now a very curious one. He entirely be- | great grief at what he regarded as the lieved that his commission to preach de- schismatical proceedings of John and pended on his ordination as a priest of the Charles. "As I told Jack, I am not afraid Church of England; but his, he thought, the Church should excommunicate him was an exceptional case; "I look upon (discipline is at too low an ebb) but, that all the world as my parish ;" and he would he should excommunicate the Church. It preach and administer the sacraments is pretty near it. . . . He only who ruleth wherever he pleased. He expected per- the madness of the people can stop them secution, and certainly did his best to pro- from being a formed sect." Wesley grew voke it. But, strange as it seems, he was more and more confident, as he saw the never the object of any formal ecclesias- fruit of his preaching, that a special call tical censure. There was never a time from God placed him supra disciplinam. when all the churches in England were A book which happened to fall in his way, actually closed to him. To be excluded in January 1746, supplied him with a thefrom churches meant, with him, not to be ory which suited the exigencies of his free to preach in any church at whose position, and by which he justified his doors he might choose to knock. "If subsequent proceedings. This was Lord they do not ask me to preach in their King's "Inquiry into the Constitution, churches, they are accountable for my preaching in the fields." His out-door preaching began at Bristol, although, for a time at least, he had liberty to preach in Clifton Church. Here also occurred the bodily convulsions which brought discredit upon the beginnings of Methodism. On June 25th, Whitefield wrote to Wesley, "I cannot think it right in you to give so much encouragement to those convulsions which people have been thrown into under your ministry. Were I to do so, how many would cry out every night!" It is remarkable that, with regard to these, both Whitefield and Charles Wesley, men of far more excitable natures, were saner than John Wesley. Charles Wesley stopped the fits by threatening to have any one who fell into them carried out. But his brother prayed over them, and treated them as conflicts between the Spirit of God and the evil one. But through all these irregularities Wesley retained his rights as a clergyman untouched. In the year 1747, a complaint was made to Bishop Gibson by the churchwardens of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, that Wesley was allowed by the rector to preach very frequently in the church. The bishop replied, "What would you have me do? I have no right to hinder him. Mr. Wesley is a clergyman, regularly ordained, and under no ecclesiastical censure." His elder brother Samuel, who died in 1739, writing to their mother a few days before his death, expressed his Discipline, Unity, and Worship of the Primitive Church;" from which Wesley learnt that "bishops and presbyters are essentially of one order." Thenceforth he assumed that according to the usage of the primitive Church, he, being a regularlyordained presbyter, was also a bishop, and was within his rights in performing the functions of a bishop. In this persuasion, he gave formal ordination to several of his preachers. There was a certain middle period of his life, at which there are symptoms that his mind was wavering about the possibility of remaining a member of the Church; but the influences which held him tied to the Church prevailed, and he became increasingly emphatic in deprecating separation. And such was the respect which his character inspired, and such the value set by Churchmen upon his avowed and resolute Toryism, that in the latter part of his life he had more invitations to preach in churches than he could accept. In 1775, he preached a sermon in Bethnal Green Church, in aid of the widows and orphans of the soldiers killed in America, in which he took occasion to speak in a strongly anti-democratic vein upon the condition of the nation, and which he specially prepared for publica. tion. In 1781, holding his Conference at Leeds, he preached in the parish church, and, with the assistance of ten other clergymen, administered the Lord's supper to eleven hundred communicants. Two instances will illustrate the courtesy shown towards him by some, at least, of the bishops. In 1777, he met Bishop Lowth at dinner at the house of a friend. The bishop refused to sit above Wesley at the table, saying, "Mr. Wesley, may I be found at your feet in another world!" At Exeter, in 1782, he dined on Sunday by the bishop's invitation at the palace, meeting five clergymen and four aldermen. Bishops and clergymen, no doubt, denounced Wesley and the Methodists in opprobrious language, and clergymen were found amongst the magistrates who tried to stop Wesley's preaching, and even amongst the mobs which assailed him with brutal personal violence. But abusive language was then too common. Those who had been friends together as converted children of God, when they fell out! would easily charge each other with every fault. When Wesley imputes to such a man as his old friend Gambold "a calm, deliberate lie," it makes a more painful impression than when Lavington or Warburton inveighs coarsely against the Methodist fanaticisms. The mobs needed a police to repress them; but the police would have interfered, in the same interest of order, with Wesley's out-door preaching. As it was, Whitefield and Wesley thrust themselves amongst holiday-making crowds, and courted the rude assaults from which they sometimes narrowly escaped with their lives. The evangelists were ambitious to suffer martyrdom, and the mobs were as ready for the worrying of a preacher as for an election riot. If a clergyman allowed himself to hound on a mob, as was sometimes the case, we are ashamed of the clergyman, but we do not dignify his conduct by the title of ecclesiastical persecution. But did not the Church of Rome, it may be asked, exert such a moral control over its founders of orders as kept them loyal and obedient? Has it not therefore done in repeated instances what the Church of England failed to do with Wesley? True, it is conceivable, as I have admitted, that the Church of England might have been a different kind of mother, and Wesley a different kind of son. But when we look at the actual behaviour of Wesley, and of the Church authorities of his time, we see on their part a tolerance almost surpassing belief, and in him a tempered but self-confident energy, which any attempt to coerce him would have driven off into declared secession. Whilst with Charles Wesley, as he professed, the Church of England was first, and Methodism second; John Wesley often avowed that the Church was little to him, compared with Methodism, or "the saving of souls." The Church, if it had not spiritual force enough to secure his enthusiastic service, scarcely took a step to hinder him from doing as he pleased. He had as much reason to complain of King George as of the bishops. Charles Wesley said truly at the end of his life," The bishops have let us alone for these fifty years." To magnify the occasional misconduct of a parish clergyman into persecution by the Church, and by this plea to justify threats of secession and acts which prepared for it, is like assuming that the opposition and annoyance encountered by the courageous advocate of an unpopular cause would justify him in promoting a rebellion against the State. II. HAVING endeavoured to give the reader some help in understanding the influences to which Wesleyan Methodism owed its origin, and to clear its early history from certain prevalent misconceptions, I go on to inquire what Methodism has become since Wesley's death. Let us recall, for the sake of comparison, the distinguishing characteristics which John Wesley strove to impress upon his society, and for the sake of which he judged it worth while to estab lish it. There is no difficulty, I may observe, in ascertaining Wesley's views, although it is important to note with discrimination to what periods of his life (1703-1791) they belong. He was always plain-spoken and positive, and his journals, his correspondence, his sermons, and the minutes of his Conferences, form a great storehouse of his opinions.* I collect a decade of such characteristics. If I do not include in these the preaching of salvation by faith, and of the necessity of holiness, and of the duty of seeking to save souls, it is because such doctrine is not peculiar to Methodism; but I wish it to be clearly understood that these ideas held primary places in Wesley's own thoughts and in his constant teaching. 1. Field-preaching. This was associated with the very beginning of Methodism, and Wesley continued to practise it to the last and to set a high value on it. Whenever the "work of God" was flagging, one of his first prescriptions was Preach abroad as much as possible." It was this that "did the execution," this that the I have been much indebted to the Rev. L. Tverman's Life of John Wesley" and "Oxford Meibo dists," books which, with considerable imperfections, are fall, laborious, and fair. devil naturally did not love. In a Confer- lies, it was plain—(1) that they felt no inence minute, published in 1763, he says toward sin; and to the best of their knowlhis preachers:— I do not find any great increase of the work of God without field-preaching. If ever this is laid aside I expect the whole work will gradually die away. 2. Itinerancy. The continual moving of preachers from place to place was so essential a part of Wesley's scheme that in the deed which gave a legal status and rights to the Methodist Conference he inserted a clause forbidding the Conference to allow a preacher to occupy a chapel for more than three years in succession. He writes in 1756: can I ever believe it was ever the will of our Lord that any congregation should have one teacher only. We have found, by long and constant experience, that a frequent change of edge committed no outward sin; (2) that preachers ever so eloquent, there is little Otherwise 4. Hostility to Calvinism. In the ConI know, were I myself to preach one whole ference of 1776, it was pronounced that year in one place, I should preach both myself" Calvinism had been the grand hindrance and most of my congregation asleep. Nor of the work of God," and the preachers were requested "not to imitate the Calvinist preachers in screaming, allegorizing, and boasting; but to visit as diligently as they did, to answer all their objections, to advise the Methodists not to hear them, to pray constantly and earnestly that God would stop the plague." A somewhat longer extract, from a letter written in 1778 (age seventy-five), will show Wesley's feeling on this subject. Speaking of Dissent, he says: teachers is best. Again, in 1774 While I live itinerant preachers shall be itinerants. . . . I have too much regard both for the bodies and souls of our preachers to let them be confined to one place any more. And in 1788: For fifty years God has been pleased to bless the itinerant plan, the last year most of all; it must not be altered till I am removed, and I hope it will remain till our Lord comes to reign upon earth. 3. Perfectionism. What Wesley meant by preaching "Christian perfection" was not merely that Christians ought to aim at perfection, which all admit, - but that ther from it than most of the sermons I hear Calvinism is not the gospel: nay it is furevangelical, but they are not anti-evangelical. at the church. These are very frequently unFew of the Methodists are now in danger of imbibing error from the Church ministers; but they are in great danger of imbibing the senting ministers. Perhaps thousands have grand error, Calvinism, from some of the Disdone it already; most of whom have drawn perfection is attainable in this life, and back to perdition. I see more instances of was actually given instantaneously to many this than any one else can do; and, on this members of his societies. Hardly any-ground also, exhort all who would keep to the thing was, to him, more characteristic of Methodists, and from Calvinism, to go to the Methodism than this assertion; and no disenchantments would induce him to surrender it. In 1760, Wesley examined a number of Methodists at Otley, in Yorkshire, who professed to be entirely sanctified. He questioned them one by one, and of the majority of them he writes: "Unless they told wilful and deliberate church, and not to the meeting. But to speak freely: I myself find more life in the Church prayers than in any formal extemporary prayers of Dissenters. Nay, I find more good works, than in what are vulgarly called profit in sermons on either good tempers, or gospel sermons. The term has now become a mere cant word; I wish none of our society would use it. Let but a pert self-sufficient But the most significant proof of Wesley's detestation of Calvinism was that the monthly magazine which he began in 1777 bore to the end of his life, and justified by its contents, the controversial name of the Arminian Magazine. stant Communion," in which he urged that all Christians should receive, not frequently, but constantly. "Let every one, therefore, who has either any desire to please God, or any love of his own soul, obey God, and consult the good of his own soul by communicating every time he can, like the first Christians, with whom the Christian sacrifice was a constant part of the Lord's Day service." When the City Road Chapel was opened, in 1776, the holy communion was administered regularly once a week. 7. Simplicity in dress and expenditure. On this head, Wesley's injunctions and remonstrances grew in urgency as his years lengthened. In 1760 he wrote a paper entitled "Advice to the Methodists with regard to Dress," containing rules which to a considerable extent he actually enforced. 5. Bodily asceticism. I need not add much to the illustrations given in my former article of the vital importance which Wesley attached to fasting and early rising. He had no wish indeed to hurt the body; he thought these practices as useful for bodily as for spiritual health, and certainly longevity appears to have been very common among the early Methodists. When he found, in 1784, that the five o'clock preaching had been discontinued at Chester, because the people would not attend in winter at so early an... I do not advise women to wear rings, hour, he exclaimed that the Methodists were a fallen people; and he called on the preachers, in the name of God, to arouse themselves to convince them that are fallen, and exhort them instantly to repent, and do the first works; this in particular-rising in the morning-without which neither their souls nor bodies can long remain in health." The "work of God," he continually testified, could not be advanced by preaching without fasting. In addition to the Friday fast, which he never ceased to insist upon, he was accustomed to order occasional days of fasting and prayer throughout his societies. 6. Attendance on ordinances. It was peculiar to Methodism that Wesley not only affirmed as strongly as any Churchman the necessity of the means of grace, but sought strenuously to make an amount of attendance on services, unknown in that age, the actual rule of his societies. The services in his preaching-houses were to be an addition to the observances which most zealous Churchmen would have recommended. "If the morning preaching be given up while I am alive," he wrote in 1784, "what must it be when I am gone? Give up this and Methodism too will degenerate into a mere sect, only distinguished by some opinions and modes of worship." He had previously said in 1764," Whenever the Methodist preachers or people leave off the morning preaching, they will soon sink into nothing." In 1788, he printed a sermon on the " Duty of Con Wear no gold, no pearls, or precious stones; use no curling of hair; buy no velvets, no silks, no fine linen; no superfluities, no mere ornaments, though ever so much in fashion. earrings, necklaces, lace, or ruffles. Neither do I advise men to wear coloured waistcoats, shining stockings, glittering or costly buckles or buttons, either on their coats or in their sleeves, any more than gay, fashionable, or expensive perukes. It is true, these are little, very little things: therefore, they are not worth defending; therefore, give them up, let them drop, throw them away without another word. He accordingly insisted on women being expelled from the societies if they would of his sermons is "On Dress." But in not give up the wearing of ruffles. One another, "On Obedience to Pastors,” he speaks still more solemnly. ... Do you then take my advice (I ask in the presence of God and all the world) with regard to dress? I published that advice above thirty years ago; I have repeated it a thousand times since. Have you taken this advice? Have you all, men and women, those needless ornaments which I particularly young and old, rich and poor, laid aside all objected to? Are you all exemplarily plain in your apparel: as plain as Quakers (so called) or Moravians? If not, if you are still dressed like the generality of people of your own rank and fortune, you declare frankly to all the world that you will not obey them that are over you in the Lord. You declare in open defiance of God and man, that you will not your sins on your forehead, openly, and in the submit yourselves to them. Many of you carry face of the sun. You harden your hearts against instruction and against conviction. If all other texts were silent, this is enough: "Submit yourselves to them that are over you in the Lord." I bind this upon your consciences in the sight of God. You cannot be clear before God, unless you throw aside all needless ornaments, in utter defiance of that tyrant of fools, fashion. expen The preaching-houses or chapels formed the property basis on which the legal constitution of Methodism was After the death of the two Wesleys and erected. their friend Grimshaw, the chapels were And this stringency about dress was only to be held in trust for the sole use of such a part of a general rule as to expendi- persons as might be appointed at the ture which Wesley made vigorous at- yearly conference of the people called tempts to enforce throughout his societies. Methodists, provided that the said persons He wished to constrain all Methodists, if preached no other doctrines than those he could, to act as he did with regard to contained in Wesley's "Notes on the money. Instead of increasing his New Testament," and in his four volditure, when he received more, he gave umes of sermons. But what was the away more. He had an extreme fear of "Conference"? In order to give this the anti-religious influence of riches, and regarded it as a misfortune which could not be helped, that the Methodist virtues of industry and frugality caused an increase of wealth which, if spent, must be deadly to Methodist piety. There was but one remedy, that the whole increment should be given away. "I charge you, in the name of God, do not increase your substance!" Voluntary poverty was, according to the founder's idea, to be one of the features of the Methodist rule. body a legal status, Wesley executed in 1784 a deed of declaration, defining the Conference, and fixing its powers. It was to consist of a hundred preachers, who were to fill up vacancies in their own body. The "legal hundred" were made the sovereign oligarchy of Methodism, and charged with all the powers which Wesley himself exercised. 10. Adhesion to the Church of England. The great majority of the Methodists in Wesley's time were members of the Es8. Society meetings. It was a fixed tablished Church; and it was his design ordinance of Methodism that the mem- that by remaining in it they should be as bers should attend the appointed meet- a leaven to the whole body. He constantings, or cease to be members. Member-ly affirmed, not only that he did not wish ship was conferred by the quarterly ticket, and this ticket was only given to those who regularly attended their "classes." 9. Absolute government. Wesley was perfectly frank in asserting his own absolute authority over his society. From him the power of government descended. He chose and dismissed preachers and stewards; he or his delegate, the preacher, chose and dismissed the class-leaders, and gave the members' tickets. The final appeal was to him, and from him there was none. He took occasion to explain from time to time that, though he invited ministers and preachers to a yearly conference, it was only that he might avail himself of their advice. I chose to exercise the power which God had given me in this manner, both to avoid ostentation, and gently to habituate the people to obey them when I should be taken from their head. But as long as I remain with them, the fundamental rule of Methodism remains inviolate; as long as any preacher joins with me, he is to be directed by me in his work. (January, 1780.) As long as I live, the people shall have no share in choosing either stewards or leaders among the Methodists. We have not, and never had, any such custom. We are no republicans, and never intend to be. (January, 1790.) them to separate from the Church, but of the Churches abroad, and having deeply In every possible way I have advised the Methodists to keep to the Church. They that do this most prosper best in their souls; I have observed it long. If ever the Methodists in general were to leave the Church, I must leave them. |