James Hutton, by order of Zinzendorf,
published, in the _Daily Advertiser_, an advertisement, declaring that
the Moravians had no connection with the two Wesleys; and subjoining
one of the count’s prophecies, that Wesley and his brother would “soon
run their heads against the wall.” To this Wesley simply said: “We
will not, if we can help it.” Dissensions also had sprung up among the
Unitas Fratrum themselves. Richard Viney had denounced Zinzendorf’s
“more than papal domination;” and large numbers of the Yorkshire
Moravians had sympathised with him. Zinzendorf was furious, and, in
February 1744, wrote from Germany as follows:—
“I hereby declare, that I will have nothing more to do with
those English Brethren, who have been mixed up in Viney’s
rebellion. I disapprove of the absolution that is given to
such Corah spirits. I laugh at the English national self
righteousness in matters relating to our salvation. I desire
to be erased from the list of English labourers, and not to be
named among them, until all accomplices in the late revolt make
an acknowledgment in writing of their having been deceived by
Satan.
“The well-known little fool and poor sinner,
“LUDWIG.”[562]
This was pitiful tomfoolery; the raging of a lilliputian and
disappointed pope.
During the year, a 12mo pamphlet, of forty-one pages, was published,
with the title, “Extracts of Letters relating to Methodists and
Moravians. By a Layman;” in which the Moravians are censured—1. For
laying aside the use of their intellectual faculties in _religious
matters_. 2. For refusing to take oaths before a magistrate. 3. For
declining to take up arms in defence of their country, at the command
of the civil power. And, 4. For their praying to and praising so
constantly the Son of God, and so very seldom the Father. This was
supposed to be written by Sir John Thorold; but as it makes no attack
upon Wesley and his immediate followers it need not be farther noticed.
Another, and more important publication, was the following:—“Remarks on
the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s last Journal, wherein he gives an account
of the tenets and proceedings of the Moravians, especially those in
England, and of the divisions and perplexities of the Methodists:
showing, by the concessions of Mr. Wesley himself, the many errors
relating to faith and practice, which have already arisen among these
deluded people; and, in a particular manner, explaining the very fatal
tendency of denying good works to be conditions of our justification.
In a letter to that gentleman. By Thomas Church, A.M., vicar of
Battersea, and prebendary of St. Paul’s.” 8vo, 76 pages.
The pamphlet is calmly and ably written, and thus concludes: “The
consequences of Methodism, which have hitherto appeared, are bad enough
to induce you to leave it. It has introduced many disorders—Enthusiasm,
Antinomianism, Calvinism, a neglect and contempt of God’s ordinances
and almost all other duties, a great increase of our sects and
divisions, and, in fine, presumption and despair in greater abundance
than they were known before.”
The letter is dated, November 3, 1744, and has the following
postscript:—“If you think proper to return any answer, I hope you will
attentively consider the points objected to you, and not put me off
with such a slight, superficial, declamatory thing as Mr. Whitefield,
without any regard to his own character or the importance of the
subject, published last year under the title of an answer to my letter
to him; in which he did not vouchsafe to consider any one argument I
had urged against him, and which no serious man could think deserved
any notice.”
The “Remarks” deserved an answer. Wesley acknowledged, in after years,
that Church “wrote as a gentleman.”[563] “Mr. Church,” said he, in
1777, “was another kind of opponent than Mr. Rowland Hill; a gentleman,
a scholar, and a Christian; and as such he both spoke and wrote.”[564]
Accordingly, first of all, Mr. Webb published a letter in vindication
of Wesley’s Journal, in reply to Mr. Church;[565] and then Wesley
himself issued a 12mo pamphlet of forty-six pages, entitled, “An Answer
to the Rev. Mr. Church’s Remarks on the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s last
Journal.”
Wesley thus begins:—“Reverend sir,—My first desire and prayer to God
is, that I may live peaceably with all men: my next, that if I must
dispute at all, it may be with a man of understanding. Thus far, I
rejoice on the present occasion. I rejoice also, that I have confidence
of your sincerity, of your real desire to promote the glory of God, by
peace and goodwill among men. I am likewise thankful to God for your
calm manner of writing (a few paragraphs excepted); and yet more for
this,—that such an opponent should, by writing in such a manner, give
me an opportunity of explaining myself on those very heads whereon I
wanted an occasion so to do.”
He then proceeds to say, that he wholly disapproved of the doctrines,
“that there are no degrees in faith; that, in order to attain faith, we
must abstain from all the ordinances of God; that a believer does not
grow in holiness; and that he is not obliged to keep the commandments
of God;” but, at the same time, he remarks, that he had already
cleared the _Moravian church_ from the charge of holding the first of
these doctrines; that, with respect to the ordinances of God, their
practice was better than their principle; and that he never knew a
Moravian, except Molther, who affirmed that a believer does not grow in
holiness. “Still,” he adds, “I am afraid their whole church is tainted
with quietism, universal salvation, and antinomian opinions.” “As a
church, they exalted themselves above measure, and despised others.
He had scarce heard one Moravian brother own his church to be wrong
in anything. Many of them he had heard speak of it, as if it were
infallible; and some of them had set it up as the judge of all the
earth, of all persons as well as doctrines. Some had said, there was no
true church but theirs, and that there were no true Christians out of
it. These were exceeding great mistakes; yet in as great mistakes holy
men had both lived and died;—Thomas à Kempis, for instance, and Francis
Sales.” He condemns them for “despising and decrying self denial; for
their extending Christian liberty beyond all warrant of holy writ; for
their want of zeal for good works; and, above all, for their using
guile;” but he wishes not to condemn all for the sake of some, and
expresses the belief that, next to some thousands in the Church of
England, that is mainly the Methodists, the Moravians, with whom he had
formed acquaintance, were, upon the whole, the best Christians in the
world. They had much evil among them, but more good. They were the most
self inconsistent people now existing; and yet he could not help but
speak of them with tender affection, were it only for the benefits he
had received from them; and, if the stumbling blocks above mentioned
were put away, he should desire union with them above all things under
heaven.
After this, Wesley gives his latest thoughts upon justification by
faith alone, as published in his “Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and
Religion,” which will be noticed hereafter.
In reply to Church’s assertion, that Wesley was guilty of enthusiasm to
the highest degree, Wesley remarks, that he is no more like Church’s
picture of an enthusiast than he is like a centaur. He made the word
of God the rule of all his actions, and no more followed any secret
impulse instead thereof, than he followed Mahommed or Confucius. He
rested not on ecstasies at all, for he never felt them; but judged of
his spiritual estate by the improvement of his heart and the tenour
of his life conjointly. He desired neither his dreams nor his waking
thoughts to be at all regarded, unless just so far as they agreed with
the oracles of God.
Before leaving the Moravians, reference must be made to another
pamphlet, issued in 1745. “A Short View of the Difference between the
Moravian Brethren lately in England and the Rev. Mr. John and Charles
Wesley. Extracted chiefly from a late Journal. London: printed by W.
Strahan. Sold at the Foundery, etc. 1745.” 12mo, 24 pages. The pamphlet
is dated, May 20, 1745, and is signed by both the Wesleys. Appended
are six hymns bearing on the subject. The differences are contained
in ten propositions; but having been referred to so frequently in the
preceding pages, it is scarcely necessary to repeat them here. Suffice
it to say, that the publication of these “Differences” was probably
owing to the publication of Church’s remarks on Wesley’s Journal; and,
that it was one, if not the main, reason of Zinzendorf and Hutton
publishing, in the _Daily Advertiser_, that the Moravians had now no
connection with the Wesleys. Wesley, in his pamphlet, uses language
more than ordinarily strong. He pronounces several of the Moravian
dogmas “utterly false.” He declares, that Zinzendorf’s definition
of faith, namely, the historical knowledge that Christ has been a
man and suffered death for us, “is a proposition directly subversive
of the whole of the Christian revelation;” and that his doctrine,
that “a believer is not holy _in himself_, but in Christ only,” is
“a palpable self contradiction, and senseless jargon.” Zinzendorf’s
temper was touchy, and it is not surprising, that he resented Wesley’s
plain speaking, and commanded Hutton to publish the advertisement just
mentioned.
The controversy still continued; and, during 1745, two other tracts
were published by Wesley. (1) “A Dialogue between an Antinomian and his
friend.” 12mo, 12 pages. (2) “A Second Dialogue between an Antinomian
and his friend.” 12mo, 12 pages.
In both these tracts, the monstrousness of the Moravian and other
errors is mercilessly exposed and censured. “All that is really
uncommon in your doctrine,” says Wesley to his antinomian friend, “is
a heap of broad absurdities, in most of which you grossly contradict
yourselves, as well as Scripture and common sense. In the meantime, you
boast and vapour, as if _ye were the men, and wisdom should die with
you_. I pray God to humble you, and prove you, and show you what is in
your heart!”
This was partly written in answer to a Dialogue that had been
published by William Cudworth, who was, for some years, a follower of
Whitefield, and then became minister of an Independent congregation,
in Margaret Street, London, and died in 1763.[566] The biographer of
the Countess of Huntingdon states, that Cudworth “died in the comforts
of the doctrines of grace, leaving behind him a character for eminent
holiness and integrity.”[567] Wesley’s description of the man is widely
different; but, if Wesley ever felt the least bitterness towards any
of his opponents, it was towards Cudworth. He describes him as an
Antinomian; an absolute, avowed enemy to the law of God, which he never
preached, or professed to preach, but termed all legalists who did.
With him, preaching the law was an abomination. He would preach Christ,
as he called it, but without one word either of holiness or good
works.[568]
Mr. Cudworth will again cross our path. Suffice it to say here, that,
between him and Wesley, no love was lost. Affection for him was at
zero; and he abhorred Wesley “as much as he did the pope, and ten times
more than he did the devil.”[569]
As already stated, Wesley made, during 1745, two journeys to Newcastle
and the north of England.
The first of these was commenced on the 18th of February, and lasted
to the 11th of May. Richard Moss was his companion, and not a few were
the adventures with which they met. Locomotion was rendered extremely
difficult in consequence of snow. In some places, a thaw, succeeded by
a frost, had made the ground like glass; and often they were obliged to
walk, it being impossible to ride, their horses frequently falling,
even while they were leading them. At Gateshead Fell, the whole country
appeared a great pathless waste of white; and, but for an honest man
who became their guide, they knew not how to reach Newcastle. Wesley
writes:—“Many a rough journey have I had before, but one like this I
never had; between wind, and hail, and rain, and ice, and snow, and
driving sleet, and piercing cold: but it is past; these days will
return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been.”
This rough journey of two hundred and eighty miles was performed on
horseback, in six days, at the rate of nearly fifty miles a day.
The besetting sin of the Newcastle Methodists was the being offended
with each other; and Wesley’s first work was to reconcile wrangling
neighbours. On the second Sunday after his arrival, a brutal bully,
who had been accustomed to abuse the Orphan House family, and to throw
stones at them, assaulted Wesley in Pilgrim Street, and cursed and
pushed him. The next day the following characteristic note was sent:—
“ROBERT YOUNG,—I expect to see you between this and Friday,
and to hear from you, that you are sensible of your fault;
otherwise, in pity to your soul, I shall be obliged to inform
the magistrates of your assaulting me yesterday in the street.
“I am, your real friend,
“JOHN WESLEY.”
Robert Young immediately came, and meekly begged pardon, and promised
to amend his ways.
On the 11th of March, Wesley wrote a long letter to a friend, giving
an account of the way in which the Methodist societies had sprung into
existence, and then stating succinctly the present position of himself
and his coadjutors. They were willing to make any concession, which
their conscience would permit, in order to heal the breach between
the clergy and themselves; but they could not desist from preaching
the doctrine of inward and present salvation, as attainable by faith
alone; nor could they promise not to preach in private houses, or
in the open air; for, as things were now circumstanced, this would
amount to a promise not to preach at all. They could not, with a safe
conscience, dissolve their societies, for they apprehended that many
souls would be lost thereby; neither could they advise the members one
by one, their number rendering this impossible. They could not suffer
those who walked disorderly still to mingle with the rest, because
evil communications corrupt good manners; nor could they discharge the
leaders, because it was through the leaders that disorderly walkers
were detected. While they were resolved to behave with reverence
towards the bishops of the Church, and with tenderness both to the
character and persons of the inferior clergy, they desired not to be
admitted to their pulpits, if they believed them to be preachers of
false doctrine, or had the least scruple of conscience concerning this;
but, at the same time, they desired that those clergymen who believed
their doctrines to be true, and had no scruple at all in the matter,
should not be either publicly or privately discouraged from inviting
them to preach in their churches. If any one thought them heretics or
schismatics, and deemed it his duty to preach or print against them,
be it so; they had not the least objection; but, before doing so, they
desired that he would calmly consider both sides of the question,
and not condemn them unheard. If they were guilty of either Popery,
sedition, or immorality, they desired no favour; but they also desired,
that senseless tales concerning them should not be credited without
proof. They desired not any preferment, favour, or recommendation,
from authorities either in Church or state; but they asked—1. That, if
anything material were laid to their charge, they might be permitted to
answer for themselves. 2. That the clergy and magistrates would hinder
their dependants from stirring up the rabble against them. And, 3.
That they would effectually suppress, and thoroughly discountenance,
all riots and popular insurrections, which evidently strike at the
foundation of all government, whether of Church or state.
Such was Wesley’s position in 1745. Though the document was not
published in his Journal for eight years afterwards, it was, in fact, a
manifesto defining his relations to Church and state, and the course of
action he felt it his duty to pursue; and, viewed in such a light, it
is of great importance.
During his stay at Newcastle, Wesley received and entertained a
strange visitor in his Orphan House. This was none other than a popish
priest. Twelve months before, a royal proclamation had been published,
ordering the laws against papists to be enforced, and commanding all
such religionists to depart from the cities of London and Westminster;
and likewise forbidding them to leave their country homes, in any
direction, for more than five miles’ distance. This proclamation was
occasioned by the preparations that were being made by the young
Pretender to invade Great Britain. Papists, and especially papistical
priests, were regarded, by the general public, with suspicion and
abhorrence. This was natural. Their disloyalty to the house of Hanover
was a well known fact; and their intrigues, in favour of the Stuart
family, were now culminating in the approaching invasion on behalf of
the eldest son of James II. Under such circumstances, it was a bold, we
think an imprudent, act for Wesley to make a priest of the Church of
Rome his guest. Still the visit led to results which, to the writer at
least, are interesting.
The priest’s name was Adams, or Watson Adams. His home was at
Osmotherley (the author’s native place), a village of about a thousand
inhabitants, sixty miles south of Newcastle. The place had been famous
as a papistical settlement, and was still resorted to by not a few
adherents of that religion. The writer’s grandmother, for a long series
of years, walked, every Sunday morning, over a bleak, roadless moor,
full of bogs and pitfalls, a distance of at least twelve miles there
and back, for the purpose of attending, in Osmotherley chapel, the
reading of a few Latin prayers, not a word of which had she scholarship
enough to understand. Here had been an important convent of Franciscan
friars, the chapel of which was still standing. In the immediate
neighbourhood were the ruins of another popish edifice, known by the
name of “the Lady’s chapel”; and, within a mile, were the beautiful and
extensive remains of Mount Grace, a Carthusian priory, founded in 1396.
Wesley’s account of the priest’s visit is as follows:—
“March 28.—A gentleman called at our house, and said, that
he lived at Osmotherley, in Yorkshire; and had heard so many
strange accounts of the Methodists, that he could not rest
till he came to inquire for himself. I told him he was welcome
to stay as long as he pleased, if he could live on our Lenten
fare. He made no difficulty of this, and willingly stayed till
the Monday sennight following; when he returned home, fully
satisfied with his journey.”
The odd acquaintance thus begun was perpetuated. A week after this
(on Easter Monday), Wesley began the day by preaching, at half-past
four o’clock, to a large congregation, including “many of the rich
and honourable.” He then set out for London, and, at eight o’clock,
preached in the open air, to “a large and quiet congregation,” at
Chester-le-street. Starting again, he reached Northallerton in the
evening, and made the inn his preaching place. The priest, Adams, and
some of his neighbours, including Elizabeth Tyerman, a Quakeress,
formed part of his congregation. The priest wished Wesley to come
and preach in his house at Osmotherley. The invitation was at once
accepted; Wesley mounted; and, travelling up hill and down hill, seven
miles more, reached the village a little before ten at night; having
ridden during the day, over execrable roads, a distance of at least
sixty miles, and preached thrice. Of course, at this season of the
year, it had long been dark; and, in a village so sequestered, most of
the inhabitants had retired to rest; but the priest and his friends
went round the place, and, arousing the people, succeeded, in about
an hour, in collecting a congregation in the chapel which formerly
belonged to the Franciscan friars. Wesley preached to them, and, after
midnight, went to bed, feeling, as he expressed it, “no weariness at
all.” At five in the morning, he preached again, on Romans iii. 22,
a sermon, in a popish chapel, on the great anti-popish doctrine of
justification by faith alone, part of the congregation having sat up
all night for fear they should not awake in sufficient time to hear
him. Many of them either were or had been papists, and one who was
present was the Quakeress already mentioned. After the sermon, this
unbaptized woman, abruptly addressing Wesley, asked, “Dost thou think
water baptism an ordinance of Christ?” Wesley replied, “What saith
Peter? ‘Who can forbid water, that these should not be baptized, who
have received the Holy Ghost even as we?’” Wesley adds: “I spoke but
little more, before she cried out, ‘’Tis right! ’tis right! I will be
baptized.’ And so she was, the same hour.“[570]
On reaching Leeds, a week afterwards, Wesley wrote, as follows, to his
brother Charles.
“LEEDS, _April 23, 1745_.
“DEAR BROTHER,—It was time for me to give them the ground
at Newcastle, and to fly for my life. I grew more and more
honourable every day: the rich and great flocking to us
together, so that many times the room would not hold them.
Iniquity, for the present, hath stopped her mouth; and it is
almost fashionable to speak well of us. In all appearance, if
I had stayed a month longer, the mayor and aldermen would have
been with us.”
He then proceeds to give an account of his journey to Northallerton,
where he found “a noble people, who received the word with all
readiness of mind”; and of his setting out for Osmotherley, where he
says: “I preached in a large chapel which belonged, a few years since,
to a convent of Franciscan friars. I found I was got into the very
centre of all the papists in the north of England. ‘_Commessatorem haud
satis commodum._’ This also hath God wrought.”[571]
Thus began Methodism in Osmotherley, Wesley preaching the first
sermon, in a popish chapel, at eleven o’clock at night, having been
brought to the place by a popish priest and a Quaker woman. A society
was formed soon after, the original class papers and society book
of which, for 1750, and onwards, are still in existence. Four years
afterwards, a chapel was erected, which still stands, and which, up to
the year 1865, for the long period of one hundred and eleven years,
was uninterruptedly occupied as a Methodist place of worship, being,
with one exception (Coleford, in Somersetshire), the oldest Methodist
chapel in the world, continuously used as such. In it, the writer was
converted, and painfully he regrets that, in the present mania for new
chapels, the society, without the least necessity, were barbarous
enough to quit it for a more modern structure, not a whit more
adapted to their church necessities, and, of course, destitute of the
unequalled memories belonging to the ugly, but venerable pile, now, we
fear, left to rats and ruin.
Osmotherley, nestled beneath moorland mountains, was one of Wesley’s
favourite haunts. Though seven miles from the direct road between
London and Newcastle, and a place difficult to reach, he paid at least
sixteen visits to the place to which he was so strangely introduced.
Nor did he forget or neglect his old friend, the popish priest. His
house, on some occasions, was Wesley’s home. When he visited him, in
1776, he found him “just quivering over the grave”; and, at his visit
a year later, he writes:—“I found my old friend was just dead, after
living a recluse life near fifty years. From one that attended him, I
learned that the sting of death was gone, and he calmly delivered up
his soul to God.”
Leaving a place, for lingering too long at which the writer craves
forbearance, we must follow Wesley in his evangelistic wanderings. He
made his way to Sykehouse, to Epworth, and to Grimsby, at which last
mentioned town he preached to a “stupidly rude and noisy congregation,
encouraged thereto by a drunken alehouse keeper.” At Epworth, he
preached at the market cross, having most of the adults in the town
to hear him. He went to his father’s church, and there heard his old
acquaintance, John Romley, preach a sermon which, “from beginning to
end, was a railing accusation.” He returned to Leeds, Armley, Birstal,
and Bradford.
Leaving the west riding, he made a tour in Lancashire, Cheshire, and
Derbyshire, and then came round to Sheffield, where he preached on the
floor of the Methodist meeting-house, “which the good Protestant mob
had just pulled down,” to the largest and one of the quietest Sheffield
congregations he had ever seen. He then made his way to Nottingham,
Wednesbury, and Birmingham, at the last of which places “stones and
dirt were flying from every side, almost without intermission, for near
an hour.” On Saturday, May 11, he got to London, from which he had been
absent about twelve weeks. Here he found things in an unsatisfactory
state. There were more than two thousand members, above two thirds
of whom were women.[572] “The sower of tares had not been idle. Many
were shaken; and some, who once seemed pillars, were moved from their
steadfastness.” Numbers were “hugely in love” with what Wesley calls,
“that solemn trifle, Robert Barclay’s Apology.” This he and his brother
read over with them. “Their eyes were opened; they saw Barclay’s
nakedness, and were ashamed.”
Having employed a month in London, Wesley set out for Cornwall, where
he spent the next five weeks. The persecutions he encountered have
been related at the commencement of the present chapter. Suffice it to
remark here, that, during this Cornish tour, he did what he was rarely
permitted to do elsewhere; he preached in not fewer than four churches,
with the consent, or at the request, of their respective ministers. An
odd event also happened to him at St. Just, where, as he himself was
about to begin to preach, a kind of gentlewoman took his place, and
“scolded, screamed, spit, and stamped, wrung her hands and distorted
her face,” most violently. She had been bred a papist, and had been
rejoiced to hear that Wesley was one; but, being now undeceived and
disappointed, her anger was quite equal to what her joy had been. Like
a true philosopher, Wesley let the vociferous lady have all the talking
to herself, and “took no notice of her at all, good or bad.” Wesley
returned to London on August 16.
Terrible was the national excitement which now existed. A few weeks
before, Charles Edward Stuart had embarked from Brittany, with about
fifty of his Scotch and Irish adherents, and had set up his standard in
Scotland, emblazoned with the motto, “_Tandem triumphans_.” On the 4th
of September, he proclaimed his father in the town of Perth; within a
fortnight, he entered Edinburgh; and, a few days afterwards, fought the
royal troops at Preston Pans, and was victorious. Under the pretentious
title of “regent of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, France, and
Ireland,” he marched his increasing forces to Carlisle, Lancaster,
Manchester, and Derby; and was then driven back to Scotland, where, on
April 16, 1746, was fought the decisive battle of Culloden. These brief
remarks will help to illustrate Wesley’s Journal.
Five days after the proclamation of the Pretender, namely, on September
9, Wesley set out from London to Newcastle. On his way he called upon
Doddridge, the great Dissenter, and addressed his students. His purpose
was to go round by Epworth; but, “hearing of more and more commotions
in the north,” he hastened to Newcastle. At Leeds, the mob pelted him
and his society with dirt and stones, and were “ready to knock out
all their brains for joy that the Duke of Tuscany was emperor.” At
Osmotherley, he took occasion to visit the Carthusian priory, already
mentioned; and, after describing the walls, cells, and gardens,
expressed a sentiment which, however just, was at that time far from
being popular:—“Who knows but some of the poor superstitious monks,
who once served God here according to the light they had, may meet us,
by-and-by, in that house of God, ‘not made with hands, eternal, in the
heavens’?” On September 18, he reached Newcastle, in, what he calls, an
“acceptable time.”
News had just arrived that the Pretender had entered Edinburgh. The
inhabitants were in the utmost consternation. Wesley at once commenced
preaching, selecting as his text, “Who can tell, if God will return,
and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?”
The _Newcastle Courant_, for September 14 to September 21, is before
us, containing an account of an association of his majesty’s Protestant
subjects in Ireland, pledging their faith and honour, that they will,
at the hazard of their lives and fortunes, oppose the abominable and
unnatural rebellion now carried on in favour of the popish Pretender.
There is also an address to the king by seven hundred and thirty of
the merchants of London, and from the lord provost, magistrates, and
council of Edinburgh, to the same effect.
The following loyal, if not finished, lines are published:—
“Rouse, Britons, rouse, before it be too late,
Join heart and hand, or slavery is your fate;
Remember how your fathers bravely stood,
And neither spared their treasure, nor their blood,
Preserved your liberties, and Church, and state;
Your sons cry out, _Remember eighty-eight_.”
The day after Wesley’s arrival, Mr. Ridley, the mayor, summoned all
the householders of Newcastle to meet him at the town hall, and to
sign an agreement, to the effect that they would hazard their goods
and lives, in defending the town against the common enemy. He ordered
the townsmen to be under arms, and to mount guard in turns. Pilgrim
Street gate, just outside of which was Wesley’s Orphan House, was
walled up; and Wesley and his society spent the day in fasting and in
prayer. The agreement submitted by the mayor, and which was signed by
eight hundred and thirteen inhabitants of the town, was, that they “do
voluntarily oblige themselves to appear in person, or to provide daily,
or when required, an able man to act in concert with his majesty’s
forces in the town, for the defence thereof, against all his majesty’s
enemies.”[573] As Wesley did not accompany the householders to meet the
mayor, he wrote to him the following letter:—
“_To the Worshipful the Mayor of Newcastle._
“SIR,—My not waiting upon you at the town hall was not owing to
any want of respect. I reverence you for your office’ sake; and
much more for your zeal in the execution of it. I would to God,
every magistrate in the land would copy after such an example!
Much less was it owing to any disaffection to his majesty King
George. But I knew not how far it might be either necessary or
proper for me to appear on such an occasion. I have no fortune
at Newcastle: I have only the bread I eat, and the use of a
little room for a few weeks in the year.
“All I can do for his majesty, whom I honour and love,—I think
not less than I did my own father,—is this: I cry unto God,
day by day, in public and in private, to put all his enemies
to confusion: and I exhort all that hear me to do the same;
and, in their several stations, to exert themselves as loyal
subjects; who, so long as they fear God, cannot but honour the
king.
“Permit me, sir, to add a few words more, out of the fulness of
my heart. I am persuaded you fear God, and have a deep sense
that His kingdom ruleth over all. Unto whom then (I may ask
you), should we flee for succour, but unto Him whom, by our
sins, we have justly displeased? O, sir, is it not possible to
give any check to these overflowings of ungodliness? to the
open, flagrant wickedness, the drunkenness and profaneness,
which so abound, even in our streets? I just take leave to
suggest this. May the God whom you serve direct you in this,
and all things! This is the daily prayer of, sir,
“Your obedient servant, for Christ’s sake,
“JOHN WESLEY.”
This was written on September 21, on which day arrived the news of
General Cope’s disastrous defeat at Preston Pans. Newcastle was seized
with panic. Many of the opulent of the inhabitants fled with the utmost
precipitation, taking their most valuable effects with them. Wesley
writes:—
“September 22.—The walls are mounted with cannon, and all
things prepared for sustaining an assault. Our poor neighbours,
on either hand, are busy in removing their goods. And most of
the best houses in our street are left without either furniture
or inhabitants. Those within the walls are almost equally busy
in carrying away their money and their goods; and more and more
of the gentry every hour ride southward as fast as they can. At
eight, I preached at Gateshead, in a broad part of the street,
near the popish chapel, on the wisdom of God in governing the
world.”
Meanwhile, part of the Northumberland militia entered the town, namely,
about four hundred horse, and above two hundred foot,[574] all well
armed, and headed by the county gentlemen. Still the alarms continued,
and the storm seemed nearer every day. “Many,” says Wesley, “wondered
we would still stay without the walls; others told us, we must remove
quickly; for if the cannon began to play from the top of the gates,
they would beat all the house about our ears. This made me look how
the cannon on the gates were planted; and I could not but adore the
providence of God, for it was obvious—(1) they were all planted in such
a manner, that no shot could touch our house; (2) the cannon on Newgate
so secured us on one side, and those upon Pilgrim Street gate on the
other, that none could come near our house, either way, without being
torn in pieces.”
Amid the most terrible alarms, Wesley continued preaching in Newcastle,
and visiting the country societies round about. On October 8 he wrote
the following characteristic letter to General Husk:—
“A surly man came to me this evening, as he said, from you. He
would not deign to come upstairs to me, nor so much as into the
house; but stood in the yard till I came, and then obliged me
to go with him into the street, where he said, ‘You must pull
down the battlements of your house, or to-morrow the general
will pull them down for you.’
“Sir, to me this is nothing. But I humbly conceive it would
not be proper for this man, whoever he is, to behave in such a
manner to any other of his majesty’s subjects, at so critical a
time as this.
“I am ready, if it may be for his majesty’s service, to pull
not only the battlements, but the house down; or to give up any
part of it, or the whole, into your excellency’s hands.”
Besides the troops already mentioned, the town had been reinforced by
the entrance of six hundred Dutch soldiers, belonging to the regiment
of General de la Rocque; and gentlemen volunteers had become expert in
military exercise, especially the company with red and pink cockades.
All persons residing outside the walls were ordered to take their
ladders to the town’s yard, and their firearms to the mayor; and no
person was to fire a gun at night under pain of imprisonment. Two
hundred cannon were planted on the town walls; and the water gates on
the quay side were all built up with gun holes in them.[575]
Wesley, supposing the danger was over for the present, started off, on
October 9, on a short tour to Epworth, leaving John Trembath to supply
his place. At Ferrybridge he was conducted to General Wentworth, who
read all the letters he had about him. At Doncaster, where he slept, or
rather wished to sleep, he was surrounded by drunken, cursing, swearing
soldiers. At Epworth, he had, for once, the satisfaction of hearing
Mr. Romley preach “an earnest, affectionate sermon”; while he himself
strongly exhorted the society to “fear God, and honour the king.” He
then returned to Newcastle, by way of Sheffield, Birstal, Leeds, and
Osmotherley, arriving on October 22, after an absence of thirteen days.
Within a week, the right honourable Fieldmarshal Wade, and Prince
Maurice of Nassau, arrived with about nine thousand Dutch and English
soldiers, which, when added to General St. George’s dragoons, General
Sinclair’s Royal Scots, and other troops, made about fifteen thousand
men, all encamped upon Newcastle moor.[576] With such an influx, no
wonder that wickedness abounded. Wesley was horrified, and on October
26 sent to Mr. Ridley, the mayor, the following letter:—
“SIR,—The fear of God, the love of my country, and the regard I
have for his majesty King George, constrain me to write a few
plain words to one who is no stranger to these principles of
action.
“My soul has been pained day by day, even in walking the
streets of Newcastle, at the senseless, shameless wickedness,
the ignorant profaneness, of the poor men to whom our lives
are entrusted. The continual cursing and swearing, the wanton
blasphemy of the soldiers in general, must needs be a torture
to the sober ear, whether of a Christian or an honest infidel.
Can any that either fear God, or love their neighbour, hear
this without concern? especially if they consider the interest
of our country, as well as of these unhappy men themselves.
For can it be expected, that God should be on their side who
are daily affronting Him to His face? And if God be not on
their side, how little will either their number, or courage, or
strength avail?
“Is there no man that careth for these souls? Doubtless there
are some who ought so to do. But many of these, if I am rightly
informed, receive large pay, and do just nothing.
“I would to God it were in my power, in any degree, to supply
their lack of service. I am ready to do what in me lies, to
call these poor sinners to repentance, once or twice a day
(while I remain in these parts), at any hour, or at any place.
And I desire no pay at all for doing this; unless what my Lord
shall give at His appearing.
“If it be objected (from our heathenish poet), ‘this conscience
will make cowards of us all,’ I answer, let us judge by matter
of fact. Let either friends or enemies speak. Did those who
feared God behave as cowards at Fontenoy? Did John Haime, the
dragoon, betray any cowardice, before or after his horse sunk
under him? Or did William Clements, when he received the first
ball in his left, and the second in his right arm? Or John
Evans, when the cannon ball took off both his legs? Did he not
call all about him, as long as he could speak, to praise and
fear God, and honour the king? as one who feared nothing, but
lest his last breath should be spent in vain.
“If it were objected, that I should only fill their heads with
peculiar whims and notions; that might easily be known. Only
let the officers hear with their own ears; and they may judge
whether I do not preach the plain principles of manly, rational
religion.
“Having myself no knowledge of the general, I took the liberty
to make this offer to you. I have no interest herein; but I
should rejoice to serve, as I am able, my king and country. If
it be judged, that this will be of no real service, let the
proposal die, and be forgotten. But I beg you, sir, to believe,
that I have the same glorious cause, for which you have shown
so becoming a zeal, earnestly at heart; and that therefore, I
am, with warm respect, sir,—
Your most obedient servant,
“JOHN WESLEY.”
The mayor sent a message, to the effect that he would communicate the
proposal to the general. We are not told whether the general gave his
consent or not; but, five days afterwards, we find Wesley, in the midst
of this huge encampment, preaching from, “Ho, every one that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters!” “None,” says he, “attempted to make the least
disturbance, from the beginning to the end. Yet I could not reach their
hearts. The words of a scholar did not affect them, like those of a
dragoon or a grenadier.”
In such circumstances, Wesley honestly acknowledges, that a layman,
like John Haime, the brave dragoon, would have been more effective than
himself. This, however, did not discourage him. The day following,
he preached to the troops again. On this occasion, a lieutenant
endeavoured to raise disturbance; but, when Wesley had finished, tried
to make amends, by telling the soldiers that all that had been said was
very good.
The next day, Saturday, November 2, his text was, “The Scripture hath
concluded all under sin, that the promise might be given to them that
believe;” and he now began to see some fruit of his labour. On the
Sunday, the camp was again his cathedral. Abundance of people flocked
together, horse and foot, rich and poor, to whom he declared, “There
is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of
God.” He had long laid aside the German tongue, but, seeing a number
of Germans standing disconsolate at the skirts of the congregation, he
also addressed them, the poor troopers drinking in every word.
This terminated his labours in the camp on Newcastle moor. The next
day he set out for London, and spoiled the Guy Fawkes holiday in
Leeds, by informing the magistrates that he had met several expresses,
sent to countermand the march of the army into Scotland; and that
the rebels had passed the Tweed, and were marching southward. The
hurry in the streets was quashed; bonfires were abandoned; and guns,
squibs, and crackers were no longer the playthings of the uproarious
crowd. Wesley proceeded on his journey, finding watchmen standing,
with great solemnity, at the end of almost every village through which
he passed. On entering Wednesbury, after it was dark, he was bogged
in a quagmire; the people came with candles; and, getting out, and
leaving them to disengage his horse, he hastened to Francis Ward’s,
and, bedaubed with mire, at once commenced preaching. On the 13th of
November he arrived safe in London, where he spent the rest of the
year, in preaching, and finishing his “Farther Appeal.” He gave away
some thousands of tracts among the common people; and his example was
immediately copied by others. The lord mayor ordered a large quantity
of papers, dissuading from cursing and swearing, to be printed,
and distributed to the trainbands; and on December 18, “An Earnest
Exhortation to Repentance” was given at all the church doors in London,
to every person who came out, and a copy left at the house of every
householder who happened to be absent. “I doubt not,” says Wesley, “but
God gave a blessing therewith.”
Wesley’s old friend and brother-in-law, Westley Hall, was already a
waverer; and, at the end of 1745, wrote a long letter, urging the
two Wesleys to renounce the Church of England. Wesley’s reply is too
long for insertion here; but it contains, besides other facts, some
startling high church principles, which are well worth noting. He
writes:—
“We believe it would not be right for us to administer either
baptism or the Lord’s supper, unless we had a commission so to
do from those bishops whom we apprehend to be in a succession
from the apostles.”
“We believe there is, and always was, in every Christian church
(whether dependent on the bishop of Rome or not), an outward
priesthood, ordained by Jesus Christ, and an outward sacrifice
offered therein, by men authorised to act as ambassadors of
Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.”
“We believe that the threefold order of ministers is not only
authorised by its apostolical institution, but also by the
written word.”
We must take Wesley as we find him; but is it not surprising to see him
still tenaciously clinging, even in phraseology, to the doctrine of
apostolical succession, and the offering of an _outward sacrifice_ in
the church, by an outward priesthood? He proceeds:—
“We allow, that many of the laws, customs, and practices of the
ecclesiastical courts are really indefensible; but we no more
look upon these filthy abuses, which adhere to our Church, as
part of the building, than we look upon any filth which may
adhere to the walls of Westminster Abbey as a part of that
structure.”
“We will obey all the laws of that Church (such as we allow
the rubrics to be, but not the customs of the ecclesiastical
courts), so far as we can with a safe conscience; and, with the
same restriction, we will obey the bishops, as executors of
those laws; but their bare will, distinct from those laws, we
do not profess to obey at all.”
“Field preaching is contrary to no law which we profess to
obey; nor are we clear, that the allowing lay preachers
is contrary to any such law. But if it is, this is one of
the exempt cases; one wherein we cannot obey with a safe
conscience.”
We have here a key to much in Wesley’s remarkable career. His doctrine
of apostolical succession was a figment. His language concerning Church
of England _priests_ still offering an _outward sacrifice_ savoured
of the popish doctrine which all true Protestants reject, though, as
will shortly be shown, the view he held was different from what his
words express. His belief in the “threefold order of ministers” was
changed a few weeks afterwards. Field preaching and the employment of
lay preachers had much to do with making Methodism; and, without a
continuance of these, Methodism will not maintain its power and its
position.
Wesley’s conference, in 1745, commenced at Bristol, on the 1st of
August, and was continued for five days following. Besides the two
Wesleys, there was but one clergyman, Mr. Hodges, present. There were
six itinerants: Thomas Richards, Samuel Larwood, Thomas Meyrick,
Richard Moss, John Slocomb, and Herbert Jenkins; and also one
gentleman, who was not a preacher at all, Marmaduke Gwynne, afterwards
the father-in-law of Wesley’s brother Charles.
At the opening of the conference a principle was adopted, which ought
to be practised in all similar assemblies, namely, that every one
might speak freely whatever was in his heart, and that no one should
be checked, either by word or look, even though what he was saying was
entirely wrong.[577] In an assembly of equals, met for purposes of
deliberation and counsel, free speech like this is indispensable to
satisfactory results.
During the first day of conference, the doctrine of justification was
reviewed; and it was agreed, that, while faith in Christ is the sole
condition of justification, repentance, that is, conviction of sin,
must go before faith, and (supposing there be opportunity for them)
fruits, or works meet for repentance, also.
On the second day, the Conference discussed the doctrines of assurance,
of works done before justification, and of obedience. It was agreed
neither to discourage nor encourage dreams, though it was admitted,
that, by such means, saving faith is often given. On the subject of
sanctification, it was laid down, that inward sanctification begins
in the moment we are justified; that, from that time, the believer
gradually dies to sin, and grows in grace; and that the seed of all
sin remains in him, till he is sanctified throughout, in spirit, soul,
and body. This entire sanctification is not ordinarily given till a
little before death; but we ought to expect it sooner; for, though
the generality of believers are not sanctified till near death, and
though few of those to whom St. Paul wrote his epistles were so at the
time he wrote, and though he himself was not sanctified at the time of
writing his former epistles, this does not prove that we may not be
sanctified to-day. It was further agreed, that sanctification should
scarcely be preached at all to those who were not pressing forward; and
when it was, it should always be by way of promise,—by drawing, rather
than by driving. And, further, it was determined, that the _general_
means which God has ordained for our receiving His sanctifying grace
are keeping all His commandments, denying ourselves, and taking up
our cross daily; and, that the _particular_ are prayer, searching the
Scriptures, communicating, and fasting.
The Methodist reader will find something here hardly in harmony with
the decisions of the previous Conference, and with Wesley’s subsequent
teaching. Twenty years after this, in answer to the question, “What
shall we do, that this work of God may be wrought in us?” Wesley said:—
“In this, as in all other instances, ‘by grace we are saved
through faith,’ Sanctification too is ‘not of works, lest
any man should boast,’ ‘It is the gift of God,’ and is to be
received by plain, simple faith. Suppose you are now labouring
to abstain from all appearance of evil, zealous of good works,
and walking diligently and carefully in all the ordinances
of God; there is then only one point remaining: the voice of
God to your soul is, ‘Believe, and be saved,’ First, believe
that God has _promised_ to save you from all sin, and to fill
you with all holiness. Secondly, believe that He is _able_
thus to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through
Him. Thirdly, believe that He is _willing_ as well as able.
Fourthly, believe that He is not only able, but willing to do
it _now_! Not when you come to die, not at any distant time,
not to-morrow, but to-day. He will then enable you to believe,
_it is done_, according to His word; and then ‘patience shall
have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire,
wanting nothing.’”[578]
At the third day’s session, the Conference debated points of church
government. The question was asked, “Is episcopal, presbyterian, or
independent church government most agreeable to reason?” The answer
given was, that each is a development of the other. A preacher
preaches, and forms an _independent_ congregation; he then forms
another and another in the immediate vicinity of the first; this
obliges him to appoint _deacons_, who look on the first pastor as
their common father; and as these congregations increase, and as their
_deacons_ grow in years and grace, they need other subordinate deacons,
or helpers; in respect of whom they are called _presbyters_, or elders;
as their father in the Lord may be called the _bishop_, or overseer of
them all. To say the least, this solution is ingenious.
With reference to Wesley’s assistants, fourteen in number, it was
resolved, that they had nothing to do but to save souls; and that, in
prosecuting this, they should, besides preaching every morning and
every night, spend from six o’clock till twelve every day in reading,
writing, and prayer; from twelve to five in visiting; and from five to
six in private communion with God.
It was also determined what books should constitute the libraries for
Wesley’s own use, at London, Bristol, and Newcastle,—namely, eleven on
divinity; four on physic; two on natural philosophy; one (Whiston) on
astronomy; one (the Universal) on history; two (Spenser and Milton) in
poetry; sixteen in Latin; twelve in Greek; and one (Buxtorf’s Bible) in
Hebrew.
While Wesley was thus conferring with his lay itinerants, he was,
unconsciously, corresponding with a man, who soon became the highest
dignitary in the Established Church.
Thomas Secker was six years the senior of Wesley. His father was a
Dissenter, and he himself was designed for the Dissenting ministry.
Scruples of conscience prevented this, and young Secker resolved to
qualify himself for the practice of physic. At Leyden, he took the
degree of M.D.; but, on returning to England, in 1721, he entered
himself a gentleman commoner at Exeter College, Oxford; and, in the
year following, was ordained a deacon of the Church of England. In
1724, he became rector of the valuable living of Houghton-le-spring;
and, in 1725, married Bishop Benson’s sister. In 1733, he obtained the
rectory of St. James’s; and, the year after, was raised to the see of
Bristol. In 1737, he was translated to the diocese of Oxford; and, in
1758, was advanced to the primacy.
In the month of May, 1745, this distinguished man commenced a long,
temperate, and able correspondence with Wesley, under the _alias_ of
John Smith. The correspondence was continued for nearly three years,
and was first published by Mr. Moore, in his Life of Wesley, in 1825.
Space forbids even an epitome of these able letters. They are full of
interest, intelligence, and piety; and do honour to the head and heart
of both the archbishop and the clerical itinerant.
The only thing which remains, before leaving the year 1745, is to
notice Wesley’s publications. His answer to Church; his Dialogues
on Antinomianism; and his Short View of the Difference between the
Moravians and himself, have been already mentioned. The rest were
partly original, and partly abridgments from the works of others.
1. “Thoughts concerning the present Revival of Religion in New England.
By Jonathan Edwards. Abridged by John Wesley.” 12mo, 124 pages. This
deeply interesting work was first published at Boston, in America, in a
volume of more than two hundred pages, and has been referred to already
in a previous chapter of the present book.
2. “An Extract of Mr. Richard Baxter’s Aphorisms on Justification.”
12mo, 36 pages. The pamphlet is divided into forty-five propositions,
and, like all Baxter’s works, is full of Scripture truth, and well
worth reading.
3. “Hymns on the Lord’s Supper; by John and Charles Wesley. With a
preface concerning the Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice. Extracted
from Dr. Brevint. By John Wesley.” 12mo, 166 pages. The hymns are
a hundred and sixty-six in number, and are distinguished by great
variety of thought and language. Several of the best are published
in the Methodist Hymn-book. An extract from Brevint, which, by
publishing, Wesley made his own, will help to explain his meaning in
the objectionable phraseology he employed in his letter to Westley Hall.
“The Lord’s supper was chiefly ordained for a sacrament:—1. To
_represent_ the sufferings of Christ which are _past_, whereof
it is a _memorial_. 2. To _convey_ the first fruits of these
sufferings, in _present graces_, whereof it is a _means_. 3.
To _assure_ us of _glory to come_, whereof it is an infallible
_pledge_.”
“The sacrifice, which by a _real_ oblation was not to
be offered more than once, is, by a devout and thankful
commemoration, to be offered up every day. The _sacrifice_ in
itself can never be repeated. Nevertheless, this sacrament,
by our remembrance, becomes a _kind of sacrifice_, whereby we
present before God the Father that precious oblation of His
Son once offered. To _men_, the holy communion is a _sacred
table_, where God’s minister is ordered to represent, from God
his Master, the passion of His dear Son, as still fresh, and
still powerful for their eternal salvation. And to _God_, it
is an _altar_, whereon men mystically present to Him the same
sacrifice, as still bleeding and sueing for mercy.”
The remainder of Wesley’s publications, in 1745, were original: namely:—
1. “An Earnest Persuasive to keep the Sabbath holy.” Four pages, 12mo.
This was afterwards reprinted as “A Word to a Sabbath-breaker.”
Sabbath breaking, in the days of Wesley, was one of the crying sins
of England. “How many are they,” he wrote, “in every city, as well as
in this, who profane the sabbath with a high hand! How many in this,
that openly defy God and the king, that break the laws, both Divine and
human, by working at their trade, delivering their goods, receiving
their pay, or following their ordinary business, in one branch or
another, and ‘wiping their mouths and saying, I do no evil!’ How many
buy and sell on the day of the Lord, even in the open streets of this
city? How many open, or (with some modesty) half open their shops?
even when they have not the pretence of perishable goods; without any
pretence at all: money is their god, and gain their godliness. What
also are all these droves in the skirts of the town, that well-nigh
cover the face of the earth? till they drop one after another into the
numerous receptacles prepared for them in every corner. They drink
in iniquity like water. A whole army joins together, and, with one
consent, in the face of the sun, runs upon the thick bosses of God’s
buckler.”[579]
This, written in 1745, is too true a picture of the state of things
at the present day. Wesley regarded national depravity as turning
chiefly on the two hinges of sabbath profanation, and the neglect of
the education of children. Till some way was found of stopping these
great inlets of wickedness, he had no hope of a general reformation.
“The religious observance of the sabbath,” he writes, “is the best
preservative of virtue and religion, and the neglect and profanation
of it is the greatest inlet to vice and wickedness.”[580] Holding such
views, no wonder that he published the pointed, pithy tract to which we
are now adverting.
2. “Swear not at all, saith the Lord God of Heaven and Earth.” Four
pages, 12mo. This also was reprinted as “A Word to a Swearer.” Like
all Wesley’s tracts, it is a model well worthy of imitation. Profane
swearing was another of the senseless, stupid, shameless sins of the
period in which Wesley lived. In another of his publications, issued in
1745, he asks: “In what city or town, in what market or exchange, in
what street or place of public resort, is not the name of God taken in
vain, day by day? From the noble to the peasant, who fails to call upon
God in this, if in no other way? Whither can you turn, where can you
go, without hearing some praying to God for damnation, either on his
neighbour or himself? cursing those, without either fear or remorse,
whom Christ hath bought to inherit a blessing!”[581]
3. “A Word in Season; or, Advice to an Englishman.” Twelve pages, 12mo.
This was published at the beginning of the rebellion, and shows what
would be the dreadful results if the Pretender should become king of
England by conquest. Popery would be established, and property would
be confiscated. “Who can doubt,” he asks, “but one who should conquer
England, by the assistance of France, would copy after the French rules
of government?” He continues:—
“How dreadful then is the condition wherein we stand! On
the very brink of utter destruction! But why are we thus?
I am afraid the answer is too plain, to every considerate
man. Because of our sins; because we have well-nigh filled
up the measure of our iniquities. For what wickedness is
there under heaven, which is not found among us at this day?
Not to insist on sabbath breaking, thefts, cheating, fraud,
extortion, violence, oppression, lying, robberies, sodomies
and murders, which with a thousand unnamed villainies are
common to us and our neighbour Christians of Holland, France,
and Germany,—what a plentiful harvest we have of wickedness
almost peculiar to ourselves! For who can _vie with us_ in the
direction of courts of _justice_? In the management of public
_charities_? Or in the _accomplished_, barefaced wickedness,
which so abounds in our _prisons_, and _fleets_, and _armies_?
Who in _Europe_ can compare with the _sloth_, _laziness_,
_luxury_, and _effeminacy_ of the _English gentry_? Or with the
_drunkenness_, and stupid, senseless _cursing_ and _swearing_,
which are daily seen and heard in our streets? Add to all
these that open and professed _Deism_ and _rejection_ of the
gospel,—that _public_, _avowed_ apostasy from the Christian
faith, which reigns among the rich and great, and hath spread
from _them_ to _all_ ranks and orders of men, and made us a
people fitted for the _destroyer of the gentiles_.”
This, under the circumstances then existing, was bold writing; but
Wesley was a bold man, and never shunned what he conceived to be his
duty because it was difficult and dangerous.
4. “A Word to a Drunkard.” Four pages, 12mo. The following are the
opening sentences:—
“Are _you_ a man? God made you a _man_; but you make yourself a
_beast_. Wherein does a _man_ differ from a _beast_? Is it not
chiefly in _reason and understanding_? But you throw away what
_reason_ you have. You strip yourself of your _understanding_.
You do all you can to make yourself a mere _beast_; not a
fool, not a madman only; but a _swine_, a poor filthy swine.
Go and wallow with them in the mire! Go, drink on, till thy
nakedness be uncovered, and shameful spewing be on thy glory!
O how honourable is a _beast_ of God’s making, compared to one
who makes himself a _beast_! But that is not all. You make
yourself a _devil_. You stir up all the devilish tempers that
are in you, and gain others which perhaps were not in you. You
cause the fire of anger, or malice, or lust to burn seven times
hotter than before.”
5. It was also about this period, that Wesley wrote and published his
small tract (12mo, four pages), entitled, “A Word to an Unhappy Woman.”
6. “Advice to the People called Methodists.” Twelve pages, 12mo. The
advices are five in number:—1. To consider, with deep and frequent
attention, the peculiar circumstances in which they stood; for their
name, their principles, and their strictness of life were _new_.
They were _newly united_ together,—a poor, low, and insignificant
people,—most even of their teachers being quite unlearned men. 2. Not
to imagine that they could avoid giving offence. 3. To consider deeply
with themselves, is the God whom we serve able to deliver us? 4. To be
true to their principles. 5. Not to talk much of what they suffered.
7. Wesley’s last and most important publication was, “A Farther Appeal
to men of Reason and Religion.” 12mo, 106 pages.
First of all, he gives a summary of the doctrines he teaches. He then
proceeds to meet the objection, that justification by faith alone is
not a scriptural doctrine, nor the doctrine of the Church of England.
He next replies to the accusations of the Bishop of London, in his
pamphlet, entitled, “Observations upon the Conduct and Behaviour of
the Methodists,” which had been sent to every clergyman in the London
diocese. Whitefield had already published an answer to this episcopal
production, in two letters, addressed “to the right reverend the
Bishop of London, and the other right reverend the bishops concerned
in the publication thereof;” and now Wesley undertakes the same
formidable task,—David against Goliath,—an outcast priest against a
whole bench of bishops. Wesley dissects the prelate’s pamphlet, and,
with a master’s brevity, refutes it bit by bit. He then replies to a
similar production, which has been already noticed, “The Notions of the
Methodists Disproved;” and after that proceeds to answer the “charge,”
lately published by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, Dr.
Smalbroke, a man of some ability, but not over skilled in logic,
who, in one of his best productions, “A Vindication of our Saviour’s
Miracles,” showed his weakness by calculating the precise number of
devils in the herd of Gadarenish swine. Wesley writes:—
“I conceive, not only, that your lordship has _proved_ nothing
hitherto; but that, strictly speaking, you have not _attempted
to prove_ anything, having _taken for granted_ whatever came
in your way. What is become of your demonstration? Leave
it to the carmen and porters, its just proprietors; to the
zealous apple-women, that cry after me in the street, ‘This is
he that rails at the _Whole Dutyful_ of man.’ But let every
one that pretends to learning or reason be ashamed to mention
it any more. O my lord, whom have you represented as rank,
dreaming enthusiasts? as either deluded or designing men?
Not only Bishop Pearson, a man hitherto accounted both sound
in heart, and of good understanding; but likewise Archbishop
Cranmer, Bishop Ridley, Bishop Latimer, Bishop Hooper; and all
the venerable compilers of our liturgy and homilies: all the
members of both the houses of convocation, by whom they were
revised and approved: yea, King Edward, and all his lords and
commons together, by whose authority they were established!
And, with these _modern enthusiasts_, Origen, Chrysostom, and
Athanasius are comprehended in the same censure.”
Wesley’s object in this important treatise may be gathered from its
concluding paragraph:—
“I have now answered most of the current objections,
particularly such as have appeared of weight to religious or
reasonable men. I have endeavoured to show, first, that the
_doctrines_ I teach are no other than the great truths of the
gospel. Secondly, that though I teach them not as I _would_,
but as I _can_, yet it is in a _manner_ not contrary to law.
And thirdly, that the _effects_ of thus preaching the gospel
have not been such as was weakly or wickedly reported,—these
reports being mere artifices of the devil, to hinder the work
of God.”
Up to the present, most of Wesley’s publications were small and cheap;
but they had an immense circulation, and not only paid expenses, but
left a profit. In a sermon, written in the year 1780, he naively
remarks: “Two-and-forty years ago, having a desire to furnish poor
people with cheaper, shorter, and plainer books, than any I had seen,
I wrote many small tracts, generally a penny apiece; and afterwards
several larger. Some of these had such a sale as I never thought of;
and, by this means, I unawares became rich. But I never desired or
endeavoured after it. And now that it is come upon me unawares, I lay
up no treasures upon earth; I lay up nothing at all. I cannot help
leaving my books behind me whenever God calls me hence; but, in every
other respect, my own hands will be my executors.”[582]
1746.
[Sidenote: 1746 Age 43]
Whitefield and his wife spent the whole of the year 1746 in America. “I
love,” said he, “to range in the American woods, and sometimes think
I shall never return to England any more.”[583] Writing to Wesley, in
October, he remarks:—
“The regard I have always had for you and your brother,
is still as great as ever; and I trust we shall give this
and future ages an example of true Christian love abiding,
notwithstanding difference in judgment. Why our Lord has
permitted us to differ as to some points of doctrine, will
be discovered at the last day. I have had the pleasure of
reading the continuance of your Appeal; and pray, that God
would prosper every labour of your pen and lip. I find that
antinomianism has been springing up in many places. I bless
God, you have made a stand against it. If you ask, how it is
with me, I answer, happy in Jesus, the Lord my righteousness.
If you ask, what I am doing,—ranging and hunting in the
American woods after poor sinners. If you ask, with what
success,—my labours were never more acceptable; and the door,
for fifteen hundred miles together, is quite open for preaching
the everlasting gospel. In Maryland and Virginia, people fly
to hear the word like doves to the windows. Congregations are
large, and the work is going on, just as it began and went on
in England. Notwithstanding the declining state of Georgia, the
orphan house is in a better situation than ever; and, in a year
or two, I trust it will support itself. Several of the great
and rich favour the Redeemer’s cause, and many of my professed
enemies are made to be at peace with me. O reverend and dear,
and very dear sir, be pleased to continue to pray for me, your
most affectionate, though unworthy, younger brother and servant
in Jesus Christ,
“GEORGE WHITEFIELD.”[584]
Charles Wesley spent more than four months in London and its vicinity;
about six in Bristol, in Cornwall, and in the west of England; and
the last weeks of the year in a tour to Yorkshire and Newcastle. Like
a flaming seraph, his soul glowed with sacred love and music; and no
toil, danger, or persecution was too great to be encountered for
his Saviour. In Cornwall, it was rumoured, that he had brought the
Pretender with him; and the famous Mr. Eustick came with a warrant to
apprehend him: but, as usual, at the last moment, Eustick’s courage
failed him. At Shoreham, as soon as he commenced the service, the wild
rabble “began roaring, stamping, blaspheming, ringing the bells, and
turning the church into a bear garden.” At Hexham, while preaching in a
cockpit, Squire Roberts did his utmost to raise a mob; and two butlers,
in the employ of two magistrates, brought their cocks, and set them
fighting. In the midst of all, Charles was jubilant, and expressed the
gratitude of his heart in the following thanksgiving:—
“All thanks be to God,
Who scatters abroad,
Throughout every place,
By the least of His servants, His savour of grace:
Who the victory gave,
The praise let Him have,
For the work He hath done;
All honour and glory to Jesus alone!”[585]
Equal zeal and heroism characterized Wesley’s helpers. At Nottingham,
the mob surrounded the meeting-house, and threatened to pull it down.
John Nelson was seized by the constable for creating the riot, and was
taken to an alderman, the crowd following him with curses and huzzas.
The alderman asked his name, and said: “I wonder you cannot stay at
home; you see the mob won’t suffer you to preach in Nottingham.” John
replied, that he was not aware that Nottingham was governed by a mob,
most towns being governed by the magistrates; and then proceeded “to
set life and death before him.” “Don’t preach here,” said the alderman;
while the constable began to be uneasy, and asked how he was to dispose
of his prisoner. “Take him to your house,” quoth the alderman. The
constable desired to be excused; and, at length, was directed to
conduct Nelson back to the place from which he had brought him, and to
be careful he was not injured. “So,” says honest John, “he brought me
to our brethren again; and left us to give thanks to God for all His
mercies.”
Wesley began the year 1746 by preaching in London at four o’clock in
the morning, a thing not often done by his successors.
On January 20, he set out for Bristol, and on the road read a book
which greatly moulded his future character and course. Lord King was
the son of a grocer at Exeter, and the nephew of the celebrated Locke,
who left him half his library. At the age of twenty-two, in 1691, he
published, “An Inquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity, and
Worship of the Primitive Church, that flourished three hundred years
after Christ; faithfully collected out of the extant writings of those
ages.” King was a rigid Dissenter; and the chief object of his learned
work was to prepare the way for that comprehension of the Dissenters
within the pale of the Established Church, which the Revolution of 1688
was supposed likely to accomplish. After this, he rose to be Lord High
Chancellor of England, and died in 1734, leaving behind him a character
of great virtue and humanity, and of steady attachment to civil and
religious liberty.
The above book by Lord King was Wesley’s companion on his way to
Bristol; and, after reading it, he wrote: “In spite of the vehement
prejudice of my education, I was ready to believe that this was a fair
and impartial draught; but, if so, it would follow, that bishops and
presbyters are essentially of one order, and that, originally, every
Christian congregation was a church independent of all others.”
Thus, notwithstanding his strong affection for the Church of England,
we find Wesley, almost at the commencement of his Methodist career,
entertaining doubts respecting its ecclesiastical polity. The recorded
decisions of the Conference of 1745 plainly show, that he regarded his
preachers as deacons, and presbyters, and thought himself a scriptural
bishop. Lord King’s researches served to confirm these sentiments. In
the minutes of the conference held a year after this (1747), we find
the following questions and answers:—
“_Q._ Does a church in the New Testament always mean a single
congregation?
“_A._ We believe it does. We do not recollect any instance to
the contrary.
“_Q._ What instance or ground is there then in the New
Testament for a _national_ church?
“_A._ We know none at all. We apprehend it to be a merely
political institution.
“_Q._ Are the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons
plainly described in the New Testament?
“_A._ We think they are; and believe they generally obtained in
the churches of the apostolic age.
“_Q._ But are you assured, that God designed the same plan
should obtain in all churches, throughout all ages?
“_A._ We are not assured of this; because we do not know that
it is asserted in Holy Writ.
“_Q._ If this plan were essential to a Christian church, what
must become of all the foreign reformed churches?
“_A._ It would follow, that they are no parts of the church of
Christ! A consequence full of shocking absurdity.
“_Q._ In what age was the Divine right of episcopacy first
asserted in England?
“_A._ About the middle of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Till then
all the bishops and clergy in England continually allowed, and
joined in, the ministrations of those who were not episcopally
ordained.
“_Q._ Must there not be numberless accidental varieties in the
government of various churches?
“_A._ There must, in the nature of things. For, as God
variously dispenses His gifts of nature, providence, and grace,
both the offices themselves and the officers in each ought to
be varied from time to time.
“_Q._ Why is it, that there is no determinate plan of church
government appointed in Scripture?
“_A._ Without doubt, because the wisdom of God had a regard to
this necessary variety.
“_Q._ Was there any thought of uniformity in the government of
all churches, until the time of Constantine?
“_A._ It is certain there was not; and would not have been
then, had men consulted the word of God only.”[586]
This is an important extract. Wesley loved the Church of England; but
who will say, that the views of Wesley were now identical with those
of the high church bigots of either past or present days! Their views
had been his; but he now renounced them. Lord King, the Dissenter, had
converted him. His principles, respecting ecclesiastical polity, were
changed. After this, we have no more nonsense concerning apostolical
succession. Indeed, in reference to this, Wesley wrote (in 1761): “I
never could see it proved; and I am persuaded I never shall.”[587]
It is not too much to say, that, from the time of reading the book
of Lord King, Wesley’s principles of ecclesiastical polity were
substantially the same as those of Dissenters. He still preferred
the Church of England, not because he thought it the only church,
but because, upon the whole, he thought it the best. In the above
extract, we have the principles deliberately adopted, which laid the
groundwork of his future proceedings. As a presbyter, in other words
a bishop, he employed preachers, and set them apart to the sacred
office. It is true, that it was not until nearly forty years after
this, that he began to use the imposition of hands; but that was a
mere _circumstance_, not the _essence_ of ministerial ordination. Mr.
Watson properly observes: “It has been generally supposed, that Mr.
Wesley did not consider his appointment of preachers as an _ordination_
to the ministry; but only as an irregular employment of laymen in the
spiritual office of merely expounding the Scriptures in a case of moral
necessity. This is not correct. They were not appointed to expound or
preach merely, but were solemnly set apart to the pastoral office; nor
were they regarded by him as _laymen_, except when in common parlance
they were distinguished from the clergy of the Church.”[588] His usual
mode of _setting apart or ordaining_ to the ministry consisted of
a most rigid examination of the ministerial candidate on the three
points—Has he grace? Has he gifts? Has he fruit? preceded by fasting
and prayer; and followed by official and authoritative appointment
to ministerial work. For the present, the form of laying on of hands
was not employed; but it was thought of, and was discussed. Hence the
following extract from the minutes of the conference held in 1746:—
“_Q._ Why do we not use more form and solemnity in receiving a
new labourer?
“_A._ We purposely decline it—(1) Because, there is something
of stateliness in it. (2) Because, we would not make haste. We
desire barely to follow Providence, as it gradually opens.”
It is granted that, for Wesley, after this, to fight so tenaciously for
the Church of England was inconsistent, but we take him as we find him.
Facts are facts; and we shall not attempt to blink them. Having founded
churches, or societies as he persisted in calling them, he proceeded to
provide and to _ordain_,—yes, to _ordain_ for them ministers. He was
a clergyman of the episcopal Church of England, with the views of a
Dissenter, and, acting accordingly, there was, of course, in his future
proceedings, much that was incongruous and perplexing.
Wesley left London for Bristol, on January 20. Two days afterwards,
he attended, in the latter city, a conference of the Calvinistic
Methodists, at which there were present Howel Harris and eleven of
his preachers, and Wesley and four of his. Wesley seems to have been
president; at all events, his name stands first. The following are the
minutes:—
“After prayer it was inquired:—(1) How we may remove any
hindrances of brotherly love which have occurred. (2) How we
may prevent any arising hereafter. It was feared that, in
consequence of Mr. Wesley’s preaching in Neath, there would be
a separation in the society. He answered, ‘I do not design to
erect a society at Neath, or any town in Wales, where there is
a society already, but to do all that in me lieth to prevent
any such separation.’
“We all agreed that, if we occasionally preached among each
other’s people, we should endeavour to strengthen and not to
weaken each other’s hands, and prevent any separation in the
several societies; and that a brother from Wesley’s society
should go with Harris to Plymouth and the west, to heal the
breach there made, and to insist on a spirit of love and its
fruits among the people. Agreed, that we should, on each side,
be careful to defend each other’s characters.”[589]
This is beautiful, and sets an example worthy of being emulated by the
Methodist Conferences of the present day. It was but five or six years
since the Methodist schism had happened; and yet, under the magnanimous
management of Wesley and Howel Harris, here we find the two parties
met, not to fight, but to love each other. Differences are kept up
and perpetuated, not by greatness and goodness, but by despicable
ignorance and selfish meanness. Why should Ephraim envy Judah, and
Judah vex Ephraim? The two are brothers; and, as brethren, it would be
a goodly and pleasant sight to see them _dwelling together_ in unity.
Wesley spent a month in Bristol and the neighbourhood; during which
period his brother Charles opened a chapel at Wapping;[590] and Wesley
himself received the following cautionary letter from a new clerical
acquaintance, and, ever afterwards, most confidential and trustworthy
friend. Vincent Perronet was now vicar of Shoreham, in the county of
Kent. A year and a half before, Wesley and Perronet had been brought
together by their mutual friend, the Rev. Henry Piers. Wesley writes:
“I hope to have cause of blessing God for ever for the acquaintance
begun this day.” The hope was realised. Wesley had no more faithful
friend than Vincent Perronet, who now wrote as follows:—
_“February 7, 1746._
“MY DEAR FRIEND,—I make no apology for this trouble, because
I know that you will think it needs none. God hath raised you
up to propagate His spiritual kingdom in the hearts of men;
therefore, be careful how you frustrate this great design of
God. But will you not do this, if you injure your health? Or
can you labour in the vineyard of Christ, when your strength is
gone? Deny yourself, my dear friend, so far as is consistent
with your constant labour; but be cautious lest your self
denials should rob God or His children of what you have
undertaken for the service of both. Remember, that, if you
weaken your body by over mortifications, you render yourself so
far incapable of promoting the honour of the former, and the
happiness of the latter; and yet I know that each of these is
dearer to you than life itself. Let the Holy Spirit’s advice,
out of the mouth of a mortified apostle, to the abstemious
Timothy, be constantly before you.
“I am, with great sincerity, my dear brother in Christ, your
most affectionate
VINCENT PERRONET.”[591]
At this period, advice like this, in Wesley’s case, was not unneeded.
On February 17, when days were short and weather far from favourable,
he set out, on horseback, from Bristol to Newcastle, a distance of
between three and four hundred miles. The journey occupied ten weary
days. Brooks were swollen, and, in some places, the roads were
impassable, obliging the itinerant to go round about through fields.
At Aldridge Heath, in Staffordshire, the rain turned into snow, which
the northerly wind drove against him, and by which he was soon crusted
over from head to foot. At Leeds, the mob followed him, and pelted him
with whatever came to hand. Several of the missiles struck him, some on
the face, but none seriously hurt him. At Skircoat Green, he preached
to a congregation of Quakers; and at Keighley, found the snow so deep,
that he was obliged to abandon his intention of travelling through the
dales. He arrived at Newcastle on February 26.
Here he found general sickness. Two thousand of the soldiers,
belonging to the encampment on the town moor, were already dead, and
the fever was still sweeping others away in troops. In Newcastle and
its neighbourhood, he spent the next eighteen days, preaching, on one
occasion, at Placey, out of doors, in the midst of a “vehement storm,”
which, however, the preacher and his “congregation regarded not.”
While he was here, a letter was published in the _London Magazine_,
addressed “to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, in relation to some false
facts affirmed by him in his Farther Appeal.” A passage was quoted
in reference to the clergy putting no difference between the holy
and profane at the sacramental table; and it was declared, that the
quotation “contains almost as many falsehoods as it does lines.” Wesley
is further accused of “gross misrepresentations and uncharitable
reflections”; of being “base, unjust, and senseless”; of “crowding a
heap of untruths into a little room”; of being animated by “a blind and
rash zeal, and glad to catch at every pretence of making God the patron
and favourer of his cause.”
A production so bitterly scurrilous scarcely deserved an answer; but,
as Wesley was slightly in error, he, like an honest man, frankly
confessed it. The following is his reply, published in the same
periodical.
“_June 18, 1746._
“SIR,—I delayed answering your letter of March 18, till I could
be fully informed of the facts in question.
“I said in the Farther Appeal, page 48, ‘Who dares repel one
of the greatest men in his parish from the Lord’s table, even
though he openly deny the Lord that bought him? Mr. Stonehouse
did this once; but what was the event? The gentleman brought an
action against him. And who was able and willing to espouse his
cause? He alone who took it into His own hands; and, before the
day when it should have been tried here, caused the plaintiff
to answer at a higher bar.’
“You (1) blame me for supposing that gentleman to be one who
openly denied the Lord that bought him; I mean, openly denied
the supreme Godhead of Christ. If he did not, I retract the
charge.
“You say (2) that gentleman brought no action, nor commenced
any suit against Mr. Stonehouse. Upon stricter inquiry, I find
he did not; it was another gentleman, Mr. C—p—r.
“You (3) observe, it was not the death of the plaintiff which
stopped the action; but before it proceeded to a trial, Mr.
Stonehouse thought fit to request it as a favour, that the
action might be stopped, promising not to do the like any more.
Mr. Stonehouse himself gives a different account; but whether
his or yours be the more just, is not material, since the
substance of what you observe is true, namely, ‘That it was not
the plaintiff’s death which stopped the action.’
“You add, ‘I would willingly hope, that you did not
deliberately design to impose upon the world.’ I did not; and
do, therefore, acknowledge the truth in as public a manner as
I am able, being willing, as far as in me lies, to make amends
for whatever injury I have done.
“I am, sir, yours,
“JOHN WESLEY.”
In the same month of March, another letter, of a different complexion,
was published in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_. The writer begins by
showing, that the years 48 and 88, in the last two centuries, at least,
if not longer, had been noted for great changes and revolutions. Thus,
in 1548, the Reformation was first completely established in England;
and, in 1588, the famous pretended invincible Spanish Armada made its
futile attempt to destroy the Protestantism of Great Britain. In 1648,
King Charles was condemned to death, and the gravest changes followed;
and, in 1688, occurred the flight of the last of the Stuart kings, and
the English Revolution.
The writer then proceeds to ask, whether there is not something
remarkable “in the revival of the Moravians very nearly about the same
time with the rise of the Methodists in England; and of a sect of the
same kind in Scotland, by the field preaching of Erskine and others;
and of exactly the same in Wales by the preaching of Howel Harris; and
of something of the same nature in France, where the principal preacher
concerned had been executed by the royal will and pleasure. Is there
not,” the writer continues, “something very surprising in all these
peoples’ rising about the same time, and preaching, all of them, the
same doctrines, and yet all of them, and all their several intentions
of so doing, being previously unknown to each other?”
The above coincidence was more than curious, and the author of the
letter suggests, that such facts and others, which he mentions, may
be “the dawning of some important religious change, or, at least, of
something very extraordinary, which the sacred womb of providence is
big with.”
At the same time as the above, Wesley was engaged in an important
correspondence of another kind. Dr. Doddridge was exactly a year older
than his illustrious Methodist contemporary, was the pastor of a
Dissenting congregation at Northampton, and the principal of an academy
for the education of candidates for the Dissenting ministry. Up to the
present, Wesley had chiefly lived within the state-church enclosure;
but now, having become a convert to the principles of Lord King, he
overstepped the enchanted circle, and thought it no disgrace to commune
and mingle with Dissenters. Methodist preachers were multiplying. Few
of them had had the advantages of education and of reading. Their
knowledge, generally speaking, was confined to the first principles
of religion. These were the only subjects on which they either did,
or were able to converse. Of necessity, their preaching was solely on
the fundamental points of experimental and practical religion; and
hence, their unequalled success in awakening and converting sinners.
Preachers of education and diversified knowledge would, perhaps, not
have excluded these; but they would, to a large extent, have regaled
their hearers with other truths, which, though of great interest, were
insignificant in point of importance when compared with the few great
and grand cardinal doctrines which formed the staple of all the sermons
of Wesley’s first itinerants. The effect of this unadorned preaching
of the greatest of all verities was surprising. Under these untutored
discourses, people found themselves emerging out of thick darkness
into light, which St. Peter aptly describes as “_marvellous_.”
These were glorious results, and almost make one wish, that among
the cultivated and captivating preachers of the present day, who can
discourse most eloquently upon any subject, from Eve’s figleaves up
to Aaron’s wardrobe, or from the architecture of Noah’s ark down to
the whale that swallowed Jonah, there were a sprinkling of men whose
preaching powers, like those of Wesley’s first helpers, were confined
to an incessant utterance, in burning though somewhat boorish words,
of the glorious old truths now-a-days too much neglected,—Repentance
toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, followed by the fruits
of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. If sinners are to
be converted, these are the doctrines which _must_ be preached. Other
doctrines and truths may be interesting, useful, and instructive; these
are absolutely _saving_ and _essential_.
Wesley was devoutly thankful for his uneducated but soul saving
preachers. Still, he saw that, as the Methodists increased in
knowledge, the preachers must keep pace with them. Without this,
though they might still be as successful as ever in converting
ignorant and rude sinners, they would be in danger of being neglected
and even despised by those who, in consequence of conversion, had
been greatly raised, in both an intellectual and social sense, above
their neighbours. In short, Wesley felt convinced that his preachers
must not only preach but read; and being persuaded, as a sort of
clerical Dissenter, that good things might be found even in Dissenting
Nazareths, he wrote to the most distinguished of all Dissenters
then existing, to make inquiry. Six months before, he had called on
Doddridge and had addressed his students; now, at Newcastle, in March,
1746, he addressed to him a letter, the nature of which may be gathered
from Doddridge’s answer.
“_March 15, 1746._
“I am grieved and ashamed, that any hurry, public or private,
should have prevented my answering your obliging letter from
Newcastle; especially as it has a face of disrespect, where I
ought to express the very reverse, if I would do justice either
to you, or my own heart. But you have been used to forgive
greater injuries. I have unwillingly a guardianship affair
on hand, on account of which, I must beg your patience for a
little longer, as to the list of books you desire me to send
you. I presume the list you desire is chiefly theological.
Perhaps my desire of making it too particular has hindered me
from setting about it. But, if God permit, you shall be sure to
have it in a few weeks.
“Let me know how you do, what your success is, and what your
apprehensions are. I fear we must have some hot flame to melt
us. Remember in your prayers,
“Reverend and dear sir,
“Your affectionate brother and servant,
“P. DODDRIDGE.”[592]
Three months later, Doddridge’s promise was fulfilled, in a long
letter, almost a little pamphlet, dated Northampton, June 18, 1746. He
writes—
“REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,—I set myself down, as well as I can,
to discharge my promise, and fulfil your request, in giving my
thoughts on that little collection of books, which you seem
desirous to make for some of your young preachers.”
Then follow his recommendations, which we give in brief:—
_Logic_—Carmichael, and Dr. Watts.
_Metaphysics_—De Urce, Dr. Watts, and Le Clerc.
_Ethics_—Puffendorf, and Hutcheson.
_Jewish Antiquities_—Lewis, Reland, Calmet, and Prideaux.
_Civil History_—Puffendorf, Turselme, and Lampe.
_Natural Philosophy_—Rowning, Ray, Cotton Mather, and Derham.
_Astronomy_—Watts, Jennings, and Wells.
_Natural and Revealed Religion_—Carmichael, Synge, Clarke,
Gibson, Doddridge, Jefferies, Bullock, Conybeare, Leland, and
Chandler.
He next proceeds to the chief subject, practical divinity, which
he thinks “ought to employ the greatest part of the care of every
preacher,” and adds:—
“I will not presume, sir, to mention to you the divines of the
Established Church; but as I may reasonably conclude, that the
Puritans and the divines of the separation are less known to
you, you will pardon me, if I mention a few of them, and of the
chief pieces.”
Then he gives the names of Bolton, Hall, Reynolds, Sibbes, Ward,
Jackson, Owen, Goodwin, Baxter, Bates, Flavel, Taylor, and Howe. He
continues:—
“In recommending the writings of the Dissenters of the present
age, I would be more sparing; yet permit me to mention Evans,
Wright, Watts, Henry, Boyce, Bennett, Jennings, and Grosvenor.
And here, dear sir, I thought to have concluded my letter; but
it occurs to my mind, that I have said nothing of commentators.
I have recommended to my pupils Beza, Erasmus, Castellio,
Heinsius, Patrick, Lowth, Locke, Pierce, Benson, Ainsworth,
Hammond, Grotius, Brennius, Wells, Calvin, Poole, Le Clerc, and
Cradock. I might mention several considerable writers, that
illustrate Scripture, though not direct commentators, such as
Witsius, Saurin, Mede, Hallet, Edwards, Le Crene, Wolsius,
Raphelius, Vitringa, Boss, Elsner, and Lardner. But as the
critical study of Scripture is not so much intended in your
plan, perhaps you will think, I have gone a little out of the
way in mentioning so many upon this head.
“I am afraid I have by this time thoroughly wearied you. It
only remains, that I most cordially recommend you and your
labours to the continued presence and blessing of God, and
subscribe myself, reverend and dear sir, your most affectionate
brother, and faithful humble servant,
“P. DODDRIDGE.”[593]
We return to Wesley. Accompanied by two of his preachers, John Downes,
and William Shepherd, he started from Newcastle for the south, on the
17th of March. When they had ridden between forty and fifty miles,
Downes was so ill that he was unable to proceed farther; and Wesley’s
horse was so lame, that it could scarcely walk. Wesley writes:—“By
riding thus seven miles, I was thoroughly tired, and my head ached more
than it had done for months. I then thought, ‘cannot God heal either
man or beast, by any means, or without any?’ Immediately, my weariness
and headache ceased, and my horse’s lameness in the same instant. Nor
did he halt any more either that day or the next. I here aver a naked
fact; let every man account for it as he sees good.”
Coming to Nottingham, he says: “I had long doubted what it was which
hindered the work of God here. But, upon inquiry, the case was plain.
So many of the society were either triflers or disorderly walkers, that
the blessing of God could not rest upon them; so I made short work,
cutting off all such at a stroke, and leaving only a little handful,
who, as far as can be judged, were really in earnest to save their
souls.”
At Wednesbury and Birmingham, the antinomian teachers had laboured
hard to corrupt the Methodists. One came to Wesley at Birmingham, and
the following colloquy ensued:—
_Wesley._ “Do you believe you have nothing to do with the law
of God?”
_Antinomian._ “I have not: I am not under the law; I live by
faith.”
_W._ “Have you, as living by faith, a right to everything in
the world?”
_A._ “I have: all is mine, since Christ is mine.”
_W._ “May you then take anything you will anywhere—suppose out
of a shop, without the consent or knowledge of the owner?”
_A._ “I may, if I want it; for it is mine: only I will not give
offence.”
_W._ “Have you also a right to all the women in the world?”
_A._ “Yes, if they consent.”
_W._ “And is not that a sin?”
_A._ “Yes, to him that thinks it is a sin; but not to those
whose hearts are free.”
Horrible! No wonder, that Wesley wrote tracts against antinomian
teachers; and no wonder he adds, “Surely these are the firstborn
children of Satan!”
Wesley reached Bristol on March 27; and, eleven days afterwards, laid
“the first stone of the new house at Kingswood;” preaching, on the
occasion, from the words, “For brass I will bring gold,” etc. (Isaiah
lx. 17–22.)
He then hurried up to London, where in company with his friend, the
Rev. H. Piers, he visited a man who called himself a prophet. Wesley
says: “We were with him about an hour. But I could not at all think,
that he was sent of God: 1. Because he appeared to be full of himself,
vain, heady, and opinionated. 2. Because he spoke with extreme
bitterness, both of the king, and of all the bishops, and all the
clergy. 3. Because he aimed at talking Latin, but could not.”
Having spent three weeks in London, Wesley, on the 4th of May, again
set out for Bristol; but on the 17th was back to London. Here his
first business was to settle the chapels in Bristol, Kingswood, and
Newcastle, upon seven trustees, reserving only to himself and his
brother, as he says, the liberty of preaching and lodging there.
This, however, was scarcely correct, so far at least as Newcastle was
concerned, and as the following synopsis of the trust deed will show.
The seven trustees, for the Orphan House there, were Henry Jackson,
weaver, and William Mackford, corndealer, both of Newcastle; John
Nelson, mason, of Birstal; John Haughton, weaver, of Chinley End;
Thomas Richards, late of Trinity College, Oxford; Jonathan Reeves,
baker, late of Bristol; and Henry Thornton, gentleman, of Grays Inn,
London. The trusts were:—1. That Wesley and his brother should have
the free use of the premises, and likewise any person or persons whom
they might nominate or appoint during their lifetime. 2. That, after
the death of the two Wesleys, the trustees should monthly or oftener
nominate and appoint one or more fit person or persons to preach in the
said house, in the same manner, as near as may be, as God’s holy word
was preached at present. 3. That a school should be taught on the said
premises, consisting of forty poor children, to be selected by Wesley
and his brother during their respective lives, and, after their death,
by the trustees. 4. That when, by any cause, the trustees were reduced
to three, they should fill up the vacancies, and make the number seven.
5. That, during their lifetime, the two Wesleys should have the sole
appointment and removal of the masters and mistresses of the school.
6. That every preacher or minister, appointed to the Orphan House,
should, as long as the appointment lasted, preach in the said house
every morning and every evening, as had been usual and customary to be
done.[594]
Southey has fallen into an error as to the settlement of chapels.
He writes:—“Whenever a chapel was built, care was taken, that the
property should be vested, not in trustees, but in Mr. Wesley and
the Conference.” This is incorrect. From the first, the property of
Methodist chapels was always vested in trustees. It is true, that
Wesley reserved to himself the right of preaching in such chapels, and
of appointing others to preach therein; but, as Mr. Watson observes,
neither he nor the Conference had any more “property in the best
secured chapels, than in the poet laureate’s butt of sack.” Wesley
was glad to divest himself of such property, and to put it into the
hands of others. A year afterwards, he writes: 1747, March 19—“I
considered, ‘what would I do now, if I was sure I had but two days
to live?’ All outward things are settled to my wish; the houses at
Bristol, Kingswood, and Newcastle are safe; the deeds, whereby they
are conveyed to the trustees, took place on the 5th instant; my will
is made; what have I more to do, but to commend my soul to my merciful
and faithful Creator?”
Having made arrangements in London for the settlement of his chapels,
Wesley turned his attention to another subject, upon which opinions
will differ. The number of members in the London society, on the
12th of April, 1746, was 1939, and the amount of their quarterly
contributions £113 9_s._,[595] upon an average, fourteen pence per
member. Considering the high price of money, and that nearly the whole
of the London Methodists were extremely poor, the amount subscribed
was highly creditable. Wesley, however, needed more than this, not for
himself but others, and propounded a somewhat novel plan for raising it.
Tea was a costly luxury. It was first imported into England about the
year 1660, when an act of parliament was passed, imposing a duty of
eightpence on every gallon of the infusion sold in coffee houses. In
1664, the East India Company bought two pounds two ounces as a royal
present to his majesty King Charles II. It continued to be sold in
London for sixty shillings per pound till the year 1707; and, though
considerably cheaper in 1746, it was still a dear indulgence. Wesley
also believed its use to be injurious.
He tells us that, when he first went to Oxford, with an exceeding good
constitution, and being otherwise in health, he was somewhat surprised
at certain symptoms of a paralytic disorder. His hand shook, especially
after breakfast; but he soon observed that, if for two or three days he
intermitted drinking tea, the shaking ceased. Upon inquiry, he found
tea had the same effect on others, and particularly on persons whose
nerves were weak. This led him to lessen the quantity he took, and to
drink it weaker; but still, for above six and twenty years, he was more
or less subject to the same disorder.
In July, 1746, he began to observe, that abundance of the people of
London were similarly affected, some of them having their nerves
unstrung, and their bodily strength decayed. He asked them if they
were hard drinkers; they replied, “No, indeed, we drink scarce anything
but a little tea, morning and night.” He says:
“I immediately remembered my own case, and easily gathered,
from many concurring circumstances, that it was the same case
with them. I considered, ‘what an advantage would it be to
these poor enfeebled people, if they would leave off what
so manifestly impairs their health, and thereby hurts their
business also! If they used English herbs instead of tea, they
might, hereby, not only lessen their pain, but in some degree
their poverty. How much might be saved in so numerous a body as
the Methodists, even in this single article of expense! And how
greatly is all that can possibly be saved, in every article,
wanted daily by those who have not even food convenient for
them! Some of the Methodists had not food to sustain nature;
some were destitute of necessary clothing; and some had not
where to lay their heads. The little weekly contributions were
barely sufficient to relieve the sick.’ I reflected ‘what
might be done, if ten thousand, or one thousand, or only five
hundred, would save all they could in this single instance,
and put their savings into the poor-box weekly, to feed the
hungry, and to clothe the naked!’ I thought further: ‘many
tell me to my face, I can persuade this people to anything. I
will make a fair trial. If I can persuade any number, many who
are now weak or sick will be restored to health and strength;
many will pay those debts which others, perhaps equally poor,
can but ill afford to lose; many will be less straitened in
their own families; many, by helping their neighbour, will lay
up for themselves treasures in heaven.’ Immediately it struck
me, ‘but example must go before precept; therefore, I must
not plead an exemption for myself, from a daily practice of
twenty-seven years: I must begin.’ I did so; the three first
days my head ached, more or less, all day long, and I was
half asleep from morning to night. The third day, my memory
failed, almost entirely. In the evening, I sought my remedy in
prayer; and next morning my headache was gone, and my memory
as strong as ever. And I have found no inconvenience, but a
sensible benefit, in several respects, from that day to this.
My paralytic complaints are all gone; my hand is as steady now
(1748) as it was at fifteen; and so considerable a difference
do I find in my expense, that, in only those four families at
London, Bristol, Kingswood, and Newcastle, I save upwards of
fifty pounds a year.”
Having set the example, Wesley recommended the same abstinence to a few
of his preachers; and, a week later, to about a hundred of his people
whom he believed to be strong in faith; all of whom, with two or three
exceptions, resolved, by the grace of God, to make the trial without
delay. In a short time, he proposed it to the whole society. Objections
rose in abundance. Some said, “Tea is not unwholesome at all.” To
these, he replied that many eminent physicians had declared it was; and
that, if frequently used by those of weak nerves, it is no other than
a slow poison. Others said, “Tea is not unwholesome to me: why then
should I leave it off?” Wesley answered, “To give an example to those
to whom it is undeniably prejudicial, and to have the more wherewith
to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked.” Others said, “It helps my
health; nothing else will agree with me.” To such, Wesley’s caustic
reply was, “I suppose your body is much of the same kind with that
of your great grandmother; and do you think nothing else agreed with
her, or with any of her progenitors? What poor, puling, sickly things,
must all the English then have been, till within these hundred years!
Besides, if, in fact, nothing else will agree with you,—if tea has
already weakened your stomach, and impaired your digestion to such a
degree, it has hurt you more than you are aware. You have need to abhor
it as deadly poison, and to renounce it from this very hour.”[596]
What was the result of Wesley’s attempt to form a _tea_-total society?
We can hardly tell; except that he himself abstained from tea for the
next twelve years, until Dr. Fothergill ordered him to resume its
use.[597] Charles Wesley began to abstain, but how long his abstinence
lasted we are not informed. About a hundred of the London Methodists
followed the example of their leader; and, besides these, a large
number of others began to be _temperate_, and to use less than they had
previously.[598]
This was, to say the least, an amusing episode in Wesley’s laborious
life. All must give him credit for the best and most benevolent
intentions; and it is right to add, that, ten days after his proposal
was submitted to the London society, he had collected among his friends
thirty pounds for “a lending stock,” and that this was soon made up to
fifty, by means of which, before the year was ended, above two hundred
and fifty destitute persons had received acceptable relief.
On July 20, Wesley set out for Bristol, where he spent the next
fortnight. While here he paid a visit to Oakhill, near Shepton Mallet,
where “the good curate” hired a drunken mob to make disturbance.
As soon as Wesley began preaching, the “drunken champions” began
“screaming out a psalm”; but Wesley says, “our singing quickly
swallowed up theirs. Soon after, their orator named a text, and
preached a sermon; his attendants meantime being busy in throwing
stones and dirt” at Wesley’s congregation.
On August 10, Wesley went to Wales. He preached in Builth churchyard
to nearly all the inhabitants that the town contained. At Maesmennys,
Lanzufried, and Wenvo, he preached in the parish churches; and at
Cardiff in the castle yard. At Neath, he found twelve young men whom,
he says, he almost envied. They lived together in one house, and gave
away whatever they earned above the necessaries of life. Most of them
were predestinarians, but so little bigoted to their opinions, that
they would not suffer a predestinarian to preach among them, unless
he would avoid controversy. Here Wesley preached in the open street,
a gentleman and a drunken fiddler doing their best to interrupt his
service; but, none joining them, they were soon ashamed, and the
gentleman slunk away on one side, and the fiddler on the other. At
Margam, he had to have a Welsh interpreter; and at Leominster (to which
he went during his tour), he began preaching on a tombstone, on the
south side of the parish church, but was not allowed to finish. The
mob “roared on every side”; the bells were set a ringing; and then
the organ began to play amain. Wesley’s voice was drowned, and hence
he thought it advisable to remove to the corn market, where he had
a “quiet time,” and “showed what that sect is, which is ‘everywhere
spoken against.’”
Returning to Bristol, he started, on September 1, for Cornwall. At
St. Just, he found the liveliest society in the county, and yet a few
of the members he was “obliged to reprove for negligence in meeting,
which,” says he, “is always the forerunner of greater evils.” At
Sithney, he preached by moonlight; and, at Gwennap, to an “immense
multitude,” a funeral sermon for Thomas Hitchins, from, “To me to live
is Christ, and to die is gain.”
Having spent a fortnight among the Cornish Methodists, he set out,
on the 16th of September, for London, his brother meeting him at
Uxbridge, and becoming his escort to the capital.[599]
After a week in London, he paid a visit to his friend Perronet,
preaching, on the way, at Sevenoaks, “to a large, wild company,” one of
whom cursed him bitterly. At Shoreham, he preached twice in Perronet’s
church; but says, “the congregation seemed to understand just nothing
of the matter.” The rest of the year was spent in the metropolis.
It has been already stated, that Wesley, for conscience sake, was now
an abstainer from tea. Before the year expired, he went a step further.
He writes: December 29—“I resumed my vegetable diet (which I had now
discontinued for several years), and found it of use both to my soul
and body; but, after two years, a violent flux, which seized me in
Ireland, obliged me to return to the use of animal food.”
Whatever may be thought about the wisdom of a man, of such active
habits, adopting such an abstemious, anchorite sort of diet, there can
be no question about the fact, that his motives were of the highest
and purest kind. He gave up tea, that he might benefit the poor; and,
contemporaneously with his resumption of a vegetable diet, he commenced
an institution, which, to say the least, was not then so popular and so
common as it is at present. He writes: “I mentioned my design of giving
physic to the poor. In three weeks about three hundred came.” Such is
the entry in his Journal.
He had already provided a fund for relieving the necessities of the
poor by furnishing them with food and clothing; but something more
was requisite. Many of them were sick; their sufferings stirred his
sympathy; and yet he knew not how to help them. “At length,” he says,
“I thought of a kind of desperate expedient: ‘I will prepare and give
them physic myself.’ For six or seven and twenty years, I had made
anatomy and physic the diversion of my leisure hours; though I never
properly studied them, unless for a few months when I was going to
America, where I imagined I might be of some service to those who had
no regular physician among them. I applied to it again. I took into my
assistance an apothecary, and an experienced surgeon; resolving, at the
same time, not to go out of my depth, but to leave all difficult and
complicated cases to such physicians as the patients should choose. I
gave notice of this to the society; and, in five months, medicines were
occasionally given to above five hundred persons. Several of these I
never saw before; for I did not regard whether they were of the society
or not. In that time, seventy-one of these, regularly taking their
medicines, and following the regimen prescribed (which three in four
would not do), were entirely cured of distempers long thought to be
incurable. The whole expense of medicines, during this time, was nearly
forty pounds.”[600]
This was a bold step, and exposed Wesley to animadversion. He was not
a legally qualified medical practitioner, and there were not wanting
those who were ready to brand him as a quack. His defence was, that the
poor were neglected; that physicians were often useless; and that his
own gratuitous treatment was successful. In a letter, published in the
_Bath Journal_, in 1749, he writes: “I do not know that any one patient
yet has died under my hands. If any person does, let him declare it,
with the time and circumstances.”[601] And, in another letter addressed
to Archbishop Secker, in 1747, four months after his dispensary was
opened, he remarks:—
“For more than twenty years, I have had numberless proofs,
that regular physicians do exceeding little good. From a deep
conviction of this, I have believed it my duty, within these
four months last past, to prescribe such medicines to six or
seven hundred of the poor as I knew were proper for their
several disorders. Within six weeks, nine in ten of them, who
had taken these medicines, were remarkably altered for the
better; and many were cured of disorders under which they had
laboured for ten, twenty, forty years. Now, ought I to have let
one of these poor wretches perish, because I was not a regular
physician? to have said, ‘I know what will cure you; but I am
not of the college; you must send for Dr. Mead’? Before Dr.
Mead had come in his chariot, the man might have been in his
coffin. And when the doctor was come, where was his fee? What!
he cannot live upon nothing! So, instead of an orderly cure,
the patient dies; and God requires his blood at my hands.”[602]
It was difficult to answer this, and Wesley was not the man to be
browbeaten from the path of duty by envious and angry members of the
healing profession. Indeed, his success was such, that, within two
months after opening his dispensary at the Foundery in London, he
instituted a second in Bristol, and writing to his friend and patron,
Mr. Ebenezer Blackwell, says, “Our number of patients increases
in Bristol daily. We have now upwards of two hundred. Many have
already desired to return thanks, having found a considerable change
for the better already. But we are at a great loss for medicines;
several of those we should choose being not to be had at any price in
Bristol.”[603]
There are only two other matters, belonging to the year 1746,
which require attention; namely, Wesley’s conference, and Wesley’s
publications.
The conference commenced in Bristol on the 12th of May, and lasted four
days.[604] Four clergymen were present—the two Wesleys, and Messrs.
Hodges and Taylor. Besides these, there were four itinerants, Messrs.
Reeves, Maxfield, Westall, and Willis; and also Thomas Glascot, of
whom we know nothing. As at former conferences, so at this, doctrines
were reviewed, and carefully guarded against error and abuse; and,
after this, points of discipline were discussed and settled. It was
agreed, that “the properest persons to be present,” at the annual
conferences, were—1. The preachers. 2. The most earnest and most
sensible of the bandleaders living in the town where the conference
was held. 3. Any pious and judicious stranger who might be visiting
the place. It was thought, that it might be useful to read one or
more of Wesley’s tracts at each conference, were it only to correct
errors, or to explain obscurities. Wesley’s helpers were defined to
be “extraordinary messengers, designed of God to provoke the others
to jealousy.” It was resolved, that those who believed themselves to
be called of God to preach should be strictly examined on the three
points, Have they grace, gifts, and fruit? and that those in whom
these three marks undeniably concurred should be allowed to have such
a call. It was thought that, at present, they were not preaching the
atonement so much as they did at first; and that the sermons which were
attended with the greatest blessing, were—“1. Such as were most close,
convincing, particular. 2. Such as had most of Christ, the Priest, the
Atonement. 3. Such as urged the heinousness of men’s living in contempt
or ignorance of Him.” It was determined, that a sufficient call of
Providence to a new place was an invitation from some worthy person,
and a probability of doing more good by going thither, than by staying
longer where they were. New members were to be admitted into the bands
and societies only once a quarter, their names having been previously
read at meetings of the existing members; and, at the same time, had to
be read the names of those excluded from the society. Directions were
given to guard against formality in public singing. Efforts were to be
employed to induce the people to attend the church; and, as an example
to the Bristol Methodists, it was agreed, that the Bristol preachers
should go to St. James’s church every Wednesday and Friday. The country
was divided into seven circuits, namely—1. London, including Brentford,
Egham, Windsor, Wycombe, and the three counties of Surrey, Kent, and
Essex. 2. Bristol, including the isle of Portland, and the counties
of Somerset, Wilts, Oxford, and Gloucester. 3. Cornwall. 4. Evesham,
embracing Shrewsbury, Leominster, Hereford, and all the places from
Stroud to Wednesbury. 5. Yorkshire, to which was to be attached the
six counties of Cheshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire,
Rutlandshire, and Lincolnshire. 6. Newcastle. 7. Wales. The present
assistants were Reeves, Bennet, Haughton, Nelson, Wheatley, Trembath,
Westall, Richards, Downes, Meyrick, Maxfield, and Walker. And to these,
perhaps, would be added, Jones, Larwood, and Cownley. Copies of the
minutes of the conferences were to be given only to those who were or
might have been present; but they were to be read to the stewards and
leaders of bands, the Sunday and Thursday following each conference.
Such is a synopsis of the proceedings of the conference of 1746.
Notwithstanding Wesley’s almost incessant travelling and preaching,
he still found time to write. Two of his publications, in 1746, were
partly his own, but principally his brother’s.
First: “Hymns for those that seek, and those that have, Redemption in
the Blood of Jesus Christ.” 12mo, 68 pages. Twenty-eight of these hymns
are inserted in the Wesleyan Hymn-Book, and are among the finest that
the book contains. One of them, evidently written by Wesley himself,
begins with the line, “How happy is the pilgrim’s lot;” and though two
or three of the verses are not suitable for a mixed congregation to
sing, the whole is strikingly descriptive of Wesley’s own condition and
experience. He had no wife, and no children, and had just transferred
his chapels to trustees, and, hence, could sing what many in Methodist
congregations cannot.
“I have no babes to hold me here;
But children more securely dear
For mine I humbly claim;
Better than daughters or than sons,
Temples Divine of living stones,
Inscribed with Jesu’s name.
No foot of land do I possess,
No cottage in this wilderness
A poor, wayfaring man,
I lodge awhile in tents below;
Or gladly wander to and fro,
Till I my Canaan gain.
I have no sharer of my heart,
To rob my Saviour of a part,
And desecrate the whole;
Only betrothed to Christ am I,
And wait His coming from the sky,
To wed my happy soul.
Nothing on earth I call my own,
A stranger, to the world unknown,
I all their goods despise;
I trample on their whole delight,
And seek a country out of sight,
A country in the skies.”
Second. The other joint publication was, “Hymns of Petition and
Thanksgiving for the Promise of the Father.” By John and Charles
Wesley. 12mo, 36 pages. These were thirty-two in number, and were
specially intended for use at Whitsuntide. Several of the best of them
are in the Methodist Hymn-Book.[605]
Wesley’s other publications were the following:—
1. “A Word of Advice to Saints and Sinners.” 12mo, 12 pages.
2. “Lessons for Children. Part I.” 12mo, 76 pages; with a vignette on
the title-page of an angel on clouds, with a scroll in one hand, and
a trumpet in the other. The lessons are fifty-four in number, and are
almost entirely taken from the five books of Moses. Prefixed is an
address “to all parents and schoolmasters,” in which Wesley says:—
“I have endeavoured in the following lessons to select the
plainest and most useful portions of Scripture; such as
children may the most easily understand, and such as it most
concerns them to know. These are set down in the same order,
and generally in the same words, wherein they are delivered
by the Spirit of God. Where an expression is less easy to
be understood, I have subjoined a word or two by way of
explication. I cannot but earnestly entreat you, to take good
heed, how you teach these deep things of God. Beware of that
common, but accursed way, of making children parrots, instead
of Christians. Regard not _how much_, but to how good purpose
they read. Turn each sentence every way, propose it in every
light, and question them continually on every point.”
3. In the month of March, the Rev. Thomas Church, vicar of Battersea,
published another two shilling pamphlet, entitled, “Some further
Remarks on Mr. Wesley’s last Journal;”[606] and, in July,[607] Wesley
issued, “The Principles of a Methodist farther explained; occasioned
by the Reverend Mr. Church’s second letter to Mr. Wesley; in a second
letter to that gentleman.” 12mo, 79 pages. First of all, Wesley
takes up the case of the Moravians; and then explains his views of
justification, and of the faith and repentance preceding it. Next he
vindicates himself against the charge of violating the discipline of
the Church of England, and of his being an enthusiast. He declares his
belief, that, in points of importance, when the reasons brought on each
side appear to be of equal weight, it is right to decide the question
by casting lots; that there are still such persons as demoniacs, and
will be such as long as Satan is the god of this world; and that there
is nothing either in the Old Testament or the New which teaches, that
“miracles were to be confined within the limits of the apostolic or
the Cyprianic age, or, that God hath in any way precluded Himself from
working miracles, in any kind or degree, in any age to the end of
time.” The pamphlet must be read to be appreciated. It is _multum in
parvo_.
In November, Wesley, for the first time, published a _volume_ of
sermons, price, in sheets, half-a-crown.[608] The title was, “Sermons
on Several Occasions;” and the book is the first of the _four volumes
of sermons_, which, with the Notes on the New Testament, were
afterwards constituted the perpetual standard of Methodist theology.
These are so widely and so well known that further description is
unneeded. The preface, however, deserves notice. It states that the
sermons contain the substance of what Wesley had been preaching during
the last eight years; and, that there was no point of doctrine, on
which he had been accustomed to speak in public, which was not here,
incidentally, if not professedly, laid before the reader. Wesley adds:—
“Nothing here appears in an elaborate, elegant, or oratorical
dress. If it had been my desire or design to write thus,
my leisure would not permit. But, in truth, I, at present,
designed nothing less; for I now write, as I generally speak,
_ad populum_. I design plain truth for plain people; therefore,
of set purpose, I abstain from all nice and philosophical
speculations; from all perplexed and intricate reasonings; and,
as far as possible, from even the show of learning, unless
in sometimes citing the original Scripture. I have thought,
I am a creature of a day. I am a spirit come from God, and
returning to God. I want to know one thing,—the way to heaven.
God Himself has condescended to teach me the way. He hath
written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price,
give me the book of God! I have it; here is knowledge enough
for me. Let me be _homo unius libri_. Here then I am, far from
the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: only God is here. In
His presence, I read His book; for this end, to find the way
to heaven. Is there a doubt concerning the meaning of what
I read? I lift up my heart to the Father of lights, and ask
Him to let me know His will. I then search after and consider
parallel passages of Scripture. I meditate thereon with all the
attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any
doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the
things of God; and then the writings whereby, being dead, they
yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach.”
This is very beautiful. Wesley was no copyist. He owed his theology
to no class of theologians, either ancient or modern,—Moravian or
otherwise. Peter Bohler and others might suggest truths like the grand
old doctrine of salvation by faith only; but before adopting them
Wesley went to the only pure fount of theology existing, and deduced
his creed, not from Bohler’s notions, but from the book of God. His
belief was thus founded upon a rock, and he felt it so. He declares,
that his mind is open to conviction; but, at the same time, he was
conscious that he had, not only human, but Divine authority for what he
taught. Let all divinity students copy his example.
Wesley’s last publication, in 1746, was Parts II. and III. of his
“Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion.” 12mo, 139 pages. In
some respects, this was one of the severest works that Wesley ever
committed to the press. With terrible power, he depicts the wickedness
of the nation,—forgetfulness of God and neglect of His holy ordinances,
swearing, perjury, sabbath breaking, drunkenness, lasciviousness,
speaking evil of dignities, and robbery. Attorneys are lashed as
being, in some instances, less honest than pickpockets; and the way in
which they whipped money out of their clients’ purses is so described,
that an unjust lawyer by whom Wesley himself had been victimised sent
him back half the amount he had extorted from him. The guardians of
public charities are charged with sacrilege. Lying was one of the
fashions of the day; and language was swollen with compliment. Pride
was rampant; and even cobblers, in London, thought themselves wiser
than secretaries of state, and coffee house disputers abler divines
than archbishops. Prisons were schools of vice, out of which prisoners
emerged fitted for any kind or degree of villainy, perfectly brutal and
devilish, thoroughly furnished for every evil word and work. In the
army, profanity was fearful. In the navy, almost every man-of-war was
a floating hell. The clergy were not free from the taint of lewdness
and drunkenness, from covetousness and idleness, from neglecting the
poor and flattering the rich. Presbyterians, in many instances, kept
a conscience void of offence, but they had among them drunkards,
gluttons, dishonest dealers, and extortioners. Baptists were far from
being faultless. Quakers affected great sanctity and simplicity, and
yet many of their women wore gold upon their very feet, and their men
might be seen with glittering canes and snuff-boxes, even in their
solemn assemblies; their female members were too strict to lay out
a shilling in a necklace, but not too strict to lay out fourscore
guineas in a repeating watch; in one kind of apron or handkerchief they
durst not expend twenty shillings, but in another sort would, expend
twenty pounds; they declined to touch a coloured ribbon, but would
cover themselves from head to foot in costly silk. Papists, Jews, and
infidels are castigated with equal severity; and with them the second
part of the Appeal concludes.
The third Part commences with an account of the present revival of
religion, and of the brutal persecutions with which it had been
assailed. Then objections are answered. Wesley states, that he has
seven thousand persons in his societies, whose souls he could not
neglect without endangering his own salvation. He shows the difference
between other reformations of the church, and that with which he and
his contemporaries were identified, and concludes thus:—
“The difference is wide between our case and the case of any
of those above mentioned. They _avowedly separated_ from the
church; we utterly _disavow_ any such design. They severely,
and almost continually, inveighed against the _doctrines_ and
_discipline_ of the church they left; we approve both the
_doctrines_ and _discipline_ of our church, and inveigh only
against _ungodliness_ and _unrighteousness_. They spent great
part of their time and strength in contending about externals
and circumstantials; we agree with you in both; so that
having no room to spend any time in such contentions, we have
one desire of spending and being spent, in promoting plain,
_practical religion_.”
It is impossible, in a brief summary like this, to give an adequate
idea of these “Appeals,” the best defence of Methodism extant. They are
among the most elaborate of Wesley’s productions; giving a melancholy
view of the low state of religion and of public morals, when he and
his brother Methodists entered upon their extraordinary career of
ministerial labour; and containing a triumphant vindication of their
doctrines and proceedings. They all are pervaded with a spirit of great
seriousness, and display a mind deeply affected by the sins and follies
of mankind.
1747.
[Sidenote: 1747 Age 44]
For a moment, let us look at Whitefield, who spent the year 1747 in
America. Wesley had written him on the subject of union; to which he
replied on the 11th of September, as follows:—
“DEAR AND REVEREND SIR,—Not long ago I received your kind
letter, dated in February last. My heart is really for an
outward, as well as an inward union. Nothing shall be wanting
on my part to bring it about; but I cannot see how it can
possibly be effected, till we all think and speak the same
things. I rejoice to hear that you and your brother are more
moderate with respect to _sinless perfection_. Time and
experience, I believe, will convince you that, attaining such
a state in this life, is not the doctrine of the everlasting
gospel. As for _universal redemption_, if we omit on each side
the talking for or against reprobation, which we may fairly
do, and agree, as we already do, in giving an universal offer
to all poor sinners that will come and taste of the water of
life, I think we may manage very well. But it is difficult to
determine such matters at a distance. Some time next year, I
hope to see you face to face. I hope ere long to be delivered
from my outward embarrassments. I long to owe no man anything
but love. This is a debt, reverend sir, I shall never be able
to discharge to you, or your brother. Jesus will pay you all.
For His sake, I love and honour you very much, and rejoice as
much in your success as in my own. I cannot agree with you in
some principles, but that need not hinder love. What have you
done with the Moravian Brethren? Their affairs are in confusion
here. I think their foundation is too narrow for their
superstructure. I believe, in their plan, there are many plants
that our heavenly Father hath not planted. The Lord bless what
is right, and rectify what is wrong in them, in us, and in all.
O for heaven! where we shall mistake, judge, and grieve one
another no more. Continue to pray for us, and assure yourself,
that you are always remembered by, reverend and very dear sir,
your most affectionate, though unworthy younger brother and
willing servant for Christ’s sake,
“GEORGE WHITEFIELD.”[609]
So much for Whitefield. What about his English coadjutors? Howel Harris
writes:—
“Wales is like the garden of the Lord; many are awakened, and
fresh doors are opened. All the ministers and exhorters go
on heartily, and the presence and power of the Lord are still
more manifest. Hasten thy winged motion, oh glorious day! when
I shall see Paul and Barnabas, Luther and Calvin, and all the
saints, joining in one song, and not so much as remembering
that they ever differed. I have lately, at their own request,
discoursed three or four times before several gentlemen,
ladies of fashion, some magistrates, counsellors, attorneys,
and doctors in divinity, and they behaved well. I have been
all round South Wales, travelling often twenty, and sometimes
thirty miles a day, and preaching twice, besides settling and
conferring with the societies everywhere. I am about to begin a
round through North Wales, where I expect to be sent home, or
at least imprisoned. For ten days, my life will be in continual
danger.”
Joseph Williams, of Kidderminster, relates, that he had recently
been on a preaching tour in Wales, and in Yorkshire. At Haworth, he
had taken a bed at the house of Grimshaw, with whom he held sweet
fellowship, from six o’clock at night till two o’clock next morning.
Grimshaw’s church was always crowded, and hundreds were not able to
get in at all. People flocked to hear him from all the neighbouring
towns, and as many as a hundred strangers were accustomed, on a Sunday,
to dine at the village inn. The surrounding clergy were caballing to
get him suspended; and, if they succeeded, he was resolved to become
at once an itinerant preacher. The landlord, at Colne, told Williams
that Grimshaw had preached in that town “damnation beyond all sense and
reason,” his sermon lasting two long hours; and that, “every week, and
almost every day, he preached in barns and private houses, and was a
great encourager of conventicles.”
Thomas Adams says, he had been preaching in a barn at Gosport, and
that in the neighbourhood of Portsmouth the good work was prospering.
In Wilts, he had seen religion reviving. In Gloucestershire, his
labours had been blessed, and the meetings of the societies had been a
pentecost. When at Bristol there had been “a brave shaking among the
dry bones.”
James Relly (who afterwards founded a sect called “Rellyan
Universalists,”) observes, that at Bristol he had examined the whole
society once a week, but the place had been “a furnace” to him. At
Bath, he had “particular freedom.” In Gloucestershire, he had been
preaching every day, and thrice on Sundays; and had found the people
“honest, simple, and hungering after the bread of life.” At Wednesbury,
he found his heart enlarged every time he preached. At Birmingham, he
had formed a society of twenty members, and had left them with great
regret. At Bromsgrove, he had preached in an Independent chapel, to a
congregation of “simple, loving souls.” At Tewkesbury, a furious mob
assaulted him, swore, cursed, laughed, pricked the congregation with
pins, threw handfuls of snuff among them, and brickbats and dirt; and
broke the windows of the house; but, in the midst of all, he continued
preaching for an hour.
John Relly was witnessing “many inroads made in Satan’s kingdom,” and
he seldom preached without seeing conversions.
Herbert Jenkins had been preaching in Scotland, and conversing with the
clergy, many of whom he pronounces to be “good men, and very powerful
preachers.” In Edinburgh, he had found nearly twenty societies,
including one composed of soldiers, who had fought at the battle of
Culloden. In the park, he had had a congregation of many thousands.
“At Glasgow,” says the _Scots Magazine_, “he was complimented with the
freedom of the city, and was entertained by the magistrates and by the
presbytery. He made no public collections as Whitefield did, and his
behaviour altogether was inoffensive and becoming.”
John Edwards had made a tour through the midland counties, where “King
Jesus was getting Himself the victory.” He writes:—“Oh what times and
seasons we have had; souls fired with the love of God, and following
the word from place to place, horse and foot, like men engaged in a
war, determined to take the city by force of arms.” At Haverfordwest
and in Wales, multitudes flocked to hear him.
Certain members of the Tabernacle society, in London, relate that the
place was generally full; and a gentleman at Plymouth writes, that “the
work goes on very comfortably there.”[610]
These hints will suggest to the reader an idea of the work that was
being done by the preachers who propagated Whitefield’s doctrines.
All the letters, filling more than a hundred pages of the “Christian
History,” breathe the most ardent piety, and are full of gratitude,
hope, and exultation.
Charles Wesley spent the first two months of 1747 in a journey from
Newcastle to Bristol. The next six months he made London and Bristol
the centre of his operations. The last four months of the year were
employed in Ireland.
Wesley himself was travelling almost incessantly, and we must now try
to follow him.
On January 11 he left London for Bristol. Reaching Devizes, he found
the town in the greatest uproar. Swelling words, oaths, curses, and
threatenings were abundant. Mr. Innys, the curate, who knew of Wesley’s
coming, had spent the day in visiting from house to house, to stir up
the people against him. He had also published an advertisement, in
the most public places in the town, of “An obnubilative, pantomime
entertainment, to be exhibited at Mr. Clark’s,” in whose house
Wesley had to preach. For the present, however, the high purpose of
the zealous curate was not realised. At the appointed hour, Wesley
commenced preaching. The well instigated mob were listeners, but they
were all dumb dogs, and attention sat on every face.
Sixteen days afterwards, Wesley returned to this clerical preserve,
where he again found, that great efforts had been used to raise a
rabble, but, he writes, “it was lost labour; all that could be mustered
were a few straggling soldiers, and forty or fifty boys.”
Wesley told his brother, “there was no such thing as raising a mob at
Devizes”; but Charles soon found it to be otherwise. Coming within a
month after, on February 24, a crowd awaited him, headed by “the chief
gentleman of the town,” while Mr. Innys, the energetic curate, stood
with them in the street, jumping for very joy. The reverend persecutor
had been more successful in organising ruffians to do his dirty work,
in the case of Charles, than he had been in the case of Wesley himself.
He had declared in the pulpit, as well as from house to house, that he
had heard Charles preach blasphemy before the university, and tell his
congregation, “If you don’t receive the Holy Ghost while I breathe upon
you, you will all be damned.” He had secured the services of two of
the chief men in the borough, Messrs. Sutton and Willy, both of them
Dissenters. The poor parson was so supremely happy, that he began to
dance. The church bells were rung backwards. Mrs. Philip’s house was
ransacked; the windows were smashed, and the shutters of the shop torn
down; the door was blocked up with a wagon; and lights were kindled to
prevent the preacher’s escaping. The mob then proceeded to the inn,
and seized the horses of Charles Wesley and his friend Meriton, and,
some hours afterwards, the poor animals were found in a pond, up to the
neck in water. A water engine was played into the house where Charles
was staying; the rooms were flooded; and the goods were spoiled.
The leader of the small society was thrown into a pool, and, almost
miraculously, escaped an untimely death. The son of the mayor had been
converted, and, instead of running away to sea, had joined the society.
His father was a coward, and had left the town, when he ought to have
remained in it; but his mother sent her maid, begging Charles Wesley
to disguise himself in a woman’s clothes, and endeavour to escape. At
length, the constable came, beseeching him to leave the town; and poor
Mr. Sutton and Mr. Willy began to fear the mob, which they and their
clerical friend Innys had been the means of raising, was becoming more
violent than might be safe. In the midst of this, Charles Wesley and
Mr. Meriton took the opportunity to get away; and, after escaping a
most murderous attack from a couple of bulldogs, not less savage than
the bloodthirsty villains which hounded them on, the two martyr like
ministers began singing the hymn commencing, “Worship, and thanks, and
blessing;” and thus, in a tone of triumph, made their way to Bath and
Bristol.[611]
Strangely enough, Wesley was accustomed to choose the worst season
of the year for his most trying journey. Why? We cannot tell. Having
finished his visitation of the London classes, he set out, on the
16th of February, for Newcastle. A north wind blew so hard and keen,
that, when he and his companions got to Hatfield, they could scarcely
use either their hands or feet. In making their way to Baldock, they
encountered a storm of snow and hail, which drove so vehemently in
their faces, that sight was useless, and breathing almost impossible.
Next day, they had the greatest difficulty in keeping their horses on
their feet. The wind rose higher and higher, till it threatened to
overturn both man and beast. A storm of rain and hail drove through
their coats, great and small, boots, and everything; and, freezing as
it fell, their eyebrows were hung with icicles. On Stamford Heath, the
snow was lying in mountain drifts, which sometimes well-nigh swallowed
up both horses and riders; but, about sunset, they came, cold and
weary, to Brigg-Casterton. On the 18th, they were told, so much snow
had fallen in the night, that travelling was impracticable. Wesley
replied, “At least, we can walk twenty miles a day, with our horses
in our hands”; and off he set. The north-east wind was piercing; the
main road was impassable; Wesley was distracted with the toothache;
but, at five in the afternoon, they arrived at Newark. Next day, they
came to Epworth, where they rested the three days following; with
the exception, that, on Sunday Wesley preached twice in the humble
meeting-house, and once, after the evening prayers, at Epworth cross,
to most of the adult population of the town.
The next three days were spent in an excursion to Grimsby and back
again to Epworth. Charles Wesley had been at the former town seven
weeks before, when the meeting-house was invaded by a mob of wild
creatures, almost naked, who ran about the place, attacking all they
met. Several caught at the preacher to drag him down, and one struck
at him. At length, they fell to fighting and beating each other, till,
in a few minutes, they literally drove themselves out of the very
room from which they meant to drive the poor Methodists; and one of
the ringleaders, armed with a great club, swore he would conduct the
minister to his lodgings, and forthwith led him through the drunken
rioters to brother Blow’s.[612]
On this occasion, when Wesley himself came, “a young gentleman and
his companions” drowned Wesley’s voice, till a poor woman took up the
cause, and, by keenly and wittily reciting a few passages of the young
spark’s life, turned the laugh of his companions upon him, and obliged
him to skulk away discomfited. Next day, he came to ask Wesley’s
pardon, and thus, for some years, Methodist persecution at Grimsby
ceased. At Tetney, Wesley found the most remarkable society in England,
with Micah Elmoor for its leader. The members were all poor, and yet
each gave from eightpence to two shillings weekly,—certainly a large
amount, considering the rate of agricultural wages and the worth of
money. The members of the London society were not averaging more than
about a penny per week. Wesley was surprised at the difference, and
asked, “How is this?” To which Micah Elmoor replied, “All of us, who
are single persons, have agreed together, to give both ourselves and
all we have to God; and, by this means, we are able, from time to time,
to entertain all the strangers that come to Tetney; who often have no
food to eat, nor any friend to give them lodging.”
On February 26, Wesley left Epworth, and proceeded northwards,
preaching, on his way, at Sykehouse, Acomb, Thirsk, and Osmotherley. At
the last mentioned place, where he had already found a friend in the
popish priest, the clergyman of the parish allowed him to preach twice
in the parish church. “The bitterest gainsayers,” says Wesley, “seemed
now to be melted into love. All were convinced we are no papists. How
wisely does God order all things in their season!”
On the 2nd of March, he reached Newcastle. At this period, Grace Murray
had charge of the Orphan House family. More than once, she had been
an inmate; but she and sister Jackson, like rival queens in the same
establishment, were unable to agree, and, at least twice, Wesley had
had the unenviable task of reconciling two gossiping women, whose
religion made them proud and garrulous, rather than of “a meek and
quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.” Grace’s
first husband was drowned in 1742, upon which she removed from London
to Newcastle, where she was appointed leader of several classes. Within
six months of her husband’s death, she became the sweetheart of John
Brydon, and it was commonly supposed they were about to marry, but, in
the long run, Grace declined the honour of John’s alliance. At the end
of 1745, she was made Orphan House keeper, and retained the office at
the time of Wesley’s visit, in 1747.[613] Unfortunately, we shall have
to recur to sister Murray at a subsequent period.
Another inmate was Jeannie Keith, belonging to a respectable family of
the Keiths in Scotland. Being persecuted on account of her religious
principles, she fled to England, and took shelter in Wesley’s Orphan
House, where she went by the cognomen of “Holy Mary.” She was
afterwards married to James Bowmaker, a master builder at Alnwick,
who erected the first Methodist chapel in that town, and was the
grandfather of the Rev. James Everett. She had two children, and died
about the year 1752. It has generally been supposed, that Jeannie
Keith fell from grace, this opinion being founded upon an expression
in one of Wesley’s letters, written a year or two previous to her
death;[614] but the inference is hardly legitimate, and the thing
itself is incorrect. The writer is possessed of authentic manuscripts,
showing, that though Jeannie returned to the presbyterian religion, she
continued faithful to her great Master to the very last. A year only
before her death, she was diligently distributing the works of John and
Charles Wesley among her friends and relatives, including Lord and Lady
Saltoun; and the greatest crime that I can find alleged against her, is
that of rejoining the church of her childhood. An extract from one of
Jeannie’s letters to Wesley, in 1747, may be useful.
“I bless God, that ever He brought me into this house. It is
like a little heaven to me. There is not only such love, but
such freedom among us, as I could not have believed would have
been so soon. I have never seen a thing, that I thought amiss
in any of the family, neither do they seem to think anything
wrong in me. I am as much entangled with the great ones of the
world as ever; and if they are not with me, I am with them. I
have great reasonings, whether to shake off all acquaintance
with them or not. I am surprised how they bear the plainness
of speech that I use; for with tears do I tell them the danger
that their souls are in. Oh! forget not your weak child,
“JEANNIE KEITH.”[615]
In another letter, dated November 1, 1748, and addressed to Wesley, she
writes:—
“I think we never had a more blessed time in this house, since
it was a house. I know of nothing amiss betwixt sister Murray
and me; but we cannot be as one soul; for, you know, she must
have a little pre-eminence. I am exceeding willing that she
should; and so we live in great peace, and, I believe, in love.
I am still unwilling to take anything from anybody. I work out
of choice, having never yet learned how long a woman can be
idle and innocent. I do not murmur because I have not worldly
goods, or a little skin-deep beauty; but I am happy, because,
as long as God lives, I shall enjoy Him; so long as there is
a heaven, I shall possess it. If this thought cannot make me
happy, without anything else, I deserve to be miserable.
“Your affectionate and loving child,
“JEANNIE KEITH.”[616]
How many more refugee sisters there were in the Orphan House, we are
not informed; but we learn from the manuscript already quoted, that,
about this period, Christopher Hopper, Benjamin Wheatley, Edward
Dunstan, and Eleazer Webster, all of them either already or about to
become itinerants, were, more or less, Orphan House residents; and
it is probable, that these were some of the young men referred to in
the extracts following. The Orphan House was, at once, a place of
worship, a school for orphans, a refuge for the injured and oppressed,
the northern home of Wesley, and the “theological institution” of his
preachers. Wesley writes:—
“March 2.—I rode to Newcastle. I found all in the house of
the same spirit; pouring out their souls to God many times in
a day together, and breathing nothing but love and brotherly
kindness.”
“March 4.—This week I read over, with some young men, a
compendium of rhetoric, and a system of ethics. I see not, why
a man of tolerable understanding may not learn in six months
more of solid philosophy than is commonly learned at Oxford in
four (perhaps seven) years.”
The old Orphan House was thus the first institution in which young
Methodist preachers received instructions for the efficient discharge
of their ministerial duties. Here Wesley himself studied. During this
very visit, he read “The Exhortations of Ephraem Syrus,” whose picture
of a broken and contrite heart had never been excelled since the days
of David,—and “The History of the Puritans;” after which he wrote:—“I
stand in amaze: first, at the execrable spirit of persecution which
drove those venerable men out of the Church, and with which Queen
Elizabeth’s clergy were as deeply tinctured as ever Queen Mary’s were;
secondly, at the weakness of those holy confessors, many of whom spent
so much of their time and strength in disputing about surplices and
hoods, or kneeling at the Lord’s supper.”
It is a curious fact, that, though only little more than four years had
elapsed since the society at Newcastle was founded by Charles Wesley,
it was now reduced from above eight hundred members to four hundred.
Wesley, however, considered, according to the old proverb, that “the
half was more than the whole”; but if this were true, the whole must
have been a motley mass.
Having spent seven weeks at Newcastle and in the neighbourhood, Wesley
set out, on Easter Monday, April 20, for London. In the evening, he
reached Osmotherley, where, after having ridden, at least, sixty miles,
and preached twice, he mounted a tombstone, and concluded the day by
a sermon from “The Lord is risen indeed.” Here John Nelson met him,
having just escaped from the hands of his murderous persecutors in the
vicinity of York.
Proceeding to Thirsk, Wesley found the town full of holiday folks,
drinking, cursing, swearing, and cockfighting. Making his way to
Leeds and other towns in the west riding of Yorkshire, he visited the
Moravian settlement at Fulneck, which was now approaching completion.
“It stands,” says he, “on the side of a hill, commanding all the vale
beneath, and the opposite hill. The front is exceeding grand, though
plain, being faced with fine, smooth, white stone. The Germans suppose
it will cost about three thousand pounds; it is well if it be not
nearer ten. But that is no concern to the English Brethren; for they
are told, and believe, that all the money will come from beyond the
sea.” We shall find, in a subsequent chapter, that Wesley’s doubts
respecting the “ways and means” were not unfounded.
At Keighley, Wesley ascertained that the small society of ten had
increased tenfold. He visited Grimshaw, and preached in Haworth
church. At Halifax, he addressed “a civil, senseless congregation,”
and baptized a Quaker. Meeting with William Darney, who, besides
converting Grimshaw, had been the means of forming a number of
societies among the mountains of Lancashire and Yorkshire, Wesley,
at his request, set out to visit those infant churches, at Roughlee,
Widdap, Stonesey Gate, and other places. While preaching one morning
at five o’clock, near New Church, in Rossendale, one of his hearers
was a young man, then in his twentieth year, who afterwards rose to a
high position,—John Butterworth, for more than fifty years the pastor
of a Baptist church, the author of a valuable concordance to the Holy
Scriptures, and the father of the late Joseph Butterworth, Esq., who
was long a distinguished Methodist in the metropolis, and a member of
the House of Commons.
From Rossendale, Wesley proceeded to Manchester, where, on the 7th of
May, he preached at Salford cross. Within the last few months, a few
young men had formed themselves into a society, had rented a room,
and written a letter desiring the Wesleys to own them as brethren.
The “room” was a small apartment in a house built upon a rock on the
bank of the Irwell, on the north side of Blackfriars Bridge, at the
bottom of a large yard, known by the name of the “Rose and Crown
yard,” and which was filled with wood built, thatched cottages. The
house, containing the “preaching room” was three storeys high. The
ground floor was a joiner’s shop; the rooms in the middle story were
the residence of a newly married couple; the garret was the “room,”
and was itself also the home of a poor woman, who there plied her
spinning wheel, while her husband, in the same apartment, flung the
shuttle. Christopher Hopper, at one of the Manchester conferences,
referred to this little meeting-house, and said: “In 1749, I preached
in an old garret, that overhung the river, in the neighbourhood of
the old bridge. The coals were in one corner of the room, the looms
in another, and I was in danger of breaking my neck in getting up to
it. The congregation consisted of not more than from twenty to thirty
persons.”[617] Such was the cradle of Manchester Methodism, in 1747.
Wesley says, “their house would not contain a tenth part of the
people,”—and hence he went to Salford cross.
While at Manchester, Wesley made his first visit to Boothbank. Here
resided John and Alice Crosse. Alice had been a rude, uncultivated
creature, but had a dash of the heroine in her constitution. “John
Crosse,” said she, “wilt thou go to heaven with me? If not, I am
determined not to go to hell with thee.” Her decision was firm and
final, and honest John soon joined her in her journey to the better
land. They now gladly received the servants of God into their dwelling,
a pulpit was fixed in their largest room, a society was formed, and
Alice was made leader. Her endeavours to be useful were indefatigable.
Common beggars were intercepted, warned of their sin and danger, prayed
with, and then relieved. Gentlemen, who came a-hunting, were run after,
and told, in the plainest terms, the consequences of their sinful
doings. On her husband being made a constable, (she having far more
courage than himself) he would send her to the constables’ meetings,
to defend the despised and persecuted Methodists. When disappointed of
a preacher, Alice herself would occupy the pulpit, and, with faithful
energy, declare the truth as it is in Jesus. Though marked with
rusticity, she was, in decision and majesty, a Deborah.[618] “She was,”
says John Pawson, “one of the most zealous, active, spiritually minded
women I ever knew.” She died in 1774, aged sixty-five. Her house, for
generations, was the happy home of Methodist itinerants. Up to a few
years ago, a bootjack, made by John Nelson, at one of his visits,
was carefully preserved by her descendants living in the same farm
dwelling; and on the panes of glass in the window of what was known as
“the prophet’s chamber,” were not a few inscriptions written by the
brave hearted evangelists, who there found a warm welcome. Boothbank
was the loving centre where the first Methodists of Lancashire and
Cheshire used to meet, for friendly counsel, and the old farmhouse
was licensed for preaching before any Methodist chapel was built in
Manchester. Five years after this first visit by Wesley, the first
Cheshire quarterly meeting was held in the humble dwelling of John
and Alice Crosse, when Chester sent, by Jonathan Pritchard, the sum
of twelve shillings; Bolton, by George Eskrick, eight shillings and
twopence; Manchester, by Richard Barlow, two pounds three shillings and
fivepence; while Boothbank itself contributed the not insignificant
sum of ten shillings and elevenpence.[619] Wesley’s description of the
Boothbank congregation, at his first visit, is brief but beautiful,—“a
quiet and loving people.”
Leaving Boothbank, he proceeded to Mr. Anderton’s, near Northwich.
Here he preached, prayed, and talked for more than two hours, his
rustic congregation being intermixed with “several of the gay and
rich.” Many long years elapsed, however, before Methodist preaching
was established in the town itself, and here, as elsewhere, Methodism
met with brutal persecution. On one occasion, the preacher was pulled
down the street by the hair of his head.[620] On another, John Morris
narrowly escaped being thrown over the bridge into the river.[621]
The mob, encouraged by two young gents of the names of Barrow and
Jeffreys, rejoiced not only in throwing stones, mud, and rotten eggs,
but in dragging the Methodist itinerants into a quagmire, which divided
the townships of Northwich and Witton. One of the first Methodists
here was Isaac Barnes, a seedsman, who was often rolled in the foul
river, and in other respects made to suffer; but his sister once used
a device by which the biters were bitten. While the mob were shouting,
swearing, and throwing stones at the front of her brother’s house, she
quietly heated the poker, and then, letting it cool till its redness
was removed, she rushed into the street, and pretended to strike the
assembled scamps. One seized the poker, but instantly let it go.
Others, in quick succession, did the same; and, in a little while,
the amazon was victorious; by their own act, in seizing the heated
poker, most of the assailants were in burning agony; and the valorous
mob were surprised and scattered. Moses Dale was another of the first
Northwich Methodists,—a poor and plain, but earnest and honest man,—a
class-leader and local preacher, who was once carried round the town
on a butcher’s block, and then set down in the market place, where the
crowd with cow horns blew into his ears till he was almost deafened.
Moses was a man of small ability, but a son of thunder. Once a year,
he made a preaching tour through Derbyshire and Shropshire, and, on
one occasion, preached in the vicarage at Madeley, with his hands on
Fletcher’s shoulders. “Moses,” said some young swells in a chemist’s
shop, “is it true that you know your sins forgiven?” “I am forbidden
to tell you,” quietly replied Moses. “Who forbids you, Moses?” “Jesus
Christ,” said Moses; “look at Matthew vii. 6.” “Surely, Moses, you
don’t compare us to swine?” “No,” quoth Moses, “but the Bible does, and
I have no occasion.” Poor Moses died in 1788.
From Northwich, Wesley went to Congleton, and Macclesfield, and
Sheffield, and Leeds; and then, turning round, he hurried, by way of
Nottingham and Birmingham, to London, which he reached on the 21st of
May.
For the last eight years, Wesley had been shut out of the London
churches; but now, to one of them, he was again admitted. The Rev.
Richard Thomas Bateman, a man of high birth and great natural
endowments, was rector of St. Bartholomew’s the Great, in Smithfield,
and also held a living in Wales, where he had been converted under
the powerful ministry of the Rev. Howel Davies.[622] Being converted
himself, he, at once, with great fervour, began to pray and preach for
the conversion of others.
As soon as Wesley got back to London, Mr. Bateman offered him his
pulpit, and the offer was accepted. The church was crowded to excess.
The churchwardens complained to Bishop Gibson, saying, “My lord, Mr.
Bateman, our rector, invites Mr. Wesley very frequently to preach in
his church.” The bishop replied, “What would you have me do? I have no
right to hinder him. Mr. Wesley is a clergyman, regularly ordained, and
under no ecclesiastical censure;”[623] and so the matter ended.
From the first, the financial affairs of the London society had been
entrusted to stewards. Hitherto, they had been sixteen in number,
but Wesley now reduced them to seven, to whom he gave a series of
instructions how to regulate their behaviour. They were to hold
meetings every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Every meeting was to
begin and end with prayer. Once a month, their accounts were to be
transcribed into the ledger. Each, in turn, was to be chairman for a
month. Nothing was to be done without the consent of the minister. They
were to be deeply serious. Only one was to speak at once, and he only
just loud enough to make himself heard. They were to avoid all clamour
and contention. If they could not relieve the poor who came, they were
not to grieve them. They were to give them soft words, if nothing else;
and to make them glad to come, even though they had to go away empty. A
steward breaking any of these rules, after being thrice admonished by
the chairman, was to be deposed from office.
It may be asked whence the stewards obtained their funds. The answer
is, that, for more than forty years, all the money collected in the
London classes was put into the hands of these officials, and was
distributed in relieving the necessities of the poor. Not a shilling
seems to have been spent upon the preachers’ salaries.[624]
Visiting the sick, and the opening of the dispensary, have been already
noticed. But, besides these, there were connected with the old Foundery
other expensive and valuable institutions. Two small houses were taken
and fitted up for the reception of needy and deserving widows, for the
support of whom the collections at the sacraments and the contributions
of the bands were given. In 1748, Wesley writes: “In this (commonly
called the poor-house) we have now nine widows, one blind woman, two
poor children, and two upper servants, a maid and a man. I might add,
four or five preachers; for I myself, as well as the other preachers
who are in town, diet with the poor, on the same food, and at the same
table; and we rejoice herein, as a comfortable earnest of our eating
bread together in our Father’s kingdom.”[625]
Then there was a school with two masters, and about sixty children,
a few of whom paid for their tuition, but the greater part, being
extremely poor, were taught and even clothed gratuitously. The rules
were characteristic, but some of them exceedingly absurd. No child
was to be admitted under the age of six. All the children were to
be present every morning at the five o’clock preaching. The school
hours were from six to twelve, and from one to five. No holidays were
granted. No child was to speak in school, but to the masters; and any
child who was absent two days in one week, without leave, was to be
excluded. The education consisted of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Two stewards were appointed to receive subscriptions and to pay
expenses; and also to pray with and exhort the children twice a week;
and to meet the parents every Wednesday morning, and give them counsels
how to train their children when at home.[626]
Then there was a lending society. Observing that people often needed
small sums of money, but knew not where to borrow them, Wesley went
from one end of London to the other, and, in a few days, begged £50.
This was lodged in the hands of stewards, who attended every Tuesday
morning for the purpose of lending to those who wanted any small
amount, not exceeding twenty shillings, on condition that the loan
should be repaid within three months. Wesley writes: “It is almost
incredible, but, with this inconsiderable sum, two hundred and fifty
have been assisted within the year 1747. Will not God put it into the
heart of some lover of mankind to increase this little stock? If this
is not lending unto the Lord, what is?”[627]
The stock was increased. At the commencement of 1748, Wesley made
a public collection for the same object, and by this and by other
means the capital was raised, in 1767, to £120,[628] after which
the maximum loan was altered from one pound to five.[629] Hundreds
of the honest poor were greatly assisted by this benevolent device;
and, among others, the well known Lackington, who about the year 1774
was penniless, but who, by the help of Wesley’s fund, began a book
business, which grew to such immense dimensions, that, eighteen years
afterwards, its annual sales were more than a hundred thousand volumes,
from which Lackington, the quondam cobbler, realised the noble income
of £5000 a year.
Such were the benevolent institutions connected with the Foundery in
1747. Wesley was often accused of making himself rich. In reply to
this, in 1748, he sarcastically remarks:—“Some have supposed my revenue
was no greater than that of the Bishop of London. Others have computed,
that I receive £800 a year from Yorkshire only. If so, it cannot
be so little as £10,000 a year which I receive out of all England!
Accordingly, the rector of Redruth extends the calculation pretty
considerably. ‘Let me see,’ said he; ‘two millions of Methodists, and
each of these paying twopence a week.’ If so, I must have £860,000,
with some odd shillings and pence, a year! A tolerable competence! But
be it more or less, it is nothing at all to me. All that is contributed
or collected, in every place, is both received and expended by others;
nor have I so much as the ‘beholding thereof with my eyes.’ And so it
will be, till I turn Turk or pagan. For I look upon all this revenue,
be it what it may, as sacred to God and the poor; out of which, if
I want anything, I am relieved, even as another poor man. So were
originally all ecclesiastical revenues, as every man of learning knows;
and the bishops and priests used them only as such. If any use them
otherwise now, God help them!”[630]
The conference of 1747 began on the 15th of June, and ended on the
20th. This was the largest yet held. Six clergymen were present,
namely, John and Charles Wesley, Charles Manning, Richard Thomas
Bateman, Henry Piers, and Vincent Perronet; also Howel Harris; and nine
preachers, John Jones, Thomas Maxfield, Jonathan Reeves, John Nelson,
John Bennet, John Downes, Robert Swindells, John Maddern, and Thomas
Crouch, the last mentioned being a local preacher only.[631]
Two doctrines were discussed at the conference of 1747; first, whether
a Divine assurance of the forgiveness of sins is an essential part
of justifying faith; and secondly, whether entire sanctification is
attainable in the present life. It was inquired, “Is justifying faith
a Divine assurance that Christ loved _me_, and gave Himself for _me_?”
Answer: “We believe it is.”[632] This was unguarded language, and John
Wesley soon felt it so. A month later, he seems to have examined the
subject more closely, and wrote to his brother Charles as follows:—
“Yesterday I was thinking on a _desideratum_ among us, a
_genesis problematica_ on justifying faith. A skeleton of it, I
have roughly set down.
“Is justifying faith a sense of pardon? _Negatur._
“By justifying faith, I mean, that faith, which whosoever hath
not is under the wrath and curse of God. By a sense of pardon,
I mean, a distinct, explicit assurance, that my sins are
forgiven.
“I allow (1) That there is such an explicit assurance. (2) That
it is the common privilege of real Christians. (3) That it
is the proper Christian faith, which purifies the heart, and
overcomes the world.
“But I cannot allow, that justifying faith is such an
assurance, or necessarily connected therewith.
“Because, if justifying faith necessarily implies such an
explicit assurance of pardon, then every one who has it not,
and every one so long as he has it not, is under the wrath and
curse of God. But this is a supposition contrary to Scripture
and to experience (Isa. l. 10, and Acts x. 34).
“Again, the assertion, that justifying faith is a sense of
pardon, is contrary to reason; it is flatly absurd. For how can
a sense of our having received pardon be the condition of our
receiving it?
“If you object, ‘We know fifteen hundred persons who have
this assurance.’ Perhaps so, but this does not prove that
they were not justified till they received it. 2. ‘We have
been exceedingly blessed in preaching this doctrine.’ We have
been blessed in preaching the great truths of the gospel;
although we tacked to them, in the simplicity of our hearts,
a proposition which was not true. 3. ‘But does not our Church
give this account of justifying faith?’ I am sure she does of
saving or Christian faith; I think she does of justifying faith
too. But to the law and testimony. All men may err: but the
word of the Lord shall stand for ever.”[633]
This seems to clash with Wesley’s previously expressed sentiments, and,
in 1809, there was a somewhat bitter controversy on the subject between
the Rev. Melville Horne and the Rev. Edward Hare and others. Suffice it
to say here, that the definition of faith in the Church of England’s
homily on salvation, which Wesley had been wont to quote, was rather
a definition of the _habitual_ faith of a justified man, than of the
_act_ by which a sinner is first justified and saved.[634] Wesley held
this corrected view to the end of life.
As it respects the second question raised at the conference of 1747,
it was allowed—(1) That many of those who have died in the faith were
not made “perfect in love” till a little before death; (2) that the
term “sanctified” is continually applied by St. Paul to all that are
justified, but that, by this term _alone_, he rarely, if ever, means
saved from all sin, and consequently, it is improper to use it in such
a sense without adding the word “wholly” or “entirely”; and (3) that
the inspired writers very rarely speak either of, or to those who
are wholly sanctified, and that therefore it behoves us, in public
at least, rarely to speak, in full and explicit terms, concerning
entire sanctification. Having conceded such points (which may sound
strangely in the ears of some at the present day), the Conference
proceeds to show most conclusively, from numerous texts of Scripture,
that believers ought to expect to be saved from all sin, previous to
death; but exhorts such as have attained to this state of grace not to
speak of it to those who know not God, nor indeed to any without some
particular reason, without some particular good in view, and even then
to have an especial care to avoid all appearance of boasting, and to
speak more loudly and convincingly by their lives, than they can do by
their tongues.
The remainder of the conference sittings were principally occupied
in determining miscellaneous matters. The right of private judgment
was enforced. All agreed to read, before the next conference, all the
tracts which had been published by Wesley, and to mark every passage
which they considered to be wrong or dubious. It was ruled, that the
Methodists were not schismatics, any more than they were rebels or
murderers. It was agreed that they had been too limited in their field
preaching; and that they had paid “respect to persons,” by devoting
more of their time to the rich than to the poor, by not speaking to
them so plain as to the others, and by admitting them into the society
and bands, though they had never received remission of sins, nor met
in any band at all. Precautions were to be employed in keeping from
the Lord’s table unworthy communicants, first, by exercising more care
in admitting members into the society, and secondly, by giving notes
to none but those who applied for them on the days appointed in each
quarter. Wesley’s “assistants” were now twenty-two in number. The names
of thirty-eight local preachers are given, including a number, who, to
some extent, were already labouring as itinerants.
Who can fail to admire the simple, honest earnestness of these early
conclaves of godly Methodists?—men, without preconceived ideas,
desiring above all things to ascertain what is truth, and to adopt
the most useful plans in spreading it? “In our first conference,” say
they, “it was agreed to examine every point from the foundation. Have
we not been somewhat fearful in doing this? What were we afraid of?
Of overturning our first principles? Whoever was afraid of this, it
was a vain fear. For if they are true, they will bear the strictest
examination. If they are false, the sooner they are overturned the
better. Let us all pray for a willingness to receive light; an
invariable desire to know of every doctrine, whether it be of God.” Men
animated by such a principle were sure to have happy meetings, and were
not likely to go far astray.
On the Sunday after the conference ended, Wesley set out for Cornwall.
It was the eve of a parliamentary election, and, at Exeter, while his
clothes were being dried, he wrote “A Word to a Freeholder;” and,
at St. Ives, so successfully warned the Methodists against bribery,
that, though sorely tempted, “not one of them would even eat or drink
at the expense of the candidate for whom they voted.” At Plymouth, a
lieutenant with his retinue of soldiers, drummers, and a mob, came to
make disturbance. At St. Agnes, the rabble threw dirt and clods; and
Mr. Shepherd’s horse, taking fright, leaped over a man who was stooping
down, the poor fellow screaming most lustily, but escaping unhurt.
Here another man, learning that Wesley was about to preach, said, “If
he does, I’ll stone him,” and forthwith began to fill his pockets with
the needful missiles. He reached the spot. Wesley took his text, “He
that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
The man’s courage failed him, stone after stone stealthily dropped
from his well filled pockets, and he went away with the impression
that the preacher was something wonderful.[635] At Sithney, Wesley met
the stewards of all the Cornish societies, and found that there were
eighteen exhorters in the county; that three of these had no gifts
at all for the work, neither natural nor supernatural; that a fourth
had neither gifts nor grace, but was a dull, empty, self conceited
man; and that a fifth had considerable gifts, but had evidently made
shipwreck of the grace of God. These, therefore, he set aside, and
advised the societies not to hear them. The remaining thirteen were
to preach when there was no preacher in their own or the neighbouring
societies, provided that they would take no step without the advice of
those who had more experience than themselves. At Newlyn, where Peter
Jaco had been recently converted,[636] some poor wretches of Penzance
began cursing and swearing, and thrust Wesley down the bank on which
he was preaching. At Port Isaac, the mob hallooed and shouted, but
none except the captain lifted up his hand to strike. At Camelford, a
large train attended him, but only one stone struck him. At Terdinny,
the parson affirmed publicly in his church, that Wesley’s errand was
to obtain a hundred pounds, which must be raised directly. These were
the unpleasantnesses of his journey; but, upon the whole, his visit
was happy and successful; and, almost in every place, he found the
good work prospering, as the following letter to his friend Ebenezer
Blackwell shows:—
“ST. IVES, _July 10, 1747_.
“DEAR SIR,—A great and effectual door is opened now, almost in
every corner of this country. There is such a change within
these two years as has hardly been seen in any other part of
England. Wherever we went, we used to carry our lives in our
hands; and now there is not a dog to wag his tongue. Several
ministers are clearly convinced of the truth; few are bitter;
most seem to stand neuter. Some of the gentlemen (so called)
are almost the only opposers now; drinking, revelling, cursing,
swearing gentlemen, who neither will enter into the kingdom of
heaven themselves, nor suffer any others, if they can hinder
it. The most violent Jacobites among these are continually
crying out that we are bringing the Pretender; and some of
these worthy men bear his majesty’s commission, as justices of
the peace.
“I am, dear sir,
“Your affectionate servant,
“JOHN WESLEY.”[637]
Wesley got back to Bristol on August 1, and, three days afterwards, set
out for Ireland.
Poor Ireland! Even then, Ireland was England’s greatest difficulty.
A hundred years had elapsed since the bloody rebellion of 1641; and
more than half a century had passed since King William’s victory at
the battle of the Boyne. Irish parliaments, during the reign of Anne,
and the first and second Georges, had riveted and extended the penal
laws against papists. Ireland was in a state of torpid tranquillity—a
slumbering volcano, stirred only by apprehensions of internal
commotion, or by the agitation of partisan quarrels between the rival
factions of court and country. The massacre of 1641, and the sanguinary
persecution in the reign of the bigoted James II., were still fresh
in the recollection of Protestants, and heightened their animosity to
the utmost; while, on the other hand, discomfitures and disasters,
penal laws and legalized oppression, rendered the hatred of the papists
virulent beyond example. Irritating and maddening circumstances
fomented, on both sides, the most rancorous malignity: protestantism
was triumphant, and an imperious papacy in a degrading bondage.
In England, Moravianism was the pioneer of Methodism; and so it was in
Ireland. In 1745, an English soldier in Dublin formed a small society
of pious people, and began to preach to them. Just at this juncture,
Benjamin La Trobe, a young student in connection with the Baptists,
having finished his studies at the university of Glasgow, came to
Dublin, and became the leader of the little band, gathered together by
the soldier’s exertions, thirty of whom already belonged to different
religious churches. In the same year, John Cennick withdrew himself
from Whitefield’s connexion, and transferred all the societies that he
had been the means of forming, to the care of the Moravians, while
he himself became a Moravian minister. At the request of the society,
organised by the soldier, and now presided over by Benjamin La Trobe,
John Cennick came to Dublin in June, 1746, and began to preach in
a chapel in Skinner’s Alley, which the society had hired from the
Baptists. The place was soon crowded with hearers, and the society
increased to about five hundred members.
Soon after this, Cennick had to attend a Moravian synod in Germany.
During his absence, Thomas Williams, one of Wesley’s itinerants, came
to Dublin. Williams was a man of attractive appearance, pleasing
manners, and good address. Holmes, in his “History of the United
Brethren,” says that Williams prevailed on several members of the
society to leave the Moravians and join the Methodists, and we
have no authority to deny the statement. It may be true, or it may
be otherwise. Certain it is, that, by some means, Williams formed
a separate society, and in a few weeks wrote to Wesley,[638] who
determined to visit Ireland without delay. The results of this were
vastly important. Forty-two times Wesley crossed the Irish Channel,
and spent, in his different visits, at least half-a-dozen years of
his laborious life in the emerald isle. Ireland yielded him some of
the most eminent of his coadjutors—Thomas Walsh, Adam Clarke, Henry
Moore, and others; and Irishmen were ordained by Providence to found
Methodism, or to aid in founding it, in the North American British
provinces, in the West Indies, in Africa, in India, and in Australia.
Wesley landed in Dublin Bay on Sunday morning, August 9. His host
was Mr. Lunell, a banker,[639] who afterwards gave £400 towards the
erection of the Methodist chapel in Whitefriar Street.[640]
On the day of his landing, Wesley preached, in St. Mary’s church, to
“as gay and senseless a congregation as he ever saw.” Next morning he
met Thomas Williams’s society at five; and at six preached in the large
room, which was not large enough to contain the congregation. He then
went to Mr. R——, the curate of St. Mary’s, who “professed abundance
of goodwill,” and commended Wesley’s sermon; but “expressed the most
rooted prejudice against lay preachers, or preaching out of a church;
and said, ‘the Archbishop of Dublin was resolved to suffer no such
irregularities in his diocese.’”
The day after, Wesley waited on the archbishop; spent above two hours
in conversation with his grace; and answered abundance of objections.
Meanwhile, Wesley and John Trembath (who was with him) continued
preaching in a chapel, originally designed for a Lutheran church, which
would accommodate about four hundred people. This was in Marlborough
Street,[641] and was crowded with poor and rich, and ministers of every
denomination. Wesley devoted every morning to an explanation of the
rules of the Methodist societies, and preached twice a day to many more
than the meeting-house would hold. Four days after his arrival, he
wrote as follows, to his friend Mr. Ebenezer Blackwell:—
“I have found a home in this strange land. I am at Mr. Lunell’s
just as at the Foundery; only, that I have not such attendance
here; for I meet the people at another part of the town. For
natural sweetness of temper, for courtesy and hospitality,
I have never seen any people like the Irish. Indeed, all I
converse with are only English transplanted into another soil;
and they are much mended by the removal, having left all their
roughness and surliness behind them. They receive the word of
God with all gladness and readiness of mind. The danger is,
that it should not take deep root, that it should be as seed
falling on stony ground.
Mr. Lunell and his family desire their best respects to Mrs.
Blackwell and you. His daughter can rejoice in God her Saviour.
They propose to spend the winter in England.”[642]
Saturday, August 15, Wesley arranged to see, at Mr. Lunell’s, all who
wished to speak with him. He writes: “I found scarce any Irish among
them. At least ninety-nine in a hundred of the native Irish remain in
the religion of their forefathers. The Protestants, whether in Dublin
or elsewhere, are almost all transplanted lately from England. Nor is
it any wonder, that those who are born papists generally live and die
such, when the protestants can find no better ways to convert them than
penal laws and acts of parliament.”
He ascertained, by personal examination, that the Dublin society,
formed by Williams, consisted of about two hundred and eighty members,
“many of whom appeared to be strong in faith.” Mr. La Trobe, the
Moravian preacher, took alarm; read to his congregation the “Short View
of the Difference between the Moravians,” etc.; and gave utterance to
“bitter words”; but this did service to the Methodists rather than
otherwise.
After spending exactly a fortnight in Dublin, Wesley returned to
England, and was succeeded by his brother Charles, who arrived on
September 9, with Charles Perronet as his companion.
During the fortnight which had elapsed since Wesley left, a mob had
broken into the Marlborough Street chapel, and destroyed all before
them; goods of a considerable value had been stolen; the pulpit and
benches had been burnt openly in the street, and several of the
Methodists beaten with shillalahs. Charles found that a new nickname
had been given to the poor Methodists. John Cennick, in his zeal
against popish idolatry, had said, “I curse and blaspheme all the
gods in heaven, but the Babe that lay in Mary’s lap, the Babe that
lay in swaddling clouts”; and, because of that, the populace called
him “swaddling John,” and the Methodists “Swaddlers.” The Methodists
were now without a meeting-house, and Charles Wesley, at the peril
of his life, regularly preached on Oxmanton Green; but, within a
month, he bought a house near Dolphin’s Barn, the whole ground floor
of which was a weaver’s workshop.[643] He writes on October 10, to
Mr. Blackwell:—“At my first coming here, we were so persecuted, that
no one in Dublin would venture to let us a house or a room; but now
their hearts are turned, and we have the offer of several convenient
places.”[644] And, in another letter, to his brother, dated October 9,
he remarks, that he must either buy the house near Dolphin’s Barn, or
get some other lodgings, or take his flight. “_Here_ I can stay no
longer. A family of squalling children, a landlady just ready to lie
in, a maid who has no time to do the least thing for us, are some of
our inconveniences. Our two rooms for four people allow no opportunity
for four people. Charles Perronet and I groan for elbow room in our
press-bed; our diet is answerable to our lodgings; we have no one to
mend our clothes and stockings, and no money to buy more.”[645] Under
such circumstances, the weaver’s shop was turned into a preaching
house, and the rooms above it used as the Dublin home of the two
Wesleys and their itinerants. Charles Wesley opened the “New House” on
October 25, “by preaching to a great multitude within and without”;
and, though he preached not fewer than five times during the day, and
also attended a three hours’ service at St. Patrick’s, he “was as
fresh” at night as he was when he commenced his labour in the morning.
The Dublin society contributed upwards of £70 towards the expenses;
Charles Wesley remained more than six months as their devoted minister;
and Methodism in Ireland was fairly started.[646] Wesley also gave the
Irish Methodists a hymn-book of 336 pages, entitled “Hymns and Sacred
Poems. Dublin: printed in the year 1747.” The hymns were 246 in number,
and embodied much of the Methodist history of the past eight years;
but, with this brief notice, we must leave them.
On his return to England, at the end of August, Wesley made his way
from Holyhead to Bristol, preaching in streets, in churchyards, on
tombstones, in meadows, in castle yards, and wherever he had a chance.
At Cardiff, he found the society filled with vain janglings, by J.
Prosser, “an honest, well meaning man; but no more qualified, either by
nature or grace, to expound Scripture, than to read lectures in logic
or algebra.”
Hurrying up to London, which he reached on September 11, he recommenced
his ministry in Moorfields, and declares, that, excepting that at
West Street, he knew no congregation in London so serious as this.
He made brief visits to Shoreham, Newington, and Lewisham, where he
employed himself in writing. He examined the London classes, “and
every person severally, touching that bane of religion, evil speaking.”
He witnessed some happy deaths; among others that of Mrs. Witham, “an
eminent pattern of calm boldness for the truth; of simplicity and godly
sincerity; of zeal for God, and for all good works; and of self denial
in every kind.” He advised his preachers, and wrote to one of them as
follows:—“In public preaching, speak not one word against opinions of
any kind. We are not to fight against notions, but sins. Least of all
should I advise you once to open your lips against predestination. It
would do more mischief than you are aware of. Keep to our one point,
present inward salvation by faith, by the Divine evidence of sins
forgiven.”[647]
Having spent eleven weeks in London and its vicinity, he set out, on
November 30, for Bristol, calling at Salisbury on his way. Five weeks
before, Westley Hall, the base husband of his sister Martha, had
infamously deserted his wife and family. The following is an _extract_
from a letter published in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_.[648] Some parts
of the letter are so grossly filthy that it would be a pollution to
insert them.
“SALISBURY, _October 30, 1747_.
“There have been, for some years past, a considerable number
of Methodists in this city, who were at first collected, and
have since continued under the guidance of Mr. Hall, as their
minister. This man, by an uncommon appearance of sanctity,
joined with indefatigable labour in field and house preaching,
drew multitudes of the meaner sort, both of Dissenters and
the Established Church, to attend him. And, though he has
continually advanced the grossest absurdities, both in his
preaching and writings, yet he has so bewitched his followers,
that his words had greater weight with them than the words of
Christ and His apostles.
“Many sober and judicious persons have often expressed their
fears, that the nocturnal meetings held at his house were
scenes of debauchery; for, now and then, a bastard child was
brought into the world by some of his female devotees.... Last
Wednesday, he took formal leave of his corrupted flock, and had
the impudence to justify his infamous conduct from the case
of Elkanah (1 Sam. i. 1, 2), which he largely expounded. On
Friday morning he set out for London, having first stripped his
wife (a virtuous woman by whom he has had several children) of
all her childbed linen, and whatever he could readily convert
into money, leaving her in the deepest distress. The fire of
jealousy has broken out in many families, where _wives_ or
_daughters_ were his followers.”
Wesley reached the desolate home of his poor sister on December 1, and
wrote:—
“From the concurring accounts of many witnesses, who spoke no
more than they personally knew, I now learned as much as is
hitherto brought to light concerning the fall of poor Mr. Hall.
Twelve years ago, he was, without question, filled with faith
and the love of God. He was a pattern of humility, meekness,
seriousness, and above all, of self denial; so that in all
England I knew not his fellow. It were easy to point out the
several steps, whereby he fell from his steadfastness; even
till he fell into a course of adultery, yea, and avowed it in
the face of the sun!”
Wesley spent two days with his unhappy sister, and then says: “I
took my leave of this uncomfortable place, and set out for Bristol.”
Two months later, he returned to Salisbury to see the poor miserable
wretch; but he was refused admittance, and his sister also was shut out
of doors.
Nothing now remains, except to notice Wesley’s publications during
1747. The Dublin hymn-book has been mentioned. The others were the
following:—
1. “A Word to a Protestant.” 12mo, 16 pages.
2. “A Word to a Freeholder.” 12mo, four pages. This, as already stated,
was written at Exeter, while halting on a journey, and on the eve of a
parliamentary election.
3. “A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London;
occasioned by his lordship’s late charge to his clergy.” 12mo, 32
pages. Wesley replies to the bishop’s accusations, and concludes thus:—
“Our one aim is, to proselyte sinners to repentance. If this be
not done, we will stand condemned; not as well meaning fools,
but as devils incarnate; but if it be, then, my lord, neither
you nor any man beside, can oppose and fortify people against
us, without being found even to fight against God. There are,
in and near Moorfields, ten thousand poor souls, for whom
Christ died, rushing headlong into hell. Is Dr. Bulkeley, the
parochial minister, both willing and able to stop them? If so,
let it be done, and I have no place in these parts. I go, and
call other sinners to repentance. But if, after all that he
has done, and all he can do, they are still in the broad way
to destruction, let me see if God will put a word even in my
mouth. My lord, the time is short. I am past the noon of life.
Your lordship is old and full of days, having passed the usual
age of man.[649] It cannot therefore be long before we shall
both stand naked before God. Will you then rejoice in your
success in opposing our doctrine? The Lord God grant it may not
be said in that hour, ‘These have perished in their iniquity;
but their blood I require at thy hands.’—I am, your lordship’s
dutiful son and servant,
“JOHN WESLEY.”
Appended to the letter is a magnificent hymn, of nine twelve lined
stanzas, expressive of a calm and firm determination still to
persevere, at all hazards, in preaching the gospel of his great
Master.[650]
4. “Lessons for Children.” Part II., 12mo, 108 pages. The lessons are
fifty-four in number, and consist of Scripture selections, from the
time of the Israelites passing over Jordan to the reign of Hezekiah.
5. “Primitive Physic; or an easy and natural Method of curing most
Diseases.” 12mo, 119 pages. The publication of this remarkable book
arose out of the great success of Wesley’s dispensary, opened in 1746.
At the time of his death, it had reached its twenty-third edition.[651]
It has often been ridiculed; but perhaps unwisely. The Rev. Samuel
Romilly Hall remarks:—“A medical gentleman of Leeds, reputed as
eminently intelligent and skilful in his profession, has declared
to me, that the unfriendly criticisms, so freely given on Wesley’s
‘Primitive Physic,’ are altogether unwarrantable. He affirms, that,
judged of in comparison with other non-professional works of the same
class, and of the same date, the ‘Primitive Physic’ is incomparably
superior to anything that he knows.”[652]
Besides, those who laugh at Wesley’s “Primitive Physic” ought to
remember:—(1) At no remote period from Wesley’s day, it was not unusual
for Christian ministers to practise medicine. (2) Wesley says, “For six
and twenty years, I had made anatomy and physic the diversion of my
leisure hours.” (3) Wesley was not a quack. “I took,” says he, “into my
assistance an apothecary, and an experienced surgeon.”
It is a remarkable incident, that the medical profession, so generally
impatient of medical empirics, allowed Wesley’s work to circulate for
nearly thirty years before any of their honourable fraternity deigned
to notice or denounce it. In 1776, an octavo pamphlet of 83 pages
was published with the following title:—“An Examination of the Rev.
Mr. John Wesley’s Primitive Physic; showing that a great number of
the prescriptions therein contained are founded on ignorance of the
medical art, and of the power and operations of medicine; and, that
it is a publication calculated to do essential injury to the health
of those persons who may place confidence in it. By W. Hawes, M.D.”
Of the medical merits of this production we have no ability to judge.
In many instances, it is in the highest degree ironical; though its
author affirms, he was totally unknown to Wesley, and had no personal
animosity against him. Dr. Hawes was unquestionably a man of great
eminence in his profession; but he is chiefly known as the founder of
the Humane Society, thirty of whose managers and directors attended his
funeral in 1808.
Before closing the present chapter of Wesley’s history, it must be
added, that, about the same time that his “Primitive Physic” was
given to the public, he also issued a small pamphlet, at the price of
twopence, entitled “Receipts for the Use of the Poor”; but as these
were extracted from the former publication no further notice is needed.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] These statistics have been compiled by the author, who has
carefully examined the plans of all the English circuits for the year
1864.
[2] Horace Mann’s “Census.”
[3] _Methodist Magazine_, 1856, p. 335.
[4] Stevens’ “Centenary of American Methodism.”
[5] To prevent confusion, the reader is reminded that in 1751 the old
English calendar was set aside, and that introduced by Pope Gregory
XIII., in 1582, substituted in its place. This was done by act of
Parliament for the purpose of harmonizing the computation of time
in England with that of the rest of Europe. In consequence of this
alteration, the anniversary of Wesley’s birth, since 1752, has been,
not the 17th, but the 28th of June.
[6] See Crowther’s “Portraiture of Methodism.”
[7] Clarke’s “Wesley Family,” vol. ii., p. 321.
[8] Benson’s “Apology,” p. 1.
[9] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 92.
[10] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 116.
[11] The following is a memorandum in Wesley’s own handwriting:—“Joan.
Westley ad nominat. ducis de Bucks admiss. in fundat. Carthus. 28 Jan.
1713–14.—— ad Univ. 24 June, 1720.”
[12] A Letter to the Rev. T. Coke, LL.D., and Mr. H. Moore, by “An Old
Member of Society.”
[13] Andrew Tooke was only usher of the school during Wesley’s
residence. The master was Dr. Thomas Walker. Tooke succeeded to the
mastership at Walker’s death, in 1728. (See Carlisle’s “Concise
Description of the Endowed Schools in England.”)
[14] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 92.
[15] Letters published by Priestley.
[16] Original letters in _Wesleyan Times_, 1866.
[17] Manuscript letter.
[18] _Methodist Magazine_, 1784, p. 606.
[19] See “Life and Times of Rev. S. Wesley,” p. 251.
[20] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 117.
[21] A story is told by the Rev. John Reynolds, in his “Anecdotes
of Wesley,” p. 8, to the effect that Wesley was deeply moved while
at Oxford, by an odd interview which he had with the porter of his
college. This man late one evening went to the young collegian’s room,
and said he wished to talk with him. After a little pleasantry, Wesley
told him to go home and get another coat. The porter replied, “This
is the only coat I have in the world, and I thank God for it.” Wesley
said, “Go home, and get your supper.” The man responded, “I have had
nothing to-day but a drink of water, and I thank God for that.” Wesley
remarked, “It is late, and you will be locked out, and then what will
you have to thank God for?” “I will thank Him,” replied the porter,
“that I have the dry stones to lie upon.” “John,” said Wesley, “you
thank God when you have nothing to wear, nothing to eat, and no bed
to lie upon. What else do you thank Him for?” “I thank Him,” returned
the poor fellow, “that He has given me life and being; and a heart to
love Him, and a desire to serve Him.” Reynolds says this was related
by Wesley himself, and that the interview made a lasting impression on
Wesley’s mind, and convinced him there was something in religion to
which he was as yet a stranger.
[22] _Wesleyan Times_, Jan. 29, 1866.
[23] Wesley’s Works, vol. iii., p. 382.
[24] Wesley’s Works, vol i., p. 341.
[25] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol i., p. 118.
[26] “Life and Times of S. Wesley,” p. 390.
[27] Only a part of this letter has been heretofore published.
[28] _Methodist Magazine_, 1845, p. 359.
[29] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 93.
[30] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 8.
[31] Ibid. vol. vi., p. 425.
[32] A mistake for 1725.
[33] Wesley’s Works, vol. iii. p. 202, and vol. xi., p. 351.
[34] Wesley’s Works, vol. xi., p. 351.
[35] See “Life and Times of S. Wesley,” p. 394.
[36] See letter dated July 18, 1725, in _Wesleyan Times_ of April 23,
1866.
[37] Mrs. Wesley here seems to use the word “repentance” in the sense
of regeneration.
[38] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 129.
[39] “Life and Times of S. Wesley,” p. 395.
[40] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 176.
[41] Wesley’s Works, vol. iii., p. 420.
[42] _Methodist Magazine_, 1797, p. 425.
[43] Lincoln College consisted of a rector, twelve fellows, two
chaplains, etc. The students numbered about fifty. The Bishop of
Lincoln was visitor. The room occupied by Wesley is still designated
“Wesley’s room,” and a vine creeping round its window is called
“Wesley’s vine.”
[44] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 136.
[45] Dr. Morley was rector of Lincoln College. He was elected July
18th, 1719, and died at his rectory of Scotton, near Gainsborough, June
12th, 1731. He used great influence in procuring Wesley his fellowship.
[46] “Life and Times of S. Wesley,” p. 399.
[47] Letters published by Priestley, p. 2.
[48] Ibid. p. 8.
[49] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 403.
[50] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 141.
[51] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 407.
[52] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 9.
[53] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 334.
[54] See _Wesleyan Times_, Feb. 26, 1866.
[55] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 93.
[56] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 284.
[57] It is a remarkable fact that Law’s “Serious Call” produced a
similar effect on Dr. Johnson. “When at Oxford,” says Johnson, “I took
it up expecting to find it a dull book, and perhaps to laugh at it.
But I found Law quite an over-match for me; and this was the first
occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable
of religious inquiry.”
[58] Ibid., vol. xi., p. 352.
[59] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 108.
[60] Ibid. vol. x., p. 387, and vol. xiii., p. 387.
[61] Wesley’s Works, vol. vi., p. 447.
[62] Ibid. vol. xii., p. 10.
[63] _Methodist Magazine_, 1798, p. 505.
[64] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 450.
[65] Ibid. vol. iii., p. 340.
[66] “Poems, by S. Wesley.”
[67] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 413.
[68] _North British Review_, 1847.
[69] Rawlinson’s Continuation of Wood’s “Athenæ Oxoniensis.”
[70] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 402.
[71] Ibid. vol. ix., p. 124.
[72] Ibid. vol. viii., p. 334.
[73] For want of space, the writer, with great reluctance, has been
compelled to omit a long biographical chapter respecting these first
Oxford Methodists. If life be spared, however, the details, in an
expanded form, may be published hereafter. Such a book would serve as a
companion volume to the present publication.
[74] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 402.
[75] _Methodist Magazine_, 1832, p. 793.
[76] The notes of their proceedings, in Wesley’s handwriting, still
exist, in a small 18mo volume, possessed by the family of the late Rev.
Dr. Adam Clarke. (See Catalogue of Dr. Clarke’s MSS., p. 93.)
[77] _Methodist Magazine_, 1798, p. 118, etc.
[78] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 20.
[79] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 34.
[80] Ibid. vol. vii., p. 65.
[81] Ibid. vol. xi., p. 352.
[82] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 82.
[83] Ibid. vol. xi., p. 498.
[84] Ibid. vol. xiii., p. 288; also, _Methodist Magazine_, 1781, p. 319.
[85] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 193.
[86] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., pp. 334, 487.
[87] Benson’s “Apology,” p. 25.
[88] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 169.
[89] Original letter in _Wesleyan Times_, May 12, 1866.
[90] See “Autobiography of Mrs. Delany.”
[91] Ibid. vol. i., p. 40.
[92] See original letter, _Wesleyan Times_, May 28, 1866.
[93] “Autobiography of Mrs. Delany,” vol. i., p. 269.
[94] _Methodist Magazine_, 1863, p. 134, etc.
[95] “Autobiography of Mrs. Delany,” vol. i., p. 343.
[96] Ibid. p. 410.
[97] Jackson’s Life of C. Wesley, vol. i., p. 11.
[98] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., pp. 6, 11.
[99] _Methodist Magazine_, 1850, p. 1064.
[100] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 94.
[101] _Methodist Magazine_, 1787, p. 229, etc.
[102] Ibid. 1844, p. 818.
[103] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 12.
[104] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 288.
[105] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., pp. 190, 191.
[106] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 194.
[107] The text was Romans ii. 29; and the title of the sermon, “The
Circumcision of the Heart.”
[108] Wesley’s Works, vol. iii., 202.
[109] Wesley’s Works, vol. v., p. 190.
[110] _Methodist Magazine_, 1798, p. 607.
[111] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 204.
[112] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 7.
[113] Ibid. vol. xii., p. 14.
[114] See original letter in _Wesleyan Times_, Oct. 1, 1866.
[115] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 288; and Brown’s “Memoirs of
Hervey,” p. 2.
[116] _Wesleyan Times_, April 8, 1861.
[117] _Methodist Magazine_, 1848, p. 892.
[118] “Life and Times of S. Wesley,” p. 441.
[119] Priestley’s Letters, p. 44.
[120] Ibid. p. 48.
[121] Priestley’s Letters, p. 21.
[122] Priestley’s Letters, p. 17.
[123] _Wesleyan Times_, Jan. 14, 1866.
[124] Priestley’s Letters, p. 16.
[125] Benson’s “Apology,” pp. 30–32.
[126] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 208.
[127] Priestley’s Letters, p. 18.
[128] Priestley’s Letters, p. 20.
[129] Ibid. p. 43.
[130] Ibid. p. 45.
[131] Ibid. p. 47.
[132] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 23.
[133] Whitefield’s Life, 1756, p. 25.
[134] The writer is perfectly aware that Wesley states (Wesley’s
Works, vol. xiii., p. 386) that he continued in his purpose to live
and die at Oxford till Dr. Burton pressed him to go to Georgia. This
is a fair objection; but the reader will do well to remember that
the above statement was made by Wesley in the year 1785; and that it
is only reasonable to suppose that Wesley, at the moment, forgot his
correspondence with Broughton fifty years previous.
[135] Wesley’s Works, vol xiii., p. 288.
[136] Whitefield’s Life, 1756.
[137] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 446.
[138] _Methodist Magazine_, 1798, p. 439.
[139] “Memoirs of Hutton.” This is not the place to pursue James
Hutton’s history. Suffice it to say, that he became one of the
principal Moravians in England; and that it was by his exertions
_mainly_ that the Moravian missions in North America were taken under
government protection. He was often contemptuously spoken of as
“the deaf old Moravian”: but he was a scholar and a gentleman; had
intercourse with persons of the highest rank; and was a frequent and
almost familiar visitor of George III. and his Queen Charlotte. For
many years, his difficulty of hearing was such that he could converse
only by the use of an ear trumpet; but his face was always lit up with
intellect, and his life was spent in doing good. He died in 1795.
[140] _Wesley Banner_, 1852, p. 351.
[141] _Evening Post_, Oct. 14, 1735.
[142] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1733, p. 384.
[143] “Account of the Sufferings of the Persecuted Protestants in the
Archbishoprick of Saltzburg.” London: 1733.
[144] Wright’s Memoir of Oglethorpe, p. 77.
[145] _Methodist Magazine_, 1844, p. 920.
[146] “Reasons for Establishing the Colony of Georgia.” London: 1733.
[147] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 35.
[148] Priestley’s Letters, p. 56.
[149] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 16, and vol. viii., p. 471.
[150] Ingham manuscripts.
[151] Manuscripts.
[152] Francis Moore, who sailed in the _Simmonds_, became keeper of the
stores in Georgia, and in 1744 published an account of his voyage; and
relates, as its principal incidents, that a boy fell overboard, but was
rescued by a rope; in the Downs, a servant was set on shore because he
had the itch; the passengers had prayers twice a day; Wesley and his
friends expounded the Scriptures and catechized the children, and ate
at Oglethorpe’s table; the Germans sung psalms, and served God in their
own way; and the only person punished during the voyage was a boy for
stealing turnips.
[153] Ingham’s Journal.
[154] Ibid.
[155] Ingham’s Journal.
[156] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 256.
[157] Ibid. p. 259.
[158] Ingham’s Journal.
[159] The _Old Whig_, June 17, 1736.
[160] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1736.
[161] “New Voyage to Georgia,” 2nd edit., 1737.
[162] “A Voyage to Georgia,” by F. Moore. London: 1744.
[163] Ingham’s Journal.
[164] James Hutton’s Memoirs, p. 22.
[165] _Methodist Magazine_, 1797, p. 371.
[166] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 289.
[167] Ibid. vol. xii., p. 15.
[168] Ingham’s Journal.
[169] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 293
[170] Ingham’s Journal.
[171] Rev. C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 5.
[172] Thomas and Beata Hawkins sailed to Georgia in the same ship as
Wesley (Clarke’s “Wesley Family,” vol. ii., p. 177). Hawkins was a
surgeon. His wife was a virago, who well-nigh murdered two constables
at Frederica, by breaking a brace of bottles on their heads (_Methodist
Magazine_, abridg. edit., 1862, p. 500).
[173] Wesley’s Works vol. xii., p. 39.
[174] Original letter in _Wesleyan Times_, Jan. 30, 1865.
[175] _Methodist Magazine_, 1848, p. 1102.
[176] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 160.
[177] Manuscript letter.
[178] Priestley’s Letters, p. 63.
[179] _Methodist Magazine_, 1863, p. 731.
[180] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1737, p. 575.
[181] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 39.
[182] _Methodist Magazine_, 1842, p. 657.
[183] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 44.
[184] Ibid. vol. xi., p. 455.
[185] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1792, p. 24.
[186] _Methodist Magazine_, 1808, p. 490.
[187] Ibid. 1798, p. 358.
[188] Ibid. 1855, p. 426.
[189] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 324.
[190] _Methodist Magazine_, 1844, p. 922.
[191] These facts concerning Causton are taken from “A True and
Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia,” published in 1741, by a
number of colonists living on the spot, and all of whom were unfriendly
to Wesley.
[192] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1792, p. 23.
[193] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol ii., p. 15.
[194] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol i., p. 312.
[195] “The Progress of Methodism in Bristol.” 1743.
[196] “A True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia.” 1741.
[197] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1792, p. 23.
[198] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 320.
[199] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 118.
[200] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 30.
[201] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 320.
[202] Wesley’s Works, vol. ii., p. 154.
[203] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1792, p. 24; and Wesley’s unpublished
journal.
[204] Ibid.
[205] Moore’s life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 326.
[206] Wesley’s unpublished journal.
[207] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 327.
[208] Wesley’s unpublished journal.
[209] Wesley’s unpublished journal.
[210] Ibid.
[211] “The Progress of Methodism in Bristol.” 1743.
[212] Wesley’s unpublished journal.
[213] Wesley’s unpublished journal.
[214] Wesley’s unpublished journal.
[215] Wesley’s unpublished journal.
[216] Ibid.
[217] Ibid.
[218] “A Journal of the Proceedings in Georgia. By W. Stephens, Esq.”
8vo: 2 vols.
[219] Ibid.
[220] “Journal of Proceedings in Georgia.” 8vo: 2 vols.
[221] It is a remarkable fact that, though Savannah is the chief city
in the state of Georgia, Methodism hardly has an existence in it.
Wesley left it in 1737; and three years after, Whitefield founded
his Savannah Orphan House, which has long since crumbled into ruins.
Nothing more was done until 1790, when Hope Hull was sent to Savannah
and preached a few times in a chairmaker’s shop, but met with more mob
violence than spiritual success. Ten years later, John Garvin tried to
collect a society; but the attempt was a failure. The South Carolina
Conference, held in 1806, appointed Samuel Dunwody, and he succeeded in
forming the first Methodist society in Savannah since the breaking up
of that formed by Wesley seventy years previously. Dunwody’s society
consisted of twelve members, five of them white and seven coloured.
After hard toiling a chapel was erected in Savannah in 1812, and was
opened by Bishop Asbury; but, to the present day, the opposition to
Methodism is most decided, and the Methodist society and congregation
are extremely poor and meagre. (See Dr. Dixon’s “Methodism in America,”
p. 282.)
[222] It is right to add that Mr. Stephens, the trustees’ secretary,
who, upon the whole, evinces a friendly spirit towards Wesley, gives a
somewhat scurvy character of Wesley’s companions. One of them, Coates,
a constable, had been one of the principal fomenters of mischief,
a busy fellow, going from house to house with idle stories to fill
people’s heads with jealousies, and distinguishing himself by a most
inveterate opposition to all the rules of government. He was greatly in
debt, and had never improved one foot of land since his arrival in the
province. Gough, a tithingman, was an idle fellow, pert and impudent
in his behaviour, always kicking against the civil power, and making
it his business to inflame sedition. He also was in debt; and left
behind him a wife and child, who scarce grieved at his departure, for
he used to beat them more than feed them. Campbell, a barber, was an
insignificant loose fellow, fit for any leader that would make a tool
of him, and whose only motive for going off was to escape his creditors.
There can be little doubt that this is true; but it by no means follows
that these vagabonds were Wesley’s _friends_. They seem to have been
_fugitives_ as well as he. Misfortune makes a man acquainted with
strange bedfellows; still, leaving in such company was an ugly fact,
and was used to Wesley’s disadvantage. Mr. Stephens writes: “As I
was always ready and willing, in conversation or otherwise, to make
allowance for Mr. Wesley’s failings in policy, and was careful not
to run hastily into a belief of all I heard against him, I was now
asked, in a sneering way, what my sentiments were of him? ‘_Noscitur ex
sociis_’ was the common byword; and all I had to say was that he must
stand or fall by himself, when his cause came before the trustees.”
[223] See Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 76; and Errata to vol. xxvi. of
his collected works, published in 1774.
[224] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 190.
[225] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 320.
[226] Whitefield’s Journal.
[227] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 347.
[228] Whitefield’s journal and letters.
[229] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1738.
[230] Wesley’s Works, vol. v., p. 18.
[231] Wesley’s Works, vol. v., p. 18.
[232] See original letter, _Methodist Magazine_, 1846, p. 1089.
[233] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 22.
[234] Ibid. vol vii., p. 189.
[235] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 95.
[236] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., pp. 86, 96.
[237] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 86; and C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i.,
p. 85.
[238] Priestley’s Letters, p. 65.
[239] _Methodist Magazine_, 1821, p. 439.
[240] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 95.
[241] Hutton’s Memoirs, p. 27.
[242] _Methodist Magazine_, 1854, p. 687.
[243] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1738, p. 608.
[244] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 344.
[245] _Methodist Magazine_, 1797, p. 149.
[246] From a “Memorial of William Law, by Christopher Walton,” printed
for private circulation in 1854.
[247] C. Wesley’s Journal; and Priestley’s Letters.
[248] Priestley’s Letters.
[249] This letter was written after Wesley’s visit to Germany, which
will be noticed shortly.
[250] Priestley’s Letters, p. 83.
[251] Priestley’s Letters, p. 88.
[252] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 108.
[253] Ibid. p. 109.
[254] Ibid. p. 111.
[255] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 112.
[256] Wesley’s Works, vol. v., p. 107.
[257] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 106.
[258] Holmes’s History.
[259] Priestley’s Letters, p. 82.
[260] Hutton’s Memoirs.
[261] Holmes’s History, etc.
[262] _Methodist Magazine_, 1856, p. 1028.
[263] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 51.
[264] Ibid. vol. xii., p. 50.
[265] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 365.
[266] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 133.
[267] Warburton’s Life, p. 523.
[268] Rules of Band Societies, 4th edit., 1744.
[269] _Methodist Magazine_, 1863, p. 794.
[270] See _Wesleyan Times_, Dec. 2, 1861.
[271] Since writing the above, we have met with one of Wesley’s letters
in Rawlinson’s Continuation of Wood’s “Athenæ Oxoniensis,” in which he
states that he published “A Collection of Psalms and Hymns,” in 1736.
Is this date an error?
[272] The _Weekly Miscellany_ for February 10, 1739, and in subsequent
numbers, states that there was considerable chicanery practised in
securing Whitefield the pulpit of St. Margaret’s. It was pretended
that a friendly society desired him to preach for the benefit of their
funds; but the treasurer of the society, and four of its six trustees,
signed and published a document contradicting this assertion. Of the
two remaining, one was from home at the time, and the other was a Mr.
Bennett, who assisted the crowd in pushing Whitefield into the pulpit.
There can be little doubt that Whitefield was deceived by Bennett, and
that it was a mistake for him to preach at St. Margaret’s when he did.
In the same weekly journal, it is asserted that Charles Wesley had been
guilty of the same illegal act, by taking possession of the pulpit
at Bloomsbury. His friends asked the pulpit for him; the request was
refused; and yet he came into the preacher’s pew; sat next the door;
and, as soon as prayers were over, went into the pulpit and preached,
to the great surprise of the clergyman, who intended to preach himself.
We have no means of either confirming or refuting this.
[273] His congregation, including horses and coaches, covered three
acres (_Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1739).
[274] Whitefield’s Journal.
[275] Ibid.
[276] Whitefield’s Journal.
[277] Ibid.
[278] C. Wesley’s Journal.
[279] This is worth noting. Wesley, in his History of England, vol.
iv., p. 188, tells us that “a severe frost began at Christmas, and
continued till the latter end of February. The Thames was covered with
such a crust of ice that a multitude of people dwelled upon it in
tents, and a great number of booths were erected for the entertainment
of the populace. The navigation was entirely stopped; the fruits of the
earth were destroyed; many persons were chilled to death; the price of
all sorts of provisions rose almost to a dearth; and even water was
sold in the streets of London.”
[280] Whitefield’s Journal.
[281] Whitefield’s Journal.
[282] Whitefield’s Journal.
[283] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 240.
[284] Ibid. vol. viii., p. 109.
[285] Taylor’s “Wesley and Methodism.”
[286] Hutton’s Memoirs, p. 42.
[287] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 292.
[288] Wesley’s Works, vol. xi., p. 472.
[289] In the same year, Trapp preached another sermon, On Religious
Zeal, before the Oxford university, and the judges presiding at
the Oxford assizes. This, at their request, he published, octavo,
thirty-two pages. One extract may suffice. Speaking of the Methodists,
he describes them as “our modern enthusiasts, pretending to be the
only true believers; and by whom the Established Church and clergy had
been outraged with unparalleled virulence and malice, insolence and
contempt.”
[290] _Methodist Magazine_, 1863, p. 908.
[291] See “Life of Whitefield. By an Impartial Hand.” 1739.
[292] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 470.
[293] Doddridge’s Correspondence, vol. iii., p. 381.
[294] Priestley’s Letters, p. 99.
[295] _Methodist Magazine_, 1815, p. 457.
[296] Ibid. 1828, p. 382.
[297] See a full account of them in “The Life and Times of the Rev.
Samuel Wesley, M.A.”
[298] See Priestley’s Letters, p. 102.
[299] _Methodist Magazine_, 1849, p. 165.
[300] Whitefield’s Journal.
[301] _Methodist Magazine_, 1778, p. 179.
[302] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., pp. 314–316.
[303] Priestley’s Letters, p. 107.
[304] “Life and Diary of Rev. Ralph Erskine,” p. 293.
[305] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 184.
[306] Ibid.
[307] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 127.
[308] “Life and Times of Countess of Huntingdon,” vol. ii., p. 358.
[309] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 236.
[310] _Weekly Miscellany_, Nov. 11, 1738.
[311] Whitefield’s Journal.
[312] Ibid.
[313] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 237.
[314] Ibid. vol. xiii., p. 150.
[315] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 125.
[316] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 37.
[317] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 245. Wesley evidently thought,
that all are, or ought to be, equal in the house of God. His
arrangements for the Foundery congregation were carried out in the
whole of his London chapels until four years before his death, when,
greatly to his annoyance, the lay authorities at City Road set aside
his policy.
[318] _Watchman_, 1838, p. 401.
[319] Jobson’s “Chapel and School Architecture,” p. 48.
[320] Jackson’s Life of C. Wesley, vol. ii., p. 536.
[321] Life of Silas Told, p. 74.
[322] _Methodist Magazine_, 1787, p. 101.
[323] Cennick’s Autobiography.
[324] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 264.
[325] Myles’s History, p. 15.
[326] The writer is aware that Wesley says, “Joseph Humphreys was the
first lay preacher that assisted me in England, in the year 1738.”
(Wesley’s Works, vol. iv., p. 473.) But this was before Wesley went to
Bristol, and, doubtless, in connection with the Moravian society in
Fetter Lane.
[327] _Methodist Magazine_, 1822, p. 783.
[328] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 259.
[329] Ibid. vol. vii., p. 404.
[330] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 76.
[331] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 126.
[332] Whitefield’s Journal.
[333] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 189.
[334] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 213.
[335] Ibid. p. 219.
[336] This is true. Hence the following, taken from a sermon published
by Annesley in 1661:—“There are believers of several growths in the
church of God: fathers, young men, children, and babes; and as, in most
families, there are more babes and children than grown men, so in the
church of God there are more weak, doubting Christians, than strong
ones, grown up to a full assurance. A babe may be born and yet not know
it; so a man may be born again, and not be sure of it. Sometimes they
think they have grounds of hope, that they shall be saved; sometimes
they think they have grounds of fears, that they shall be condemned.
Not knowing which might be most weighty, like a pair of balances, they
are in equipoise.”
[337] Clarke’s “Wesley Family,” vol. ii., p. 119.
[338] Priestley’s Letters, p. 108.
[339] Priestley’s Letters, p. 96.
[340] Wesley’s Works, vol. xi., p. 355.
[341] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 331.
[342] Robert Ramsey did not long escape the hand of justice. About the
Christmas of the year following, he was arrested for another crime,
tried and condemned to die; and on January 14, 1741, with eleven other
malefactors, was executed at Tyburn. While lying under sentence of
death in Newgate prison, he requested Wesley to visit him; and twice
his old master went, but was refused admittance. (_London Magazine_,
1742, p. 47; and Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 331.)
[343] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 251.
[344] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 242.
[345] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 264.
[346] Hutton’s Memoirs, p. 50.
[347] Original letter, published in _Wesleyan Times_.
[348] Hutton’s Memoirs, p. 48.
[349] Hutton’s Memoirs.
[350] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 222.
[351] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 221. Hymn 92, in the Methodist
Hymn-book, is an abridgment of it.
[352] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 222.
[353] See Hutton’s Memoirs.
[354] Jackson’s Life of C. Wesley.
[355] C. Wesley’s Journal.
[356] Wesley’s Works, vol. ii., p. 26.
[357] Ibid. vol. viii., p. 401.
[358] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. ii., p. 167.
[359] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 224.
[360] Benson’s “Apology,” p. 134.
[361] See Wesley’s Works, vol. x., p. 257; orig. edition.
[362] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 156.
[363] Ibid. vol. i., p. 182.
[364] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 185.
[365] Ibid. vol. i., p. 189.
[366] _Weekly History_, No. 13: 1741.
[367] Whitefield’s Works, vol. iv., p. 54.
[368] Ibid. vol. i., p. 205.
[369] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 212.
[370] See “Wesley Poetry,” vol. i., p. 310.
[371] “Life and Times of Howel Harris.”
[372] _Weekly History_, No. 13: 1741.
[373] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 219.
[374] Ibid. vol. i., p. 225.
[375] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 263.
[376] Whitefield’s Works, vol. iv., p. 72.
[377] _Methodist Magazine_, 1807, p. 6.
[378] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 335.
[379] Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii., p. 541.
[380] _Weekly History_, No. 33: Nov. 21, 1741.
[381] Myles’s History, p. 58.
[382] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 246.
[383] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiv., p. 306; and vol. xi., p. 366.
[384] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1741, p. 608.
[385] Philip’s Life of Whitefield, p. 275.
[386] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 102.
[387] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 481.
[388] Ibid. p. 489.
[389] Wesley’s Works, vol. ii., p. 27.
[390] Life of Dr. Bunting, vol. i., p. 395.
[391] Doddridge’s Correspondence, vol. iv., p. 56.
[392] _Methodist Magazine_, 1798, p. 490.
[393] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 257.
[394] Benson’s “Apology,” p. 137.
[395] _Weekly Miscellany_, March 14, 1741
[396] Cennick says: “When we were separated, we were in number twelve
men and twelve women.” (“Life of Cennick,” p. 27.)
[397] Wesley’s Works, vol. iv., p. 473.
[398] _Weekly History_, No. 11.
[399] _Weekly History_, No. 4.
[400] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 267.
[401] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 102.
[402] Ibid. p. 147.
[403] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 257.
[404] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 261.
[405] Ibid. p. 271.
[406] Ibid. p. 331.
[407] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 401.
[408] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 331.
[409] “Anecdotes of Wesley, by Rev. J. Reynolds.” Leeds: 1828.
[410] Ibid. p. 13.
[411] Taylor’s “Wesley and Methodism,” p. 44.
[412] Thirty more were expelled at a later period of the year.
[413] Wesley’s Ecclesiastical History, vol. iv., p. 178.
[414] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 53.
[415] Ibid. vol. xiii., pp. 242, 293.
[416] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 247.
[417] C. Wesley’s Journal.
[418] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 85.
[419] _Scots Magazine_, 1741, p. 380.
[420] _Weekly History_, No. 14.
[421] _Weekly History_, No. 15.
[422] Ibid. No. 24.
[423] Hutton’s Memoirs.
[424] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 431.
[425] “Friendly Remarks,” published in 1772.
[426] His sermon before the university has been mentioned already.
[427] Wesley’s Works, vol. xi., p. 359.
[428] It was hardly honest of Wesley to publish this without a word
of acknowledgment as to its author and origin. We have compared it
with “A Dialogue between the Baptist and Presbyterian; wherein the
Presbyterians are punished, by their own pens, for their cruel and
self-devouring doctrines, making God the ordainer of all the sins of
men and devils, and reprobating the greatest part of mankind without
any help of salvation. By Thomas Grantham, Messenger of the Baptized
Churches in Lincolnshire. London: 1691.” 4to, pages 18; and have no
hesitancy in saying, that Wesley’s Dialogue, abridged and altered, is
taken from that of Grantham.
[429] See “Life and Times of Rev. S. Wesley,” p. 136.
[430] See lives of Wesley, by Whitehead and Moore.
[431] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 102.
[432] _Standard_ newspaper, May 22, 1869.
[433] Whitefield’s Works, vol. i., p. 386.
[434] Ibid. vol. i., p. 438.
[435] Ibid. vol. i., p. 449.
[436] Act of the Associate Presbytery, 1744.
[437] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 152.
[438] Jackson’s Life of C. Wesley.
[439] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 103.
[440] _London Magazine_, 1742, p. 468.
[441] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 292.
[442] Ibid. vol. i., p. 335.
[443] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 243.
[444] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 342.
[445] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 148.
[446] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 149. This was not
altogether novel. Nearly a hundred years previously, under the auspices
of Nicholas Pavillon, the Bishop of Alet, in the south of France, there
had sprung up “The Society of Regents,” one of whose meetings was for
exhortation and free spiritual conversation, and in which each person,
who was so inclined, related her experience, or asked advice. See “Life
of Nicholas Pavillon”: 1869.
[447] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 246.
[448] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 247.
[449] “Principles and Career of Wesley,” by Dr. Dobbin.
[450] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 294.
[451] _Methodist Magazine_, 1856, p. 332; and “Life and Times of
Countess of Huntingdon.”
[452] _Methodist Magazine_, 1798, p. 490.
[453] Ibid. 1798, p. 642.
[454] _Methodist Magazine_, 1845, p. 1073.
[455] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 103.
[456] A day or two afterwards Miss Cooper peacefully changed earth for
heaven.
[457] “The Country Parson’s Advice to his Parishioners,” is an octavo
volume of 215 pages, and was first published in 1680. It consists of
two parts:—(1) An exhortation to a religious and virtuous life. (2)
General directions for such a life. The book, as a whole, is well
written, and useful; but the last chapter is exceedingly objectionable.
It unmistakably teaches apostolical succession, confession, priestly
absolution, and other favourite dogmas of the high church party of the
present day.
[458] Doddridge’s Correspondence, vol. iv., p. 86.
[459] _Methodist Magazine_, 1801, p. 531.
[460] _Methodist Magazine_, 1808, p. 138.
[461] Bourne’s and Brand’s histories of Newcastle.
[462] Manuscripts.
[463] _Methodist Magazine_, 1848, p. 91.
[464] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 84.
[465] _Methodist Magazine_, 1778, p. 184.
[466] _Methodist Magazine_, 1778, p. 185.
[467] Ibid. 1846, p. 362.
[468] Jackson’s Life of C. Wesley, vol. i., p. 319.
[469] John Nelson’s Journal.
[470] Brand’s History of Newcastle, vol. ii., p. 424; and _Wesleyan
Times_, 1856, p. 597.
[471] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 294.
[472] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 551.
[473] _Christian Miscellany_, 1858, pp. 97, 164.
[474] Manuscripts.
[475] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 295.
[476] Early in the year 1742, an eightpenny pamphlet was published,
which Wesley never noticed. Its title was, “A Letter to the Rev. Mr.
John Wesley, in vindication of the Doctrines of absolute, unconditional
Election, particular Redemption, special Vocation, and final
Perseverance. Occasioned chiefly by some things in his Dialogue between
a Presbyterian and his Friend; and in his Hymns on God’s Everlasting
Love.”
[477] _Weekly History_, No. 78: Oct. 2, 1742.
[478] Since the above was written, we have met with one of Wesley’s
letters, in Rawlinson’s Continuation of Wood’s “Athenæ Oxoniensis,”
in which he states that he published, “An Abridgment of Mr.
Norris’s Christian Prudence, and Reflections on the Conduct of our
Understanding,” in 1734.
[479] _Methodist Magazine_, 1866, p. 324.
[480] Ibid.
[481] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 306.
[482] Mr. Tucker was vicar of All Saints, Bristol. This pamphlet
(octavo, fifty-one pages) was written at the request of the Archbishop
of Armagh, and was entitled, “A Brief History of the Principles of
Methodism.”
[483] Wesley also published “Hymns and Poems” in 1742; but as his
poetical publications were chiefly written by his brother, they will be
only occasionally noticed hereafter. For full information the reader is
referred to the “Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley,” in twelve
volumes, octavo, published at the Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office,
City Road, London.
[484] Southey’s Life of Wesley.
[485] Life and Times of Howel Harris, p. 96, etc.
[486] “Papers on the Rise and Progress of Methodism at Wednesbury.”
London: 1744.
[487] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 295.
[488] Ibid. vol. xii., p. 75.
[489] Papers on Rise, etc., of Methodism at Wednesbury, 1744.
[490] Papers on Rise, etc., of Methodism at Wednesbury, 1744.
[491] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 164.
[492] Papers on Rise, etc., of Methodism at Wednesbury, 1744.
[493] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 162, etc.
[494] Papers on Rise, etc., of Methodism at Wednesbury, 1744.
[495] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 339.
[496] See _Methodist Recorder_, Oct. 5, 1866.
[497] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 340.
[498] Ibid. p. 340.
[499] _Methodist Recorder_, Oct. 12, 1866.
[500] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 204.
[501] Ibid. vol. i., p. 426.
[502] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 173.
[503] _Methodist Magazine_, 1820, p. 538.
[504] Ibid. 1823, p. 204.
[505] Nelson’s Journal.
[506] See the substance of this paper, under the year 1741, pp. 349,
350.
[507] Life of C. Wesley, vol. i., p. 350.
[508] _Weekly History_, June 19, 1742.
[509] Wesley’s Works, vol. ii., p. 28.
[510] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 117.
[511] Watson’s Life of Wesley, p. 110.
[512] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 254.
[513] Clarke’s “Wesley Family,” vol. ii., p. 267.
[514] C. Wesley’s Journal.
[515] Whitefield’s Works, vol. ii., pp. 33, 35.
[516] “Progress of Methodism in Bristol.” 1743.
[517] Wesley’s Works, vol. x., p. 417.
[518] Wesley’s Works, vol. xi., p. 324.
[519] Ibid. vol. xiii., p. 31.
[520] Ibid. vol. viii., pp. 293, 304.
[521] Everett’s Life of Clarke.
[522] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 80.
[523] It is a mistake to say, as is done in the edition of Wesley’s
collected works, and in some of the Methodist periodicals, that the
“Earnest Appeal” was written and published in 1744.
[524] _London Magazine_, 1744.
[525] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 354.
[526] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 406.
[527] Smith’s “History of Methodism,” vol. i., p. 227.
[528] Life of Whatcoat, by Fry.
[529] Atmore’s “Methodist Memorial,” p. 411.
[530] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 302.
[531] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 367.
[532] Minutes (edit. 1862), vol. i.
[533] Minutes (edit. 1862), vol. i.
[534] Minutes, published in 1763, 12mo, pp. 30.
[535] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 380.
[536] Wesley’s Works, vol. i., p. 443.
[537] Ibid. vol. xiii., p. 299.
[538] _Methodist Magazine_, 1866, p. 44.
[539] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1744, p. 568.
[540] Wesley’s Works, vol. ii., p. 404.
[541] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i.
[542] Whitefield’s Works, vol. iv., p. 125.
[543] _London Magazine_, 1744, p. 260.
[544] _London Magazine_, 1724, p. 624.
[545] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1744, p. 504.
[546] Nelson’s Journal.
[547] Manuscripts.
[548] See Myles’s History.
[549] Wesley’s Works, vol. vi., p. 464.
[550] _Methodist Magazine_, 1848, p. 976.
[551] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 72.
[552] Ibid. vol. iii., p. 257.
[553] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 233.
[554] _Methodist Magazine_, 1820, p. 540.
[555] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 396.
[556] C. Wesley’s Life, vol. i., pp. 415, 430.
[557] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 492.
[558] _London Magazine_, 1745, p. 297.
[559] Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes, vol. viii., p. 228.
[560] Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii., p. 541.
[561] Whitefield’s Works, vol. ii., p. 79.
[562] Hutton’s Memoirs, p. 143.
[563] Wesley’s Works, vol. ix., p. 62.
[564] Ibid. vol. x., p. 433.
[565] Hutton’s Memoirs, p. 184.
[566] Cudworth published two replies to Wesley; one in 1745, entitled,
“A Dialogue between a Preacher of inherent righteousness and a
Preacher of God’s righteousness: being an answer to a late Dialogue
between an Antinomian and his friend.” 12mo, 12 pages. Another, in
1746, with the title, “Truth defended and cleared from mistakes and
misrepresentations.” 12mo, 52 pages. In both of these productions,
Cudworth shows great ability, and though his opinions, as there
expressed, are far from orthodox, yet, unless other facts can be
alleged against him, he hardly deserves the hard things which Wesley
said of him.
[567] “Life and Times of Countess of Huntingdon,” vol. ii., p. 338.
[568] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 335.
[569] Ibid. vol. xii., p. 245.
[570] An old Methodist, Jenny Meek, who knew Wesley well, told the
writer that the baptism of this energetic sister took place, not in the
popish chapel, but in an adjoining house. Many an hour, when a child,
did I sit listening, with rapt attention, to old Jenny’s Methodist
traditions, and to this I trace, in a great degree, my passion for old
Methodist matters.—L. T.
[571] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 104.
[572] Wesley’s unpublished journal.
[573] Brand’s History of Newcastle, vol. ii., p. 525.
[574] Brand’s History.
[575] Brand’s History.
[576] Ibid.
[577] Minutes (edit. 1862), vol. i.
[578] Wesley’s Works, vol. vi., p. 466.
[579] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 155.
[580] Ibid. vol. xi., p. 320.
[581] Ibid. vol. viii., p. 145.
[582] Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 9.
[583] Whitefield’s Works, vol. ii., p. 83.
[584] _Methodist Magazine_, 1778, p. 418.
[585] C. Wesley’s Journal.
[586] Minutes (edit. 1862), vol. i., p. 36.
[587] Wesley’s Works, vol. iii., p. 42.
[588] Watson’s Works, vol. v., p. 148.
[589] “Life and Times of Howel Harris,” p. 113.
[590] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 409.
[591] _Methodist Magazine_, 1797, p. 252.
[592] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 206.
[593] _Methodist Magazine_, 1778, p. 419.
[594] Stamp’s “Orphan House.”
[595] Wesley’s unpublished journal.
[596] Ibid. vol. xi., p. 483.
[597] Ibid. vol. x., p. 379.
[598] Ibid. vol. xi., p. 489.
[599] C. Wesley’s Journal.
[600] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 254.
[601] Ibid. vol. viii., p. 495.
[602] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 83.
[603] Ibid. vol. xii., p. 155.
[604] C. Wesley’s Journal, vol. i., p. 414.
[605] Other hymns were published in 1746: as, “Hymns for our Lord’s
Resurrection;” “Hymns for Ascension Day;” “Hymns to the Trinity;”
“Graces before and after Meat;” “Hymns for the Watch-night;” “Hymns for
the Public Thanksgiving Day;” “Funeral Hymns;” and “Hymns on the Great
Festivals;” but it is impossible to determine how many of these were
written by Wesley himself, and how many by his brother.
[606] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1746, p. 223.
[607] Ibid. p. 388.
[608] _London Magazine_, 1746, p. 594.
[609] Whitefield’s Works, vol. ii., p. 128.
[610] The above extracts are all taken from a 12mo volume, published
at the time, and consisting of a collection of letters, entitled “The
Christian History.”
[611] C. Wesley’s Journal.
[612] C. Wesley’s Journal.
[613] Manuscript in British Museum.
[614] See Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 181.
[615] _Methodist Magazine._ 1778, p. 474.
[616] Collection of Letters: Dublin, 1784.
[617] Everett’s “Methodism in Manchester,” p. 58.
[618] Everett’s “Methodism in Manchester.”
[619] _Methodist Magazine_, 1843, pp. 26, 379.
[620] Ibid. 1830, p. 857.
[621] Ibid. 1795, p. 76.
[622] “Life and Times of Countess of Huntingdon,” vol. i., p. 62.
[623] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 138.
[624] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 108.
[625] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 256.
[626] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 257.
[627] Ibid. vol. viii., p. 257.
[628] Ibid. vol. iii., p. 258.
[629] Ibid. vol. viii., p. 257.
[630] Wesley’s Works, vol. viii., p. 258.
[631] Minutes (edit. 1862), p. 38.
[632] Minutes (edit. 1862), p. 15.
[633] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 235.
[634] Watson’s Life of Wesley, p. 163.
[635] Manuscript.
[636] _Methodist Magazine_, 1850, p. 33.
[637] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 157.
[638] Wesley’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 308.
[639] _Irish Evangelist_, Dec. 1, 1866.
[640] Wesley’s Works, vol. iii., p. 406.
[641] _Irish Evangelist_, Dec. 1, 1866.
[642] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 157.
[643] Smith’s “Methodism in Ireland,” p. 12.
[644] _Methodist Magazine_, 1848, p. 516.
[645] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 320.
[646] C. Wesley’s Journal.
[647] Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., p. 239.
[648] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1747, p. 531.
[649] Bishop Gibson died the year after this was written.
[650] Hymns 439 and 440, in the Wesleyan Hymn-Book, are a part of it.
[651] The writer has a copy of the thirteenth edition, published in
1768, with a large number of emendations and new prescriptions, in
Wesley’s own handwriting,—evidently the copy which he himself revised
for a new edition.
[652] Hall’s Lecture on Wesley’s Death-bed.
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