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  JOHN WESLEY THE METHODIST
  by John Fletcher Hurst
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A biography of John Wesley tracing his ancestry through generations of
preachers, his upbringing under the remarkable Susanna Annesley, and his
emergence as the leader of the Methodist movement that transformed
eighteenth-century England.

  Chapters: 20

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. Chapter 01 - A Race of Preachers
    2. Chapter 02 - The Epworth Household
    3. Chapter 03 - The Gownboy of the Charterhouse
    4. Chapter 04 - The Crisis at Oxford
    5. Chapter 05 - The Holy Club
    6. Chapter 06 - To America and Back
    7. Chapter 07 - The New Birth
    8. Chapter 08 - Revival Preaching
    9. Chapter 09 - Society and Class
   10. Chapter 10 - Lay Helpers
   11. Chapter 11 - Two Sorts of Methodists
   12. Chapter 12 - Wesley Faces Mobs
   13. Chapter 13 - In Conference with the Preachers
   14. Chapter 14 - Doctrinal Wars
   15. Chapter 15 - Ireland, Scotland, and Wales
   16. Chapter 16 - The Work Beyond the Sea
   17. Chapter 17 - Traveler, Preacher, and Philanthropist
   18. Chapter 18 - Setting His House in Order
   19. Chapter 19 - The Passing of John Wesley
   20. Chapter 20 - The True John Wesley

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  CHAPTER 1: CHAPTER 01 - A RACE OF PREACHERS
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Chapter I - A Race of Preachers The Wesley Ancestry.--The First John
Westley.--Samuel Wesley, Poet and Preacher.--Susanna Annesley.-- Piety and
Culture. So far as I can learn, such a thing has scarce been for these thousand
years before, as a son, father, grand-father, atavus, tritavus, preaching the
Gospel, nay, the genuine Gospel, in a line."

Thus wrote John Wesley to his brother Charles, thirty years after the date of organized Methodism, concerning their ancestry. He could have said with equal truth that his female ancestors were as distinguished as their husbands---his mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother being renowned for their gifts of genius, for their intense interest in ecclesiastical life, and for their suffering in obedience to conscience. The founder of Methodism was not fully acquainted with the particulars of his remarkable ancestry. But in those rare moments when even the busiest of men naturally inquire about their forefathers he was profoundly impressed that Providence had favored his own household in a singular way. The ancestral line of the Wesleys revealed the fact that the principles of intellectual, social, and religious nobility were developing and maturing into a new form of pentecostal evangelism. On the southwestern shore line of England is the county of Dorset, a part of which was called "West-Leas," lea signifying a field or farm. In Somerset, adjoining Dorset, there was a place called Welswey, and before surnames were common we have Arthur of Welswey, or Arthur Wellsesley (Wellesley), and John West-leigh, and Henry West-ley. There were land-owners in Somerset named Westley in the days of Alfred the Great, in the ninth century. Sir William de Wellesley was a member of Parliament in 1339. His second son, Sir Richard, became the head of the Wesleys in Ireland, from whom descended Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the conqueror of Napoleon at Waterloo.

We step out on firmer ground and get nearer home in stating that a grandson of
Sir William, Sir Herbert, now called Westley, was the father of Bartholomew
Westley, and great-grand-father of our own John Wesley.

Bartholomew Westley was about seven years old when James I came to the throne.
He entered Oxford as the first on the list of coming students bearing the name
of Wesley. After completing the Classical course he graduated in "physic," which
was his means of livelihood for some years to come. In 1620, at the age of
twenty-five, he married the daughter of Sir Henry Colley, of Castle Carberry,
Kildare, Ireland, by whom he had one son named John.

Having taken "holy orders," Bartholomew Westley became a Puritan clergyman in
the Established Church. In 1640 he was appointed rector of Charmouth, on the
English Channel. When the Puritan rectors were ejected by Charles Stuart after
the Restoration of 1660 he lost his parish, but continued to preach as a
Nonconformist pastor of a portion of his old parishioners. The Royalists
stigmatized him as a "fanatic" and a "puny arson," because of his small stature,
but he was much beloved by his flock, and much lamented at his death, in 1680,
being then about eighty-five years old.

John Westley, son of Bartholomew and Ann, was born in 1636, and was consecrated
to the ministry in his infancy. He was educated at New Inn Hall, Oxford
University, and was an exceptional student. After graduation he began preaching
as minister of a congregation at Whitchurch, and as a Nonconformist strenuously
defended his right to do so without episcopal ordination. He suffered sorely in
the persecuting times of the Restoration, being driven from his pulpit and
thrown into jail. He had married a daughter of Rev. John White, of Dorchester,
one of the most celebrated of the Puritan divines, and to them was born, at
Whitchurch, in 1662, a son, Samuel. Westley died in 1678 at Preston, being then
forty-two years of age, and having suffered many things for his principles of
religion and ecclesiastical order. His widow survived him for forty years, and
was lovingly cared for by her sons-Matthew, a surgeon of London, and Samuel, the
rector of Epworth.

Samuel Wesley was born in 1662, in Dorsetshire, four months after the English
St. Bartholomew’s Day, upon which his father and his grandfather were ejected
from their livings for Nonconformity. His father dying when he was a lad, his
education was cared for by his mother, and in 1678 some friends of his family
sent him to a Nonconformist academy in London. Here he made the acquaintance of
the eccentric bookseller and literary man, John Dunton, afterward the editor of
the Athenian Gazette, a precursor of the Tatler and Spectator. Here also he
obtained entry, as the son and grandson of distinguished confessors, into the
best Nonconformist circles, of which one of the leading families was that of a
Rev. Dr. Annesley. One of his schoolfellows was Daniel Defoe. He heard Stephen
Charnook and John Bunyan preach, made notes of many sermons, and wrote some
verses and unwise lampoons.

He was about twenty years of age when he was asked to answer some strictures
made upon the Dissenters, and while studying the subject he decided to leave
Nonconformity and go over to the Established Church. With that quick impulse
which distinguished all his subsequent life, he rose early one morning and
started afoot for Oxford University, ’entering Exeter College as a servitor,
with only two pounds and five shillings in his pocket. The young collegian met
his expenses partly by teaching and partly by his pen. He collected his poetical
pieces, which were published under the title of Maggots; or Poems on several
subjects never before handled, by a Scholar, London. The claim to novelty for
"several subjects" is sustained by the tittles of the pieces: The Grunting of a
Hog, A Cow’s Tail, A Hat Broke at Cudgels, The Tobacco Pipe, The Tame Snake in a
Box of Bran. This curious book is extremely scarce. It was published by that odd
John Dunton, with whom, as we know, Wesley was acquainted before he went to
Oxford. Dunton had married Elizabeth Annesley, the sister of Susanna, who six
years afterward became Wesley’s wife. At Oxford Samuel Wesley’s character
ripened. There was awakened in him a true pastoral feeling of compassion and
responsibility by visiting the prisoners in the castle; as his sons did fifty
years later, when he wrote to them, "Go on in God’s name in the path your
Saviour has directed and that track wherein your father has gone before you; for
when I was an undergraduate at Oxford I visited them in the castle there, and
reflect on it with great satisfaction to this day." As quaint old Fuller says,
"Thus was the prison his first parish; his own charity his patron presenting him
to it; and his work was all his wages."

He took his degree of B. A. in 1688, signing his name Wesley instead of Westley.
He received his M. A. degree later from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Returning to London, he was ordained deacon by the time-serving but able Bishop
of Rochester, Dr. Thomas Sprat, whom Dunton eulogized thus:

Nature rejoiced beneath his charming power; His lucky hand made everything a
flower. On earth the king of wits (they are but few), And, though a bishop, yet
a preacher too!

Twelve days after the Prince and Princess of Orange were proclaimed as King
William III and Mary, Samuel Wesley was ordained a priest of the Church of
England by Bishop Compton, of London, in St. Andrew’s Church, Holborn.

Samuel Wesley became "passing rich" on 8 a year as a London curate, then
obtained a naval chaplaincy, commenced his metrical Life of Christ, and in 1689
married Dr. Annesley’s accomplished daughter Susanna on another London curacy of
30 a year. The young couple commenced their married life in Holborn, in lodgings
somewhere near the quaint old houses still standing opposite Gray’s Inn Road.

Susanna Wesley, the mother of Methodism, was the daughter of a Puritan minister,
who has been called "The St. Paul of the Nonconformists." Her father, Samuel
Annesley, nephew of the first Earl of Anglesea, was born at Haseley, in the
Shakespeare country, in 1620, and educated at Queen’s College, Oxford. He
enjoyed great prominence as a preacher until the Restoration drove him from his
pulpit in St. Giles, the largest congregation in London. His means saved him
from distress, and made him a blessing to many of his dissenting brethren. He
gathered a flourishing congregation in London and ministered to it for many
years.

Annesley was tall and dignified, and of robust constitution He had an aquiline
nose, a short upper lip, wavy brown hair, and a strong and penetrating eye.
Severe persecutions did not disturb the geniality and cheerfulness of his
Christian life. When John Wesley had set the Churches of England aflame with the
doctrine of Assurance he asked his mother whether her father had ever preached
it. She replied that he personally enjoyed it and confessed it for many years,
but did not recollect hearing him preach upon it in particular. She therefore
presumed he regarded it as a high privilege of a few. How well he lived and died
let these words witness: "Blessed be God! I have been faithful in the work of
the ministry above fifty-five years."

Shortly before his departure from this world, December 3, 1696, Dr. Annesley
said: "Come, my dearest Jesus! the nearer the more precious, the more welcome!"
"I cannot express the thousandth part of the praise that is due to thee. . . I
will die praising thee .... I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness!
Satisfied! Satisfied!"

Dr. Williams, who founded the library now in Gordon Square, preached his funeral
sermon, and exclaims: "O how many places had sat in darkness, how many ministers
had been starved, if Dr. Annesley had died thirty-four years since! The Gospel
he ever forced into ignorant places, and was the chief instrument in the
education as well as the subsistence of several ministers." The second wife of
this leading London divine was a daughter of John White, a member of the Long
Parliament, and a man of the highest repute. She was a woman of rare
accomplishments and remarkable piety. The youngest of her children, Susanna, who
became the mother of John and Charles Wesley, was born on January 20, 1669, in
Spital Yard, between Bishopsgate Street and Spital Square, London. Her home was
probably in the last house, which blocks up the lower end of the yard. Here
Susanna Annesley spent her girlhood, studied Church controversies, and asserted
her personal decision, and hence she went forth to her wedding with Samuel
Wesley.

"How many children has Dr. Annesley" inquired a friend of Thomas Manton, who had
just baptized one of the family. "I believe it is two dozen, or a quarter of a
hundred," was the startling reply. Susanna, the youngest, was perhaps the most
gifted of the many beautiful and well-educated daughters. Her sister Judith was
a very handsome and sturdy-minded woman, whose portrait was painted by Sir Peter
Lely; Elizabeth, who married John Dunton, was lovely in person and character,
and Susanna shared largely in the family gift of beauty. She was slim and
graceful, and retained her good looks and symmetry of figure to old age. The
best authenticated portrait of her is one that was taken in her old age and
engraved under the direction of her son John. It shows "delicate aquiline
features, eyes still vivid and expressive under well-marked brows; a physiognomy
at once benignant and expressive." Her letters reveal "a perfect mistress of
English undefiled," some knowledge of French authors, and a logical mind well
read in divinity. The secret of her deep spirituality is revealed in one of her
letters to her son: "I will tell you what rule I observed in the same case, when
I was young, and too much addicted to childish diversions, which was this-never
to spend more time in any matter of mere recreation in one day than I spent in
private religious duties."

Bishop McTyeire’s eloquent tribute to her virtues, graces, and gifts does no
more than justice to this remarkable woman:

"When I was in Milan I visited the church where Ambrose preached and where he
was buried; but I thought more of his patroness, the pious Helena, than of him.
I thought of Augustine, and of that mother whose prayers persevered for his
salvation; and in the oldest town on the Rhine I could not help being interested
in the legend of Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins. But greater than
Helena, or Monica, or Ursula, there lived a woman in England, known to all
Methodists, and of whom in the presence of those I have mentioned it might be
said, ’Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou hast excelled them all.’ I
mean the wife of the rector of Epworth, and the conscientious mother of his
nineteen children; she that transmitted to her illustrious son her genius for
learning, for order, for government, and I might almost say for godliness; who
shaped him by her councils, sustained him by her prayers, and, in her old age,
like the spirit of love and purity, presided over his modest household; and,
when she was dying, said to her children, ’Children, as soon as the spirit
leaves the body gather round my bedside and sing a hymn of praise.’"

Susanna Annesley, at the age of thirteen, was interested in the ecclesiastical
and doctrinal controversies of the day. With remarkable independence she made up
her mind to renounce Dissent and enter the Established Church, one year after
Samuel Wesley had come to the same decision. It is possible that the two
ecclesiastical conversions were not unconnected. Young Wesley was seven or eight
years older than his future bride, and the friendship had already begun which
was to ripen into love. In one of her later private meditations she mentions it
among her greatest mercies that she was "married to a religious orthodox man; by
him first drawn off from the Socinian heresy." The same feeling is expressed in
the words of the epitaph from her pen inscribed on Samuel Wesley’s tomb at
Epworth: "As he lived, so he died, in the true Catholic faith of the Holy
Trinity in Unity; and that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, .and the only Saviour
of mankind." It was natural that the thoughtful, fervent girl should be strongly
influenced by one by whom she had been settled in a belief of such vital
importance. "If the Puritans," says Dr. Rigg, "could not transmit to her lover
and herself their ecclesiastical principles, at least they transmitted a bold
independence of judgment and of conduct." The girl of thirteen expressed her
opinions against the Church of her distinguished father, however, with such tact
and sweetness of spirit as to win his consent to her confirmation at St. Paul’s.
She was at once so decided and gentle, and he so tolerant, that the love between
the father and daughter never lost its strength and charm.

"The Puritan movement in which she had been reared," says Buoy, "went with her
into the Church of England. She entered it essentially a Puritan and that stern,
heroic faith, softened by the grace of God, held her all her life. There was a
providence leading this woman back to Anglicanism as plain as that which led the
mother of Moses back to the court of Egypt, and she, like Jochebed, had her
ministry--to train a child who should set the people free." "The Wesley’s
mother," says Isaac Taylor, "was the mother of Methodism in a religious and
moral sense; for her courage, her submissiveness to authority, the high tone of
her mind, its independence and its self-control, the warmth of her devotional
feelings, and the practical direction given to them, came up, and were visibly
repeated in the character and conduct of her sons."

We left the young curate and his wife in their lodgings in London, where they
"boarded without going into debt." Here their son Samuel was born, who became
the poet and satirist of Westminster School and master of Tiverton Grammar
School. In the autumn of 1690 the Marquis of Normanby presented Wesley to the
living of South Ormsby, in Lincolnshire, worth 50 a year. Wesley himself
describes the parsonage as "a mean cot, composed of reeds and clay." His family
increased "one additional child per annum." Again his pen came to the rescue,
and Wesley published his Life of Christ, dedicating it to Queen Mary. At South
Ormsby Wesley also published his treatise on the Hebrew points. Here also he
wrote much for "The Athenian Gazette; or Casuistical Mercury, resolving all the
nice and curious questions proposed by the ingenious." One third of the Gazette
at this time was from Wesley’s pen.

About the beginning: of 1697 Samuel Wesley was presented to the living of
Epworth, in Lincolnshire, "in accordance with some wish or promise of the late
queen;" here he continued for thirty-eight years, and here John Wesley was born
on June 17, 1703, O. S., the fifteenth of the rector’s nineteen children. John
Benjamin appears to have been his full name when christened, but he never used
the middle name or initial.

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


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  CHAPTER 2: CHAPTER 02 - THE EPWORTH HOUSEHOLD
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Chapter II - The Epworth Household Epworth in Lincolnshire.--The Wonderful
Mother.--Pecuniary Difficulties.- "A Brand Plucked from the Burning."

LINCOLNSHIRE, the county of "fen, marsh, and wood," has, perhaps, been the most
assertive of all the seething counties of the eastern coast of the British
Isles. In almost every great crisis of English history we find leaders from
Lincolnshire. For at least seven hundred years it has been represented in the
high places of English life by some illustrious son. The old market town of
Epworth stands on a piece of land once inclosed by five livers, and called the
Isle of Axholme. Its population remains about the same as in the days of the
Wesleys, when the parishioners numbered two thousand. They live, for the most
part, in the one street that stretches out for two miles From the time of
Charles I down to the first quarter of the eighteenth century the "stilt
walkers" had fiercely resisted every effort to drain the fens, and when the work
was accomplished by new settlers the older Fenmen burned the crops, killed the
cattle and flooded the lands of the intruders. The turbulent spirit of the
Fenmen lingered still among the villagers of Epworth, who were also profligate
and vicious in their habits--as Samuel Wesley discovered to his cost during his
first twelve years among them The exterior of Epworth Church remains much the
same as in Wesley’s day. Porches, walls, buttresses, and towers have not been
materially altered in the two centuries. Within, the pews, organ, and
decorations are new, the rood screen has been removed, the aisles have been
reroofed, and six bells have been hung in the tower. The first home of the
Wesleys at Epworth was a typical country parsonage of the seventeenth century, a
homely frame structure, plastered within and roofed with straw. Parker’s
well-known painting of John Wesley’s deliverance from the fire provides a
partially imaginary picture of the house. An old document thus describes it: "It
consists of five bayes, but all of mud and plaster, the whole building being
contrived into three stories, and disposed in seven chief rooms, kitchen, hall,
parlout, butterie, and three large upper rooms, and some others of common use; a
little garden empailed between the stone wall and the south, a barn, a dove
coate, and a hemp kiln."

Let us take a look into the interior of the Epworth rectory, for in this
household we have, as Stevens well says, the "real origin" of Methodism. Mrs.
Wesley’s education in the splendid religious environment of the twenty years’
life in her father’s house in London, and her diligent self-improvement during
her married life, gave superior qualifications for the training of the school in
the home. The method of living and the course of study have been given in a
letter by the matchless teacher herself. The children were always put into a
regular method of living, in such things as they were capable, from their birth;
as in dressing, undressing, and changing their linen. When turned a year old
they were taught to fear the rod, and to cry softly. "I insist," she says, "in
conquering the will of children betimes, because this is the only strong and
rational foundation of a religious education, without which both precept and
example will be ineffectual, but when this is thoroughly done then is a child
capable of being governed by the reason and piety of its parents, till its own
understanding comes to maturity, and the principles of religion have taken root
in the mind." As soon as the child learned to talk, its first act on rising and
its last act before retiring were to say the Lord’s prayer, to which, as it grew
bigger, were added short prayers for parents some collects, a short catechism,
and some portion of Scripture, as memory could bear. That genius of successful
management which utilizes every help and helper was shown when, at the regularly
designated hour, the oldest took the youngest that could speak, and the second
the next, to whom were read the psalms for the day and a chapter in the New
Testament. In the morning they were directed to read the psalms and a chapter in
the Old Testament. They were taught to be still at family prayers, and to ask a
blessing, which they did by signs before they could speak. The exquisite manners
of John Wesley came largely from his careful training in childhood. The children
were trained to "civil behavior ;" saluting one another by the proper name with
the addition of "brother" or "sister," yet nearly every child a gentle nickname.
Each must "speak handsomely for what was wanted," even to the humblest servant,
saying, "Pray, give me such a thing." Telling the truth brought reward; rude,
ill-bred talk was unheard; and the children were forbidden freedom with the
servants in conversation or association, lest something coarse or evil might be
projected into their lives. But there was recreation in abundance. They thus
grew up in that humble home a healthy, happy, witty band of children.

There was on the calendar of this home "The Alphabet Party." On the fifth
birthday of each child, the house having been set in order the previous day for
the celebration, the new pupil took the first lesson. To begin the child’s
education was better than a banquet, and the first effort must, if possible, be
a decided success.’ In the school hours of the learner’s first day the alphabet
was acquired. The second day spelling and reading began in the Holy Scriptures,
with the Book of Genesis. Much stress was laid on good reading and writing. Then
came the multiplication table, elementary mathematics, grammar, history, and
geography. The drill which John acquired in grammar flowered out into his later
authorship of short grammars for the study of English, French, Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew. Reading aloud became a specialty with the older children, from such
authors as Milton and Shakespeare. John Wesley declared that his sister Emilia
was the best reader of poetry that he had ever heard. The wise mother drilled
the mental faculties, the "memory drill" being another specialty.

"Why do you go over the same thing with that child the twentieth time" said the
rector impatiently to his wife.

Because," said she, "nineteen times were not sufficient. It I had stopped after
telling him nineteen times, all my labor would have been lost."

There was even a successful adaptation of university study and method. Mrs.
Wesley taught first by talks or lectures, then by text-books, and required
essays or papers from the elder scholars. The classics were exalted, and the
daughters took the same lessons as their brothers. Mehetabel, the first one
trained by the systematic plan finally adopted, could read in the Greek
Testament when only eight years old. The rector rendered assistance in the
classics. In the school hours attention was given to the culture of the soul,
and there even was a catechism drill in the primary department, and the teaching
of Christian doctrines in the higher grades. Then there were Mrs. Wesley’s own
compositions, so highly commended by Adam Clarke, but lost when the rectory was
burned. There were elaborate essays on religious and educational themes which
she had prepared as text-books for her home school. Has there ever been a home
school equal to this in Epworth rectory The stroke of the family clock regulates
all things. But morning and evening the glad sound of youthful voices rings out
in singing. Around the evening candle sit the happy family, with sewing and
witty talk, with many games, with even the sensation of a haunted house; where
the ghost is often heard, but never seen, and, better still, never feared. Buoy
well says: "Epworth was an ideal home; the family were the embodiment of the
name of their church, St. Andrew’s; for they were said to have been the most
loving family in Lincolnshire."

It was not all sunshine, however, in the Epworth home. The rector grew vexed
because his wife would not respond "amen" to his prayer for the king. "Sukey, if
we serve two kings, we must have two beds," and, as impulsively as when he left
London for Oxford, Samuel Wesley hurried away to the London Convocation, to
return only at the death of the king as if nothing unpleasant had ever occurred.
There were many conflicts between the rash rector and his ungodly parishioners.
They hated him, and he knew not how to win their love. Debts crowded in upon
him. In 1705, when John was two years old, his father was arrested in the
churchyard for a debt of 30 and hurried off to jail. His good wife sent him her
rings to sell, but he returned them, believing the Lord would provide otherwise.
We see him at work among his "fellow jailbirds" in Lincoln Castle reading
prayers and preaching, even securing books to distribute among the prisoners. He
writes: "I am now at rest. I am’ come to the haven where I’ve long expected to
be." And again: "A jail is a paradise in comparison of the life I led before I
came hither. No man has worked truer for bread than I have done, and few have
lived harder, or their families either." But the storm beat more fiercely upon
the rectory, for food was hard to find, the crop of the previous year having
been a failure. The angry neighbors now burned the flax, stabbed the three cows
that had given milk to the family, and wished "the little devils "--the children
in the rectory--would be turned out to starve. The delicate, brave-hearted wife
toiled on, and kept together the half-fed and half-clothed children.

"Tell me, Mrs. Wesley," said the Archbishop of York, "whether you have ever
really wanted bread."

"I will freely own to your grace," she replied, "that strictly speaking, I never
did want bread. But then I had so much care to get it before it was eat and to
pay for it afterward as have often made it unpleasant to me; and I think to have
bread on such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all."

Friends came to the relief of the rector, and through the influence of the Duke
of Buckingham he was presented with 25. After three months’ imprisonment he
returned to his parish and his books.

Then came the enemy’s torch. The rectory went down in ashes, and only the good
providence of God saved the lives of John and his mother. It was on Wednesday
night, the 9th of February, 1709. Mrs. Wesley was ill in her room, with her two
eldest daughters as companions. Bettie, the maid, and five younger children were
in the nursery, while Hettie was alone in the small bedroom next to the granary,
where the newly threshed wheat and corn were stored. The rector left his study
at half-past ten, locked the room that contained his precious manuscripts and
the records of the family and parish, and retired to rest in a room near to his
wife.

It was a wild night. A howling northeast storm obscured the half moon. The fire
crept up the straw roof and dropped upon the bed where Hetty slept. Scorched and
alarmed, she ran to her father’s room, while voices on the street cried, "Fire!
fire!" The father warned his wife and daughters, helped them down stairs, and
wakened those in the nursery. Bettie escaped with Charles in her arms, while
three children followed. The brave father helped them into the yard and over the
garden wall, and back to the house he rushed, trying in vain to find his wife,
He tried to reach the study and failed. A dismal cry came out from the flames,
"Help me !" "Jacky" had awakened to find the ceiling of his room on fire. The
distracted father tried to force himself up the stairs, but streams of flame
beat him back. He and the children committed the boy’s soul to God. Within, Mrs.
Wesley, lost in the excitement, sought the opened front doors, but was forced
back by the blinding sheet of fire and smoke. At a third effort she was
literally blown down by the flames. Calmly she sought divine help. Wrapped in a
cloak about her chest, she waded knee-deep through the flames to the door. Her
limbs were scorched, and her face was black with smoke, so that when found by
her frantic husband he did not know her.

John, not yet six years old, climbed on a chest to the window, and cried to be
taken out. One man was helped up over the shoulders of another, and the child
leaped into his arms. At the same moment the roof fell in. The boy was put into
his mother’s arms. The rector, in his search for his wife, found her holding the
child, who by this time he had thought was burned to ashes. He could not believe
his eyes until several times he had kissed the boy. Mrs. Wesley said to him,
"Are your books safe" "Let them go," he replied, "now that you and all the
children are preserved." He called on those near him to praise God, saying,
"Come, neighbors, let us kneel down; let us give thanks to God. He has given me
all my eight children. Let the house go; I am rich enough." To John Wesley for
more than fourscore years this event was the initial of his vivid reminiscences.
There was no place found in his thought from that time onward for a doubt of a
Supreme Being whose mercy interposes in moments of danger. The mother’s escape
was as miraculous as that of her celebrated son. In later years he caused a
vignette to be engraved of a burning house, beneath his portrait, and these
words underscored: "Is not this a brand plucked from the burning" The rectory
was soon rebuilt in a more substantial manner and on a more commodious plan.
While the rector is attending the Convocation in London the good mother holds
service with her children on Sabbath afternoons in the kitchen, reading good
books and sermons. Neighbors ask the privilege of coming to hear, and there are
soon as many as thirty attending regularly. The rector, though displeased with
the news, is delighted with the plan On his return. The next year he has a
conceited curate, who writes him words of bitter complaint against the
sermon-reading wife. She tells her husband of the good work, and that as many as
two hundred come to hear. The curate writes him strong words of a "conventicle"
a pestiferous gathering of Dissenters--and the rector in reply urges his wife to
discontinue the meetings. The defense of the mother of Methodism is in these
noble words:

It is plain, in fact, that this one thing has brought more people to church than
ever anything did in so short a time. We used not to have above twenty or
twenty-five at evening service, whereas we have now between two and three
hundred, which are more than ever came before to hear Inman in the morning.

Besides the constant attendance on the public worship of God, our meeting has
wonderfully conciliated the minds of this people toward us, so that now we live
in the greatest amity imaginable; and, what is still better, they are very much
reformed in their behavior on the Lord’s day; and those who used to be playing
in the streets now come to hear a good sermon read, which is surely more
according to the will of Almighty God ....

I need not tell you the consequences if you determine to put an end to our
meeting .... If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not
tell me that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience;
but send me your positive command, in such full and express terms as may absolve
me from guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good when
you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus
Christ. The marvelous service continued to shed its light abroad, for who could
resist the words and work of that matchless heroine of the spacious Epworth
kitchen The fire sadly interfered with the school in the home. The children were
received into friendly families until the rectory could be rebuilt, and when
they returned their mother had a difficult task to restore order and good
manners. She was deeply impressed by John’s escape, and two years afterward we
find her meditating in the eventide, and writing: "I do intend to be more
particularly careful of the soul of this child that thou hast so mercifully
provided for than I ever have been, that I may do my endeavor to instill into
his mind the principles of true religion and virtue. Lord, give me grace to do
it sincerely and prudently, and bless my attempts with good success."

Much as the Epworth children owed to their mother, they owed not a little also
to their father, a learned man, a comprehensive thinker, a racy writer and
speaker, a brave worker, a manly soul, hasty, impetuous, hot, but loving,
liberal, and true." He gave a good example to his own children by his
self-sacrificing care for his widowed Nonconformist mother. He never failed,
amid all his distress, to make up an annual 10 for her. His letters to his sons
at school and college show that he was their friend and teacher. When he was not
at Convocation he taught them the rudiments of classics. He imparted to his sons
his own love of books, for he was a bibliomaniac of pronounced type. He
encouraged his children in a wide range if reading. He criticized the "sorry
Sternhold Psalms," and in the same letter expressed his love for music as "a
great help to our devotion." In two of his many enterprises in the Press and the
pulpit the vigorous rector notably anticipated the principles of his Methodist
sons; he was the apologist of the TM religious societies" of his day, and he was
the advocate of "a broad and comprehensive scheme" of foreign missions. Indeed,
he was to the year of his death disposed, could the way be made clear, to go out
himself as a missionary to heathen lands.

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 3: CHAPTER 03 - THE GOWNBOY OF THE CHARTERHOUSE
========================================================================

Chapter III - The Gownboy of the Charterhouse A Friendly Duke.--The Charterhouse
School--John’s School Days.-- The Epworth Ghost.--The Brothers at Westminster.

MRS. WESLEY gives a characteristic glimpse of her boy John in a letter to her
husband in London in 1712: "Jack has bore his disease bravely, like a man, and
indeed like a Christian, without any complaint, though he seerfled angry at the
small pox when they were sore, as we guessed by his looking sourly at them, for
he never said anything." When John was a child his father once said to him:
"Child, you think to carry everything by dint of argument; but you will find how
very little is ever done in the world by close reason." "Very little indeed,"
was John’s comment in after years.

Mrs. Wesley trained the children to refuse food between meals, and little John’s
characteristic and polite reply to all kindly offers was, "I thank you; I will
think of it." "One pictures John Wesley at Epworth," wrote the present rector,
Dr. Overton, "as a grave, sedate child, always wanting to know the reason of
everything, one of a group of remarkable children, of whom his sister Martha was
most like him in appearance and character; each of them with a strong
individuality and a very high spirit, but all well kept in hand by their
admirable mother, all precise and rather formal, after the manner of their day,
in their language and habits." As soon as the sons of the Wesleys were old
enough to leave home arrangements were made for carrying on their education in
the best schools that the kingdom afforded. Samuel went to Westminster School in
1704, then to Oxford University, returning to the old school as a teacher about
ten years later, when his younger brother, John, was entering the Charterhouse.
Charles, the youngest son, entered Westminster School in 1706. Thus for four
years before John went up to Oxford the three brothers were in London together.
In a letter recently brought to light the rector of Epworth, in attendance upon
Convocation in London in May, 1711, writes of the good fortune which was in
store for his two elder boys:

I believe twill be no unpleasing news to so good a Friend, that my Son is chosen
from Westminster to Xtchurch, & the week after Whitsun-week I design to com to
Oxford with him, & see him matriculated.

I’ve a younger son at home whom the Duke of Buckingham has this week writt down
for his going into the Charterhouse as soon as he’s of age: so that my time has
not been all lost in London. The younger son was John Wesley, who at the age of
eight was thus assured a free scholarship in the famous school of the
Charterhouse. The nobleman to whose patronage the lad was indebted was the lord
chamberlain to Queen Anne. The literary duke had befriended the literary rector
before, helping him out of his financial troubles in 1703, and receiving from
him an account of the rescue of "Jacky" from the rectory fire. A Latin
memorandum in John’s own hand records the dates of his admission to school and
university opportunities: "Joan. Westley ad nominat. ducis de Bucks admiss. in
fundat. Carthus. 28 Jan. 1713-4. Ad. Univ. 24 June 1720."

Never had boys a nobler "private education" than the "plain living and high
thinking" of the Epworth rectory, had afforded the Wesleys. When John went to
the Charterhouse he suffered less from the hardships of school life than many
who had been reared in the lap of luxury. Already he was "a diligent and
successful scholar and a patient and forgiving boy, who had at home been inured,
not indeed to oppression but to hard living and scanty fare." Nevertheless, from
the Epworth home to the cheerless Charterhouse must have been a trying
experience even for a boy like John, who was not yet eleven years old. The
school of the Charterhouse celebrated its one hundredth anniversary the year
that little John Wesley came to live within its walls, but its buildings were
much more ancient, having beep a part of a great Carthusian monastery. Sir
Thomas Sutton, one of the merchant princes of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, had
bought the buildings and established in them a school and a home for old men.
Forty-four boys were "on the foundation’-- that is they were educated at the
expense of the Sutton fund-- and it was as one of these charity scholars that
John Wesley gained admission. He had his meals in the gownboys’ dining hall, a
low-ceiled room, adorned by a carved chimney-piece with the founder’s arms
sculptured above. Tradition says that it had been the refectory of the lay
brothers of the monastery.

Here in Wesley’s day discipline was so lax that the boys of the higher form were
suffered to rob the small boys of their portions of animal food, and Wesley
himself says, "From ten to fourteen I had little but bread to eat, and not great
plenty of that. I believe this was so far from hurting me that it laid the
foundation of lasting health." Isaac Taylor says: "Wesley learned as a boy to
suffer wrongfully with a cheerful patience, and to conform himself to cruel
despotisms without acquiring either the slave’s temper or the despot’s." He
faithfully obeyed his father’s instructions to run round the green three times
every morning, "and this," declares a recent writer in the Charterhouse School
Magazine, "would amount to one mile, as We know to our cost, having repeatedly
done it ourselves in exceedingly bad time." But it is in chapel "that one
naturally thinks of the little gownboy in his black cloth gown and knee
breeches, sitting in one of the rows of seats which may still be seen just in
front of the founder’s tomb; and close to his left, in a sort of glorified
pepper box of strange construction, sat the great head master, Thomas Walker,
who had himself been a gownboy! A little farther away, in the corner near the
pulpit, sat, in a similar pepper box, Andrew Tooke, usher, or second master."

Sarah Wesley, the daughter of Charles Wesley, in a letter to Adam Clarke,
written from Marylebone in 1809, gives the true version of an anecdote about
Tooke and John Wesley which was related to her by her father: When John Wesley
was at the Charterhouse, the schoolmaster, Mr. Tooke, missing all the little
boys in the playground, supposed them by their quietness to be in some mischief.
Searching, he found them all assembled in the schoolroom around my uncle, who
was amusing them with instructive tales, to which they listened rather than
follow their accustomed sports. The master expressed much approbation toward
them and John Wesley, and he wished him to repeat this entertainment as often as
he could obtain auditors and so well employ his time.

Sarah Wesley wrote this letter to confute a malicious version of the story by
Nightingale, which represents Wesley as haranguing his schoolfellows from the
writing desk and, when rebuked for associating with the smaller boys, replying,
"Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven," Of his religious life as a
schoolboy Wesley himself gives us a glimpse. In 1738, after describing his early
life at Epworth, he wrote: "The next six or seven years were spent at school,
where, 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." Defective as this was, Rigg justly considers
Tyerman’s judgment on the schoolboy, based on this confession, too severe--"
John Wesley entered the Charterhouse a saint, and left it a sinner." It is clear
that "Wesley never lost, even at the Charterhouse, a tender respect for
religion, the fear of God and the forms of Christian proriety. It was no slight
evidence of at least the powerful restraining influence of religion that he
passed through such an ordeal as his six or seven years’ residence without
contracting any taint of vice." The death of Queen Anne, his father’s
benefactress, occurred during John Wesley’s first year in school, and the
excitement which it occasioned must have passed within the school gates. Dr.
Sacheverell, the agitator, stirred the populace to riots over the new king’s
attitude to the Church.

Toward the close of his schooldays Wesley had occasion to visit Sacheverell, who
still held the living of St. Andrew’s. The boy’s early environment must have
saturated his mind with Tory and High Church ideas, but his regard for one of
their chief exponents received a rude shock when he visited the turbulent and
pompous clergyman. "I remember,"says Alexander Knox, "Mr. Wesley told us that
his father was the person who composed the well-known speech delivered by Dr.
Sacheverell at the close of his trial; and on this ground, when he, Mr. John
Wesley, was about to be entered at Oxford, his father, knowing that the doctor
had a strong interest in the college for which his son was intended, desired him
to call on the doctor in his way to get letters of recommendation. ’When I was
introduced,’ said Mr. Wesley, ’I found him alone, as tall as a maypole, and as
fine as an archbishop. I was a little fellow. He said, "You are too young to go
to the university; you cannot know Greek and Latin yet. Go back to school." I
looked at him as David looked at Goliath, and despised him in my heart. I
thought, "If I do not know Greek and Latin better than you, I ought to go back
to school indeed." I left him, and neither entrearies nor commands could have
again brought me back to him.’" The coffeehouses were the chief social
institution of the metropolis. At Smith’s coffeehouse, Stockmarket, Samuel
Wesley and his colleagues of the Athenian Society used to meet. As young Wesley
passed by these he might have caught a glimpse of those famous old Charterhouse
boys, Steele and Addison. Just before John was at the school Addison’s hymns,
"When all thy mercies, O my God," and "The spacious firmament on high," appeared
in the Spectator, and must have been read with pride by the Charterhouse
masters. More than twenty years after (1737) Wesley inserted them in his first
Hymn Book, and thus introduced them into the public worship of the churches. The
story of "the rectory ghost" must have at least a word. "Old Jeffrey," as the
children named him, did not begin his antics until John had left Epworth for the
Charterhouse School. Strange noises were heard at night and during family
prayers--knocks and groans and rattling doors and pans; trenchers danced and
dogs howled. Clergymen and others urged Wesley to leave the "haunted,,
parsonage, but he replied, "No; let the devil flee from me,. I will not flee
from him." On the general question of apparitions Mrs. Wesley guardedly wrote to
"Dear Jacky" in 1719: "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." There is much of Susanna Wesley’s characteristic common sense in
these words. The latest biographer of Mrs.Wesley-- Eliza Clarke, 1886--states
that about a hundred years after the Wesleys, had left Epworth strange noises
were heard in the rectory, and the incumbent, not being able to trace or account
for them, went away with his family and resided abroad for some time. The
present rector is of the opinion that ’Old Jeffrey’ is, to some extent,
answerable for a marked feature in Wesley’s character--his love of the marvelous
and his intense belief in the reality of apparitions and of witchcraft."

One minor incident, which is linked in a singular way with the history of
Methodism, ought not to be omitted. While John and Charles Wesley were at school
an explosion took place which John must have heard, for the Charterhouse was not
many minutes’ walk from the place where it occurred, and which Charles might
have heard, as there were few buildings to break the sound, save the quiet
hamlet of Charing, between the city proper and Westminster. As the building at
which the explosion occurred became, twenty-three years afterward, the first
Methodist chapel, the account which appeared in Newsletter of May 12, 1716, has
for us a more than ordinary interest: On Thursday night last, at a quarter past
nine, as they were casting three pieces of cannon of an extraordinary size, at
Mr. Bayley’s, a founder on Windmill Hill, soon after the second cannon was
poured into the mould, the same burst (occasioned by some small damp), whereby
Mr. Hill, one of the clerks belonging to the Ordnance, was so mangled that he
died yesterday morning between three and four o’clock. Mr. Whiteman, who keeps a
public-house hard by, and about ten or twelve more being present at this sad
accident,; were so dreadfully wounded that their lives are despaired of. Several
persons of distinction were expected there on this occasion, but happily they
did not come. That explosion was followed by important consequences to the
nation and the Church. Vulcan migrated with his molds and sledges from Windmill
Hill, Moorfields, to Woolwich, and created the Royal Arsenal. The shattered
foundry, after nearly a quarter of a century’s bandonment to uselessness and
silence, became the mother church of the whole family of Methodist churches in
both hemispheres, on all continents, and on manya distant island of the sea. In
1720 John Wesley left the Charterhouse for Christ Church College, Oxford, taking
with him a school "exhibition" prize of 40 a year, the equivalent in purchasing
power of some 160 at the present day.

Wesley looked back upon his years at school "not only without bitterness, but
with pleasure." He would have agreed with the later Carthusian, Thackeray, that
the pupils educated there "love to revisit it, and the oldest of us grow young
again for an hour or two as we come back into those scenes of our boyhood."

We get an interesting record of one c.f Wesley’s later visits in his Journal
(1757): "Aug. 8th. I took a walk in the Charterhouse. I wondered that all the
squares and buildings, and especially the schoolboys, looked so little. But this
is easily accounted for. I was little myself when I was at school, and measured
all about me by myself. Accordingly the upper boys . . . seemed to me very big
and tall, quite contrary to what they appear now, when I am taller and bigger
than them."

Another link with the Charterhouse is found in Wesley’s friendship for Pepusch,
the’ famous musician, "a profound student of the ancient Greek modes and
systems," who also advanced English love of music by adapting old national and
popular airs to modern words. After his wife’s death he left his sumptuous house
and took the post of organist at the Charterhouse. Wesley records several visits
to him.

Contact with the first musicians of their day, including not only Pepusch, but
the greater master, Handel, must have done much to form the musical tastes of
the two brothers, who were the great leaders of a modern reform in the music for
worship in the churches. To appreciate the astounding energy of the Wesleys in
sacred psalmody, and their numerous publications of hymns, often accompanied
with music, through all their public career, one must recognize the impulse
which they received from this early acquaintanceship with a master.

It must not be supposed that John Wesley had educational advantages beyond his
brothers. Samuel had left Epworth at fourteen, and entered Westminster School in
London, going thence to Oxford, and after graduation returning to teach at
Westminster. He was a fine classical scholar, a poet of taste and talent, and
the friend of the great poets of his day. Charles Wesley came to study at
Westminster, in 1716, while John was still at the Charterhouse. Samuel found a
home for the little boy of nine, and derrayed the expenses of his education
until he won a place as king’s scholar, in 1721, when his board and schooling
became free. A few years later we find him captain of the school, and so
becoming the link between the masters and the four hundred boys. Westminster has
been particularly rich in poets, and Charles Wesley’s best work as a sacred
lyrical poet was to bring new honor to the school which trained Ben Jonson,
Cowley, Dryden, George Herbert, Cowper, and Southey.

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 4: CHAPTER 04 - THE CRISIS AT OXFORD
========================================================================

Chapter IV - The Crisis at Oxford A Freshman of Christ Church.--No Religious
Friends.--Letters from Home--Choosing a Profession.--’l’he First Convert.--
Fellow of Lincoln.--Curate at Wroote.

JOHN WESLEY came up from the Charterhouse School to Oxford University in the
early summer of 1720, and matriculated at Christ Church College. With all its
fame as the chief English university, Oxford was not at that time an inspiring
or stimulating place. Its religion had for the most part hardened into the most
inflexible and spiritless forms of High Churchism, and the undergraduate life
was rude, gay, and dissolute. Foppery, conviviality, and roistering were not
altogether restricted to this class, for the dons were stigmatized as greedy,
dissipated, rude, covetous, and stupid. How far the lad from Epworth went with
these gay companions we do not know. He afterward accused himself of having been
sinful and contented at this period, but the praying mother and the habit of the
home which had made him a praying and Bible-reading schoolboy still bound him to
these religious observances and probably restrained him from flagrant vice. It
was five years, however, before he awakened to the serious purpose of life. He
was until then content to stand well in his studies, surpassing all in logical
acuteness, and to be a favorite with his fellows. His contemporary at Christ
Church, Badcock, describes him as "the very sensible and acute collegian,
baffling every man by the subtleties of logic, and laughing at them for being so
easily routed; a young fellow of the finest classical taste, of the most liberal
and manly sentiments;" "gay and sprightly, with a turn for wit and humor." He
wrote sparkling letters to his friends, and his brother Samuel received some
stanzas after the Latin, composed as a college exercise, on "Cloe’s Favorite
Flea." In more sedate mood he sent verses on the 65th psalm to his father, who
was pleased with them, and urged him not to bury his talent. His letters reveal
a wealth of family affection and warm interest in all the little details of the
home life at Epworth and at Wroote. In 1724 the family removed to Wroote, the
living which his father at this time held with Epworth. Begging for letters from
his sisters, he says: "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 to
me, that the persons, not the place, make home so pleasant." His sister Emilia
was the eldest of the gifted sisters. "Her love for her mother was strong as
death, and she regarded her brother John with a passionate fondness. Though so
much younger than herself, she selected him as her most intimate companion, her
counselor in difficulties, to whom ’her heart lay open at all times.’" Wesley
was a most affectionate brother, and his letters show that he was the opposite
of the "semistoical person, destitute of homely warmth and kindness," which some
of his critics have supposed him to be. For the first time Wesley became
troubled about his health, and on one occasion, while walking in the country, he
stopped violent bleeding of the nose by the somewhat drastic method of plunging
into the river. He read Cheyne’s Book of Health and Long Life, a plea for
exercise and temperance. This book led Wesley to eat sparingly and drink water,
a change which he considered to be one means of preserving his health. He had a
constant struggle "to make ends meet," although there is no evidence to show
that he was extravagant. "Dear Jack," wrote his mother, "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." This letter was written
just after he had taken his bachelor’s degree, in 1724. Two years later he
secured the Lincoln fellowship, which brought him financial relief. When John
Wesley was twenty-two years of age, in 1725, he came to a turning point in his
life: he faced the question of his future work. The prospect of taking holy
orders awakened his most serious thought, but he realized his spiritual
unfitness for the work of the ministry. He had not fallen into flagrant sin; the
aristocratic and expensive vice of some of the young noblemen at Christ Church
was scarcely possible for him, even had he desired it. The letters of his mother
carried always with them the aroma of her tender love and the purity of the
Epworth life. He never lost his Strong and touching love for his brothers and
sisters. His love of learning, stimulated by his father’s letters, was a
safeguard from idleness. But the divine fire burned low. John Wesley had become
simply the gay collegian, a general favorite in society, a sparkling wit;
maintaining a high repute for scholarship, but, according to his own account,
comparatively indifferent to spiritual things. He writes: "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 one 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." Late one night he had
a conversation with the porter of his college, which began with pleasantry, but
ended with a point that deeply impressed the merry student:

"Go home and get another coat," said Wesley.

"This is the only coat I have in the world, and I thank God for it," replied the
porter.

"Go home and get your supper, then," said the young student.

"I have had nothing to-day but a drink of water, and I thank God for that,"
rejoined the other.

"It is late, and you will be locked out, and then what will you have to thank
God for "

"I will thank him 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," responded the good man, "that he has given me my life and being,
a heart to love him, and a desire to serve him;" and the porter’s word and tone
made Wesley feel that there was something in religion which he had not as yet
found. He wrote home in regard to entering the ministry. His father’s reply was
written with a trembling pen: "You see," wrote the old man, "Time has shaken me
by the hand, and Death is but a little way behind him. My eyes and heart are now
almost all I have left, and I bless God for them." He counseled delay, not
liking "a callow clergyman," and fearing, too, that his motive might be "as
Eli’s son’s, to eat a piece of bread." But his mother judged his character
better, and marked the change in her son’s tone of thought. The rector came
around --as he generally did--to the opinion of his wife. The latter writes:
"Mr. Wesley differs from me, and would engage you, I believe, in critical
learning, which, though incidentally of use, is in nowise preferable to the
other (practical divinity). 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! . . . 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.’ Then his mother’s words
become more pointed: "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 by Jesus Christ. If you have, the satisfaction of knowing it will
abundantly reward your pains; if you have not, you will find a more reasonable
occasion for tears than can be met with in a tragedy." His father again
cautioned him against taking up the ministry as a mere means of livelihood,
adding that "the principal spring and motive . . . must certainly be the glory
of God, and the service of the Church in the edification of our neighbor. And
woe to him who with any meaner leading view attempts so sacred a work." The
young man was in a mood to heed such noble words. At this time, and a year
later, Wesley came under the influence of some remarkable books which he never
ceased to hold in high esteem, though he found deliverance from their ascetic
and mystic tendencies. They were Thomas a Kempis’s Imitation of Christ (in
Stanhope’s translation, The Christian Pattern); Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying;
and later, Law’s Serious Call, and Christian Perfection. The Christian Pattern
profoundly moved the heart of Wesley. It had been his father’s favorite book,
his "great and old companion." Its sentences make us feel while we read them as
though we had lald our hand on the heart, throbbing with sorrows like our own,
which beat so many years ago in the old mystic’s breast.

Wesley writes in his Journal: "The providence of God directing me to Kempis’s
Christian 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, very angry at Kempis for being too strict, though I read him only
in Dean Stanhope’s translation .... 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 pray for inward holiness. So that
now, ’doing so much and living so good a life,’ I doubted not but I was a good
Christian."

Canon Overton marks the irony of the last sentence, and asks if it is not right
in this case to defend John Wesley against John Wesley. While thoroughly
believing in the reality and importance of the later change, he thinks it cannot
be denied that Wesley from this time forward led a most devoted life. Rigg
believes he sees here the doctrine of entire Christian consecration and
holiness, which afterward developed into the Methodist doctrine of Christian
perfection. Full of spiritual beauty are Wesley’s own words: "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."

Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying strengthened the convictions awakened by a
Kempis. "In reading several parts of this book," says Wesley, "I was exceedingly
affected ....I resolved to dedicate all my life to God--all my thoughts and
words and actions--being thoroughly conscious that 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, to the devil." Well does Tyerman note that here 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 fellow-men.

Another result of reading Taylor was the commencement of the famous Journals.
They now occupy a well-recognized place in the literature of the eighteenth
century, but they were the outcome of Wesley’s spiritual resolve to make a more
careful use of all his time, and to keep an account of its employment.

Although during the next few years Wesley became an ascetic, with High Church
beliefs, strong ritualistic tendencies, and a mystical bias, he was repelled by
a Kempis’s extreme doctrine of self-mortification, and Taylor’s morbid teaching
as to the necessity of perpetual sorrowful uncertainty concerning personal
salvation. In a letter to his mother he writes:

If we dwell in Christ and he 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 we are in this life, of all men, most miserable. God deliver us from
such a fearful doctrine as this!

Here, in 1725, we have the basis of another of the characteristic doctrines of
the coming Methodism--that of a present salvation from guilt and fear through
the indwelling of Christ. This was opposed to the Carolan High Churchmanship of
Taylor as well as to Calvinism. But Wesley had yet to learn by experience the
power of evangelical faith which laid the foundation of his later teaching on
conversion and the "witness of the Spirit." In the same memorable year, 1725,
Wesley and his mother rejected the doctrine of Predestination, which for
centuries had terrified many earnest souls, and narrowed the sympathies and work
of the Christian Church. Wesley asks: "How is this consistent with either the
divine justice or mercy Is it mercy 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 of the clearest idea
’we have of the divine nature and perfections." To this his mother replies: The
doctrine of Predestination, as maintained by 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 justness 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.

Hugh Price Hughes, in the Contemporary Review for March, 1897, declared:

John Wesley killed Calvinism. No really instructed and responsible theologian
dares to assert now that Christ died only for a portion of mankind, although the
full logical effect of asserting the redemption of the entire race has not yet
been universally realized. Little did the young Oxonian dream in 1725 that he
and his mother were sowing the seed of the bitterest theological controversy of
his life, over which Methodism would be rent in twain by an irreparable schism,
that would unhappily leave the evangelical section of the Established Church on
the wrong side of the breach, doomed to the comparative helplessness we witness
to-day, although it would burst his fetters and enable him to exclaim, with
prophetic truth, "The world is my parish." In the midsummer of this same year,
while preparing for ordination, Wesley won his first convert. He tells his
mother: "I stole out of company at eight in the evening with a young gentleman
with whom I was intimate. As we took a turn in an aisle of St. Mary’s Church, in
expectation of a young lady’s funeral, with whom we were both acquainted, I
asked him if he really thought himself my friend; and, if he did, why he would
not do me all the good he could. He began to protest, in which I cut him short
by desiring him to oblige me in an instance which he could not deny to be in his
own power, to let me have the pleasure of making him a whole Christian, to which
I knew he was at least half persuaded already; that he could not do me a greater
kindness, as both of us would be fully convinced when we came to follow that
young woman." The word went home. Eighteen months afterward the young man died
of consumption, and Wesley preached his funeral sermon.

Wesley’s earnestness soon exposed him to the raillery of the college wits, and
this evoked a characteristic clarion blast from his father: "Does anyone think
the devil is dead, or asleep, or 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." As leaders of the militant host of God both the Wesleys
owed much of their moral muscle to their father, and that old soldier’s words
echo in many a war song by Charles Wesley.

John Wesley was ordained deacon by John Potter, Bishop of Oxford, in Christ
Church Cathedral, Oxford, on Sunday, September 19, 1725, and priest on September
22, 1728. His first sermon was preached at South Leigh, in Oxfordshire, in 1725.
Of the fruitlessness of all this early preaching he wrote long afterward:
"Preaching was defective and fruitless, for ’ from 1725 to 1729 I neither laid
the foundation of repentance nor of preaching the Gospel, taking it for granted
that all to whom I preached were believers, and that many of them needed no
repentance. From 1729 to 1734, laying a deeper foundation of repentance, I saw a
little fruit. But it was only a little--and no wonder; for I did not preach
faith in the blood of the covenant."

There was great rejoicing in the rectory at Wroote on March 17, 1726, when John
Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln College. His father had only 5 to keep
his family from March until after harvest, but he wrote in high spirits: "What
will be my own fate, God knows, before this summer is over-sed passt graviora
[but we have suffered heavier troubles]. Wherever I am, my Jack is a fellow of
Lincoln." For more than a quarter of a century Wesley was connected with Lincoln
College, and its name appears on the title pages of all his works. The college
was founded in the fifteenth century by two Bishops of Lincoln, who were bent on
extirpating the Wyclifite heresies and other opinions dangerous to the Church.
Goldwin Smith says: "The two orthodox prelates would have stood aghast if they
could have foreseen that their little college of true theologians would one day
number among its fellows John Wesley, and that Methodism would be cradled within
its walls."

Wesley’s Lincoln apartments are the second-floor rooms on the right, or south,
side of the first quadrangle opposite the clock tower. In these rooms the "Holy
Club" met in 1739. Hundreds of visitors ramble into this quiet quadrangle
to-day, many of them from the colonies and America. They pluck a leaf from the
vine, look into the study of the man whose parish was the world, visit the
chapel, with its windows of rich stained glass, stand in the pulpit from which
Wesley preached, and gaze upon his portrait by Williams, in the dining hall.

Wesley found the moral tone and discipline of Lincoln superior, on the whole, to
that of other colleges, and the fellows "both well-natured and well-bred." He
was soon appointed Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes. It became his
duty to lecture weekly in the college hall to all the undergraduates on the
Greek Testament. The Greek text was the basis of the lecture, but the main
object was to teach divinity, not merely a language. As moderator of the classes
he presided over the disputations, held every day except Sunday. The disputants
argued on one side or the other; the moderator had to listen to the arguments,
and then to decide with whom the victory lay. John Locke, at Christ Church
seventy years before, lamented the "unprofitableness of these verbal niceties;"
but Wesley writes, "I could not avoid acquiring thereby some degree of
expertness in arguing, and especially in discovering and pointing out
well-covered and plausible fallacies. I have since found abundant reason to
praise God for giving me this honest art."

He became a hard and wide student, and, indeed, continued such all his life.
Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin, logic, ethics, metaphysics, natural philosophy,
oratory, poetry, and divinity entered into his weekly plan of study.’ He
obtained the degree of Master of Arts in 1727, acquiring much reputation in his
disputation for his degree. His financial struggles were over, but he was rigid
in his economy and was able to help his father and his family to the end of
life. He saved about 2 a year by allowing his hair to grow long, in spite of the
protest of his mother, thus escaping the expense of a wig. In a letter to his
brother Samuel occurs his well-known sentence: "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." His brother Charles came up from Westminster School to Christ
Church soon after John Wesley’s removal to Lincoln. When John spoke to him about
religion he said, "What, would you have me to be a saint all at once" and would
hear no more. But the heart of John was set upon saintliness. He courteously
broke off acquaintanceships which hindered him, after fruitless attempts to
bring his companions to his own serious view of life. He now began the system of
early rising, which he continued to the end of life. He could say, after sixty
years, that he still rose at four o’clock. His father was now sixty-five years
of age, and in feeble health. To fill the small living of Wroote in addition to
that of Epworth, he needed a curate. A school in Yorkshire had been offered
John, with a good income, and he was attracted by the seclusion it promised, but
his mother saw that God had better work for him to do, and, again following her
advice, he declined it. He went to Lincolnshire and acted as his father’s curate
for two and a quarter years, returning at intervals to Oxford. This was the only
experience he ever had in parochial work.

Wroote was surrounded by fens, and often had to be reached by boat. During one
journey, in 1728, Wesley narrowly escaped drowning, the fierce current driving
the boat against another craft and filling it with water. The small brick church
in which he preached at Wroote was taken down a century ago and the material
used for paving the streets of Epworth. One incident of this period is worth
preserving, as it bears upon the organized fellowship of the Methodists. He
tells us that he traveled several miles to converse with a "serious man" who
said to him, "Sir, you wish to serve God and go to heaven. Remember you cannot
serve him alone; you must therefore find companions or make them; the Bible
knows nothing of solitary religion." He was recalled to Oxford by the rector of
his college in 1729, and found the Methodist movement commenced by his brother
Charles.

Wesley was becoming an earnest ascetic ritualist. He held that water should be
mixed with the wine in the daily Holy Communion. He advised something near akin
to confession, as a racy letter from his sister Emelia shows: To lay open the
state of my soul to you, or any of our clergy, is what I have no inclination to
do at present; and I believe I never shall. I shall not put my conscience under
the direction of mortal man as 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. The old
Puritan spirit comes out in the letter of this sister, 0who had the Puritan
blood in her veins. Her brother was teaching almost all that a High Anglican of
to-day teaches, except that he does not appear to have held to the "conversion
of the elements" in the Eucharist. A little later, under the influence of his
friend Clayton, he left the guidance of the Bible to follow that of tradition,
or such pretended tradition as the Apostolical Constitutions. He says of himself
that he "made antiquity a coordinate rule with Scripture." The strict High
Churchman also sought rest for his heart in mysticism. He first read William
Law’s Christian Perfection and Serious Call in 1728 or 1729. These two powerful
devotional treatises did not contain the mystical errors of Law’s later
teaching. Although in later years Wesley diverged widely from Law, he never lost
his admiration for the Serious Call. A very short time before his death he spoke
of it as a "treatise which will hardly ever be excelled, if it be equaled, in
the English tongue, either for beauty of expression or for justice and depth of
thought." He owned that Law’s two books sowed the seed of Methodism.

Later Law went astray into the fields of mysticism. Wesley visited him at Putney
in 1732, and from that period began to read the German mystics. Their noble
descriptions of union with God and internal religion deeply impressed him, but
he never followed Law into the unfathomable confusions" of Behmen. He never
accepted the theories which deny the necessity of the means of grace. He appears
to have extricated himself from the meshes of mysticism during his sojourn in
Georgia, and writes to his brother Samuel: "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." He
asks his brother to give him his thoughts upon the scheme of their doctrines
which he has drawn up, and thinks they may be of consequence "not only to all
this province, but to nations of Christians yet unborn." Thus this Christian
knight was delivered from this "wandering fire;" he never passed "into the
silent life," and we must return with him to Oxford to practice the counsel of
the "serious" countryman who told him that "the Bible knows nothing of solitary
religion."

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
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  CHAPTER 5: CHAPTER 05 - THE HOLY CLUB
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Chapter V The Holy Club

Charles Wesley Begins It.--" Methodists."--John Wesley its Father.-"Men of One
Book." Works of Mercy and Help.--The Oxford Methodists.--Whitefield,--Death of
the Epworth Rector.-- Reserved for a Better Appointment.

CHARLES WESLEY came up to Christ Church, in 1726, a bright, rollicking young
fellow, "with more genius than grace." He had objected to becoming "a saint all
at once." But the rebuff did not estrange the brothers, and soon after John went
to Wroote, Charles wrote to him in a very changed mood, seeking the counsel
which before he had spurned. Lamenting his former state of insensibility, he
declared: "There is no one person I would so willingly have to be the instrument
of good to me as you. It is owing, in great measure, to somebody’s prayers (my
mother’s most likely) that I am come to think as I do; for I cannot tell myself
how or why I awoke out of my lethargy, only that it was not long after you went
away." He not only gave himself with zest to his studies, but began to attend
the weekly sacrament and induce others to unite with him in seeking true
holiness. He and his companions adopted certain rules for right living, and
apportioned their time exactly to study and religious duties, allotting as
little as possible to sleeping and eating, and as much as possible to devotion.
This precise regularity caused a young gentleman of Christ Church to say
derisively, "Here is a new set of Methodists sprung up."

Charles Wesley says that the name of Methodist "was bestowed upon himself and
his friends because of their strict conformity to the method of study prescribed
by the university." John Wesley, in an address to George II, designates his
societies "the people in derision called Methodists," and in his English
Dictionary makes good use of the word. He defines a Methodist as "one that lives
according to the method laid down in the Bible."

Overton, with an honorable regard for his own college worthy of Wesley himself,
says: "A Lincoln man may be pardoned for remarking with satisfaction that
Lincoln had nothing to do with the feeble jokes which were made upon these good
earnest youths. Christ Church and Merton must divide the honor between them. The
Holy Club, Bible Bigots, Bible Moths, Sacramentarians, Supererogation Men,
Methodists--all these titles were invented by the fertile brains of ’ the wits’
to cast opprobrium, as they thought, but really to confer honor upon a perfectly
inoffensive band of young men who only desired to be what they and their
opponents were alike called--Christians. An Oxford man may, indeed, blush for
his university when he reflects that these young men could not even attend the
highest service of the Church without running the gauntlet of a jeering rabble,
principally composed of men who were actually being prepared for the sacred
ministry of that Church." When John Wesley returned to Oxford he at once became
the leader of this little band formed by his brother. His age, his genius for
generalship, his position in the university, his superior learning, made this a
matter of course. And Charles rejoiced in this. A more perfect instance of real
brotherhood it would be difficult to find in history. The elder always spoke of
the work which was being done as their joint work. "My brother and I," is the
expression he constantly used in describing it. Charles was by no means the mere
"man Friday" of his brother, as some have supposed. He would not have been a
Wesley if he had not given proof of magnificent individuality. It must be
remembered that he was the first Methodist. He was to take his full share in the
work of the great revival, not only as a poet, but as a preacher. But John
Wesley was nicknamed "the Curator of the Holy Club," or, sometimes, "the Father
of the Holy Club." The old rector of Epworth, hearing of John’s new title,
wrote: "If this be so, I am sure I am the grandfather of it; and I need not say
that I had rather any of my sons should be so dignified and distinguished than
to have the title of ’ His Holiness.’"

Gambold says: "Mr. John Wesley was always the chief manager, for which he was very fit; for he not only had more learning and experience than the rest, but he was blest with such activity as to be always gaining ground, and such steadiness that he lost none. What proposals he made to any were sure to charm them, because they saw him always the same. What supported this uniform vigor was the care he took to consider well of every affair before he engaged in it, making all his decisions in the fear of God, Without passion, humor, or self-confidence; for though he had naturally a very clear apprehension, yet his exact prudence depended more on humanity and singleness of heart. To this I may add, that he had, I think, something of authority on his countenance, though, as he did not want address, he could soften his manner and point it as occasion required. Yet he never assumed anything to himself above his companions. Any of them might speak their mind, and their words were as strictly regarded by him as his were by them." The first work of the Holy Club was the study of the Bible. The new movement was spiritual, humanitarian, but, first and strongest of all, scriptural. The searching of the Scriptures was earnest, open-minded, devout, unceasing. Wesley himself said: "From the very beginning--from the time that four young men united together----each of them was homo ur, ius libri; a man of one book .... They had one, and only one rule of judgment .... They were continually reproached for this very thing, some terming them in derision Bible Bigots; others, Bible Moths; feeding, they said, upon the Bible as moths do on cloth .... And indeed, unto this day, it is their constant endeavor to think and speak as the oracles of God." This fundamental fact in the history of Methodism must never be lost to view. At first the friends met every Sunday evening; then two evenings in every week were passed together, and at last every evening from six to nine. They began their meetings with prayer, studied the Greek Testament and the classics, reviewed the work of the past day, and talked over their plans for the morrow, closing all with a frugal supper. They received the Lord’s Supper weekly, fasted twice a week, and instituted a searching system of self-examination, aiming in all things to do the will of God and be zealous of good works. The first flower of the study of the Bible was a new philanthropy. William Morgan, of Christ Church, visited a condemned wife murderer in the castle jail; Morgan also conversed with the debtors in prison, and was convinced that good might be done among them. On August 24, 1730, the brothers Wesley went with him to the castle, and from that time forward the prisoners became their special care. Morgan also began the work of visiting the sick. John Wesley wrote to his father for counsel, and received an inspiring letter: "I have the highest reason to bless God that he has given me two sons together at Oxford, to whom he has given grace and courage to turn the war against the world and the devil, which is the best way to conquer them." The Bishop of Oxford gave the young men his approval, and the visiting was extended to poor families in the city. Children were also taught. One of these, a poor girl, called upon Wesley in a state of great destitution. He said to her, "You seem half starved; have you nothing to cover you but that thin linen gown " She replied, "Sir, this is all I have." Wesley put his hand into his pocket, but found it nearly empty. The walls of his chamber, however, were hung with pictures, and they seemed to accuse him. "It struck me," he says, "’ 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’"

It was the practice, he says, of all the Oxford Methodists to give away each
year all they had after providing for their own necessities. He himself, having
thirty pounds a year, lived on twenty-eight, and gave away two. 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 one hundred and twenty pounds, and still lived on twenty-eight
as before, giving to the poor all the rest.

While the number of the Methodists was only four at first, in the following year
two or three other students desired the liberty of meeting with them, and these
were joined by one of Charles Wesley’s students. In 1732 Benjamin Ingham, of
Queens; Thomas Broughton, of Exeter; John Clayton, of Brazenose; James Hervey,
and two or three others, were admitted to the club, and in 1735 George
Whitefield, of Pembroke, became a member. The numbers fluctuated, and when the
Wesleys sailed for Georgia the Holy Club’ had thirteen members. In 1733 there
were twenty-seven Methodist communicants. During one of Wesley’s absences at
Epworth the number dwindled to five, but it rallied again when its leader was
once more at the front. Of these early Methodists three were tutors in colleges
and the rest were bachelors of arts or undergraduates. All were strictly
orthodox in doctrine, or counted themselves so; and practically they had all
things in common; that is, no one was allowed to want what another was able to
spare.

It would be interesting to follow, if space allowed, the subsequent career of
the Oxford Methodists. The sympathetic Morgan died of consumption in 1732.
Robert Kirkham, whose sister Betty was probably Wesley’s first sweetheart,
became an Anglican curate. John Clayton became a High Church clergyman, and a
powerful preacher, but refused to recognize the Wesleys after they broke away
from Church usages and preached in the open air. Benjamin Ingham’s friendship
was of better metal. He followed them to Georgia and joined in their later
labor. John Gainbold, after a brief experience as an Anglican rector, became a
Moravian bishop, and wrote many hymns. James Hervey became a charitable country
parson of Calvinist creed, who wrote the once popular , "Meditations." Thomas
Broughton was curate at the Tower of London, and for the better part of his life
secretary of the Society for. Promoting Christian Knowledge. Charles Kinchin
became dean of Corpus Christi College. He was a liberal Churchman, and
maintained a close friendship with the Wesleys through life. John Whitelamb, a
protege of Rev. Samuel Wesley, Sr., became his curate, and married his daughter
Mary. He was greatly afflicted and spent a life of obscurity as rector of the
starveling parish of Wroote, adjoining Epworth. The Holy Club had one member
whose fame in some respects surpassed them all --George Whitefield. He was the
son of an innkeeper at Gloucester, and drew ale for the customers until he was
fifteen years of age. At the school to which he was sent he made a little stir
with his talent for oratory and acting, read Thomas a Kempis, and began to dream
of being a minister. At eighteen he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, as a
servitor, for which his bartending experience served him well. He was drawn to
the Holy Club, but in his poverty dared not join these young gentlemen, though
he often gazed at them with deep emotion as they passed through a jeering crowd
to receive the sacrament at St. Mary’s. At length he made the acquaintance of
Charles Wesley, who gave him religious counsel and helpful books, which brought
him a powerful religious experience.

He learned that true religion did not consist in going to church, or
faithfulness in any external duties, but was a union of the soul with God; and
that he must be a new creature. It was an era in his history. He says: "I found
and felt in myself that I was delivered from the burden that had so heavily
oppressed me. The spirit of mourning was taken from me, and I knew what it was
truly to rejoice in God my Saviour. The day-star arose in my heart. I know the
place; it may perhaps be superstitious, but whenever I go to Oxford I cannot
help running to the spot where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me and
gave me ’a new birth." This was in 1735, when he was in his twenty-first year.
He was the first of the Holy Club to come into this divine experience. That he
did not at once communicate it to the Wesley brothers, who for three years still
groped in the twilight of legalism, may be partly owing to the difference which,
on account of their superiority in learning and social position, would keep him
from presuming to teach them, but still more was it due to the fact that they
became at this time separated from him by their preparations for departure to
America. The Father of the Holy Club remained in residence at Lincoln College
until 1735. For a time in 1730 he held a curacy near Oxford. He now began to
converse in Latin with his brother, a habit which became lifelong. They walked
to Epworth, seventy-five miles, on foot, in 1731, and John visited London in
that year and the next, calling on William Law, and joining the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge. In 1734 his horseback journeys aggregated one
thousand miles, and he formed the habit of readingt in the saddle. At London he
suprevised the printing of his father’s ponderous treatise on the book of Job.
The aged rector of Epworth was fast failing in health, and looked to one of his
sons to succeed him in the living and furnish a home for their mother and
sisters. The son Samuel thought he could not resign his post as headmaster of
Tiverton Grammar School. They both turned to John. He had twenty-six reasons
against it, but they were all reducible to two; namely, that he thought he could
be more holy and more useful at Oxford. He says: "Another can supply my place at
Epworth better than at Oxford, and the good done here is of a far more diffusive
nature. It is a more extensive benefit to sweeten the fountain than to do the
same to particular streams."

However, in spite of all this, he seems to have yielded ultimately to the
earnest pleadings of his father and brother, and, no doubt, also the united
appeals of his mother and sisters, who would otherwise lose their home. He
Consented to accept the living if it could be procured. But for some reason,
probably the reports of his extreme strictness, the application was
unsuccessful; the living of Epworth was given to a clergyman who appears never
to have resided there, and the work was transferred to a curate. God had
something more important for John Wesley. The good old rector, who had had such
a hard struggle all through life, finished his labors April 25, 1735, at the age
of seventy-two. His sons were by his side during his last hours. His mind was at
rest. He said to John, "The inward witness, son, the inward witness--this is the
proof, the strongest proof, of Christianity." But it was some years before this
son knew much about that. The day before his death he told Charles, "The weaker
I am in body the stronger and more .sensible support I feel from God." To the
question, "Are you in much pain " he replied: "God does chasten me with pain,
yea, all my bones with strong pain. But I thank him for all, I bless him for
all, I love him for all." Laying his hands upon the head of Charles, he said:
"Be steady. The Christian faith will surely revive in this kingdom; you shall
see it, though I shall not." To his daughter Erailia he said, "Do not be
concerned at my death; God will then begin to manifest himself to my family." So
he peacefully passed away, just before sunset, and was buried "very frugally,
yet decently, in the churchyard, according to his own desire." Little did he
think to what strange uses his molest tombstone would be put in after years

John Wesley again returned to Oxford, whence he was, within a few months, to be
removed to a widely different sphere of action. The group of earnest Christians
wko had composed the Holy Club was soon dispersed. "In October, 1735, John and
Charles Wesley and Ingham left England, with a design to go and preach to the
Indians in Georgia; but the rest of the gentlemen continued to meet till one and
another were ordained and left the university. By which means, in about two
years’ time, scarce any of them were left."

Whitefield had some oversight of them until, in February, 1738, he also embarked
for Georgia. Kinchin, Hutchins, Kirkham, and others were more or less at Oxford
subsequently, and rendered valuable service in the outside work; but there was
not continuously a sufficient number to maintain the frequent meetings, and the
society was thus gradually dissolved. The influence of it remained a while as a
sweet savor in Oxford, and was distributed widely by those who left. After
Wesley’s return from Georgia he met some of them, and wrote: "Soon after I
returned to England I had a meeting with Messrs. Ingham, Stonehouse, Hall,
Hutchins, Kinchin, and a few other clergymen, who all appeared to be of one
heart as well as of one judgment resolved to be Bible Christians at all events,
and, wherever they were, to preach, with all their might, plain old Bible
Christianity." The main purpose of these Oxonian Methodists had been to save
their own souls and the souls of others. Though the little society passed away,
yet through the lives of these three sons of genius and of grace, John and
Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, first a university was aroused, then a
kingdom was set in a blaze, and the nations beyond the seas felt the glow of the
divine fires whose new enkindlings had occurred in the Holy Club. To the two
Wesleys, however, the great doctrines of justification by faith and the witness
of the Spirit were not yet experimental verities. And they were to learn their
practical force not from the voice and pen of any great teacher within their own
Church, but from the lips of a humble Moravian preacher, and from the glowing
commentaries of the great German reformer.

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 6: CHAPTER 06 - TO AMERICA AND BACK
========================================================================

Chapter VI - To America and Back The Missionary Spirit.--Oglethorpe’s
Philanthropic Colony.-- John Wesley, Missioner to Georgia.--The High Churchman
at Savannah.-- Moravian Influences.--The First Methodist Hymnal-- An Unhappy
Ending. LONG before the dawn of the great societies the missionary spirit was
the heritage of the Wesley family. That sturdy Nonconformist, the first John
Westley, had a burning desire to go to Surinam or Maryland. His son Samuel, the
Epworth rector, had sympathies that overleaped all parochial boundaries. He
devised a great mission for India, China, and Abyssinia, and a year before his
death lamented that he was too infirm to go to Georgia. Now the imagination of
his Methodist sons is fired with the idea of evangelizing the Indians, and the
recently widowed "Mother of Methodism" utters her famous missionary saying. A
royal charter had been granted in 1732 for the establishment of a colony, named
after the king, "in that part of Carolina which lies from the most northern part
of the Savannah River all along the seacoast to the southward." The founder was
General James Edward Oglethorpe, an energetic and humanitarian member of
Parliament, who was intent upon reforming the condition of the debtors’ prisons
and providing a new home in a new world where the released prisoners might find
a hopeful refuge. The two Wesleys, father and son, and many of like mind, took
deep interest in the plans for Georgia, which was to be not only an anti-slavery
colony, but which was to be a center of missionary effort among the Indians.
Oglethorpe took out his first expedition to Savannah early in 1733. Other
distressed people, Salzburghers, German Protestants, and a company of Highland
Scots, found settlement there. Certain Moravians, seeking "freedom to worship
God," were the fourth to arrive. The Wesleys came with the fifth migration. When
the Georgian trustees were looking for a missionary, some one suggested the name
of the zealous young fellow of Lincoln. Oglethorpe liked the idea, but John
doubted whether his widowed mother could spare him. He finally went home to ask
her. "Had I twenty sons," was her noble reply, "I should rejoice that they were
all so employed, though I should never see them more." Charles decided to go as
the general’s secretary, and Ingham, of the Holy Club, and a young Londoner
joined the mission, for such they considered it. Wesley’s motives are best
learned from his own candid words in a letter to a friend. The apparent
selfishness of his first motive must be judged in the light of his frank
confession of his need of the first qualification for his mission and the higher
altruism of his second motive: "My chief motive," said he, "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, ambi tious
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."

"I then hope toknow what it is to love my neighbor as myself, and to feel the
powers of that second motive to visit the heathen, even the desire to impart to
them what I have received-- a saving knowledge of the Gospel of Christ; but this
I dare not think on yet. It is not for me, who have been a grievous sinner from
my youth up, . . . to expect God should work so great things by my hands; but I
am assured, if I be once converted myself, he will then employ me both to
strengthen my brethren and to preach his name to the Gentiles." The party of
"missloners" embarked with Olethorpe, October 18, 1735, on the Simmonds, a
vessel of two hundred and twenty tons. Twenty-six Moravians, under their bishop,
David Nitsehman, and eighty English colonists were fellow-passengers. Although
they started from Gravesend in October, it was December before they left
England, and many weeks were spent at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, where they
had to wait for the man of-war that was to be their convoy. This gave time for
the Methodists to plan their days as carefully as at Oxford. From four to five
every morning was spent in private prayer; then for two hours they read the
Bible together, comparing it with the Fathers. Breakfast and public prayers
filled two hours more. From nine to twelve Charles Wesley wrote sermons, John
studied German, Delamotte read Greek, and Ingham taught the emigrants’ children;
and the remainder of the day was as carefully mapped out, all uniting with the
Germans in their evening service.

One event of the eight weeks’ voyage made a deep impression on John Wesley. On
several occasions there were storms, and he felt restless, and afraid to die. He
had made friends with the Moravians and was charmed by their sweet spirit and
excellent discipline. He now found that they were brave as well as gentle. One
evening a storm burst just as the Germans began to sing a psalm, and the sea
broke, split the mainsail in shreds, covered the ship, and poured in between the
decks as if the great deep were swallowing them up. The English began to scream
with terror, but the Germans calmly sang on. Wesley asked one of them afterward:

"Were you not afraid "

"I thank God, no," was the reply.

"But were not your women and children afraid "

"No," he replied mildly, "our women and children are not afraid to die." At the
close of the day’s Journal Wesley writes, "This was the most glorious day which
I have hitherto seen." On February 6, 1736, the Simmonds landed her passengers
in Georgia. One of Wesley’s first acquaintances was Spankenberg, a Moravian
pastor, whose advice he sought. The German said:

"My brother, I must first ask you one or two questions: Have you the witness
within yourself Does the Spirit of God witness with your spirit that you are a
child of God" Wesley knew not what to answer. The preacher, seeing his
hesitation, asked:

"Do you know Jesus Christ"

"I know," said Wesley, "he is the Saviour of the world."

"True," replied he, "but do you know he has saved you "

Wesley answered, " I hope he has died to save me."

Spangenberg only added, "Do you know yourself "

"I do," was the reply; but in his Journal he wrote, "I fear they were vain
words." Such a spiritual probing Wesley had never before received. The
conversation was worth the journey across the ocean. The flash of lightning left
him in darkness. He asked Spangenberg many questions about the Moravians of
Herrnhut.

Tomo-chi-chi, the chief, and other Indians called on him and expressed their
friendly greeting, but the way of approach to these heathen was for the time so
hedged up that Wesley could devote little attention to their needs.

John Wesley found Savannah, with forty houses, built on a bluff forty or fifty
feet above the bend of the river, which here was about a thousand feet across.
He began his ministry with a sermon on "Charity" (1 Cor. xiii), and described
the deathbed of his father at Epworth. The courthouse, which served as church,
was crowded, and the mission began with great promise. Ten days later a ball had
to be given up, for the church was full for prayers and the ballroom empty! A
lady told him when he landed that he would see as well-dressed a congregation on
Sundays as most which he had seen in London. He found that she was right, and he
preached on the subject of dress with such effect that gold and costly npparel
disappeared, and the ladies came to church in plain linen or woolen. He
established day schools, teaching one himself and placing Delamotte in the
other. Some of Delamotte’s boys who wore shoes and stockings thought themselves
superior to the boys who went barefoot. To cure their pride Wesley changed
schools with his friend and went to teach without shoes and stockings. The boys
stared, but Wesley kept them to their work, and before the end of the week he
had cured the lads of their vanity. The Sunday appointments were many. He
divided the public prayers, reading the morning service at five, having the
sermon and Holy Communion at eleven, and the evening service at three. There was
a meeting at his own house for reading, prayer, and praise. At six o’clock he
attended the Moravian service. He catechised the children at two o’clock, and
during the latter part of his stay he had service for the Itallans at nine and
for the French at one. In two neighboring settlements he read prayers on
Saturday in German and French, and he even studied Spanish in order to converse
with some Spanish Jews.

All might have gone on well if, as Southey says, he could have taken the advice
of Dr. Burton, to consider his parishioners as babes in their progress, and to
feed them with milk. But "he drenched them with the physic of an intolerant
discipline." His High Churchmanship manifested itself in all the irritating
forms common to the sectarian bigots who domineer over timid villagers in some
of the rural parishes of England to-day, except that he did not resort to the
modern cruelty of depriving the poor and sick Dissenters of relief from public
charities. He refused the Lord’s Supper to all who had not been episcopally
baptized; he re-baptized the children of Dissenters, and he refused to bury all
who had not received Anglican baptism. He insisted also on baptism by immersion.
He refused the Lord’s Supper to one of the most devoted Christian men in the
colony, Bolzius, the pastor of the Salzburghers, because he had not been
baptized by a minister who had been episcopally ordained. Many years afterward
he made this comment on his action: "Can anyone carry High Church zeal higher
than this And how well have I been since beaten with mine own staff!" No wonder
was it that a plain speaker said to Wesley at this time: "The people say they
are Protestants, but as for you they cannot tell what religion you are of; they
never heard of such a religion before, and they do not know what to make of it."
At the same time, as Rigg has pointed out, Wesley was "inwardly melting, and the
light of spiritual liberty was dawning on his soul." He attended a Presbyterian
service at Darien, and, to his great astonishment, heard the minister offer a
devout extempore prayer. He was impressed by the simple beauty of the life of
the Moravians, and they sent him to the New Testament. He read Bishop
Beveridge’s Pandectae Canonum Conciliorum, which sent him to the Scriptures
again as a higher authority than tradition or councils. He thus expresses to
Wogan his opinion as to the innermost nature of religion: "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, and indeed with whatever is not
according to the . . . gentleness of Christ Jesus."

Charles Wesley, who had accompanied Oglethorpe to Frederica, a new settlement,
one hundred miles to the southward, had no better success in winning the
sympathy of those to whom he preached. His faithful preaching at the sins of his
parishioners gained him enemies, who lied about him, and even attempted his
life, until at a funeral service he "envied the corpse his quiet grave." In 1736
he was sent home to England with dispatches from the governor, and saw no more
of Georgia.

While he was in Georgia, John Wesley published his first collection of Psalms
and Hymns. It was printed "at Charles-Town" (Charleston, S.C.), and the
title-page is dated 1737. In a preface to a reprint of this volume Osborne says:
"It has been supposed that this Collection of Psalms and Hymns was the first
published in our language, so that in this provision for the improvement of
public worship . . . Wesley led the way." His father’s hymn rescued from the
Epworth fire, Addison’s hymns, and some of his own noble translations from the
German are included in the collection. The incident which terminated John
Wesiey’s usefulness as a missionary has a somewhat romantic interest. He fell
deeply in love with Miss Sophia Hopkey, the attractive niece of the chief
magistrate of Savannah. On the advice of his Moravian friends he suddenly
decided not to marry her, and she soon married another. The attachment must have
been very strong, for in his old age he wrote of the disappointment: "I was
pierced through as with a sword." But the matter did not end here. Later Wesley
felt it his duty to rebuke the lady for inconsistency of life and to refuse her
the Communion. He was prosecuted’ by her husband for so doing, but, as a High
Churchman, refused to recognize the authority of a civil court. Then the storm
burst. The colonists found many grievances against their rigid clergyman, and to
end the matter, on the advice of his friends, he decided to leave Georgia. So
with a heavy heart, on December 5, 1737, Wesley took boat with three friends for
Carolina, on his way to England. After a trying journey of ten days they reached
Charleston, and went on board the Samuel. After a stormy voyage Wesley rejoiced
to see "English land once more; which, about noon, appeared to be the Lizard
Point," and the next day they landed at Deal, only a day after Whitefield had
sailed out. Whitefield afterward declared: "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. O that I may follow him as he has followed Christ!" On his voyage home,
and just after he landed, Wesley poured out his soul in language which in after
years he modified in some of its expressions. He wrote in his Journal: "I went
to America to convert the Indians, but, O! who shall convert me who, what is he
that will deliver me from this evil ’heart of unbelief I have a fair summer
religion; I can talk well, nay, and believe myself, while no danger is near; but
let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. Nor can I say, to die
is gain . . . 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 . . . O who will deliver me from this fear of death . . .
Where shall I fly from it" The day that he landed in England, February 1, 1738,
there was another gloomy entry in his Journal, but he ends it with his face
toward the light: "This, then, have I learned in the ends of the earth, that I ’
am fallen short of the glory of God ;’ that my whole heart is ’altogether
corrupt and abominable;’ . . . that my own works, my own sufferings, my own
righteousness, are so far from reconciling me to an offended God, that the most
specious of them need an atonement themselves; . . . that, ’having the sentence
of death’ in my heart, . : I have no hope . . . but that if I seek, I shall find
Christ, and ’be found in him, not having my own righteousness, but that which is
through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.’" "I
want . . . that faith which enables every one that hath it to cry out, ’I live
not; . . . but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live, I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’ I want that
faith which none can have without knowing he hath it; [when] ’the Spirit itself
bearcth witness with his spiritthat he is a child of God.’"

Many years later when republishing his Journals he added four short notes: On
the original statement, "I, who went to America to convert others, was never
myself converted," he remarks, "I am not sure of.this." "I am a child of wrath,"
was his early record; "I believe not," was his later note. And in another note
he says: "I had even then the faith of a servant, though not that of a son "--a
distinction upon which he dwells in one of his sermons. In a touching passage in
a letter to Bishop Lavington, written in 1752, he says that the passages in the
Journal were written "in the anguish of my heart, to which I gave vent between
God and my own soul." But the anguish was soon to pass away, and he was to know
the full joy of sonship in the family of God. The mission to Georgia never
fulfilled the ideal of the ardent young ritualists and mystics who were its
apostles. It was diverted from its noble and romantic purpose of founding a
primitive and perfect Church in a new world and among unsophisticated Indians.
But it was not an utter failure. It brought the missionaries themselves
priceless lessons, which they had the grace and manliness to learn. It developed
the Moses-like meekness which was blended with strength in the character of the
coming leader. It drew Whitefield across the Atlantic to preach a Gospel greater
than his later Calvinistic creed. It did much to mold the men who were to be the
founders of a catholic missionary Church. It gave to the hymnology of the great
Revival "the wafture of a world-wide wing." It prepared the way for a theology
radiant with the light of a new spiritual experience, and broad as the charity
of God.

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: CHAPTER 07 - THE NEW BIRTH
========================================================================

Chapter VII - The New Birth

Whitefield’s Revival Fire.--Peter Bohler’s Influence.--Charles Wesley’s Happy
Day.--John Wesley’s Heart "Strangely Warmed."-- A Spiritual Revolution. WHILE
the Wesleys were in America their young Oxford companion, George Whitefield, had
set the world to talking. Such preaching was never heard. The parish churches
were crowded to the doors when he was to preach, even on week days. He preached
thirty times a month, some, times four sermons on a Sunday, and weeping hearers
followed him out into the streets to get a word with him. He says of a notable
sermon: "The doctrine of the new birth and justification by faith in Jesus
Christ (though I was not so clear in it as afterward) made its way like
lightning into the hearers’ consciences."

All classes for the first time now heard from a tongue of fire the Gospel of
Christ. The mighty doctrines of justification and regeneration leaped forth in
living power. Heaven and hell were realities in awful contrast. Of course the
people were moved. They felt that Whitefield was one of them. His illustrations,
drawn from common life and spiced with humor, deepened the popular interest.
"Even the little improprieties," remarked Wesley, "both of his language and
manner, were the means of profiting many who would not have been touched by a
more correct discourse or a more calm and regular manner of preaching." To all
must be added the power arising out of the divine transformation of the man and
the eloquence of the Spirit. The God before whom he stood was to him so glorious
in majesty that Whitefield would throw himself prostrate on the ground and offer
his soul as a blank for the divine hand to write on it what he pleased. Mabie
says that when Corot in his peasant blouse went out into the fields at four
o’clock with his easel before him, and studied the dawn, "the day broke for him
as if it had never come out of the sky before; as if he were the first man
seeing the first day." So to Whitefield every day seemed the first day on which
God had sent the Gospel to men and commissioned him to put the vital truth on
the tablets of the heart. An urgent letter from John Wesley turned Whitefield’s
attention to Georgia. His heart leaped at Wesley’s words: "What if thou art the
man, Mr. Whitefield Do you ask me what you shall have Food to eat, and raiment
to put on; a house to lay your head in, such as your Lord had not; and a crown
of glory that fadeth not away." Whitefield offered himself to the authorities of
the Georgian Mission, was accepted, and voyaging westward his vessel passed that
of John Wesley homeward bound. His apostolic journeyings and splendid services
on both sides of the Atlantic transcend the scope of this biography, though we
shall from time to time meet the flaming evangelist as we follow the person and
work of the head of the Methodist movement. For several years after their return
from Georgia the Wesleys were thrown much in contact with certain Moravians
whose creed kept alive the old doctrine of justification by faith. Peter Bohler,
the Moravian, wrote to Count Zinzendorf at Herrnhut of his acquaintance with
them:

I traveled 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.

Bohler put himself under Charles Wesley’s care, at Oxford, to learn English. The
pupil taught his teacher a yet nobler lesson. When he fell ill and seemed on the
point of death Bohler asked him, "Do you hope to be saved " Charles answered,
"Yes." "For what reason do you hope it" "Because I have used my best endeavors
to serve God." Bohler shook his head and said no more. "I thought him very
uncharitable," wrote Charles at a later day, "saying in my heart, Would he rob
me of my endeavors I have nothing else to trust to." The sad, silent,
significant shake of Peter Bohler’s head shattered all Charles Wesley’s false
foundation of salvation by endeavors. On Sunday, March 5, 1738, John Wesley
wrote: "I was, in the hand of the great God, clearly convinced of unbelief, of
the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved." In later years he adds, in
parenthesis, "(With the full Christian salvation.)" To the question whether he
should cease preaching his friend replied, "By no means." "But what can I preach
" asked Wesley. "Preach faith till you have it, and then because you have it you
will preach faith." And so on Monday morning he offered salvation by faith to a
man under sentence of death in Oxford Castle.

He was deeply moved when the condemned man he again visited rose from prayer
exclaiming eagerly, "I am now ready to die. I know Christ has taken away my
sins, and there is no more condemnation for me." So he died in peace. On the
Sunday after this affecting scene Wesley took a step of no little importance in
the history of Methodist worship. He writes in his Journal of April 1: "Being in
Mr. Fox’s society, my heart was so full that I could not confine myself to the
forms of prayer which we were accustomed to use there. Neither do I propose to
be confined to them any more, but to pray indifferently, with a form or without,
as I may find suitable to particular occasions."

Rigg has well observed how strikingly this illustrates the main principle of
Wesley’s ecclesiastical course, of using whatever methods dearly promised to do
the most good. He enters into no abstract controversy as to praying with or
without forms. Probably his experiences in America, where he heard the
Presbyterian minister pray, and yet more his intercourse with the Moravians, had
helped to loosen the bonds of servile ecclesiasticism in this respect. He never
condemned forms of prayer, which would have precluded not only the liturgy, but
the Lord’s Prayer and many hymns, but he found free prayer rich in blessing, and
henceforth he held himself at liberty, according to occasion, to pray without
forms. "The ritualist was already greatly changed. Already the manacles had
dissolved from the hands of devotion; soon the fetters would be broken which
bound his feet from running in the evangelical way." On the following Easter
Sunday morning, after thus commencing the use of extempore prayer in social
worship, he preached "in our college chapel" of Lincoln; and closed the day with
the entry, "I see the promise; but it is far off."

Again Bohler came to his help by bringing together some friends to relate their
experience in his hearing. As they testified with clearness and fervor to the
joy of faith, John Wesley and his companions were "as if thunderstruck." An old
Moravian hymn, "My soul before thee prostrate lies," was sung.

John Wesley thus sums up the result of his conversations with Bohler, the
testimony of the Moravians, and the singing of this old hymn: "I was now
thoroughly convinced; and, by the grace of God, I resolved to seek it unto the
end:

(1) By absolutely renouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my own
works or 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."

Charles Wesley was the first of the Wesley brothers to receive the name of
Methodist, and he was also the first to experience joy and peace through
believing. "While John was entering this Bethesda pool Charles stepped in before
him. One Mr. Bray, a brazier, of London, a poor ignorant mechanic, who knows
nothing but Christ, yet by knowing him knows and discerns all things," finds him
sick and spiritually perplexed, and invites him to lodge with him in Little
Britain, that, he may help him to spiritual health. Here the sick man found
Luther’s Commentary on Galatians, and was greatly edified by its views of the
work of faith. He spent much time in reading, meditation, converse, and prayer,
and on Whitsunday, in 1738, he found peace. A poor woman, the brazier’s sister,
herself recent convert, had been moved to address him with the words: "In the
name of Jesus of Nazareth, arise, and believe, and thou shalt be healed of all
thy infirmities." She spoke the words tremblingly, and fled. Bray reads,
"Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered," and
the hearer, laying hold on the atonement by simple faith, finds himself at peace
with God. Opening his Bible, his eye falls on the words, "and now, Lord, what is
my hope Truly my hope is even in thee. He hath put a new song in my mouth, even
a thanksgiving unto our God; many shall see it and fear and shall put their
trust in the Lord." Thus Charles Wesley learned the new Song of the great
revival, and found his lifelong inspiration. On the following Tuesday he began
the hymn which links his conversion with that of his brother: Where shall my
wondering soul begin How shall I all to heaven aspire A slave redeemed from
death and sin, A brand plucked from eternal fire, How shall I equal triumphs
raise, Or sing my great Deliverer’s praise On that Whitsunday which brought joy
to Charles Wesley’s soul his brother John attended the Church of St.
Mary-le-Strand. He was still grieving because he had not the assurance of
acceptance. "Let no one deceive us by vain words," he wrote to a friend, "as if
we had already attained this faith. By its fruits we shall know. Do we already
feel peace with God and joy in the Holy Ghost Does his Spirit bear witness with
our spirit that we are the children of God Alas! with mine he does not. O, thou
Saviour of men, save us from trusting in anything but thee! Draw us after thee.
Let us be emptied of ourselves, and then fill us with all peace and joy in
believing, and let nothing separate us from thy love in time or eternity." His
prayer was heard. On Wednesday, May 24, at five in the morning, he opened his
Testament to these words: "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious
promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature." As he was
about to leave the house he came upon the words, "Thou art not far from the
kingdom of God." In the evening he reluctantly attended a little meeting in
Nettleton Court, on the east side of Aldersgate Street, where a few pious souls
met in a society for prayer and Bible study. Some one was reading Luther’s
preface to the Epistle to the Romans descriptive of saving faith.

About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works
in the heart through faith in Christ, 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. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial
manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all
there what I now first felt in my heart. The brazier’s house was but a few steps
away, and John Wesley hastened thither to hail his brother with the rapturous
words, "I believe," and to join him in singing the new hymn, Where shall my
wondering soul begin His conversion revolutionized the whole character and
method of his ministry. The great evangelical doctrines had been obscured by his
sacerdotalism. His moral teaching, lofty as it was, had lacked the inspiration
of the mightiest motive-- the personal consciousness of God’s love to man and
the burning love to God created by the witness of the Spirit. The faith of a
servant was transformed into the faith of a son, and from this hour, as Dr. Rigg
observes, "this ritualistic priest and ecclesiastical martinet was to be
transformed into a flaming preacher of the great evangelical salvation and life
in all its branches, and its rich and varied experiences. Hence arose Wesleyan
Methodism and all the Methodist Churches." The younger Methodist, Rev. Hugh
Price Hughes’, expressed the same conviction as to the historical importance of
this event: "The Rubicon was crossed. The sweeping aside of ecclesiastical
traditions, the rejection of the apostolical succession, the ordination with his
own hands of presbyters and bishops, the final organization of a separate and
fully equipped Church, were all logically involved in what took place that
night."

Oxford Methodism, as Fletcher’s latest biographer, P. W. Macdonald, has
observed, "With its almost monastic rigors, its living by rule, its canonical
hours of prayer, is a fair and noble phase of the many-sided life of the Church
of England, and with all its defects and limitations claims our deep respect.
But it was not the instrument by which the Church and nation were to be revived;
it had no message for the world, no secret of power with which to move and
quicken the masses. To do this it must become other than it was. It must die in
order to bring forth much fruit. And this death and rising were accomplished in
the spiritual change wrought in John Wesley, the leader of the earlier and the
later Methodism." The place of this spiritual event in the history of the
English nation has been well stated by the historian Lecky: "It is scarcely an
exaggeration to say that the scene which took place at that humble meeting in
Aldersgate Street forms an epoch in English history. The conviction which then
flashed upon one of the most powerful and most active intellects in England is
the true source of English Methodism." From the year of his conversion Wesley’s
sacerdotalism withered away. He did not, as an Anglican has observed, abate his
attachment to the ordinances of the Established Church, and he did not at once
reach that degree of independence of her hierarchy and some of her rules which
marks his farthest point of divergence. Dr. Rigg has forcibly said, "Habits of
thought and feeling which had become a second nature still clave to him for a
while; but these dropped off one by one until scarcely a vestige of them was
left." The graveclothes of ritualistic superstition hung about him even after he
had come forth from the sepulcher and had in his heart and soul been set loose
and free, and he only east them off gradually, but the new principle that he had
embraced led before long to his complete emancipation from the principles and
prejudices of High Church ecclesiasticism. The ultimate separation of the
Methodist societies from the Anglican Church, Dr. Rigg says, was also involved
in this change: "Newman renounced justification by faith, and clung to apostolic
succession; therefore he went to Rome. Wesley embraced justification by faith,
and renounced apostolical succession; therefore his people are a separate people
from the Church of England."

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: CHAPTER 08 - REVIVAL PREACHING
========================================================================

Chapter VIII - Revival Preaching

" Jesus, the Sinner’s Friend, Proclaim."--" By Grace are Ye Saved."--A Happy New
Year.--Whitefield Calls Wesley Out of Doors.- Shouts in the Camp.--The Old Room
at Bristol.-- The Foundry for Gospel Artillery.--Wesley’s -- Chapel in City
Road.--Wesley’s House. IN that first burst of song which came to Charles
Wesley’s lips at his conversion were these pregnant lines: O how shall I the
goodness tell, Father, which thou to me hast showed That I, a child of wrath and
hell, I should be called a child of God! Should know, should feel my sins
forgiven, Blessed with this antepast of heaven And shall I slight my Father’s
love Or basely fear his gifts to own Unmindful of his favors prove Shall I, the
hallowed cross to shun, Refuse his righteousness to impart. By hiding it within
my heart No: though the ancient dragon rage. And call forth all his hosts to
war; Though earth’s self-righteous sons engage Them and their god alike I dare;
Jesus, the sinner’s Friend, proclaim; Jesus, to sinners still the same. John
Wesley was not behind his brother in his purpose to proclaim salvation, and his
tremendous energy, inspired industry, and genius for administration soon
organized a corps of helpers to assist in declaring abroad the word of life. As
he has strikingly summarized this phase of the movement: "Just at this time
(1738-9), when we [the nation] wanted little of filling up the measure of our
iniquities, two or three clergymen of the Church of England began vehemently to
call sinners to repentance. In two or three years they had sounded the alarm to
the utmost borders of the land. Many thousands gathered together to hear them,
and in every place where they came many began to show such a concern for
religion as they had never done before." On the 11th of June, 1738, eighteen
days after his conversion, John Wesley preached his famous sermon before the
University of Oxford on "By grace are ye saved through faith "--the keynote of
his entire ministry. That sermon is the first of those which form the standard
of Methodist belief. That great doctrine he now began to preach with
experimental fervor. His conviction of its importance was deepened by his visit
to Herrnhut, in Bohemia (July-September, 1738), where he studied with enthusiasm
and sympathy the beliefs and practices of the pious Moravians. On the way he
spent a fortnight at Marienborn in company with Count Zinzendorf, the chief man
of the Moravian brotherhood, The day after his return to London he began, to use
his own words, "to declare in my own country the glad tidings of salvation,
preaching three times and afterward expounding the Scripture to a large company
in the Minories," one of the localities in which his brother had been zealously
preaching and working. Here a woman "cried out as in the agonies of. death," so
poignant was her conviction of sin. On New Year’s eve, 1738-9, seven of the
Oxford Methodists and some sixty others held a watch-night service and love
feast in a religious society whose rooms were in Fetter Lane, London. The seven
were ministers of the Church of England. Wesley writes of the ushering in of
this most notable year in Methodist annals:

"About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power
of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy,
and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe
and amazement at the presence of his majesty we broke out with one voice, ’We
praise thee, 0 God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.’" Whitefield pronounced
this to be "the happiest New Year’s Day he had ever seen."

Tyerman well regards it as a ‘glorious preparation for the herculean work on
which Whitefield and the Wesleys were entering. Three days afterward the seven
clergymen met again. Whitefield says: "What we were in doubt about, after
prayer, we determined by lot, and everything else was carried on with great
love, meekness, and devotion. We continued in fasting and prayer till three
o’clock, and then parted, with a full conviction that God was going to do great
things among us."

It was Whitefield who began to preach in the open air, and he did so at first
because the churches would not hold the multitudes who came to listen. At
Kingswood, beside Bristol, on Saturday, February 17, 1739, before a congregation
of two hundred colliers, he first defied ecclesiastical rules or fashions by
preaching in the open air.

"I thought," says he, "it might be doing the service of my Creator, who had a
mountain for his pulpit and the heavens for a sounding board; and who, when his
Gospel was refused by the Jews, sent his servants into the highways and hedges."
Wesley, who came to his aid at Bristol, shrank from the practice, but bethought
himself of the Sermon on the Mount as "one pretty remarkable precedent of field
preaching," and soon "submitted to be more vile," preaching to a crowd of four
thousand from a hillock near the city from the words: "The spirit of the Lord is
upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor." Charles
Wesley had the same stiff churchly notions to break down, but he was soon in the
fields with the others. Thus all three evangelists were committed to a work
which did more than anything else to arouse the slumbering people and churches
of England. The philosophic critic of Methodism, Isaac Taylor, has ’truly said:
"The men who commenced and achieved this arduous service, and they were scholars
and gentlemen, displayed a courage far surpassing that which carries the soldier
through the hailstorm of the battlefield. Ten thousand might more easily be
found who would confront a battery than two who, with the sensitiveness of
education about them, could mount a table by the roadside, give out a psalm, and
gather a mob."

While Wesley remained at Bristol the famous Methodist school at Kingswood, for
the education of the colliers’ children, began to rise. It was Whitefield who
initiated it, but Wesley who gave it substance and form and directed its
beneficent career. Under his preaching at Bristol also broke out the strange
cries and shouts, accompanied by singular physical manifestations such as marked
the Great Awakening in New England. Cries of the sharpest anguish were heard.
Hardened sinners were stricken down as in the throes of death. A Quaker who was
angry at what he thought to be the affected groans and cries in Baldwin Street
room was knitting his brows and biting his lips in displeasure when he was
struck down in a moment, as by an unseen hand, and recovering after prayer,
cried out, "Now I know thou art a prophet of the Lord!" Bold blasphemers cried
aloud for mercy; passing travelers, pausing to hear, were smitten to the earth
in deep conviction for sin. An irritated mother, vexed by the weeping of her
daughter, became herself convulsed with sorrow and went home in joy. A
physician, who thought that mere excitement or even fraud had most to do with
these scenes, was present at one meeting and watched with keen eyes one woman
whom he had known for years: She broke out into "strong cries and tears." Great
drops of perspiration ran down her face, and her body shook. He was convinced
that in this case at least there was no imposition nor mere natural disorder,
and when, in a moment, both body and soul were healed he acknowledged "the
finger of God."

It must, in justice to Wesley, be said that such phenomena were never encouraged
by him, but every effort was made to control them. There is no doubt that there
were some cases of imposture. Charles Wesley said:’" Many, no doubt, were at our
first preaching struck down, both body and soul, into the depth of distress.
Their outward affections were easy to be imitated." Where he suspected
affectation he ordered the persons to be carried away. At Newcastle he declared
he thought no better of anyone for crying out or interrupting his work, and
successfully secured quietness. He sometimes regarded "the fits" as a device of
Satan to stop the work. But when every allowance was made for such cases the
evangelists themselves had good reason to believe that the large majority were
the result of real and intense conviction for sin. "From the days of John the
Baptist till now," observes Mrs. Oliphant, "such incidents have made themselves
visible wherever a new voice like that of him in the wilderness has come,
rousing the world into a revival of religious life." One of Wesley’s most recent
biographers in the Anglican Church, Miss Wedgwood, is convinced "that there was
something in the personal influence of Wesley (for it certainly does not remain
in his sermons) which had the power of impressing on a dull and lethargic world
such a horror of evil, its mysterious closeness to the human soul, and the need
of a miracle for the separation of the two, as no one perhaps could suddenly
receive without some violent physical effect." On May 12, 1739, the foundation
stone of the first Methodist "preaching room" in the world was laid. It was the
building known to Wesley in after years as "the new room in the Horsefair." The
eleven trustees whom Wesley anointed did very little to raise the necessary
funds, and Wesley took upon himself the payment of the builder. Whitefield urged
Wesley to get rid of the trustees, on the ground that they would have power
under the deed to turn him out if he displeased them by his preaching. Wesley
took this advice, canceled the deed, and became the sole proprietor. This,
though insignificant at the time, was a matter of great importance, for in this
manner nearly all the chapels built in the early years of his career were vested
in himself. This involved serious responsibility, which however, was honorably
fulfilled; for trusts were afterward created, and by his "Deed of Declaration"
all his interests in his chapels were transferred to his incorporated
Conference.

Three weeks after the first stone was laid Wesley wrote: "Not being permitted to
meet in Baldwin Street, we met in the shell of our new society room. The
Scripture which came in course to be explained was, ’ Marvel not if the world
hate you.’ We sung: Arm of the Lord, awake, awake Thine own immortal strength
put on, and God, even our own God, gave us his blessing." Here the first class
meeting was held. Here, in Wesley’s lifetime, eighteen Conferences assembled.
From the old pulpit, moved from its former place, but otherwise unchanged, John
Wesley in 1739 expounded the Acts of the Apostles, the "inalienable charter" of
the Churches of God. It was also Charles Wesley’s pulpit, in which he preached
for many years. And many others, men of renown, who turned the old godless world
of those days upside down, preached in that pulpit, and lodged in the little
rooms above, like ships’ cabins. Whitefield complained to Wesley that the room
was too richly ornamented. Wesley replied: "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 adornment, or less.
But ’ lodgings are made for me and my brother.’ This 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." In London, whither he went in June,
Mr. Wesley preached to vast crowds in the fields near the site of the old
Foundry and the later chapel in City Road, the most celebrated preaching-house
of world-wide Methodism. The winter of 1739 was unusually severe, and in the
prospect of being unable to preach out of doors, and with most of the churches
closed against him, Wesley, by the advice and with the help of two gentlemen
until then unknown to him, leased the Foundry for 115, and afterward restored
and almost rebuilt the whole, at a cost of 8oo, to fit it for his purposes. This
was the arsenal which had been wrecked by an explosion when the Methodist
preacher was a lad at the Charterhouse School. Its preaching room would seat
fifteen hundred people. The band room behind seated three hundred. One end of
the chapel was fitted up for a schoolroom; the opposite end was the "book room,"
and the Collection of Psalms and Hymns published in 1741 bore the imprint, "Sold
at the Foundry, Upper Moorfields." Above the band room were Wesley’s apartments,
whither he brought his mother, to spend her declining days.

Wesley’s first service was held at the Foundry on Sunday, November 11, 1739. He
wrote: "I preached at eight o’clock to five or six thousand, on the Spirit of
Bondage and the Spirit of Adoption, and at five in the evening in the place
which had been the king’s foundry for cannon. O hasten Thou the time when nation
shall not rise up against nation, neither shall they learn war any more!" For
thirty-eight years the Foundry was the headquarters of Methodism, and the center
of many philanthropic agencies, including the charity school, a dispensary,
almshouse for nine poor widows, and a loan society. "On dark winter nights, over
roads without pavements, and unlighted by gas or lamps of any kind save the
flickering lantern of the serious and earnest worshipers, might be seen those
devout men and women almost groping their way to the daily services at the first
Methodist chapel, led by the tinkling of the Foundry bell." The building was
often so overcrowded that preacher and people left it for the open fields, and
the crazy structure was costly to repair. In 1775 Wesley obtained from the city
authorities a piece of land two hundred yards away from this old building, and
on a stormy April day in 1777 he laid the foundation stone of the "new chapel"
in City Road. On November 1, 1778, the chapel was opened. It was the first
Methodist chapel built in London, and was unequaled throughout the connection.
To a preacher who compared one of the Hull chapels with it Wesley replied, "If
it be at all equal to the new chapel in London I will engage to eat it." Two
years after its completion Wesley was awakened one night by an alarm of fire.
The building stood in the course of the flames, but while the family were at
prayer the wind shifted and saved the structure. The glory of the "latter house"
was as great as that of the former, and many memorable services were held within
its walls, notably that of 1785, the first London ordination service, when three
laymen were solemnly set apart "to administer the sacraments and feed the Church
of God." In 1791 ten thousand persons filed through the house to look on the
calm face of John Wesley as he lay coffined for burial in the adjoining
graveyard. The chapel in City Road, now known as Wesley’s Chapel, has been many
times renovated, but the shell of the building, the galleries and beams, the
communion table and rail are all of Wesley’s time. Many mementos of the Wesleys
and Fletcher are preserved in it, and it is the most interesting locality in
London to all lovers of Methodist history. Twice, in 1881 and 1901, the
Ecumenical Conference has brought together within its hallowed walls the
spiritual children of John Wesley from every quarter of the world. In 1902 its
memorial window to Bishop Simpson, the gift of American Methodists, Was
unveiled, with appropriate ceremony, to which the presence and participation of
the Ambassador of the United States gave especial dignity.

Wesley’s dwelling house still stands substantially unaltered on the south side
of the open space in the front of the chapel. He occupied the three rooms on the
ground floor, and was head of the household of London preachers who dwelt above,
as a significant entry in his Journal shows, December 9, 1787: "I went down at
half an hour past five, but found no preacher in the chapel, though we had three
or four in the house. [From the minutes of the Conference we may infer that
these were Dr. Coke, Mr. Creighton, Samuel Bradburn, and John Atlay.] So I
preached myself. Afterwards, inquiring why none of my family attended the
morning preaching, they said it was because they sat up too late. I ...
therefore ordered that (1) everyone under my roof should go to bed at nine, that
(2) everyone might attend the morning preaching."

Hither came Dr. Coke to discuss Wesley’s momentous proposal of
ordination--although the ordination took place later in a private house at
Bristol. Hither, also, often came Charles Wesley on his little horse, gray with
age, to write and sing many of his hymns to the delighted household. And hither,
too, came John Howard, the philanthropist, to spend an hour with John Wesley in
memorable converse. And in the front room the founder of Methodism died. Can we
wonder that the plain old dwelling is visited by troops of Methodists, who
rejoice that in 1898 it was endowed as a permanent memorial of Wesley and a
house for "Christian workers in the development of the spiritual and aggressive
work connected with Wesley’s Chapel"

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: CHAPTER 09 - SOCIETY AND CLASS
========================================================================

Chapter IX - Society and Class No Solitary Religion.--The First Society.--A
Layman’s Notion. --An Unspeakably Useful Institution.--The General Rules.--
Quarterly Tickets.-- Mother and Son.--" Jack May Excommunicate the Church."
--Braving the Bishops.--" I Look upon All the World as My Parish."-- Preaching
from His Father’s Gravestone.--Death of Susanna Wesley.

WESLEY never forgot the words of the "serious man" who told him that if he would
serve God and reach heaven he must find companions or make them, saying, "The
Bible knows nothing of solitary religion." He had seen the usefulness of the
"societies" which had once existed in the Church of England, and he had profited
by the fellowship meetings of the Moravians. In April, 1739, and a little later
in London, he mentions fellowship meetings among the newly won converts. He took
the names of the three women at Bristol who "agreed to meet together weekly,"
and also the names of the four men who agreed to do the same. "If this work be
not of God, let it come to naught. If it be, who can hinder it " He dates,
however, the actual commencement of organized Wesleyan Methodism a few months
later in the same memorable year of "First things." His account was first
published in 1743 as preface to that most important of early Methodist
documents, The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies, in
London, Bristol, Kingswood, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne:

"In the latter part of the year 1739 eight or ten persons, who appeared to be
deeply convinced of sin and earnestly groaning for redemption, came to Mr.
Wesley in London. They desired, as did two or three more the next day, that he
would spend some time with them in prayer and advise them how to flee from the
wrath to come, which they saw continually hanging over their heads. That he
might have more time for this great work he appointed a day When they might all
come together; which from thenceforward they did every week, namely, on
Thursday, in the evening. To these and as many more as desired to join with them
(for their number increased daily) he gave those advices from time to time which
he judged most needful for them; and they always concluded their meeting with
prayer suited to their several necessities. This was the rise of the United
Society, first in London, and then in other places."

Wesley took down their names and places of abode in order to call upon them at
their homes. He was moving in the same path as the apostles. "In the earliest
times," says he, "those whom God had sent forth preached the Gospel to every
creature. And the body of hearers were mostly Jews or heathens. But as soon as
any of these were so convinced of the truth as to forsake sin and seek the
Gospel salvation they immediately joined them together, took an account of their
names, advised them to watch over each other, and met these 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."

"Thus arose, without any previous design on either side, what was afterward
called a society; a very innocent name, and very common in London for any number
of people associating themselves together." When this society at the Foundry was
begun--the first society under the direct control of Wesley--the society in
Fetter Lane was still attended by the Methodist converts, but they seceded from
it on account of internal dissensions on July 20, 1740. About seventy-two of the
members adhered to them, joining the new society at the Foundry.

Wesley describes the next step in the organization of Methodism with
characteristic simplicity: "The people were scattered so wide, in all parts of
the town from Wapping to Westminster, that I could not easily see what the
behavior of each person in his own neighborhood was; so that several disorderly
walkers did much hurt before I was apprised of it. At length, while we were
thinking of quite another thing, we struck upon a method for which we have cause
to bless God ever since." This was the method of the class meeting, which was
first adopted at Bristol in 1742. There still remained a large debt on the
meetinghouse built in the Bristol "Horsefair" three years before, and Wesley
called together the principal men for consultation. How should the debts be paid
Captain Foy said, "Let every member of the society give a penny a week till all
are paid."

Another answered, "But many of them are poor, and cannot afford to do it."

"Then," said Foy, "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 yore
neighbors weekly, receive what they give, and make up what is wanting."

"It was done," says Wesley. "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.’" The layman conceived the
idea that solved the financial problem, and that quickened in the preacher’s
mind the plan by which the spiritual welfare of every member might be secured.

Wesley called together all the leaders of the classes--as they were now
termed--and desired each to make particular inquiry into the behavior of those
he visited. This was done, and "many disorderly walkers were detected." Some
turned from the evil of their ways; others were put out of the society. Thus was
found a plan by which discipline might be maintained, the unworthy admonished or
dismissed, and the consistent encouraged. On Thursday, April 25, Wesley called
together in London several earnest and sensible men, told them of the difficulty
of knowing the people who desired to be under his care, and after a long
conversation they adopted the new plan of classes. "This was the origin of our
classes at London," writes Wesley, "for which I can never sufficiently praise
God; the unspeakable usefulness of the institution having ever since been more
and more manifest."

It was soon found impracticable for the leader to visit each member at his own
house, and so it was agreed that the members of each class should come together
at some suitable place once a week. Wesley writes: "It can scarce be conceived
what advantages have been reaped by this little prudential regulation. Many
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."

After the division of the society into classes there came the institution of
weekly leaders’ meetings. The leaders were untrained men, and the objection was
raised that they had neither gifts nor graces for such a divine employment.
Wesley, however, quietly remarked, "It may be hoped they will all be better than
they are, both by experience and by observation, and by the advices given them
by the minister every Tuesday night, and the prayers (then in particular)
offered up for them." On February 23, 1743, John Wesley sent forth the General
Rules in his own name, and on May 1 Charles Wesley’s name was signed to the
important pamphlet. The society was defined as "a company of men, having the
form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to
receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that
they may help each other to work out their salvation." There was only one
condition required for admission into these societies--" a desire to flee from
the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins." But wherever this is really
fixed in the soul it will be shown by its fruits. It was therefore expected of
all who desired to continue therein that they should continue "to evidence their
desire of salvation, first, by doing no harm, by avoiding evil in every kind,
especially that which is most generally practiced." One special test was in the
"avoiding such diversions as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus." A
further evidence of sincerity was to be shown by "doing good of every possible
sort, and as far as is possible, to all men." The third evidence of desire for
salvation was by "attending on all the ordinances of God," such as public
worship, the ministry of the word, the Lord’s Supper, family and private prayer,
searching the Scriptures, and fasting or abstinence. Thus in well-built sections
was laid the broad platform of Methodism. The quarterly visitation of the
classes by Wesley and his preachers and the use of a ticket of membership,
appear to have begun in 1742. Soon a voluntary subdivision of the class, called
the "band," was instituted. There were bands for married men, married women,
single men, and single women. The love feast, the agape of the early Christians,
was revived by Wesley, and celebrated quarterly. At first band members, and,
later, all members of the society holding class tickets, were admitted. "A
little plain cake and water" were partaken of as a sign of fellowship, and the
service consisted of a joyous testimony of Christian experience.

Another institution peculiar to Methodism was the watch night. The colliers at
Kingswood had heretofore given many a night, and especially the last night of
the year, to drunken revels and song. When they became Christians their social
customs underwent a transformation, and they met as often as possible, and spent
the greater part of the night in prayer and praise. Objectors arose, and Wesley
was urged to stop the meetings. He remembered that the early Christians spent
whole nights in prayer, giving to them the name vigilea, and he saw in them an
agency for good. So he sent the members word that on Friday night nearest full
moon (that there might be light) he would watch with them and preach. He began
the meeting between eight and nine, and continued it until after twelve, "a
little beyond the noon of night," as Wesley remarked. The first meeting at the
end of the year was held at Kingswood, on Wednesday, December 31, 1740. The
first watch night in London was held on Friday, April 9, 1742. The custom
extended to other places, The meetings in time ceased to be monthly, and were
held quarterly, but in recent years they have been confined to New Year’s Eve.
Charles Wesley wrote some triumphant hymns for use on these occasions, including
the song in which every English watch-night service concludes to-day, "Come, let
us anew our journey pursue." Another service of which Wesley made much was one
"for renewing the covenant."

Very soon Wesley was driven, "sorely against his own will," says Dr. Rigg, to
make a distinct separation of his societies in London and Bristol from the
Church of England. The clergy not only excluded the Wesleys from their pulpits,
but in 1740 repelled them and their converts from the Lord’s table. At Bristol
especially, in that year, this was done with much harshness. The brothers,
therefore, administered the sacrament in their own preaching rooms. The practice
having been established at Bristol, the London society at the Foundry claimed
the same privilege. Thus full provision was made for the spiritual wants of the
societies quite apart from the services of the Church of England, although for
many years many of the Methodist members attended the communion service of the
Anglican Church.

Susanna Wesley was providentially at hand to counsel and encourage her son when
he was laying the foundation of organized Methodism. She stood by his side when
he preached at Kennington Common to twenty thousand people. She was present when
the question of separation from the Fetter Lane society was discussed, and
approved of the withdrawal of the members to the Foundry. About this time she
was brought into fuller sympathy than ever with her son’s views of the
possibility of conscious forgiveness. John Wesley records a conversation in
which she said that until recently she never dared ask this blessing for
herself. "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 her," says Wesley, "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, especially upon it;
whence she supposed he looked upon it as the peculiar blessing of a few; not as
promised to all the people of God." At the Foundry Mrs. Wesley enjoyed the
society of her sons and several of her daughters, and attended all the meetings
of the infant Methodist Church. But Samuel Wesley, at Tiverton, was greatly
distressed by the doctrinal and the ecclesiastical irregularities of his younger
brothers. He declared in a letter to his mother shortly before his death,
November 6, 1739, that he would "much rather have them picking straws within the
walls than preaching in the area of Moorfields "--alluding to the lunatic
asylum. "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 .... 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 .... He only who
ruleth the madness of the people can stop them from being a formed sect in a
very little time." This letter faithfully presents the views of many a clergyman
of the time.

Although some Anglican and Methodist writers have stated that Wesley did nothing
that was inconsistent with the laws of the Established Church, it must be
granted that his "irregularities" were calculated to alarm the "orderly"
prelates of his day. When he organized his societies, built and registered
meetinghouses for worship, and, later, ordained ministers not only to preach,
but to administer the sacraments, he practically separated from the State Church
in the eyes of orderly clergy. His brother Samuel, as we have seen, very early
called his action "schismatic." A recent Methodist newspaper observes that there
could be no more curious illustration of the way in which our wishes can destroy
our logic than the fact that Wesley persuaded himself to the end that he had not
separated from the Church of England. Abel Stevens, breathing the free air of
the New World, has said that English writers have deemed it desirable, and have
not found it a difficult task, to defend Wesley against imputations of disregard
for the authority and "order" of the State Church, "but it may hereafter be more
difficult to defend him before the rest of the Christian world for having been
so deferential to a hierarchy whose moral condition at the time he so much
denounced, and whose studied policy throughout the rest of his life was to
disown if not to defeat him."

Within five weeks of John Wesley’s return from Germany he and his brother
Charles were summoned before the Bishop of London, Dr. Edmund Gibson, and
questioned with great strictness. When the Wesley brothers appeared before him,
charged with preaching an absolute assurance of salvation, he heard them fairly,
and 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 an assurance." To the
charge of preaching justification by faith only, the Wesleys replied: "Can
anyone preach otherwise who agrees to our Church and the Scriptures" John Wesley
inquired if his reading in a religious society made it a conventicle. The bishop
warily replied: "No, I think not. However, you can read the acts and laws as
well as I. I determine nothing." But in 1739 the bishop issued a pastoral letter
in which he charges the Methodists with "enthusiasm," or "a strong persuasion in
their mind that they are guided in an extraordinary manner by immediate impulses
and impressions of the Spirit of God." They Were guilty of "boasting of sudden
and surprising effects, wrought by the Holy Ghost, in consequence of their
preaching." He supported the churchwardens of Islington against their vicar and
excluded Charles Wesley from the pulpit.

We find John Wesley again facing the bishop in 1740. What did he mean by
perfection was the question. When Wesley had replied the bishop said, "Mr.
Wesley, if this be all you mean, publish it to the world." And Wesley gladly
obeyed by publishing his sermon on Christian Perfection. But a little later the
rise of the societies and the field-preaching, with its sensational
accompaniments, again alarmed the bishop. He wrote a pamphlet against this
"sect," in which he charged them with "having had the boldness to preach in the
fields and other open places, and inviting the rabble to be their hearers," in
defiance of a statute of Charles II. Wesley replied in his Farther Appeal to Men
of Reason and Religion. He declares that the clergy, who will not suffer him to
preach in the churches, are accountable for his preaching in the fields.
Besides, "one plain reason why these sinners are never reclaimed is this, they
never come into a church. Will you say, as some tender-hearted Christians I have
heard, ’ Then it is their own fault; let them die and be damned !’ I grant it
may be their own fault, but the Saviour of souls came after us, and so we ought
to seek to save that which is lost." The able and sincere Bishop Gibson could
not shake himself free from the prejudices and Church "order" which stood in the
way of the salvation of the despised "rabble," and in another of his pastorals
he classes the Methodists with "deists, papists, and other disturbers of the
kingdom of God."

Bishop Butler, author of the great Analogy, summoned Wesley, and after a
conversation on justification by faith, for which the Methodist claimed the
support of the Anglican Homilies, said:

"You have no business here; you are not commissioned to preach in this diocese.
Therefore I advise you to go hence." "My Lord, my business on earth is to do
what good I can," replied Wesley. "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 do not, therefore, conceive 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."

Wesley took his own time and did not leave Bristol until persuaded that it was his duty to labor elsewhere. There was a deluge of pamphlets and articles against the Methodists, in which Wesley was branded as "a restless deceiver of the people," "a newfangled teacher setting up his own fanatical conceits in opposition to the authority of God," "a Jesuit in disguise," and, worst of all, "a Dissenter." The Methodists were denounced as "young quacks in divinity," "buffoons in religion," "bold movers of sedition, and ringleaders of the rabble." The magazines and newspapers conducted a hot crusade against them, "stirring up the people," writes Wesley, "to knock these mad dogs on the head at once;" and we shall find that mob violence soon followed these appeals of the press and censures of the prelates. In answer to a clergyman who forbade his preaching in his parish, Wesley gave utterance to the famous saying which appears on the Wesley tablet in Westminster Abbey. He wrote: "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 .....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. This is the work which I know God has called me to, and sure I am that his blessing attends it." In 1742 John Wesley began to occupy a larger portion of his boundless parish. During the year he spent about twenty-four weeks in London, fourteen in Bristol and its neighborhood, one in Wales, and thirteen in making two tours to Newcastle-on-Tyne, the metropolis of the busy North. His own account of his Newcastle visit is graphic. He had never seen and heard before in so short a time so much drunkenness, cursing, and swearing---even from the mouths of little children. He writes: At seven I walked down to Sandgate, the poorest and most contemptible part of the town, and, standing at the end of the street with John Taylor, began to sing the 100th psalm. Three or four people came out to see what was the matter, who soon increased to four or five hundred. I suppose there might be twelve or fifteen hundred before I had done preaching, to whom I applied those solemn words, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his stripes we are healed."

Observing the people, when I had done, to stand gaping and staring upon me with the most profound astonishment, I told them: "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." At five the hill on which I designed to preach was covered from the top to the bottom. I never saw so large a number of people together, either in Moorfields or at Kennington Common. I knew it was not possible for the one half to hear, although my voice was then strong and clear; and I stood so as to have them all in view, as they were ranged on the side of the hill. The word of God which I set before them was, "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely." After preaching the poor people were ready to tread me under foot, out of pure love and kindness. It was some time before I could possibly get out of the press. I then went back another way than I came; but several were got to our inn before me, by whom I was vehemently importuned to stay with them, at least a few days, or, however, one day more. But I could not consent, having given my word to be at Bitstall, with God’s 1cave, on Tuesday night. Four months before his mother’s death Wesley revisited his birthplace, Epworth. The curate was now Mr. Romley, who had been schoolmaster at Wroote, had been assisted by Wesley’s father in preparing for Oxford, and had been his amanuensis and curate. On Sunday morning Wesley offered to assist Mr. Romley either by preaching or reading the prayers, but the curate would have none of his help. In the afternoon Wesley took his seat in the church, which was crowded in consequence of a rumor that he would preach. Romley preached a florid and rhetorical sermon against "enthusiasm" with evident reference to Methodism. But the people were not to be disappointed. As they came out John Taylor announced that Mr. Wesley, not being permitted to preach in the church, would preach in the churchyard at six o’clock. At that hour he stood on his father’s tombstone and preached to the largest congregation ever seen in Epworth. "The scene was unique and inspiriting---a living son preaching on a dead father’s grave because the parish priest would not 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."

He could not resist the appeal to remain a few days longer, and on eight
evenings he preached from the tomb-pulpit. In the daytime he visited the
surrounding villages. He waited on a justice of the peace, and writes of him as
"a man of candor and understanding; before whom (I was informed) their angry
neighbors had carried a whole wagonload of these heretics. But when he asked
what they had done, there was a deep silence; for that was a point their
conductors had forgot. At length one said, ’Why, they pretended to be better
than other people; and, besides, they prayed from morning to night.’ Mr. S.
asked, ’ But have they done nothing besides’ ’Yes, sir,’ said an old man; ’and
please your worship, they have convarted my wife. Till she went among them she
had such a tongue! And now she is as quiet as a lamb.’ ’Carry them back, carry
them back!’ replied the justice, ’and let them convert all the scolds in the
town.’" The churchyard services were attended with amazing power. On the
Saturday evening Wesley’s voice was drowned by the cries of penitents, and many
then and there found rest for their souls. His last service at Epworth lasted
three hours, and "yet," says Wesley, "we scarce knew how to part. O let none
think his labor of love is lost because the fruit does not immediately appear!
Near forty years did my father labor here; but he saw little fruit of all his
labor. I took some pains among this people, too, and my strength almost 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 long
since now sprung up, bringing forth repentance and remission of sins." The next
year Wesley again visited Epworth, and, it being a place under heaven where this
should befall 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.

Methodism in Lincolnshire owes its organized churches to the service of Wesley
in his father’s churchyard. During the forty-eight years that followed Wesley
made many visits to his native county, preaching in nearly all its towns and
many of its villages. In 1761 he writes, "I find the work of God increases on
every side, but particularly in Lincolnshire, where there has been no work like
this since the time I preached on my father’s tomb." His last visit to Epworth
was paid just eight months before his death, when he preached in the market
place to a large crowd on "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation
" At the centenary of his death, in 1891, the Wesleyan Methodist societies of
his native county reported a membership of twenty thousand, or one twentieth of
the entire membership of the societies in England and Wales; and this in a
county the entire population of which is considerably under half a million.

Susanna Wesley, "the mother of the Wesleys" and the "mother of Methodism," lived
to see England awakening at the call of her devoted sons, and in the metropolis,
the west, and the North of England she heard of multitudes quickened by the new
life and enrolled in the new fellowship. The records of her closing days are
brief. In the last letter she is known to have written she is rejoicing in the
clear assurance which came to her so late in life: "He did by his Spirit apply
the merits of the great atonement to my soul, by telling me that Christ died for
me ....If I do want anything without which I cannot be saved (of which I am not
at present sensible), then I believe I shall not die before that want is
supplied." Her son John was at Bristol when he heard that she was failing fast,
and after preaching to a large congregation on Sunday evening, July 18, 1742, he
rode off hurriedly to London. He reached the Foundry on the 20th, and wrote in
his Journal, "I found my mother on the borders of eternity; but she has no doubt
or fear, nor any desire but, as soon as God should call her, to depart and be
with Christ." Fifteen years before, she had told John that she did not want her
children to weep at her parting from them, but if they "were likely to reap any
spiritual advantage" by being present at her departure, she would be glad to
have them with her. Charles was absent from London, but her five daughters were
present, as well as John. On the following Friday they saw that her end was
near. John read the solemn commendatory prayer, as he had done seven years
before for his father. It was four o’clock when he left her side for a moment to
"drink a dish of tea," being faint and weary with watching and emotion. "One
called me again to her bedside," he says, "She opened her eyes wide and fixed
them upward for a moment. Then the lids dropped and the soul was set at liberty
without one struggle or groan or sigh. We stood around the 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!’"

She was buried in "the great Puritan necropolis," Bunhill Fields. A witness
records: "At the grave there was much grief when Mr. Wesley said, ’I commit the
body of my mother to the earth!’" Then a hymn was sung, and standing by the open
grave Wesley preached to a vast congregation which he describes as ,"one of the
most solemn assemblies I ever saw, or expect to see on this side eternity." His
subject was "the great white throne" of the Book of the Revelation.

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

© Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
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Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
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  CHAPTER 10: CHAPTER 10 - LAY HELPERS
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Chapter X - Lay Helpers

Wesley’s "Irregularities."--,, Soul-saving Laymen."--Cennick, Humphreys,
Maxfield.--, He is as Surely Called of God to Preach as You Are."--John. Nelson,
of Birstall.--The Extraordinary Call of Women.--Mary Bosanquet and others.

WESLEY had already become a radical anti-High Churchman. Four departures from
conventional church "order "evidence this. He had organized a system of
religious societies altogether independent of the parochial clergy and of
episcopal control, and the "rules" of his societies contained no requirement of
allegiance to the State Church. This was a distinct step toward a separate
communion. A year later he had built meetinghouses, licensed and settled on
trustees for his own use. The next year he began, with his brother, to
administer the sacraments in these houses. Now he took another step in the same
direction by calling out lay preachers, wholly devoted to the work of preaching
and visitation. When this last step was challenged he met it in a style which
showed how resolutely he was "casting off the graveclothes" of sacerdotalism. "I
do assure you this at present is my embarrassment. That I have not gone too far
yet I know, but whether I have gone far enough I am extremely doubtful ....
Souldamning clergymen lay me under more difficulties than soulsaving laymen."
The step cost him a severe struggle. "To touch this point," he says, "was to
touch the apple of mine eye." But in his First Appeal to Men of Reason and
Religion he triumphantly justifies lay preaching by Scripture, Church history,
and Christian common sense. "God immediately gave a blessing thereto. In several
places, by means of these plain men, not only those who had begun to run well
were hindered from drawing back unto perdition, but other sinners also, from
time to time, were converted from the error of their ways .... 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 these poor sheep when their own
shepherd pitied them not." The "plain men" who head the host of Wesley’s lay
preachers are John Cennick, Joseph Humphreys, Thomas Maxfield, and John Nelson.

John Cennick was the grandson of persecuted Quakers. He had turned from a
reckless youth to deep seriousness and so to a joyous Christian experience. He
made the acquaintance of the Methodist leaders, and was engaged to teach the
Kingswood school. Here, with Wesley’s approval, he began "expounding" the word
to the assembled colliers. Later he left the Methodists and joined the
Moravians, doing nobly the work of an evangelist amid mobs and sore abuse. He
died in 1755, if it be well to speak of him as dead who wrote those living
hymns, "Children of the heavenly King" and "Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb."

Joseph Humphreys, who began to assist Wesley at the Foundry in 1740, had been
trained for the ministry in a Dissenters’ school. Having been awakened by
hearing the Methodist preachers, he began to read sermons, then to exhort
briefly, and finally to preach, in spite of jeers and maltreatment. After his
work with Wesley he joined Whitefield’s following, later the Presbyterians, and
died a regularly ordained clergyman.

Thomas Maxfield was one of the first converts at Bristol He went up to London
with Charles Wesley, and was helpful as personal worker at the Foundry meetings.
By the usual stages he went on from exhortation to preaching in John Wesley’s
absence.

Wesley at first considered this preaching of sermons, as distinguished from the
informal exhortations of a leader, an irregularity, and hastened back to London
to check it. He arrived with an anxious look upon his face. His mother inquired
the reason of his concern and displeasure.

"Thomas Maxfield has turned preacher," was his abrupt reply.

"John," said Mrs. Wesley, "you know what my sentiments have been. You cannot
suspect me of favoring readily any thing of this kind. But 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 points of his preaching, and hear him
yourself."

Wesley heard Maxfield preach, and was satisfied. "It is the Lord!" he exclaimed;
"let him do what seemeth him good. What am I that. I should withstand God " His
last scruples about employing unordained preachers yielded to his mother’s
argument, and the woman apostle of the old rectory kitchen, who had alarmed her
good husband by the "irregularity" of her fireside services, gave an impetus to
the work of the lay preachers which is felt to-day over the whole earth. The way
was now prepared for the extension of Methodism throughout the country, and for
the growth of the "circuit" system. But Wesley’s enlistment of laymen roused
afresh the fears of the English prelates. When Robinson, the Archbishop of
Armagh, met Charles Wesley at the Hot-wells, Bristol, he said:

"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."

"How so" asked the primate.

"Because you hold your peace, and the stones cry out."

"But I am told," said the archbishop, "that they are unlearned men."

"Some are," said the sprightly poet; "so the dumb ass rebukes the prophet."

John Wesley’s defense of these "unlettered" men was, perhaps, more to the point.
He wrote:

"I am bold to affirm that these unlettered men have help from God for that great
work-the saving of souls from death. . . . 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."

John Nelson, the prince of lay preachers, was a giant York shire stonecutter,
whose great body held a soul tormented by uncertainty. "Surely God never made
man to be such a riddle to himself, and to leave him so," he wrote, in the era
of his spiritual conflicts. "I was like a wandering bird cast out of the nest
till Mr. John Wesley came to preach his first sermon in Moorfields. O that was a
blessed morning to my soul! As soon as he got upon the stand he stroked back his
hair and turned his face toward where I stood, and, I thought, fixed his eyes
upon me. His countenance struck such an awful dread upon me, before I heard him
speak, that it made my heart beat like the pendulum of a clock, and when he did
speak I thought his whole discourse was aimed at me. When he had done I said, ’
This man can tell the secrets of my heart; he hath not left me there, for he
hath shown the remedy, even the blood of Jesus. ’"

Conversion made John Nelson a new creature. His Birstall neighbors were curious
to know the cause of the change, and from telling them he was soon preaching to
them. "If it be my Master’s will, I am ready to go to hell," said he, "’and
preach to the devils." He could hardly have fared worse had he been taken at his
word the parish clergy were enraged to see a stone mason assuming to teach
people the way to heaven. They used every means foul and fair to silence him and
disperse his meetings. Wesley saw the greatness of the man and called him to
London. Together they traveled Cornwall, preaching and enduring opposition and
privation. He was cast into prison, impressed as a soldier, but after three
months was released. He continued to preach in the market places, submitting to
all indignities rather than defend himself by his strength. Once he was felled
by a brute who had sworn to kill him. His assailant leaped upon him several
times, till he was breathless, and the renewed bleeding from his morning wounds
left him unconscious. The bully then seized one of the Methodists who was near
and flung him against a wall, breaking two of his ribs. He then went to the
gentleman who had hired him and boasted, "I have killed the preacher; he lies.
dead in the croft." As Nelson lay bleeding on the ground "the parson’s brother"
and about twenty others came to see if he were really dead. They cursed him
soundly, dragged him into the street as consciousness returned, and one after
another struck him till he was down again. Eight times he struggled to his
knees, and eight times they knocked him down. Then taking him by his long hair,
they dragged him over the stones, kicking him fiercely. Six of them got on his
body and thighs, "to tread the Holy Spirit out of him," they said. One
exclaimed, "I have heard that a cat has nine lives; but I think he has
ninescore." Another said, "If he has, he shall die this day." The "gentlemen"
then dragged him to the village well and attempted to put him in, but a woman
intervened and resisted them, and at last some "gentlewomen from the city called
the gentlemen by their names," who looked as men confounded at being discovered
in this dastardly work. Some friends helped him into a house, and the next day
he met Wesley and "found his word come with power" to his soul, and was
constrained to cry out: "O Lord, I will praise thee .... Thou hast brought me
out of the jaws of death." It was with men of such mettle to carry the
proclamation that John Wesley organized his itinerant ministry.

We have seen that Susanna Wesley became a lay preacher in the rectory of Epworth
and saw the fruit of her labor. Her meetings formed part of that providential
training which made her not only the mother of the Wesleys, but also the "mother
of Methodism." We cannot wonder that John Wesley, enriched by the influence of
his gifted mother and sisters, should have recognized the freedom and power of
woman in the work of extending and deepening the Evangelical Revival and its
philanthropic ministry.

Mary Bosanquet, who became the wife of Fletcher of Madeley, is the most eminent
of the daughters of Methodism who received what Wesley called the "extraordinary
call" to address mixed public Congregations. She was the daughter of wealthy
worldly folk, and it was from a Methodist maidservant that Mary first heard of
the peace that comes with believing. Before she was twenty her father drove her
from home because she would not promise to refrain from trying to convert her
brothers. With her own means she opened an orphanage. She and Mrs. Sarah Crosby,
one of her helpers, began to address the members of society. Many were present,
and the two women were in effect preaching before they knew it.

In 1771 Mrs. Crosby wrote a letter to Wesley to ask his advice and direction for
Miss Bosanquet on the same point. With the sound judgment and calm, good sense
which distinguished her she argues that from the Scriptures it is clear that
occasionally women had an extraordinary call to preach. For herself she
concludes, "If I did not believe I had an extraordinary call, I would not act in
an extraordinary manner." Wesley’s reply expresses his mature and final opinion:
"MY DEAR SISTER: I think the strength of the cause rests there; on your having
an extraordinary call. So I am persuaded has every one of our lay preachers;
otherwise I could not countenance his preaching at all. It is plain to me that
the whole work of God termed Methodism is an extraordinary dispensation of his
providence. Therefore I do not wonder if several things occur therein which do
not fall under ordinary rules of discipline. St. Paul’s ordinary rule was, ’ I
permit not a woman to speak in the congregation.’ Yet in extraordinary cases he
made a few exceptions; at Corinth, in particular. "I am, my dear sister, your
affectionate brother, ‘JOHN WESLEY." Mrs. Crosby traveled widely through
Yorkshire after this letter, and her labors were owned of God.

Mary Bosanquet was asked by many, "If you are called to preach, why do you not
do it constantly, and take a round as a preacher" She answered, "Because that is
not my call. I have many duties to attend to, and many cares which they know
nothing about. I must therefore leave myself to his guidance who hath the sole
right of disposing of me." Again, she tells us, they asked, "Why do you not give
out, ’ I am to preach ’ Why call it meeting " She answered, "Because that suits
my design best. First, it is less ostentatious. Secondly, it leaves me at
liberty to speak more or less, as I feel myself led. Thirdly, it gives less
offense to those who watch for it." Thus she uses her gifts with discretion, as
tenderly sensitive to inward impressions, which she believed were wrought by the
Holy Spirit, as the saintly Quaker women like Elizabeth Fry and Mary Capper. For
thirteen years she toiled at Cross Hall, sometimes in great financial straits,
sometimes slandered, but comforted by her friendships, and ever praying, "Only
make me what thou wouldst have me to be, and then lead me as thou wilt."

We have seen that Wesley recognized the "extraordinary call" of Sarah Crosby and
Mrs. Fletcher as preachers. Later we find him giving even more decided
encouragement to Miss Mallet (afterward Mrs. Boyce), whom he met at Long
Stratton, in Norfolk, and of whose remarkable experience he gives an account in
his Journal. He became to her, as she well says, "a father and a faithful
friend." Her own Journal is so suggestive and terse that it must tell its own
story: "When I first traveled I followed Mr. Wesley’s counsel, which was to let
the voice of the people be to me the voice of God, and where I was sent for, to
go, for the Lord had called me thither. To this counsel I have attended unto
this day. But the voice of the people was not the voice of some preachers. Mr.
Wesley soon made this easy by sending me a note from the Conference by Mr.
Joseph Harper, which was as follows: ’ We give the light hand of fellowship to
Sarah Mallet, and have no objection to her being a preacher in our connection so
long as she preaches the Methodist doctrine and attends to our discipline.’ This
was the order of Mr. Wesley and the Conference of 1787. From that day I have
been little opposed by preachers."

Another of the prophesying daughters of Methodism was Mrs. ’Ann Gilbert, who
consulted John Wesley, about 1771 as to her public work. He took her by the
hand, saying only, "Sister, do all the good you can." One minister, who heard
her preach in Redruth Chapel to fourteen hundred people, said that she had a
torrent of softening eloquence which occasioned a general weeping through the
whole congregation; and, what was more astonishing, she was blind, and had been
so for many years. The Rev. W. Warrener, the first missionary to the West
Indies, was converted under the preaching of another good woman, Miss Hurrell;
and Mrs. Holder, Mrs. E. Collett, Mrs. De Putron, and Mrs. Sarah Stevens, all of
them ministers’ wives, were preachers.

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: CHAPTER 11 - TWO SORTS OF METHODISTS
========================================================================

Chapter XI - Two Sorts of Methodists

Whitefield’s Calvinism.--Arminians.--" The Queen of the Methodists."-- Trevecca
College.-- Lady Huntingdon’s Connection.--Time Heals the Wounds.--Whitefield’s
Candle Burns to the Socket.

WHILE John Wesley was organizing societies and building preaching houses in
England, George Whitefield was ranging through the American colonies kindling
the old churches into new zeal by his flaming eloquence. He returned to England
in March, 1741, prepared to take issue with his former leader on the doctrine of
election. His intercourse with the New England Calvinists had made him a
militant opponent of the doctrine of universal redemption as taught by the
Wesleys. Some of the new societies had already split upon this rock, even John
Cennick, the schoolmaster at Kingswood, having seceded and urged Whitefield to
return from America in order to defend the doctrine. To Wesley’s intensely
practical mind the main reason for opposing the Calvinistic theories was what he
considered to be their tendency to antinomianism. To check the progress of what
he felt to be dangerous error, he preached and published his famous sermon on
Free Grace--the third sermon that he had published. On reading this sermon and
Charles Wesley’s appended hymn, Whitefield attacked it in a pamphlet "Letter to
John Wesley," which was disfigured by the personalities and bad logic of the
overmatched debater.

About six weeks before his arrival in England some one obtained a copy of an
abusive private letter he had sent to Wesley in 1740 and circulated it at the
doors of the Foundry.

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. In two minutes the whole congregation had followed his example, and
all the copies were torn to tatters. When Whitefield reached England, in March,
1741, and preached at Kennington Common, he was greatly distressed to find that
his letters to Wesley had alienated many of his friends. He did not refrain,
however, from preaching against the Wesleys by name, at Moorfields. His old
friends, nevertheless, invited him to preach at the Foundry, but with Charles
Wesley by his side he there proclaimed the Absolute Decrees in the most
offensive manner, and it was evident, as Wesley says, that "there were now two
sorts of Methodists-- those for particular and those for general redemption."

It is not necessary to enter into all the details of the painful important
controversy. It is far pleasanter to record that in the course of time the
personal breach between the evangelists was entirely healed, although both held
fast their own opinions, and the living stream of Methodism was divided into,
two currents. "One branch," says Bishop McTyeire, "after refreshing and
enriching a dry and thirsty land, is absorbed and lost; the other, with
well-defined and widening banks and deepening current, flows on."

Howell Harris, the warm-hearted Welsh Calvinist, and Lady Huntingdon found
Wesley ready to forgive Whitefield’s impetuous personal abuse, and one of the
noblest characteristics of Whitefield was revealed in his willingness to confess
his faults. He wrote to Wesley in October, 1741: "May God remove all obstacles
that now prevent our union; may all disputings cease, and each of us talk of
nothing but Jesus and him crucified. This is my resolution, I am without
dissimulation. I find I love you as much as ever, and pray God, if it be his
blessed will, that we may all be united together." Later Wesley’s pardon was
asked for the unnecessary and offensive taunts of the widely circulated letter.
In a pamphlet of some years later Whitefield made the following frank
confession: "It was wrong in me to publish a private transaction to the world,
and very ill-judged to think the glory of God could be promoted by unnecessarily
exposing my friend. For this I have asked both God and him pardon years ago, and
though I believe both have forgiven me, yet I believe I shall never be able to
forgive myself; my mistakes have been too many and my blunders too frequent to
make me set up for infallibility. But many and frequent as my mistakes have been
or may be, as I have no part to act--if I know anything of my heart--but to
promote God’s glory and the good of souls, as soon as I am made aware of them
they shall be publicly acknowledged and retracted."

Whitefield soon regained his popularity. Evangelical Calvinists, mostly
Dissenters, rallied ’round him and built his first tabernacle in Moorfields not
far from the Foundry. It was only a large, rough wooden shed, but for twelve
years it was Whitefield’s metropolitan cathedral and was the scene of great
spiritual victories. A few months later Whitefield sent Cennick a contribution
of 20, from a lady, toward a chapel at Kingswood, which still stands. Like
Wesley, he began to employ lay evangelists. Howell Harris was soon preaching in
the Moorfields tabernacle. The Wesleyan Methodists now became distinguished from
the followers of Whitefield as Arminians. The Arminian or, rather, Remonstrant,
Confession arose in Holland about the beginning of the seventeenth century as a
protest against Calvinism. The principle of the Arminian type of doctrine was
the universality of the benefit of the atonement and the restored freedom of the
human will. The Wesleyan Methodists, however, rejected the teaching of the
immediate successors of Arminius, who were tinged with Socinianism and
rationalism, and Wesleyans, as Pope says, were Arminians as opposed to
Calvinists, but in no other sense. The pillar and prop of Whitefield and his
Calvinistic followers was Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, one of the most
notable figures in Methodist history, the woman who won from her fashionable
friend, Horace Walpole, the half-ironical title, "Queen of the Methodists." This
peeress, the daughter of the Earl of Ferrars, was four years younger than John
Wesley. Being naturally of a serious mind, her impressions were deepened by the
experience of her sister, Lady Margaret Hastings, who had been converted by
Ingham, the Oxford Methodist. She, too, experienced the joy of full acceptance
in Christ, became a hearer of Whitefield and, an attendant at the Foundry.
Although she sided with Whitefield in the Calvinistic controversy, she was
largely instrumental in bringing about the reconciliation of the leaders, and
became a devoted friend of Mrs. Charles Wesley.

It required much more courage to face the prejudices and ridicule of her class,
but it is to the credit of the nobility that they learned to respect Lady
Huntingdon’s character and motives, though only a few followed her example. She
succeeded in persuading the most distinguished men and women of her day to meet
in her drawing-room at Chelsea, or her chapel at Bath, or in Whitefield’s
Tabernacle itself, to hear her favorite preachers. The lists of illustrious
persons given by her biographers make some pages look like a court directory.

There is evidence that even in the corrupt court of the second George it was
felt that Lady Huntingdon had chosen the better part. One day at court, we are
told, the Prince of Wales inquired where Lady Huntingdon was, that she so seldom
visited the circle now. Lady Charlotte Edwin replied with a sneer, "I suppose
praying with her beggars." The prince shook his head and said, "Lady Charlotte,
when am dying I think I shall be happy to seize the skirt of Lady Huntingdon’s
mantle to lift me up with her to heaven."

Lady Huntingdon’s personal character deserved and won the deepest respect. An
Anglican writer has well said that the moral courage which enabled a lady,
brought up among all the traditions of an aristocracy such as the aristocracy
was in the reigns of George II and George III, to cast aside all the prejudices
of her order, and brave all the contempt and ridicule of those with whom she
would naturally be most brought into contact, and cast in her lot openly and
without reserve with the despised Methodists, is admirable. If she seems at
times to adopt a somewhat imperious air toward her proteges, we must remember
that a countess was a countess in those days, and that she was certainly
encouraged in the line she took by the extravagant homage paid to her by
Whitefield and others. John Wesley, indeed, was never dazzled by her grandeur;
on the contrary, he took upon him more than once to rebuke the imperiousness of
"that valuable woman." Berridge, of Everton, rebelled in his own laughing way
against her authority; and there is not the slightest trace of undue
subserviency in the clergy, like Romaine and Henry Venn and others, who acted
with rather than under her. But the majority of those who were connected with
her could not fail to be-dazzled by the honor of the connection; and not only
submitted, but courted, the authority which she was not slack in assuming over
them. But she used that authority for the highest purposes. She was as far
removed as John Wesley from any love of power for power’s sake. She devoted her
fortune to her new work. The sale of her jewels contributed to the building of a
chapel at Brighton. She erected or purchased buildings in many places,
appointing ministers as she thought fit--revoking such appointments at her
pleasure. The united congregations were called "Lady Huntingdon’s Connection."
Over the affairs of this connection she ruled with much tact until her death,
appointing committees of laymen to superintend secular business.

There was a great stir at the universities in 1767. A little band of Methodists
had been formed in Cambridge under Rowland Hill. At Oxford, Halward, of
Worcester College, formed an evangelical "Holy Club," with the result that six
students of St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, were expelled, after due trial, "for
holding Methodist tenets, and taking upon them to pray, read, and expound the
Scriptures in private houses." The Oxford authorities as well as the public
journals accused Lady Huntingdon of "seducing young men from their respective
trades and avocations and sending them to the university, where they were
maintained at her expense, that they might afterward skulk." The resolute
countess had already consulted Wesley about a scheme for the education of
preachers, and she decided at once to build a college of her own. On the site of
an old castle in South Wales she built Trevecca College. It was opened in 1768.
John Fletcher, the saintly Methodist clergyman of Madeley, was president, and
Joseph Benson was head master, until the Calvinistic sympathies of the countess
led to their retirement. She resided at the college for many months in the year,
and "stationed" the students; some going to Ireland, others to America, but the
greater number supplying her chapels in Great Britain.

Lady Huntingdon maintained her leadership of her connection with undiminished
vigor. Her chapels at Bath and Brighton were always full. About the middle of
the eighteenth century Tunbridge Wells became a more popular resort than either
of these places, and she forthwith built a chapel there which Whitefield opened
with one of his thrilling sermons.

Lady Huntingdon’s societies, like Wesley’s, drifted away rather than separated
of set purpose from the Established Church. She was compelled to become a
practical Dissenter in the interests of her noble evangelistic work. The crisis
in her case, however, came earlier than in Wesley’s. The step was not taken
hastily, but after repeated provocations, legal decisions, and with a pure
desire to secure the preaching of the Gospel. The clergymen who preached in her
chapels were silenced by the Anglican authorities in 1782, and she was forced
with bitter pain to withdraw from the Church to which she had been so loyal.

It is gratifying to record that Lady Huntingdon lived to regret the spirit of
the Calvinistic controversy. She survived Mr. Wesley about five months. After
his death a small tract was published containing the particulars of his last
illness, and the expressions to which he then gave utterance. Lady Huntingdon
read it with great interest, and sending for Joseph Bradford, asked him if this
account was true, and if Mr. Wesley really died acknowledging his sole
dependence upon the meritorious sacrifice of Christ for acceptance and eternal
life. He answered her ladyship that this was so, and that from his own knowledge
he could declare, whatever reports to the contrary had been circulated, that the
principles which Mr. Wesley recognized upon his deathbed had invariably been the
subject of his ministry. She listened with eager attention to this statement,
confessed that she had believed that he had grievously departed from the truth,
and then, bursting into tears, expressed her deep regret at the separation which
had in consequence taken place between them. She died at the age of eighty-four,
in the Chapel House, Spa Fields, June 17, 1791, and was buried at
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, clothed with the white silk dress in which she opened the
chapel in Goodinan’s Fields. "I long to be at home. I shall go to my Father; can
he forget to be gracious Is there any end of his loving-kindness My work is
done. I have nothing to do but go to my Father," were among her last words.

Dr. Haweis, his wife, Lady Anne Erskine, and a lay gentleman were appointed
trustees of the chapels, houses, and other effects of Lady Huntingdon’s
Connection; and they were to appoint successors. For thirty-one years, from the
date of his conversion (1739) to his death, in 1770, Whitefield traveled and
preached with such consuming energy that the attempt to follow him produces a
sensation of breathlessness. In 1744 he made his third visit to America,
remaining four years; his fourth visit was in 1751, less than one year; the
fifth in 1754, a little over a year; the sixth in 1763, lasting about two years;
his last in 1769.

Whitefield’s Tabernacle, in Tottenham Court Road, London, was opened in 1756.
Beneath it were vaults, "where," Whitefield used to say to his somewhat bigoted
congregation, "I intend to be buried, and Messrs. John and Charles Wesley shall
also be buried there. We will all lie together. You will not let them enter your
chapel while they are alive. They can do you no harm when they are dead." He
continued to do the work of an evangelist to the last in England, Scotland, and
America, besides conducting an enormous correspondence.

During the last four years of his life in England Whitefield’s friendship with
the Wesleys became very warm. John Wesley breakfasted with him, and sadly writes
of him as "an old, old man, fairly worn out in his Master’s service, though he
has hardly seen fifty years;" and a month later: "Mr. Whitefield called upon me.
He breathes nothing but peace and love. Bigotry cannot stand before him, but
hides its head wherever he comes." And in a letter to his wife Charles Wesley
wrote of two happy hours he and his brother spent with their old friend. "The
threefold cord we trust will never more be broken." In 1769 he made his last
voyage, and after revisiting the scenes of his Gospel triumphs from Georgia to
New England, died at Newburyport, Mass., September 30, 1770, "suddenly
changing," as the quaint epitaph has it, "his life of unparalleled labors for
his eternal rest." In compliance with Whitefield’s expressed wish, John Wesley
preached his funeral sermon in Tottenham Court Road Chapel. and Charles Wesley,
who had introduced the humble Oxford servitor to the Holy Club years before,
wrote an elegy full of tender feeling upon the death of his friend.

What is probably the true version of a story concerning Wesley’s warm friendship
for Whitefield was sent to the editor of the Contemporary Review, in 1891, by
Mr. Bevan Braithwaite, the venerable representative of the Society of Friends at
the centenary celebration of Wesley’s death. Mr. Braithwaite heard it from
Edward Pease (the friend and early patron of George Stephenson), who died in
1857 at the advanced age of ninety-two. He was fond of relating how in early
manhood he had stolen into a chapel to hear Wesley preach, and had a distinct
recollection of his personal appearance and earnest solemnity of manner. The
following was his story:

"One day, after Whitefield’s decease, John Wesley was timidly approached by one
of the godly band of Christian sisters who had been brought under his influences
and who loved both Whitefield and himself:

"’ Dear Mr. Wesley, may I ask you a question’

"’ Yes, of course, madam, by all means.’

"’ But, dear Mr. Wesley, I am very much afraid what the answer will be.’

"’ Well, madam, let me hear your question, and then you will know my reply.’

"At last, after not a little hesitation, the inquirer tremblingly asked, ’ Dear
Mr. Wesley, do you expect to see dear Mr. Whitefield in heaven’

"A lengthy pause followed, after which John Wesley replied with great
seriousness, ’No, madam.’ "His inquirer at once exclaimed, ’Ah, I was afraid you
would say so.’

"To which John Wesley added, with intense earnestness, ’ Do not misunderstand
me, madam; George Whitefield was so bright a star in the firmament of God’s
glory, and will stand so near the throne, that one like me, who am less than the
least, will never catch a glimpse of him.’"

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 12: CHAPTER 12 - WESLEY FACES MOBS
========================================================================

Chapter XII - Wesley Faces Mobs The Wednesbury Riots.--Before the Magistrate.--A
Noble Champion.--"Always Look a Mob in the Face."--Stoned at the Market
Cross.--Causes of the Disturbance.--Quieter Times. THE Wesleys had been censured
by bishops, cursed by High Church clergy, and slandered by a host of
pamphleteers. But this stormy course of violent words was only the prelude to
the ferocious attacks of the mobs which came, like wild beasts, howling on their
track in the moral wilderness of England. The "Black Country," in the northern
part of Staffordshire, was the scene of one of the earliest and most violent
persecutions. The towns of Wednesbury, Walsall, and Darlaston had won for
themselves an unenviable notoriety for lawlessness. The brutal sports of these
towns reflected the moral condition of the people. Bull baiting and cockfighting
provided scenes of riotous delight.

Charles Wesley was the first Methodist who preached at Wednesbury, in November,
1742. John soon followed, and a society of one hundred members, increased to
more than three hundred by the following May, was speedily formed. The storm
soon broke. Charles preached in May at Walsall from the steps of the market
house the mob roaring, shouting, and throwing stones incessantly, many of which
struck him, but none hurt him.

Soon after this the rioters of the three towns turned out in force and smashed
windows, furniture, and houses. People were promiscuously struck and bruised.
The magistrates, on being appealed to by the Methodists for protection, told
them they were themselves to blame for the outrages, and refused all assistance.

Wesley, in London, received a full account of this terrible six-days’ riot, and
thus writes: "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 risen and cut all that were
Methodists in pieces!"

Wesley proceeded at once to the scene to render what assistance he could. But no
redress could be obtained. In October he went again to this den of wild beasts.
While he was writing at Francis Ward’s the mob beset the house and cried, "Bring
out the minister; we will have the minister!" Wesley asked some one to take
their captain by the hand and lead him in. After a few words the lion became a
lamb. Wesley now asked him to bring two of the bitterest opponents inside. He
soon returned with a couple who "were ready to swallow the ground with rage; but
in two minutes they were as calm as he." Then, mounting a chair in the midst of
the mob, he demanded, "What do any of you want with me"

Some said, amid the clamor, "We want you to go with us to the justice."

"That I will," said Wesley, "with all my heart." The few words he added had such
an effect that the mob shouted, "The gentleman is an honest gentleman, and we
will spill our blood in his defense."

Some dispersed to their homes, but Wesley and the rest, some two or three
hundred, set out for the magistrate’s house. Darkness and heavy rain came on in
about half an hour, or by the time they had walked a mile, but they pushed
forward another mile, to the justice’s house at Bentley Hall. Some of the
advance guard told that officer, Mr. Lane, that they were bringing Wesley.

"What have I to do with Mr. Wesley" quoth the magistrate. "Take him back again."
When the crowd came up and knocked for admission the magistrate declined to see
them, sending word that he was in bed. His son came out and 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. What advice would your worship give us"

"To go home," said young Lane, "and be quiet." Not getting much satisfaction
there, they now hurried Wesley to Walsall, to Justice Persehouse. Although it
was only about seven o’clock, he also sent word that he had gone to bed, and
refused to see them. Yet these very magistrates had recently issued an order
calling on all officers of justice to search for and bring before them any
Methodist preacher found in the district. At last they all thought it wise to
make their way home, and some fifty of the crowd undertook to convey Wesley back
to Wednesbury. But they had. not gone a hundred yards when the mob of Walsall
burst upon them. They showed fight but, being wearied and greatly outnumbered,
were soon overpowered, and Wesley was left in the hands of his new enemies

Some tried to seize him by the collar and pull him down. A big, lusty fellow
just behind him struck at him several times with an oaken club. If one of these
blows had taken effect, as Wesley says, "it would have saved all further
trouble. But every time the blow was turned aside, I know not how, for I could
not move to the right hand or left Another, rushing 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; but he felt no more
pain, he affirms, from either than if they had touched him with a straw; not,
certainly, because he was over excited or alarmed, for he assures us that from
the beginning to the end he was enabled to maintain as much presence of mind as
if he had been sitting in his study, but his thoughts were entirely absorbed in
watching the movements of the rioters. When he had been pulled to the west end
of the town, seeing a door half open--which proved, strangely enough, to be the
mayor’s, though he did not know it--he made toward it to go in; but the owner,
who was inside, would not suffer it, saying the mob would pull the house down to
the ground. However, Wesley stood at the door, and raising his voice to the
maddened throng, asked, "Are you willing to hear me speak" Many cried out, "No!
No! Knock his brains out! Down with him! Kill him at once!" Others said, "Nay,
but we will hear him first!" Then he spoke a while, until his voice suddenly
failed. Now the cry was: "Bring him away! Bring him away !" Recovering his
strength, he began to pray aloud. Then the ruffian who had headed the rabble, a
prize fighter at the bear garden, struck with awe, turned and said: "Sir, I will
spend my life for you! Follow me, and not one soul here shall touch a hair of
your head!" Others of his companions joined with him in this new departure. An
honest butcher also interposed and thrust away four or five of the most violent
assailants. The people fell back to the right and left, and in the charge of his
new-found protectors Wesley was borne through the infuriated crowd and escorted
to his lodgings at Wednesbury, having lost only one flap of his waistcoat and a
little skin from one of his hands. He says concerning it: "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." "I never saw such a chain of providences before; so many
convincing proofs that the hand of God is on every person and thing, overruling
all as it seemeth him good." In the midst of all these perils four brave
Methodists--William Sitch, Edward Slater, John Griffith, and Joan Parks--clung
fast to Wesley’s side, resolved to live or die with him. None received a blow
save William, who was knocked down, but soon got up again. When Wesley asked
William Sitch what he expected when the mob seized them he 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." When Wesley reached Wednesbury the friends were
praying for him in the house from which he had started. His sufferings awoke
general sympathy. Next morning, as he rode through the town, he says, "Everyone
I met expressed such a cordial affection that I could scarce believe what I saw
and heard." Charles Wesley met him at Nottingham. He says his brother "looked
like a soldier of Christ. His clothes were torn to tatters." Charles went
straight from Nottingham to the scenes of the rioting, boldly bearding the lions
in their den. He was constitutionally a timid man, as he often confesses, but
there was nothing he feared so much as to offend his own conscience.

He arrived at Wednesbury five days after the miraculous escape of his brother,
and found the Methodists "standing fast in one mind and spirit, in nothing
terrified by their adversaries." He writes: "We assembled before day to sing
hymns to Christ as God. As soon as it was light I walked down the town and
preached .... It was a most glorious time." The clergyman at Darlaston was so
struck with the meek behavior of the Methodists in the midst of suffering that
he offered to join the Wesleys in punishing the rioters. As for "honest
Munchin," the nickname for George Clifton, the captain of the rabble, who had
rescued Wesley, he was so impressed with Wesley’s spirit that he immediately
forsook his godless, profligate gang, and was received on trial into the
Methodist society by Charles. The latter asked him, "What think you of my
brother" "Think of him" was the answer, "That he is a mon of God; and God was on
his side, when so mony of us could not kill one mon." Clifton lived a good life
after this, and died in Birmingham, aged eighty-five, in 1789, two years before
Wesley. He was never weary of telling the story of that night when he might have
taken life, had not God stayed his hand.

It was John Wesley’s rule, confirmed, he says, by experience, "always to look a
mob in the face." An indescribable dignity in his bearing, a light in his eyes,
and a spiritual influence pervading his whole personality often overawed and
captured the very leaders of the riots. At St. Ives, in Cornwall, when the mob
attempted to break up his meeting, he says: "I went into the midst, and brought
the head of the mob up with me to the desk. I received but one blow on the side
of the head, after which we reasoned the case, till he grew milder and milder,
and at length undertook to quiet his companions." A similar incident is recorded
a few years later when a lieutenant at Plymouth-dock, with his retinue of
soldiers and drummers, headed a raging crowd. "After waiting about a quarter of
an hour," says Wesley, "perceiving the violence of the rabble still increasing,
I walked down into the thickest of them and took the captain of the mob by the
hand. He immediately said: ’ Sir, I will see you safe home. Sir, no man shall
touch you. Gentlemen, stand off! give back! I will knock down the first man that
touches him! ’ We walked on in great peace, my conductor, a very tall man,
stretching out his neck and looking round to see if any behaved rudely, till we
came to Mr. Hide’s door. We then parted in much love. I stayed in the street,
after he was gone, talking with the people who had now forgot their anger and
went away in high good humor."

Sometimes the rioters themselves were the chief sufferers from the missiles and
clubs so freely used. Wesley gives a striking instance of this at Bolton,
Lancashire, when he preached at the Cross. One man was bawling just at Wesley’s
ear, "when a stone struck him on the cheek, and he was still." A second was
forcing his way to assault Wesley, when another stone hit him on the forehead,
"the blood ran down, and he came no farther." A third stretched out his hand,
and in the instant a sharp stone came upon the joints of his fingers, and he was
"very quiet" during the rest of the discourse, which was finished in peace. A
year later, in the same town, Wesley was followed "full cry" to the house where
he stayed. A raging crowd filled the street and took possession of every room in
the house. One friend who ventured out was thrown down, rolled in the mire, and
thrust back in such a state that "one could scarce tell who he was." Wesley
called for a chair and quietly stood upon it. "The winds were hushed, and all
was calm and still. My heart was filled with love, my eyes with tears, and my
mouth with arguments." In a few hours the entire scene was changed, and none
opened their mouths unless to bless or thank the Methodists! When Wesley was
preaching at Gwennap two men raging like maniacs rode furiously into the midst
of the congregation and began to lay hold upon the people. Wesley commenced
singing, and one man cried to his attendants, "Seize him, seize him, I say;
seize the preacher for his majesty’s service." Cursing the servants for their
slowness, he leaped from his horse, caught Wesley by the cassock, crying, "I
take you to serve his majesty." Wesley walked with him three quarters of a mile,
when the courage of the bravo failed, and, finding he was dealing with a
gentleman, he offered to take him to his house, but Wesley declined the
invitation. The man called for horses and took Wesley back to the preaching
place. The next day at Falmouth more serious perils awaited him. The rioters
attacked the house where he was staying, and the noise was like "the taking of a
city by storm." The outer door was forced; only a wainscot partition was between
them and the object of their rage. Wesley calmly took down a large looking-glass
which hung against the partition. The daughter, Kitty, cries out, "O, sir, what
must we do"

"We must pray," he replied.

"But, sir, is it not better for you to hide yourself "

"No," said Wesley. "It is best for me to stand just where I am." The crews of
some privateers, to hurry matters, set their shoulders to the inner door, and
cried, "Avast, lads, avast!" and the door gave way. Wesley stepped forward at
once and said: "Here I am. Which of you has anything to say to me To which of
you have I done any wrong Toyou Or you Or you" He walked on as he talked until
he came to the middle of the street, when, raising his voice, he cried with
great dignity:

"Neighbors, countrymen! Do you desire to hear me speak "

"Yes, yes," they answered; "he shall speak." The captains of the mob, admiring
his courage, commanded silence while he spoke, and afterward conducted him in
safety to another house. The reasons assigned by the rioters themselves for
their opposition to Methodism were very various and curious, but they often
echoed the pulpit cries of the day, or were the outcome of passing popular and
unreasoning excitement ready to seize on any excuse for violence. When Wesley
visited St. Ives the second time, in 1744, he found the mob had pulled down the
preaching house "for joy that Admiral Matthews had beat the Spaniards such is
the Cornish method of thanks giving. I suppose, if Admiral Lestock had fought
too, they would have knocked all the Methodists on the head." The violence of
the clergy was not any more intelligent. The bigoted rector of Penzance had
several Methodists committed to prison, among them Edward Greenfield, a tanner,
who had a wife and seven children. Wesley asked what objection there was to this
peaceable man, and the answer came: "The man is well enough in other things; but
his impudence the gentlemen cannot bear. Why, sir, he says he knows his sins are
forgiven!" The main responsibility of these riots lay with the clergymen and
"gentlemen" who stirred up the excitable people, and cannot be attributed to any
illegal or rash actions of the Wesleys.

Miss Wedgwood, who is far from being a Methodist, says, concerning John Wesley:
"Nothing that could form the flimsiest pretext for the treatment received by his
followers can be brought home to him. He does not appear to have separated
families; he never went where he had not a perfect right to be; he addressed
those whom he regarded as beyond his pale in courteous and modern language; he
never thrust his exhortations on anybody. The attacks of enemies, and even the
accounts of alienated disciples, may be read without extracting a single
anecdote that we should think discreditable to him; indeed, it is from this
source that we derive much valuable, because unconscious, testimony to the good
influence of his code on secular life. We cannot, then, admit that Wesley’s
errors of judgment or limitations of sympathy had even the slightest share in
producing the popular fury of which instances have just been given."

It is noteworthy that, while Wesley’s persecutors passed quickly away, nearly
all who took patiently the spoiling of their goods lived long and peaceful
lives. Wesley notes the sad end of many persecutors. Egginton, the Vicar of
Wednesbury, who delivered a sermon against the Methodists which Wesley
pronounced the most wicked he ever heard, and who was responsible for the
violence of the mob, died in a few months. At Bristol, in 1743, a clergyman
preached terrible sermons in several city churches against the upstart
Methodists, and was about to do so in the Church of St. Nicholas, when, after
announcing his text, he was seized with a rattling in the throat, fell backward
in the pulpit, and expired the following Sunday. In some instances those who
planned the death of the preachers were themselves wounded, and even killed, by
their companions. The Methodists were not driven out; they more and more became
masters of the situation, and after 1757 peace reigned almost everywhere. It was
due largely to Wesley’s good generalship, his perfect command of his forces, and
the noble example which he himself set. Isaac Taylor’s verdict is, "When
encountering the ruffianism of mobs and of magistrates, he showed a firmness as
well as a guileless skill, which, if the martyr’s praise might admit of such an
adjunct, was graced with the dignity and courtesy of the gentleman." Wesley was
always the gentleman and the scholar. As Rigg says: "It was contrary alike to
his temper and his tactics, to his courtesy and to his common sense, to say or
do anything which might justly offend the taste of those with Whom he had to do
.... Wesley’s perfect, placid intrepidity, his loving calmness and serenity of
spirit, amid whatever rage of violence and under whatever provocations and
assaults, must always remain a wonder to the historian. His heroism was perfect;
his self-possession never failed him for a moment; the serenity of his temper
was never ruffled. Such bravery and self-command and goodness, in circumstances
so terrible and threatening, were too much for his persecutors everywhere. He
always triumphed in the end."

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 13: CHAPTER 13 - IN CONFERENCE WITH THE PREACHERS
========================================================================

Chapter XIII - In Conference with the Preachers An Ecclesiastical
Statesman.--The First Conference.-- Notable Conferences.--One-Man
Power.--"Christian Democracy." --Early Discipline.--Circuits.

"MY brother Wesley acted wisely. The souls that were awakened under his ministry
he joined in societies, and thus preserved the fruit of his labor. This I
neglected, and my people are a rope of sand." Thus Whitefield, the evangelist,
spoke of John Wesley, the ecclesiastical statesman. It was Wesley’s aim to bind
together with links of steel not only individual members, but all the new
societies from Land’s End to Newcastle. And he did this at first without any
intention to form a separate Church from the Establishment. With a sole desire
to shepherd these souls, but against his own ecclesiastical sentiments, in spite
of his own protests, and with a curious obliviousness to the final results of
his action, Wesley step by step organized a great New Testament Church, which
after his death was to drift away from the State Establishment and become one of
the Free Churches of the world. It was not Wesley but Wesley’s Christ who, as
Head of his Church, overruled Wesley’s Anglicanism that Methodism might become
cosmopolitan.

During his first five years of itinerancy, from 1739 to 1744, forty-five
preachers, including three or four clergymen, had gathered round Wesley. The lay
preachers maintained themselves by working at their secular callings in the
intervals of their journeys. There is no record of the total membership in
England, but in London alone there were two thousand members. The class meeting
was fully developed, the Rules of the United Societies printed and enforced, the
quarterly visitation of the classes arranged for, lay preaching instituted,
places of worship secured, and the sacraments administered. And all this had
been done apart from episcopal authority or control.

Five years after the formation of the first society class the first Conference
was held in London, in 1744. Its purely incidental character is indicated by the
quiet record in Wesley’s Journal, where "Conference" is spelled with a small
"c": "Monday, August 25, and the five following days, we spent in conference
with many of our brethren, come from several parts, who desire nothing but to
save their own souls and those that hear them."

"That little conclave of 1744 in the Foundry," said Dr. Gregory in 1899, "was
the first of a series which has already extended over a hundred and fifty-five
years, with many offshoots and affiliations, directing and administering to
thousands of churches, in almost every nation under heaven." There were present
the two Wesleys and four other clergymen: John Hodges, rector of Wenvo, Wales;
Henry Piers, Vicar of Bexley; Samuel Taylor, Vicar of Quinton in
Gloucestershire; and John Meriton, from the Isle of Man. The four lay
"assistants" present were Thomas Richards, Thomas Maxfield, John Bennet, and
John Downes. The Conference considered three points: 1. What to teach. 2. How to
teach. 3. How to regulate doctrine, discipline, and practice. For two days they
conversed on such vital doctrines as the Fall, the Work of Christ,
Justification, Regeneration, Sanctification. The answer to the question "How to
teach " was fourfold: 1. To invite. 2. To convince. 3. To offer Christ. 4. To
build up. And to do this in some measure in every sermon. In the light of later
history the questions relating to the Church of England are of great interest.
It was agreed to obey the bishops "in all things indifferent," and to observe
the canons "so far as we can with a safe conscience." The charge of schism was
anticipated thus:

"Q. 12. Do not you entail a schism on the Church that is, Is it not probable
that your hearers after your death will be scattered into sects and parties Or,
that they will form themselves into a distinct sect

"A. 1. We are persuaded the body of our hearers will even after our death remain
in the Church, unless they be thrust out. 2. We believe, notwithstanding, either
that they will be thrust out or that they will leaven the whole Church. 3. We
do, and will do, all we can to prevent those consequences which are supposed
likely to happen after our death. 4. But we cannot with good conscience neglect
the present opportunity of saving souls, while we live, for fear of consequences
which may possibly or probably happen after we are dead."

It was decided that lay assistants should be employed "only in cases of
necessity." The rules of an assistant are terse: "Be diligent. Never be
triflingly employed. Be serious....Speak evil of no one; else your word,
especially, would eat as doth a canker." The remainder of these rules appear in
our facsimile pages of the recent edition of Bennet’s Notes.

It was decided that the best way to spread the Gospel was "to go a little and
little farther from London, Bristol, St. Ives, Newcastle, or any other society.
So a little leaven would spread with more effect and less noise, and help would
always be at hand." It is evident that the towns here named were regarded as the
centers of Methodism in that year. The belief was expressed that the design of
God in raising up the preachers called Methodists was "to reform the nation,
particularly the Church,’: and "to spread scriptural holiness throughout the
land."

During its session Lady Huntingdon invited the Conference to her London mansion
in Downing Street, and Wesley preached from the text, "What hath God wrought."
This was the first of the household services which afterward, under Whitefield,
almost transformed that aristocratic mansion into a chapel. The second
Conference was held at Bristol, in the Horsefair preaching room. London and
Bristol were the meeting places until 1753, when Leeds was added; in 1765
Manchester was visited, and these became the four Conference towns for the rest
of Wesley’s lifetime. A layman was present at the second Conference, as well as
seven lay preachers. This layman was Marmaduke Gwynne, a magistrate of Garth,
whose daughter Charles Wesley married. In 1749 the question was asked, "Who are
the properest persons to be present at any Conference of this nature" The answer
was: "1. As many of the preachers as conveniently Song of Solomon 2:1-17. The
most earnest and most sensible of the Band Leaders where the Conference is. 3.
Any pious and judicious stranger who may be occasionally in the place." It is
evident that the early Conferences were very mixed in their membership. It was
not until 1784, when Wesley’s famous "Deed of Declaration" was enrolled, that
the Conference received a legal definition, and the governing body of one
hundred preachers was appointed. And it was not until 1797 that "the Band
Leaders" and "pious and judicious strangers" were formally excluded, and
preachers only declared eligible to attend. Later legislation has again opened
the door to the laity. The Church principles aimed at and acted on at Wesley’s
Conferences are clearly stated. The leading principle is that every
ecclesiastical obligation, including obedience to bishops and observance of
canons, must be subordinated to the salvation of souls. We have seen this
expressed at the first Conferences; it was reaffirmed later. In 1746, after he
had read Lord (Chancellor) King’s account of the Primitive Church, Wesley
finally renounced the doctrine of apostolical succession. He never swerved from
his conclusion, and in a letter to his brother Charles many years after he spoke
of "the uninterrupted succession" as "a fable, which no man ever did or can
prove." The Leeds Conference of 1755 was confronted by the fact that some of the
lay preachers, upon their, own responsibility, had begun to administer the
sacraments. Sixty-three preachers assembled--an unprecedented number. Many views
were advocated, but John Wesley’s prevailed. He succeeded in persuading the
Conference that; whether it was lawful or not, it was no way expedient to
separate from the Church. He admitted that he could not answer the arguments for
secession; but he wrote: "I only fear the preachers or people leaving not the
Church, but the love of God and inward or outward holiness .... If, as my lady
[Huntingdon] says, all outward Establishments are Babel, so is this
Establishment. Let it stand, for me; I neither set it up nor pull it down. But
let you and I build up the city, of’ God." "Church or no Church," he again
wrote, "we must attend to the, work of saving souls," He felt that separation at
this time would not help the main work. Walsh and his associates consented, for
the sake of peace, to cease to administer the sacraments. So here, for a season
only, the question was shelved, not as the result of any ecclesiastical opinion
held by John Wesley, "but of that expediency which with him was always a moral
law." At the Leeds Conference of 1769, memorable, as we shall tell later, for
the appointment of the first preachers to America, Wesley read a paper in which
he advised the preachers what to do after his death. It was signed by all the
preachers at the Conferences of 1773, 1774, and 1775, and was afterward
superseded by his Deed of Declaration, but it is worthy of note here as showing
that at the age of sixty-six he felt that Methodism would be compelled, sooner
or later, to take an independent and permanent form.

During his lifetime John Wesley was recognized as the living center of his
united societies. He was the president of every Conference. He was felt to be
the father of this new people, who before were "not a people," but "a rope of
sand." A Fernley lecturer has well said that nothing but his personal
influence--spiritual, moral, and intellectual, brought to bear on each part of
the wide connection by his visitation and his facile, firm, yet flexible and
gentle pen, which gave him a kind of connectional ubiquity--could possibly have
held together and molded the vast and locally scattered multitude which was
pulsating with a new life. At the Conference of 1766 he frankly faced the
question: "What power is this which you exercise over both the preachers and the
societies " After tracing step by step the wonderful history of the societies,
he affirms, "It was merely in obedience to the Providence of God, for the good
of the people, that I first accepted this power which I never sought; it is on
the same consideration, not for profit, honor, or pleasure, that I use it this
day."

"Does not Methodism . . . represent Christian democracy within the Church, in
opposition to the supremacy of a few great ones" says the Lutheran Church
historian, Hagenbach. Contrasting Wesley with Zinzendorf, "who could never lay
aside the count," this German onlooker observes of Wesley: "Nature had made him
a man for the masses, and, notwithstanding all that native nobility and dignity
by which he impressed everybody, there was in him a true absence of everything
that savored of haughtiness." Although, inspired by the purest motives and for
the good of the people, he maintained his leadership to the last, no leader of
men was ever more willing to take counsel with others. With aristocratic blood
in his veins, he founded the most democratic Church in Christendom. He
encouraged the utmost freedom of discussion in his Conferences. He would have no
man muzzled.

It is surely not without reason that so many Methodist class leaders and local
preachers have been elected to the various local government boards which now
abound in England. In many rural districts their training in the conduct of
Church business has fitted them above all others to serve the community in these
local boards. Uninteresting and complicated as Methodist polity and the doings
of "Conference" may appear to the casual observer, to those who follow its
development the history has national significance.

It was in 1747 that the qualifications of lay preachers were set down in this
wise:

"Q. How shall we try those who believe they are moved by the Holy Ghost and
called of God to preach

"A. Inquire, 1. Do they know in whom they have believed Have they the love of
God in their hearts And are they holy in all manner of conversation 2. Have they
gifts (as well as grace) for the work Have they (in some tolerable degree) a
clear, soundunderstanding Have they a right judgment in the things of God Have
they a just conception of the salvation by faith And has God given them any
degree of utterance Do they speak justly, readily, clearly 3. Have they success
Do they not only so speak as generally either to convince or affect the hearts "
The territorial division of the country early necessitated a gradation of office
among the preachers. In the most incidental "common-sense manner" a primitive
episcopacy of the purest type was thus formed, without the name. The preacher in
charge of a circuit was called an assistant (to Wesley), and his colleagues were
helpers, both to the assistant and Wesley. At the third Conference we also find
the third office, exhorter, recognized. The religious life of the preachers of
each grade was the primary qualification, but from the first their intellectual
training was provided for, as the lists of books in the early Minutes show.
"Read the most useful books," was a minute at Leeds in 1766. "Steadily spend all
the morning in this employ, or at least five hours in twenty-four .... ’ But I
have no taste for reading.’ Contract a taste for it by use, or return to your
trade." This applied especially to the itinerants, for whom a better financial
provision was made about this time.

Wesley’s common sense is evident in the crisp sentences of the "smaller advices
about preaching" in 1746. After advising that assistants should never preach
more than twice a day, unless on Sunday or special occasions, the minute
enjoins: "1. Be sure to begin and end precisely at the time appointed. 2. Sing
no hymns of your own composing. 3. Endeavor to be serious, weighty, solemn, in
your whole deportment before the congregation. 4. Choose the plainest text you
Song of Solomon 5:1-16. Take care not to ramble ’from your’ text, but keep close
to it, and make out what you undertake. 6. Always suit the subject to the
audience. 7. Beware of allegorizing or spiritualizing too much. 8. Take care of
anything awkward or affected, either in your gesture or pronunciation. 9. Tell
each other if you observe anything of this kind." A question of intense interest
to all who, like Wesley, are engaged in evangelizing the masses also occurs at
this third Conference:

"Q. What sermons do we find by experience to be attended with the greatest
blessing

"A. 1. Such as are most close, convincing, and practical. 2. Such as have most
of Christ the ’Priest, the Atonement, 3. Such as urge the heinousness of men
living in contempt or ignorance of him." The early preachers did not take a vow
of poverty on entering the itinerancy, but the Frenchman, Lelievre, in his
charming Life of Wesley, has well said, "They practiced a voluntary course of
self-renunciation that was never excelled by the followers of St. Francis." One
of the rules was, "Take no money of anyone. If they give you food when you are
hungry, or clothes when you need them, it is good, but not silver or gold. Let
there be no pretense to say we grow rich by the Gospel." Receiving their daily
supplies from the society, they were only paid, in money, enough to cover their
traveling expenses, and these were very small,, most of them walking long
distances, One faithful preacher, who died, in harness, left but one shilling
and four pence. "Enough," says Wesley, "for any unmarried preacher of the
Gospel, to leave his executors."

Married preachers like John Nelson, stone mason, and William Shent, barber, had
to work at their trade for support. In 1752 the Conference fixed 12 as the sum
which the societies should pay annually to each preacher. It was a much-breached
rule. In 1769 an allowance of 10 was made for the wife of a married preacher.
And the next year we find a preacher’s house in the principal Methodist centers.
In 1774 the rule was made that "every circuit shall find the preacher’s wife a
lodging, coal, and candles, or 15 yet year" to procure them for herself. An
allowance of 4 a year was made for each child. The question of the education of
the preachers’ children occupied the Conference of 1748. The school at Kingswood
was enlarged, with the help of 800 received from some unknown lady, and a
schoolroom, separate from that used for the colliers’ school, was provided. A
very elaborate plan, extending to the very details of diet, was drawn up by
Wesley, and the stringent rules suggest the reflection that Wesley was never
blessed with any children of his own. The course of study was encyclopaedic; the
discipline severe. But Kingswood School was a marvelous advance upon any school
in the kingdom, for boys of from six to twelve years old, in the range and
quality of its teaching. The division of the kingdom into "circuits" first
appears in the Conference Minutes of 1746. The circuits and appointments for the
next quarter were thus arranged, the initials indicating the names of the
preachers:

"Q. How are these places to be supplied for this quarter "A. As far as we can
yet see, thus:

Circuit. June. July. August.

1. London. J.W.J.R.T.R. J.W. To.M.J.R. C.W. Jo.B. Jo.D 2. Bristol. J.M.T. Md.
J.W. C.W.T.K.T.H. T.R.T.J.

3. Cornwall. C.W.T. Mk. J.Tr. Jo. Tr. T.R.F.W.

4. Evesham. J.W. Ja. Jo. Ja.J.T. Jo. Co. Jas. Co.

5. Yorkshire. To. Ha. To.W. J.H.J.B. Ja.W. J.T. Jo.N. Ja.W.

6. Newcastle. Ja.W. Jo.R. J.N.T. We. S.L. S.L.T.W. Jo.W.

7. Wales. Mr.M. T.R. J.W. The chapels were legally settled upon trustees in
1749, and at the Manchester Conference of 1765 a secretary was appointed to
examine the deeds and see that vacancies among trustees were filled. The regular
annual publication of the Minutes also began at this latter Conference, and the
first provision for the "worn-out preachers" having been made two years
previously, the title of "Superannuated Preachers" appears in the Minutes for
the first time. At this session the Member’s Ticket was permanently adopted. The
Methodist preachers were required to exercise over each other the most faithful
vigilance, and at every Conference after 1767 the question was asked: "Are there
any objections to any of the preachers" who were named one by one. This practice
is still maintained. Wesley regarded the maintenance of doctrine, experience,
right conduct, and discipline as essential to the permanency of Methodism, and
held that they must not be separated. "The first time I was in the company of
the Rev. John Wesley," once wrote a correspondent of the New York Evangelist, "I
asked him what must be done to keep Methodism alive when he was dead. To which
he immediately answered: "The Methodists must take heed of their doctrine, their
experience, their practice, and their discipline. If they attend to their
doctrines only, they will make the people antinomians; if to the experimental
part of religion only, they will make them enthusiasts; if to the practical part
only, they will make them Pharisees; and if they do not attend to their
discipline, they will be like persons who bestow much pains in cultivating their
garden, and put no fence round it to save it from the wild boars of the
forest.’"

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 14: CHAPTER 14 - DOCTRINAL WARS
========================================================================

Chapter XIV - Doctrinal Wars Antinomianism.--The Minute of 1770.--Fletchcr’s
Checks.--The Hills, Toplady, anti Berridge.--Wordy Wars.

METHODISM owes one of its doctrinal standards, The Notes on the New Testament,
to an illness which confined John Wesley to a sanitarium at the Hot-wells,
Bristol, early in 1754. It was "a work," he says," I should scarce ever have
attempted had I not been so ill as not to be able to travel or preach, and yet
so well as to be able to read and write." He had been attacked with a cough in
November, and showed alarming symptoms of a rapid decline. Believing that his
end was near, "to prevent vile panegyric," he then wrote his own epitaph, which,
happily, was not needed: Here lieth the body of JOHN WESLEY. A brand plucked out
of the burning: Who died of consumption in the fifty-first year of his age, Not
leaving, after his debts were paid, Ten pounds behind him; Praying, God be
merciful to me, an unprofitable servant A far more serious trouble to Wesley
than any personal affliction was the antinomianism which threatened his
societies with mortal disease. He was ever awake to the dangers which arise from
the perversions of evangelical doctrine. "The antinomian proper," says Dr. Pope,
the Methodist theologian, "is one who treats the requirements of perfect
holiness as met by Christ, and refuses to measure his own conduct by any law
whatever."

Wesley carefully guarded his own doctrine of Christian perfection from this
peril. He considered antinomianism the worst of all heresies. Most strenuously
and persistently did he teach that the profession of justification by faith
should ever be tested by right conduct.

"I would not advise to preach the law without the Gospel any more than the
Gospel without the law," wrote John Wesley, referring to the so-called Gospel
preaching which he disowned. "Undoubtedly both should be preached in their
turns; yea, both at once, or both in one." And he sums up the Christian ethics
taught by himself and John Nelson in these words:

"God loves you; therefore love and obey him. Christ died for you; therefore die
to sin. .Christ is risen; therefore rise in the image of God. Christ liveth
evermore; therefore live to God till you live with him in glory." "So we
preached; and so you believed! This is the scriptural way, the Methodist way,
the true way. God grant we may never turn therefrom, to the right hand or to the
left."

Wesley’s intense conviction of the importance of practical morality led him to
take drastic measures to aid his society of antinomian teachers, and their
perversions of evangelical truth. But, as Fletcher says, antinomianism had
"spread like wildfire" among some of the societies. Most of Wesley’s preachers,
like John Nelson, never ceased to urge the people to maintain good works. But a
few were using the cant phrases and catchwords of a perverted Calvinism. It
would be unjust to call the leading Calvinistic clergy antinomians. Wesley did
not do so.. But the teaching of some of them provided little safeguard against
immorality at a time when antinomianism was doing fatal damage to the cause of
religion. They held, practically, that since salvation was all of grace through
faith, they were not required to maintain good works; their standing in Christ
was secured by election, and, clothed in his imputed righteousness, their own
righteousness was a matter of indifference. It was not merely a logical
deduction on Wesley’s part that looseness of life might result from such loose
doctrine. He had painful evidence that immorality was the actual result. He
claimed the right to deal with the matter in his own Conference of preachers
which met in London a month before the death of Whitefield. Hence arose the
famous Minutes of 1770, the outburst of a controversy which lasted for eight
years, and the publication of Fletcher’s celebrated Checks to Antinomianism. The
Minute which provoked the new controversy declared: "We said in 1744, ’We have
leaned too much toward Calvinism.’ Wherein

"1. With regard to man’s faithfulness. Our Lord himself taught us to use the
expression. And we ought never to be ashamed of it. We ought steadily to assert,
on his authority that if a man is not ’ faithful in the unrighteous mammon, God
will not give him the true riches.

"2. With regard to working for life. This also our Lord has expressly commanded
us. ‘Labor’ (eogazesqe) ’ work,’ ’ for the meat that endureth to everlasting
life.’ And, in fact, every believer, till he comes to glory, works for as well
as from life.

"3. We have received it as a maxim that ’a man is to do nothing in order to
justification.’ Nothing can be more false. Whoever desires to find favor with
God should ’cease from evil, and learn to do well. ’Whoever repents should do’
works meet for repentance.’"

Then followed a review of the whole affair, concluding that "we are every hour
and every moment pleasing or displeasing to God, according to our works;
according to the whole of our inward tempers and our outward behavior." This
restatement of doctrine was intended for the preachers, and as a counterblast to
antinomianism. Lady Huntingdon and her Calvinistic friends, however, regarded it
as an attack on their doctrine of "imputed righteousness" and "justification by
faith." Wesley seldom used the former term, on account of its frequent abuse,
but the tenor of his preaching for thirty years and his recent sermon on the
death of Whitefield ought to have convinced them of his loyalty to the great
doctrine of the Reformation, justification by faith.

Lady Huntingdon ’broke off her friendship with the Wesleys, and declared that
she "could burn against" the Minute.

Joseph Benson and John Fletcher had to leave her college at Trevecca for
endorsing its position, which that elect lady and her cousin and adviser, Rev.
Walter Shirley, branded as "popery unmasked." A peace was patched up on the
basis of concessions, but not until the ground had been laid for the five
pamphlets by Fletcher--the Checks to Antinomianism, which constitute the
greatest prose contribution to the literature of the Methodist awakening as do
Charles Wesley’s hymns to its poetry.

"It appears, if I am not mistaken," writes Fletcher in the first of his famous
Checks, "that we stand now as much in need of a reformation from antinomianism
as our ancestors did of a reformation from popery. People, it seems, may now be
’in Christ’ without being new creatures, and new creatures without casting old
things away. They may be God’s children without God’s image." This was
Fleteher’s main reason for the publication of the five pamphlets in which he
defended the chief points of the Methodist belief with matchless logic and the
finest literary expression.

Very pathetic is Fletcher’s protest against the unkindness with which Wesley has
been treated: "A gray-headed minister of Christ, an old general in the armies of
Immanuel, a father who has children capable of instructing even masters in
Israel, one whom God made the first and principal instrument of the late revival
of true religion in Israel," should have met with more consideration. In another
paragraph, as beautiful in style as in spirit, he incidentally pays a generous
tribute to the Calvinist Whitefield as "one of the two greatest and most useful
ministers I ever knew." "The other [Wesley], after amazing labors, flies still
with unwearied diligence through the three kingdoms, calling sinners to
repentance and to the healing fountain of Jesus’ blood. Though oppressed with
the weight of near seventy years, and the care of near thirty thousand souls, he
shames still, by his unabated zeal and immense labors, all the young ministers
in England, perhaps in Christendom. He has generally blown the Gospel trump and
rode sixteen or twenty miles before most of the professors who despise his
labors have left their downy pillow. As he begins the day, the week, the year,
so he concludes them, still intent upon extensive services for the glory of the
Redeemer and the good of souls. And shall we lightly lift up our pens, our
tongues, our hands, against him No; let them rather forget their cunning.

If we will quarrel, can we find nobody to fall out with but the minister upon
whom God puts the greatest honor Our Elijah has lately been translated to
heaven. Gray-headed Elisha is yet awhile continued upon earth. And shall we make
a hurry and noise to bring in railing accusations against him with more success"

Fletcher’s masterpiece remains to this day a really valuable contribution to the
literature of an age-long dispute. Every Methodist preacher reads the Checks as
an indispensable part of his studies, and they are found at all points of the
globe whither Methodist preachers have borne the cross. "They have been more
influential in the denomination than Wesley’s own controversial writings on the
subject; for he was content to pursue his itinerant work, replying but briefly
to the Hills, and leave the contest to Fletcher." They have influenced, if not
directly through Fleteher’s writings, yet indirectly through Methodism, the
subsequent tone of theological thought in much of the Protestant world. The
chief champions of Calvinism were Sir Richard Hill and his brother, Rev. Rowland
Hill, Rev. A.M. Toplady, the author of the hymn, "Rock of Ages," and John
Berridge. That these Calvinistic friends were exasperated by Wesley’s
comparative silence is evident. Toplady writes: "Let Mr. Wesley fight his own
battles, but let him not fight by proxy; let his cobblers keep to their stalls,
his tinkers mend their brazen vessels, his barbers confine themselves to their
blocks and basins, his blacksmiths blow more suitable coals than those of
controversy; each man in his own order." Wesley is elegantly described as
"slinking behind one of his drudges." Some of the terms used respecting this
venerable servant of God, who had grown gray in unparalleled labors for Christ,
are almost too bad to be transcribed, but they serve to show the spirit of the
age. Here are a few: "An old fox, tarred and feathered;" "a designing wolf; ....
the most perfect and holy and sly that e’er turned a coat, or could pilfer and
lie;" "a dealer in stolen wares, as unprincipled as a rook and as silly as a
jackdaw;" "a gray-headed enemy of all righteousness;" "a venal profligate;" "an
apostate miscreant;" "the most rancorous hater of the Gospel system that ever
appeared in this land; a low and puny tadpole in divinity." He is charged with
"low, serpentine cunning," and with "driving a larger traffic in blunders and
blasphemies than any other blunder-merchant this island has produced." When
Wesley received Richard Hill’s scurrilous pamphlet a little cool irony fell from
his pen as he wrote in his Journal, 1772: "July 11. I was presented with Mr.
Hill’s Review, a curiosity in its kind. But it has nothing to do with either
good nature or good manners; for he is writing to an Arminian." Toplady’s
translation of Zanchius on Predestination drew from Wesley his well-known
summary of Calvinism: "The sum of all is this: one in twenty (suppose) of
mankind are elected; nineteen in twenty are reprobated. The elect shall be
saved, do what they will; the reprobate shall be damned, do what they can."
Toplady recognized Wesley’s mental force, and wrote: "I are not insensible to
your parts, but, alas what is distinguished ability if not wedded to integrity!"
Rowland Hill called Wesley "the lying apostle of the Foundry." But, as Macdonald
has well said, "we have no heart to pursue the details of this history. It is
complicated and unremunerative in the last degree. It deepened into bitterness
and scurrility, till its later literature becomes unreadable for very shame; it
separated brethren; it turned allies into adversaries; it offered to a skeptical
and ungodly age the spectacle of good men ’smiting one another unfriendly,’ and
consumed time and strength that were wanted, and more than wanted, for the
Christianizing of the country."

Charles Wesley’s daughter Sarah has preserved an anecdote which illustrates John
Wesley’s calm fidelity to his work amid his troubles. Her uncle had promised to
take her to Canterbury and Dover, in 1775, and she was looking forward to this
with peculiar pleasure. The day before the journey her father heard that Mrs.
John Wesley had ransacked her husband’s bureau and taken out some letters, on
which, by interpolating words and misinterpreting spiritual expressions, she
contrived to place a vile construction. These she read to some Calvinists. They
were to be sent to the Morning Post. Mr. Russell, a Calvinist, and an intimate
friend of Charles Wesley, told him of the plot, suspecting that the letters were
partial forgeries. Charles hastened to the Foundry to induce his brother to
postpone his journey and remain in town to protect his reputation.

"Never shall I forget," says Miss Wesley, "the manner in which my father
accosted my mother on his return home. ’ My brother,’ said he, is indeed an
extraordinary man. I placed before him the importance of the character of a
minister; the evil consequences which might result from his indifference to it;
the cause of religion; stumbling-blocks cast in the way of the weak; and urged
him, by every relative and public motive, to answer for himself, and stop the
publication. His reply was: "Brother, when I devoted to God my ease, my time, my
life, did I except my reputation No. Tell Sally I will take her to Canterbury
to-morrow."’"

Miss Wesley adds, "The letters in question were satisfactorily proved to be
mutilated, and no scandal resulted from his trust in God." Richard Watson
records that in his day some of these letters, mutilated, interpolated, or
forged by this unhappy woman, had got into different hands, and were still
preserved. There were other Calvinists besides Charles Wesley’s friend who
protested against the attempt on the part of Rowland Hill, Toplady, and others
to defame Wesley’s personal character.

Rowland Hill, however, lived to lament the bitter spirit of the controversy, and
he said of his own writings, "A softer style and spirit would have better become
me." He also suppressed one of his most violent publications. The smoke of the
controversy must not conceal from us his noble work as an impressive, witty,
warm-hearted preacher.

Within a year of the close of the controversy Toplady died. He had removed from
the country parish of Broad Henbury to London, and two months before his death a
strange scene occurred in his chapel in Orange Street. He had heard a report
that he had expressed a desire to recant his opinions in the presence of John
Wesley. His combative but honest soul was greatly stirred. He resolved to appear
Before his congregation once more and publicly deny the rumor. His physician and
family remonstrated in vain. He replied that he "would rather die in harness
than die in the stall." He was carried to the pulpit, and there made his "dying
avowal" that he was satisfied of the truth of all that he had ever written. He
was carried from his pulpit and soon after borne to his grave. He was only
thirty-eight when he died; and Bishop Ryle says: "If he had lived longer,
written more hymns, and handled fewer controversies, his memory would have been
held in greater honor .... Toplady’s undeniable faults should never make us
forget his equally undeniable excellencies." Wesleyan Methodists to-day agree
with the evangelical bishop. One of them writes of the sturdy polemic: "He was
honest in his errors, and had a stout English heart, which commands our wonder,
if not our admiration, in spite of his faults."

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 15: CHAPTER 15 - IRELAND, SCOTLAND, AND WALES
========================================================================

Chapter XV - Ireland, Scotland, and Wales

Island Visits.--" The Dairyman’s Daughter. "--Irish and Irish-American
Methodism.--Shamefully Treated.--The Palatines.-Wesley in Scotland.--A Dash into
Wales.

BEFORE the death of Wesley, Methodism had touched all the islands that gem the
coast of Britain, with the exception of the Shetlands, in the far north of
Scotland. Midway between Ireland and the north of England lies the Isle of Man,
with a resident population to-day of fifty-five thousand, and visitors who
annually number one hundred and thirty thousand. The Manx novelist, Hall Caine,
remembers among the old Methodist local preachers "some of the sweetest, purest,
truest men that ever walked the world of God."

It was a Liverpool local preacher, John Crook, who preached the first Methodist
sermon in the island, in 1775, and the apostolic succession has been well
maintained. Wesley came in 1777 and preached to vast assemblies in churchyards,
markets, and fields. When he died one tenth of the adult population of Manxmen
were members of the Methodist societies. The Scilly Isles lie off the coast of
Cornwall. As early as 1743 Wesley paid them a flying visit, accompanied by John
Nelson. "It seemed strange to me," he writes, "to attempt going in a fisher boat
fifteen leagues upon the main ocean." Landing at St. Mary’s, they waited on the
governor, with the usual present, namely, a newspaper. "I desired him,
likewise," says Wesley, "to accept of an Earnest Appeal. The minister not being
willing I should preach in the church, I preached at six, in the street, to
almost all the town and many soldiers, sailors, and workmen, on ’Why will ye
die, O house of Israel’ It was a blessed time, so that I scarce knew how to
conclude. After sermon I gave them some little books and hymns, which they were
so eager to receive that they were ready to tear both them and me to pieces."

Among Wesley’s hearers in the Isle of Wight, where he formed a society in 1753,
was one Robert Wallbridge, whose daughter, Elizabeth, was the Methodist girl
saint whose piety has been immortalized in the character of "The Dairyman’s
Daughter."

Twelve years before Wesley visited Ireland Bishop Berkeley had advocated the
very methods which Wesley used for reaching the hearts of the Irish people: the
employment of lay preachers taken from the people, speaking their tongue, and
"well instructed in the first principles of religion." The Established Church
was feeble, and spiritually paralyzed, and Thomas Jackson, in his life of
Charles Wesley, was justified in claiming that even the forms of Protestantism
would at this day be extinct in most of the country had it not been for the new
energy that was infused into the Irish Protestant churches by Wesley and his
helpers. It is true that, while the progress of Methodism in Ireland has not
been so rapid as elsewhere, owing to racial estrangements and deep-rooted
Romanism, yet the fruit of Irish Methodism may be found in almost every land,
and America and Australia owe a mighty debt to Erin.

Wesley crossed the Irish Channel forty-two times, and spent six years of his
busy life in the island. The bells were ringing for church when he first
entered. Dublin Bay, on Sunday morning, August 9, 1747. In the afternoon he
preached in St. Mary’s Church "to as gay and senseless a congregation" as he
ever saw, and the next morning at six he preached to the Methodist society in a
crowded room. When he went back to England, a fortnight later, the Catholic mob
wrecked the meeting room. The next year he came again--his brother Charles
having made some progress in his absence.

John Wesley was welcomed .on his second visit, 1748, with great joy, so that his
voice could scarcely be heard for some time for the noise of the people in
praising God. He soon began to preach at five in the morning, "an unheard-of
thing in Ireland," and he continued to do this at Philipstown, Tullamore, Clara,
and Athlone.

Wesley states that, while many of the Methodist converts had been Roman
Catholics, the number would have been far greater had not the Protestant as well
as the popish priests hindered them. "The dead Protestantism of the land was his
chief obstacle." "O what a harvest might be in Ireland did not the poor
Protestants hate Christianity worse than either popery or heathenism!"

Let us follow John Wesley in his itinerancy and obtain from his Journals passing
glimpses of the Ireland of his day. On his second visit to Cork, in 1750, where
he was accompanied by Christopher Hopper, riots broke out with renewed violence.
He went to Bandon to preach, but the Cork mob followed him and hung him in
effigy. His best guardians were the soldiers, many of whom became stanch
Methodists, and the mob became more afraid of them than of the mayor, to whom
Wesley wrote a letter closing with these words: "I fear God and honor the king.
I earnestly desire to be at peace with all men. I have not willingly given any
offense either to the magistrates, the clergy, or any of the inhabitants of the
city of Cork; neither do I desire anything of them but to be treated (I will not
say as a clergyman, a gentleman, or a Christian) with such justice and humanity
as are due to a Jew, a Turk, or a pagan." The day came (in 1787) when Wesley was
received at the Mansion House by the mayor and "the chief of the city, being no
longer bitter enemies, but cordial friends." Methodism was firmly planted, a
large chapel built, and Wesley even feared, only five years from the date of the
riots, that Cork might prove "the Capua of the preachers."

We find him in Dublin in 1752 preaching at five in the morning, and at midday
attending the service at St. Patrick’s, where he is shocked at the "careless and
indecent behavior of the congregation." At Kinsale he preaches in a grander
cathedral. On the hill above the fort was a deep hollow capable of containing
three thousand people. On one side the soldiers cut with their swords a ledge of
earth which served as a pulpit, from which Wesley preached to a vast multitude
who sat on the grass.

He and Christopher Hopper had attempted to reach Waterford in 1750, but the
ferryman, fearing the mob which the notorious Butler had gathered, would not
take them across the Graimah Ferry. So he came again two years later, heard
Thomas Walsh preach on market day in Irish, and preached, himself, to a
shouting, cursing crowd at the courthouse. Eleven years later he again faced the
rioters in this city, and an interesting incident is related in the diary of
Samuel Wood, a preacher of a later date: "I shall never forget the feelings
excited within me when I was hardly five years old, in April, 1773, when I saw
that venerable servant of God, the Rev. John Wesley, shamefully treated by a
rude and desperate mob while he was preaching in the Bowling Green, Waterford. I
felt all my blood rushing into my face. I stood at the table upon which Mr.
Wesley was standing; and While I heard the shouting of the crowd, and saw the
dead animals and cabbage stalks flying around his hoary head, I was filled with
pity and horror. I wished that I were a man. I clinched my little fists. Some
person came to remove the ’child;’ but ’the child’ resisted and would not be
removed, until a gentleman, afterward well known as Sir John Alcock rushed
forward, took Mr. Wesley in his arms off the table and conveyed him in safety to
Mr. Scott’s. He [Mr. Wesley] afterward inquired who ’the child’ was who so
bravely stood by the table. I was brought to him. He put both his hands upon my
head and blessed me, in the presence of my mother. Dear Mr. Wesley must have
been seriously injured but for the manly intervention of Mr. Alcock. Such was my
first sight of, and such my first introduction to, my venerable and much-beloved
father and friend, the Rev. John Wesley. This outrage, I afterward learned, was
excited and encouraged by a superstitious faction of some mercantile reputation
in the city of Waterford, which faction soon melted away, like hail in summer.
God visited them suddenly and awfully.

"The next evening Mr. Wesley preached in John Street, ’Sir Charles’s Yard,’ as
it was called in Waterford; and there, before the gate, a wretched vagrant was
dressed up in a white shirt and a flaxen wig, placed upon a table, and was
singing ribald songs." In Limerick, Wesley preached to the Palatines, those
German Protestant refugees who had been allowed to settle there a generation
before. The Methodist doctrine and order took hold upon them, and from among
them went out Philip Embury and Barbara Heck, who, with Robert Strawbridge,
another native of Ireland, were to plant Methodism in New York and Maryland, and
open the way for the widest extension of Methodism.

Scotland first heard of Methodism through a handful for Methodist soldiers at
Musselburgh, near Edinburgh.

Wesley first visited Scotland in 1751, at the entreaty of his friend Colonel
Gallatin, who was quartered at Musselburgh. Moore tells us that Whitefield had
urged him not to go, saying that he would have "nothing to do but to dispute
from morning to night." Wesley, however, went his way, resolving to avoid
controversy. His companion was Christopher Hopper, who had been among his
brother’s curious hearers at Tanfield Cross, Newcastle. At Musselburgh a large
congregation "remained as statues from the beginning of the sermon to the end,"
though they were said to be grossly inattentive when in their own kirk. At
Edinburgh, Wesley says he "used great plainness of speech toward them, and they
all received it in love; so that the prejudice which the devil had been several
years planting was torn up by the roots in one hour. After preaching, one of the
bailies of the town, with one of the elders of the kirk, came to me and begged I
would stay with them awhile, if it were but two or three days, and they would
fit up a far larger place than the school, and prepare seats for the
congregation. Had not my time been fixed, I should gladly have complied."

Wesley visited Scotland again in 1753, when Dr. Gillies, of Glasgow, courteously
offered him his pulpit. "Surely," said Wesley, "with God nothing is impossible!
Who would have believed, five and twenty years ago, either that the minister
would have desired it or that I should consent to preach in a Scotch kirk!" He
preached also in the open air to crowds, who stood listening even in the rain.
Hopeful at first, he soon learned that respectful attention covered much
indifference, or difference of opinion; but he found those who joined the
society were reliable in character. "Steadiness, indeed," says Moore, "he looked
for in the people of North Britain." At Aberdeen, in 1761, Wesley preached to a
vast crowd in the college close, and about twenty were added to the society.
Before noon on Monday morning, he says, "twenty more came to me desiring to cast
in their lot with us ;" and as he was looking at the King’s College, shortly
after, one of a large party of ladies and gentlemen came to him and said, "We
came last night to the college close, but could not hear, and should be
extremely obliged if you would give us a short discourse here." "I knew not,"
says Wesley, "what God might have to do, and so began without delay on ’God was
in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.’ I believe the word was not
lost--it {ell as dew on the tender grass. In the afternoon I was walking in the
library of the Marischal College when the principal and the divinity professor
came to me, and the latter invited me to his lodgings, where I spent an hour
very agreeably. In the evening the eagerness of the people made them ready to
trample each other under foot. It was some time before they were still enough to
hear, but then they devoured every word." In the evening the professors and
magistrates attended the service. Wesley left ninety members in the society. On
two later visits to Edinburgh we find him preaching in the High School yard and
on Calton Hill, until, in 1766, he reports a service in "the new room, a large
and commodious building." His summary of what he said at Dundee in answer to
objections to Methodist work in Scotland, in 1766, is so important that it must
be given in full. He writes: "The sum of what I spoke was this: ’I love plain
dealing. Do not you I will use it now. Bear with me. I hang out no false colors;
but show you all I am, all I intend, all I do. I am a member of the Church of
England; but I love good men of every Church. My ground is the Bible. Yea, I am
a Bible bigot. I follow it in all things, both great and small. Therefore I
always use a short private prayer when I attend the public service of God. Do
not you Why do you not Is not this according to the Bible I stand whenever I
sing the praise of God in public. Does not the Bible give you plain precedents
for this I always kneel before the Lord my Maker when I pray in public. I
generally use the Lord’s Prayer, because Christ has taught me when I pray to say
. . .’ I advise every preacher connected with me, whether in England or
Scotland, herein to tread in my steps" At Dundee he found a society of sixty
members. At Edinburgh again, on the following Sunday morning at five o’clock, he
had a larger congregation than he had ever seen before, and he remarks--probably
in view of the idea that the Scotch can only be reached by elaborate polemical
and profound discourses--" It is scarce possible to speak too plain in England;
but it is scarce possible to speak plain enough in Scotland. And if you do not,
you lose all your labor; you plow upon the sand."

Controversies over doctrinal points made the progress of the Scottish societies
slower than that in other parts of the British Isles. On several occasions he
was present as a spectator at the meeting of the General Assembly of the Kirk of
Scotland. He was shocked at the behavior of many of the members, and he
declares, "Had any preacher behaved so at our Conference, he would have had no
more place among us." At Edinburgh many of the ministers attended the services
which he held during the session, and he had pleasant intercourse with some of
them. Moore tells us that Mr. Wardrobe, minister of Bathgate, preached at
Wesley’s Chapel at Newcastle, to the no small amazement and displeasure of some
of his zealous countrymen. It was not Wesley’s fault that his fellowship with
many other excellent Scotch ministers was interrupted by the Calvinistic
controversy

John Wesley preached his first sermon in Wales on October 15, 1739, on the
little green at the foot of the Devauden Hill near Chepstow. Wesley’s first
convert was a poor woman who had walked six miles to hear him, and followed him
to Abergavenny, Usk, and Pontypool, found peace, and stood by his side at
Cardiff, the wave-sheaf of an abundant harvest. At Cardiff he preached in the
shire hall, and on later visits in the castle yard. As he explained the last six
beatitudes he tells us that his heart was so enlarged that he knew not how to
give over, so he "continued three hours." At Cardiff was formed the mother
church, and here Wesley opened his first chapel in Wales on May 6, 1743. The
Calvinistic wing of Methodism, led by such splendid evangelists as Howell Harris
and George Whitefield was first in the field and has always been predominant in
Wales.

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 16: CHAPTER 16 - THE WORK BEYOND THE SEA
========================================================================

Chapter XVI - The Work Beyond the Sea

Methodism in 1769.--An American Offshoot.--Shall Wesley Go--
PoliticalPamphlets.--Wesley to Lord North.--A Calm Address --A Methodist
Episcopal Church for America. A DOZEN years ago there came to light a letter
written by John Wesley in 1769 to John Liden, a professor in Lund University, in
Sweden, and giving in orderly arrangement the condition of Methodism as it
existed in that year. The sixth paragraph alludes to the work in America: "There
are only three Methodist societies in America: one at Philadelphia, one at New
York, and one twelve miles from it. There are five preachers there; two have
been at New York for some years; three are lately gone over. Mr. Whitefield has
published a particular account of everything relative to the Orphan House (in
Georgia)." The first societies in New York and Maryland were the result of the
independent labors of emigrants who had been converted in Ireland. Appeals came
from the new societies urging Mr. Wesley to send them regular Conference
preachers. In the Leeds Conference of 1769 Question XIII is as follows: "We have
a pressing call from our brethren at New York (who have built a preaching house)
to come over and help them. Who is willing to go" A young man, apparently far
gone in consumption, rose up in his place in the gallery and said, "If you will
send me, sir, I will go in the name of the Lord." Immediately another young man,
also in the gallery, got up and said, "Sir, if you will send me, I will go with
Brother Pilmoor." This second volunteer was Richard Boardman.

Then came Question XIV: "What can we do further in token of our brotherly love "
Answer: "Let us now make a collection among ourselves." (This was immediately
done.) Question XV: "What is the whole debt remaining" Answer: "Between five and
six thousand pounds." So with a heavy debt on one hand and no reserve for
contingent expenses on the other, the great American Mission began in the
British Conference.

Lloyd’s Evening Post, of May 6, 1769, had some fun at the expense of this
departure. The public were sarcastically informed that the following promotions
in the Church were about to be declared: "The Rev. G; Whitefield, Archbishop of
Boston, Rev W. Romaine, Bishop of New York; Rev. J. Wesley, Bishop of
Pennsylvania; Rev. W. Madan, Bishop of the Carolinas; Rev. W. Shirley, Bishop of
Virginia: and Rev. C. Wesley, Bishop of Nova Scotia."

Wesley was greatly moved by the reports which came to him from the American
envoys, Boardman and Pilmoor. He wrote: "It is not yet determined if I should go
to America or not. I have been importuned for some time; but nil sat firmi
video. I must have a clear call before I am at liberty to leave Europe."
Referring to this period, Mr. Tyerman remarks: "Wesley had nearly arrived at the
age of threescore years and ten; but if his way had opened, he would have
bounded off across the Atlantic with as little anxiety as he was accustomed to
trot to the hospitable Perronet home at Shoreham." The obstacles, however, were
insurmountable. There was no one during his absence to take his place as
superintendent general of the societies in Britain, and to this must be added
the strong objections of the people to let him go.

"If I go to America," said he, "I must do a thing which I hate as bad as I hate
the devil."

"What is that " asked his friend. "I cannot keep a secret," he answered; meaning
that he must conceal his purpose, otherwise his societies would interfere and
effectually prevent his going.

Twelve months later he wrote to Mrs. Marston, of Worcester: "If I live till
spring, and should have a clear, pressing call, I am as ready to embark for
America as for Ireland. All places are alike to me. I am attached to none in
particular. Wherever the work of our Lord is to be carried on, that is my place
for to-day. And we live only for to-day. It is not our part to take thought for
to-morrow."

Rumors spread, both in America and England, that Wesley had decided to go and
"turn bishop;" and he wrote later to Walter Sellon: "Dear Walter, you do not
understand your information right. Observe, ’I am going to America to turn
bishop.’ You are to understand it in sensu composito. I am not to be a bishop
till I am in America. While I am in Europe, therefore, you have nothing to fear;
but as soon as ever you hear of my being landed in Philadelphia it will be time
for your apprehension to revive. It is true some of our preachers would not have
me stay so long, but I keep my old rule: Festina lente." For several years the
Conference continued to appoint volunteers to America. In 1770 the name of young
Francis Asbury was read out--the man who, under God, was to lay the foundations
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, when the troubles between the king and the
colonies should have led to the War of Independence.

It was Wesley’s way to maintain a deep interest in all events which touched the
national life. When the kingdom was agitated by fears of a French invasion, in
1756, Wesley, ever practical, proposed to raise five hundred volunteers,
supported by contributions, ready to act for a year in case of invasion. They
were to be supplied with arms from the Tower and to be drilled by one of the
king’s sergeants. The offer does not appear to have been accepted. During the
Seven Years’ War the Methodists observed the national fasts and united in
constant intercession. The parliamental elections of the day were often riotous.
We find Wesley "hastening to Bristol on account of the election" in 1756. He
called all the freemen of the society together after preaching, and "enlarged a
little on his majesty’s character, and the reasons we had to spare no pains in
his service," with a view to persuading some of them to vote for John Spencer,
who was opposing Jarrit Smith, a suspected Jacobite. This at least reveals the
loyalty of the Wesleys to King George. "The whole city is in confusion," writes
Wesley to Mr. Blackwell. "O what a pity there could not be some way of managing
elections of every sort without this embittering of Englishmen against
Englishmen, and kindling fires which cannot be quenched in many years!"

About 1764 he wrote a letter to the societies at Bristol in which he utters a
noble protest against political corruption: "For God’s sake, for the honor of
the Gospel, for your country’s sake, and for the sake of your own souls, beware
of bribery. Before you see me again the trial will come at the general election
for members of Parliament. On no account take money or money’s worth. Keep
yourself pure. Give, not sell, your vote. Touch not the accursed thing, lest it
bring a blast upon you and your household." He asserts that this political
morality is essential "to your retaining the life of faith, and the testimony of
a good conscience." Such was the ethical teaching of the leader of the Great
Revival.

Wesley’s first political pamphlet was directed against John Wilkes, M.P., the
editor of the North Briton, whose blundering arrest by the government made him a
popular hero. Wesley says of himself that politics were beyond his province, but
he uses "the privilege of an Englishman to speak his naked thoughts." "I have no
bias, one way or the other. I have no interest depending. I want no man’s favor,
having no hopes, no fears, from any man." We may question if Wesley were
unbiased, but of his disinterestedness there can be no doubt. He defends the
character of the king, though later we find him opposed to his American policy.
He sees that the rule of "King Wilkes" means the rule of "King Mob." Wesley’s
pamphlet was published in 1768. Next year the celebrated Letters of Junius
appeared in the Public Advertiser, and political excitement rose to fever heat.
The attempt to tax the American colonies by the notorious Stamp Act--an
infringement of the principle "no taxation without representation "-- and the
imposition of other obnoxious duties after its enforced repeal, were producing
the ferment which resulted in the American War of Independence. The scenes and
passions of the American Revolution are now viewed by Englishmen in lengthening
perspective and in clearer light. But many of the most honest Christian
Englishmen of that day could not see through the smoke of fratricidal war and
party fury, as the little band of Methodist preachers in America proved to their
cost.

Even Wesley’s vision became dim in the thick of the storm. During the first two
years of the Revolution he was in sympathy with the colonists. On June 15, 1775,
he wrote his now famous letter to Lord North and the Earl of Dartmouth. This
letter was consigned to an official pigeonhole, and was first printed in full
nearly a century later by Dr. George Smith. It has often been quoted since,
notably by Bancroft, who, however, was misled as to its place in the story of
Wesley’s political change of view. "In spite of all my long-rooted prejudices,"
writes Wesley, "I cannot avoid thinking, if I think at all, that an oppressed
people asked for nothing more than their legal rights, and that in the most
modest and inoffensive manner that the nature of the thing would allow. But
waiving this, waiving all consideration of right and wrong, I ask, Is it common
sense to use force toward the Americans Whatever has been affirmed, these men
will not be frightened; and it seems they will not be conquered so easily as was
at first imagined. They will probably dispute every inch of ground, and, if they
die, die sword in hand. Indeed, some of our valiant officers say, ’ Two thousand
men will clear America of these rebels.’ No, nor twenty thousand, be they rebels
or not, nor perhaps treble that number. They are as strong men as you; they are
as valiant as you, if not abundantly more valiant, for they are one and all
enthusiasts--enthusiasts for liberty; and we know how this principle breathes
into softer souls stern love of war, and thirst of vengeance, and contempt of
death. We know men, animated with this spirit, will leap into fire or rush into
a cannon’s mouth. ’ But they have no discipline.’ Already they have near as much
as our army, and they will learn more of it every day, so in a short time they
will understand it as well as their assailants. ’But they are divided among
themselves.’ So you are informed. So, doubt not, was Rehoboam informed
concerning the ten tribes. So, nearer our own times, was Philip informed
concerning the people of the Netherlands. No, my lord, they are terribly united.
Not in the province of New England only, but down as low as the Jerseys and
Pennsylvania. The bulk of the people are so united that to speak a word in favor
of the present English measures would almost endanger a man’s life. Those who
informed me of this, one of whom was with me last week, lately come from
Philadelphia, are no sycophants; they say nothing to curry favor. But they speak
with sorrow of heart what they have seen with their own eyes and heard with
their own ears.

"These men think, one and all, be it right or wrong, that they are contending
pro aris et focis; for their wives, children, and liberty. What an advantage
have they herein over many that fight only for pay! none of whom care a straw
for the cause wherein they are engaged; most of whom strongly disapprove of it.
Have they not another considerable advantage with the colonists from the moment
they determined upon revolution, and his horror of war intensified his
feelings." Bishop McTyeire well remarks on the extreme infelicity of the case
that, while the letter to Lord North lay buried in the state archives for nearly
a century, the Address to the Colonies was published by tens of thousands of
copies, creating serious difficulties for the American preachers. With
characteristic wisdom and charity Asbury thus comments on an "affectionate"
letter which he received from Wesley: "I am truly sorry that the venerable man
ever dipped into the politics of America. My desire is to live in love and peace
with all men; to do them no harm, but all the good I can. However, it discovers
Mr. Wesley’s conscientious attachment to the government under which he lives.
Had he been a subject of America, no doubt but he would have been as zealous an
advocate of the American cause. But some inconsiderate persons have taken
occasion to censure the Methodists in America on account of Mr. Wesley’s
political sentiments." The independence of America brought Wesley face to face
with a new problem. The American Methodists were left without an ordained
ministry capable of administering the sacraments. They looked to Wesley as their
"father," and asked what they should do. The crisis was reached in 1784.
Thirty-eight years earlier, as we have seen, Wesley had renounced the High
Church dogma of apostolic succession, and had been convinced that in the
primitive Church "bishops and presbyters were of the same order, and
consequently have the same right to ordain." He now proceeded to exercise that
right. The Rev. Dr. Thomas Coke, a presbyter of the Established Church, had been
for six years a Methodist preacher. In his study at City Road, London, Wesley
first asked Dr. Coke to accept episcopal consecration at his hands and become
"superintendent" (or bishop) of the societies in the United States. Coke asked
for time to consider this innovation on the order of the Anglican Church. Wesley
cited the example of the ancient Alexandrian Church, which for two hundred years
had provided its bishops through ordination by its presbyters. Two months passed
before Coke wrote to Wesley accepting his proposal, though still suggesting
delay. But on September 1, 1784, the momentous step was taken at Bristol.
Richard Whatcoat thus records it in his Journal: "September 1, 1784, Rev. John
Wesley, Thomas Coke, and James Creighton, presbyters of the Church of England,
formed a Presbytery and ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey deacons, and
on September 2, by the same hands, etc., Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey were
ordained elders, and Thomas Coke, LL.D., was ordained superintendent for the
Church of God under our care in North America." The ordination took place in Mr.
Castleman’s, 6 Dighton Street. Wesley commissioned Dr. Coke to ordain and
consecrate Francis Asbury as "joint superintendent" on his arrival in America,
and wrote a letter for circulation among the societies, which concludes with the
significant words: "As our American brethren are now totally disentangled both
from the State and from the English hierarchy, we dare not entangle them again
either with the one or the other. They are now at full liberty simply to follow
the Scriptures and primitive Church; and we judge it best that they should stand
fast in that liberty wherewith God has so strangely made them free."

Charles Wesley was shocked by what he considered to be a breach of Church order.
He wrote to his friend Dr. Chandler: "I can scarcely yet believe it, that in his
eighty-second year my brother, my old and intimate companion and friend, should
have assumed the episcopal character, ordained elders, consecrated a bishop, and
sent him to ordain our lay preachers in America. Lord Mansfield told me last
year that ordination was separation." He wrote to his brother begging him,
before he had quite broken down the bridge, to stop and consider. But his
brother had considered the question for forty years, and the extraordinary need
of America was not the only ground of his action. He based it upon Scripture,
history, and reason. "I firmly believe," he replied, "that I am a scriptural
episcopos as much as any man in England, or in Europe; for the uninterrupted
succession I know to be a fable which no man ever did or can prove."

Canon Overton, a Churchman who considers Wesley’s action to have been utterly
wrong, says with honorable candor: "It has been said that John Wesley’s mental
powers were failing when he began to ’set apart’ his preachers; and Charles
Wesley himself has countenanced the idea by exclaiming, ’’Twas age that made the
breach, not he! ’ But there really appear to be no trades of mental decay in any
other respects."

Wesley used the Latin designation "superintendent" rather than "bishop," the
more accurate rendering of the Greek episcopos. The latter word was associated
in England with too much secular pomp to satisfy his simple tastes. It was not
his wish to multiply bishops of the Anglican type. He desired a more primitive
Church order; as Dr. Gregory has expressed it, "not prelatical, but
presbyterial; not hierarchical, but evangelistic; not diocesan, but ’itinerant.’
The term bishop, in this primitive sense, was afterward adopted by the Methodist
Episcopal Church. Wesley raised an objection to the designation "Episcopal,"
though he clung tenaciously to his term "superintendent." The history of the
Methodist Episcopal Church shows that Wesley’s fear of the hierarchical use of
the more simple and exact term "bishop" was groundless. Watson has well stated
Wesley’s position. He "never did pretend to ordain bishops in the modern sense,
but only according to his view of primitive episcopacy... founded upon the
principle of bishops and presbyters being of the same degree; a more Extended
office only being assigned to the former, as in the primitive Church. For,
though nothing can be more obvious than that the primitive pastors are called
bishops or presbyters indiscriminately in the New Testament, yet at an early
period those presbyters were, by way of distinction, denominated bishops, who
presided in the meetings of the presbyters, and were finally invested with the
government of several churches, with their respective presbyteries; so that two
offices were then, as in this case, grafted upon the same order." The Methodist
bishops, says Watson, "have in practice as well exemplified the primitive spirit
as in principle they were conformed to the primitive discipline."

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
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  CHAPTER 17: CHAPTER 17 - TRAVELER, PREACHER, AND PHILANTHROPIST
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Chapter XVII - Traveler, Preacher, and Philanthropist

Wesley’s Travels.--His Preaching Power.--The Last University Sermon.--A Pioneer
of Benevolence.--Temperance.--Sunday Schools.--The Press.--Hymns and Tunes. AT
seventy-two John Wesley could truthfully say to Lord North that he traveled four
thousand or five thousand miles a year and conversed with more persons of every
sort than anyone else in the three kingdoms.

Bad as the roads were he was a sturdy pedestrian, good for his five and twenty
miles a day, reading as he walked. Before 1773 he made most of his long journeys
on horseback, and, regardless of grace, rode with loose rein, reading history,
poetry, or philosophy from the book in his uplifted hand. One June day in 1750
he rode ninety miles and was twenty hours in the saddle, using two horses.

He rode with a slack rein for above one hundred thousand miles, and except with
two horses, that he says would fall "head over heels" anyway, he had
surprisingly few falls; and he recommends the use of a loose rein to all
travelers. When his friends insisted on providing him with a chaise he showed
the same determination to fulfill every appointment. The old Cornish sexton,
Peter Martin, of Helstone, used to tell how, when he was ostler, he had driven
Wesley to St. Ives. When they reached Hayle the sands which separated them from
St. Ives were covered by the rising tide. A captain of a vessel came up and
begged them to go back at once. Wesley said he must go on as he had to preach at
a certain hour. Looking out of the window, he shouted, "Take the sea! Take the
sea!" Soon the horses were swimming, and the poor ostler expected every moment
to be drowned; but Wesley put his head out of the window--his long white hair
was dripping with the salt water.

"What is your name, driver " he asked.

"Peter," said the man.

"Peter," he said, "fear not; thou shalt not sink." At last the driver got his
carriage safely over. Wesley’s first care, he says, was "to see me comfortably
lodged at the tavern;" he secured warm clothing, good fire, and refreshment for
his driver, then, totally unmindful of himself, and drenched as he was with the
dashing waves, he proceeded to the chapel, where he preached according to
appointment. He was then in his eighty-third year.

Although he read as he traveled, nothing seemed to escape his observation. His
journals are alive with critical notes on men and manners, nature and art.

Wesley’s headquarters for England were London, where he spent several months
every year; Bristol, in the west, with the neighboring Kingswood School as his
home in later life; and Newcastle, with the hospitable Orphanage House, in the
north. He itinerated by a careful plan, to avoid all waste of labor. He
concentrated his preaching on the most thickly populated parts of England,
though he visited many villages by the way. Miners and colliers, weavers and
spinners, artisans and laborers, formed the backbone of his societies, .with a
strong contingent of commercial men and a few doctors and lawyers.

Wesley as a preacher possessed many natural advantages, as the accounts of him
by John Nelson and Dr. Kennicott have shown us. His expressive features, his
vivid eye, his clear voice, and manly, graceful carriage made his hearers either
forget his small stature or wonder that a frame so slight should enshrine a
manhood so sturdy. When he preached at Hull in his old age, in the largest
parish church in England, he was well heard. In the open air his voice reached
the outskirts of the vast crowds. One of his favorite preaching places was in
Cornwall, the natural amphitheater at Gwennap--" the finest I know in the
kingdom." At one of his early annual services there it is supposed there were
ten thousand people. The service continued until the darkness of night covered
the vast assembly, yet there was "the deepest attention; none speaking,
stirring, or scarce looking aside."

Wesley’s extraordinary power as a preacher was due to his simplicity, his force
of argument, his grip upon the reason and conscience, his transparent sincerity,
his spirituality. He was not an impassioned and dramatic orator, like Whitefield
He did not, like his brother Charles, melt his hearers by his deep emotion and
pathetic appeals. He "reasoned of sin and righteousness and judgment." John
Nelson witnesses to his power of making the "heart beat like the pendulum of a
clock: I thought he spoke to no one but me." "This man can tell the secrets of
my heart; he hath not left me there, for he hath shown the remedy, even the
blood of Jesus." After his "day of Pentecost" his whole man was "kindled and
inspired by a divine conviction and force, and he preached as one inspired, with
solemn intensity and perfect self-control, to crowds swayed by feelings which
found expression in sobs and tears and outcries of prayer or praise St. John’s
First Epistle was his model of style. "Here," he says, "are simplicity and
sublimity together, the strongest sense and the plainest language. How can
anyone that would speak as the oracles of God use harder words than are found
here" He advised all his young preachers to make St. John their master. His
first extempore sermon was preached in All Hallows Church, Lombard Street,
London. In 1788 he told the attendant, as he was putting on his gown to preach
again in the same place, "Sir, it is above fifty years since I first preached in
this church; I remember it from a particular circumstance. I came without a
sermon, and going up the pulpit stairs I hesitated, and returned into the vestry
under much mental confusion and agitation A woman who stood by noticed my
concern, and said, ’Pray, sir, what is the matter’ I replied, ’I have not
brought a sermon with me.’ Putting her hand on my shoulder, she said, ’ Is that
all Cannot you trust God for a sermon ’" Her question went home; he spoke with
freedom, and from that time he was independent of manuscript.

Sometimes, as we have seen, he preached at great length to hearers who never
wearied. Sometimes he brought forth the treasures of ancient philosophy and
interwove classical passages of point and beauty into his sermons, as in his
sermon on The Great Assize preached before the Judges of the Common Pleas at
Bedford. But his printed sermons as a rule do not represent the energy and
directness of his extempore preaching when vast crowds hung upon his lips. How
he preached in the open air, face to face with a raging mob, is better suggested
by one of the many entries in his Journal: "I called for a chair. The winds were
hushed, and all was calm and still. My heart was filled with love and my mouth
with arguments. They were amazed; they were ashamed; they were melted; they
devoured every word." On St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1744, Wesley was
called to Oxford to take his turn as university preacher. According to the terms
of his fellowship he must deliver a sermon in St. Mary’s Church once in three
years or forfeit three guineas. He had preached in 1738 and 1741 but now he had
become a notable figure, and great interest was felt in what he would say. The
church is filled with university dignitaries and townspeople. William
Blackstone, an old Charterhouse boy, like the preacher, listens and makes note
and comment as he did later on the Common Law. An observant undergraduate in the
gallery remembers that "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 short, soft, and conformable to the rules of the university.
His text (Acts iv, 31), ’And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’ He spoke
the text very slowly and with an agreeable emphasis."

Then followed the beautiful description of scriptural Christianity, and
afterward the practical application which gave such dire offense. The
dignitaries in the body of the church grew angry and restless, although the
touching appeal to "the venerable men" who were responsible for the guidance of
the young life of Oxford was based on facts to which every leading Oxford man of
that century bears painful witness.

John Wesley notes in his Journal that it was St. Bartholomew’s Day, and, of
course, the anniversary of the ejectment of two thousand ministers from the
National Church by the Act of Uniformity. He adds: "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 delivered my own soul. The beadle came to me afterward 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."

Blackstone also wrote of the service in a letter dated August 28, 1744: "We were
yesterday entertained at Oxford by a Curious Sermon from Wesley Ye Methodist.
Among other equally modest particulars, He informed us: 1st. That there was not
one Christian among all ye heads of Houses. 2ndly. That Pride, Gluttony,
Avarice, Luxury, Sensuality and Drunkenness were ye General Characteristics of
all Fellows of Colleges, who were useless to a proverbial uselessness Lastly,
that ye younger part of ye University were a generation of’ triflers, all of
them perjured, and not one of them of any Religion at all. His notes were
demanded by ye Vice Chancellor, but on mature deliberation, it has been thought
proper to punish him by a mortifying neglect."

Wesley visited Oxford many times afterward, preaching only in a room or chapel,
the authorities preferring to pay for a substitute rather than sit again under
his searching preaching.

He went up to vote for a member of Parliament on a bitter day in January, 1751,
at the request of the rector of his college, for whom he cherished warm
affection. The university now was changing its attitude toward Wesley, and he
says: "I was much surprised wherever I went at the civility of the people,
gentlemen as well as others. There was no pointing, no calling of names, no, not
even laughter. What can this mean Am I become the servant of men Or is the
scandal of the cross ceased" In the same year, on Friday, June l, after enjoying
his fellowship for twenty-six years, he resigned it of his own free will. This
severed his official connection with the university, but he loved it to the
last, and wrote in 1778: "Having an hour to spare, I walked to Christ Church,
for which I cannot but still retain a peculiar affection. What lovely mansions
are these! What is wanting to make the inhabitants happy That with out which no
rational creature can be happy, the experimental knowledge of God." Two years
later he said, "I love the very sight of Oxford;" and when he was eighty he
walked through the city, which was "swiftly improving in everything but
religion." The hall at Christ Church, the Meadow, Magdalen Walks, and the White
Walk still filled the old man with admiration, and he declared them finer than
anything he had seen in Europe. In 1744 and 1745 England was panic-stricken over
the rumors of a French invasion to place the exiled Stuart "pretender" on the
throne. "Papists" were proclaimed as especially pernicious foes of the king, and
the Methodists fell under such suspicion of popery that John Wesley had to go
before a magistrate and take the oath of loyalty--as no one could do with better
conscience. Even in this period of unrest he did not cease from his journeyings
up and down the kingdom from Cornwall to Newcastle.

John Wesley was a pioneer on more than one line of philanthropy. The colliers’
school at Kingswood and the orphan house at Newcastle were early manifestations
of his love for his fellows. The activities which centered in the Foundry remind
the modern reader of that very modern thing "the institutional church." At the
Foundry clothes were received from all who could spare them, and were
distributed among the poor. The society room was actually turned into a workshop
for four months, where the poorest members were employed in carding and spinning
cotton. Soon after, all the women who were out of work were employed in
knitting, for which they were paid the ordinary price. A gratuity was added to
the earnings in cases where the family need was great. Twelve persons were
appointed to inspect the work and to visit the sick. In 1743, in the great
London society, Wesley appointed forty-six visitors whom he judged to be
sympathetic and capable for this delicate work. They were selected from a
company of volunteers. Dividing the metropolis into twenty-three districts, they
went two by two into the homes of the sick three times a week, relieving their
wants and inquiring concerning their souls. Their accounts were presented weekly
to the stewards. Four plain rules were laid down: 1. Be plain and open in
dealing with souls. 2. Be mild, tender, and patient. 3. Be clean in all you do
for the sick. 4. Be not nice. Here was the golden law: "If you cannot relieve,
do not grieve the poor; give them soft words, if nothing else; abstain from
either sour looks or harsh words. Let them be glad to come, even though they
should go empty away. Put yourself in the place of every poor man, and deal with
him as you would God should deal with you." Wesley showed characteristic
prudence in handling none of the funds himself. The Newcastle Orphan House,
begun in 1742, and built by faith and prayer, became a preaching house, a
children’s home, a place of rest for workers, a school where Wesley taught
rhetoric, moral philosophy, and logic to his young preachers, and a center of
evangelism for the North of England. The West Street Chapel in London was
another center of philanthropic effort. A Friendly Union Benefit Society was
formed. The front parlor of the house was used as a soup kitchen. There was also
a charity school similar to that of which Silas Told was master at the Foundry.
Methodist women prepared linen for the children to wear, and formed what would
be called to-day "a household salvage corps," collecting cast-off clothing and
food for the poor. There are touching stories of outcast women rescued by the
early Methodists. But the boldest step was the founding of Wesley’s medical
dispensaries at the Foundry, West Street, and Bristol. The sufferings of the
sick poor stirred his heart, and "I thought," says Wesley, "of a kind of
desperate expedient; I will prepare and’ give them physic myself." For six or
seven and twenty years he had made anatomy and physic the diversion of his
leisure hours. When preparing for the mission to Georgia he studied medicine;
now he applied himself again. "I took into my assistance an apothecary and an
experienced surgeon; resolving not to go out of my depth, but to leave all
difficult and complicated cases to such physicians as the patients should
choose." In six months six hundred cases were treated in London. The Bristol
dispensary soon had two hundred patients. In 1780 we find a medical man in
attendance twice a week, for three hours each day, at the chapel house of West
Street. Between 1746 and 1780 medical science and surgery in England had made
more advance than in all the previous part of the century, but when Wesley
commenced both were in a very poor condition. A twenty-third edition of his
Primitive Physic was published in the year of his death, in which many of the
early prescriptions were discarded, but some of the remedies appear very
"primitive" and amusing in the present day. Quick to perceive the practical
usefulness of electricity as a therapeutic agent, he gave electric treatments to
many as early as 1756. We can hardly claim for him the honor of founding aseptic
practice, but certainly the man who said "cleanliness is next to godliness" was
not far from it. In a dram-drinking age he was an enemy of alcohol. Even of the
medicinal value of liquors he said: "They may be of use in some bodily
disorders, although there would rarely be occasion for them were it not for the
unskillfulness of the practitioner." In general his condemnation of the use of
beer, ale, wines, and spirits was far in advance of public opinion. Of the
traffickers in liquor he said: "All who sell spirituous liquors in the common
way, to any that Will buy, are poisoners general. They murder his majesty’s
subjects by wholesale. They drive them to hell, like sheep. And what is their
gain Is it not the blood of these men" He advocated prohibition of the spirit
traffic. In 1773, when bread was at famine price, and great poverty prevailed,
one remedy he suggested was "prohibiting forever, by making a full end of
distilling." "What will become of the revenue" shrieked economists. Wesley
wrote: "True, the traffic brings in a large revenue to the king, but is this an
equivalent for the lives of his subjects Would his majesty sell one hundred
thousand of his subjects yearly to Algiers for 400,000 Surely, no. Will he,
then, sell them for that sum to be butchered by their own countrymen O tell it
not in Constantinople that the English raise the royal revenue by selling the
flesh and blood of their countrymen!" In 1746 John Wesley established a "poor
man’s bank," collecting by public appeal a small capital to lend out to the
industrious poor. He started with some 30, out of which he made loans of twenty
shillings each to two hundred and fifty-five persons in eighteen months. The
loans ran three months, and were repaid by weekly installments. One, Lackington,
who was thus enabled to stock a book stall, worked up to a business of 5,000 a
year in London.

Prison work had been begun by Wesley in his Oxford days. His Foundry schoolmaster, Silas Told, carried it nobly forward in London. Before there was an antislavery society Wesley had described the trade in men as "that execrable sum of all villainies." It was the burden of his letter to Wilberforce, the last he ever penned. Personally Wesley was the most liberal of givers. In his lifetime he lived on some 30 a year, and gave away the 30,000 profits of the book business. When the excise men supposing him to be wealthy--as he might have been---demanded that he "make due entry" of his plate, that duty might be levied on it, he wrote: "Sir, I have two silver teaspoons here in London and two at Bristol. This is all which I have at present; and I shall not buy any more while so many round me want bread."

Some of the wealthy men of Manchester told Wesley that he did not know the value
of money. He took no notice, but bit his lip and let them talk on. When he was
preaching he recollected it, and began to talk of it immediately. "I have heard
to-day," said he, "that I do not know the value of money. What! don’t I know
that twelve pence make a shilling, and twenty-one shillings a guinea Don’t I
know that if given to God, it’s worth heaven--through Christ And don’t I know
that if hoarded and kept, it’s worth damnation to the man who hoards it"

Wesley’s doctrine of Christian stewardship is summed up in his sermon on The Use
of Money, with its three points: "Gain all you can; save all you can; give all
you can;" and he practiced what he preached.

"I reverence the young," said John Wesley, "because they may be useful after I
am dead," and at his last Conference, when asked what he would recommend for
perpetuating that revival of religion which he had commenced he said, "Take care
of the rising generation." He had encouraged Methodist Sunday schools before
Robert Raikes made his conspicuous success at Gloucester. His presses gave
Raikes’s experiment the widest publicity. His Journal entry at Bingley in July,
1784, remarks:, ’I stepped into the Sunday school, which contains two hundred
and forty children, taught every Sunday by several masters, and superintended by
the curate. So, many children in one parish are restrained from open sin, and
taught a little good manners at least, as well as to read the Bible. I find
these schools springing up wherever I go. Perhaps God may have a deeper end
therein than men are aware of. Who knows but some of these schools may become
nurseries for Christians"

"Though I am always in haste," said Wesley, "I am never in a hurry, because I
never undertake more work than I call go through with perfect calmness of
spirit." This perfect self- control, and the ability to turn toadvantage every
minute of spare time enabled him, in addition to his travels of five thousand
miles a year and his forty thousand sermons, to edit and write four hundred
books, and become the pioneer in publishing cheap and good books for the people.
His style bears no trace of "hurry." He has described it: "What is it
constitutes a good style Perspicuity, purity, propriety, strength, and easiness
joined together ..... As for me, I never think of my style at all, but just set
down the words that come first.....Clearness in particular is necessary for you
and me ....When I had been a member of the university for about ten years I
wrote and talked much as you do now; but when I talked to plain people in the
castle or town I observed they gaped and stared. This obliged me to alter my
style .... And yet there is dignity in this simplicity which is not disagreeable
to those of highest rank." That Journal which flows on with such copiousness,
variety, and interest to the end of his life is, says Birrell, "the most amazing
record of human exertion ever penned by man." Social historians have learned to
go to it for observation and comment of the rarest value. As a pioneer of
popular literature Wesley holds a high place in national history. The traveling
peddlers, or "chapmen," were the only purveyors of cheap books before Wesley did
his work, and their "cheap books," sold for a few pence, were of little or no
value from an educational standpoint, as our facsimiles of some of the most
harmless show. Wesley stored his preachers’ saddlebags with penny books of a
wholesome sort. "Two and forty years ago," he writes, "having a desire to
furnish poor people with cheaper, shorter, and plainer books than any I have
seen, I wrote many small tracts, generally a penny apiece, and afterward several
larger. Some of these have such a sale as I never thought of; and by this means
I became unawares rich." What he did with the wealth we shall learn later. He
created an appetite for reading among the people. His cheap books had an
enormous circulation, and Watson justly observes that "he was probably the first
to use on any extensive scale this means of popular reformation."

Wesley and Coke formed the first tract society in 1782, seventeen years before
the formation of the Religious Tract Society of London, and forty years before
this thousands of copies of Wesley’s Word to a Smuggler, Word to a
Sabbath-breaker, Word to a Swearer, and other tracts were circulated broadcast.
He did much by his cheap abridgments to bring stores of useful literature within
the reach of those who were short of money to buy and time to read the ponderous
folios and quartos in which much of the best writing was entombed. His Christian
Library, in fifty volumes (1749-1755),was his greatest effort in this direction,
but by this he suffered a loss of 200. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Young’s Night
Thoughts, and even the Pilgrim’s Progress were mercilessly condensed, and though
to-day this may be regarded as vandalism, the needs of the poverty stricken
multitudes whose intellects were awakened by the revival condone the deed. The
list of Wesley’s original works, from the first of 1733--a Collection of Forms
of Prayer, for the use of his pupils into the last revision of his Notes on the
New Testament, fifty-seven years later, would fill a volume.

Wesley’s Notes on the New Testament (constituting with his first fifty-three
sermons the doctrinal standards of Methodism) appeared in 1755. The notes he
made "as short as possible, that the comment may not obscure or swallow up the
text, and as plain as possible, in pursuance of the main design." His brother
Charles, who was an excellent critic, assisted him. He took great pains to
secure a correct Greek text, using chiefly the Gnomon Novi Testamenti of
Bengel--" that great light of the Christian world." He anticipated the revision
of 1881 in his use of paragraphs, the omission of chapter headings, and in a
large number of renderings. His first fifty-three sermons, referred to as part
of the doctrinal standards of Methodism, were published in 1746 and 1760. Henry
Moore states that Wesley felt the need of preparing some concise, clear, and
full body of divinity to guide his preachers and people. Retiring to the house
of his friends, the Blackwells, at Lewisham, and taking only his Hebrew Bible
and Greek Testament with him, "My design," he says in his preface, "is in some
sense to forget all that I have ever read in my life." One portion of this
preface is so characteristic of the man and his methods that no review of his
work would be complete without it. He writes: "To candid, reasonable men I am
not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have
thought, I am a creature of the day, passing through life as an arrow through
the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God; just hovering over
the great gulf, till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an
unchangeable eternity; I want to know one thing: the way to heaven; how to land
safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; for
this very end he came down from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. 0
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
open, I read his book, for this end--to find the way to heaven.’ Is there a
doubt concerning the meaning of what I read Does anything appear dark or
intricate I lift up my heart to the Father of lights. ’" Lord, is it not thy
word, If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God Thou givest liberally and
upbraidest not. Thou hast said if any man be willing to do thy will, he shall
know. I am willing to do; let me know thy will.’ I then searell after and
consider parallel passages of Scripture, comparing spiritual things with
spiritual. 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."

These written and printed sermons, as we have noted, do not represent his
preaching, and must be regarded rather as careful statements of his doctrines
intended for thoughtful reading. His later sermons were prepared for his
magazine, and are more varied in style and literary illustration. His Earnest
Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion (1743 and.1745) contain some of his most
trenchant and powerful work. They were not only a vindication of Methodism, but
of the Christian religion, and answered their purpose to a remarkable degree.
They were fruitful, as we have seen, in the conversion of deists like Lampe, and
Wesley tells of several like "Dr. W_____ , a steady, rational infidel," whom "it
pleased God to touch" as they read. They did more to melt the hearts of the more
reasonable of Wesley’s clerical opponents than anything else he wrote.

Wesley wrote or compiled or edited schoolbooks, histories, condensations of
great literary works, in great number and variety. His Collected Works, in
thirty-two volumes, were published 1771-1774. All this work was done from what
Dr. Osborne describes as his "intense determination to popularize literature,
and by means of cheap extracts and abridgments to bring good books within reach
of his societies, most of whom had neither time to read nor money to buy much
more than he supplied to them." In 1778 he put forth the first number of the
Arminian Magazine, which is still issued under another title. It was aimed to
counteract the effect of the Calvinist magazines.

Wesley declared in a letter to Thomas Taylor that his object was, "not to get
money," but "to counteract the poison of other periodicals." But it also
supplied, by means of lives and letters, "the marrow of experimental and
practical religion." For forty years Wesley had a store, "The Book-Room," at the
Foundry. In 1777 the business was removed to the new chapel in City Road.

Thus began the great Book Concerns of world-wide Methodism, which have done so
much for the circulation of its literature and the assistance of its funds.

Music had a powerful charm for all the Wesleys, and John was no exception.
Scarcely less than his brother, whose poetical gift surpassed his, was his
fondness for good singing. He heard the Messiah sung in Bristol Cathedral in
1758, and frequently met the composer Handel in London. His tune books caught
the popular ear, and the good singing of the Methodists became proverbial.

John Wesley’s knowledge of the German language, acquired on his first Atlantic
voyage, opened up to him the splendid treasury of German hymnody; for, as Dr.
Philip Schaff has well said in Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology, the "church
hymn, in the strict sense of the term, as a popular religious lyric in praise of
God, to be sung by the congregation in public worship, was born with the German
Reformation." Ten thousand German hymns have become more or less popular, and
have enriched the hymn books of Churches of other tongues, and nearly a thousand
are "classical and immortal." "John Wesley," says Dr. Schaff, "was one of the
first English divines who appreciated their value." He translated at least
thirty hymns, five of which appeared in his first hymn book. He translated Psalm
lxiii from the Spanish version, and at least revised Mme. Bourignon’s French
hymn, "Come, Saviour, Jesus, from above."

John Wesley’s modesty has made it difficult to distinguish his original hymns
from those of his brother. His paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer, to which his
name is attached, is one of the finest in the English language. His severer
taste pruned his brother’s hymns of luxuriances, and on comparing those which
John edited with the originals it will be found that they gained much by his
unsparing censorship. John Wesley strongly objected to any "mending" of his own
hymns, but he mended the hymns of others with a clear conscience, and with what
success one example of his handling of the famous hymn writer, Watts, will
suffice to show:

AS WRITTEN BY WATTS,AS REVISED BY WESLEY The God that rules on high,The God that
rules on high, And thunders when he please,And all the earth surveys, That rides
upon the stormy sky,That rides upon the stormy sky, And manages the seas.And
calms the roaring seas. After their spiritual Pentecost of 1738 the two brothers
cooperated, both as authors and editors, and issued fifty-four hymnal
publications, making on an average one every year until the death of John. The
year after City Road Chapel was opened the Large Book was advertised in the
Arminian Magazine, and it was published in 1780. It was entitled A Collection of
Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, and contained five hundred
and twenty-five hymns selected from twenty-one previous publications.

John Wesley calls the hymns "a body of experimental and practical divinity."
They were not only intended for congregational use, they were a compendium of
theology and a manual of private devotion; and when the voices of the preachers
were stilled the hymns remained for the deepening of the spiritual life of the
people, the elevation of their worship, and the development of their character.
"It is a great recommendation to the hymns of both Wesleys," says an Anglican
historian, "that, although they are often mystical in tone, and appeal
persistently to the feelings, they are thoroughly practical, never losing sight
of active Christian morality."

But, after all, the Poet of the Revival was Charles Wesley, whose hymns are now
sung in every branch of Christianity. Charles, though younger than John, died
before him. He had been residing in London for nearly a score of years,
preaching frequently in City Road, and living in happiness with his good wife
and his musically remarkable children. The friendship of the brothers was not
broken by their differences of opinion on ecclesiastical policy. A few days
before his death Charles Wesley called to his wife and requested her to write
down the following lines: In age and feebleness extreme, Who shall a sinful worm
redeem Jesus, my only hope thou art, Strength of my failing flesh and heart: O
could I catch a smile from thee, And drop into eternity! This was the last verse
he wrote.

Samuel Bradburn, then stationed in London, who sat up with him the last night of
his life but one, says, "His mind was as calm as a summer evening." He told his
wife that no fiend was permitted to approach him, and that he had a good hope.
When asked if he wanted anything, he replied, "Nothing but Christ." Some one
said that the valley of the shadow of death was hard to be crossed. He
exclaimed, "Not with Christ." All his family was present. He pressed his wife’s
hand, when too feeble to speak, to assure her that he knew her. After his last
words, "Lord--my heart--my God!" he quietly fell asleep, on Saturday, March 29,
1788. A fortnight later, when at Bolton, John Wesley attempted to give out as
his second hymn, "Come, O thou Traveler unknown," but when he came to the lines,
My company before is gone, And I am left alone with Thee, he sank beneath the
sorrow of his bereavement, burst into a flood of tears, sat down in the pulpit,
and hid his face with his hands. The crowded congregation well knew the cause of
his speechless sorrow; singing ceased, and "the chapel became a Bochim." At
length the aged preacher recovered, and went through a service which was never
forgotten by those who were present. His love for his brother is expressed in
his own words: "I have a brother who is as my own soul."

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


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  CHAPTER 18: CHAPTER 18 - SETTING HIS HOUSE IN ORDER
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Chapter XVIII - Setting His House in Order

Thou Art the Man!"--Methodist Clergy.--The Swiss Recruit.--Fletcher’s
Proposals.--The Deed of Declaration.--The Ordinations.--The Rubicon Crossed.

JOHN WESLEY completed his seventieth year in 1773. His health was apparently
failing, and the great itinerant began to feel the necessity to set his house in
order as one who goes on a long journey. He had been revising his manuscripts
for his literary executor, but was concerned for the future conduct of the
complex system of work which had resulted from his labors.

"What an amazing work has God wrought in these kingdoms in less than forty
years!" he writes. "And it not only continues, but increases, throughout
England, Scotland, and Ireland; nay, it has lately spread into New York,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina. But the wise men of the world
say, ’When Mr. Wesley drops, then all this is at an end.’" And Wesley himself
fears this, "unless, before God calls me hence, one is found to stand in my
place .... I see more and more, unless there be one proestwz, the work can never
be carried on." At present he fears the preachers will not submit to one
another. A leader they must have. "But who is sufficient for these things"

Then, after describing the type of leader needed, Wesley declares to John
Fletcher: "Thou art the man!"

Fletcher stands easily foremost among the clergy of the Church of England who
became identified with the Methodist movement. Some of these gave up parochial
work in the Church of England and became itinerant preachers like Whitefield.
Others continued in their church livings and were at the same time Methodist
assistants (superintendents)and had a Methodist circuit extending far beyond
their own parishes, like Grimshaw, of Haworth. A third class attended the
Conferences, welcomed the Methodist leaders to their homes and pulpits, and
assisted them in the administration of the sacraments, without leaving or
extending their parochial work, like Vincent Perronet, of Shoreham, to whom
Wesley addressed his Plain Account of the People Called Methodists, and Henry
Venn, of Clapham, to whom Wesley wrote in 1765 the spirited letter in which the
motto of the Epworth League is found: "I desire to have a league offensive and
defensive with every soldier of Christ. We have not only one faith, one hope,
one Lord, but are directly engaged in one warfare. We are carrying the war into
the devil’s own quarters, who therefore summons all his hosts to war. Come,
then, ye that love him, to the help of the Lord--to the help of the Lord against
the mighty! I am now well-nigh miles emeritus senex, sexagenarius [an old
soldier who has served out his time, and is entitled to his discharge--a
sexagenarian]; yet I trust to fight a little longer." But of all the evangelical
clergy who, with or without their consent, were classed as Methodists the vicar
of Madeley stands preeminent for saintliness, learning, and as a defender of the
faith.

Jean Guillaume de la Fleehere, for so he was christened, was a Swiss, born at
Nyon of excellent family in 1729. Though educated for the Reformed ministry, he
rejected its Calvinistic creed and turned to a life of adventure. A train of
remarkable providences landed him in England, where he was coaching the sons of
a member of Parliament when in 1754 he fell in with the Methodists and joined
class at the Foundry. Wesley’s Journal helped him to understand his spiritual
needs and the way of salvation, and on January 23, 1755, he recognized himself
"a new creature" in Christ Jesus. He entered the ministry of the Church of
England, and performed his first ministerial service in assisting Wesley with
the sacraments in Snowsfield Chapel.

"How wonderful," wrote Wesley, "are the ways of God! When my bodily strength
failed, and none in England were able and willing to assist me, he sent me help
from the mountains of Switzerland, and an helpmate for me in every respect;
where could I have found such another"

Fletcher’s charming personality and rare spiritual gifts gained him immediate
adoption into the little group of the clergy who favored the revival work. In
1760 he was appointed to the living of Madeley, and in that rural parish of
miners and colliers he preached and lived the Gospel for twenty-five years. His
converts were formed into classes on the Wesleyan plan, and his parish was
administered according to Wesley’s ideal.

Such was Fletcher of Madeley when, in 1763, John Wesley, looking about for a
successor, said: "Thou art the man God has given you a measure of loving faith
and a single eye to his glory. He has given you some knowledge of men and
things, particularly of the old plan of Methodism. You are blessed with some
health, activity, and diligence, together with a degree of learning. And to all
these he has lately added, by a way none could have foreseen, favor both with
the preachers and the people. Come out, in the name of God! Come to the help of
the Lord against the mighty! Come while I am alive and capable of labor! . . .
Come while I am able, God assisting to build you up in faith, to ripen your
gifts, and introduce you to the people! Nil tanti. What possible employment can
you have which is of so great importance"

Fletcher did not definitely decline Wesley’s proposal, but he stated that he
"needed a fuller persuasion that the time is quite come" to leave his work at
Madeley. He hopes that Wesley may outlive him, but he promises, "Should
Providence call you first, I shall do my best . . to help your brother to gather
the wreck, and keep together those who are not absolutely bent on throwing away
the Methodist doctrines and discipline." Six months later the call was repeated
without success. Thirteen years afterward Wesley still doubted if his friend had
done right in remaining in his parish. "I can never believe," says he, "it was
the will of God that such a burning and shining light should be hid under a
bushel. No; instead of being confined to a country village it ought to have
shone in every corner of our land."

Although Fletcher did not accept Wesley’s commission of lieutenancy, and was
survived by him, he is known as his "designated successor." That he gave deep
thought to the problem of Methodism after Wesley we know from a comprehensive
statement of his conclusions in a letter written to Mr. Wesley in August, 1775,
in which he exhorts his correspondent as an Englishman, a Christian, a divine,
and an extraordinary messenger of God, to take positive steps toward the
reformation of the Church of England, "which I love," says Fletcher, "as much as
you do, but I do not love her so much as to take her blemishes for ornaments."
Some of the leading points in the program of reform are thus stated:

"(1) That the growing body of the Methodists in Great Britain, Ireland, and
America be formed into a general society--a daughter Church of our holy mother.
(2) That this society shall recede from the Church of England in nothing but in
some palpable defects, about doctrine, discipline, and unevangelical hierarchy.
(3) That this society shall be the Methodist Church of England, ready to defend
the as yet unmethodized Church against all the unjust attacks of the
Dissenters--willing to submit to her in all things that are not
unscriptural--approving of her ordination, partaking of her sacraments, and
attending her service at every convenient opportunity. (4) That a pamphlet be
published containing the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.
rectified according to the purity of the Gospel, ’together with some needful
alterations in the liturgy and homilies, such as the expunging of the damnatory
clauses of the Athanasian Creed, etc. (5) That Messrs. Wesley, the preachers,
and the most substantial Methodists in London, in the name of the societies
scattered through the kingdom, would draw up a petition and present it to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, informing his grace, and by him the bench of the
bishops, of this design; proposing the reformed Articles of Religion, asking:
the protection of the Church of England, begging that this step might not be
considered as a schism, but only as an attempt to avail ourselves of the liberty
of Englishmen and Protestants to serve God according to the purity of the
Gospel, the strictness of primitive discipline, and the original design of the
Church of England, which was to reform, so far as time and circumstances would
allow, whatever needed reformation. (6) That this petition contain a request to
the bishops to ordain the Methodist preachers which can pass their examination
according to what is indispensably required in the canons of the Church. That
instead of the ordinary testimonials the bishops would allow of testimonials
signed by Messrs. Wesley and some more clergymen, who would make it their
business to inquire into the morals and principles of the candidates for orders.
And that, instead of a title, their lordships would accept of a bond signed by
twelve stewards of the Methodist societies, certifying that the candidate for
holy orders shall have a proper maintenance. That if his grace, etc., does not
condescend to grant this request, Messrs. Wesley will be obliged to take an
irregular (not unevangelical) step, and to ordain upon a Church of England
independent plan such lay preachers as appear to them qualified for holy
orders."

Then follow suggestions as to the trial of candidates and the exercise of
discipline, and under (9), "that when Messrs. Wesley are dead the power of
ordination be lodged in three or five of the most steady Methodist ministers,
under the title of moderators, who shall overlook the flocks and the other
preachers as Mr. Wesley does now." Under (10--12) the Prayer Book is to be
revised, confirmation is to be performed with the utmost solemnity by Mr. Wesley
or the moderators, and (13) enjoins that the doctrine of grace shall be preached
against the Socinians, the doctrine of justice against the Calvinists, and the
doctrine of holiness against all the world. The letter closes with a proposal
that Kingswood School shall be used for the training of candidates for
"Methodist orders," the education of the preachers’ children, and as a home for
worn-out ministers.

It will be seen that Fletcher thought that Wesley might secure the much-needed
reform "without perverting;" that Methodism might exist in ecclesiastical form
as a Church with-in a Church, or as a Church branch of the Mother Church, but
with a power of expansion to Ireland, the colonies, and the work beyond; the
Articles and Prayer Book might be purged from unevangelical elements, to meet
the scruples of many Methodists, and the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian
Creed might be omitted. The Methodist superintendent preachers might be
episcopally ordained presbyters, and their helpers deacons. If the bishops would
not ordain, let the Wesleys do so.

Wesley did not see his way to do more than very partially to act upon Fletcher’s
very striking and comprehensive proposals. He did partially act upon them in
some important respects. He drew up a revised Prayer Book or Sunday Service for
the independent Methodist Church, afterward the Methodist Episcopal Church of
America. In this book the Thirty-nine Articles are reduced to twenty-four, the
Athanasian Creed disappears, the Psalms are abridged. All is adapted to a new
people in a homely, pastoral country. Provision is made for independent
Methodist ordination of deacons, presbyters, or elders, and the setting apart of
superintendents, or "bishops," to use the word which early became current in
America and which has almost displaced the other designation. The suggestion (9)
in regard to moderators was an extension of that which Wesley had himself
proposed in 1769. It resembles more closely the American plan of general
superintendence.

Both Fletcher (1759) and Perronet (1762) had previously described the Methodist
society as the "Methodist Church." And Wesley himself was now using the term, so
that this was not a new departure. But "what was new was the frank boldness with
which Fletcher would one hundred and twenty years ago have spread before the
world and all the churches of the world the fact that by the labors of the
Wesleys and their followers a new great Church--for not one nation, but all
nations, something greater in its idea and it’s potentiality than a mere
national Church had actually been created; and that it was destined to prevail
until it had replenished the earth. Here the independent race and
nationality--the independent churchly ideas also--of the Swiss Reformed
Churchman found voice and utterance. To Fletcher, Methodism was already a great
Church, potentially the greatest Church of the world."

All accounts agree that Fletcher was a man of exceptional purity of character.
Canon Overton, the High Churchman, writes: "Never, perhaps, since the rise of
Christianity has the mind which was in Christ Jesus been more faithfully copied
than it was in the vicar of Madeley." The philosophic critic, Isaac Taylor,
concludes that "the Methodism of Fletcher was Christianity, as little lowered by
admixture of human infirmity as we may hope to find it anywhere on earth." "In a
genuine sense he was a saint; . . as unearthly a being as could tread the earth
at all."

Yet the Protestant saint was no recluse. John Fletcher’s pure and lofty heavenly
mindedness did not alienate him from his age. His asceticism, as Mr. Macdonald
has remarked, was "the asceticism of love, and not of bondage or of fear." He
was a Methodist of the Methodists, and he was delighted when Wesley succeeded in
persuading the converts at Madeley to meet in class. He built a Methodist
meetinghouse in his village, and regarded Christian fellowship as essential to a
New Testament Church. He greeted the lay preachers as brethren, and his
appearance at Wesley’s Conferences produced the same remarkable spiritual
impression on them as it did on his visitors and hearers elsewhere. At one of
the most important Conferences Wesley ever had Fletcher was present (1784). Dr.
Coke had just begun the Foreign Missionary Society, and Wesley had just signed
his famous Deed of Declaration constituting the Legal Conference. When Fletcher
preached at seven on the Sunday morning, Henry Moore records, ".The shadow of
the divine presence was seen among us, and his going forth was in our
sanctuary." The Conference was a critical one, and for seven days the new "deed"
was debated. Fletcher was at prayer at two or three every morning. Turbulent
brethren appealed against Wesley, but Fletcher acted as mediator. To Wesley, now
eighty-one years of age, he said, "My father! my father! they have offended, but
they are your children." To the disputing preachers, "My brethren! my brethren!
he is your father!" Then he fell upon his knees and prayed until many were in
tears and sobbed aloud.

Fletcher’s last sermon was preached in Madeley Church, August 7, 1785, and after
the service he was carried fainting to his room. A week later he died, in the
fifty-sixth year of his age. "I was intimately acquainted with him," says John
Wesley, "for about thirty years. I conversed with him morning, noon, and night,
without the least reserve, during a journey of many hundred miles; and in all
that time I never heard him speak one improper word nor saw him do an improper
action. Many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, within
fourscore years; but one equal to him! have not known; one so inwardly and
outwardly devoted to God. So unblamable a character in every respect I have not
found either in Europe or America, and I scarce expect to find such another on
this side of eternity." "A pattern of all holiness, scarce to be paralleled in a
century!" His widow, Mary Bosanquet, continued for many years as an evangelist
and loving benefactress of her kind.

Fletcher’s refusal to assume the responsibilities of the work left John Wesley
without an apparent successor. But in 1784 he promulgated his plan for
perpetuating the Methodist organization. This was the Deed of
Declaration--sometimes named in legal phrase the Poll Deed--which he executed
February 28, 1784. It legally defined the "Conference of the people called
Methodists," and declared "how the succession and identity thereof is to be
continued."

Wesley’s Poll Deed contained the names of a hundred preachers who were to be in
the eye of the law what Wesley himself had been for forty years in relation to
his societies and trust property. He had been carefully training his preachers
for his responsibility. In a letter dated 1780 he had written, "I chose to
exercise the power which God had given me through the Conference--both to avoid
ostentation, and gently to habituate the people to obey them when I should be
taken from their head." This Wesley now carried out more fully by merging his
own authority in that of the Legal Conference. The Conference was to meet
annually, fill up vacancies in its number, elect a president and secretary,
station the preachers, admit preachers on trial and into full connection, and
maintain the discipline and general oversight of the societies. The term of
appointments for itinerant preachers was limited to three years. The deed was
not kept in reserve until Wesley’s death, as some writers have assumed, but five
months after its execution it was acted upon at the Conference by the election
of two preachers to fill vacancies in the Hundred, and by the formal signing of
the Minutes. Wesley was chosen president year by year until his death. Five or
six preachers who were annoyed by the omission of their names from the Hundred
severed their connection with Wesley, but at the Conference of 1785 all the
preachers present signed a document approving both of the substance and design
of the deed.

"Viewed in the light of outward appearances,’, wrote William Arthur, "the
enrollment of the Deed Poll of John Wesley would be one of the most commonplace
of events. Viewed in the light of the attention given to it at the time by men
of thought, of taste, or of affairs, it would rank as one of the most
insignificant; not of more consequence than the execution of his will by an
ordinary proprietor, or that of his deed of donation by the founder of some
local charity. Viewed in the light of its moral intent, however, it rose to the
rank of acts noble and wise. Viewed in its relations to Christianity as a
collective body of Churches, it belonged to the category of great ecclesiastical
events; and viewed in the light shed back upon it to-day by its historical
results, as developed up to the present time, it must be placed among those
pregnant acts in human affairs to which in successive generations other pregnant
acts have to trace up their own origin."

Three years later (November, 1787) Wesley took another step by which, as Dr.
Stoughton observes, "he became practically a Dissenter," however strongly he
might repudiate the term. He decided that the safest way to safeguard his work
was to secure legal licenses for his chapels and preachers, "not as Dissenters,"
he says, "but simply as preachers of the Gospel." By his repeated ordinations of
preachers to minister the sacraments "according to the usages of the Church of
England," he finally broke with the Church, though he insisted to the end that
he remained within the pale.

After quoting many of Wesley’s appeals to the Methodists against separation from
the Church of England, Canon Overton asks: "But some years before Wesley uttered
these words, had he not himself done the very thing which he deprecated
Consciously and intentionally, No! a thousand times no; but virtually, as a
matter of fact, we must reluctantly answer, Yes. Lord Mansfield’s famous dictum,
’Ordination is separation,’ is unanswerable. When, in 1784, Wesley ordained Coke
and Asbury to be superintendents, and Whatcoat and Vasey to be elders, he to all
intents and purposes crossed the Rubicon." With conspicuous fairness this able
Anglican historian finds "the true explanation of Wesley’s conduct in this
matter in the intensely practical character of his mind. His work... seemed
likely to come to a deadlock for want of ordained ministers. Thus we come back
to the old notion. Everything must be sacrificed for the sake of his work. Some
may think this was doing evil that good might come, but no such notion ever
entered into Wesley’s head; his rectitude of purpose, if not the clearness of
his judgment is as conspicuous in this as in the other acts of his life."

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 19: CHAPTER 19 - THE PASSING OF JOHN WESLEY
========================================================================

Chapter XIX - The Passing of John Wesley An Active Octogenarian.--Welcomed in
Ireland.--Triumphal Progresses. --" I do not Lack for Labor."--Last Open-air
Sermon.--The Last Text.--A Last Letter.--" The Best of All is, God is with Us !"
ON the verge of fourscore Wesley wrote: "I entered into my eightieth year, but,
blessed be God, my time is not labor and sorrow. I find no more pain nor bodily
infirmities than at five-and-twenty. This I still impute (1) to the power of
God, fitting me for what he calls me to; (2) to my still traveling four or five
thousand miles a year; (3) to my sleeping, night or day, whenever I want it; (4)
to my rising at a set hour; and (5) to my constant preaching, particularly in
the morning.." To these he added, "Lastly, evenness of temper. I feel and
grieve, but, by the grace of God, I fret at nothing. But still, ’ the help that
is done upon earth he doeth it himself.’ And this he doeth in answer to many
prayers."

It was not until he was eighty-five that he began to feel that he was not "quite
so agile as in times past," and that his sight was "a little decayed." But he
did not even then cease to labor, and his cheerfulness was irrepressible. The
days of persecution for him were past, and he was crowned with honor wherever he
went. A year after his brother’s death he paid his last visit to Ireland, where
he remained for nearly four months. The mayors of Dublin and Cork accorded him
civic honors, and he was everywhere a coveted guest. The traditions of his
prayers are cherished in many an Irish family to-day.

He took a nine weeks tour from Dublin through sixty towns into villages,
preaching a hundred sermons, six times in the open air, and once in a place
which he says was "large but not elegant a cow house." "I was delighted," says
Alexander Knox, "to find his cheerfulness in no respect abated. It was too
obvious that his bodily frame was sinking; but his spirit was as alert as ever,
and he was little less the light of the company he happened to be in than he had
been three-and-twenty years before, when I first knew him. Such unclouded
sunshine of the breast, in the deepest winter of age and on the felt verge of
eternity, bespoke a mind whose recollections were as unsullied as its present
sensations were serene."

He presided over his last Irish Conference (1789), and wrote: "I found such a
body of men as I hardly believed could have been found together in Ireland; men
of so sound experience, so deep piety, and so strong understanding. I am
convinced they are no way inferior to the English Conference, except it be in
number."

Wesley closed his farewell service in Ireland with his brother’s hymn, "Come,
let us join our friends above," pronouncing it the sweetest hymn his brother
ever wrote. Before going on shipboard the vast crowd on the quay again joined
him in singing. He then knelt down and asked God to bless them and their
families, the Church, and their country. Not a few fell upon his neck and kissed
him. As the ship moved from the shore the Irish people saw the patriarch’s hands
still uplifted in prayer for the land he loved so well, and "they saw his face
no more."

After Conference in 1789 he made a tour of Cornwall. Where once they had mobbed,
him they now lined the streets to stare "as if the king were going by."
Twenty-five thousand people heard him preach at Gwennap pit.

He wrote on January 1, 1790: "I am now an old man, decayed from head to foot. My
eyes are dim; my right hand shakes much; my mouth is hot and dry every morning;
I have a lingering fever almost every day; my motion is weak and slow. However,
blessed be God, I do not slack my labor; I can preach and write still." He
continued to rise at four, and was a prodigy of energy and industry. Once more
he visited Scotland, but it was apparent that his work was done. On his last
birthday, June 28, 1790, he thinks his strength "probably will not return in
this world. But I feel no pain from head to foot; only it seems nature is
exhausted, and, humanly speaking, will sink more and more till the weary springs
of life stand still." Tyerman truly observes, "No weary child of innocence ever
went to its welcome couch with greater serenity than Wesley went down the steps
leading to his sepulcher." This year he revisited Epworth, preaching at the
market cross. Companies of people went with him from village to village, men
walking on one side of the road and women on the other, singing as they walked,
guarding their precious charge. His salutation to the crowds as he passed was in
the words of his favorite apostle: "Little children, love one another." The last
Conference he attended was at Bristol, in 1790. In England there were now 71,463
members of society; in America, 43,260; and on the mission fields, 5,350. The
results during the last ten years of Wesley’s life were more than double the
united results of the forty years preceding. "The Conference business over, its
venerable head--who for seventy years had directed its deliberations--attached
his signature. The autograph--preserved now as a precious relic--too clearly
indicates that his eyes were dim, and that his hand had forgot its cunning." But
still he traveled, and preached in Wales, in Bristol and other towns in the west
and south, in the Isle of Wight, whose "poor, plain artless society" delights
him. Then companies of the brethren come out to meet him as he returns to
London. His last open-air service was held under an ash tree in the churchyard
at Winchelsea, Sussex, on October 6, 1790. He preached at noon, that the people
who were at work might hear. He stood on a large oak dining table, and spoke
from the words, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent ye, and believe the
gospel." One who was present said, "The word was with mighty power, and the
tears of the people flowed in torrents." The ash was long known as "Wesley’s
tree," and the vicar of the parish has hard work to protect it from
relic-hunting pilgrims.

Henry Crabb Robinson, the first war correspondent of the London Times and one of
the founders of London University, heard Wesley preach at Colchester, and says
that he stood in a wide pulpit and on each side of him was a minister, the two
holding him up. His voice was scarcely audible, and his reverend countenance,
with the long white locks, formed a picture never to be forgotten. "Of the kind,
I never saw anything comparable to it in after life." After the people had sung
a verse Wesley rose and said: "It gives me a great pleasure to find that you
have not lost your singing, neither men nor women. You have not forgotten a
single note. And I hope, by the assistance of God, which enables you to sing
well, you may do all other things well." A universal "Amen" followed. A little
ejaculation or prayer of three or four words followed each division of the
sermon. After the last prayer Wesley , rose up and addressed the people on
liberality of sentiment, and spoke much against refusing to join with any
congregation on account of difference of opinion." In these last days his
constant prayer Was, "Lord, let me not live to be useless;" and James Rogers
tells us that he often closed family prayers in the preachers’ home, City Road,
with the verse: O that without a lingering groan I may the welcome word receive;
My body with my charge lay down, And cease at once to work and live!

He writes his last letter to America on February 1, 1791: "Those that desire to
write . . . to me have no time to lose, for time has shaken me by the hand, and
death is not far behind .... Lose no opportunity of declaring to all men that
the Methodists are one people in all the world, and that it is their full
determination so to continue, Though mountains rise, and oceans roll, To sever
us in vain."

He arranged for another journey to Bath, and thence north, but that journey was
never taken. He preached for the last time in City Road Chapel on Tuesday
evening, February 22. Next day he preached in a magistrate’s house at
Leatherhead, eighteen miles from London. The text was," Seek ye the Lord while
he may be found; call ye upon him while he is near." This was Wesley’s last
sermon. The last of his innumerable letters was addressed to William
Wilberforce, the anti-slavery apostle. A better he never penned:

LONDON, FEBRUARY 24, 1791. MY DEAR SIR: Unless the divine Power has raised you
up to be as Athanasius, contra roundurn, I see not how you can go through your
glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the scandal of
religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this
very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God
be for you, who can be against you Are all of them together stronger than God 0
"be not weary in well-doing." Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of his
might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall
vanish away before it.

Reading this morning a tract, wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck
by that circumstance--that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged
by a white man, can have no redress, it being a law in our colonies that the
oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this! That He
who has guided you from your youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and
all things, is the prayer of, ’dear sir, your affectionate servant, JOHN WESLEY.

Weakness grew upon him daily. He was taken to the house in City Road, but was
very feeble. One day he would have written, but could not wield the pen. Miss
Ritchie suggested, "Let me write for you, sir; tell me what you would say."

"Nothing," he replied, "but that God is with us." He begged the friends who had
gathered round him to "pray and praise," responding with a fervent "Amen" to
their petitions. He grasped their hands and said, "Farewell, farewell." As
others entered the room he tried to speak, but finding they could not understand
him, he summoned all his remaining strength and cried out, "The best of all is,
God is with us." Then lifting up his dying arms in token of victory, and raising
his feeble voice with a holy triumph not to be expressed, he again repeated the
heart-reviving words, "The best of all is, God is with us." When Mrs. Charles
Wesley moistened his lips he repeated the thanksgiving which he had always used
after meals, "We thank thee, 0 Lord, for these and all thy mercies; bless the
Church and the king; and grant us truth and peace, through Jesus Christ our
Lord, forever and ever."

During the night he was often heard to say, "I’ll praise-- I’ll praise." Next
morning, about ten o’clock, Joseph Bradford, his faithful companion and nurse,
prayed at the bedside, where eleven of Wesley’s friends were assembled. The
dying patriarch was heard to say, "Farewell;" then as Bradford was repeating,
"Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and
this heir of glory shall come in!" he entered, "without a lingering groan," into
the joy of his Lord. His friends standing around sang: Waiting to receive thy
spirit, Lo, the Saviour stands above, Shows the purchase of his merit, Reaches
out the crown of love. Then they knelt down, and Mr. Rogers led them in prayer
"for the descent of the Holy Ghost on us and all who mourn the loss the Church
militant sustains by the removal of our much-loved father to his great reward."

John Wesley died on Wednesday, March 2, 1791, in his eighty-eighth year. The day
before his funeral his body was laid in City Road Chapel, and ten thousand
persons passed through the building to take a last look upon his face. The poet
Rogers was one of the number, and was wont to speak of the peace and beauty of
the face, on which there lingered a heavenly smile. To lessen the dangers of a
vast crowd it was thought desirable for the funeral to take place in the early
morning of Wednesday, March 9. The service was read by the Rev. John Richardson,
one of the clergymen who had helped Wesley for nearly thirty years. When he came
to the words, "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto himself
the soul of our dear brother," and substituted with profound feeling the word
"father," the throng of people were deeply affected, and loud sobs took the
place of silent tears. In one of his American addresses of 1878 Dean Stanley
said: "On visiting in London the City Road Chapel, in which John Wesley
ministered, and the cemetery adjoining, in which he is buried, I asked an old
man who showed me the cemetery --I asked him, perhaps inadvertently, and as an
English Churchman might naturally ask--’ By whom was this cemetery Consecrated’
And he answered, ’ It was consecrated by the bones of that holy man, that holy
servant of God, John Wesley.’" At the first Conference after Wesley’s death
Joseph Bradford produced a sealed letter, which Wesley had charged him to
deliver to the president, containing his last counsels to the Conference. It was
dated 1785 and stated that some of the traveling preachers had expressed a fear
lest those who were named in the Deed of Declaration should exclude their
brethren "either from preaching in connection with you or from some other
privileges which they now enjoy. I know no other way to prevent any such
inconvenience than to leave these, my last words, with you. I beseech you, by
the mercies of God, that you never avail yourselves of the Deed of Declaration
to assume any superiority over your brethren, but let all things go on among
those itinerants who choose to remain together exactly in the same manner as
when I was with you, so far as circumstances will permit. In particular, I
beseech you, if you ever loved me, and if you now love God and your brethren, to
have no respect for persons in stationing the preachers, in choosing children
for the Kingswood School, in disposing of the yearly contribution and the
preachers’ fund, or any other public money. But do all things with a single eye,
as I have done from the beginning. Go on thus, doing all things without
prejudice or Partiality, and God will be with you even to the end."

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 20: CHAPTER 20 - THE TRUE JOHN WESLEY
========================================================================

Chapter XX - The True John Wesley

John Wesley’s Appearance.--His habits.--His Temperament.--His Tact.--His Love of
Children.--His Unhappy Matrimonial Experience.--His Wit and Humor.--His Freedom
from Selfish Ambition.--Asbury’s Tribute.

MANY authentic portraits, from Williams, in 1763, to Romney, in 1788, have given
John Wesley’s features to the world. His hazel eyes are said to have been bright
and penetrating, even to the last. In youth his hair was black, and in old age
silvery white. In height he was not quite five feet six inches, and he weighed
one hundred and twenty-two pounds; his frame was well knit, muscular, and
strong. He was scrupulously neat in his person and habits, and wore a
narrow-plaited stock, a coat with a small upright collar, buckled shoes, and
three-cornered hat. "I dare no more," he said in his old age, "write in a fine
style than wear a fine coat." "Exactly so," remarks Overton, "but, then, he was
particular about his coats. He was most careful never to be slovenly in his
dress, always to be dressed in good taste. . . . It is just the same with his
style; it is never slovenly, never tawdry." In his habits of order,
account-keeping, and punctuality he was literally a "methodist." "Sammy," said
he to his nephew, "be punctual. Whenever I am to go to a place the first thing I
do is to get ready; then what time remains is all my own." In old age, as he
stood waiting for his chaise at Haslingden, he remarked, "I have lost ten
minutes, and they are lost forever."

Every minute had its value to him for work or rest. "Joshua, when I go to bed I
go to bed to sleep, and not to talk," was his rebuke to a young preacher who
once shared his room and wished to converse at sleeping time.

Dr. Johnson once said to Boswell: "John Wesley’s conversation is good, but he is
never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very
disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out, as I do.
"On another occasion he said, "I hate to meet John Wesley; the dog enchants you
with his conversation, and then breaks away to go and visit some old woman."

Yet Wesley was never hurried in mind or manner. "He had no time," says Henry
Moore, "to mend anything that he either wrote or did. He therefore always did
everything: not only with quietness, but with what might be thought slowness."

Wesley was a delightful companion, and his comrades on the road and friends in
the home witness to his cheerfulness, courtesy, kindness, and wit, "Sour
godliness is the devil’s religion," was one of his sayings. He told Mr.
Blackwell that he could not bear to have people about him who were in ill humor,
and he did his best to cure them.

Knox, as we have seen, was charmed with Wesley’s habitual cheerfulness. When he
first met him he tried to form an impartial judgment of his character, and
wrote: "So fine an old man I never saw! The happiness of his mind beamed forth
in his countenance. Every look showed how fully he enjoyed ’the gay remembrance
of a life well spent.’ Wherever Wesley went he diffused a portion of his own
felicity, Easy and affable in his demeanor, he accommodated himself to every
sort of company, and showed how happily the most finished courtesy may be
blended with the most perfect piety. In his conversation we might be at a loss
whether to admire most his fine classical taste, his extensive knowledge of men
and things, or his overflowing goodness of heart. While the grave and serious
were charmed with his wisdom, his sportive sallies of innocent mirth delighted
even the young and thoughtless; and both saw in his uninterrupted cheerfulness
the excellency of true religion. No cynical remarks on the levity of youth
embittered his discourses. No applausive retrospect to past times marked his
present discontent. In him even old age appeared delightful, like an evening
without a cloud; and it was: impossible to observe him without wishing
fervently, ’May my latter end be like his! ’"

Wesley and one of his preachers were once taking lunch with a gentleman whose
daughter had been greatly impressed by Wesley’s preaching. The itinerant, a man
of very plain manners and little tact, was conversing with the young lady, who
was remarkable for her beauty. He noticed that she wore a number of rings, and
taking hold of her hand, he raised it, and called Wesley’s attention to the
sparkling gems. "What do you think of this, sir," said he, "for a Methodist’s
hand" The girl turned crimson, and the question was awkward for Wesley, whose
aversion to all display of jewelry was so well known. But the aged evangelist
showed a tact Chesterfield might have envied. With a quiet, benevolent smile he
looked up, and simply said, "The hand is very beautiful." The young lady
appeared at evening service without her jewels, and became an earnest Christian.
Of Wesley’s love for children many anecdotes are told. Robert Southey says: "I
was in a house in Bristol where Wesley was. When a mere child, on running down
stairs before him with a beautiful little sister of my own, whose ringlets were
floating over her shoulders, he overtook us on the landing and took 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 as though I had the blessing of that
good man upon me at the present moment." As Southey spoke the last words his
eyes glistened with tears, and his voice showed what deep emotion the memory of
that scene of his childhood awakened.

John Wesley’s marriage presents a sad contrast to his brother’s happy union. Dr. Rigg, in his Living Wesley, with psychological insight and balanced judgment has forever vindicated Wesley, and the Christian women with whom he was brought into close relations before and after his unhappy marriage, from the austere and by no means discriminating or delicate criticism of more voluminous writers on the subject. Wesley’s letters, he says, reveal his "extreme natural susceptibility to whatever was graceful and amiable in woman, especially if united to mental vigor and moral excellence. He had been brought up in the society of clever and virtuous women---his sisters--and it seems as if he could at no time in his life dispense with the exquisite and stimulating pleasure which he found in female society and correspondence. He was naturally a woman worshiper--at least a worshiper of such women. An almost reverent courtesy, a warm but pure affection, a delicate but close familiarity, marked through life his relations with the good and gifted women--gifted they were, for the most part--with whom he maintained friendship and correspondence."

Alexander Knox, who convinced Southey of Wesley’s freedom from personal
ambition, also wrote to Hannah More a letter which reveals an unbiased critic’s
view of Wesley’s relation to his women friends. He is writing of Wesley’s
friendship with Miss Knox, and having transcribed a note to himself, in which
Wesley sends an earnest message to "My dear Sally Knox," declaring that he
"loves her dearly, and shall be glad to meet her at our Lord’s right hand," Mr.
Knox proceeds as follows: "John Wesley’s impressible nature inclined him to
conceive such attachments, and the childlike innocence of his heart disposed him
to express them with the most amiable simplicity. The gayety of his nature was
so undiminished in its substance, while it was divinely disciplined in its
movements, that to the latest hour of his life there was nothing innocently
pleasant with which he was not pleased, and nothing naturally lovely which, in
its due proportion, he was not ready to love. To interesting females,
especially, this affection continually showed itself; of its nature and kind,
what he says of my sister gives a striking manifestation." This susceptibility
of Wesley shows that his somewhat ascetic and intensely busy public life and his
ecclesiastical statesmanship did not crush his tender human feeling, as some of
his critics have supposed. In four instances Wesley the friend became a lover
before he made the fatal mistake of marrying one who proved unworthy of his
affection. Miss Betty Kirkham, the sister of one of the earliest Oxford
Methodists, was his first love. With her he corresponded in the curious stilted
manner of the day--a style he afterward utterly forsook. In those first love
letters he transformed prosaic Betty into the romantic "Varanese," just as in
his later correspondence with Mrs. Pendarve (Delany) he named that lady
"Aspasia," his brother Charles "Cyrus," and himself "Araspes." Then came his
ill-fated love affair with Miss Hopkey, in Georgia, which revealed what Canon
Overton calls "his extreme guilelessness, his readiness to believe the best of
everybody, his utterly unsuspicious nature." But the broken courtship which
brought him most pain was with Mrs. Grace Murray.

Grace Murray, a sailor’s widow, was then a devoted worker in the orphanage at
Newcastle. She had a hundred members in her classes, was a skillful housekeeper,
and nursed the sick itinerants who found refuge in Wesley’s northern home. In
spite of the pungent aspersions of Tyerman there is nothing in the history of
her residence at the orphanage inconsistent with the conclusion that "she was a
woman not only of singular tact, but of attractive modesty and of deep piety."
All who knew her best testify to this; her diary, and the savor of her piety,
and long after-life as a wife and widow of another than Wesley confirm this.
Canon Overton is in evident sympathy with Charles Wesley’s strong objection to
having "a ci-devant servant-maid for his sister-in-law." But she was far
superior in intelligence and true refinement to many "ladies of quality" of the
coarse Georgian period. That she manifested weakness and vacillation under
circumstances of great perplexity may be granted, but in a woman of tender
conscience and compassionate heart, surrounded by conflicting counselors, this
is not surprising. John Bennet, one of Wesley’s preachers, and John Wesley
himself both fell in love with her. She had nursed the former through an illness
of six months, in 1747, and next year Wesley was under her care for six days.
She accompanied the preachers on their journeys to assist in village work, in
leading bands and classes, and addressing small gatherings. According to the
custom of that century, when women everywhere rode on pillion behind servingman,
friend, or relative, she followed the fashion. Mrs. Charles Wesley did the same.
Mr. Tyerman reflects on Wesley for thus taking Grace Murray with him on journeys
when there was special work for her to do. Wesley’s contemporaries would have
thought no evil of this, nor was there any impropriety in it. She corresponded
with John Bennet, and, though there does not appear to have been a definite
agreement between them, their marriage was no doubt looked forward to by both;
but when John Wesley, with characteristic decision, made her an offer of
marriage In August, 1748, she accepted it with surprise and delight. But John
Bennet proved to be a successful rival, persuaded Grace Murray that it was her
duty to marry him, and said that if she did not, he should "run mad." Charles
Wesley intervened, alarmed at the thought of his brother marrying a woman who
was so inferior to his own wife in social station. He saw Grace Murray and
passionately remonstrated with her--" Grace Murray, you have broken my heart!"
The weak, distressed, and vacillating woman rode with him to Newcastle and fell
at Bennet’s feet, begging forgiveness for using him so badly. Within a week she
became John Bennet’s wife.

Bennet soon left Wesley, taking with him the majority of the members at Bolton
and Stockport. He afterward became a Calvinistic minister at Warburton, where he
died, in 1759. The loss of Grace Murray was the greatest personal sorrow of John
Wesley’s life. Very pathetic are the letters and verses in which he refers to
the event. He did not meet her again until 1788. "The meeting was affecting,"
says Moore, who was present; "but Mr. Wesley preserved more than his usual
self-possession. It was easy to see, notwithstanding the many years which had
intervened, that both in sweetness of spirit and in person and manners she was a
fit subject for the tender regrets expressed in his verses. The interview did
not continue long, and I do not remember that I ever heard Mr. Wesley mention
her name afterward."

If Wesley had married Grace Murray he would have been saved from the matrimonial
disaster which afterward befell him. In 1751 he married Mrs. Vazeille, the widow
of a London merchant. Wesley took care that her fortune should be settled on
herself and children, and it was agreed that he should not preach one sermon or
travel one mile less than before his marriage. During the first four years Mrs.
Wesley accompanied her husband on many of his journeys, but she naturally grew
discontented with the discomforts of this unsettled life, and when she remained
at home she became possessed of such an absurd jealousy of her husband that she
almost became a monomaniac.

Charles Wesley early discovered her to be of an angry and bitter spirit, and in
1753 wrote to his own amiable wife: "I called, two minutes before preaching, on
Mrs. Wesley at the Foundry, and in all that time had not one quarrel." He begs
his wife to be courteous without trusting her. She acted with such unreasonable
malice that it is charitable to accept the suggestion that she was at times
mentally unsound. She seized her husband’s papers, interpolated his letters, and
then gave them into the hands of his enemies or published them in the
newspapers. She shut up Charles Wesley with her husband in a room, and told them
of their faults with much detail and violence. Charles called her his "best
friend," for this service, but began to recite Latin poetry and persisted until
she at last set her prisoners free. He had tried this device with good effect on
his voyage from Georgia.

Sometimes Mrs. Wesley drove a hundred miles to see who was with her husband in
his carriage. John Hampson, one of Wesley’s preachers, witnessed her in one of
her fits of fury, and said, "More than once she laid violent hands upon him, and
tore those venerable locks which had suffered sufficiently from the ravages of
time." She often left him, but returned again in answer to his entrearies. In
1771 he writes: "For what cause I know not, my wife set out for Newcastle,
purposing ’never to return.’ Non eam reliqui ; non dimisi; non revocabo." (I did
not forsake her; I did not dismiss her; I shall not recall her.) In 1774 a
petulant letter shows she was still with her husband. She died at Camberwell, in
1781, when Wesley was in the West of England. Jackson in his Life of Charles
Wesley says that several letters of Wesley to his termagant wife, during his
worst trials from her, show "the utmost tenderness of affection, such as few
female hearts could have withstood; and justify the opinion that, had it: been
his happiness to be married to a person who was worthy of him, he could have
been one of the most affectionate husbands that ever lived. Those who think that
he was constitutionally cold and repulsive utterly mistake his character."

He told Henry Moore that he believed God overruled this prolonged sorrow for his
good; and that if Mrs. Wesley had been a better wife, and had continued to act
in that way she knew well how to act, he might have been unfaithful to his great
work, and might have sought too much to please her according to her own desires.
Of wit and humor there is much in the Journals, and much more in the pithy
letters which he was continually sending to his preachers. His anecdotes and
racy sayings often supplied a tonic much needed by some of these itinerants

He was naturally quick-tempered, and sometimes said sharp things, but he was yet
quicker to apologize if he felt he had spoken too hastily and in anger. He was
incapable of malice, and was marvelously ready to forgive his most cruel
traducers and hitterest opponents.

It must be admitted that Wesley was sometimes too ready to believe the
marvelous, and that his guileless trustfulness of his fellow-men betrayed him
into practical errors during his half century of labor. "My brother," said
Charles Wesley, "was, I think, born for the benefit of knaves." He was too prone
to take men and women at their own estimates. He attributed to the immediate
interposition of Providence events which might be attributed to natural causes.
He was too ready to regard the physical phenomena of the early years of the
revival as spiritual signs, though he checked them when he was convinced of
their imposture.

Southey was convinced by Knox of his error in regarding selfish ambition as a
leading feature in Wesley’s character. Canon Overton truly says that "Knox knew
Wesley intimately; Southey did not." Knox, who united wide culture with ardent
piety, but who differed from Wesley in some of his opinions, speaks thus of his
motives: "The slightest suspicion of pride, ambition, selfishness, or personal
gratification of any kind stimulating Mr. Wesley in any instance, or mixing in
any measure with the movements of his life, never once entered into my mind.
That such charges were made by his opponents I could not be ignorant. But my
deep impression remains unimpaired--that since the days of the apostles there
has not been a human being more thoroughly exempt from all those frailties of
human nature than John Wesley," "And this," says Overton, "is the unvarying’
strain of those who knew Wesley best." He was a born ruler of men, but he used
his extraordinary power for no selfish ends. He ruled preachers and people with
absolute authority, but he was no despot. He was the patriarch of his people,
and they knew he spoke the truth when he said: "The power I have I never sought;
it was the unexpected result of the work which God was pleased to work, by me. I
therefore suffer it till I can find some one to ease me of my burden." When he
heard that men said he was "shackling freeborn Englishmen," "making himself a
pope," and exercising arbitrary power, he replied with characteristic
artlessness: "If you mean by arbitrary power a power which I exercise singly,
without any colleague therein, this is certainly true; but I see no harm in it.
Arbitrary in this sense is a very harmless word. I bear this burden merely for
your sakes." He possessed, as Macaulay says, "a genius for government." Matthew
Arnold ascribes to him "a genius for godliness." Southey considered him "a man
of great views, great energies, and great virtues; the most influential mind of
the last century; the man who will have produced the greatest effects centuries,
or, perhaps, millenniums hence." In America the irritation caused by Wesley’s
expression of his opinions during the Revolution had passed away before he died.
Bishop Asbury in his Journal (April 29, 1791) refers to the death "of that dear
man of God," and gives what Dr. Buckley well calls "probably the best estimate
of his character and career." It is well worth quoting here as we conclude our
plain account of his life: "When we consider his plain and nervous writings, his
uncommon talent for sermonizing and journalizing; that he had such a steady flow
of animal spirits; so much of the spirit of government in him; his knowledge as
an observer; his attainments as a scholar; his experience as a Christian; I
conclude his equal is not to be found among all the sons he hath brought up, nor
his superior among all the sons of Adam he may have left behind."

Text scanning, proofreading, MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan
Danker.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided
this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of
any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley
Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the
Wesley Center Online for permission or to report errors.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/john-wesley-the-methodist/
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