';i.f *,^ ^m.:-'

Bought with the income
of the
Samuel Lockwood Fund

Br THE SAME AUTHOR
OUR BROTHER OF JOY.
WHEN FAITHS FLASH OUT.

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON ¦ BOMBAY ¦ CALCUTTA • MADRAS
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK ¦ BOSTON - CHICAGO
DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

WESLEY
THE ANGLICAN

BY

DAVID BAINES-GRIFFITHS, M.A.
MINISTER OF EDGEHILL CHURCH, NEW YORK

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1919

COPYRIGHT

TO
SAM HIGGINBOTTOM OF
ALLAHABAD

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction . . . ix
I. Antecedent ... . i
II. Son of the Manse . .12
III. The Scholar . 17
IV. The Bookman ... 25
V. Wesley's "Journal" . . .36
VI. An Oxford Don in Georgia . . 40
VII. Servant or Son ? . . . .50
VIII. The Apostolic Dawn . 60
\J IX. Methodism : a Personal Faith with
Social Consequences ... 77
X. Wesley the Churchman ... 93
XL Wesley the Human . . . -133

VU

INTRODUCTION
Wesley the Anglican had its origin in
a paper read by the author before a
group of professors and students at the
General Theological Seminary (Protestant
Episcopal), New York. There was a
unanimous feeling on the part of all
present, that the subject had been so
uniquely and suggestively treated that
the paper should be expanded and pub
lished in book form. Acting upon this
request the author expanded the paper
into this book.
In November of 191 8, in response to
reiterated invitations from the British
Churches, the author, Rev. David Baines-
ix

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
Griffiths, M.A., undertook a three months'
mission among the Churches of England
and Wales on behalf of the closer unity
of the English-speaking peoples. He
brought the manuscript of Wesley the
Anglican with him to England and it
was accepted by Macmillan & Co. While
the book was in the press the author
suddenly passed away at Liverpool. He
was buried in the village of his birth,
Llandudno, Wales. The land that gave
him to America claimed him at his death.
It was in the performance of a beautiful
task of reconciliation between the country
of his birth and the land of his adoption
that he died.
Mr. Baines- Griffiths went to America
upon the advice of Mr. Moody, whom he
met in the course of the great revival.
He was educated at Mr. Moody's schools
at Mount Hermon and at Harvard Uni
versity. After serving in various churches

INTRODUCTION
he was finally called to the Edgehill
Church, New York City, where for many
years he exercised a unique and influential
ministry. His two books. Our Brother
of Joy and When Faiths Flash Out,
reflect the rare quality of his sermons.
During the period of his pastorate at this
church he was also the reviewer of the
philosophical and religious books for the
New Tork Tribune, and a regular con
tributor to the editorial columns of The
Christian Work. His memory will always
remain a link between the two great
English-speaking peoples, whom he loved
equally.
FREDERICK LYNCH.
London, March 6, 19 19.

ANTECEDENT
When Henry VIII. was thirty years old
he published his book entitled. An
Assertion of the Seven Sacraments against
Martin Luther, an adventure in the fields
of authorship which had its results. One
was that among the bales of merchandise
fetched from the Continent the writings of
Luther more and more found their way
into the homes of England, thus augment
ing the mass of freer thought to which
pioneers like Wyckliffe and Tyndale and
— slater from another direction — Erasmus
had been contributing. Another con
sequence of Henry's liteirary assault upon

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
the Wittenberg monk, his senior by eight
years, was the winning of a fresh title,
Defender of the Faith. By a Bull of
October 26, 1521, the reigning pope, Leo
X., conferred the new degree in divinity
upon the debonair monarch who could be
so chivalrous on occasion and so urbane
when, not provoked. The legend was to
function in a way never dreamed of by the
pontiff who bestowed it. Now and again
a later ruler of England, a maculate Mary
or a Caliban James II., might equal
Henry VIII. in devotion to Catholic truth ;
yet the title. Defender of the 'Faith as
current British coinage reminds us, was to
be part of. the official designation of the
King of England in his capacity of supreme
Governor of the Protestant Reformed
Church of England as by law estab
lished. Although of a mediaeval mind, and
strongly Roman in sympathy, Henry

ANTECEDENT
ultimately found the authority of the
visible Church of Christ to be a serious
bar to domestic projects ctf his own.
Combining political ambitions with other
personal considerations he caused the
Convocation of Canterbury to declare in
1534, that "the Roman Bishop hath
no greater jurisdiction given to him by
God in this kingdom than any other
foreign bishop." The Convocation of
York gave its testimony in words not
identical but similar. Lest we should
suppose the action of the respective Con
vocations to have been voluntary and due
to patriotic and freedom-loving impulses
we must remind ourselves that the proceed
ings were owing to the persistent energy
of the King's canny henchman, Thomas
Cromwell. Having long accustomed
himself to think in terms of a premier, it
was becoming in Cromwell to advise that
the reluctance of the clergy to take so
3

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
radical a course be dispelled by means of a
threat of praemunire, the good old process
of seizure upon failure to obey. The
clergy, at least those who were not hanged,
obeyed. Nor did the King, on his part,
treat lightly his position as supreme
governor of the newly made, or shall we
say confiscated. Church. In matters of
faith, where some special training has often
been thought to be a pre-requisite for the
holding of magisterial powers, this hand
some occupant of the English throne
deemed himself a sufficient decider. A
priest named Lambert was haled before the
theological majesty, accused of having
adopted the views of Zwingli about the
Lord's Supper, views that we now know to
have been much in accord with those of
Calvin, so far as these latter are reflected
in the twenty-eighth of the Articles of the
Church of. England. The royal judge
informed the cleric that the words "This
4

ANTECEDENT
is My Body" settled the matter, and the
priest was forthwith condemned to be
burned to death. Men like Cardinal
Fisher and Sir Thomas More, whose
formal religious views were not unlike
those of Henry himself, were dismissed
this mortal life because they refused to
acknowledge the supremacy, in the English
part of the visible Church, of a secular
ruler.^ A widening retrospect enables us
to see how sixteenth - century Catholics
and seventeenth - century Separatists and
nineteenth-century Tractarians could have
agreed at least in one principle, that in all
spiritual things or causes no temporal
monarch could be supreme.
Although that fine title Defender of
the Faith was seldom to do duty as the
ensign of Catholic rule in England, it was
fated to serve as the symbol of a regime as
' Robert I. Wilberforce, An Inquiry into the Principles Oj
Church-Authority, or. Reasons for recalling my Subscription to the
Royal Supremacy (1855). 5

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
rigid and inhuman as any papal tyranny
from which the English folk, some from
religious motives, some for reasons of
state, and King Henry for a variety of
reasons, had sought to be relieved. The
absolutism of the political government of
the Reformed Church was to become a
black grievance when the awakened mind
of England saw new horizons looming for
the spirit of man. Nor was the despotic
mania the exclusive possession of any one
party. In the century later than Henry
VIII., when the monarchy had been for
the moment anaesthetized, and Common
wealth men were in the saddle, a like
disposition prevailed. The main difference
was as to who held the whip. Down to
' our day traces of the ignoble despotism
have lingered ; but for a flagrant example
we go back to the year 1662, two years
after the coronation of Charles II. The
Prayer Book having been revised in what
6

ANTECEDENT
would be called a party interest,^ the Act
of Uniformity required every clergyman
to use the new book on and after St.
Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1662.
Before that date every parson, vicar, or
other minister whatsoever was to declare
publicly his unfeigned assent and consent
to all and everything contained and
prescribed in and by the new revision ot
the new Book of Common Prayer. For
the rank and file of the ministers of the
Church the use of the prescribed liturgy
involved little or no hardship. A demand
yet more arbitrary was the requirement
that certain clergy, of hitherto sound
ecclesiastical standing, should submit to
ordination at the hands of a bishop.
Having already been lawfully ordained in
the Church of England, they were bidden
' " It is curious and sad to think how much of dirty human
passion underlies the Prayer Book ; e.g. the word ' Schism ' in
the Litany was inserted in 1661. . . ." Diary of Stopford
Brooke, June 10, 1861, quoted in L. P. Jacks's Life and Letters
of Stopford Brooke, p. 120. 7

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
submit to a process which, to them, could
mean only a sacrilegious re - ordination.
The Act of Uniformity further required
that every clergyman promise upon oath
that he would not take up arms against
the King. It will be seen that, judged by
these tests, neither our Lord nor His
Apostles could have been accorded
ministerial standing in the Church of 1662,
and that if such a demand respecting the
King had been in vogue in the American
Colonies George Washington would never
have become the father of his country.
No humanity interposed to soften the
rigours of this legislation which resembled
the Conventicle Act in embodying what
Andrew Marvell called " the quintessence
of arbitrary malice. " On St. Bartholomew's
Day, slightly reminiscent of the bloody
festival in France some ninety years before,
over two thousand sons of the Church of
England renounced their lives and went
8

ANTECEDENT
forth into a homeless world. The search
ing light of historical inquiry does but
make more clear the fact of their having
chosen honour before comfort and the
reproach of Christ as greater riches than
the spoils of uniformity.
Among the victims of the Ejectmentj
"renowned," as Bishop Boyd Carpenter
phrases it, " in the universities for their
learning and in their parishes for their
activity," were John Lightfoot and John
Ho^e, Richard Baxter, Philip Henry,
and John Owen. Among the men less
renowned in their day was a John Wesley
who in that same year was forced by the
Act to leave his parish of Blandford.
His father, \^ho was still alive, had been
compelled through the working of an
earlier piece of legislation to relinquish
the living of Ailington in Dorsetshire.
The younger man, endeavouring to preach
after the Ejectment, was four times put in
9

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
prison. He died at the age of thirty-
three, and the Vicar of Preston would not
allow the priest's body to be buried in the
church. A son, Samuel, had been born
to the nonconforming churchman in the
very year of grace 1662. In due time
Samuel went to Oxford, where his grand
father and father had been before him, his
father having had recognition from the
vice-chancellor for progress in the Oriental
tongues. Samuel Wesley was not to sus
tain the brief tradition of protest, for
among contemporary nonconformists he
found a spirit of acrid intolerance. The
discovery confirmed him in a decision to
turn to the ancestral Church and to take
orders. When a curate in London he
married the admirable Susannah, daughter
of Dr. Annesley, the inflexible remonstrant,
who himself had been a victim of the
Separatist enactment of 1662.^ Samuel
' Daniel Neal, History of the Puritans, ii. 301.
10

ANTECEDENT
Wesley was not friendly to the, projects of
the Romanist, James II. When William
and Mary came to the throne the clergy
man wrote a Defence of the Revolution
and dedicated the. work to Queen Mary.
He was rewarded by being presented to
the living of Epworth in Lincolnshire.
In the Epworth Rectory Samuel's second
son, named John, was born June 17, 1703.
Charles Wesley was born six years later.

II

II
SON OF THE MANSE
On occasion the state of English politics
could find their reflection in the parsonage
at Epworth. The man of the house had
favoured the accession of William and
Mary, and at the domestic altar he was
wont to pray for the rulers. The rector's
wife happened to hold an entirely different
opinion about these imported regalities,
but being a dutiful spouse she pursued an
industrious silence. About a year before
William of Orange died the loyalist rector
of Epworth became aware of the fact that
the mistress of the manse never said Amen
to the prayers for the King's Majesty. A
pointed question procured a plain answer.
12

SON OF THE MANSE
Susannah was a Jacobite. She did not
believe that William was lawful King of
England. The secret was out. Samuel
Wesley vowed he would not live with
Susannah until she was ready to say Amen
to the prayer for King William. He rode
off in a rage, and this curious rectory was
minus a rector for toward twelve months.
Then the death of the King conveniently
allowed a reconciliation, inasmuch as neither
husband nor wife had scruples about pray
ing for Queen Anne.
Scientific pedagogy never had the op
portunity to enlighten Susannah Wesley
about the rearing of children. She herself
had been well reared, and she needed no
Froebel to tell her to live with her children.
Indeed, we might ask, what else could she
do ? For she gave birth to no fewer than
nineteen, of whom six came to mature
years. What with daily schooling of t^ie
infants, tending them in smallpox and
13

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
other sicknesses, the rector's wife hardly
lived in a doll's house. Fortunately she
had brought to her duties not only a con
trolled spirit but a mind on which practical
forms of education as well as the liberalizing
influence of Greek and Latin had made
an impression. A glimpse of Susannah's
method is given us in the fact that none of
the children, excepting Kezzy, was taught
to read before the age of five. In Kezzy's
case, says Mrs. Wesley significantly, " I
was overruled, and she was more years in
learning than any of the rest had been
months. . . . One day was allowed the
child wherein to learn its letters, and each
of them did In that time know all its letters,
great and small, except Molly and Nancy,
who were a day and a half before they knew
them perfectly, for which I then thought
them very dull. But the reason why I
thought them so was because the rest learned
them so readily, and your brother Samuel,
14

SON OF THE MANSE
who was the first child I ever taught, learned
the alphabet in a few hours." ^
Now it happened that a sense of public
duty made the rector an assiduous attendant
at meetings of Convocation. This was at
an expense which his household could not
properly afford. Also, it was at an expendi
ture of time somewhat to the disadvantage
of the parish. During the periods of absence
there was no Sunday afternoon service at
Epworth. On the Sunday evenings the
minister's wife would gather the family
about her, pray with them, read a sermon,
and then lead in religious conversation.
Neighbours happening to come In were
admitted to the circle. The numbers in
creased, and Mrs. Wesley was soon speak
ing to as many as two hundred people.
When the absent rector was told that more
were coming than' the room would hold
he felt impelled to write his wife a strong
^ Southey's Life of fFesley, p. 9.
15

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
word of objection. Because of her sex he
said such ai;rangemcnts "looked particular."
Moreover, a scandalized curate had been
writing the rector about the same irregu
larities. Correspondence on this difficulty
goes to show that Susannah Wesley was
a woman with a mind, and a mind of her
own. Although having no vote in the
realm of England, she could on occasion
bring things to pass. Hear the dutiful
wife as she closes the discussion in which
you are sure she had won the day :
" 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 con
science ; but send me your positive com
mand, 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. ' ' ^
' Southey, p. 13.
16

Ill
THE SCHOLAR
" On our way to finding, if we can, the hid
ings of the energy of John Wesley as of
one exerting a religious influence " greater
than that exercised by any individual Chris
tian during the last three hundred years," ^ ¦
we are under compulsion to take account
of his scholarship and of the breadth of his
mental life. To begin with, nothing is
clearer than that he came of intellectual
stock. The paternal grandmother was a
niece of ThomasFuller,thewit and historian;
of whom Coleridge said that- he was incom
parably the most sensible, the least pre-
' Wm. Boyd Carpenter, Popular History of the Church of
England, p. 364..
17 c

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
judiced, great man of an age that boasted a
galaxy of great men. Wesley's grandfather
and namesake was, as we have seen, ac
knowledged a scholar in his University at
Cambridge. The versatile rector of Ep
worth, John's father, graduated B.A. at
Exeter College in the same University, was
assuredly a man of parts. He published a
life of Christ, a Latin commentary on the
Book of Job, besides some minor writings
and several volumes of verse. Indeed, his
long poem on the Battle of Blenheim proved
so acceptable — acceptable, that is, to the
persons concerned — that the Duke of Marl
borough made Samuel Wesley, sen., the
chaplain of a regiment. John was prepared-
for college at the Charterhouse school in
London, and he was entered at Christ
Church, Oxford, when he was seventeen.
By that time he had already made good
progress in Hebrew, thanks to the tutelage
of an older brother, Samuel, who was after-
i8

THE SCHOLAR
wards headmaster at Blundell's. Conceded
that the University was not in those days
at its best estate, the undergraduate's train
ing in the classics seems to have been of
the typical Oxford quality, so that he was
at home with his authors. From the year
1 73 1 it became the life-long habit of John
and Charles Wesley to correspond with each
other in Latin. Long before he left the
University he had accumulated material for
a critical annotation of Horace. Seeing that
Wesley was endowed with a relentlessly
logical mind, it is not surprising to learn
that logic was with him a subject of especial
devotion. The narrative goes to show
that logic was, to him, something that had
to do with the business of life. So it is
not without good grounds that Mr. Paul
Elmer More, in one of his Shelburne
Essays, touches on the "evangelical absolut
ism " of Wesley ; or that Baron Friedrich
von HUgel, the accomplished Roman
19

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
Catholic scholar, should speak of him as
" the man of absolute judgments." ^
While our Undergraduate was a fairly
diligent student, it must be remembered
that In the first years at Oxford he was
under no sense of vocation. He was the
man of taste, the man of the world, a lively
lad intent on what was going on ; seeing
Macbeth or Richard III. performed at
Drury Lane ; reading the current plays.
Half- Pay Officers, Royal Convert, The
Orphan, The Silent Woman ; dancing at
a week-end party ; putting in an hour
or two at tennis ; turning off light
verse, or translating something as non
sensical ; somewhat thriftless, and giving
his father not a i&N anxious momients over
money matters. For a year or so after
taking his degree he has associations of a
pleasant sort which will be relinquished
before he is steadily set on his course.
^ The Mystical Element of Religion, vol. ii. p. 4., n.
20

THE SCHOLAR
There was his response to the apparition
of Mary Granville, distantly related to
the Garrett Wesley who was created Baron
of Mornington. It was this Lord Morning-
ton who afterwards desired to make Charles
Wesley his heir. Mary Granville was the
widow of Alexander Pendarves, and she
was three years older than John Wesley.
One gets glimpses of the amiable woman
as she shares the life of her day in London,
boating on the Thames in a party where
the Duchess of Ancaster provides amuse
ment by catterwauling some piece out of
The Beggar's Opera, jaunting to Greenwich,
attending Court, and then sitting by the
side of Hogarth while painting a picture
of the Wesley family, and obtaining a
promise that he would give her instructions
in drawing, and in the midst of this flutter
ing sort of existence receiving letters
frequently from Oxford, young Wesley
calling himself Cyrus and she answering
21

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
with a no less Grecian name. Is not the
picture calculated to raise questions of a
sort to be resolved only by an omniscient
Committee on Contingencies ?
Wesley had proceeded Master of Arts
in February 1727, when in his twenty-
fourth year. The Disputation comprised
three lectures : " De Anima Brutorum,"
" De Julio Caesare," " De Amore Dei." It
is a pretty point whether the reputation
which the Exercise won for him took its
rise from the intrinsic value of the material
or from the entirely generous range of the
repertory. By this time, and increasingly
as he comes to work in the wider world,
there is no mistaking Wesley's scholarly
temper. Nor did any asceticism practised
in other regards operate toward the nullify
ing of his intellectual Instincts. He was
for fever putting to best account his native
endowment and the disciplines of his Uni
versity years. It may be that a scholar's
22

THE SCHOLAR
self-consciousness was deepened rather than
the reverse by his contacts in public ministry.
"Yet I could not reach their hearts," he
observes one day in mature life when he
has been preaching to a company of soldiers ;
" the words of a scholar did not affect
them like those of a dragoon or a grenadier."
Let it be noted about this man for whom
claims of scholarship are being made that
for toward a half-century he rarely sat at a
student's desk to read, although he was
compelled to be indoors when he wrote his
books. " Leisure and I," he once said at
the later period of his Oxford residence,
" have taken leave of one another. I
propose to be busy as long as I live."
The resolution led to the rule and custom
of refusing to attempt any more work than
he could accomplish with a quiet mind.
He lived by time-table, and perhaps
Southey was not far wrong when he de
clared that no conqueror or poet was ever
23

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
more ambitious than John Wesley. "It is
absolutely needful for such a one as me,"
he wrote his father at Epworth, " to foUpw
with all possible care and vigilance that
wise advise of Mr. Herbert :
Still let thy mind be bent ; still plotting how
_And when, and where, the business may be done."

24

IV
THE BOOKMAN
To ask consideration for Wesley as a man
of letters might seem like taking advantage
of the eighteenth century's reputation for
dulness ; or if one believes that the England
of the period was in reahty brilliant with
bookmen, then the attempt to snatch a
laurel for our clergyman might seem a
presumption. Was not this the age of
Horace Walpole and Lord Chesterfield
among letter-writers ; of Burke and Junius
and Thomas Paine among the expositors
of political theory ; of Adam Smith and
David Hume and Erasmus Darwin among
philosophers ; of Richardson and Henry
Fielding and Smollett and Sterne among
25

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
novelists ; of Garrick and Goldsmith and
Sheridan among dramatists ; of Thomas
Gray and William Cowper and William
Blake among poets ? Moreover, there
was Samuel Johnson as representative
man of letters. Wesley and the literary
magistrate were aware of each other, too.
Indeed Boswell describes Johnson as a
Methodist in religion. And what could
better set off the distinctive leanings of the
men than a remark of Johnson's, made
when he is sixty -nine and Wesley five
years older.? "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 out his
talk, as I do." ^ .
Admitting that, to the world, Wesley
appears pre-eminently the man of action, it
remains not only possible but necessary
' Boswell's Johnson, April 1778.
26

THE BOOKMAN
to take into account an Industrious and
brilliant vitality of intellect. From an
itinerant preacher you will not expect a
continuously wide sort of reading. Enough,
we say, if so engrossed a toiler is able to
retain and employ the results of the labour
of student years. What we find is that'
Wesley early learned to organize his work
ing day. Was he compelled to walk long
distances ? He discovered that it was
possible to walk twenty-five miles a day
without damage, and that for ten miles
. of the journey it was practicable to read
without inconvenience. Most of his travel
ling as a clergyman, some five thousand
miles a year, was done on horseback.
On horseback, therefore, did he manage
to get much' of his reading done, and it is
an astonishing number of books to which
he is able to give careful attention. In
religion and theology you will expect him
to be a persistent reader. You are not
27

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
surprised that he should have read the
works of Swedenborg, the " awakening
words " of Ephraem Syrus, k Kempis, the
Theologia Germanica, Luther's Galatians,
Calvin's Account of Servetus (in the reading
of which Wesley's sympathies are all with
Servetus), the writings of Jacob Boehme,
Lowth's Hebrew Poetry, Butler's Analogy,
the Pensies of Pascal, Madam Guyon s
Les Torrents spirituels. His tastes take
him also to works ancient and modern in
philosophy, in aesthetics, to histories not
only of antiquity but of the most recent
rebellions, and to studies in natural history
and physics. Here are 'authors like
Macchiavelli and Mandeville and Boling-
broke. For poets, Shakespere, Milton,
Gray, Pope and Prior, Torquato, Tasso
with Ariosto for a foil, Osslan the rage
of Europe, and that mildly repining pre
ferment-seeker, the well-groomed other-
worldling, Edward Young of the Night
28

THE BOOKMAN
Thoughts. Nor is the literature all on
one level. Lectures on Elocution, Irish
grammars, the Emile of Rousseau, Voltaire's
Henriade and Memoirs, the Meditations of
Marcus Aurelius, Priestley's Treatise on
Electricity : might these titles, a few taken
from among hundreds, serve at least to
indicate a mental lIlDerality on the part of
the preacher ? This is the man who could
read a French play or a Greek tragedy* as
he rode, and could dismount to preach to
a company thrilled to the soul with the
sense of an eternal life.
In Wesley the zest of the bookman
was always in subjection to the zeal of the
missioner. However terse and unlaboured
his comment on \ given volume may be,
you know for all that he is measuring a
piece of literature not only for intrinsic
literary quality but for its relation to
certain great human ends. If sympathy
is the first canon of criticism, then his way
. 29

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
of approaching a book would compare
favourably with the mode of the literary
inquisitors of his generation. Of " animad
versions " he Is fully capable, yet if he is
at times severe In his strictures he maintains
himself far above pettiness. After he
has read Gerard's Meditationes Sacrae, his
comment is, "... a book recommended
to me in the strongest terms. But alas,
how was I disappointed ! They have
masterly strokes, but are in general trite
and flat, the thoughts being as poor as the
Latin." Phrases of Wesley's in regard to
a sixteenth-century mystic have often been
quoted, but the entire passage is useful for
the light It sheds on his reading conscience :
Here I met once more with the works of a
celebrated author, of whom many great men
cannot speak without rapture and the strongest
expressions of admiration. I mean Jacob Boehme.
The book I now opened was his Mysterium
Magnum, or Exposition of Genesis. Being con
scious of rny ignorance, I earnestly besought
30

THE BOOKMAN
God to enlighten my understanding. I seriously
considered what I read, and endeavoured to weigh
it in the balance of the sanctuary. And what
can I say concerning the part I read ? I can
and must say thus much (and that with as full
evidence as I can- say that two and two make
four), it is sublime nonsense ; inimitable bombast ;
fustian not to be paralleled ! All of a piece with
his inspired interpretation of the word tetragram-
maton, on which (mistaking it for the unutterable
Name itself, whereas it means only a word con
sisting of four letters) he comments with such
exquisite gravity and solemnity, telling you the
meaning of every syllable of it ! ^
A grouping of reports made by Wesley
upon his reading would give welcome side
lights both on the books discussed and
upon the man himself. When he first gets
hold of Butler's Analogy he finds it a
strong and well-written treatise, but he is
afraid it is far too deep for their under
standing to whom it is primarily addressed.
Twenty-two years later he is again reading
" that fine book," and again he feels that
' Journal (Everyman edition), i. 376.
31

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
the Analogy is fated to pay the penalty of
its excellence :
... I doubt it is too hard for most of those
for whom it is chiefly intended. Freethinkers,
so called, are seldom close thinkers. They will
not be at the pains of reading such a book as
this. One that would profit them must dilute
his sense, or they will neither swallow nor digest
it.i The historical treatises and the biographies
perused by our presbyter usually obtained
a prompt reaction. The facts as to
England's mistreatment of Ireland are not
lost upon him, and he puts the Christianity
of Oliver Cromwell on .a par with that of
Henry VIII. Nor do his Tory predilections
forbid the exclamation, " Oh, what a blessed
governor was that good-natured man, so
called. King Charles the Second ! Bloody
Mary was a lamb, a mere dove in com
parison of him." The eighteenth-century
infidel might scorn the religious ideas of
^ Journal, iii. 329.
32

THE BOOKMAN
Wesley, but he could hardly bring a charge
of obscurantism. Wesley at least under
stood, if he could not accept, the viewpoint
of the then prevailing type of scepticism.
His own moral idealism was all the stronger
for his having given serious study to a
different ethic. For example, he is not
ignorant of the influence of Macchiavelli,
in whose formal treatises the world found
a reasoned system, the flowering of the
principle for which Sophocles makes King
Ulysses stand sponsor.
Now, for a day's short fragment, lend yourself
To ruthlessness ; and then to after-time
Be called the most religious of mankind.^
Once, when voyaging along the Atlantic
coast, Wesley, having procured "a celebrated
book, the Works of Nicholas Machiavel,"
sets himself carefully to read and consider
it : I began with a prejudice in his favour ; having
1 Fhiloctetes, 83-85.
33 D

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
been informed he had often been misunderstood,
and greatly misrepresented. I weighed the
sentiments that were less commonj transcribed
the passages wherein they were contained ; com
pared one passage with another, and endeavoured
to form a cool, impartial judgment. And my
cool judgment is, that if all the other doctrines
of devils which have been committed to writing
since letters were in the world, were collected
together in one volume, it would fell short of
this ; and that should a Prince form hjmself by
this book, so calmly recommending hypocrisy,
treachery, lying, robbery, oppression, adultery,
whoredom and murder of all kinds, Domitian or
Nero would be an angel of light, compared to
that man.i
In an age when every man had to declare
himself in respect to the merits of a long
debate, Wesley was an unflinching partisan
of the memory of Mary, Queen of Scots.
His examination of contending historians
leaves him with a fine scorn for George
Buchanan, " Queen Elizabeth's pensioner,
and her other hireling writers." His
> Journal, i. p. 43.
34

THE BOOKMAN
opinion is that the much-injured Scots
Queen appears to have been far the greatest
woman of that age, exquisitely beautiful
in her person, of a fine address, of a deep
unaffected piety, and of a stronger under
standing, even in youth, than Queen Eliza
beth had at threescore. By way of contrast
to this enthusiasm there is his reflection
after reading the celebrated life of St.
Catherine of Genoa, a biography which is
now discovered to have been clogged with
legend. " Mr. Leslie calls one, ' a devil
of a saint.' I am sure this was ' a fool
of a saint ' ; that is, if it was not the folly
of her historian, who has aggrandized her
into a mere idiot." ^
1 Journal, iii, p. 76.

35

WESLEY'S "JOURNAL"
Although we are dealing with a master
who chose holiness before humanism, the
fact need not be lost upon us that Wesley
has come to recognition for his achievements
as a man of letters. Just as it was at one
time a surprise to evangelical worshippers
at the shrine of Bunyan to be told that
their favourite author was a foremost writer
of English prose, so it was left to the more
detached outsider — such as Edward Fitz-
Gerald, the translator of Omar Khayyim
— to bespeak attention for the Journal of
Wesley as one of the masterpieces of English
literature. Mr. Thomas Seccombe, in his
handbook The Age of Johnson, devotes a
36

WESLEY'S "JOURNAL"
page or two to the Journal, as being "a
work of literary power inspired by religion
and permeated by a force that is almost
superhuman." . He adds : " The name of
Wesley is venerated wherever English is
spoken, but his Journal is not enough read.
It is a great book in every way. . . ."
Not only is it a monument of incredible
exertions. It is itself a piece of prodigious
penmanship, for it contains over seven
hundred thousand words. The first entry
is dated October 14, 1735, when Wesley
is thirty-two years old, and the last on
October 24, 1790, when he is in his eighty-
seventh year. My own attention to this
treasure was aroused one Sunday evening
when I was with Sir William Robertson
NIcoU, in his library at Frognal at Hamp-
stead. The volumes happened to be in
sight, for Sir William had just been writing
for The British Weekly an article on John
Wesley's three saints — Lopez, de Renty,
37

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
and John Fletcher. On returning to
wonted scenes I promptly borrowed from
a clergyman in the neighbourhood what
proved to be a non-indexed and rather
ugly edition of the Journal. Since then
the work has been issued in more manage
able forms, particularly in the all-sufficing
Curnock edition.
The giving of oneself to this human
document might well reward a reader with
exhilarations such as came to Keats on first
looking into Chapman's Homer, or as came
to Hazlitt on his first acquaintance with
Coleridge. Mr. Seccombe recalls the saying
of the Wesleys' kinsman, Thomas Fuller,
about some person who had " drunk more
of Jordan than of Helicon." It is surely
part of the charm of the Journal that he
who reads it has access to both streams. I
remember that as Sir William was so kindly
giving me impressions from his recent
reading, the outstanding thing was the
38

WESLEY'S "JOURNAL"
stark loneliness of Wesley in England in
the hour of his spiritual accolade.
One man against a stone-walled city of sin.
"There is hardly any book like it," writes
this accomplished critic. " Its shrewdness,
its wit, its wisdom, its knowledge are
bordered with a pale edge of fire, the
spiritual passion of the great apostle's soul."
And again : " There is no book, I humbly
think, in all the world like John Wesley's
Journal. It is pre-eminently the book of the
resurrection life lived in this world. . . .
Indeed, it stands out solitary in all Christian
literature, clear, detached, columnar."

39

VI
AN OXFORD DON IN GEORGIA
Even in undergraduate days of relative
indifference young Wesley had met the
requirement of attending services of Holy
Communion at least three times in the
year. The occasions were for him, as for
any sincere communicant, times of self-
inquisition. At the age of twenty-one he
seems to have turned with decision to the
question of a career. At twenty-two he
is being urged by his father to take holy
orders. Then it is that he begins to ask
guidance of teachers in the life of the soul.
A Kempis is one of these, but the other-
worldliness of the author of the Imitation
repels him as unsound. Jeremy Taylor's
40

AN OXFORD DON IN GEORGIA
Holy Living and Dying appeals to him
forcibly, and later he is particularly helped
by reading William Law. In 1725 Wesley
is ordained by Bishop Potter of Oxford.
In the following year he is, to his father's
delight, made a Fellow of Lincoln College.
Eight months after election to the Fellow
ship he is appointed Greek lecturer and
moderator of the classes. In the latter
capacity it was his business to preside at the
debates. From this time onward he is
regarding his vocation with a deepening
seriousness. Certain associations deemed
by him to be a hindrance to robust rehgious
life are relinquished. In November of
1729 he with his brother Charles and two
others agreed to spend three or four even
ings in the week together for the purpose
of reading over some classics which each
had previously read in private. On Sunday
evenings they would read a book in divinity.
The distress of a man imprisoned for
41

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
murder having been brought to the notice
of one of the members of the small circle,
there was a disposition to join together in
an effort to help the criminal. Before long
the four scholars were joined by a few
others. Soon the question was raised
among them, "Whether it does not con
cern all men of all conditions to imitate
Him as much as they can, who went
about doing good ? " In this inquiry they
were, as we see, endeavouring to make the
biography of Jesus the social programme
of the Church. Their question takes us
to the sources of the Evangelical move
ment considered as a phenomenon of social
regeneration. Practical measures for the
aid of the sick, the hungry, the naked and
ignorant, and the spiritually destitute were
of the marrow of the purpose of this
congenial coterie. They determined to
live by rule and method as to academic
duties, as to neighbourly philanthropies, and
42

AN OXFORD DON IN GEORGIA
as to the culture of the spirit. In further
ing the last-named project they turned to
ancient custom and observed the Wednes
day and Friday fasts. It was also their
practice to communicate frequently. Along
with this, at least on Wesley's part, there
went considerable rubrical and antiquarian
ardour. For instance, he is found inquiring
in what parishes the sacramental wine is
mixed with water, since he would consider
it his duty to communicate in the church
more nearly following that ancient Catholic
mode. Thus, for the Oxford don, do
many years pass in diligence of business,
in rigorous churchmanship, and in earnest
quest of salvation. When he at last
emerges from the University milieu, and at
the age of thirty-two sets forth with his
brother Charles and two other collegians in
a mission to the Indians of Georgia, the
individual aspect of the undertaking is
rarely lost sight of. " Our end in leaving
43

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
our native country was not to avoid want,
God having given us plenty of temporal
blessings, nor to gain the dung or dross of
worldly honour ; but singly this, to save
our souls, to live wholly to the glory of
God." On learning of the Georgia project, an
acquaintance said to Wesley, " What is this,
sir ? Are you turned Quixote too ? WiU
nothing serve you but to encounter wind
mills ? " In the sequel nothing noteworthy
came of the effort to reach the Indians, and
the S.P.G. missionaries had their hands full
in trying to minister to the necessities of
the Georgia colonists. To see what manner
of men these were who exchanged Oxford
for Savannah and Frederica, one has only
to turn to Wesley's account of the outward
journey on a vessel that carried many
German emigrants :
We now began to be a little regular. Our
common way of living was this : From four in
44

AN OXFORD DON IN GEORGIA
the morning until five, each of us used private
prayer. From five to seven we read the Bible
together, carefully comparing it (that we might
not lean to our own understandings) with the
writings of the earliest ages. At seven we break
fasted. At eight" were the public prayers. From
nine to twelve I usually learned German, and
Mr. Delamotte, Greek. My brother writ sermons
and Mr. Ingham instructed the children. At
twelve we met to give an account to one another
what we had done since our last meeting, and
what we designed to do before our next. About
one we dined. The time from dinner to four
we spent in reading to those whom each of us
had taken in charge, or in speaking to them
severally as need required. At four were the
evening prayers j when either the Second Lesson
was explained, as it always was in the morning,
or the children -were catechised, or instructed
before the congregation. From five to six we
again used private prayer. From six to seven I
read in our cabin to two or three of the pas
sengers (of whom there were about eighty
English oh board), and each of my brethren to
a few more in theirs. At seven I joined with
the Germans in their public service, while Mr.
Ingham was reading between the decks to as
many as desired to hear. At eight we met aigain,
45

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
to exhort and instruct one another. , Between
nine and ten we went to bed, where neither the
roaring of the sea nor the motion of the ship
could take away the refreshing sleep which God
gave us.i
Without pausing to consider how much
more industrious our seafaring priests might
have been had they only been Initiated in
the secrets of modern " efficiency," it may
be worth while to look at further indica
tions of Wesley's tendency to treat seriously
his commission as a priest in the Church.
About a fortnight after reaching Savannah
the newly arrived Ordinary jots down the
item :
Mary Welch, aged eleven days, was baptized
according to the custom of the first Church, and
the rule of the Church of England. The child
was ill then, but recovered from that hour.
No opportunist comprehension nor diplo
matic dread of extremes here. Rules, you
see, are rules, and the baby must be im-
' Journal, i. i6.
46

AN OXFORD DON IN GEORGIA
mersed at baptism. On the same subject
there is a further entry :
I was asked to baptize a child of Mr. Parker's,
second bailiiF of Savannah ; ' but Mrs. Parker
told me, " Neither Mr. Parker nor I will consent
to its being dipped." I answered, "If you
certify that your child is weak, it will suffice, the
rubric says, to pour water upon it." She re
plied, "Nay, the child is not weak, but I am
resolved it shall not be dipped." This argument
I could not confute. So I went home ; and the
child was baptized by another person.
Nor had Wesley been in Savannah long
before he began dividing the public prayers
according to the original appointment of
the Church (" still observed in a few places
in England"). The morning service began
at five. The communion office, with the
sermon, at eleven. The evening service
at about three. On one occasion the
niartinet director feels constrained to re
prove a young woman, Mrs. Williamson,
for misbehaviour. As she is far from show-
47

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
ing signs of penitence he repels her from
the Lord's Table. The matter is compli
cated by the fact that the lady, previous to
her marriage, had been for some time en
grossed in a friendship with Wesley, and
only his austere interpretation of priestly
duty had stood in the way of a betrothal.
The day after repelling, Sophia Williamson
from the Sacrament, he is arrested for de
faming the lady. When brought before
the Bailiff of Savannah, Wesley answers
that this is an ecclesiastical affair, with which
the civil authorities have nothing to do.
Then, at the request of the young woman's
uncle, he writes his explanations to Sophia :
The rules whereby I proceed are these : " So
many as intend to be partakers of the holy Com
munion, shall signify their names to the Curate,
at least some time the day before." This you
did not do.
"And if any of those . . . have done any
wrong to his neighbours so that the Congrega
tion be thereby offended ; the Curate shall . . .
48

AN OXFORD DON IN GEORGIA
advertise him, that in any wise he presume not
to come to the Lord's Table until he have openly
declared himself to have truly repented." If you '
offer yourself at the Lord's Table on Sunday, I
will advertise you (as I have done more than once)
wherein you have done wrong : And when you
have openly declared yourself to have truly
repented, I will administer to you the mysteries
of God. V

49

VII
SERVANT OR SON.?
In the year 1736, and in the month of
May of that year, when John Wesley was
scandalizing the Savannah colonists by re
fusing to baptize a healthy child with any
mode other than that prescribed by the
Church of England, namely, by immersion,
an English Bishop, Joseph Butler of
Durham, was giving to the world his
famous book. The Analogy of Religion,
Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution
and Course of Nature. In his advertisement
his lordship took occasion to say :
It is come, I know not how, to be taken for
granted by many persons, that Christianity is not
so much as a subject of inquiry ; but that it is
50

SERVANT OR SON?
now at length discovered to be fictitious. And
accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age,
this were an agreed point among all people of
discernment ; and nothing remained but to set it
up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as
it were by reprisals for its having so long inter
rupted the pleasures of the world.
The social and religious conditions of
those decades have many times been de
lineated, as in the ample pages of W. E. H.
Lecky. In brief space they have been
compactly described by Samuel Parkes
Cadman in his brilliant study of Wesley,
in the volume The Three Religious Leaders
of Oxford. For our present purpose Bishop
Butler's comment needs but little supple
ment. Green, the historian, quotes Mon
tesquieu as reporting, after a visit to
England, " In the higher circles of society
every one laughs if one talks of religion."
Lord Chesterfield, who ought not to have
been hard to please, is found bewailing the
low morals of the people. Never was the
51

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
tone of Oxford so poor, and it was con
ceded that both the Universities were able
to ruin their students. Further on in the
century Edward Gibbon spent fourteen
months at Magdalen College. "To the
University of Oxford," he says, " I ac
knowledge no obligation ; and she will as
cheerfully renounce me for a son as I am
willing to disclaim her for a mother." It
was of one of his instructors at Oxford that
Gibbon said, " He remembered that he had
a salary to receive, and forgot that he had
a duty to perform." As for Lord Chester
field's complaint of a " remarkable licen
tiousness in the stage," it can be matched
by the remark of a philosopher, William
WoUaston, whose work, The Religion of
Nature Delineated, was first published in
1722. The book reached a circulation of
over ten thousand copies. It was highly
valued by Bishop Butler, and it was a
favourite book of Queen Caroline's. Hav-
52

SERVANT OR SON ?
ing occasion to discuss the marriage troth,
WoUaston provides his page with a foot
note reading thus : " The form is still
extant in our public offices, and may be
seen by such as have forgotten it." It is
a period in the State when a Robert Wal
pole can flourish like the green bay-tree.
It is a period in the Church when a bishop
could be far distant from his diocese, could
court the Mall and be devoted to London
in the season. " Our clergy," writes John
Brown, as late as 1757, in An Estimate of
the Manners and Principles of the Times,
" have become, and deserve to become,
contemptible because they neglect their
duties in order to slumber in stalls, haunt
levees, or follow the gainful trade of elec
tion jobbing." ^ The Bishop of Ely, in
assigning the living of an unhealthy fen-
.parish to his well-connected friend Thomas
Whalley, does so with the express stipula-
' Thomas Seccombe, Ihe Age of Johnson, p. xxiv.
SI

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
tion that Whalley shall never enter into
residence. So, as Wilberforce put it, 'you
have the picture, behind this amiable and
typical product, of a curate starving upon a
pittance and doing the rector's work. As for
the spiritual heights attained in the churches,
it was a time when an orthodox clergyman
was expected in his preaching to show the
worldly advantages of good conduct.
At the age of thirty-four John Wesley
is returning from the coasts of Georgia to
the shores of, England. Nor does he come
with such dream of ecclesiastical conse
quence as moved the soul of another
Oxford churchman, who ninety-five years
later is making a journey from Palermo to
the homeland. Newman turns his face
toward England with the conviction that
he has a work to do. A sense of mission
is at the heart of the lyric, " Lead, kindly
Light." With Wesley, aU through the
months of his exile in Georgia, the quest
54

SERVANT OR SON ?
of salvation is his one concern. As he
nears the English coast he writes, "I went
to America to convert the Indians, but oh !
who shall convert me ? " And having
reached his native land, he sums up the
more than two years of missionary life with
the exclamation] " This, then, have I learned
in the ends of the earth, that I am fallen
short of the glory of God."
Coming from one who for years has
been living so zealous a life, does the
language seem overwrought.? Not when
we see how the more introspective side of
Wesley's career is bound up with the
practical. To dismiss the subjective phase
as a negligible factor would be to miss the
secret of that influence which made him
the pioneer of a more, spacious religion in
the England of his day. Brisk and business
like as he had been in the duties of the
religious life, he was yet to discover that
his devotion had been a perfect bondage ;
SS

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
that his had been, as he vividly described
it, the faith of a servant rather than the
faith of a son. It was the Moravians on
shipboard, outward bound, whose com
posure in time of danger contrasted so
strongly with the perturbations of others,
who gave to the much-occupied, not to say
officious, young clergyman a hint of his
lack. It was Mr. Spangenberg, one of
their pastors in Savannah, who meets the
newcomer with the gentle inquiry, " Does
the Spirit of God bear witness with your
spirit that you are a child of God ? " The
language is Scriptural and the question true
to the intention of St. Paul, but the question
is one that Wesley knows not how to
answer. It is Peter Bohler, of the Church
of Herrnhuth, who, on Wesley's return to
England, is able to show him still more
clearly the need of the emancipating "faith
of a son." Bohler is the man " by whom,
in the hand of the great God," he was,
56

SERVANT OR SON?
" on Sunday the 5th, clearly convinced of
unbelief; of want of that faith whereby
alone we are saved." There is a special
propriety, it would seem, in Wesley's use
of Pauline phrases in giving an account of
his own spiritual struggle and deliverance.
Both the Apostle and the Anglican were
dashing young religionists, who, after a
period of spirited churchmanship, came to
an end of self-sufficiency, and came to see
in the spontaneity of a sense of sonship a
more excellent way than that of a laborious
legalism straining at the propitiation of the
Higher Powers. Not to press the parallel,
both men went through a liberating crisis
which involved what the theologians might
call a change from the pagan view to the
Christian view of God. I ,
For Wesley and his friends the taking
literally of truths which the Church had
always been setting forth in its formularies
-had an influence that was revolutionary.
57

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
Of the effect of Peter Bohler's words we
hear Wesley saying, " Oh, what a work has
God begun since his coming into England !
Such an one as shall never come to an end,
till heaven and earth pass away." ^ An
entry in the Journal on May lo, in that
year of grace 1738, alludes to the vicar of
Islington, Mr. Stoneham, as having become
convinced of " the truth as it is in Jesus " ;
convinced, that is to say, of the difference
between the faith of a servant and the faith
of a son, and ready to espouse the latter as
the Gospel prerogative, even though there
is not at once given to the inquirer an
inward serenity answering to what St.
Paul described as the peace of God.
Wesley's persuasion as to the possibilities
of the inner life was a conviction not
immediately followed by the guerdon of
simple faith. In the early weeks after the
return from Georgia he has access to the
' Journal, i. p. 91.
58

SERVANT OR SON?
pulpit of many a London parish, and the
truth which had before been "bed-ridden
in the dormitory of the soul " is set forth
as a Gospel ere yet the preacher has himself
entered into the beatitude. The days of
passionate preaching are days also of
earnest seeking. There are meetings of
friends for conference and supplication.
A refreshing letter comes from Peter
Bohler assuring Wesley of his love and
prayers. The prayer was not to wait long
for answer : " Ut gustare et tunc videre
possis, quam vehementer te Filius Dei
amaverit et hucusque amet, et ut sic
confidere possis in eo omni tempore,
vitamque ejus in te et carne tua sen tire."
If the social consequences of the Methodist
rising were anticipated in the activities of
the little club at Oxford, then may we not
say that the irresistible Slan of the move
ment discloses its sedret in the aspiration
voiced in such a prayer as this of Bohler's.
59

VIII
THE APOSTOLIC DAWN
To read our churchman's account of the
occurrences of the twenty-fourth day of
that month of May 1738, so fraught with
benefit for aftertimes, is to feel something
of a first thrill of dawn :
I think it was about five this morning that I
opened my Testament on those words : " - . .
There are given unto us exceeding great and
precious promises, even that ye should be
partakers of the divine nature." Just as I went
out, I opened it again on those words : " Thou
art not far from the kingdom of God." In the
afternoon I was asked to go to St. Paul's. The
anthem was, " Out of the deep have I called
unto thee, O Lord. . . . "
In the evening I went, very unwillingly, to
a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was
60

THE APOSTOLIC DAWN
reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the
Romans. 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, in Christ alone, for salvation ; and an
assura^nce was given me, that he had taken away
my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of
sin and death.^
Henceforth the face of the skies was
changed for this man. In a deep sense is
it true that his life thereafter knew no
cloud. Out of the exhilarating, childlike
confidence in the Father God he spoke to
men of their privileges in the life of the
soul ; spoke as plainly, so artlessly, yet
with such valour, that the note of authority
was immediately felt. Indeed, since his
home-coming, the authentic tone was
detected whenever he preached " assurance "
as a boon to be believed in, even though
he could not at the moment lay claim
to its interior possession. The abundant
' Journal, i. p. 102.
6i

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
formalism of the day was disposed to treat
the doctrine as an outlandish thing, and
the preacher stands forth in strange dis
tinction against the apathy of the age. In
the diocese of London parish after parish.
refused to let him be heard in the church a
second time. Let the Journal teU us of
some of those first rejections :
Feb. 5. — In the afternoon I was desired to
preach at St. John the Evangelist's. I did so on
those strong words, " If any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature." I was afterward informed,
many of the best of the parish were so offended,
that I was not to preach there any more.
Feb. 12. — I preached at St. Andrew's,
Holborn, on, " Though I give all my goods to
feed the poor and have not charity. ..." O
hard sayings 1 Who can hear them ? Here
too, it seems, I am to preach no more.^
The unworldly scorn of scorn which
Newman so much admired in his patron
St. Philip Neri was more than matched
by Wesley's conviction that contempt and
' Journal, i. p. 82.
62

THE APOSTOLIC DAWN
despising were an inevitable accompani
ment of fidelity to the highest choices.
To Wesley the "despisings" were as
much a badge as was " neglect "to St.
Philip Neri.
A week later Wesley Is preaching at
the Castle in Oxford. On the next Sunday
he is again preaching in London churches —
at six in the morning at St. Lawrence's, at
ten in St. Katherine's Cree Church, in the
afternoon at St. John's, Wapping. At
the first service, so he learns, his preaching
gave offence, but he is asked to preach in
these places ten weeks later :
Sunday, May 7. — I preached at St. Lawrence's
in the morning, and afterward at St. Katherine's
Cree Church. I was enabled to speak strong
wprds at both, and was therefore the less surprised
at being informed, I was not to preach any more
in either of those churches.
Tuesday, 9. — I preached at Great St. Helen's,
to a very numerous congregation. . . . My
heart was now so enlarged to declare the love of

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
God to all that were oppressed by the devil, that
I did not wonder in the least when I was after
wards told, " Sir, you must preach here no more."
Sunday, 28. — (This is the Sunday following
his conscious possession of "the faith of a son.")
This day I preached, in the morning, at St.
George's, Bloomsbury, on, " This is the victory
that overcometh the world, even our faith " ;
and, in the afternoon, at the chapel in Long
Acre, on God's justifying the ungodly ; the last
time, I understand, I am to preach at either.
" Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." 1
Intimations of the same forbidding sort
are given Wesley when he preaches at
St. Ann's, Aldersgate ; at St. Bennett's,
Paul's Wharf; at St. John's, Clerkenwell ; at
St. Swithin's ; at the Savoy Chapel and at
St. Clement's in the Strand. Elsewhere there
was better fortune. There are parishes
where he is eagerly welcomed, and the
preaching takes increasing hold upon the
country. By the end of the year, although
he had spent nearly four months in
1 Journal, i. p. 83 ff.
64

THE APOSTOLIC DAWN
Germany, the work has gathered power.
In December he writes :
Sunday, 24th, I preached at Great St.
Bartholomew's in the morning, and at Islington
in the afternoon j where we had the blessed
Sacrament every day this week, and were com
forted on every side. Wednesday, 27th, I
preached at Basingshaw church; Sunday, 31st,
to many thousands, in St. George's, Spitalfields.
And to a yet more crowded congregation at
Whitechapel, in the afternoon, I declared those
glad tidings. . . .
As time went on Wesley did more than
preach in the London churches, and in the
chapel of his College and in the University
Church of St. Mary's. Societies for the
promotion of spiritual life were found so
fruitful that they grew with the growth
of interest in the re-discovered Evangel.
Dr. Cadman, in the valuable essay to which
we have referred, draws attention to the fact,
now well established, that it was not among
a group of Moravians but in an Anglican
6s F

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
society that the seeker was taking counsel
in the hour when his heart was " strangely
warmed." Wesley and his friends found
warrant " in the commandment of God by
St. James" for the arrangement to meet
at stated intervals to confess " our faults
one to another, and pray for one another,
that we may be healed." They agreed that
the persons so meeting be divided into
several bands, or little companies, none of
them consisting of fewer than five or more
than ten persons; " that every one in order
speak as freely, plainly, and concisely as he
can, the real state of his heart, with his several
temptations and deliverances, since the last
time of meeting ; that aU the bands have a
conference at eight every Wednesday even
ing, begun and ended with singing and
prayer." Candidates for membership in the
societies were for two months regarded as on
trial before becoming members in the com
plete sense. Every fourth Saturday was to
66

THE APOSTOLIC DAWN
be observed as a day of general intercession,
and the Sunday seven-night following was
set apart for a general love-feast, from seven
until ten in the evening. Apart from its
resemblance to Catholic models, the plan
was one admirably adapted to conserve the
spiritual harvests that were immediately to
appear. Deferring for the present any attempt
to define the quality of John Wesley's
churchmanship, we may at least observe
that from the beginning he was a punctili
ous presbyter, that what he did amid the
scenes of the vast spiritual awakening among
his countrymen was done as a priest of
the Church of England, and that his com
panions in labour were clergymen of the
same Establishment. In any extraordinary
development of religious devotion extra
agencies are likely to be brought into
operation, as in the apostolates of St. Paul
and St. Francis. The period now under
67

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN ¦
notice was marked, as we know, by im
pressive ethical triumphs ; but the moral,
practical, and more external results followed
rather than preceded the inner and spiritual
transformation of thousands of men and
women. There were rectors of parishes
who found, to their joy, that people hitherto
unreached by the Church were now coming
into its fellowship. Church edifices were
not adequate for the gatherings of hearers
and inquirers. A Bishop of London felt
moved to complain that the crowded attend
ance at multiplied services of Holy Com
munion left his clergy without opportunity
to dine. Is there not a touch of parable
in Wesley's report of a Sunday at Builth,
in 1747 ? "I then began in the church
yard, notwithstanding the north-east wind,
to call sinners to repentance. More than
all the town were gathered together in that
pleasant vale, and made the woods and
mountains echo while they sang :
68

THE APOSTOLIC DAWN
Ye mountains and vales,
In praises abound !
Ye hills and ye dales.
Continue the sound :
Break forth into singing.
Ye trees of the wood ;
For Jesus is bringing
Lost sinners to God."
George Whitefield had led the way in
preaching in the .fields as soon as the
audiences became too large to be housed.
Despite " little improprieties of speech and
manner," not unobserved by his fastidious
colleague, Whitefield was humbly followed
by Wesley in the adventurous modes of
ministry. When Wesley visits Bristol,
where already his colleague has seen amaz
ing instances of amendment and regenera
tion in the lives of the colliers, the sight
of Whitefield's open-air speaking makes an
impression :
I could scarce reconcile myself to this strange
way of preaching in the fields, of which he set
69

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
me an example on Sunday ; having been all my
life, till very lately, so tenacious of every point
relating to decency and order, that I should have,
thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it
had not been done in a church.
Two days after, he writes :
In the evening, Mr. Whitefield being gone, I
begun expounding our Lord's Sermon on the
Mount (one pretty remarkable precedent of field-
preaching, though I suppose there were churches
at that time also) to a little society. . . .
An entry for the day following has this :
At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be
more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the
glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little
eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to
about three thousand people.
In June 1739, that is in the second year
of the religious renewal, Wesley goes one
day with Whitefield to Blackheath, where
he preaches to a crowd numbering from
twelve to fourteen thousand . The thorough
way in which he gave himself to the out
door ministry was rather a proof of Wesley's
70

THE APOSTOLIC DAWN
ardour than any indication of his tastes.
" To this day," he says, in his seventieth
year, " field-preaching is a cross to me."
The practice did not obtain approval from
the reigning respectabilities. Wesley, who
was as alert as the objectors in detecting
the ceremonial lack, was not to be deterred
from the use of such tried and proved
measures. As for the relative decency of
things, he humorously retorts on the critics
that the highest indecency could on occasion
be witnessed at St. Paul's, when a consider
able part of the congregation are asleep.
The question resolved itself to this,
" Whether it is not better that men should
go to heaven by irregular methods, or
regularly go to the devil ? "
Leaving no stone unturned in the effort
to bring a liberating message to the common
people of England, this man, of whom
Macaulay said that his eloquence and logical
acuteness might have made him eminent in
71

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
literature, and that his genius for govern
ment was not inferior to that of Richelieu,
was to cultivate simplicity for the love of
God. In detachment from lesser concerns
he was to illustrate " obedience to the
severe and strange call which when yielded
to makes life simple." At the age of sixty
he is found exclaiming, " Lord, let me not
live to be useless." It is characteristic
that at the age of eighty-six he should be
saying, "Let us work now; we, shall rest
by and by." His physical capacity was
such as to astonish feebler saints, and he
added conscientious regimen to native en
dowment. In undergraduate days he had
read a book by Dr. Cheyne, the Horace
Fletcher of the period, and had put himself
under abstemious rules. Temperance in
food and drink became a lifelong habit.
He once said, " I am as strong at eighty-
one as I was at twenty-one, but abundantly
more healthy." At the age of eighty-two
72

THE APOSTOLIC DAWN
the incorrigibly industrious preacher re
marks, " It is eleven years since I felt any
such thing as weariness." We find him
holding a meeting at eight in the evening
and preaching at four o'clock the next
morning, although five o'clock was a pre
ferred hour. When the Methodist societies
had won their way in the land it was
discovered that not all the faithful were
so enchanted with five o'clock as a service
hour, whereupon the never-languid chief
sees fit to allude to the days of his cure
at Savannah :
As soon as I set foot in Georgia, I began
preaching at five in the morning ; and every
communicant, that is, every serious person in
the town, constantly attended throughout the
year ; I mean, came every morning, winter and
summer, unless in the case of sickness. They
did so till I left the province.^
To the old saying about Wesley that
when he was sick he preached himself well,
^ Journal, iv. p. 276.
73

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
and that when he was weary he preached
himself vigorous, it could be added that he
wilfuUy ignored no hygienic law, although
several times he writes of journeys in bad
weather when he was " wet from morning
till night ; but I found no manner of
inconvenience." Once, indeed, he can be
detected confiding to his Journal that in
a given indisposition he had neglected the
rhubarb or the ipecac. He excuses himself
for the omission on the ground that he has
been too busy, and then he naively notes
that he has recovered without the aid of
the old stand-bys. At another time an
adventure in Avalon has involved a stiff
climb to Glastonbury Tower.
I was weary enough when we came to Bristol,
but I preached until all my complaints were
gone ; and I had now a little leisure to sit still
and finish the Notes on the New Testament.
His time-thrift would assert itself all
the more whenever the best-laid plans had
¦74

THE APOSTOLIC DAWN
gone askew. Coming to a crossing at the
Menai Straits and finding the tide adverse,
Wesley " sat down in a little cottage for
three or four hours, and translated Aldrich's
Logic'' The treatise was for the use of
the lay preachers who by this time had
become numerous in the Methodist societies.
Kept indoors at another place, with a
sprained ankle, he takes the opportunity
to write a book of lessons for children,
and also a Hebrew grammar for his
preachers. An entry for January 6, 1754,
Sunday, says :
I began writing Notes on the New Testa
ment, a work which 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.
" Eia age, rumpe moras ! " he exclaims,
as he reminds his brother how they are
getting on in years. Idleness could hardly
be the foible of a gentleman who was
75

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
capable of saying, " At least we can walk
twenty miles a day with our horses in our
hands." For a man unlnstructed in "New
Thought" he 'managed well to combine
economy of time with an absence of strain.
When the worst comes to the worst in the
matter of ship-sailing delays, he can recall
and adapt the cheerful lines —
There are, if rightly I methink.
Five causes why a man should drink.
With a little alteration he gets something
suitable for the sea-captains who with their
lame excuses are less sea-going than they
should be :
There are, unless my memory fail.
Five causes why we should not sail :
The fog is thick ; the wind is high ;
It rains ; or may do by and by ;
Or — any other reason why.^
' Journal, ii. p. 49.

76

IX
METHODISM: A PERSONAL FAITH
WITH SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES
Of the far-reaching consequences of the
apostolate of Wesley and his company the
world has long had proofs. As individuals
were converted, that is to say as they
exchanged the faith of a servant for the
faith of a son, the first results apparent
were in terms of personal experience, in
the love, joy, peace, which in St. Paul's
categories are the prelude to righteousness
and long-suffering. At the outset Wesley
had observed among the Moravians what
he called " this terrible abuse " of preaching
"Christ given for us." So, said he, "we
began to insist more than ever upon 'Christ
77

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
living in us.' " Crisis was an almost in
dispensable element in the conversions,
although there are responses to Wesley's
preaching on the part of the " once-born "
as well as on the part of those " twice-born "
for whom conquest is achieved by means
of self- despair and self - surrender. In
their demand for the clear, if not in
stantaneous experience of conversion, the
societies were, as Professor William James
put it, following "on the whole the pro-
founder spiritual Instinct. The individual
models ... set up as typical and worthy
of imitation are not only the more interest
ing dramatically, but psychologicaUy they
have been the more complete." ^
Inevitably, as the men and women
reached by the Evangel came into the
transforming consciousness of communion
with God, homes and communities reflected
the change. At one place men are con-
1 William James, The t^arieties of Religious Experience, p. 227.
78

METHODISM
verted whose business has been the buying
and selling of uncustomed goods. The
preaching to which they listened left no
doubt that unless they ceased to do evil
they could not learn to do well. Speaking
of another region where men had previously
been making a living by "robbing the
king," Wesley reports, " Since they have
cut off the right hand, the work of God
sinks deep into their hearts." An increase
of scrupulosity, of moral sensitiveness, was
a steady accompaniment of the spiritual
awakening. Always the preachers were
facing the question of sin in the concrete,
anti-social reality. In a CornwaU village
two persons belonging to the society had
been discovered selling their votes at
election time. The manner of dealing
with the evil was of a sort that went to
the root of the trouble. To the jibe of
the Westminster Journal that the minds of
the vulgar had been darkened to a total
79

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
neglect of their civil and social duties,
Wesley was able to reply : " Just the
contrary : thousands in London, as well
as elsewhere, have been enlightened to
understand, and prevailed on to practise
those duties, as they never did before."
Readers of J. R. Green's History of the
English People will remember how the
enthusiastic philanthropies of the latter
part of the eighteenth century are traced
to the Wesleyan movement with its insist
ence on vital religious- moral processes.
A. social regeneration of England did take
place, and it was the practical consequence
of the arising of souls renewed in the power
of God. Prison reform, the abolition of
slavery, the attempts at popular education,
what were these — even when undertaken
by persons not nominally attached to the
Wesleyan societies — but, the coming to
flower of the good tidings to the meek, in
the healing of the broken in heart, and in
80

METHODISM
the opening of the prison to them that .
were bound? "In any case, the grand
and solitary figure of Wesley seemed always
in the front of whatever was making for
righteousness. He breathed upon the
evils of his tirne -yvith a fiery breath of
purification." ^
That an attempt to live above the level
of contemporary life should invite reprisal
appeared to Wesley the logical outcome.
Deyotion to severer ethical standards,
insistence also on the subjective side of
religion : why should not this incur the
antagonism of the unbelieving and secular-
hearted? It must be bo'rne in memory
that Wesley had been willing to absent
him from the felicity of certain social
contacts, the Capuas of existence, that he
might be God's servant to all classes of
people. " I spent an hour at Mr. G.'s. I
can trust myself about once a year in this
' The British Weekly, June 17, 1909.
81 G

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
warm sunshine, but not much oftener, or I
should melt away." In the Journal for
October 6, 1749, he writes :
I then waited upon Mr. M. for an hour. Oh,
how could I delight in such an acquaintance !
But ¦ the will of God be done. Let me
" acquaint " myself " with Him," and it is
enough. To some one who spoke to him of the
vagabond life of his ministry he said,
" Why indeed it is not pleasing to flesh
and blood, and I would not do it if I did
not believe in another world."
Convinced that any movement of real
power must go from the bottom up, and
not the other way, Wesley's interpretation
of the spirit of the Gospel left him no
alternative to serving the most lowly and
unenlightened. In the earlier days of the
movement there were occasional neurotic
or hysterical or fanatical manifestations
among the religiously awakened. Physical
phenomena in the assemblies had a
82

METHODISM
character that might, and did, give a
handle to the scornful. All the unwhole
some spectacles put together are few
enough to be, if not negligible, then, useful
only for setting in relief the sane and life-
giving quality of the work as a whole.
Voltaire had spoken of atheism as the last
refuge of religious scandal, but it is open
to question whether in England the charge
of " enthusiasm " was not a degree more
portentous than the charge of atheism.
The Westminster Journal called Wesley an
" enthusiast," and the editor was invited to
prove or to retract the charge. Faith
working by love was the only enthusiasm
Wesley would admit as being characteristic
of the religious awakening. That he
comprehended the nature of enthusiasm in
the Deists' sense, and saw its menace, is
abundantly plain when he so skilfully
describes it in a letter to a fervent but not
well-poised preacher :
83

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
I dislike something that has the appearance
of enthusiasm ; overvaluing feelings and inward
impressions ; mistaking the mere work of
imagination for the voice of the Spirit ; expect
ing the ends without the means ; and under
valuing reason, knowledge, and wisdom in
general. Wesley need not be blamed if to certain
of his contemporaries plain religion and
" enthusiasm " were one and the same.
It remains that against " enthusiasm " in
the accepted eighteenth - century hostile
meaning of the term, Wesley set his face
like a flint. *
Many a penalty was paid by the
churchmen for preaching good tidings to
the poor. Among their critics was Edward
Gibson, ecclesiastical jurist and Bishop of
London, who complained : " They have
had the boldness to preach in the fields and
other open places, and by public advertise
ment to invite the rabble to be their
hearers." Dr. Gibson had the grace to
84

METHODISM
recant, as became a Christian and an
authority on Canon Law. When it comes
to delicate usages, a Gospel for the
multitude may not be the equal of a
Gospel for superior persons. Yet, the
leaders being gentlemen (as they were in
this instance, albeit with no " pedantry of
gentlemanship ") they could be magnani
mous' toward the ignorances and supersti
tions of the people among whom they
laboured. Moreover, the refining fire
that went through the heart of the convert
was of an efficacy that could change a boor
into an amiable person. Luther's typical
" old woman in the chimney-corner with
her Bible,"' who might know more of God
than did all the doctors of theology, might
be capable also of a finer humanity and
grace than a high priestess of the
proprieties. As it came to pass, the
Methodists were for a half- century and
more treated as a pariah class. So late as
85

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
1809, the Reverend Sydney Smith, a
fellow-churchman of Wesley's, was writing
in The Edinburgh Review of " the nasty
and numerous vermin of Methodism."
.As a means of sport the religionists
were a big boon to the Philistines. A
Newcastle Theatre presented a farce en
titled, Trick upon Trick, or Methodism
Displayed. George Whitefield had not
been dead two months before Foote the
actor had come upon the stage of an
Edinburgh theatre Imitating the preacher's
appearance and manner of speaking.
Public opinion was, this time, too much
for the vulgarity of the actor, and the
theatre was empty on the second evening.
For daring to associate with Wesley,
working men and women sometimes found
themselves summarily discharged from
employment. A housemaid whose con
version was accomplished with much
physical manifestation was forbidden to
86

METHODISM
return to the hpuse, her master saying he
would have none in his house who had
received the Holy Ghost.^ There was a
town in which three dissenting ministers
refused the Communion to such of their
people as would not refrain from going to
the meetings of the societies. Moreover,
the notion was energetically fostered that
Wesley and his comrades were but papists
in disguise ; a notion for which an extreme
high-churchmanship and an asceticism of
practice may have been, at the beginning,
superficially responsible. He comes to
Epworth, his birthplace, where his father
had been rector, and himself for a short
time curate, and he Is told that he may
not preach in the church. It was there
fore on the tomb of his father that, later
in the Sabbath, he preached to such a crowd
as had not before assembled in Epworth.
On a day in 1743, five years after the
1 Journal, i. p. 213.
87

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
Methodists had begun to lift their voices
in the land, Wesley goes to the town of
Wednesbury. Here, unfortunately, one
of the lay-preachers had Indulged in
foolish denunciation of the Church people.
Through what Wesley called the inexcus
able folly of the zealous helper, it came to
pass that the rector's former love was
turned to hatred. At the afternoon
service the rector pours out his wrath
against the new teaching. " I think I
never heard so wicked a sermon," says
Wesley, " and delivered with such bitter
ness of voice and manner, as that which
Mr. E. preached," and he adds :
I knew what effect this must have in a little
time, and therefore judged it expedient to prepare
the poor people for what was to follow, that,
when it came,. they might not be offended. Ac
cordingly, on Tuesday, 19th, I strongly enforced
those words of our Lord, " If any man come
after Me, and hate not ... his own life, he
cannot be My disciple. And whosoever doth not
88

METHODISM
bear his own cross, and come after Me, cannot
be My disciple."
While I was speaking, a gentleman rode up
very drunk ; and, after many unseemly and bitter
words, laboured much to ride over some of the
people. I was surprised to hear he was a neigh
bouring clergyman. And this, too, is a man
zealous for the Church ! . Ah, poor Church, if
it stood in need of such defenders ! ^
At Wednesbury, five months later,
Wesley had one of those demonstrations of
animosity, which when they do not frighten
a man are likely to strengthen the moral
fibre. He was writing at Francis Ward's
in the afternoon, and a cry arose that the
mob had beset the house; " We want you
to go with us to the Justice," explained the
leaders. Their victim, having acquiesced
heartily, a procession was formed, and a
journey of two or three miles was taken in
the rain at nightfall. The Justice being
abed, his son was sent to ask the crowd
what might be the matter. One answered,
' Journal, i. pp. 421, 422.
89

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
" Why, an't please you, they sing psalms
all day ; nay, and make folks rise at five
in the morning ; and what would your
worship advise us to do ? " To which the
magisterial oracle : " To go home, and be
quiet." Foiled here, there was nothing
open but to try Justice Persehouse at
Walsall. That dignitary was also, under
the necessity, of sending word that he had
gone to bed, and by this time the mob w^s
disposed to turn again home and to act as
convoy for their prey. All might have
become quiet but for the arrival of a larger
mob from Walsall, pouring in like a flood
and driving away all the clergyman's former
custodians. To attempt speaking was vain ; for the noise
on every side was like the roaring of the sea ; so
they dragged me along till we came to the town,
where seeing the door of a large house open, I
attempted to go in ; but a man, catching me by
the hair, pulled me back into the middle of the
mob. They made no more stop till they had
90

METHODISM
carried me through the main street, from one-
end of the town to the other. I continued speak
ing all the time to those within hearing, feeling
no pain or weariness. At the west end of the
town, seeing a door half open, I made toward it,
and would have gone in ; but a gentleman in the
shop would not suffer me, saying, " They would
pull the house down to the ground." However,
I stood at the door, and 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." I began asking, "What evil have I
done ? Which of you all have I wronged in
word or deed ? " and continued speaking for
above a quarter of an hour, till my voice suddenly
failed. Then the floods began to lift up their
voice again ; many crying out, " Bring him
away ; bring him away." ^
In the meantime, continues Wesley, in
the absorbing recital :
. . . my strength and my voice returned, and I
broke out aloud into prayer. And now the man
who had just before headed the mob, turned and
said, " Sir, I will spend my life for you : follow
' Journal, i. p. 438 fF.
91

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
me, and not one soul here shall touch a hair of
your head. . . ." But on the bridge the mob
rallied again ; we, therefore, went on one side,
over the Mill-dam, and thence through the
meadows, till a little before ten God brought me
safe to Wednesbury ; having lost only one flap
of my waistcoat, and a little skin ¦ from one of
my hands.
Reviewing the circumstances, aU of
which he Is able to Interpret religiously,
he makes note of this fact :
From the beginning to the end I found the
same presence of mind as if I had been sitting in
my own study ; but I took no thought for one
moment before another ; only once it came into
my mind, that if they should throw me into the
river, it would spoil the papers that were in my
pocket ; for myself, I did not doubt but I should
swim across, having but a thin coat and a Hght
pair of boots.

92

X
WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
Now that the fame of Wesley has survived
Methodist adulation and Anglican patron
age there is nothing to hinder a more
objective treatment of the character and
career of this presbyter of the Church
of England, greatest of all her great
and illustrious sons. Thirty millions of
Methodist adherents, in churches separated
from the Church of England, reflect in our
modern world something of the inspira
tion associated with Wesley's name. Yet
powerful as are the forces of denomina
tional Methodism with its efficient organ
ization on a national basis, its care for
jurisdiction, its fidelity to Catholic faith,
93

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
its avoidance of caste vulgarities, and its
unexcelled esprit de corps, it is not in
institutional Methodism that the English
churchman's highest achievement is revealed,
but rather In the fact that he modified, and
modified profoundly, the religious life of
the Church and nation to which he belonged.
The severance from the Church of the
Methodist societies, fostered for a half-
century by Anglican clergy, was in Wesley's
eyes a deplorable thing ; unless indeed,
toward the end, he realized what is patent
now to churchman and Methodist alike,
namely, that the tides of the divine life
in man do not always wait upon the official
custodians of religion. Charles Wesley's
querulous letter to the Rev. T. B. Chandler,
April 28, 1785, is one of uncomprqmising
objection to the Idea of any separation from
the Church of England, and it breathes a
pained solicitude over " those poor sheep in
the wilderness, the American Methodists,"
94

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
betrayed into a separation which their
preachers and they no more intended than
the Methodists in England. He saw in
them only a new sect of Presbyterians.
" They will lose all their usefulness and
importance ; they will turn aside to vain
jangling ; they will settle again upon their
lees and, like other sects of Dissenters, come
to nothing." ^ Without our going so far
as to share Hazlitt's distrust of the prose
style of poets, these so completely dis
credited predictions serve to remind us
that the sweet singer of Methodism was a
better psalmist than pi-ophet. If the union
of churches seems, in our time, a moral
imperative, we must remember how dark
were the hours of that early part of the
eighteenth century when the Church saw
not its visitation. If repentance came too
late, we may recall Gladstone's observation
1 For this letter in full, see W. J. Seabury, Memoir of Bishop
Seabury, pp. 377-38 1-
95

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
on the uncanny capacity of an Establish
ment to prescribe correctly and skilfully for
the patient who died yesterday. As Mr.
Thomas Seccombe says, in accounting for
the ultimate development of Wesleyanisra
outside the ecclesiastical pale :
' The Church at the close of George II. 's
reign was (in a thoroughly worldly way) benevo
lent and philanthropic, and upon the whole
decidedly prosperous. The old Protestant dissent
seemed dwindling, and never had the prospect of
a general comprehension seemed so likely to be
eventually realized. The churchmen, however,
in their complete indifference to the spiritual
side of Christianity, and to the hidden spring
that moves man to be religious, had entirely
underestimated both the strength of the Protestant
spirit and of the schismatic temper in the English
race.^ Oblique and unwilling confirmation of the
correctness of Mr. Seccombe's opinion is
found in Dr. Seeker, Archbishop of Canter-
^ Thomas Seccombe, The Age of Johnson, Introduction,
p. xxviii.
96

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
bury. Writing at some date not far from
July 13, 1760, to Dr. Samuel Johnson of
King's College, New York, the eccleslast
has this to say :
I am glad that the Clergy in your parts are
orthodox. Mr. Maclaneghan gives them a very
different character. I hope they will cut off all
occasion from them who desire occasion against
them, by preaching faithfully and frequently the
distinguishing doctrines of the Gospel ; which
we in this nation have neglected too much, and
dwelt disproportionately on morality and natural
religion ; whence the Methodists have taken ad
vantage to decry us, and gain followers.^
Church conditions In England, In
Wesley's period, afforded an illustration of
Archbishop Laud's famous plea, that there
could be schism without separation, and
separation without schism. There were
priests In the Establishment whose careers
were an embodied contradiction of the faith
^ The Life of Samuel Johnson, D.D., the first President of
King's College, New York, by Thomas Bradbury Chandler,
D.D. (1805), p. i8i.
97 H

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
and rule of the Church, yet they never
dreamed of separating from that power
ful body. { Methodism in its ultimate
organization became a Church separated
from Anglicanism almost by as much as
Anglicanism had Itself separated from the
mother Church, yet the schismatic temper
was not a characteristic of the so-called
founder of Methodism, who in his old age
could say, in letters to Lord North and
the Earl of Dartmouth, " I am^ a_Hig;h_
Churchman, the son of a High Church-
man." If any desire sympathetically to
measure the scope of Wesley's churchman
ship, we may turn to the reliable document,
the Journal. Here we are on surer ground
than we would be if we depended only
upon occasional formal deliverances. Here
we.' get at the man's mind and behaviour
through a half-century. We are enabled
to observe the schoolings of heart, the
changes of opinion that go with growth,
98

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
an absorbing and involved story wherein
the rabid rubricist of the Georgia mission
becomes the religious primate of England.
Already we have seen how, in the
Savannah parish, our rector was as rigid a
disciplinarian as could be imagined. Even
in the uttermost parts of the earth juris
diction was not to be trifled with. Some
person in Carolina, evidently a priest, had
married several of Wesley's parishioners
without either banns or licence. To put a
stop to the goings-on, Wesley sets out in
a sloop for Charleston, states the case to the
Bishop of London's commissary, and obtains
assurances that " no such irregularity should
be committed for the' future." Besides,,
publicly ^expounding and defending the
three Creeds, the Thirty-nine Articles, the
B^ooFof Common Prayer and the HomUies,
he is prompt to set forth the grievous errors
of the Church of Rome. At the same
time he is disposed to remind himself that,
99

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
" with regard to eternity," a Deist is in a
more dangerous state than a Papist. To
ward Dissenters the feeling of our Oxford
don is what you would expect. When the
Williamson v. Wesley case Is called, he
jealously notes that on the Grand Jury
there Is one Papist, one professed Infidel,
three Baptists and sixteen or seventeen other
Dissenters. What the colonists thought of
the clergyman is also a matter of record.
The inventory of his foibles, as it appears
in A True and Historical Narrative of the
State of Georgia, Includes the item following :
Under an affected strict adherence to the
I Church of England, he most unmercifully
/ damned all Dissenters of whatever denomination,
I who were never admitted to communicate with
him until they first gave up their faith and
principles entirely to his moulding and direction
and, in confirmation thereof, declared their belief
of the invalidity of their former baptism, and
then to receive a new one from him. This was
done publicly on the persons of Richard Turner,
carpenter, and his son. Another instance was
lOO

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
that of William Gaff, who had always com
municated and always conformed to his regula
tions, but was at last found out by Mr. Wesley
I to have been baptized by a Presbyterian Dissenter.
The same thing was proposed to him ; but Mr.
Gaff, not inclinable to go that length, was ever
thereafter excluded from the Communion.^
Who knows whether, in the radiant
summer of the evangelical revival, Wesley
would have'been capable of writing, as did
his brother Charles, to one of the foremost
Methodist preachers, John Nelson : " John,
I love thee from my heart : yet rather than
see thee a Dissenting minister I wish to see
thee smUing in thy coffin ! " Miracles of
grace were to be performed in the soul of
the clergyman. They failed to eradicate a
capacity of disdain toward Dissent. With
the Savannah Incumbency forty years be
hind him, we come upon a note like this,
after he has been preaching in Mrs.
Turner's chapel at Trowbridge : " As most
^ Journal, Curnock edn., viii. p. 305.
lOI

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
of the hearers were Dissenters, I did not
expect to do much good. However, I
have done my duty : God will look to the
event." ^
There is a week in June of 1779 de
voted to work in the Isle of Man, the
itinerant being then seventy-six years old,
a week full of satisfactions for the doughty
chief. He tells us of visiting Bishop's
Court, "where good Bishop Wilson resided
near threescore years" ; he takes pleasure
in the natural beauty of the island. He
delights in the plain, artless, simple people,
and particularly in the two-and-twenty
stout, well-looking preachers of the Manx
societies. All in all, he does not know of
any circuit of societies the equal of this of
the Isle of Man. And for final touch
of beatitude, what could go beyond a state
of affairs portrayed so ingenuously ?
Here are no Papists, no Dissenters of any
' Journal, iv. p. 195.
102

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
kind ; no Calvinists, no disputers. Here is no
opposition either from the Governor, a mild,
humane man, from the Bishop, a good man, or
from the bulk' of the clergy.^
Elsewhere he describes the. Church of
England : " It is not 'aU the people of
England.' Papists and Dissentprg are nn
part__there£)f. It is not all the people of
England except Papists and Dissenters.
Then we should have a glorious Xhurch
Indeedl:^.^ To renew the claim that Wesley was an
inveterate churchman is not to ignore the
genuinely Catholic traits in his disposition
or to proclaim him impervious to the facts
of life. The humanity of him overcame
^ Journal, iv. p. 211. Foi; a slight verbal relevance, as well
as for contrast, one may recall Gladstone's perplexity, when a
scholar in Christ Church, over the mystery of religious apathy
at Oxford, a place safely hedged against the incursion of foes.
" We have no Papists, no Socinians, no Dissenters of any class.
where, then, are the fruits .? " See D. C. Lathbury, Correspond
ence on Church and Religion of William Eivart Gladstone.
'^ Letters of John Wesley, selected by George Eayrs (1915),
p. 91.
103

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
whatever might have been obstinately
doctrinaire, and his hospitality of mind
came to be an element of greatness. That
he made changes slowly can be seen from
the fact that seven years after the religious
movement has been in progress he is as
outspoken as ever in asserting priestly
prerogative on the basis of Apostolical
Succession. The time comes when the
vehement prepossessions of his early train
ing are to be recognized as such. For
example, the statement that, in the
primitive and apostolic churchmanship,
presbyters and bishops are essentially one
order might be thought of as a common
place of Information. Nevertheless, when"
the discovery is made by a priest who has
been reared on the stark, if sacrosanct,
inaccuracy of the Preface to the Ordinal,
the old idol is not forsaken without a
pang. Lord King's treatise helped Wesley
to see, what Anglican learning has long
104

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
substantiated, that the early Christian
churches were independent of episcopal
control in the old Catholic sense, and that
the three distinct orders of ministry did
not thea exist. The acknowledgment in
no wise affects Wesley's conviction as to
the general soundness and effectiveness of
Church of England polity, but it does
serve him as a further invitation to put
on a generous mind.
Once, after reading Neal's History of
the Puritans, he sets down his reflections :
I stand in amaze. First, at the execrable
spirit of persecution which drove those venerable
men out of the Church, and with which Queen
Elizabeth's Clergy were as deeply tinctured as
ever Queen Mary's were ; secondly, at the weak
ness of those holy confessors, many of whom
spent so much of their time and strength in dis
puting about surplices and hoods, or (about)
kneeling at the Lord's Supper ! ^
And for another indication of the fact
^ Journal, ii. p. II.
105

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
that Wesley's impatience with Noncon
formity, In its theory and in certain con
temporary representatives, was not allowed
to run into hopeless bigotry, we turn to
this: In my hours of walking I read Dr. Calamy's
Abridgment of Mr. Baxter's Life. What a scene
is opened here. In spite of all the prejudice of
education I could not but see that the poor Non
conformists had been used without either justice
or mercy ; and that many of the Protestant
Bishops of King Charles had neither more re
ligion nor humanity than the Popish Bishops of
Queen Mary.^
To be sure, he also learns that those
apostles of religious liberty, the New
England worthies, were not above harry
ing the Quakers. Whereupon he slyly
exclaims, " Oh, who would have looked for
Father Inquisitors at Boston ! "
Were any foil needed by which to set
off the qualities of Wesley's churchman-
' Journal, ii. p. 279.
106

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
ship it could be furnished in the phrases
of John H. Newman's notorious denial, in
1862, of the rumour that he was about to
forsake Rome for the ancestral Church :
I do hereby profess, ex animo, with an
absolute and internal assent and consent, that
Protestantism is the dreariest of possible " re
ligions ; that the thought of the Anglican
service makes me shiver, and the thought of the
Thirty-nine Articles makes me shudder. Re
turn to the Church of England ! No ! " The
net is broken and we are delivered." ^
To take these flat-footed protestations
in their order, and testing Wesley by their
aid, we have the consideration that to his
dying day he was a convinced and devoted
son of the Protestant Reformed Church of
England, and that he cherished the right
of private judgment as behoved a member
of that Society. As for the Anglican
service, toward which Newman was to
' Wilfrid Ward, Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, i.
p. 561.
107

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
become so genially patronizing, it was
cherished by our churchman because its
felicity of form and expression offered a
medium most meet for the telling of the
soul's aspirations, as also a means whereby
divine truth could most fitly be_ set before
the mind of the worshipper, f Free prayer
may be an inescapable accompaniment of
spiritual renaissance without thereby cancel
ling the validity of treasured devotional
forms. Whatever the exaltation that was
Wesley's when a new world came into his
ken, it was not an experience alien from
what the Church in her formularies and use
of Holy Scripture had set forth as a Gospel.
" The plain old religion of the Church of
England," he called it, " which is now
almost everywhere spoken against under
the new name of Methodism." ' We have
seen how, on the great day of his life, his
longings found voice in the "De Profundis"
chanted in St. Paul's Cathedral. The next
io8

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
afternoon, in tremulous joy, he is again a
worshipper in St. Paul's. There, as he tells
us, he could taste the good word of God in
the anthem, " My song shall be always of
the loving-kindness of the Lord : with my
mouth will I ever be showing forth Thy
truth from one generation to another."
On the day following he is in some heavi
ness, and he gets a helping word from the
Moravian, Mr. Telchig. In the afternoon
this is reinforced in the Cathedral service
as he listens to the anthem, " My soul
truly waiteth stUl upon God . . . He is my
defence, so that I shall not greatly fall. Oh,
put your trust in Him always, ye people ;
pour out your hearts before Him ; for God
is our hope." Instinctively and with an
affection unfeigned did he resort to the
Book of Common Prayer. The musical
phrases of the Coverdale Psalter were ever
being put to living uses. An echo of that
exultant hour in St. Paul's is heard In such
109

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
a scene as Wesley tells of a few years
later :
In the evening our souls were so filled with
the spirit of prayer and thanksgiving, that I
could scarce tell how to expound, till I found
where it was written, "My song shall be always
of the loving-kindness of the Lord. . . ."^
It was with filial pride, not with critic
condescension, that toward the end of his
days the churchman wrote :
I believe there is no Liturgy in the world,
either in ancient or modern language, which
breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety,
than the Common Prayer of the Church of
England. As for proof of his professions, there is his
life-long custom of using the prayers in the
informal gatherings, in the societies, in the
groups that would gather at an inn to meet
him as he journeyed. That his devotion to
the Liturgy was of a discriminating, and
therefore the most respectful, sort may be
seen in the method of his recension of the
^ Journal, i. p. 296.
HO

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
Prayer Book, published 1784, in view of
'the needs of Methodists in America who
shared with other Anglicans in the depriva
tions due to the Church of England's ad
mitted steady neglect of her children in the
United States. In the light of present-day
discussion of Prayer Book revision, the
changes made by Wesley are particularly
engaging. They anticipate not a few
of the improvements desired by modern
Anglicans of broad sympathy.
Little alteration is made in the following
edition (says the Preface), except in the follow
ing instances :
I. Most of the holy days (so called) are
omitted, as at present answering no valuable end.
2. The service of the Lord's Day, the length
of which has been often complained of, is con
siderably . shortened.
3. Some sentences in the offices of Baptism,
and for the Burial of the Dead, are omitted ; and,
4. Many Psalms left out, and many parts of
the others, as being highly improper for the
mouths of a Christian congregation.
Ill

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
The significance of Wesley's dealing
with the Prayer Book Is not' in his having
boldly removed certain passages, in pursu
ance of a Protestant principle, but rather
in the fact that the Liturgy was to continue j
with those churchmen whose association
together as Methodists was to involve,
finally, a separate churchly existence. To
this day you may find Methodist churches
using, of aSunday, the Morning Prayf "'"
the Office of Holy Communion In forms
differing from th.e_Af}2;V^r!injcLcx-jmnrp than
do the forms of tjie Prn<-Pt<-anf F.pi<;rnpal
Church in the^United-States. Even in those
sections of the Methodist Communion,
where the Order for Morning Prayer has
been forsaken, the Administration of the
Lord's Supper is still according to the
usage of the Church of England.
And if, unlike Newman, the Calvlnlst
evangelical whose quest was to end where
the waters of the Tiber wash the walls of
112

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
the City of God, John Wesley did not
" shiver " at the thought of the Anglican
service, neither did he "shudder" at the
thought of the Thirty -nine Articles.
Honest adhesion to VI. and XXI. pre
vented him frorfi the accepting of any such
" catholic " principles as appeared out of
harmony with the declarations of Holy
Writ. He gloried in the intrinsic Pro
testantism of the Church of England's
appeal, in these articles, to Bible authority/
as against Conciliar deliverances, whether
of Trent or of Dort. Of these two Councils
he once observed, somewhat caustically,
" What a pity it is that the holy synod of
Trent and that of Dort did not sit at the
same time, nearly allied as they were, not
only as to the purity of doctrine which
each of them established, but also as to the
spirit wherewith they acted ; if the latter
did not exceed." ^ When Wesley had
' Journal, i. p. 318.
113 I

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
begun to incur criticism for preaching the
novelty of " the faith of a son," he had
recourse to the Homily of Justification,
reprinting it for its usefulness in setting
forth that new teaching which was the old,
" a most wholesome doctrine, and very full
of comfort." ^
Of the Thirty-nine Articles, Wesley's
I recension of the Prayer Book for Methodists
|i In America retained only twenty-five. An
examination of that piece of editorial labour
goes to show the conservative and respon
sible spirit of a widely influential leader.
Some of the Anglican Articles were plainly ^
not negotiable apart from the Royal Arms.
As it was, the Methodists had the honour
of being the first churchmen in the United
States to set forth the Articles formally.^
The second religious body to adopt the
Articles of the Anglican tradition was the
1 Art. XI.
^ Henry Wheeler, History and Exposition of the Tiventy-five
Articles of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1908).
114

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
Protestant Episcopal Church. Its first re
vision was less conservative than Wesley's,
so that the Prayer Book of 1785 appears
with the Thirty-nine cut down to twenty.^
Harking back to Cardinal Newman's
rhetorical eruption against the Church in
which he had been reared, we see that he
held out no hope of his ever craving the
shelter of the old home. " Return to the
Church of England ! No ! ' The net is
broken and we are deUvered.' " ^ Without
begrudging this veritable separatist what
ever meed of honour has been given him
by the churchmen whose company he fled,
we may usefully compare his behaviour
with Wesley's in such wise as to bring into
relief the non-separatist intention of the
Methodist. In our day, when the moral
^ The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the
Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies, as revised and pro
posed to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church, at a
Convention of the said Church. . . . Held in Philadelphia,
from September 27 to October 7, 1785.
115

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
sense of the plain Christian is revolted at
the spectacle of disunity, particularly re
volted at the sight of sacerdotal sectarianism
pursuing its divisive course under catholic
banners, the only use of referring to an
ancient controversy would be for the light
thereby thrown on our present duty of
endeavouring to consolidate the Christian
forces. Lord Morley has lately lifted from
oblivion a saying of Archbishop Whately's
about the Orangemen's fondness for the
anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne.
" It is doing what among the heathen was
reckoned an accursed thing, keeping a
trophy in repair. "J So far as a rapproche
ment between the Anglican and the
Wesleyan churches were sincerely desired,
the project would, I earnestly believe, be
helped and in no way hindered by a fresh
examinatlonof the motives of the eighteenth-
century churchmen who were none the less
of the Church of England although bearing
ii6

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
a party name. Not so much, then, by
way of maintaining a thesis, or labouring
a point, as for the sake of a cumulative
impression concerning Wesley's lifelong
loyalty to the Church, I would like to
bring together certain informal passages
culled from our prime source-book, the
Journal, or from Mr. Eayrs's pleasant
edition of the Letters :
. June 17, 1739. — In the afternoon I saw poor
Richard Tompson, who had left our society and
the Church. We did not dispute, but pray ;
and in a short space the scales fell from his eyes.
He gladly returned to the Church, and was in
the evening readmitted into our society.
April 28, 1745. — I preached at five. ... A
plain man came to me afterward and said, " Sir,
I find Mr. Hutchings and you do not preach the
same way. You bid us read the Bible, and pray,
and go to Church ; but he bids us let all this
alone, and says if we go to Church and Sacra
ment we shall never come to Christ."
May 2, 1745. — I rode to Markfield. The
church was full, although the notice was so short.
But I was sorry to hear some of the neighbour-
117

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
ing churches are likely to be empty enough : for
the still Brethren, I found, had spread themselves
into several of the adjacent parishes. And the
very first sins their hearers leave off are reading
the Bible and running to Church and Sacrament.
May 23, 1745. — We had one more earnest
conversation with one that had often strengthened
our hands, but now earnestly exhorted us (what
is man ! ) to return to the Church, to renounce
all our lay assistants, to leave off field-preaching,
and to accept of honourable preferment.
December 27, 1745. — Having received a long
letter from Mr. Hall, earnestly pressing my
brother and me to renounce the Church of
England (for not complying with which advice
he soon renounced us), I wrote him. . . .
October lb, iyS3- — (Bedford.) It is amaz
ing that any congregation should be found here,
considering what stumbling-blocks have been
thrown in their way. Above fourteen years ago,
Mr. Rogers, then curate of St. Paul's, preached
the pure gospel with general acceptance. A great
awakening began, and continually increased, till
the poor weathercock turned Baptist. He then
preached the absolute decrees with all his might ;
but in a while the wind changed again, and he
turned and sank into the German whirlpool.
118

C(

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
April 30, 1755. — We began reading together,
A Gentleman's Reasons for his Dissent from
the Church of England." ... did not yield us
one proof that it is lawful for us (much less our
duty) to separate from it.
August 28, 1756. — My brother and I closed
the Conference by a solemn declaration of our
purpose never to separate from the Church ; and
all our brethren concurred therein.
March 6, 1760. — (A remonstrance against
the action of certain lay preachers who had
given the Sacrament at Norwich.) They did
it jvithoutJinv oFdination. . . . Do you think
.they acted_riglit ? If the other preachers follow
their example, not only separation but general
confusion must follow. My soul abhors the
thought of separating from the Church of
England.^ August 4, 1766. — At one I preached at
Bingley, but with a heavy heart, finding so
many of the Methodists here, as at Haworth,
perverted by the Anabaptists. I see clearer
and clearer, none will keep to us unless they
keep to the Church. Whoever separate from
the Church will separate from the Methodists.
^ George Eayrs, The Letters of John Wesley.
119

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
July 13, 1769. — . . . Thence I rode on to
Carlow. The Under-Sheriff had promised the
use of the town hall ; but the High Sheriff,
coming to town, w^ould not suffer it. I thank
him. For, by this means, I was driven to the
barrack-field, where were twice as many as the
hall could have contained ; over and above many
of the poor Papists, who durst not have come
into it. Afterwards I met the little society. I
used to wonder they did not increase : now I
should wonder if they did ; so exquisitely bitter
are the chief of them against the Church. I
solemnly warned them against this evil ; and
some of them had ears to hear.
June 16, 1770. — I found our preacher, James
Brownfield, had just set up for himself. The
reasons he gave for leaving the Methodists were
(i) that they went "to Church ; (2) that they
held Perfection. . . . Sunday, 17th. — We had
a poor sermon at Church. However, I went
again in the afternoon, remembering the w^ords
of Mr. Philip Henry, " If the preacher does not
know his duty, I bless God that I know mine."
September 4, 1785.^ — Finding a report had
(been spread abroad that I was just going to leave
[the Church, to satisfy those that were grieved
concerning it, I openly declared in the evening
120

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
that I had now no more thought of separating
from the Church than I had forty years ago.
July 25, 1786. — Our Conference began.
About eighty preachers attended. . . . On
Thursday in the afternoon we permitted any
of the society to be present, and weighed what
was said about separating from the Church.
But we all determined to continue therein,
/without one dissenting voice ; and I doubt not
I but this determination will stand, at least till
I am removed into a better world.
January 2, 1787. — I went over to Deptford ;
but, it seemed, I was got into a den of lions.
fMost of the leading men of the society were
mad for separating from the Church. I en
deavoured to reason with them, but in vain ;
they had neither sense nor even good manners
left. At length, after meeting the whole society,
I told them: "If you are resolved, you may
have your service in church hours ; but remember,
from that time you will see my face no more."
This struck deep ; and from that hour I have
heard no more of separating from the Church.
July 6, 1788. — I fain would prevent the
members here from leaving the Church j but
I cannot do it. As Mr. G. (Joshua Gibson,
curate of Epworth) is not a pious man, but
121

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
rather an enemy to piety, who frequently preaches
against the truth, and those that hold it and love
it, I cannot with all my influence persuade them
either to hear him, or to attend the Sacrament
administered by him. If I cannot carry this
point even while I live, who then can do it
when I die ? And the case of Epworth is the
case of every church where the minister neither
loves nor preaches the gospel. The Methodists
will not attend his ministrations. What, then,
is to be done ?
August 4, 1788. — One of the most important
things considered at this Conference was that
of leaving the Church. The sum of a long
conversation was, (i) Thnt, in n r"']"" "f ^ffy
years, we had neither premeditately nor willingly
varied from it in one article either nf Anrtr\npj^
discipline-;- (2) That we were not yet conscious
of varying from it in any point of doctrine ; (3)
That we have in a course of years, out of
necessity, not choice, slowly and warily varied
in some points of discipline, by preaching in the
fields, by extemporary prayer, by employing Ipy
¦preachers, by forming and regulating societies,
and by holding yearly Conferences. But we
did none of these things till we were convinced
we could no longer omit them but at the peril
of our souls. 122

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
From knother angle we come upon hints
and gleams such as these :
I heard two useful sermons at our parish
church (Liverpool). . . . I pity those who "can
learn nothing at Church."
(Prescot.) The vicar preached an excellent
sermon on "Whatsoever is born of God over
cometh the world ; and this is the victory that
overcometh the world, even our faith."
March 25, 1767. — (Congleton.) It seems
the behaviour of the Society in this town has
convinced all the people in it but the Curate,
who still refuses to give the Sacrament to any
that will not promise to hear these preachers
no more.
April 24, 1788.- — (Wesley is in his eighty-
fourth year.) About ten we began the service
in the church at Todmorden, crowded sufficiently.
. . . We had a pleasant road from thence to
Burnley, where a rnultitude of people were
waiting. But we had no house that could
contain them. Just then the rain ceased : so
we went into the inn yard, which contained them
well. . . . April, 27. — I preached at Haworth
church in the morning, crowded sufficiently ;
as was Bingle church in the afternoon ; but as
123

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
very many could not get in, Mr. Wrigley
preached to them in the street, so that they did
not come in vain.
Good Friday, March 29, 1782. — I came to
Macclesfield just time enough to assist Mr.
Simpson in the laborious service of the day. I
preached for him morning and afternoon, and
we administered the Sacrament to about thirteen
hundred persons. While we were administering
I heard a low, soft, solemn sound, just like that
of an Aeolian harp. It continued for five or six
minutes, and so affected many, that they could
not refrain from tears ; it then gradually died
away. Strange that no other organist (that I
know) should think of this !
May 6, 1759. — (Liverpool.) I received much
comfort at the Old Church in the morning, and
at St. Thomas's in the afternoon. It was as if
both the sermons had been made for me. I pity
those who can find no good at Church. But
how should they, if prejudice come between ?
an effectual bar to the grace of God.
In the event, Wesley took steps whose
logical consequence was a religious organiza
tion distinct from the Church of England.
124

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
It was the need of ministering to Methodists
in America that had led Wesley to implore
Bishop Lowth to ordain men who could
do this work. The Bishop's refusal Was
of a piece with the steady, not to say
callous, indifference of the authorities
toward the plight of American churchmen.
One has only to read such letters from
Bishops of London and Archbishops of
Canterbury as are preserved to us in Dr.
Chandler's Life of Samuel Johnson, of
King's CoUege, New York, to see how
prudential, 'political considerations weighed
more than the cure of souls. As Professor
W. J. Seabury stated it, to the faith of a
churchman the want of Bishops in the
Colonies not only involved incompleteness
of Church organization, but also "en
dangered the perpetuity of spiritual life."
We know what the American churchmen
did in the premises. Samuel Seabury
obtained episcopal consecration in the
125

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
Scotch succession when he found that the
Church of England would not make him
Bishop. A beginning in America had •
therefore to be made with a bishop upon
whose title there was necessarily a cloud. ^
Moreover, it has since become open to
question whether the first bishop ever
received Christian baptism, unless baptism
in a Congregational church could be looked
upon as valld.^ Wesley also had seen, in
the . apathy of the Establishment toward
the Colonies and the United States, a
menace to the perpetuity — in the actual
rather than sacramental sense — of spiritual
life. I Instead of resorting to Scotch bishops
for aid, he united with fellow - presbyters
of the Church of England in bestowing
presbyterial ordination on those preachers,
other than English clergy, who were going
to America. That ordaining act, if you
1 Charles A. Briggs, Church Unity, p. 138.
^ W. J. Seabury, Memoir of Bishop Seabury, p. 2 f.
126

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
are to go by the book, was ipso facto
separation. To say__ that presbyterial
ordination was held by early Anglicans
to be, under stress of circumstances,
entirely valid does not defend Wesley from
the techfiical charge. Life defied legality.
" The legal mind at once decided that
authority lay In the written thing, not in
the living thing, that the Church was
founded not upon Peter, who represents
humanity (failures included), but upon
parchment." ^ Criticism of the Innovation
could come with little grace from rulers in
the Establishment who sanctioned arrange
ments by which, as James Martineau said,
" the most loyal of religious bodies was
absolutely repulsed from Conformity."
Extirpative zeal went so far as to fine a
poor man twenty pounds for allowing In
his house a meeting of friends for prayer
and praise. There was no preaching at
1 Philip Whitwell Wilson, Why We Believe, p. 6i.
127 ¦

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
all. Reporting on this, autumn, 1790,
Wesley says :
All the justices averred the Methodists could
have no relief from the Act of Toleration,
because they went to Church ; and that, so long
as they did so, the Conventicle Act should be
executed upon them. Last Sunday, when one
of our preachers was beginning to speak to a
quiet congregation, a neighbouring .justice sent a
constable to seize him, though he was licensed,
and would not release him until he had paid
twenty pounds, telling him his license was
good for nothing, because he was a Church
man. It is a high-minded, reasoned defence
of the step taken regarding American
Methodists that is set forth in Wesley's
famous letter of September 10, 1784, a
recognition of leadings of the Divine
Spirit in regions for which the official
Church had not responsibly prepared to
labour. Wesley knew that the body was
more than raiment, and just as Samuel
Seabury could serve the Protestant
128

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
Episcopal Church as Bishop, despite the
fact that his consecration was not according
to English Canon Law, so it was evident
to sincerity and good sense that religion
was more to be desired than regularity.
" If any one is minded," said Wesley, " to
dispute concerning Diocesan Episcopacy,
he may dispute. But I have better work."
It need not escape our attention that
as late as 1786, after the American
Methodists had formally organized and —
to Wesley's unfeigned horror — elected and
consecrated Bishops, the English leader
wrote to Freeborn Garretson with reference
to procedure in the New World :
Wherever there is any Church service, I
not approve of any appointment the same hour ;
because I love the Church of England, and
would assist, not oppose it, all I can.^
Here and there a pedant may still arise
to dismiss Wesley and all his works on the
1 Eayrs's edition. Letters of John Wesley, p. 272.
129 K

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
ground that he did transgress canon law.
No doubt the same objector would scorn
as Jesuitical the suggestion that Catholic
principles may outwardly be contravened in
the interest of their true essence. The
late Bishop Satterlee of Washington, D.C.,
was an ardent supporter of the Protestant
Episcopal Mission in Mexico. The
Mission now numbers some two thousand
communicants, and it is known in Episco
palian circles as the Mexican Church.
Bishop Charles H. Brent, in describing Dr.
Satterlee's approval of the arrangement
" to intrude in the domain of the venerable
and fully organized Church which had
held jurisdiction for centuries," teUs us
that the vocation of the Church of Bishop
Satterlee's allegiance "demanded that in
given circumstances she should organize in
Roman Catholic countries. Nor was he
looking for sectarian glory in advocating
this course. He felt that true Catholicity
130

WESLEY THE CHURCHMAN
demanded it." ^ Perhaps this is the dis
position that George Whitefield had in mind
when he said of Howell Harris, " He is of
a most catholic spirit, and therefore is
styled a dissenter."
Burke's inability to draw up an indict
ment against an entire people should be
thought of when considering the Church
of England and the Evangelical Revival.
Fortunately the narrative can be reviewed
without partisanship. It would seem that
the Church at heart was proud of Wesley.
For a lifetime he had served at her altars.
His last years witnessed memorable scenes,
the fitting complement to occurrences of a
half-century before, with handsome expia
tions for the former slowness of heart to
believe. When were the churches and the
cathedrals, and even the University Church
of St. Mary's, more thronged with eager
and expectant worshipping folk ? And
1 Charles H. Brent, A MasUr Builder.
131

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
what, indeed, could Wesley have accom
plished without the afl^ectionate co-opera
tion of a not inconsiderable number of the
clergy who, from Archbishop Potter to
Mr. Grimshaw of Haworth, stood by him
through evil report and good report ?

132

XI
WESLEY THE HUMAN
Lest, having put into prominence the
churchly concerns which bulked in Wesley's
life story, we should lose perspective, it is
agreeable to return to aspects of his career
in which a broad humanity found other
scope. Critical estimates of the preacher
easily pass into eulogy, not because he was
a bundle of priggish virtues, but for the
same reason as that by which the vigour of
an oak tree always inclines us to make
little of its knotted coat. Few men have
been subject to keener scrutiny, and none
have more worthily met the ordeal. An
anthology of Wesley's limitations might
be compiled from the mass of literature
133

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
centring around his name. He believed
in witchcraft, and disliked any scepticism
about demons, on the ground that doubt
about devils involved doubt about Holy
Scripture. The ordinary reader can be
merciful to a clergyman whose date was
nearer than is ours to the date of the first
Prayer Book of Edward VI., with its form
of exorcism at the Baptism of Infants.
This man who declared, " We think, and
let think," could make the vicinage uncom
fortable for one whose thoughts were much
at variance from the standard of the
Articles and Homilies. And he was
equal to sustaining an aversion such as
he had toward Count Zinzendorf. Indeed,
Wesley kept more than one bite noire in
his backyard.
A writer in the Cambridge History
speaks of our preacher's " aspect of im
perious tyrannic strength." There- is
general agreement that at least one ponti-
134

WESLEY THE HUMAN
fex maximus was missed by the Church of
Rome when she permitted the Protestant
Reformation. None believed more firmly
in Wesley's autocratic capacity than did
the persons toward whom he evinced it.
" I determined to mend them or end
them." He cuts off triflers " at one
stroke." Toward his wife he could be
magisterial without mercy. Notwithstand
ing, he was usually a leader rather than a
driver, with an influence that could have
been wielded only as men believed in his
humble sincerity. Of his austerities of
personal discipline, especially when he set
out on his work, one has to speak with the
respect always due to the spirit, if not the
method, of a self-denying zeal. No doubt
the ascetic blight was to blame for his not
having married Grace Murray, a woman
who could have been a comrade. Perhaps
the awkward marriage ultimately achieved,
making him of the fellowship of Job and
135

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
Socrates, had reactions of value for his
public work. ' The poise of Wesley was
the control of a rich nature. To the end
he was the humanist, with warm suscepti
bilities, tremulously ready to see the charm
of exquisite and precious things, to value
sheltered nooks, and homes of intellectual
response. " I rode on to Mr. Marshal's
at Gulseley, the Capua of Yorkshire.
Hie nemus, hie gelidi fontes, hie mollia prata.
'Tis well God is here, or who could bear it ?"
Mr. George Eayrs has done a service to
the memory of Wesley's most intimate
friend among laymen, Ebenezer Blackwell.
A banker for fifty years, chief partner in
Martin's, Change Alley, Lombard Street,
Blackwell had a country home, " The
Limes," at Lewisham. It was, says Mr.
Eayrs, " the ever - open and delightful
resting-place of the brothers, especially of
John. During forty years he found there
what his aristocratic cultured nature ap-
136

WESLEY THE HUMAN
predated keenly, although he cheerfully
dispensed with them for his work's sake,
— quiet, ample comfort, refinement, con
genial friends, and the charms of a wealthy
English home aniid beautiful surroundings.
Much of his best literary work was done
there." When you hear Wesley describing the
effect of the singing of a hundred trebles
in the service at Bolton, you know that the
missioner is a musician. He occasionally
allowed himself the treat of listening to
' an oratorio : the Messiah, Elijah, Judith,
Ruth. Sometimes he spent an evening
with his musically gifted nephews. The
son of one of them, Samuel Sebastian
Wesley, was organist of the Chapel Royal.
I He composed many hymn tunes, notably
" Aurelia," and he died in 1876. Wesley,
as the ambassador to the lowly, was not
completely disfranchised from the poUte
world. He was not above taking ad- '
137

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
vantage of the honourable opportunity of
being in the robing-room when King
George is arrayed for coronation. Nor
was he too busy to sit for his portrait ; but
he preferred the artist who worked quickly.
The old warrior writes January 5, 1789 :
At the earnest desire of Mrs. Tighe, I once
more sat for my picture. Mr. Romney is a
painter indeed. He struck off an exact likeness
at once, and did more in one hour than Sir
Joshua did in ten.^
Thanks to the Journal, with its in
cidental allusions, we have many an en
gaging proof that the man whose preaching
had a temper touched with flame was alert
to the comedy as well as to the tragedy
of life. Humour, of the sort defined by
Thackeray as a mixture of love and wit,
often came in to relieve a strain. Com
ments on congregations and services are
given a light, not trivial touch. A sub-
^ George Eayrs, Letters of John Wesley, p. 289.
138

WESLEY THE HUMAN
acid flavour is to be discerned at times.
We are told of a Church whose choir
arrangements were marked with a finitude
that makes them look familiar to a cynic.
An anthem was sung, but " twelve or four
teen persons kept it to themselves." The
Sternhold and Hopkins psalmody, whose
doggerel held potent sway in the Church,
was a sore trial to our itinerant. One day
he is at a place where what is being said
'makes him fear that the weak might be
caused to stumble ; " but God took away
my fear, in a manner I did not expect,
even by the words of Thomas Sternhold:
they were these (sung immediately after
the sermon) : -^
Thy mercy is above all things,
O God ; it doth excel ;
In trust whereof, as in Thy wings,
The sons of men shall dwell."
Sometimes he confides to his paper that
he has been preaching to a " quiet, stupid
' Journal, i. p. 157.
139

WESLEY THE ANGLICAN
congregation," or to " a civil, unconcerned
congregation." Addressing a large com
pany at Durham, in a pleasant meadow
near the water's edge, he is reminded, by
the behaviour of three or four gentlemen,
of the honest man in London who was so
gay and unconcerned when Dr. Sherlock
was preaching on the Day of Judgment.
One asked, " Do you not hear what the
doctor says ? " He answered, " Yes, but
I am not of this parish."
Again, he demurely reports, " I left
them very well satisfied with the preacher
and with themselves." The instances of
insensibility are relatively few. The fore
most impression from the service reports
is one of preacher and people sharing in a
not too elusive gladness of heart. I " I was
myself much comforted in comforting the
weary and heavy laden." It was this
access of joy to human lives that con
stituted the first mark of the spiritual
140

WESLEY THE HUMAN
visitation. Between that period and our
own the long years have intervened, yet do
we not stand to be refreshed and sustained
as we recall the legend of one who carried
through life his cup of honour unspilled ?
Come where the Abbey's great lantern burns full
o'er the wave :
Once this lamp of St. Peter was low and dim ;
Then Christ to his English another Apostle gave ;
Souls of the righteous, bless ye the Lord for him.^
1 Jane T. Stoddart.

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