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THE CENTENARY LIFE OF
JOHN WESLEY

THE LIVING WESLEY.

REV. JAMES H. RIGG, D.D.,
AUTHOR OP
'MODERN ANGLICAN THEOLOGY," "THE OHUROHMANSHIP OF JOHN WESLEY,"
"CHURCH ORGANISATIONS: PRIMITIVE AND PROTESTANT,"
ETC. ETC.

Second Edition, Revised Throughout, and greatly Enlarged,
Containing several New Chapters and also a Supplementary Chapter
On the Progress of Universal Methodism during the Century
sines the Death of Wesley.

LONDON:
CHARLES H. KELLY, 2, Castle Street, City Road, E.C;
And 66, Patebnostek Row, E.C.
1891.

PREFACE.

Under the title, The Living Wesley, as he was in his
Youth and in his Prime, a considerable portion of this
volume was published some years ago, first in this
country, and, somewhat later, in the United States,
the American edition being graced by an introduction
from the pen of my friend Dr. Hurst, now Bishop
Hurst, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The
special purpose of the book was described in the
Preface as being " to do something towards furnishing
a true portraiture of John Wesley, in his human
affections, in his intellectual character, and in his gifts
and power as a preacher." At the same time I expressed
my opinion that " even after Mr. Tyerman's diligence
there is yet room for an original and standard life of
the Methodist Eeformer, at once shorter and in some
respects more satisfactory, clearer and more dis
criminating as to some matters of primary importance."

vi PREFACE.
I intimated that I felt myself obliged, through increas
ing pressure of work, to relinquish the hope I had
long cherished of being able, in some degree, to supply
this want, but offered The, Living Wesley as a con
tribution towards what I felt to be needful. Since
that time I have published a volume on The Church-
manship of John Wesley, which may perhaps be
regarded as another contribution towards the same
object. I have, in the meantime, been frequently solicited
to enlarge my study of The Living Wesley into a duly
proportioned biography, embracing not only the youth
and prime of Wesley, but his whole course and life-
work. The continued pressure of other work, from
which there has been no escape, has prevented me
from doing this. The call for a new edition of The
Living Wesley, however, coinciding with the centenary
year of Wesley's death, has led to the suggestion being
urged upon me, so to enlarge the new edition as to
make it a study of Wesley in all the great phases and
stages of his life-development and of his characteristic
work, as a national evangelist and as the founder of
Methodism, and specially to connect it at the same
time with the centenary epoch which just now is

PREFACE. vii
recalling public attention to his life and work. I
have attempted to do this in the pages which follow.
Narrow limits both of space and of time — for the
volume must still be small, and the weeks available
for accomplishing my task have been few — have not
allowed me to do all that I could have wished. I
have, however, extended the scope and much enlarged
the contents of the original volume. Throughout, it has
been closely revised ; some portion has been not only
enlarged, but in part rewritten ; several new chapters
have been added ; and to the whole there has been
appended a Supplementary Chapter, making Part V.
of the volume, in which a sketch is given of " The
Progress of Universal Methodism since the death of
Wesley." I am aware that, since the publication of The Living
Wesley in its original form, more than one valuable
biography of Wesley has been published, and in
particular two by Wesleyan ministers. Neither the
small biography by the Eev. E. Green, however, nor
the larger and fuller one by the Eev. J. Telford,
resembles in scope or character the present volume.
No other book exhibits in all its stages, as distinctly
as this does, the singularly interesting development of

viii PREFACE.
character and opinion in the case of Wesley, by which,
under Divine influence, he came to be the revivalist of
evangelical doctrine, the great awakener of souls, the
master-theologian, and the founder of a new religious
community. No other book shows, with equal distinct
ness and completeness of outline, what Wesley was
in his proper idiosyncrasy, with his bright gifts and
faculties, but also with his weaknesses of temperament
— these weaknesses being some of them what would
have been least expected ; or how the natural, College-
bred Wesley was strengthened and spiritualised, was
quickened and inspired, so as to become the hero,
sage, and saint of his ripe maturity and glorious later
years. In no other book is his special character as
a preacher, and the secret of his awakening power,
often so overwhelming, made the subject of so careful
and complete an analysis. Nor is there any other
in which his intellectual characteristics are the subject
of so detailed and comprehensive a study. In respect
of these important particulars, this volume stands alone
as a portraiture of The Living Wesley as his contempor
aries saw and felt him. With the study thus furnished
of his living and moving self, there is in the present
volume incorporated and interlaced such a sketch of his

PREFACE. ix
history and life-work as, though comparatively slight,
may, I hope, entitle this book, as a whole, to be regarded
as, in its kind and degree, not unworthy to take its
place among the shorter biographies of Wesley, as his
' Centenary Life.' The Supplementary Chapter, com
pendious and brief as it necessarily is, yet furnishes
such a view of the progress of universal Methodism
during the last hundred years as is not elsewhere to
be found.
JAMES H. RIGG.
New Year's Day, 1891.

CONTENTS.

PART I. PAGE
INTRODUCTORY — WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AND
CRITICS,  A .1

PART II.
WESLEY'S CHARACTER AND OPINIONS IN HIS EARLIER
LIFE TO THE PERIOD OF HIS EVANGELICAL CON
VERSION.
CHAP. I. HIS CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH, . . . .23
II. THE COLLEGIAN AT OXFORD, . . . .31
t III. JOHN WESLEY, MISS KIRKHAM, AND MRS. PENDAEVES
(AFTERWARDS MRS. DELANY), . . .44
IT. WESLEY'S THEOLOGICAL VIEWS AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER
AT OXFORD (1731-1735), .... 64
V. WESLEY IN GEORGIA — MISS HOPKEY, . . .75
VI. WESLEY'S RELIGIOLtS OPINIONS AND CHARACTER IN
GEORGIA, ...... 82

PAGE

xii CONTENTS.
PART III.
WESLEY'S CONVERSION AND HIS LIFE-WORK AS AN
EVANGELIST.
CHAP.
• I. WESLEY'S RITUALISM AND MYSTICISM BEFORE HIS EVAN
GELICAL CONVERSION, ..... 87
> II. WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION, . 101
III. WESLEY THE PREACHER, ..... 124
IV. WESLEY'S ITINERANCY AND PERSECUTIONS, . . 150
V. WESLEY'S DEALING WITH ANTINOMIAN PERVERSIONS OF
EVANGELICAL DOCTRINE, .... 167
VI. WESLEY AS THE ORGANISER OF A NEW EVANGELICAL
COMMUNITY, . .... 174

PART IV.
WESLEY'S INTELLECTUAL POWERS, HIS DISPOSITION AND
CHARACTER, AND HIS LATER LIFE.
I. WESLEY AS A THINKER, . . 183
II. WESLEY'S DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER, . . 193
III. WESLEY'S LATER LIFE AND LAST DAYS, . 208

PART V.
SUPPLEMENTARY - THE PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL
METHODISM SINCE THE DEATH OF WESLEY, . 215

THE LIVING WESLEY.

PART I.

INTEODUCTORY.
WESLEY S BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS.
THERE are some questions as to Wesley's character
and the nature of his influence still unsettled ;
indeed, as I shall show, he is imperfectly under
stood as yet. But there can be no question as to the
immense spread and depth of the motive energies
which he has been the means of originating within the
nationalities of England, with all her Colonies, and of
the United States, not to speak of the critical and
determinative influence which has been exercised by
Methodism upon the Protestant thought and life of
France, and even of Germany. No single man for
centuries has moved the world as Wesley has moved
it ; since Luther, no man. No Protestant Church at
this day counts so many adherents as the Methodist
family of Churches ; no Church has operated so
powerfully as a ferment of life among all the other
Churches. If these things are so — and now-a-days hardly any
A

2 THE LIVING WESLEY.
man will venture to deny the truth, at least in general,
of what I have stated — it is no wonder that the
present age has waked up to an eager curiosity as to
the character of the man, the secret of his power, the
meaning of his work, the history of his life. Long
ago Dr. Southey perceived the capabilities of this
theme ; historian, man of letters, and poet-laureate as
he was, he treated the character and life of Wesley
with a respect and ability worthy alike of the subject
and the writer. It was inevitable that such a philo
sophic Churchman as Southey, such a semi-rational-
istically-orthodox Anglican, should commit serious
errors in his attempt to portray and estimate such a
character as that of Wesley. It was equally inevitable,
with scarcely any other sources of information in
addition to Wesley's works than the Arminian Magazine
and the very imperfect Lives of Wesley which had
been published by some of his over-worked, hurried
and driven, and, as literary men and historians, un
trained itinerant helpers, the best Life which Southey
or any other writer could produce at that time should
be defective and incorrect. He had no access what
ever to the special sources of information without
which no Life of such a man could be justly or
adequately written, and which it was as yet too soon
after the death of Wesley to expect to be given to the
world. But, with all its faults, the work produced by
Southey was so beautiful in its style, and so skilful in
its use of the materials at his disposal, that almost up
to this day it has remained — now for much more than
half a century — the one biography by which Wesley
has been known to the world. Men have not read the
Lives written by Whitehead, Coke, and Moore  for

WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. 3
many years, indeed, these have been out of print, and
it would be an injustice to the name and memory of
Wesley to reprint any of them, — but Southey's Life of
the Methodist reformer has been in every important
and well-chosen library, whether of a public institution
or of a private mansion ; and its fascination has not
failed to secure for it successive generations of readers.
Wesley's Life, indeed, as written by the Tory his
torian, reviewer, biographist, and poet, as written in
the best style of one who was a master both of the
English language and of the biographer's art — became
at once an English classic, and, what is much more,
raised the character and memory of Wesley at once,
in the circles of men of high and thoughtful culture,
to a place of eminence and respect often rising to
veneration. Nor was it only to Wesley that Southey
did, according to his light, generous justice ; he did
justice also to the humble but great and noble men,
such as John Nelson and the soldier Haime, who were
Wesley's early and chief lay-helpers. He showed
these men in their true light, as manliest among men
and saintliest among saints ; as men of no less stead
fast power than fervid zeal ; as among the heroes of
the holy Christian warfare. Thus the total effect of
Southey's Life of Wesley was to elevate the Methodism
of Wesley and his followers to a place of permanent
interest and honour before their countrymen, and,
we may say, before the world.
Southey, indeed, as I have intimated, misappre
hended some leading particulars in Wesley's character,
and accordingly misconstrued broadly, in certain
directions, his motives and his conduct. He conceived
ambition to be the leading natural feature of his

4 THE LIVING WESLEY.
character, and to have powerfully prompted and con
trolled him through life — the ambition of the ruler
and the statesman ; he resolved, moreover, the
wonderful effects of his preaching into the natural
results of potent and penetrating oratory, managed
with consummate skill, by a master alike of speech
and of the art of turning circumstances and situations
to account. For these fundamental errors he was
most ably and severely searched and called to account
by the Rev. Richard Watson, in his well-known
Observations on Southey's Life of Wesley ; and his mis
conceptions in this respect have also been effectually
disposed of very recently by Miss Wedgwood, in
her essay on Wesley, — Miss Wedgwood having,
apparently, never read Mr. Watson's Observations.1
Still, with all its errors, and notwithstanding its neces
sary defects — notwithstanding its evident Anglican
prejudices and its pervasive taint of rationalistic sense-
dogmatism and spiritual insusceptibility — Southey's
work is so interesting, so genial, so candid, so evidently
sincere, and even generous, in its spirit, that it ought
ever to be regarded by the followers of Wesley as the
work, not of an enemy, but of one who meant honestly
and kindly, and who has really, on the whole, done
the office of a friend. Southey himself, indeed, became
convinced that he had wronged Wesley's memory and
misunderstood his character ; and if he had lived to
bring out the new edition which he had in contempla
tion, he would have made a correction of his leading
errors. Whether Mr. Watson's criticism had any share
in bringing about this change, I know not. Southey's
1 John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction oj the ISlh Century.
By Julia Wedgwood. London : Macmillan.

WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. 5
own account of it, given to the late learned and
amiable James Nichols, littirateur and printer, of
Hoxton Square, in an autograph letter, of which a fac
simile, very interesting to look at, if it were only for
the elegance and neatness of the writing, is engraved
in Dr. Smith's History of Methodism1 states that Mr.
Alexander Knox, in " a long and admirable paper ''
(which is printed at length in the recent editions of
Southey's biography), had " convinced him that he was
mistaken " in charging Wesley with personal ambition.
The date of this letter was 17th August, 1835. He
was at that time making some preparations for a new
edition of the Life, and he stated that it was " his
intention to incorporate in it whatever new information
has been brought forward by subsequent biographers,
and, of course, to correct every error that had been
pointed out, or that he himself could discover." More
than twelve months later, in December, 1836, being
on a visit to Penzance, he in substance repeated to
the late Mr. Carne, of that town, the same statement
which he had made in writing to Mr. Nichols. Un
fortunately, the new edition was never prepared by
him; and when, after his death, his son edited a new"
edition, in which Mr. Knox's observations were printed,
as well as some notes by Coleridge, he seems to have
been ignorant that his father had been convinced by
Mr. Knox, or had intended to rectify his error. He
leaves it, indeed, distinctly to be inferred that the
text, as originally printed, expressed his father's settled
judgment on the matter in question.
Southey's biography was published early in 1820.
Before the end of the same year, Mr. Watson published
1 Wesley and his Times, vol. i. p. 634. Longmans & Co.

6 THE LIVING WESLEY.
his Observations. It was not, however, until 1825
that the Methodists themselves put forth a new Life
of their founder, such as might be regarded as a cor
rective to that of Southey. This was the Rev. H.
Moore's Life in two volumes, published at the
Conference Office. Mr. Moore was one of Wesley's
trustees, the other two being Dr. Coke, and the
physician, Dr. Whitehead. Of these, the last had got
hold, in the first instance, of Wesley's papers, and had
published, very unfairly, by means of these, a separate
and an ex parte Life of Wesley, as regarded chiefly
from the point of view of an English Churchman,
although Whitehead himself was in principle a thorough
Dissenter. To anticipate this publication, the other
two trustees, by the help of Wesley's own publications,
and of such papers as they were able to command the
use of, published very hastily a joint Life of Wesley.
Malice, however, had been beforehand, and Hampson's
Life (Hampson had formerly been a Methodist
preacher, but was then a clergyman of the Church of
England) had been published even earlier than that
by Coke and Moore. The latter, though it sold largely,
was too hurried a composition (to a large extent,
indeed, it was a mere compilation) to hold its rank as
a biography of Wesley. Moore's Life, published in
1825, was more carefully prepared and fuller than
either of its Methodist predecessors, and was intended
to serve as an antidote both to Whitehead's and to
Southey's Life. It was far, however, from being
really adequate to the claims of Wesley's history, not
withstanding its genuine interest and its real value.
It never for a moment was likely to supersede that of
Southey with the general reading world. Watson, at

WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. 7
the request of the Conference, undertook to prepare,
and published in the year 1831, a short Life of
Wesley for popular use and extensive circulation.
But Watson was in failing health, and greatly over
worked. His little volume is valuable for its observa
tions on certain points especially connected with the
relations between Wesley and the Church of England ;
but, regarded as a consecutive biography, it was
altogether too slight, and left far too many blanks in
the narrative. It was far from being even a tolerably
complete epitome of Wesley's crowded and momentous
history. Since Watson's Life of Wesley, no English
biography of the founder of Methodism had been
published, until the Eev. Luke Tyerman published his
elaborate work. The first volume of Dr. Smith's
History of Methodism was, however, virtually a bio
graphy of Wesley, for the most part correct and
judicious, although slight and incomplete. Though
slight, it contributed some new and important infor
mation on the subject. The first volume of Dr.
Stevens's able History of Methodism furnished a
fuller and more vivid account of the chief figure
among the leaders of " Methodism " — using that word
in its wider sense. It was not, however, and could
not be, a complete biography, nor did it stand apart.
It was intermingled with the sketches and episodes
of an eloquent and stirring history. The Life of
Wesley was but the chief among several biographical
lines of narrative which were interwoven in that
history. Southey's Life was very likely to suggest the
history and character of Wesley as a theme for philo-

8 THE LIVING WESLEY.
sophical students of religious movements and ecclesi- .¦
astical history. It was not, however, till thirty years
after the first publication of his work, that the first
essay on Wesley, in a separate volume, made its
appearance. This was by Isaac Taylor, and was
entitled Wesley and Methodism. The author of
Essays on Enthusiasm, on Fanaticism, on Spiritual
Despotism, on Ignatius Loyola, could hardly have re
frained from working out a study in his own line of
composition on the character and life of Wesley.
Taylor's Wesley and Methodism is not less faulty
than might have been expected from such a writer,
but it possesses at the same time considerable merits,
and some parts of it are written in Taylor's best
manner. Dr. Dobbin, somewhere near the same time,
published a warmly appreciative sketch of Wesley.
A few years earlier, the late Dr. James Hamilton, in
the North British Review, had published an article
on Wesley, which, although brilliantly written, and
conceived in a kindly spirit, showed that the writer
knew very little of the real character or of the labours
of the founder of Methodism. After this period,
nearly twenty years passed away before much was
written again respecting Wesley. Some years ago,
however, the gifted author of the Schonberg - Cotta
Family series of stories, in her Diary of Mrs.
Kitty Trevelyan, brought the life of early Methodism,
according to her conception of it, vividly before a large
circle of readers. Meanwhile, the public interest in
Wesley, and in the history and position of Methodism,
was at once shown and stimulated in England by
discussions, year after year, in Convocation ; by those
reports of the proceedings of the annual Wesleyan

WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. 9
Conferences which, within the last few years, have
become a striking feature in the leading newspapers
of the country, both metropolitan and provincial ; by
discussions relating to Methodism in clerical meetings ;
by correspondence in the religious newspapers ; by
letters in the public journals, and by pamphlets
relating to the subject, and chiefly bearing upon the
question of reunion with the Church of England ; and
by certain tracts which are extensively circulated by
clergymen of the Church of England. Within the
last five-and-thirty years, two articles on the relations
between Wesleyan Methodism and the Church of
England have been published in the London Quarterly
Review, — the former from the pen of Eev. W. Arthur ;
the latter, which has been since published in a separate
form, by myself.1 The public mind in England has
thus, within the last twenty years, become much more
widely interested, and somewhat better informed, re- '
specting Wesley and his work than formerly. Doubt
less, also, the publication (in thirteen volumes), under
the able editorship of Dr. Osborn, of the whole of the
Wesley poetry, by which, for the first time, the world
has been made aware of the wealth and variety, as well
as the intensity and brilliancy, of the poetic power
wich which the two brothers, but especially Charles,
were endowed, has contributed to the general feeling
of interest with which the career of the Wesleys is
now regarded — of Charles, as the Methodist poet, and
otherwise his brother's faithful coadjutor ; of John
Wesley, as the leading mind, whose character and
convictions gave law to the whole Wesleyan move-
1 My own article has finally been incorporated as part of a volume on
The Churchmanship of John Wesley.

10 THE LIVING WESLEY.
ment. One further element I must name as con
tributing largely to the recent growth of interest in
Wesley and Methodism ; it is that which, indeed, has
been already in part indicated in my reference to the
space recently accorded to the Wesleyan Conference
in the public papers — I mean the manifest, and the
manifestly growing, power of Methodism. With this
element in the case, the extension of the franchise,
the spread of anti-State-Church principles, and the
precedent, as many regard it, of the Irish Church dis
establishment, distinctly connect themselves.
It is no wonder, accordingly, if Mrs. Oliphant, in
her series of papers in Blackwood's Magazine for
1870, concerning the England of the Eighteenth
Century, found herself brought face to face with John
Wesley as " The Eeformer " of his age. Her paper
is clever, frank, and genial, but, as was to be expected,
full of misconceptions. Southey would seem to have
been her one source and authority, and it is something
if she detects some of his fundamental mistakes.
Since Mrs. Oliphant wrote, Miss Wedgwood has
published her very candid and thoughtful essay on
Wesley. It is to be regretted that Miss Wedgwood
had not read some of the most important authorities
on her subject. She, also, seems to have relied chiefly
on Southey. In her list of authorities we find
Whitehead's Life of Wesley, and that by Coke and
Moore ; but not the more authentic and important
biography of 1825, by Moore alone ; nor (very import
ant for Miss Wedgwood's purpose in her study of
Wesley) Watson's Observations, nor Watson's Life (by
no means unimportant), nor Dr. Stevens's very able
and valuable volume, the first of his History of

WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. u
Methodism, nor the biography of Wesley, which
constitutes the first volume of the late Dr. George
Smith's History of Methodism, nor even Isaac Taylor's
Wesley and Methodism, a book most germane to her
purpose. Neither of the articles in the London
Quarterly to which I have referred seems to have
come in her way. If they had, they might at least
have cleared up some points of misconception or
obscurity, or have served as an index to sources of
information. It is all the more satisfactory and noteworthy,
however, on this account, that Miss Wedgwood, from
her own independent study, has been enabled to refute
the most fundamental errors in Southey's representa
tion of Wesley's character. With a quiet grasp of
the subject, with easy acuteness and insight, she
disposes of the charge of ambition, as easily as she
exposes the inconsistent and untenable naturalism
which lies at the basis of Southey's resolution of
religious phenomena into their supposed constituents,
and of most of his criticisms of Wesley's " credulity "
and " enthusiasm." Her views, indeed, appear to be
strongly tinctured with Mauri cian mysticism, and she
repeats, in substance, some of the criticisms on the
evangelical Arminianism of Wesley which are con
tained in Coleridge's notes to Southey's biography.
But her main lines of thought are admirably laid
out ; her grouping of facts is very skilful ; her general
handling of the subject is simple and masterly. It
is to be regretted, indeed, that what we have is only
a study of the man as he was when he first set forth
on his evangelical work ; or, at the utmost, of his
moral and spiritual qualifications as a reformer, and

12 IHE LIVING WESLEY.
of the position to which he advanced in the opening
campaigns of his life's warfare : consequently the
volume gives us the impression of being merely an
introduction or a fragment. Wesley the preacher is
scarcely sketched at all ; his intellectual characteristics
as a thinker or writer are scarcely touched upon ; his
evangelical itinerancy is not represented to our view ;
his ripe manhood and his old age are passed by ; of
the organisation and the wide-spread work and influ
ence of his later years next to nothing is said, except
only so far as relates to the American ordinations.
In short, just as misconceptions have been cleared
away, as his position has been distinctly defined, as
the nature of his work in general has been explained,
and its need and vast importance been established ;
just when his disinterestedness, his magnanimity, his
bravery and gentleness in peril and in controversy,
have been beautifully shown ; just as the general
characteristics of his mission, his purpose, his faith,
have been set forth, and we are waiting to see what
are his actual powers for work and service, for
preaching and counselling, for moulding the faith and
the theology of a community, for saturating a nation
with his influence, for consolidating and governing a
Christian Church or family of Churches — we find that
the essay breaks off, and all is over. Perhaps Miss
Wedgwood acted wisely, perhaps she knew best her
own compass of power — but I confess to have experi
enced a feeling of disappointment.
Miss Wedgwood has admirably delineated the cir
cumstances which surrounded Wesley at the beginning
of his work, and she has effectually refuted Southey's
errors as to his character and motives ; but the livino-

WESLEYS BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. 13
man himself, as preacher, as ruler, as companion or
friend, she has left quite in the shadow. She has
done justice to the living Wesley only as a con
troversialist. Indeed, it is plain that she has, so far
as she has conceived his living and social humanity
at all, in part, at least, misconceived it. She can
appreciate the character of his writing, so far as she
has studied it, and has also fine glimpses of insight
into his public character and his gifts as a ruler ; but
of Wesley as a friend and companion she evidently
has no sort of just conception ; otherwise she would
not have characterised as devoid of all sense of humour
one of the pleasantest and brightest of men, of whose
remarkable vein of humour, indeed, she must have
read some instances in Southey's Life, and would have
found others in Stevens's History ; neither would she,
notwithstanding the apparent inhumanness of Wesley's
school arrangements at Kingswood, and the reticence
as to domestic details in his letters, of which his
brother Charles pleasantly complained in their college
days, have really concluded that Wesley was defective
in human sympathy, had she mastered the details of
his many-sided life and character. Wesley, as will
presently be shown, was perhaps as susceptible a man
in regard to all the charms and attractions of social
character and intercourse, especially in the case of
women, as can easily be found among the saints of
history. But the most elaborate work which has appeared
on Wesley is the Life, in three volumes, from the
pen of the Eev. Luke Tyerman, to which I have
referred. This work embodies the results of very
great research, the fruit of years of industrious reading

14 THE LIVING WESLEY.
and collection. Mr. Tyerman prepared himself for his
work by writing his biography of the father of the
Wesleys — Samuel Wesley, the rector of Epworth. He
seems also to have collected and studied — or at least
to have carefully read, if he was not able to purchase
— almost every book, pamphlet, broadsheet, and
periodical, in which there is any reference whatever to
Wesley : so that he writes with hitherto unequalled
fulness of material and knowledge so far as respects
the facts of Wesley's life. Being thus furnished and
prepared, he has set himself to search out and set
forth in order the whole history of Wesley from his
cradle to his grave. His boyhood, so far as anything
can be learned about it ; his school and college life ;
his home relations ; his early personal friends, including
not only university chums but well-beloved ladies ; his
religious history, minutely traced in all its stages,
especially his changes of opinion and feeling as these
gradually declared themselves, until in the end a
complete revolution had been consummated, and the
academical High Churchman had become the father of
the Methodist revival and transformation ; his preach
ings and journeyings; his organisations; his contro
versies ; the persecutions he endured ; the slanders in
full tale and in all their baseless enormity, which
were continually invented and circulated, against him,
however miserable and short-lived such slanders may
have been ; his love-affairs and his married life ; his
almost innumerable publications ; his conferences and
his helpers, ordained and unordained ; his " ordina
tions " and his relations with the Church of England ;
his co-operation and his disagreements with the
Moravians, with Whitefield, and " the Countess ; " his

WESLEYS BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. 15
loving concord and co-working, and his no less loving
differences and contentions, with his Church-satirising
but Church-idea-loving brother Charles ; the peaceful
labours and the wide-spread love and honour which
marked the protracted years of his wonderful old age;
— all these matters, and a world of things besides,
belonging to the infinitely busy and varied life of
Wesley, Mr. Tyerman has made known to the world
in these large and closely-printed volumes. The
world, by the help of Mr. Tyerman, may now know
all about John Wesley ; may know much more, indeed,
about the mere facts and consecutive history of his
life, in its various fields and departments, than was
ever known of him in his lifetime by his closest friends.
The record may be read and pondered in all its breadth,
and from beginning to end. We may study the man
as he hardly could have studied himself.
It must be admitted, moreover, that Mr. Tyerman
has shown no indulgence to his hero. Cromwell
enjoined on the courtly portrait-painter to be sure to
paint in all the warts there were upon his face. Mr.
Tyerman appears rather to have been on the look-out
for warts, and occasionally, as it seems to us, has
magnified a mole into a wart, if he has not sometimes,
looking through his microscope with broken light,
fancied he saw an unevenness and blemish where in
reality there was none. The severe and Rhadaman-
thine judgment which Mr. Tyerman has exercised in
regard to the pre-eminent son, is the more remarkable
because he went to the other extreme in writing the
Life of the father. On that old soldier's face there
were warts not a few, and of no small size. But Mr.
Tyerman could hardly see any. To him the rector of

1 6 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Epworth was an altogether noble and comely-seeming
character, with a few venial infirmities, but no faults
of any serious account ; he was not merely a good and
able and worthy man, although somewhat rugged in
natural disposition, and time-serving in professions and
policy — to Mr. Tyerman's eye he was a truly great
man, a great and good man ; he was a high poetic
genius, a man of a brave and lofty spirit, a great
sufferer, a great hero, and a great saint. What
Frederick the Great is to Carlyle, Wesley of Epworth
is to Mr. Tyerman ; and, according to his ability, he
has effected for Samuel Wesley, as a figure in the public
eye, a transformation similar in character to that which
the rugged Scotch philosopher has effected for the harsh
and distempered Prussian king. But, having been so
indulgent in the case of the father, Mr. Tyerman set
himself to be severely faithful in the case of the son,
pleasant and blessed a man as that son undeniably was.
Perhaps it is as well that it should be so. At all
events, we may perhaps account for the different treat
ment which the biographer has bestowed on the two
characters. The Wesley father had suffered much,
had shown much patience and bravery of spirit, and
had been undervalued, as Mr. Tyerman thought, and
left more in the background than such a father of such
a family — and in particular of such sons — should have
been. There was a great deal, too, that was picturesque
in the history and the situation of the forlorn, per
secuted, unbusiness-like, and weather-beaten rector.
Here was a temptation to an author — to repair an
old injustice, to bring out a striking figure into lioht,
to disinter a hero. As to the son, the case is different.
Mr. Tyerman had passed his life among those who

WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. 17
almost worship the memory of John Wesley; some of
whom thought him absolute perfection, and cherished
toward him a blind and unintelligent admiration.
Probably he himself at one time shared strongly in
these feelings. Research showed Mr. Tyerman that
the popular conceptions of Wesley were to some extent
mistaken. In applying his research, moreover, to
point after point in Wesley's life, he discovered what
— as seen through his lens — looked like considerable
faults ; although, when the natural eye looks at the
whole character, they fade away into almost imper
ceptible foibles, or are seen to be, in reality, points of
excellence. Here, then, were discoveries which the
truth-loving biographer deemed it necessary to point
out ; here were popular errors which it was his stern
duty, as an historian, to correct. Chivalry, sustained
by fact, as he fancied, prompted Mr. Tyerman to make
a hero of the father ; public fidelity seemed to require
that he should enlighten, as to certain points, the
blind worshippers of the son.
Nor may we deny that it was Mr. Tyerman's duty
to be rigidly faithful in his history of • John Wesley,
and this all the more because he is himself a Methodist.
We are bound to repudiate altogether the maxim, as
applied to such a case, that he ought, as one of
Wesley's followers, to
"Be to his faults a little blind,
Be to his virtues very kind."
The sanctity of truth — historical truth — is a holier
and more venerable thing than even the reputation of
John Wesley. Nor should we withhold from the
biographer our admiration for the courage and fidelity
with which, according to his own conceptions of truth,
B

1 8 THE LIVING WESLEY.
he has done his work. Moreover, as I have intimated,
his rugged fidelity has, at least in one way, done good.
No one can read this Wesleyan Life of Wesley with
out feeling certain that the whole of Wesley's life,
including whatever might have appeared to bear an
unfavourable construction, and all the scandals which
were circulated respecting him by his meanest and
most malignant foes, is brought fully out to view, and
that, if the biographer has not " set down aught in
malice," he has, on the other hand, " extenuated "
nothing. Whatever he knew of to tell is told ; what
ever might at any time have been suspected, or scandal
ously alleged, that is told too. The worst possible is
indicated as to Wesley. And the result is, a character
with as much of goodness in it and as little alloy of
evil as could well have been conceived ; the character
of a man absolutely free from meanness, from malice,
from any standing anger or resentment ; who, if he
now and then went wrong, did so from the sanguine
imprudences of a generous and susceptible nature, or,
in one or two cases in the course of half a century,
from the momentary irritation which a thwarted chief
might be apt to feel; but whose whole life was one of
unremitting self-denial and unresting labour for the
good of others. Such a character, so revealed and
established, comes out most impressively from Mr.
Tyerman's biography.
Still, I cannot but add that, in my judgment,
Mr. Tyerman has overdone his fidelity. He almost
seems to have made it his rule to take the worst
construction which, with anything like probability,
could be put upon Wesley's conduct. In the case of
a charge or prejudice against Wesley, he often gives

WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AiXD CRITICS. 19
the benefit of any doubt, as it seems to me, not to the
accused, but to the accuser. Considering who and
what Wesley was, and what his antecedents and
independent character must be admitted to have been,
this appears to be peculiarly unfair. Besides which,
there is a tone in his dealing with Wesley which
fairly astonishes one at times. Mr. Tyerman does
not sum up in phrase of precise accuracy just what
happened, and leave his readers t6 draw their con
clusions — he censures, he pronounces, he condemns;
and this, too, in a tone of harshness, in some instances,
and of lofty decision, as if he were Wesley's superior
and judge. I believe that Macaulay — it is perfectly
certain that Southey — would never have ventured, in
so absolute, unceremonious, dictatorial a style to pro
nounce censure on John Wesley. They would have
felt their own inferiority to him ; that, if he sometimes
erred, he was at least a good and great man, a venerable
saint, as to whom they could not venture to pronounce
an unfavourable judgment, even in individual acts of
his life, without modesty and self-restraint — without
what the Eomans would have called verecundia. Mr.
Tyerman has not been restrained by any such diffidence.
At times his mere ipse dixit, without even the formality
of any attempt to weigh evidence or investigate the
matter, pronounces at once sharply and shortly the
folly or the wrong-doing of Wesley.
Nor does it ever seem to have occurred to Mr.
Tyerman, that perhasp Wesley and he regarded certain
questions from different points of view ; that he ought
to have tried fully to master Wesley's own way of
thinking and of regarding the matter in hand; and
that, after all, from some point of view less con-

20 THE LIVING WESLEY.
ventional and more really true than his own, things
which seem to his prejudices to be wrong might turn
out to be right. Considering that Wesley was a man
of far more thought than most of us — who had seen
much more of life than any of us — it is possible that
he might have had so much to say for his own way
of thinking and acting, even when it seems to be
directly in opposition to some current notions of
to-day, as at least to warrant arrest of judgment in
the case. Mr. Tyerman appears incapable of entering
sympathetically into the mind and idiosyncrasy of
Wesley, and yet does not appear to feel that this is
the case, or to be aware that perfect sympathetic
intelligence is necessary in order to enable him to
write the Life of Wesley. He judges merely and
unhesitatingly by his own lights and his own instincts.
Those instincts, at least in some cases, I regard as
mere conventional prejudices, and am prepared to
vindicate Wesley just where and wherefore his bio
grapher condemns him.1
Nothing, indeed, is more evident than that Mr.
Tyerman is deficient in that faculty of dramatic
sympathy and insight, without which it is impossible
for any man to understand, much more to write, the
life of another man, especially of a unique and
1 The contrast in tone between Mr. Tyerman's treatment of Wesley
and his manner of judging him, and the manner in which genial
outsiders write of him, may be understood by reference to the article
on "Wesley and Wesleyauism " in the British Quarterly for October,
1871. Still more striking is the contrast between the tone of Mr.
Tyerman's biography, and the truly liberal and sympathetic as well
as remarkably well-informed view of Wesley's life and character given
by Messrs. Abbey and Overton — and especially by the latter — in that
noble work, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century.

WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. 21
wonderful man. He misunderstood the father, paint
ing him after his own heart merely, but not as the
facts, properly interpreted in a spirit of insight, really
present him to our view : he painted a man he could
understand and admire, but it was not the rector. In
that case the facts were unconsciously warped to suit
the sympathetic conception of the biographer ; in the
case of the son, he generally sticks to the facts in their
mere outside aspect, but often he cannot get behind
them — cannot see their real meaning. In neither case
have the facts helped him to a true and real concep
tion of the life and character which lay beneath them.
Nevertheless Mr. Tyerman has done a great work.
He has furnished perfect means of knowledge ; the
means, indeed, if he is carefully read, of correcting
himself where he is wrong. His narrative of the
most important parts of Wesley's life is particularly
full and good. The last two chapters, for example,
are complete and impressive in a high degree ; pre
senting Wesley's later years and last days as they had
never been presented before. In fine, Mr. Tyerman
has prepared and worked up into narrative almost
complete materials from which to prepare a re-moulded
biography of Wesley, which shall, with true realisation,
exhibit him as he grew and changed, and was enlarged
from stage to stage — as he felt and judged and acted
from point to point of his eventful life. Such a Life
of Wesley will yet, I hope, be some day written.
Meantime, in the chapters which follow, I venture to
offer a contribution of materials towards such a Life
which, imperfect as it is in scope and contents as well
as in workmanship, may not, I trust, be without its
distinctive value.

PART I

WESLEY'S CHARACTER AND OPINIONS IN HIS
EARLIER LIFE, TO THE PERIOD OF HIS
EVANGELICAL CONVERSION.

CHAPTEE I.
HIS CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL LIFE.
MY chief object in this part of my study of the
living Wesley is to bring into clear light some
points of Wesley's history, and especially some aspects
of his character up to the time of his final and full
spiritual change, which hitherto seem either to have
escaped recognition or to have been misunderstood.
I cannot, in the space of one small volume, attempt
to give anything like a complete view, even in outline,
of the course of Wesley's life. But such an outline
will be given as may serve as a basis, and may
suffice to suggest a perspective, for those points of
chief interest in his character and development,
through the successive stages of his history, with
which in this life-portraiture I propose to deal.1 In
1 Those who desire to know the details of Wesley's history, with
many newly-diseovered facts, — so far as these may be given in one
handy volume, — are referred to Telford's Life of John Wesley (1886).

24 THE LIVING WESLEY.
the present short chapter I shall have to correct
some singular misconceptions on the part of Mr.
Tyerman. From his boyhood, through all his pre-
con version years, it may, I think, be conclusively shown
that Wesley has been misunderstood, and perhaps more
completely, as to some points, by Mr. Tyerman than
by others who have written on the subject.
John Wesley was born June 17, 1703, at
Epworth, where his father, the Eev. Samuel Wesley,
was rector during the first thirty years of the last
century (1697-1735); being four years older than
his brother Charles, so long his companion in labour
and so gifted as a sacred poet. The rectory was filled
with a numerous family, of whom those that grew up,
whether sons or daughters, were all gifted and accom
plished. Brave, bright spirits and high principles
were the growth of that remote Lincolnshire parsonage,
with the rugged and granitic father, and the noble
and episcopal mother. It was -the home of strict and
earnest religion, of much learning, of true high breeding,
and of pinching and sometimes bitter poverty. Both
the rector and his wife came of a line of Puritan
ancestors, who had endured persecution for their faith,
but who were at once gentlemen, scholars, and divines;
and the training in the parsonage was not unworthy
of such a twofold ancestry.
Susanna Wesley was an admirable mother, and it
was her custom to give each of her children an hour
a week, on a fixed day, for religious conversation and
prayer. It was on Thursday that she conversed and
prayed with John. Orderliness, reasonableness, stead
fastness of purpose, calm authority, tender affection,
were combined in this justly celebrated woman. And

HIS CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL LIFE. 25
all these qualities were remarkably reproduced in her
son John.
Wesley was at home with his mother — he was
eight years of age — when, in the absence of the
rector in London for several months at Convocation,
Mrs. Wesley felt it to be her duty to supplement the
parish services of a curate, who had to work two
parishes single-handed, and who was, besides, but an
inefficient preacher and pastor, by holding afternoon
services for her family and the neighbouring parish
ioners in the kitchen of the parsonage. She used to
read a sermon or some good book, and to conduct a
service of Scripture reading and prayer with the
gathered company. These services were very popular,
and the large farm-rectory kitchen was crowded. The
curate, disliking the services, which looked not unlike
the setting up of a conventicle in the rector's kitchen
by the rector's wife, appealed by letter to the absent
husband, who thereupon wrote to her upon the subject.
The mother of the Wesleys replied to her husband
in a long and earnest letter, which ended as follows :
" If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly,
do not tell me that you desire me to do it, for that
will not satisfy my conscience ; but send me your
positive command, in such full and ' express terms, as
may absolve me from all 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." Such was the woman who
bore and- nursed and trained John Wesley. Such a
woman was worthy to be, as she came to be, not only
the guide of his childhood, but the closest counsellor
of his ripening manhood.

26 THE LIVING WESLEY.
When Wesley was nearly six years old, the rectory
was set on fire by a malicious parishioner. All the rest
of the family had escaped safely from the flaming house,
when it was found that " Jacky " was missing. Two
brave fellows rescued him, at great peril to themselves,
and he was delivered into his father's arms. " Come,
neighbours," said the rector, " let us kneel down ; let
us give thanks to God ! He has given me all my
eight children. Let the house go : I am rich enough."
John Wesley commemorated this escape, in after life,
by an engraving, under one of his portraits, of a house
in flames, underneath which is the motto : " Is not
this a brand plucked out of the burning ? "
Before he was eleven, the boy was sent to the
Charterhouse School. Here he suffered such hard
ships and oppressions as were common at public
schools in that age. But he was a diligent and
successful scholar, and a patient and forgiving boy,
of a brave and elastic spirit, who had at home been
inured, not indeed to oppression, but to hard living
and scanty fare. When, therefore, his seniors robbed
him of the best portions of his food, as they not
seldom did, he could bear the privation with more
patience, and perhaps with less injury, than if he had
been a full-fed and pampered boy. It is a character
istic feature in his case, that he seems to have carried
away, on the whole, pleasant recollections of his school,
where, in due time, he rose to be among the most
distinguished scholars. Once a year, in later life, it
was his custom to revisit the scene of his school-days,
and walk round the Charterhouse garden, " chewing
the cud " of early memories, to him more '' sweet " than
" bitter."

HIS CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL LIFE. 27
It appears that there was a tradition in the school,
that Wesley was accustomed, when himself a senior,
to associate with the junior scholars. This is likely
enough to have been true, considering what the
manners and, it may well be feared, the morals of
the school were at that time. He might do some
good to his juniors, and might, perhaps, among them,
avoid evil communications. As for the story, however,
related by Mr. Tyerman, that when Mr. Tooke, his
master, asked him the reason for his so associating,
he answered, "Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven,"
I simply regard it as an invention and embellishment,
added by his school-fellows, more puerorum, to amplify
and round off the tradition and the story. I feel sure,
besides, that Wesley, if he had quoted Milton at all,
would have quoted him accurately. It is said that
Wesley was accustomed to " harangue " his juniors ;
and it is not unlikely that he did, more or less,
expound and hold forth to them on interesting matters
of routine and duty, or possibly on themes of fancy.
He was a quick boy, with the gift of a teacher, and
not wanting in the fancy of a poet.
But one remark made by Mr. Tyerman, as to his
school-life at the Charterhouse, strikes me as singularly
austere. It is the first instance of the austerity with
which the biographer has treated Wesley throughout.
Wesley, who, it must be remembered, entered the
Charterhouse at the age of ten, is said, with solemn
emphasis, there to have " lost the religion which had
marked his character from the days of infancy." He
is himself quoted to the effect that at school he was

28 THE LIVING WESLEY.
" negligent of outward duties, and continually guilty
of outward sins." And on the strength of this con
fession his biographer says : " Terrible is the danger
when a child leaves a pious home for a public school.
John Wesley entered the Charterhouse a saint, and left
it a sinner." That is to say, he entered it a saint of
ten years old, and left it a sinner of seventeen.
Now, I emphatically agree that the danger is very
great indeed which attends a child leaving a simple,
pious home to enter upon a public school. The
wickedness of public schools has been proverbial. In
the last century they may well have been still worse
than in the present. But I think the instance of
Wesley is by no means a strong one to cite in illustra
tion of the point. I hardly know how, adequately, to
interpret the saying that Wesley at ten was " a saint,"
or to understand the contrast between the saint-child
of ten and the sinner -youth of seventeen. But
it is well to observe in what sense Wesley was
" a sinner " in his teens. He, who himself made the
confession of his religious failures, has also taught us
how to understand and qualify them. He was negli
gent and careless, and he was guilty of what he knew
to be outward sins ; but yet such sins, he tells lis in
the same context, were " not scandalous in the eye of
the world." He adds, moreover, "However, I still
read the Scriptures, and said my prayers morning and
evening. And what I now hoped to be saved by was :
1. Not being so bad as other people ; 2. Having still
a kindness for religion; and, 3. Reading the Bible,
going to church, and saying my prayers." x
Such is the sentence which Wesley, the sternest of
1 Tyerman's Wesley, Sixth Edition, vol. i. pp. 21, 22.

HIS CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL LIFE. 29
judges in such a case, pronounced on his own moral
and religious state when he was at the Charterhouse
— a sentence pronounced, it must be remembered, at
a time when all, Wesley's judgments as to such cases
were far more severe than they became as revised,
after many years' experience, in his later life. It was
in 1738 that he so wrote of himself. It is clear that
Wesley never lost, even at the Charterhouse, a tender
respect for religion, the fear of God, and the forms of
Christian propriety. That he was at this time un
converted there can be no doubt; but when Mr.
Tyerman, with such awful emphasis, tells us that,
having gone to the Charterhouse a " saint "-child at
ten years of age, he left it " a sinner " at seventeen,
he uses language which can scarcely fail to convey an
altogether exaggerated impression as to the character
of the boy's moral and spiritual faults and failings.
Nor do I think such unqualified language is con
sistent with the account he had given on a former
page of young Wesley's behaviour at the Charterhouse.
Isaac Taylor, in his work on Wesley and Methodism,
says with reference to the privations and oppressions
which Wesley endured at school, that "he learned as
a boy to suffer wrongfully with cheerful patience, and
to conform himself to cruel despotisms without acquir
ing either the slave's temper or the despot's." Mr.
Tyerman substantially adopts this language into his
text as his own description of how Wesley fared and
did at the Charterhouse (p. 20). But, for my part, I
cannot help thinking that not a little grace must have
been still working in the soul of the brave and patient
boy, to enable him to behave as he did. Wesley must
have carried a heart, not only bright and hopeful, but

30 THE LIVING WESLEY.
forgiving, not only elastic and vigorous, but patient
and generous, or he could not have looked back in
after days on his six or seven years at the Charter
house, not only without bitterness, but with pleasure,
and, to use Southey's phrase, have retained " so great
a predilection for the place, that he made it his custom
to walk through the scene of his schoolboy years.
One consequence of his school experience I may
note in passing. There can be no doubt that what he
saw and experienced of the coarse and wicked horse
play of a great school, had much to do with the
regulations which he made long afterwards for Kings-
wood School, forbidding all play, and permitting only
of walks and garden-work by way of exercise and
recreation. It was no slight evidence, let me here
subjoin, of at least the powerful restraining influence
of religion, that Wesley passed through such an ordeal
as his six or seven years' residence at the Charter
house without contracting any taint of vice.

CHAPTER II.
THE COLLEGIAN AT OXFORD.
LET us linger awhile with Wesley at Oxford —
which University he entered, as student at
Christchurch, in 1720 — not so much that we may
review at any length his course and experience there,
as that we may observe what manner of person he
was — first, as a collegian, companion, and friend ;
next, as a theological student and Churchman ; and,
in both respects, as a living and moving man, full of
power over those who came near him.
When Wesley went to Oxford at seventeen, he was
a gay, sprightly, and virtuous youth, full of good
classics, and also with some knowledge of Hebrew,
which he had begun to learn under his brother
Samuel, during the short interval, apparently, between
leaving the Charterhouse and gaining his studentship
at Christchurch. He was moral and church-going;
according to his own testimony, he read the Scriptures
and religious books, especially commentaries ; but he
was destitute of any true apprehension of spiritual
religion : he was, in fact, a devout yet half-worldly
Pharisee, much such another as the young ruler in the
Gospels, only without his possessions. His scholar
ship yielded him £40 a year, which ill sufficed for his
needs. His tutors were considerate, and indeed
generous ; his poverty-wrung parents did all they

32 THE LIVING WESLEY.
could for him, the father joining to his gifts (poor
man) reproofs now and then, of his son's want of
adequate economy. But with all this, and although
John's parsimony must really have been extreme, it
was very hard for him, during his undergraduate
course, and afterwards until pupils and a fellowship
brought him a competency, to "make ends meet."
" Dear Jack," wrote his mother to him, after he had
been some four years at college and had taken his
bachelor's degree, " be not discouraged ; do your duty,
keep close to your studies, and hope for better days.
Perhaps, notwithstanding all, we shall pick up a few
Crumbs for you before the end of the year. Dear
Jacky, I beseech Almighty God to bless thee." A
month later, I find that one of the college dons, who
had lent Wesley money, had " paid himself out of
Wesley's exhibition," not altogether to the contentment
of Mrs. Wesley.
In November of 1724, Mrs. Wesley writes a kind
letter to her son; in which she urges him to save as
much money as possible that he might pay his debts.
Early in January 1725, the father writes a brief note,
promising £5 towards £10, which Wesley owed to a
friend ; and three weeks later he writes to him again
as follows : — " Wroote, January 26, 1725.
"Dear Son, — I am so well pleased with your
decent behaviour, or, at least, with your letters, that
I hope I shall have no occasion to remember any more
some things that are past ; and since you have now
for sometime bit upon the bridle, I will take care
hereafter to put a little honey upon it as oft as I am
able ; but then it shall be of my own mere motion

THE COLLEGIAN A T OXFORD. 33
as the last £5 was, for I will bear no rivals in my
kingdom. — " Your affectionate father, " Samuel Wesley."
The meaning of this not unpleasing, although
monitory, letter is not altogether clear. It would
seem, however, that the father had been solicited
previously to give some help to his son — perhaps by
the mother or one of the sisters — and that he had
refused, accompanying his refusal with some admoni
tions ; further, that the son had taken his father's
reproof somewhat amiss at first, but had latterly
expressed himself in his letters in a way which satis
fied his father. The father had accordingly relented,
as the letter shows. Mr. Tyerman's commentary on
this and the brief preceding note is altogether in an
exaggerated tone of austerity. He writes as if such
letters " cast shadows on the character " of young
Wesley ; he declares, quite unwarrantably, that, from
the age of eleven to twenty-two, Wesley was, " by his
own confession, an habitual, if not profane and
flagrant sinner," and that he " thoughtlessly contracted
debts greater than he had means to pay." There is
no evidence whatever to justify such language as this.
Wesley seems always to have kept at a remote
distance from anything like " profane and flagrant
sin ; " he was " a sinner," as moral and virtuous
youths are sinners, but only so ; and if he could not
make ends meet on £40 a year, there is no evidence
whatever that he "thoughtlessly contracted debts."
His sister Emilia, writing to him a few months later,
said, no doubt most truly, " I know you are a young
man encompassed with difficulties, and have passed
c

34 THE LIVING WESLEY.
through many hardships already, and probably must
through many more before you are easy in the
world ; " she adds, also — poor, half-clad girl ! — a
noticeable remark : " I know not when we have had
so good a year, both at Wroote and at Epworth, as
this year ; but, instead of saving anything to clothe
my sister or myself, we are just where we were. . . .
One thing I warn you of — let not my giving you this
account be any hindrance to your affairs. If you
want assistance in any case, my father is as able to
give it now as at any time these last ten years ; nor
shall we be ever the poorer for it." x
It is evident that the sister's sympathies were
heartily with her brother. There is, in truth, no
foundation whatever for imputing to John Wesley, in
his earlier years at Oxford, improvidence or unthrift.
I take it for granted that he never incurred a serious
expense, unless sometimes to purchase a book which
appeared to be needful to his success as a student.
That he had any extravagant habits or tendencies
whatever, there is not the least reason to suppose.
His mother did, indeed, urge him gently to try to
save, probably because the rector would have her put
in an admonition to that effect ; but she never
approaches the tone of censure in writing to her son.
If for once she had seemed to incline that way,
wanting as she was, for herself and her family, almost
the necessaries of life, and not understanding fully a
collegian's necessities, it would have been no great
wonder. But there is no such tone in her correspond
ence. Her loving son had talked of trying to save a
little that he might be able to visit his family ; she
1 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i, p. 33.

THE COLLEGIAN A T OXFORD. 35
gently reminds him that the payment of his debts was
the first thing to be thought of, but expresses, at the
same time, the hope that she may be able to bear his
charges home. _ " I am not without hope," she says in
the letter from which I have lately quoted a few
words, " of meeting you next summer " (in London).
" If you then be willing to accompany me to Wroote,
I shall bear your charges, as God shall enable me."
To this subject of young Wesley's faults and
failings Mr. Tyerman gives a whole paragraph — a
very emphatic, and not a very short, paragraph. And
yet, in the very next paragraph, and within some
half-dozen lines of saying that Wesley " had need to
repent in dust and ashes " for his sins — for the sins,
among the rest, of extravagance and thoughtless
improvidence, by which he had brought additional
burdens on his poor, embarrassed, and struggling
father, Mr. Tyerman goes on to say that " Wesley
was far too noble and too high-principled to seek
admission into the Christian ministry" merely as a
livelihood. Surely, if he had been improvident,
extravagant, inconsiderate of his father's circumstances,
" an habitual, if not profane and flagrant, sinner,"
" without religious sentiments, and without a religious
aim," as Mr. Tyerman tells us he was, it would not
have been by any means incredible that when he went
to college, it might have been his intention to enter
the Church as a profession, without any high religious
motive. I do not in the least wish to intimate that
it was so ; but it is not consistent, on the one hand,
to place John Wesley so low in respect of religion, if
not also of morality, and on the other hand, to speak
of him as so noble and so high-principled a young man.

36 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Leaving this point, however, let us note the indica
tions of young Wesley's character in the earlier years
of his college life, which are afforded by the family
correspondence ¦ with which Mr. Tyerman enriches his
first chapter, " Wesley at Home, at School, and at
College." No one can read this correspondence with
out becoming aware that " Jacky " — the very name
" Jacky " might indeed be sufficient to settle that
question — was by no means the semi-stoical person,
destitute of homely warmth and kindliness, and of
natural interest and concern about the little matters
, of family life, which some of his critics — which even
a writer of such discrimination and insight as Miss
Wedgwood — would seem to have supposed him to be.
If at a later period of his life, when absorbed and
oppressed by the care of the religious movement at
Oxford, he forgot, on his arrival from a visit home, to
tell his brother Charles of the details of the family
circumstances, that must be attributed, not in the
least to want of feeling for his parents .and sisters,
or lack of interest in all that really affected them,
but to the weight and pressure at the moment of a
most solemn religious undertaking and responsibility.
How lovingly and generously he cared for his mother
and sisters through life— with what depth and inten
sity, with what force of reason and fact, and of barely
suppressed indignation, he vindicated himself, on one
occasion, from a petulant and unwarrantable imputa
tion to the contrary — the. students of his life will
hardly fail to remember.1 In his early days at Oxford
he kept up very loving relations and correspondence
1 See his letter to his sister Emily, in Clarke's Wesley Family, p.
519, and in Mr. Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i. pp. 424-5.

THE COLLEGIAN A T OXFORD. 37
with his sisters. " More than once," as Mr. Tyerman
tells us, "when requesting that his sisters would
write to him, he playfully remarks that, though he
was so poor, he would be able to spare the postage for
a letter now and then." And, writing to his mother on
the 1st of November, 1724, from Oxford, he says:
" I should be exceedingly glad to keep up a corre
spondence with my sister Emily, if she were willing.
I have writ once or twice to my sister Sukey, too, but
have not had an answer either from her or my sister
Hetty, from whom I have more than once desired the
poem of ' The Dog.' I should be glad to hear how
things go on at Wroote, which I now remember with
more pleasure than Epworth ; so true it is, at least
in me, that the persons, not the place, make home so
pleasant." A sweeter, purer tone of writing than this
we could hardly imagine. It will be observed that
the family were now living, not at Epworth, but at
Wroote, the living which his father held with Epworth,
and that this was the reason of the turn in the last
sentence. Wroote itself was a most uninviting place,
very different from the pleasant and old-fashioned
settledness of the town of Epworth, with its comfort
able houses and goodly gardens. The letter closes
by begging his mother's and his father's blessing on
their " dutiful son." It was five months later than the
date of this letter that Emilia Wesley wrote the
letter to her brother from which I have already
quoted. Poor Emilia, eldest of the gifted sisters ! Mr. Kirk
says of her, in his Mother of the Wesleys, " Her love
for her mother was strong as death ; and she re
garded her brother John with a passionate fondness.

38 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Though so much younger than herself, she selected
him as her ' most intimate companion, her counsellor
in difficulties,' to whom ' her heart lay open at all
times.' " Crossed in love, and for some reason not
fully explained, but perhaps connected with her love
affair, irritated against her father, her spirit chafed
under the difficulties of her situation ; but she bravely
helped both her family and herself during the years of
her earlier womanhood. She was known in her later
years as Mrs. Harper, a widow, and died in the bosom
of her brother's Methodism, in her eightieth year.
Poor Sukey ! too, the second sister — beautiful, vivacious,
and accomplished, but whose lot was far more troub
lous than that of Emily, though Emily's was so far
from an easy life. She was in the flower of her life
when her brother referred to her in the letter which
has been quoted. Some years later, after she had
married the wretched profligate Ellison, her youngest
sister wrote of her : " Poor Sukey ! she is very ill.
People think she is going into a consumption. It
would be well for her if she were where ' the wicked
cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' "
And again, poor Hetty ! Her lot was as sad as that
of her sister Ellison. The most gifted of all the
sisters, to whom it was more natural to write in sweet
verse than in prose — though her prose, like that of all
the sisters, was excellent — her sad story has in part
been told by Mr. Kirk in the interesting volume to
which I have referred. Her husband was every way
unsuitable for her — an ignorant, illiterate, and de
graded plumber. Mehetabel (Hetty) Wesley, or Mrs.
Wright, after a living martyrdom of some twenty
years, died in 1750, leaving not a few beautiful verses

THE COLLEGIAN AT OXFORD.

39

behind her. To these and to all his sisters Wesley
never failed to show himself an affectionate brother.
How it is that there was no reference to his amiable
but deformed sister Mary in the letter of Wesley I
have quoted, it is not possible to guess. She became
Mrs. Whitelamb — Whitelamb having been first her
father's amanuensis, afterwards his curate, and finally,
when he married, becoming his successor in the small
rectory of Wroote — and she died in 1734, one year
after her marriage, at the age of thirty-eight, having
had, indeed, a short but not an unhappy life. Keziah,
the remaining sister of Wesley, was, in 1724, only
fourteen years old.
Mr. Badeock, in the Westminster Magazine, gave
a picture of Wesley as he was at Oxford in 1724,
when he was about twenty-one years of age. " He
appeared," we are told, " the very sensible and acute
collegian ; a young fellow of the finest classical taste,
of the most liberal and manly sentiments." He was at
this time a general favourite. But, having taken his
degree, and being in prospect of presently taking
orders, a decided change began to come over his tone
of thought and feeling. He became much more
serious and thoughtful than he had been, and corre
sponded earnestly both with his father and his mother
as to the motives which should govern him in seeking
to take orders ; as to the studies which he should
pursue ; and as to the principles and manner of life
which should give character to one intending to enter
the holy ministry. Mr. Tyerman gives the most im
portant letters, and enables us to trace the formation
of Wesley's principles. Thomas a Kempis, Jeremy
Taylor, and William Law, as he himself has particu-

40 THE LIVING WESLEY.
larly described, were his chief instructors at the first,
and for a considerable period. The asceticism of the
first, indeed, was always too sombre for him. But,
on the whole, he was greatly moulded by their
influence, and became after a time himself an ascetic,
with a mystical bias (due partly to Law), and also
a strong ritualistic tendency, but at all times free
from sombreness of colouring or moroseness of tempera
ment. Against Jeremy Taylor's gloomy and morbid
teachings as to the necessity of perpetual, sorrow
ful uncertainty on the point of the penitent sinner's
pardon and acceptance, Wesley's cheerful faith and
good sense revolted from the first. Writing to his
mother in 1725, he says : " If we dwell in Christ, and
Christ in us (which He will not do unless we are
regenerate), certainly we must be sensible of it. If we
can never have any certainty of our being in a state
of salvation, good reason it is that every moment
should be spent, not in joy, but in fear and trembling ;
and then, undoubtedly, we are in this life of all men
most miserable. God deliver us from such a fearful
expectation as this!" There, in 1725, we have
already settled within Wesley's mind, notwithstanding
his High Church indoctrination from the writings of
Taylor, one of the characteristic doctrines of Methodism,
namely, that of a present salvation from guilt and fear,
through the indwelling of Christ. It is true, indeed,
that as yet Wesley had not the experience and know
ledge of evangelical faith and life which made the
foundation of his special teaching in after life on the
subject of conversion and the witness of the Spirit.
But he had already taken the general position in
opposition equally to Calvinism and to Carolan High

THE COLLEGIAN AT OXFORD. 41
Churchmanship indicated in the passage just quoted.
It is clear, also, from the parenthesis, that as yet the
modern Anglican doctrine of baptismal regeneration
had not been embraced by him.
It was from the Christian's Pattern of Thomas a
Kempis, and from Taylor's Holy Living and Dying,
that Wesley learned the doctrine of entire Christian
consecration and holiness which afterward developed
into the Methodist doctrine of " Christian Perfection."
" I saw," he says in a passage which Mr. Tyerman
quotes, " that simplicity of intention and purity of
affection — one design in all we speak and do, and one
desire ruling all our tempers — are indeed the wings
of the soul, without which she can never ascend to
God. I sought after this from that hour." This was
in 1725, and the lesson was learned from the Pattern.
Again, he says, in reference to the effect of the Holy
Living and Dying — " Instantly I resolved to dedicate
all my life to God — all my thoughts and words and
actions — being thoroughly convinced there was no
medium, but that every part of my life (not some only)
must either be a sacrifice to God or myself, that is,
the devil." Truly does Mr. Tyerman say, after quoting
these passages, and more than we have cited — " Here,
then, we have the turning-point in Wesley's history.
It was not until thirteen years after this that he
received the consciousness of being saved through
faith in Christ ; but from this time his whole aim
was to serve God and his fellow-creatures, and get
safe to heaven." Let it be noted, accordingly, that
1725 was a great era in Wesley's history. Further
more, in the same year he and his mother — that
remarkable woman was his chief theological tutor

42 THE LIVING WESLEY.
— settled between them the question of predestination,
in the sense in which Wesley always afterwards dealt
with it. As to faith, however, Wesley still remained
altogether beclouded. Faith with him, at this period,
seems to have meant little else than right opinion.
No wonder, after wandering for so many years in the
wilderness because misled by this natural and preva
lent error, that in later life he waged war so sharply,
so continually, so resolutely against this error. As yet
he had no glimmering of the truth that a true Christian
faith is strictly personal, is "of the operation of God,"
is a moral and spiritual affection and act, or habit of
acting, of the highest significance and potency, rooting
the soul in Christ and God, and including within itself
implicitly the whole fruit of the Spirit of God.
Wesley was ordained Deacon in September 1725,
by Bishop Potter, and preached his first sermon at
South Leigh, a small village near Witney. In March,
1726, he was elected Fellow of Lincoln College. By
this time his increasing strictness had begun to attract
attention ; but, as yet, no greater reproach than that of
singular and somewhat excessive religiousness attached
to him in the minds of any. No one regarded him as
fanatical ; most looked upon him with high respect as
one of the most distinguished and conscientious, one
of the most accomplished and able men in the Univer
sity. From the time of his receiving the Lincoln
fellowship, however, he was to enter upon a new stage
of his career. He himself has told us how he took
occasion, by his change of colleges, to give a resolute,
though not uncourteous, conge" to all his former
acquaintances who were not as serious and as earnest
as himself. From this time, accordingly, Wesley

THE COLLEGIAN AT 0 XT ORD. 43
became a religious devotee, although he took no taint
of sourness, and by no means lost all his smart
pleasantry of speech. He was at this time, and indeed
all his life, as his circumstances permitted, a very hard
and very various student. Oriental languages, oratory
and poetry, metaphysics, logic, and ethics, as well as
divinity, entered into his weekly plan of study. Eight
months after his election to the fellowship, he was
appointed Greek Lecturer in his college, and Moderator
of the Classes. His skill and readiness in logic, it is
well known, were extraordinary. " Leisure and I," he
said in a letter to his brother Samuel, written about
this time, " have taken leave of one another. I pro
pose to be busy as long as I live, if my health is so
long indulged me." From the time of his receiving
his first college allowances as Fellow, Wesley's financial
battle was over ; and, exercising economy as rigid over
his personal expenses afterward as in his greatest
poverty before, he was able to assist his brother
Samuel in helping their father, to be, and to the end
of his life, a benefactor to his family. He never saved
to enrich himself. The summer after his election he
took a sort of holiday, for which he had been longing,
and for which his parents and family had longed not
less than he. He spent it at Epworth and Wroote,
acting as his father's curate, and pursuing his studies.

CHAPTER III.
JOHN WESLEY, MISS KIRKHAM, AND MRS. PENDAEVES.1
IN 1727 we catch a very interesting glimpse of
Wesley's relations with others beyond his own
family. There resided at Stanton, in Gloucestershire,
the Rev. Lionel Kirkham. This clergyman had (at
least) two daughters and a son. Of the daughters,
one, Sarah, had married the Rev. William Capoon (or
Chapone), and remained, as his wife, at Stanton. She
is often referred to in the Life and Correspondence
of Mrs. Delany, with whom she was on terms of
intimate friendship, as a woman of remarkable talent ;
she appears also to have been very fond of theological
discussions. Another (or the other) daughter, Betty,
is referred to in a quotation I shall immediately give
from a family letter. The brother was an intimate
college friend of Wesley's, and became, a few years
later, one of the original band of Methodists. Wesley
had visited this family, and appears to have been a
very welcome guest there. The brother was evidently
very anxious that Wesley should become his brother-
in-law, and Wesley appears to have been greatly
impressed with the merits and charms of Miss Betty.
In a letter which Mr. Tyerman gives from young Kirk
ham to Wesley, dated February, 1727, and which begins,
1 Afterwards Mrs. Delany.

MISS KIRKHAM AND MRS. PENDARVES. 45
" With familiarity I write, dear Jack " — a letter, I must
say, so empty, although hearty, and so broadly rustic in
tone, as to surprise us from a friend of Wesley's — I
find the following passage : — ¦
" Your most deserving, queer character ; your worthy
personal accomplishments ; your noble endowments of
mind ; your little and handsome person ; and your
obliging and desirable conversation, have been the
pleasing subject of our discourse for some pleasant
hours. You have been often in the thoughts of M. B.
[Miss Betty], which I have curiously observed, when
with her alone, by inward smiles and sighs, and abrupt
expressions concerning you. Shall this suffice ? I
caught her, this morning, in a humble and devout
posture on her knees. I am called to read a Spectator
to my sister Capoon. I long for the time when you
are to supply father's absence. Keep your counsel,
and burn this when perused," etc.
It is singular that such a letter as this was not
burned by Wesley — very curious that it was preserved
for a hundred and forty years before it was published
in the Wesleyan Times. It may well, however,
serve as preface to a series of letters of the greatest
and most curious interest, which reveal Wesley in a
light altogether new, which show the workings of his
mind, and even his style of writing, as no one could
ever have expected to see them, utterly contradicting
the idea that he was wanting in the softer and warmer
emotions of our nature — an idea which has grown up
from the singleness with which, for fifty years, he
devoted himself to the intense, practical work of an
apostle. No greater mistake could there be than such
an idea ; and if, in his later life, there are appearances

46 THE LIVING WESLEY.
which seem to lend a countenance to it, the reason is
that, in proportion to his natural susceptibility to the
warm attraction of intimate and fond affections, was
the rigidness of watchful suppression which he imposed
upon his temperament, when the solemn life-work
which Providence had assigned to him demanded his
undivided and unintermitted energies.
The correspondence to which I refer was not, how
ever, between Wesley and Miss Betty Kirkham — the
lady referred to in the extract just given — but between
Wesley and an intimate friend of hers, known for
three - quarters of a century as a woman of high
accomplishments and of almost unequalled charms and
attractions, who moved in the best society of the
country, and was honoured for half a century and more
with the intimate friendship and confidence of King
George III. and his Queen. I refer to Mrs. Delany,
whose history is so well known from her Life and
Correspondence, published by Lady Llanover.
Mary Granville, afterwards Mrs. Delany, was left a
widow after her first marriage, early in 1725, being
then twenty-four years of age. Her first husband's
name was Pendarves. Her mother's house was near
Gloucester, not far from Stanton, Gloucestershire,
where Mr. Kirkham lived, and she had become very
intimate with his daughters. One of these, as I have
remarked, is often referred to in the Life and Corre
spondence — the " sister Capoon " of the foregoing »
extract — mother-in-law, in after years, of Mrs.
Chapone, whose Letters were once so well known.
The other is never once referred to, and does not
appear to have been known to Lady Llanover, although
her ladyship was a grand-niece (I believe) of Mrs.

MISS KIRKHAM AND MRS. PENDARVES. if]
Delany, or, at all events, a descendant of her sister,
Anne Granville. And yet this other, as appears from
the correspondence to which we have referred, was a
most highly -valued friend of Mrs. Pendarves (or
Delany), and a Christian of no ordinary character.
It seems, indeed, as if all the religious correspondence
and the religious life and connexions of the fascinating
Court lady in her earlier history must have vanished
from her Remains, so completely wanting are any traces
of this phase of her history from the Life and Corre
spondence of Mrs. Delany. And yet the evidence is
before us that the idol of the Court circle was much
occupied, at least for considerable intervals, with
religious thought and feeling, and that between her
and John Wesley there was carried on a very remark
able correspondence, deeply coloured with religion.
What is more, it is evident that this lady succeeded
to the place in Wesley's thoughts which had been
occupied by Miss Betty Kirkham. The latter he would
have married, if it had been possible ; but some insur
mountable obstacle — it may have been a stern parental
(jecree — made such a union impossible. Not conceal
ing his deep sorrow at such a barrier to his tenderest
and most treasured hopes from her friend and his new
correspondent — frankly, indeed, avowing it throughout
— Wesley would have had the dazzling, but most
amiable, widow take her place, if she would but have
inclined her ear and heart. She was evidently not
insensible to his merits nor to his admiration. But it
was hardly likely at any time that she would have
accepted the position of his wife. At all events, after
several years of correspondence, a long visit to Ireland,
with its new scenes, its fashionable absorption, its

48 THE LIVING WESLEY.
dissipating stimulants, interrupted the correspondence
for some time. Then she made an attempt, with deep
apologies, to renew it ; but Wesley had escaped from
the pleasing snare, and, with stately but tender courtesy,
in a final letter, bowed the charmer out of his circle.
It was the fashion, in those times, for friends to
have fictitious names by which to address and speak
of each other — names often borrowed from some
romance of the time. Mrs. Pendarves' name, with
many of her friends, was Aspasia ; her sister Anne's
was Selina. Miss Betty Kirkham's was Varanese.
John Wesley's, in this correspondence, was Cyrus ; his
brother Charles's was Araspes. Lady Llanover prints
letters in her volumes which mention Cyrus, but she
had no suspicion that Cyrus was Wesley. What a
striking mosaic relief would this correspondence have
introduced into her first volume if she had only had
the opportunity of printing it !
I have stated that Varanese was the fancy name
of Betty Kirkham. As such it appears in the quota
tions about to be given from the correspondence,
sometimes being indicated under the initial V., some
times as Var., and again as V"ese'
This correspondence has never been published in its
integrity, but considerable extracts from it will be
found in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine for 1863,
at pp. 134-139, and 211-217, and Mr. Tyerman has
printed some portions of it. By the kindness of my
honoured friend, the late Rev. Dr. Hoole,1 I was
favoured with the opportunity of consulting the whole,
and using it for the purposes of this publication.
1 For many years one of the secretaries of the Wesleyan Missionary
Society.

MISS KIRKHAM AND MRS. PENDARVES. 49
What strikes one as most remarkable in this corre
spondence is, the variation of character which the
warm and tender admiration for such a woman as
Mrs. Pendarves seems to work in Wesley. He, of
course, had seen little of the world. His home was
amid the uncultured rusticity of Epworth and Wroote.
At college his means had not allowed him to mix with
general society before his fellowship, and after his
fellowship his seriousness had prevented his mingling
with the fashionable. But at Stanton, at his friend
Kirkham's home, he had, no doubt, been introduced to
the Granville family. There he had met with Mrs.
Pendarves, a brilliant lady of the Court, familiar with
all that rank and fashion could display, yet sweet and
modest, intelligent and inquiring ; as happy in country
life as if she had never known a Court or shone in
the assemblies of London ; as if the assembly and the
opera were altogether strange to her ; and, above all,
interested and concerned about matters of religious
devotion and duty. It is no wonder if the young
collegian, with a mind open to every charm of refine
ment and goodness, as well as to every grace of person,
was altogether dazzled and subdued by such an
apparition as that of Mrs. Pendarves in Stanton. Then
she was affectionately and admiringly attached to the
lady whom, above all others, he had esteemed and
admired — to Betty Kirkham. The result was, that
the Oxford fellow, tutor and clergyman, linguist
and wit, logician and theologian, student and devotee,
sought and obtained permission to become a corre
spondent of the widow ; in this respect more fortunate
than any other gentleman of whom we have any
information. But when he undertook to write to her,
D

50 THE LIVING WESLEY.
he seems to have been quite overset by the quality
and accomplishments of the person to whom he had
undertaken to write. In all other correspondence,
before as well as after this period of his life, Wesley
is always clear, neat, and parsimonious of words ;
simple, chaste, and unaffected. In this correspondence,
on the contrary, he is stilted, sentimental, I had almost
said affected, certainly unreal, certainly at times ful
some, when he has to speak of the lady herself, or
attempts to turn a compliment. One almost wonders
how the lady, who never forgets herself, and whose
style is always natural and proper, was able to bear
the style in which he addressed her. It is only
when a question of religious casuistry or of theology,
of duty or of devotion, is to be dealt with, that Wesley
is himself again ; then, his style is singularly in con
trast with what it is in respect to points of personality
or of sentiment. His expressions of regard and
admiration are as high-flown as if they belonged to a
Spanish romance ; his discussions are clear and close.
It is hard to understand how the same man could be
the writer of all these letters.
I have said that the correspondence with Aspasia
(Mrs. Pendarves) grew out of the relations between
Wesley and Betty Kirkham, and that the fancy name
of the latter was Varanese. This is shown by a letter
to Wesley from his sister Martha, a sentence of which
is quoted by Mr. Tyerman, and the date of which is
five days later than that of the one from Kirkham to
Wesley, from which I have quoted. " When I knew,'
says she, "that you were just returned from Wor
cestershire, where, I suppose, you saw your Varanese,
I then ceased to wonder at your silence, for the sight

MISS KIRKHAM AND MRS. PENDARVES. 51
of such a woman, ' so known, so loved,' might well
make you forget me." Mr. Tyerman, however, for
once has fallen short in his research as to this case,
for he says, " Nothing more is known of this incipient
courtship ; " and also, that " Wesley soon became far
too much immersed in more serious things to have
time to think of wooing." x The correspondence with
Aspasia shows that on Wesley's side, at least, there
was no withdrawal from his passion for Varanese ;
that, years afterwards, the attachment still continued
very strong ; that it was not his fault if it did not
lead to a life-long union ; and that he could and did
find time, in the midst of his most engrossing engage
ments, for a correspondence with the woman of his
choice.2 It seems to have been in the summer of 1730,
three years and a half after the date of Robert Kirk-
ham's letter to Wesley about his sister, while Mrs
Pendarves was spending some months in the country
with her mother and sister, that Wesley first made
her acquaintance ; no doubt, at Stanton, at the
Kirkhams'. Wesley's first letter to her, accompanying some
MS., which he had promised to send her, is dated
August 14 of that year, and in this he refers to "his
1 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i. p. 50.
a In his Oxford Methodists, p. 2, Mr. Tyerman has, in his notice of
Robert Kirkham, tacitly recognised the truth of what is written above.
He seems to show that Betty Kirkham became Mrs. Wilson, and died
in the summer of 1732. The question with which Mrs. Pendarves, in
the letter which alludes to her death, and which is dated June 28,
1732 closes her reference to her case, shows that Mrs. Wilson must
have been married some years. I should add here that the substance
of this chapter was originally published in 1872, in the London
Quarterly Review.

52 THE LIVING WESLEY.
dear Varanese." It appears that some correspondence
of hers was necessary in order to explain the MS.,
" the trifle," which he was sending. In reference to
this he says, "While I was transcribing the letters,
these last monuments of the goodness of my dear V,
I could not hinder some sighs which, between grief
and shame, would have their way. Not that I was
so much pained at seeing my utmost efforts outdone
by another's pen, but I could not, I ought not, to be
unmoved when I observe how unworthy I am of that
excellent means of improvement, etc. ... I trust so
unusual a blessing of Providence has not been utterly
useless to me. To this I owe both the capacity and
the occasion of feeling that soft emotion with which I
glow even at the moment when I consider myself as
conversing with a kindred soul of my V."
In a later letter (September 1 4th) he says, " My
dear V. informs me you are going yet farther from us,
but cannot inform me how soon." On the 12 th of
October, Mrs. Pendarves (Aspasia), writing to him
from Gloucester, speaks of " our inimitable dear V,"
and longs for her ability to write on high and serious
subjects. On the 19 th of November, apologising for
her infrequent writing, she says, " I have not had time
even to write to V." In a letter dated Innocents'
Day following, Cyrus thus significantly expresses
himself : " While I am reflecting on this, I can't but
often observe with pleasure the great resemblance
between the emotion I then feel and that with which
my heart frequently overflowed in the beginning of
my intercourse with our dear V Yet is there a sort
of soft melancholy mixed with it, when I perceive
that I am making another avenue for grief — that I

MISS KIRKHAzM AND MRS. PENDARVES. 53
am laying open another part of my soul, at which the
arrows of fortune may enter." There follows much
more soft meandering around the same subject, and to
a similar effect.
On the 11th January following he refers again to
the advantage he has enjoyed in " the friendship of
our V." Under date April 4, following, Aspasia
refers to " dear V," and to being " denied the happi
ness and advantage of conversing with such a friend."
And, a few days later, Cyrus, after referring to " dear
V," adds, most suggestively, " Why it is that I am
not allowed a stricter intercourse with such a friend,
is a question I could never fully answer but by
another : why is my intercourse with such a friend
as Aspasia or Selina allowed ? " Selina, I remark in
passing, here as elsewhere in the correspondence, is
decorously joined in society with Aspasia, as Araspes
is with Cyrus.1 But this is a very transparent
artifice of correspondence. So he desires, in another
letter, to " shelter himself under the protection of V.,
and Aspasia and Selina."
In the early summer of 1731, Wesley met V,
somewhere on a visit, probably at Stanton, where he
may have been over from Oxford " doing duty." He
writes in regard to this visit to Aspasia as follows :
" You will easily judge whether the remembrance of
Aspasia made that entertainment in particular less
agreeable which I enjoyed last week, in the almost
uninterrupted conversation of dear V. ' On this spot
1 For example : "The esteem of Araspes as well as Cyrus must ever
attend both Aspasia and Selina." This is a P. 8. to a letter from
Cyrus. So the lady closes one of her letters thus: "Araspes may
justly claim our service and esteem. Selina joins with Aspasia in
being to Cyrus a Faithful and Orlired Friend."

54 THE LIVING WESLEY.
she sat,' 'along this path she walked,' 'here she
showed that lovely instance of condescension,' were
reflections which, though extremely obvious, could not
but be equally pleasing, and gave a new degree of
beauty to the charming arbour, the fields, the meadows,
and Horrel (?) itself." In her reply she says: "I
will not say I envied either Va. or Cyrus those
moments they passed together; but happy should I
have been to have shared them with you. How I
please myself with the thought that I was not quite
forgot at that interview. Perhaps I was wished for."
In one place the passionate religious fervour of Vara
nese is shown by some words which Wesley quotes
from her. " I do not wonder," he says, " that Aspasia
is thus minded, any more than I did at the temper of
dear ynese> under the sharpest pain that an embodied
spirit can know. You will easily take knowledge of
those words, if you have not heard them before :
' When I was in the greatest of my pains, if my
strength would have allowed, I would gladly have
run out into the streets to warn all I met that they
should save themselves from pain sharper than
mine.' " x
Mrs. Pendarves was three years older than Wesley,
and was, it is evident enough, regarded by her country
friends as a sort of superior being. When she allowed
the correspondence to begin, she probably had no
idea that any warm affections would be stirred in the
course of it. Wesley's earliest effusions, however,
1 From several references in the letters, it would appear that Vara
nese was by no means an habitual sufferer from illness or pain, but
enjoyed good ordinary health. The date of the letter last quoted is
July 24th, 1731. A year later, the lady — then, and also at the date of
the letter quoted, Mrs. Wilson — had died altogether unexpectedly.

MISS KIRKHAM AND MRS. PENDARVES. 55
must have excited in her some suspicion as to how
matters might turn ; and, before the correspondence
came to an end, it would seem that a tone of decidedly
warmer, more natural, and more confidential friend
ship gave character to her letters. Her own religious
sensibilities, besides, were more awakened ; and, as she
became more earnest and confidential, the power of
Wesley's writing greatly grew. There can be no doubt
that he did at one time cherish the aspiration that
Mrs. Pendarves might join her lot with his. Her
second husband was an Irish dean and divine, neither
so well born and bred nor so distinguished or useful a
man as Wesley. But Wesley, wedded in 1732 to
Mrs. Pendarves, might have become a very different
man from what he did become. The following pas
sage in a long letter of Wesley's, dated July 24, 1731,
is the nearest approach to a proposal of marriage con
tained in this correspondence. One broad hint has
been quoted already. The passage now to be quoted
is evidently an argumeut to detach Mrs. Pendarves
from fashionable life.
" Is it no hurt to rob you of your time, for which
there is no equivalent but eternity ? on the use of
every moment of which more than a world depends ?
to turn your very sweetness of temper against you ?
on this very account to encroach on you with so much
cruelty ? to force you to stand still so many hours,
when you are most ardent to press forward ? — nay, to
strike whole days out of your existence, while He that
sitteth in heaven sees that all the kingdoms He hath
made are vile compared to the worth of one particle
of them ! 0 God, hath Thy wisdom prepared a
remedy for every evil under the sun ? and is there

56 THE LIVING WESLEY.
none for this? Must Aspasia ever submit to this
insupportable misfortune ? Every time a gay wretch
wants to trifle away part of that invaluable treasure
which Thou hast lent him, shall he force away a part
of hers too ? tear another star from her crown of
glory ? 0, 'tis too much, indeed ! Surely there is a
way to escape ; the God whom you serve point it out
to you ! "
This was certainly opening the way skilfully and
clearly for future advances, if due responsiveness had
been shown by the lady. Her next letter, like the
one preceding, is warmly kind and religiously earnest,
by no means likely to discourage her correspondent.
The one following, dated August 26, was written just
on the eve of her journey and voyage to Ireland, and
is still very kind, although, in the postscript, a stringent
injunction is given, not the first she had given of the
same kind in her postscripts, that all her letters should
be burned, and that Cyrus should make use of no
epithet before her name. This letter Wesley answered
at length (September 28), but received no reply. It
can hardly be doubted that he wrote other letters
afterwards not contained in this series, for he often
wrote two letters for her one ; and he was the more
likely to do so as she was in Ireland, and as the
direction in her last had been, " When you write to
me, which I hope will be soon, direct your letter to
my sister at Gloucester, and she will take care to
convey it to me." But he still received no reply,
though many months had passed away. Writing to
her sister from Dublin the following spring (March
11), when nearly six months had passed away, she
says : —

MISS KIRKHAM AND MRS. PENDARVES. 57
"Cyrus by this time has blotted me out of his
memory ; or, if he does remember me, it can only be
to reproach me. What can I say for myself ? What
can I indeed say to myself, that have neglected so
extraordinary a correspondent ? I only am the
sufferer, but I should be very sorry to have him think
my silence proceeded from negligence. I declare 'tis
want of time ! Then there's poor Sally,1 too, who I
think of every day, but cannot find a moment to tell
her so ; though soon I will endeavour to acquit myself
in a proper manner to them both. I can't put myself
into better hands for making an excuse for me than
yours." 2
Precisely twelve months later, in another letter to
her sister, still from Ireland, she thus writes : —
" As for the ridicule Cyrus has been exposed to, I
do not at all wonder at it. Religion in its plainest
dress suffers daily from the insolence and ignorance of
the world ; then how should that person escape who
dares to appear openly in its cause ? He will meet
with all the mortification such rebels are able to give,
which can be no other than that of finding them
wilfully blinding themselves, and running headlong
into the gulf of perdition — a melancholy prospect for
the honest-hearted man who earnestly desires the
salvation of his fellow-creatures." 3
It was not, however, till the summer of 1734, after
an interval of nearly three years, that Mrs. Pendarves
found time to write to her Oxford friend. By this
time she had returned to England. Her first words
1 Mrs. Chapone.
2 Mrs. Delany's Life and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 343.
3 Ibid. p. 410.

58 THE LIVING WESLEY.
indicate the feeling of the letter : — " I never began a
letter with so much confusion to anybody as I do this
to Cyrus." Her apologies are deep, and no doubt
sincere. She had " at last broken through " the
shame and reluctance to write which her long delay
and neglect had produced, and was ready to " suffer
any reproach rather than lose the advantage of Cyrus's
friendship." Things, however, had gone too far ; and
the Cyrus of 1734 was a man of stronger character
and more experience, as well as of wider influence and
of higher position as a spiritual teacher and leader,
than the Cyrus of 1731. He will not renew the
correspondence, and it may be doubted whether Cyrus
and Aspasia ever met again.1 His voyage to America
soon intervened, and the whole colour of his life was
completely changed.
The contrast between the beginning and the end
of this correspondence is striking, and suggests that
a great development had in the meantime taken place
in Wesley's character. The first letter of all bears
the signature "J. W.," and begins with the formal
" Madam " of the time. It is tolerably sentimental
and high-flown ; but it is nothing to the second,
which is addressed to Aspasia, and which properly
begins the Cyrus and Aspasia series. We transcribe
a part of it, observing only that it is in reply to one
from Aspasia, in which she acknowledged the MS. and
letters he had sent her with his first. First he thanks
her in elaborate circumlocution for her letter to him
— a letter complimentary, indeed, but destitute of any
real matter or genuine thought whatever — and then
proceeds : —
1 Mrs. Delany's Life and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 175.

MISS KIRKHAM AND MRS. PENDARVES. 59
"It convinces me that it was possible I should
enjoy a higher pleasure than even your conversation
gave me. If your understanding could not appear in
stronger light than when it brightened the dear hill,
the fields, the arbour, I am now forced to confess your
temper could. You even then showed but half your
goodness. " I spent some very agreeable moments last night
in musing on this delightful subject, and thinking to
how little disadvantage Aspasia or Selina would have
appeared even in that faint light which the moon,
glimmering through the trees, poured on that part of
our garden in which I was walking. How little
would the eye of the mind that surveyed them have
missed the absent sun ! What darkness could have
obscured gentleness, courtesy, humility — could have
shaded the image of God ! Sure none but that which
shall never dare to approach them ; none but vice,
which shall ever be far away ! "
Such compliments as these are singularly elaborate,
and cumbrous and obscure ; but yet John Wesley,
the master of simple manliness of style, wrote this
and much more, in the following letters, not inferior
in its kind. Such was Wesley in 1730 and 1731,
as a "squire of dames," and, in particular, as the
fascinated admirer of Mrs. Pendarves. In one place
he even goes so far as to place his orthodoxy in
question when paying his excessive tribute to this
lady. "Though," he says, "I would fain be nearer
you, though I do what I can (I fear not always) to
overtake you, yet so hard is it to lay aside every
weight — these follies do so easily beset me — that I
find it will not be — the penitent cannot avoid being

60 THE LIVING WESLEY.
left behind by the innocent!" The date of this
notable sentiment is July 24, 1731, twelve months
after the first acquaintance. It occurs in a long,
earnest, religious, and, on the whole, impressive letter.
The following sentiments in an earlier letter (October
24, 1730), also appear to be very curious in an
Oxford clergyman and fellow — an Oxford tutor and
religious leader : —
"What the advantage of being present with you
must be, may be easily conceived from what you do
even when absent. To your good wishes I can't but,
in a great measure, impute it that we should exactly
find our way through a country in which we were
utter strangers, and for some miles without either
human creature or day or moon or stars to direct us.
By so many ties of interest as well as gratitude am
I obliged, whether present or absent, to be, Madam,
your most obliged and most obedient servant."
Such was the style in which Wesley had paid his
epistolary court to Mrs. Pendarves. Of course there
was more substantial matter than such as I have
quoted. Some of the letters discuss at length ques
tions of religious duty and religious experience, and
there is not a little earnest religious exhortation. But
yet such writing as I have lately quoted occupies a large
space in this correspondence. The letter, closing the
correspondence, written by Wesley in 1734, in reply
to Mrs. Pendarves' letter of profound apology, shows a
higher style of writing, and much more dignity of
character. " Alas, Aspasia ! " he rejoins, " are you indeed con
vinced that I can be of any service to you ? I fear
you have not sufficient ground for such a conviction.

MISS KIRKHAM AND MRS. PENDARVES. 61
Experience has shown how much my power is short
of my will. For some time I flattered myself with
the pleasing hope, but I grew more and more ashamed
of having indulged it. You need not the support of
so weak a hand. How can I possibly think you do
(though that thought tries now and then to intrude
itself still), since you have so long and resolutely
thrust it from you ? I dare not, therefore, blame
you for so doing. Doubtless you acted upon cool
reflection. You declined the trouble of writing, not
because it was a trouble, but because it was a needless
one. And if so, what injury have you done yourself ?
As for me, you do me no injury by your silence. It
did indeed deprive me of much pleasure, and of a
pleasure from which I ought to have received much
improvement. But still, as it was one I had no title
to but your goodness, to withdraw it was no injustice.
I sincerely thank you for what is past ; and may the
God of my salvation return it sevenfold into your
bosom ! And if ever you should please to add to
those thousand obligations any new ones, I trust they
shall neither be unrewarded by Him nor unworthily
received by Aspasia's faithful friend and servant,
Cyrus. — Araspes, too, hopes you will never have
reason to tax him with ingratitude. Adieu ! "
Mr. Tyerman (as I have intimated) misses the full
meaning of this interesting and suggestive episode
in Wesley's life. He quotes, indeed, Aspasia's first
letter in full, as published in the Wesleyan Times
in 1866 ; and he adds the interesting fact that on
the fly-leaf of that letter Selina added a P.S., inform
ing Wesley that her sister was about to visit Bath,
and intimating to him that he had best write to her

62 THE LIVING WESLEY.
to ascertain her movements ; telling him also that
Varanese had sent him a letter by the carrier a fort
night before, and wished to know whether it had
come safe to hand. But he quite misinterprets the
latter part of the letter from Aspasia. Aspasia writes :
" If you have any affairs that call you to Gloucester,
don't forget that you have two pupils who are desirous
of improving their understanding, and that friendship
has already taught them to be, sir, your most sincere,
humble servants. My companion joins me in all I
have said, as well as in service to Araspes." The.
" companion," Mr. Tyerman says, was probably Mrs.
Granville (with whom also Wesley corresponded 1), or
Sarah Kirkham. But there is no evidence that Wesley
had any particular friendship with Sarah Kirkham,
who had, indeed, for years, been Mrs. Capon, Capoon,
or Chapone, and Mrs. Granville is clearly out of the
question. The " companion " is evidently the other
"pupil," and that other was Aspasia's sister Selina.
I have dwelt thus at length upon this correspond
ence, not merely because of the curious interest which
attaches to the letters, but because it reveals a back
ground of natural character which enables us to see
in a much truer light the matured, and in good part
transformed, Wesley of later years. It reveals to us
the extreme natural susceptibility of Wesley to what
ever was graceful and amiable in woman, especially if
united to mental vigour and moral excellence. He
had been brought up in the society of clever and
virtuous women, his sisters ; and it seems as if he
1 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i. p. 75. Mrs. Delany's Life and Corre
spondence, vol. i. p. 269. The date ofthe one letter to Mrs. Granville, of
which we have any knowledge, is " Lincoln College, December 12, 1730."

MISS KIRKHAM AND MRS. PENDARVES. 63
could at no time of his life dispense with the exquisite
aud stimulating pleasure which he found in female
society and correspondence. He was naturally a
woman-worshipper — at least, a worshipper of such
women. An almost reverent courtesy, a warm but
pure affection, a delicate but close familiarity, marked
through life his relations with the good and gifted
women — gifted they were, for the most part — with
whom he maintained friendship and correspondence.
If Miss Wedgwood had been aware of this fact, her
estimate of Wesley's character would have been different
at some points from that which she has given to the
world.1 ' In illustration of what is written above, see Alexander Knox's
Remains, vol. iii. pp. 478-9. In one of the later chapters of this
book, writing of Wesley's "disposition and character" (p. 205), I have
quoted this passage, which I had not as yet seen when I wrote and
first published the foregoing pages.

CHAPTER .IV
WESLEY'S THEOLOGICAL VIEWS AND RELIGIOUS
CHARACTER AT OXFORD, 1731-1735.
I MUST not pass away from the subject of Mr.
Wesley's correspondence with Mrs. Pendarves,
without saying a few words as to the light which
the letters throw upon the stage of development at
which Wesley had arrived in his doctrinal views
at the time (1730-1731) when they were written.
As we have only, besides, a somewhat insignificant
sermon or two of this period from which to draw our
inferences, they are, in this point of view, very
welcome to the student of Wesley's character in its
whole unfolding.
I may say, then, in general, that the theology of
these letters is utterly unevangelical. There is in
them very little savour of Christ's presence ; there is
absolutely nothing of the righteousness of faith. The
way to holiness and happiness is the use of the
" instituted " means ; all these should be continually
used — used to the full — because the more means are
made use of the more grace must needs come to the
teachable and humble Christian who uses them.
But of Christ and of faith there is nothing. A
servile legalism — a plodding ritualism, which the
performer must have continually felt to be liable

HIS THEOLOGICAL VIEWS AT OXFORD. 65
to degenerate into perfunctoriness — constitutes the
whole " way of salvation." Aspasia mentions a case
of religious distress in a female friend of hers.
Wesley recommends the diligent use of all the means
of grace — the "instituted" means — as a remedy for
her state. Aspasia rejoins that she had already tried
these and was none the better, but rather the worse.
Her spiritual adviser had no genuine remedy to pre
scribe for such a case as this. He was a " miserable
comforter" and an ignorant physician. Cases of
casuistry as to Sunday employments and some other
matters Wesley discussed, and more or less resolved
with no little skill. His view of religious consecra
tion, too, was high. But of evangelical faith and
experience he knew nothing. Further evidence as
to Wesley's theological views at this period of his
life is afforded by several sermons which, although
not printed at the time, were printed many years
afterwards, at various times, in the Methodist
Magazine, and of which some account is given by
Mr. Tyerman. From these it appears that Wesley
taught between 1731 and 1734 a high doctrine of
Christian holiness, both active and passive ; that he
taught the duty of at least weekly, if not also, when
circumstances allowed, of daily communion ; and that,
though he does not seem to have claimed the power
and prerogative of absolution, he appears to have taught
the duty of something near akin to confession as a
preparation for the Communion ; that he also would
have had the wine in the Holy Communion mixed
with water; but that he did not entertain any such
view respecting the real and corporeal presence, in
or under the sacramental elements, of the incarnate

66 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Christ, whether by transubstantiation or consubstan-
tiation, as is now taught by High Anglicans. On the
point of confession, Mr. Tyerman quotes a very racy
passage from a letter of Wesley's elder sister Emily,
to whose love for her brother I have already
referred : —
" To lay open the state of my soul to you, or any
of our clergy, is what I have no inclination to do at
present; and I believe I never shall. I shall not
put my conscience under the direction of mortal man
frail as myself. To my own Master I stand or fall.
Nay, I scruple not to say that all such desire in you
or any other ecclesiastic seems to me like Church
tyranny, and assuming to yourselves a dominion over
your fellow-creatures which was never designed you
by God. ... I further own that I do not hold fre
quent communion necessary to salvation, nor a means
of Christian perfection. But do not mistake my
meaning : I only think communing every Sunday, or
very frequently, lessens our veneration for that sacred
ordinance, and consequently our profiting by it." *
There speaks out the keen common sense of the
eldest of the Wesley sisters, couched in the admirable
English, pure, clear, and strong, which the whole
family seem to have caught from their mother.
Emily would not make a father-confessor of her
younger brother or of any man. She had not only
Puritan blood in her veins, but some of the Puritan
spirit for her inheritance. Wesley himself, in a
passage quoted by his biographer, has truly pointed
out what were, the essential defects of his theology
and his preaching from 1725 onward, so long as he
1 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i. p. 94.

HIS THEOLOGICAL VIEWS AT OXFORD. 67
remained at Oxford: "From the year 1725 to 1729
I preached much, but saw no fruit of my labour.
Indeed, it could not be that I should ; for I neither
laid the foundation of repentance nor of preaching
the Gospel, taking it for granted that all to whom I
preached were believers, and that many of them
needed no repentance. From the year 1729 to 1734,
faying a deeper foundation of repentance, I saw a
little fruit. But it was only a little — and no wonder :
for I did not preach faith in the blood of the
covenant." 1
Wesley, indeed, went to consult a new teacher,
and entered upon a new phase in the formation of
his theological views, in 1732; but the new teacher
was not likely to enlighten his darkness on the points
to which I have referred. He visited William Law in
the year named, and, on his recommendation, read the
Theologia Germanica, Tauler's Works,' and other mystic
writings. Thus was Mysticism grafted on High Church-
manship. Under the influence of Law, Wesley seems
to have continued until after he went to America.
It was in 1726 that Law published his Christian
Perfection and Serious Call; and it must have been
about the year 1728 or 1729 that Wesley first read
these fine devotional and practical books ; it was
certainly before 1730.2 When, in 1732, Wesley
visited Law, the latter had just begun to be a student
of the mystical writers. It appears to have been
about two years later that Law entered upon his course
of decided deterioration and increasing confusion, by
becoming addicted to the study of Behmen.
1 Wesley's Works, vol. viii. p. 468.
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 99.

68 THE LIVING WESLEY.
In one respect, Law's influence was antagonistic to
the errors of externalism — the servile devotion to
means and rites — in which Wesley had been ensnared.
"A contemplative man," says Wesley, meaning by
this contemplative man, his instructor Law, "con
vinced me, still more than I was convinced before,
that outward works are nothing, being alone; and,
in several conversations, instructed me how to pursue
inward holiness, or a union of the soul with God."
Nevertheless, the essential self-righteousness of mysti
cism, its real self-involution, its Christless and unevan-
gelical character, are well shown by Wesley in his
criticism of Law's teaching, which immediately follows
what we have just quoted. After saying that Law's
teachings, in reality, went to discourage him from
doing outward works at all (as is the inevitable
tendency of all mysticism), he adds, " He recom
mended (to supply what was wanting in them)
mental prayer and like exercises, as the most effectual
means of purifying the soul and uniting it with God.
Now these were, in truth, as much my own works
as visiting the sick or clothing the naked ; and the
union with God, thus pursued, was as really my own
righteousness as any I had before pursued under
another name." 1
Law's semi-mysticism, however, was at least, under
Providence, one means of delivering Wesley from the
excessive traditionalism in which he had been en
tangled. " I bent the bow," he himself says, " too far in that
direction, by making antiquity a co-ordinate, rather
than a subordinate, rule with Scripture ; by admitting
1 Works, vol. i. p. 100.

HIS THEOLOGICAL VIEWS AT OXFORD. 69
several doubtful writings ; by extending antiquity too
far ; by believing more practices to have been uni
versal in the ancient Church than ever were so ; by
not considering that the decrees of a provincial synod
could bind only that province, and the decrees of a
general synod only those provinces whose representat
ives met therein ; that most of those decrees were
adapted to particular times and occasions, and conse
quently, when those occasions ceased, must cease to
bind even those provinces." " These considerations,"
Wesley adds, " insensibly stole upon me as I grew
acquainted with the mystic writers, whose noble de
scriptions of union with God, and internal religion,
made everything else appear mean, flat, and , insipid.
But, in truth, they make good works appear so too." '
When and how Wesley was brought finally to
abandon mysticism, does not appear to be determinable
with precision ; but it would seem to have been
during, or soon after, his voyage to Georgia, as a
missionary of the Propagation Society, in 1735. For
some year or two previously, his opinions and prac
tices must have been a singular amalgam of High
Church ritualism and of mysticism, in which the
contemplative tendency and the strenuous and inces
sant devotion to rites or means and " good works," as
the necessary vehicles and exercise of holiness, united
in an asceticism at once severe and suave. Rapt
abstraction, inward continual prayer, frequent ejacula
tions, constant attendance at prayers (notwithstand
ing some temptations to omit the duty as merely an
outward work), daily communion, unceasing works of
charity, and, in the intervals, close study in many
1 Southey's Wesley, vol. ii. p. 94.

70 THE LIVING WESLEY.
branches of learning, English and foreign, but especi
ally theology and ecclesiastical history, would seem to
have made up the life, from day to day, of Wesley
and those original Methodists who placed themselves
under his guidance.
" In this refined way," he says, " of trusting to my
own works and my own righteousness (so zealously
inculcated by the mystic writers), I dragged on
heavily, finding no comfort or help therein, till the
time of my leaving England. Some change, however,
seems to have begun on shipboard, where, he says, " I
was again active in outward works." He also learned
much from the Moravian emigrants who were his
companions on the voyage, although, he says, '' I under
stood it not at the first ; I was too learned and too
wise." Nevertheless, he was more or less under the
old influences all the time he remained in Georgia.
" All the time I was at Savannah," he says, " I was
thus beating the air. I continued preaching, and
following after, and trusting in, that righteousness
whereby no flesh can be justified." 1
In the other account we have from his own pen,
written on his return to England, of the experiences
through which he had passed, he describes his state
during these years, and his deliverance from it, as
follows : —
" Though I could never fully come into this " (the
quietness of mysticism), " nor contentedly omit what
God enjoined, yet, I know not how, I fluctuated between
obedience and disobedience. I had no heart, no vigour,
no zeal in obeying, continually doubting whether I
was right or wrong, and never out of perplexities and
1 Works, vol. i. p. 100.

HIS THEOLOGICAL VIEWS AT OXFORD. 7i
entanglements. Nor can I at this hour give a distinct
account how I came back a little toward the right
way; only my present sense is this — all the other
enemies of Christianity are triflers ; the mystics 1 are
the most dangerous ; they stab it in the vitals, and
its most serious professors are most likely to fall by
them."2 So Wesley wrote in the beginning of 1738, on his
return from America. What has now been shown is
the interior view of his character and experience. I
shall proceed to give a view of him as seen from the
exterior by an intimate and gifted Christian friend.
But I must first recapitulate a few dates and facts,
as mementoes of an often-told history of which the
interesting and instructive details are very fully given
by Mr. Tyerman.
During Wesley's absence from college in 1727, while
he was serving his father's rectory of Wroote, his
brother Charles (then at Christchurch) had become
serious, and he and a few serious undergraduates began
to meet and consort together. This company it was
which, in the absence of John, was first nicknamed
'On November 23, 1736, twelve months after his leaving England,
Wesley wrote a letter to his brother Samuel, in which he gives an
admirable scheme (in brief) of the mystic doctrines, and asks his
brother's " thoughts " upon them. It would appear that, at that time,
he had but lately made his escape from these subtleties, which, though
Mr. Tyerman speaks of them as "mystified balderdash," have led
astray many hearts and minds of the finest quality. " I think," he
says, in introducing the subject to his brother, " the rock on which I
had the nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the writings of the
Mystics ; under which term I comprehend all, and only those, who
slight any of the means of grace." It is evident, also, from the style
of his earnest application to his brother, that, even as he wrote them,
he felt the power of the mystic'spell.— Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i. p. 133.
2 Southey's Wesley, vol. i. p. 112.

72 THE LIVING WESLEY.
variously as Sacramentarians, Bible Bigots, Bible Moths,
the Holy or the Godly Club, and, finally, Methodists.
Returning to Oxford in November, 1729, at the request
of the authorities, to become a college tutor, John
Wesley was immediately placed at the head of this
company, being styled the Father of the Holy Club.
Whitefield, Hervey, Robert Kirkham, and poor Morgan,
who died very soon afterwards, were among the earliest
members of this society.1 Mr. Gambold also, afterwards
a Moravian bishop, a man both of deep piety and of
fine poetic genius, became a member of it. The best
picture extant of what Wesley was at this time, the
view to which I have referred above, is that delineated
by Gambold after Wesley had sailed to Georgia. It
was given in a letter addressed to a member of Wesley's
family. After stating how he became acquainted with
Charles Wesley, how Charles Wesley took him to his
brother, the profound deference and unbounded and
tender affection which Charles ever showed toward
John, the part which Mr. Morgan had in suggesting
the society out of which Methodism arose, and that
the two Wesleys and Morgan were the first members
of that society, Gambold further proceeds : —
" Mr. John Wesley was always the chief manager,
for which he was very fit. For he had not only more
learning and experience than the rest, but he was
blessed with such activity as to be always gaining
ground, and such steadiness that he lost none ; what
proposals he made to any were sure to alarm them,
because he was so much in earnest ; nor could they
afterwards slight them, because they saw him always
1 For an exhaustive account of all the original Methodists, see Tyer
man's Oxford Methodists.

HIS THEOLOGICAL VIEWS AT OXFORD. 73
the same. What supported this uniform vigour was
the care he took to consider well of every affair before
he engaged in it, making all his decisions in the fear
of God, without passion, humour, or self-confidence ;
for though he had naturally a very clear apprehension,
yet his exact prudence depended more on honesty and
singleness of heart. To this I may add that he had, I
think, something of authority in his countenance. Yet
he never assumed any to himself above his companions ;
any of them might speak their mind, and their wishes
were as strictly regarded by him as his were by them.
. . . They took great pains with the younger members
of the University, to rescue them from bad company,
and to encourage them in a sober, studious life. When
they had some interest with any such, they would get
them to breakfast, and over a dish of tea endeavour to
fasten some good hint upon them ; they would bring
them acquainted with other well-disposed young men ;
they would help them in those parts of learning which
they stuck at ; they would close with their best senti
ments, drive home their convictions, give them rules of
piety when they could receive them, and watch over
them with great tenderness."
After describing their works of Christian love and
zeal, especially in visiting the prisons and dealing with
the prisoners, in instructing poor ignorant children
and relieving the poor, their fasting twice weekly, and
their weekly communion, Mr. Gambold proceeds : —
" They seldom took any notice of the accusations
brought against them ; but if they made any reply, it
was commonly such a plain and simple one, as if there
was nothing more in the case but that they had just
heard some doctrines of their Saviour, and had believed

74 THE LIVING WESLEY.
and done accordingly. . . . He thought prayer to be
more his business than anything else, and I have often
seen him come out of his closet with a serenity that
was next to shining ; it discovered where he had been,
and gave me double hope of receiving wise direction in
the matter about which I came to consult him. . . . He
used many arts to be religious, but none to seem so ;
with a soul always upon the stretch, and a most trans
parent sincerity, he addicted himself to every good
word and work. . . . He is now gone to Georgia as a
missionary. ... A family picture of him his relations
may be allowed to keep by them. And this is the
idea of Mr. Wesley which I cherish for the service of
my own soul, and which I take the liberty likewise to
deposit with, you." x
Such was Wesley, the Oxford Methodist.
1 Part of this letter was quoted in Whitehead's Life of Wesley. Dr.
Hoole had, and allowed me to use, a, copy of the original transcribed
from the short-hand.

CHAPTER V.
WESLEY IN GEORGIA  MISS HOPKEY.
I MUST bring this part of my study to a close, by
some remarks, in this and the following chapter,
on Wesley's Georgian history. It lasted two years and
four months from the time of his leaving till the time
of his returning to this country, his departure on his
voyage being from Gravesend, on October 21, 1735;
his return to Deal on February 1, 1738. Of the
voyages out and back I shall say nothing at this
time ; although the outward voyage, in the course of
which Wesley was introduced for the first time into
Moravian fellowship, produced, as all the world knows,
a critical effect in the development of his views and
character, and led on to the connection with Bohler,
which was the means of working in him so profound
and far-reaching a change of spirit and principles.
The chief matter of general human interest in Wesley's
Georgian history was his disappointment in love with
Miss Sophia Hopkey, the niece of Mr. Causton, the
magistrate of the colony. Into this, however, I shall
not go in detail, because the story is well known, and
Mr. Tyerman has told all about it very plainly, and
more fully than it was ever told before. There is one
point, however, as to which I must say a few words.
Henry Moore, in his Life of Wesley, has a version of

76 THE LIVING WESLEY.
one part of this affair, which he professes to have
learned from Wesley himself in full distinctness, and
according to which Wesley never actually proposed
marriage to Miss Hopkey. Mr. Tyerman most uncere
moniously discredits this version as wholly unworthy
of reliance and as " painfully ludicrous." I confess I
cannot accept this " short and easy method " of dealing
with Moore's testimony as to Wesley's own account. I
think a little considerate attention given to the matter
would have prevented Mr. Tyerman from making so
unceremonious an attack on the credit of either John
Wesley or Henry Moore, and have shown him that
there is really no contradiction between the sentences
which he quotes from Wesley's private diary and the
statement of Henry Moore. I should weave the two
accounts into one consistent statement in some such
way as follows : —
The young chaplain and " ordinary " of the province
of Georgia — a clergyman and a gentleman, and withal
a man of handsome personal appearance, notwithstand
ing his smallness of stature — comes to Savannah.
Who so likely as he to attract the attention of the
magistrate's niece, resident in the magistrate's family ?
Was he not, next to Governor Oglethorpe, the best
gentleman in the colony, and in influence, after the
governor, only second to her uncle, the magistrate ?
From the first, she makes him her mark. He has a
long and dangerous illness ; she waits upon him con
tinually, night and day. He has special and dainty
taste in dress ; the Horatian " simplex munditiis "
expresses his standard of propriety and grace, regard
ing the matter either as a gentleman or a Christian ;
simplicity becomes accordingly her law, and she appears

WESLEY IN GEORGIA. 77
in plain but graceful white before him continually.
He is a devotee, and she becomes devout. She wins
the minister's heart by her regular attendance at his
early morning service, and by taking to light suppers
and early hours at night under his advice. She becomes
his penitent, and repairs to him when proposino to
take the Communion. Quid multa ? We know how
unsuspicious and how susceptible to feminine attraction
and charm Wesley was ; here was all that he could
desire, " the very handmaiden of the Lord." Wesley
is deeply in love. Meantime, others have clearer eyes
than the fascinated chaplain ; something is known of
Miss Hopkey's inner woman ; she has, in effect, courted
the minister, and he is about to fall under the arts of
an attractive but unsuitable woman. Delamotte, his
brother collegian and brother Methodist, his companion
and friend, gives a word of warning to Wesley. Dela
motte also lays the matter before the Moravian elders,
a venerable body in the eyes of the teachable and
single-minded chaplain. These express their judgment
that his marriage with this lady would be against the
will of God. Wesley, overawed, says, " The will of the
Lord be done," and goes away convinced, for the time
at least, that it would be wrong in him to prosecute
this connection any further.
In all this I can see nothing but what was perfectly
natural under the circumstances ; especially consider
ing how Wesley was accustomed, at that time, and for
years afterwards, to defer to what he regarded as the
determinations of Providence, sometimes given in the
way of impressions, and sometimes of the lot, and still
more to the combined judgment and conclusion of wise
and good men. He had been accustomed to act in

78 THE LIVING WESLEY.
this spirit at Oxford, and to instruct others to do the
like. I conceive that what followed was probably some
thing like this. Wesley became more constrained in
his manner, and intermitted his attentions. Miss
Hopkey hears some rumour of consultations with the
Moravians, touching her affair. She discovers, at the
same time, that Wesley's ritualistic requirements are
somewhat too severe for her taste and powers. Another
admirer is in the field, and she at once discards her
clerical lover. Wesley, notwithstanding what had
occurred, had never lost his own love for the lady, and
is grieved accordingly. Nevertheless, he had been
thinking that it was his duty to give up the connection,
although he had not been able to gather courage to let
her understand his feeling ; and so the affair ends.
All this surely is quite consistent with Henry Moore's
statement, that there had never been any definite
proposal on Wesley's part. If there had been, it is
certain that it would have been made in the first
instance to Mr. Causton, the young lady's guardian.
Clergymen of Wesley's character and position did not,
in those days, slip out proposals of marriage informally
and privately to the ward or daughter in the first
instance. They addressed themselves, and were bound
to address themselves, in the first instance and with
all formality, to the parent or guardian. The undoubted
fact is, that no proposal of marriage to Miss Hopkey
was ever addressed by Wesley to her uncle, and that
no charge of dishonourable conduct or of breach of
engagement was ever preferred against Wesley, either
by Miss Hopkey or by Mr. Causton : these considera
tions settle the question for us. Mr. Tyerman himself

WESLEY IN GEORGIA. 7g
informs us that before the grand jury Mrs. William
son "was called, but acknowledged, in the course
of her examination, that she had no objection to
Wesley's behaviour previous to her marriage. Mr.
and Mrs. Causton were also examined; when the
former confessed that, if Mr. Wesley had asked his
consent to marry his niece, he would not have refused
it." 1
It is plain enough that Wesley's great offence was,
that he did not propose. His hesitation lost him Miss
Hopkey — a loss which, no doubt, was a real gain and
blessing. Mr. Moore's account is not "painfully
ludicrous," but is well sustained by all the evidence.
It is sustained, indeed, by the very passages which
Mr. Tyerman quotes from the unpublished Journal.
Here is one —
"February 5lh, 1737. — One of the most remarkable
dispensations of Providence toward me began to show
itself this day. For many days after, I could not at
all judge which way the scale would turn ; nor was it
fully determined till March 4th, on which day God
commanded me to pull out my right eye ; and, by His
grace, I determined to do so, but, being slack in the
execution, on Saturday, March 12 th, God being very
merciful to me, my friend performed what I could not."
The meaning of this is not hard to decipher.
Delamotte had spoken to Wesley, as Moore relates,
and Wesley felt bound to take advice. He did take
advice with David Nitzchmann, the Moravian Bishop,
as Moore also relates, and his answer was dubious,
suggesting grave caution and deliberation. After a
month thus passed in painful irresolution, on the 4th
1 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i. p. 156.

8o THE LIVING WESLEY.
of March, Nitzchmann communicates to Wesley the
judgment of his fellow-elders — I have no doubt a
most sound judgment — that he ought not to marry.
Wesley receives this as from the Lord, and determines
to carry it out, but is " slack in the execution." On
the 8 th, the matter being blown abroad in gossiping
Savannah, Miss Hopkey takes her revenge by engaging
herself to an altogether unworthy person. On the
7 th, as we learn from the Diary, Wesley had walked
with Causton "to his country lot," and had greatly
admired the place, but had made no overture of
marriage. Wesley's entry in regard to the marriage
is as follows : —
" March, 8th. — Miss Sophy engaged herself to Mr.
Williamson, a person not remarkable for handsomeness,
neither for greatness, neither for wit, nor knowledge, nor
sense, and least of all for religion ; and on Saturday,
March 12 th, they were married at Parry sbury — this
being the day which completed the year from my
first speaking to her. What Thou doest, 0 God, I
know not now, but I shall know hereafter."
That he had tenderly loved Miss Hopkey is certain ;
equally evident it is that he must have been a some
what trying and not easily comprehensible suitor,
especially to a vain young lady ; and the hasty
marriage shows how bitterly she resented his indecision,
and the slight which she conceived herself to have
suffered. Forty-nine years afterwards, as Mr. Tyer
man reminds us, he wrote, in reference to this event :
" I remember when I read these words in the church
at Savannah, ' Son of man, behold, I take away from
thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke,' I was
pierced through as with a sword, and could not utter

WESLEY IN GEORGIA. 81
a word more. But our comfort is that He that made
the heart can heal the heart."
Such was the unprosperous issue of Wesley's third
love affair. He was not, it must be confessed, fortun
ate in these matters ; but they illustrate very strongly
the real nature of the man. He was susceptible, to 1
weakness, in presence of female attractions, but he
was always delicate and honourable in his feelings y
and conduct. On the whole, we cannot but love our
Wesley the better for these revelations. At the same
time, it is a matter of regret that Mr. Tyerman has so
inadequately rendered them, as he has, in my judgment,
inadequately and inapprehensively represented, through
out his volumes, Wesley's relations of affection and
confidence with women.
This matter, as many of my readers know, and all
may fully know by consulting Mr. Tyerman's interest
ing pages, was the beginning of troubles to Wesley.
The worldly and wicked members of the colony — and,
in such a colony as Georgia was, these could not but
be the majority — had now the magistrate and his
family on their side. A suit at law was brought
against him, which, however, completely broke down,
and Wesley saw that his only course was to leave
the colony — " a sadder and a wiser man " than he
entered it.

CHAPTER VI.
WESLEY'S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS AND CHARACTER' IN
GEORGIA.
FROM the public indictment against Wesley in the
Savannah Court, and his own testimony or
comments in his Diary, we know what sort of a
Churchman he was in Georgia. The resemblance of
his practices to those of modern High Anglicans is,
in most points, exceedingly striking. He had early,
and also forenoon, service every day ; he divided the
morning service, taking the Litany as a separate
service ; he inculcated fasting (real, hard fasting, his
was), and something scarcely to be distinguished from
confession, as a preparation for communion. He
made a point of the celebration of the Lord's Supper
weekly ; he refused the Lord's Supper to all who had
not been episcopally baptized ; he insisted on baptism
by immersion; he re-baptized the children of Dissenters;
and he refused to bury all who had not received epis
copalian baptism. One thing, however, was wanting to
make the parallel with our moderns complete : there
is no evidence that he believed in the conversion of
the' elements by consecration, or in their doctrine of
the " real presence." l
1 It is well known that Wesley refused the Lord's Supper to one of the
most exemplary Christians in the colony, Belzius or Bolzius, the pastor

HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS IN GEORGIA. 83
But, at the same time that he was in some respects
an intolerant High Church ritualist, he was inwardly
melting, and the light of spiritual liberty was dawning
on his soul. He attended the Presbyterian service
at Darien, heard Mr. M'Leod, the minister, to his great
astonishment, offer an extemporary prayer and preach
a written sermon, on which fact he fails not to remark
in his Diary, and was much struck by the Christian
devoutness and the exemplary Christian behaviour of
the people of his charge ; he was continually learning
from the Moravians, with all meekness ; he gathered
a meeting of the clergy of the Province, at which, he
says in his Diary, " there was such a conversation, for
several hours, on ' Christ our Righteousness and
Example,' with such seriousness and closeness as I
never heard in England in all the visitations I have
been present at ; " and he thus expresses to a friend
his views respecting the innermost nature of religion: —
" I entirely agree with you that religion is love, and
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost ; that, as it is the
happiest, so it is the cheerfullest thing in the world ;
that it is utterly inconsistent with moroseness, sour
ness, -severity, and indeed with whatever is not
according to the softness, sweetness, and gentleness of
of the Salzburghers, because he had not been, as he insisted, canonically
baptized. His entry in his Journal (Sept. 30, 1749), in reference to this
matter, written many years later, will not be forgotten, which ends
with the words, ' ' Can High Church bigotry go further than this ? And
how well have I since been beaten with mine own staff ! " In regard
to this matter there is the following entry in Wesley's unpublished
Journal, under date Sunday, July 17, 1737 : " I had occasion to make
a very unusual trial of the temper of Mr. Belzius, pastor of the Salz
burghers, in which he behaved with such lowliness and meekness as
became a disciple of Jesus Christ." The vernacular name of this good
man, it may be presumed, was Bolz.

84 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Christ Jesus. I believe it is equally contrary to
all preciseness, stiffness, affectation, and unnecessary
singularity. I allow, too, that prudence, as well as
zeal, is of the utmost importance in the Christian life.
But I do not yet see any possible case wherein trifling
conversation can be an instance of it. In the follow
ing scriptures I take all such to be flatly forbidden —
Matt. xii. 36 ; Eph. v. 4, and iv. 29 ; Col. iv. 6.
" That I shall be laughed at for this, I know ; so
was my Master. I am not for a stern, austere manner
of conversing — no : let all the cheerfulness of faith
be there, all the joyfulness of hope, all the amiable
sweetness, the winning easiness of love. If we must
have art, ' Hcec mihi erunt artes! " 1
So far distant from real Christianity does Wesley,
the Georgian missionary, appear to have been, if we
look only at his, bigotry, his ritualism, his wearisome and
punctilious externalism ; so near, notwithstanding, does
he come in his inner desires and in his views respecting
the nature of religious experience. A similar com
bination, we cannot doubt, exists to-day in the case of
not a few who seem not untruly to be infatuated
sticklers for a servile and benighted High Anglicanism.
I have thus endeavoured, beating ground seldom
trodden, and known hitherto to very few, to exhibit
the living and visible humanity of Wesley, the collegian
and the Oxford Anglican, before he entered into the
liberty of the children of God. In the Third Part of
this study I shall endeavour to illustrate the stages
and the true nature of his evangelical conversion, its
effects upon his character, especially as a preacher,
and on his ecclesiastical spirit and views ; the secret
1 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i. p. 138.

HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS IN GEORGIA. 85
of his extraordinary power as a preacher ; his manner
of work as an itinerant evangelist, and how he behaved
under fiercest persecutions ; how he dealt with false
teachers ; and in what spirit and manner he organised
his societies. Of his intellectual powers, hitherto in
general very imperfectly understood, his personal
disposition and character as a companion and friend,
his later years and the beautiful ending of his life,
I shall speak in the Fourth and final Part of this study
of Wesley as a living personality.

PART III.

WESLEY'S CONVERSION AND HIS LIFE WORK
AS AN EVANGELIST.

CHAPTER I.

WESLEY S RITUALISM AND MYSTICISM BEFORE HIS
EVANGELICAL CONVERSION.
IT will be necessary, in opening what I desire now
to say respecting Wesley in his mature and in
his later life, that I should recapitulate some of the
information contained in the former part of this
volume. We left Wesley still in Georgia, but on
the point of returning to England. The date was
1737-8. Wesley had gone to Oxford in 1720, being seven
teen years of age. He took his bachelor's degree in
1724. He was ordained Deacon in 1725, and elected
Fellow of Lincoln College six months later, in March,
1726. He had always been a moral youth, with
religious habits and predilections; but in 1725 he
was deeply awakened to a sense of his want of real
holiness, and began thenceforth to seek after absolute
consecration to God, as the great aim of his life. The

88 THE LIVING WESLEY.
main outline of his characteristic teaching in future
life as to Christian perfection, may be traced in the
views which he at this time embraced, and which he
seems to have learned chiefly from Thomas a Kempis
and Jeremy Taylor. In the same year, also, he
settled his views in opposition to the Calvinistic
doctrines of predestination. About the same time,
revolting at this point from Jeremy Taylor, he con
cluded that it must be the privilege and blessing of a
Christian to know his acceptance with God.
In 1727, during Wesley's absence from Oxford at
Wroote, where he was serving his father's rectory, his
brother Charles became serious, and the original com
pany of "Methodists," so designated in mockery or
in pleasantry, was formed; Charles and a few like-
minded friends being the members of the company.
In 1730, shortly after his return to residence at
Oxford, John Wesley was placed at the head of this
company, being styled the Father of the Holy
Club. Wesley, as I have just stated, left Oxford in 1727,
and went for a time to reside, in Lincolnshire. Not
long before his leaving he had visited the family of
the Kirkhams, at Stanton, in Gloucestershire; and
there appears, as we have seen, to have been at that
time a mutual attachment between himself and Miss
Betty Kirkham. Of this, however, we lose the traces
for several years afterward. During those years, it
is to be observed, Wesley was very far away from
Gloucestershire; they were the years during which
he had exchanged his university life for parochial
residence and service in Lincolnshire. Possibly there
may have been some reason connected with Stanton

WESLEY'S RITUALISM AND MYSTICISM. 89
which helped in part to keep him so long away from
Oxford, though the reason was certainly not that he
had become indifferent to the merits of his friend
Kirkham's sister. However, to Oxford he returned,
as we have noted, at the end of 1729, and became
the chief of the Methodist band. In the summer of
that same year he renewed his personal intercourse
with the daughter of the Stanton parsonage, although
without any hope of marriage being possible ; indeed,
it seems not unlikely that about this time she married
and became Mrs. Wilson. Through his connection
with her family he was about the same time intro
duced to Mrs. Pendarves, afterward Mrs. Delany, with
whom, during several years following, he kept up the
remarkable correspondence from which I have given
some extracts. His last and parting letter to her was
dated 1734. By that time he had learned that his
way and hers through life must be separate and
divergent. Three years before, he was deeply engaged
to her in admiration and affection, and would most
gladly have married her if he had been able. At
that time she would have been a compensation to
him for even the loss of his former hopes as to Miss
Kirkham. It was precisely during the interval which covers
the correspondence with Mrs. Pendarves that Wesley's
High Church asceticism developed itself at Oxford.
He set himself conscientiously to be an Anglican
Churchman, according to the prescriptions of the
Eubric; and to be a devout and holy Christian,
according to early ecclesiastical examples and tradi
tions. He became, accordingly, an ascetic ritualist
of the strictest and most advanced class. At this

90 THE LIVING WESLEY.
time, to use his own words of himself, he " made
antiquity a co-ordinate rule with Scripture." x
In 1735 he Went to Georgia, and there, while
inwardly the need and the attainability of a real
consciousness and power of Divine love and holiness,
as contradistinguished from any external services or
observances, became with him a matter of deepening
and almost passionate conviction, outwardly his rule
of life and service seemed to become more and more
forbidding and unevangelical in its legal servility, its
rubrical punctiliousness, and its ascetic severity. He
was almost all that a High Anglo-Catholic of the
present day is understood to be, except that he seems
not to have believed in the "conversion of the
elements" in the eucharist.
Nevertheless, with all his punctilious Eitualism,
there was curiously intermixed, during nearly the
whole of these seven years (1730-1738), a strong
tincture of mystical tendency and influence. This
element represented the reaction, in such a true and
earnest soul as Wesley's, of the inward against the
merely outward. Through all his life, indeed, Wesley
was resolute to maintain the union of outward godli
ness and religious observance with inward and spiritual
contemplation and affection. But, during the period
of which I am now speaking, he had not found, in the
" righteousness of faith," the true nexus and harmony
between these antithetic necessities. Hence, at this
period, the intermixture of Eitualism and Mysticism,
1 Mr. Tyerman, in his Oxford Methodists, has shown that it was
in 1733 that Wesley, partly through the influence of his friend and
fellow-Methodist, Clayton, left the guidance of the Bible to follow
that of tradition, or such pretended tradition as the Apostolical
Constitutions.

WESLEY'S RITUALISM AND MYSTICISM. 91
the oscillations from one to the other, of which we
have had a view in the Second Part of this life-study.
Never ceasing to be outwardly the strict and ascetic
High Churchman, Wesley, in his inward sympathies
and longings, found himself strongly attracted by the
union of contemplation and passion in the writings of
the best class of devotional mystics, and was himself
often a mystic at heart. Indeed, although servile
Eitualism and Mysticism are antagonistic to each other,
there is a deep congeniality, as all religious history
has shown, between Asceticism and Mysticism ; and,
accordingly, on his ascetic side, Wesley found himself
verging naturally toward the school from which, as a
punctilious legalist, he was repelled. Besides which,
Wesley could not, even for a time, find rest in legalism :
earnest and sincere spirits never can. Whereas
Mysticism was a doctrine of rest ; made fair offers to
him of " quietness and assurance for ever."
It was about 1728 or 1729 that Wesley, was
deeply impressed by reading Law's Christian Perfec
tion and Serious Call. The fruit of these powerful
books was seen in his deepened earnestness and
" Methodist " singularity of religious strictness and
devotion on his return to Oxford ; that is, from the
beginning of the year 1730. In 1732 he paid a
personal visit to Law, at Putney ; and from that period
seems to have begun to read the mystics, chiefly, it
would appear, at first, the Germans who preceded and
in part prepared the way for the Eeformation, such as
Tauler, and the author of the Theologia Germanica ;
but afterward, also, such French writers as Madame
de Bourignon. Just as he was leaving England for
Georgia, Law was going astray, wide and deep, by

92 THE LIVING WESLEY.
plunging into the unfathomable confusions of Behmen-
ism. Into these Wesley never followed him ; but,
as I have already shown, appears to have distinctly
and intelligently extricated himself from the meshes
of Mysticism toward the end of the year 1736, during
his sojourn in Georgia. His criticism on the principles
of Mysticism, given in a letter to his brother Samuel,
from Georgia, under date November 23, 1736, and
already referred to in a note, is worth quoting here,
both for its own intrinsic value, and as a specimen of
his philosophical and critical capacity at this period
of his life.
" I think," he says, " the rock on which I had the
nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the writings
of the mystics ; under which term I comprehend all,
and only those, who slight any of the means of grace.
I have drawn up a short scheme of their doctrines,
and beg your thoughts upon it as soon as you can
conveniently. Give me them as particularly, fully,
and strongly as your time will permit. They may be
of consequence, not only to all this Province, but to
nations of Christians yet unborn.
" ' All means are not necessary for all men ; there
fore each person must use such means, and such only,
as he finds necessary for him. When the end is
attained, the means cease.'
" ' Men utterly divested of free-will, of self-love,
and of self-activity, are entered into the passive state,
and enjoy such a contemplation as is not only above
faith, but above sight — such as is entirely free from
images, thoughts, and discourse, and never interrupted
by sins of infirmity or voluntary distractions. They
have absolutely renounced their reason and under-

WESLEY'S RITUALISM AND MYSTICISM. 93
standing, else they could not be guided by a Divine
light. They seek no clear or particular knowledge of
anything ; but only an obscure general knowledge,
which is far better.'
"'Having thus attained the end, the means must
cease. Hope is swallowed up in love ; sight, or some
thing more than sight, takes the place of faith. All
particular virtues they possess in the essence, and,
therefore, need not the distinct exercise of them.
They work, likewise, all good works essentially, not
accidentally ; and use all outward means only as they
are moved thereto.'
" ' Public prayer, or any forms, they need not, for
they pray without ceasing. Sensible devotion in any
prayer they despise, it being a great hindrance to perfec
tion. The Scripture they need not read, for it is only
His letter, with whom they converse face to face.' " 1
The one really plausible position of all that are
here laid down is that set forth in the first paragraph
of the summary. How much of truth there is in it, it
is not my business to inquire at this moment. But I
may observe that Wesley's special weakness at this
time as a ritualist was in precise antithesis to this
position. He taught the pernicious error which is in
the opposite extreme to the no less pernicious mystical
half-truth. His one prescription for the attainment
of holiness and happiness was the use of " the .means
of grace" — of the "instituted" means. He taught
that the more means are made use of, the more grace
must needs come to the sincere user of them. His
doctrine was a servile legalism, a plodding ritualism,
less absurd, perhaps, and less open to mischievous
1 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i. pp. 133, 134.

94 THE LIVING WESLEY.
abuse, than the extremer developments of the Mysti
cism summarised in the passage I have quoted, but
not less opposed to Christian truth, and in special
contradiction to the liberty wherewith Christ has
made His people free. One secret of the strength and
attraction of the mystical doctrines for him — that
which drew him to them, even while he revolted
against them — consisted, doubtless, in the fact that
the element of truth which lay at the bottom of all
their Antinomian paradoxes and inexplicable subtle
ties — that contained in the first paragraph of the
preceding summary — was, if it could only have
been disinvolved from the fallacies in which it was
embedded, precisely the principle that was needed
to correct his own servile doctrine of " means " — his
ritualistic legalism. To this must be added, that the
mystical doctrines, under the hands of some of their
teachers, become a very cunning web of verbal deduc
tions ; a fabric of fallacies very deftly put together,
and exceedingly likely to impose upon a verbal
logician. Now, Wesley was a most dexterous master
of the logical art and method. But if his mastery of
the logician's craft often stood him in good stead
when conducting an argument, it also was at times a
snare to him. If he often easily and happily disen
tangled verbal subtleties, he was sometimes entangled
in them. The school in which he was trained was a
school of verbal dialectics and of scholastic distinctions.
Hence, though he was furnished with the skill and
possessed the power finally to penetrate and refute the
fallacies of the mystics, he was for a time bewildered
in their plausible mazes.
The passage I have quoted from his letter to his

WESLEY'S RITUALISM AND MYSTICISM. 95
brother, shows, at any rate, that Wesley had, from the
beginning, the taste and tendencies of the philosophic
theologian ; and, moreover, that he had a fine philo
sophic capacity. The philosophic tincture and bias of
thought remained with Wesley through life, and was
shown in many of his sermons, not only in such of
his most finished discourses, published in his ripe
maturity of thought, as that on The Original of the
Law, but in many of those which, in the later years of
his long life, he wrote for the Arminian Magazine.
His original tendency, in fact, was to be a philosophical
rather than an evangelical, or even a biblical, theo
logian. His Moravian guides, especially Bohler,
drove him to the New Testament. Bohler had strong-
reason when he said to him, " Mi frater, mi frater, ista
philosophia tua excoquenda est." It has often been
said that Wesley was not a metaphysician ; and there
is truth in the saying, although it is by no means so
absolutely true as it is commonly assumed to be.
But then there can hardly be said to have been any
metaphysical science in his earlier days, certainly not
at Oxford. It might not be untruly said that even
Cudworth was no metaphysician.1 But if Wesley was
not a metaphysician, he was a philosophical student in
the whole bias of his intellect, addicted, no doubt, like
all the students of his age, and in the spirit of all
scholastic traditions, to synthesis and deduction rather
than to analysis and induction ; but nevertheless open
to correction as respects this tendency. The cha
racteristic parts of Wesley's theology were based on
experience and consciousness. His Arminianism was
founded on the moral intuitions of humanity, in oppo-
1 Cudworth was one of the Cambridge Platonists.

96 THE LIVING WESLEY.
sition to the mere deductive logic of Calvinism. His
doctrines of assurance and of Christian perfection,
although moulded into a system by the help of his
logical faculties — occasionally employed, as I venture
to think, with more of verbal truth-seeming than of
truth-reaching insight — yet reposed in their broad
power and merits on the basis of living consciousness
and experience. Whether as a logical expositor, how
ever, or as a witness, and the mouthpiece of other
witnesses, Wesley was never a dry, or a merely scho
lastic and systematic, theologian ; there was always,
in his teaching as a theologian, a living freshness of
thought and a philosophic basis and mould of exposi
tion. Even as a boy, he was singularly remarkable
for reflectiveness ; 1 and his Oxford discipline in early
life — the influence, also, of Plato and Aristotle, of
Taylor and Beveridge and Law — had contributed their
full share to the permanent colour and quality of his
intellectual character.2
Through all the preparatory stages of his life,
Wesley was emphatically a learner. All through life,
indeed, he was a man of a peculiarly open and teach
able mind ; as much so in his ninth as in his third
decade. But during the first five-and-thirty years of
his life he was not only a learner, he was a learner in
quest of a teacher ; he was looking out for a school in
1 Clarke's Wesley Family, vol. ii. p. 321.
1 A striking passage, relating to Wesley as a philosophic theologian,
will be found in the Remains of the accomplished Alexander Knox, vol.
iii. pp. 162-172. Knox was for twenty years an intimate friend of
Wesley. He was afterwards an intimate friend of Southey. His
Remains (4 vols.) and his Correspondence with Bishop Jelf (2 vols.)
are well known. By some persons he has been absurdly supposed to
be the first teacher of modern High Anglicanism.

WESLEY 'S RITUALISM AND MYSTICISM. 97
which to study and graduate ; he was unsettled in his
principles. He went to school to the Rubric, and,
being a loyal son of the Church of England, he worked
long and assiduously in that school ; but this, after
all, was only grinding at the elements—" beggarly
elements " he found them to be- in after days ; he
went to school to Law, and for some years Law was
his oracle, until he found that he durst not any
longer follow the hazardous excursions of his teacher ;
he sat as a scholar at the feet of the Moravians during
his voyage to Georgia, and also in the colony, although
he could not accept all their teachings ; he wrote from
Georgia to his brother Samuel, entreating him for
correction and instruction ; in the colony he learned
from Lutheran Salzburghers and from Scottish Presby
terians — not, indeed, as yet, lessons of true ecclesiastical
liberality and catholicity, but much that sunk deep
into his open and thoughtful mind. All through he
felt that his system of theological and ecclesiastical
principles remained yet to be formed ; he had not
found his centre or his basis ; he was far from being
at rest. Nevertheless, it is notable that, with all this,
he felt that he was a teacher likewise, and he acted as
such. If he was ever listening that he might learn,
he was also ever speaking to instruct. His personal
influence was always very great ; there was authority
in his presence and his words. Especially we must
note that he was under the continual conviction that
he was destined to be a chief teacher — the teacher
not only of a company in his generation, but of multi
tudes in many generations. This conviction is ex
pressed with startling distinctness in the letter to his
elder brother which has been quoted. Begging his
G

98 THE LIVING WESLEY.
brother to give him his thoughts respecting the- prin
ciples of the mystics, as summarised in the letter, he
says, with singular emphasis, " Give me them as
particularly, fully, and strongly as your time will
permit. They may be of consequence, not only to all
this Province, but to nations of Christians yet unborn."
So much did he think might depend on the settlement
of his own views respecting Christian doctrine. The
same sense of a most important destiny for himself as
a teacher of men was expressed a year or two earlier,
in his well-known reason for remaining at Oxford
rather than succeed his father iu the Epworth rectory.
" The schools of the prophets," he said, " were at
Oxford ; and was it not a more extensive benefit to
sweeten the fountain than to purify a particular
stream ? " l
1 It is not necessary to the scope of the discussion in the text, to
consider how far Wesley was justified in the view which he took of his
duty respecting the matter referred to above. Not a few have thought
that he ought to have yielded to the urgency of what were pleaded
as the claims of family affection and duty, aud have left Oxford for
Epworth. Southey appears to have been of this mind. Mr. Tyerman,
who gives a clear and full account of the whole question, evidently
feels that Wesley ought to have yielded to his father's and his family's
appeals. He speaks of this part of Wesley's history as "somewhat
painfully mysterious ; " and he thinks that he, in fact, clears it up by
producing a letter to show that Wesley did, in the end, consent to
seek, through his friend Broughton, at the hands of Mr. St. John,
then in high office, a presentation to the crown living of Epworth.
Miss Wedgwood, on the contrary, holds that Wesley " fully justifies"
his insuperable reluctance to leave Oxford ; and the Rev. J. Gordon,
in his able and well-informed papers on Wesley in the Theologian
(April and July, 1871), holds, in like manner, that Wesley was per
fectly right in his feelings upon the matter. I think that, on such
a point, Wesley alone could be the judge in his own case. It was a
question of personal conscience and conviction. "He felt that he had
a vocation to teach thinkers and teachers, to teach in the schools of

WESLEYS RITUALISM AND filYSTICISM. 99
He seems to have had a settled and governing con
viction that there was a great work to be done for the
Church and the world, for the present and yet more
for the future ; a work which God had called him to
do. He saw around him the need of such a work —
a hollow and heartless world, full of corruption,
vanity, and unrest, and a supine, undisciplined, insen
sible Church ; and he felt stirring strongly within him
the power and the call to awaken and organise the
Church, and to impress and convert the world.
Such was John Wesley, the Oxford Methodist and
the Georgian missionary. Such, on the whole, he
appears to have remained up to the time of his quit
ting Georgia. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the
intolerant High Church ritualist was all the time,
and especially toward the end of his stay in Georgia,
inwardly beginning to melt ; the light of spiritual
the prophets ; " that to him was duty. He knew what a country
parish and parish duty were ; he had served more than two years at
Wroote ; and he felt that a country cure was not his vocation. It
seems probable, from tbe evidence which Mr. Tyerman has produced,
that, at the last, Wesley did, against his own proper judgment and
.will, allow an application to be made on his behalf for presentation
to Epworth in succession to his father. Miss Wedgwood, also, has,
from other *data, arrived at the same conclusion. "It appears, how
ever," she saj's, "from an obscure sentence in a letter of Charles
Wesley's, that John did at last make an unsuccessful and reluctant
application for the living." I do not know to what letter she refers,
and Mr. Tyerman, who knows almost everything about the Wesleys,
makes no reference to any such sentence in any letter of Charles ; but
the coincidence between Mr. Tyerman's and Miss Wedgwood's conclu
sion is striking. Still this fact, if it be a fact, does not at all change
the general aspect of the affair, and it remains true, notwithstanding,
that Wesley, to use his own words, " continued in his purpose to live
and die at Oxford, till Dr. Burton pressed him to go to Georgia." It may
fairly be assumed that he neither expected nor desired the application,
to which he reluctantly consented, to be successful,

ioo THE LIVING WESLEY.
liberty, even before he quitted Georgia, was beginning
to break through the darkness which had so long
wrapped him round, and to dawn into his soul ; and
during the spiritual solitude of his voyage home he
must have learned much, and learned quickly. When
he landed at Deal he was a very different man from
what he had been two years and a half before, when
he sailed for Georgia. This is shown by the reflec
tions which at that time he wrote in his Journal. It
is evident that his intercourse in the colony with
Moravians, Salzburghers, and Presbyterians, in connec
tion with his experience of his own errors and failures,
and with the diligent and prayerful study of the
Scriptures, had profited him more, upon recollection
and reconsideration, daring the voyage, than during
the time he was in the colony, occupied in actively
enforcing his own strongly held views, and in the
routine of Church service and rubrical ceremonial.

CHAPTER II.
WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION.
THE following are the reflections to which I have
referred, as written down by Wesley immediately
after his return to England. They are so important,
that, notwithstanding their length, I must give them
entire, with the notes which Wesley appended to them
in the later editions of his Journal : —
" It is now two years and almost four months since
I left my native country, in order to teach the
Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity : but what
have I learned myself in the meantime ? Why (what
I least of all suspected) that I, who went to America
to convert others, was never myself converted to God. x
' I am not mad,' though I thus speak ; but ' I speak
the words of truth and soberness ; ' if haply some of
those who still dream may awake, and see that as I
am so are they.
" Are they read in philosophy ? So was I. In
ancient or modern tongues ? So was I also. Are
they versed in the science of divinity ? I too have
studied it many years. Can they talk fluently upon
spiritual things ? The very same could I do. Are
they plenteous in alms ? Behold, I gave all my goods'
1 " I am not sure of this."
101

102 THE LIVING WESLEY.
to feed the poor. Do they give of their labour as
well as of their substance ? I have laboured more
abundantly than they all. Are they willing to suffer
for their brethren ? I have thrown up my friends,
reputation, ease, country ; I have put my life in my
hand, wandering into strange lands ; I have given my
body to be devoured by the deep, parched up with
heat, consumed by toil and weariness, or whatsoever
God should please to bring upon me. But does all
this (be it more or less, it matters not) make me
acceptable to God ? Does all I ever did or can know,
say, give, do, or suffer, justify me in His sight ? Yea,
or the constant use of all the means of grace ? — which,
nevertheless, is meet, right, and our bounden duty.
Or that I know nothing of myself; that I am, as
touching outward moral righteousness, blameless ?
Or, to come closer yet, the having a rational conviction
of all the truths of Christianity ? Does all this give
me a claim to the holy, heavenly, Divine character of
a Christian ? By no means. If the oracles of God
are true, if we are still to abide by ' the law and the
testimony ; ' all these things, though, when ennobled
by faith in Christ,1 they are holy and just and good,
yet without it are ' dung and dross,' meet only to
be purged away by ' the fire that never shall be
quenched.' " This, then, have I learned in the ends of the earth,
that I ' am fallen short of the glory of God ; ' that
my whole heart is ' altogether corrupt and abomin
able,' and, consequently, my whole life, seeing it
cannot be that an ' evil tree ' should ' bring forth good
fruit ; ' that, ' alienated ' as I am from the life of God,
1 " I believe not."

WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 103
I am ' a child of wrath,' * an heir of hell ; that my
own works, my own sufferings, my own righteousness,
are so far from reconciling me to an offended God —
so far from making any atonement for the least of
those sins, which ' are more in number than the hairs
of my head' — that the most specious of them need
an atonement themselves, or they cannot abide His
righteous judgment ; that, ' having the sentence of
death ' in my heart, and having nothing in or of my
self to. plead, I have no hope but that of being ' justi
fied freely through the redemption that is in Jesus, —
I have no hope, but that if I seek I shall find Christ, and
' be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness,
but that which is through the faith of Christ, the
righteousness which is of God by faith ' (Phil. iii. 9).
" If it be said that I have faith (for many such
things have I heard from many miserable comforters),
I answer, So have the devils — a sort of faith ; but
still they are strangers to the covenant of promise.
So the apostles had even at Cana in Galilee, when
Jesus first ' manifested forth His glory ; ' even then
they, in a sort, ' believed on Him ; ' but they had not
then ' the faith that overcometh the world.' The faith
I want is,2 ' A sure trust and confidence in God, that,
through the merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven, and
I reconciled to the favour of God.' I want that faith
which St. Paul recommends to all the world, especially
in his Epistle to the Romans, — that faith which
enables every one that hath it to cry out, ' I live not ;
but Christ liveth in me ; and the life which I now
live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me,
1 " I had even then the faith of a servant though not that of a son."
2 "The faith of a non."

104 THE LIVING WESLEY.
and gave Himself for me.' I want that faith which
no one can have without knowing that he hath it
(though many imagine they have it who have it not),
for whosoever hath it is ' freed from sin,' the whole
' body of sin is destroyed ' in him : he is ' freed from
fear,' ' having peace with God through Christ, and
rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.' And he is
freed from doubt, ' having the love of God shed abroad
in his heart through the Holy Ghost which is given
unto him ; ' which ' Spirit itself beareth witness with
his spirit that he is a child of God.' "
Here was evidently a spirit prepared of the Lord
to receive the glad tidings of " salvation by faith," in
the simplest and most evangelical form. Wesley was
already on the very verge of the truth in its freedom
and fulness. He was " convinced of sin ; " was truly
awakened and penitent, and was feeling after, was
yearning for, the true " righteousness of Christ." It
was natural that his humbled and chastened spirit, in
the depth of its penitential awakening, should " write
bitter things " against itself. In after years, writing
in the fulness of his wide and mature Christian ex
perience, Wesley revised the language which he had
written in his sore trouble of spirit. To the passage
which declares that he had never been " converted to
God," he appended as a note the words, " I am not sure of
this." Evidently the question here is as to the mean
ing of the word " converted." In one sense Wesley
was truly and deeply " converted ; " in another sense
he was not yet " converted," not having as yet been
made a partaker of the " righteousness of faith." in its
full and true evangelical sense. He also, in his later
revisions, corrected the record in his Journal at some

WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 105
other points, by stating that " he had even then the
faith of a servant, though not of a son," and that he
was not at that time " a child of wrath," although he
had not attained to that " faith toward our Lord Jesus
Christ " which implies filial confidence, and cannot but
bring with it filial love, the witness of the Spirit, and
all the fruits which belong to the new birth. A con
troversy has been raised upon this question, into which
I do not feel it needful to go. Mr. Wesley's Notes
on the New Testament, especially if the notes are
taken in connection with those sermons of his later life,
in which he discriminates between the faith and ex
perience of a " servant " of God and of a " son," are
fully sufficient to explain in what sense Mr. Wesley
may be truly said to have been, and in what sense not
to have been, " converted " at the time of his return
from Georgia in the first months of 1738. One thing
all must be agreed upon, that Wesley was a man of
very different spirit and experience in February, 1738,
from what he had been four years before. He was
then sincere and in earnest, but oscillating between an
unevangelical mysticism and an equally unevangelical
ritualistic legalism ; he was " beating the air," and
" going about to establish his own righteousness." Of
the true doctrine of grace he seems to have had little
perception or feeling, any more than of the true
doctrine of faith — the one, indeed, must ever imply
the other — for salvation is " of grace, through faith ; "
nor does he appear to have been the subject of a true
"evangelical repentance." Now, on the contrary,
Wesley was evidently a true and lowly penitent, whom
the Spirit of God had emptied of his own self-
righteousness, that he might be prepared for the

106 THE LIVING WESLEY.
reception of Christ's righteousness — " the righteousness
which is of God through faith."
In one thing, however, Wesley was not changed on
his return. He still believed as firmly as ever in his
" vocation." He landed at Deal at half -past four
in the morning. That same morning, at a very
early hour, before starting on his way to London,
he read and expounded at the inn, and he did
the like after arriving at Faversham in the evening..
His humbling experience in Georgia had not in the
least disheartened him, or abated his courage in this
respect. Since he left England he had seemed to fail
in everything ; his influence as a clergyman had
declined almost to nothing in Georgia ; he had become
embroiled in law, partly, at least, through his own
unwisdom, if partly through his fidelity ; his reputa
tion as a man of counsel and of action could not but
have suffered ; many slanders respecting him were
afloat; his heart, for which it seemed as if no haven
of conjugal affection was to be found, had been cruelly
wounded. Such was the issue of a voyage and mission,
which he had undertaken in the fond hope that in a
new world he might, in God's hands, be and do some
thing better and something more in his own time and
for generations to come, than he had ever been, had
ever done, or could have hoped to be or do, even in
Oxford, where were " the schools of the prophets," if
he had spent his best days there.
It could not but frequently recur to Wesley, in his
meditations on the history of the two hapless-seeming
years he had spent in America, that there must some
where be a vital defect, a fatal flaw either in his
character or in his doctrine or in his methods. His

WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 107
enterprise as a missionary pioneer had broken down
in a most humiliating way.
It is true, indeed — as Mr. Tyerman happily quotes
Whitefield's " Journal," written but a few months
later, to show^that, after all, Wesley had left not a
little good behind him in Georgia ; that among the
best people of the colony " his name " was " very
precious ; " and that he had laid a valuable foundation
for Whitefield to build upon. But to Wesley's mind,
on his voyage home, his failures would be present,
while the measure of his success would be as yet
unknown. Nor, after all, was that measure of success,
which we cannot but place in contrast with the results
accomplished in Georgia by Whitefield's ministry,
sufficient to do more than qualify, to a limited extent,
the picture of failure, on the whole, which has passed
under our view.
His Journal reveals to us, in part, the working of
his mind during the voyage. He exerted himself to
the utmost for the good of the seamen ; but this could
only yield him partial and temporary relief. During
the former part of the voyage he was " continually
weighed down with fearfulness and heaviness." He
writes, in the fulness of his heart, among many other
words of lamentation, that he had thus far " evidently
built without a foundation." During the last fort
night he had some comfort ; but yet he writes, five
days before the voyage came to an end, " I went to
America to convert the Indians ; but 0 ! who shall
convert me ? Who, what is he that will deliver me
from this evil heart of unbelief? I have a fair
summer religion. I can talk well ; nay, and believe
myself, while no danger is near ; but let death look

108 THE LIVING WESLEY.
me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. Nor can
I say, ' To die is gain ! '
" ' I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ! ' "
Such was the working of Wesley's mind during his
voyage home from Georgia — a period which we may
look upon as for him a critical season of searching,
gracious, humbling experience ; a seed-time overcast
with heavy clouds, but rich in promise ; a seed-time
of weeping, which was to be followed by a life-long
harvest of spiritual fruitfulness.
Wesley, during the voyage, deliberately reviewed
his whole experience, and the phases of thought and
feeling through which he had been passing during the
twelve years preceding. Of this review I have already
availed myself, especially in the Second Part of this
volume, in delineating the formation of his opinions
and the growth of his character. We have seen how
near, before he landed at Deal, Wesley had come to
the simplicity and truth of Gospel teaching. This
" scribe " certainly was " not far from the kingdom of
God." The Providence which had brought him thus
far on his way — which had brought " the blind by a
way that he knew not, even by paths which he had
not known " — had in readiness for him at this very
point the human guide who was to lead him into the
fulness of evangelical faith and experience. "Dark
ness " was now to be made " light before him," and
" crooked things straight." What Philip was to the
Ethiopian eunuch, what Peter was to Cornelius,
Bohler was to become to Wesley.
At the very moment when Wesley landed at Deal,

WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 109
his teacher was on his way to England from Germany.
He was a Moravian minister ; and he came to England
that he might go forward to the very colonies which
Wesley had just left. Within a week after Wesley's
landing at Deal, he and Bohler met in London.
Bohler, in a letter to Zinzendorf, gives a description
of Wesley as he found him. He describes him as " a
good-natured man,"1 who " knew he did not properly
believe on the Saviour, and was willing to be taught."
He adds, " Our mode of believing in the Saviour is
so easy to Englishmen, that they cannot reconcile
themselves to it ; if it were a little more artful
[artificial ? ], they would much sooner find their way
into it. They justify themselves ; and therefore they
always take it for granted that they believe already,
and try to prove their faith by their works, and thus
so plague and torment themselves that they are at
heart very miserable." 2
Wesley always regarded his intercourse with Bohler
as the cardinal point in his spiritual history. Having
landed at Deal on February 1st, he fell in, six clays
later (February 7th), in London, with Bohler, just
landed from Germany, and procured him lodgings.
He sets a special note against this day in his Journal,
as " a day much to be remembered ; " and he mentions
that, from this time, he did not willingly lose any
opportunity, during his stay in London, of conversing
with Bohler and his companions. He accompanied
his Moravian teacher to Oxford on the 17th, and took
him with him to visit Mr. Gambold (who had been
1 The English translation here is, no doubt, inadequate. The mean
ing probably is — a man of excellent disposition and principles.
2 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. i. pp. 181, 182.

no THE LIVING WESLEY.
led astray by " mystic delusion "), at Stanton-Harcourt,
on the 18 th. It was during this visit to Oxford that
Bohler insisted so solemnly to Wesley that " his
philosophy " needed to " be purged away." On the
4th of March, returning to Oxford to visit his brother
Charles, who had been ill of pleurisy there, he found
Bohler with his brother, and writes that by him on
the next day (Sunday) he was " clearly convinced of
unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we
are saved." ' Meantime Bohler exhorted him to
preach the true faith and way of faith, though he
might not himself as yet have attained thereto. His
intercourse with his Moravian guide at Oxford lasted
till the 10th, when Bohler returned to London. On
the 23rd, being in Oxford, he met Bohler there again.
I give the whole of the entry, in his Journal under this
date. " I met Peter Bohler again, who now amazed me
more and more by the account he gave of the fruits
of living faith — the holiness and happiness which he
affirmed to attend it, The next morning I began the
Greek Testament again, resolving to abide by ' the law
and the testimony,' and being confident that God would
hereby show me whether this doctrine was of God."
Already the " new wine " of the kingdom was work
ing mightily within his breast. He had been the
slave of forms ; he had been greatly surprised, if not
shocked, when he heard the Presbyterian minister in
the American colony offer an extemporary prayer.
But now we find him writing, under date of April
1st, "Being at Mr. Fox's society, my heart was so
full that I could not confine myself to the forms of
1 "With the full Christian salvation," is Wesley's note at this place
in the revised edition of his early Journals.

WESLE Y'S E VANGELICAL CONVERSION. 1 1 1
prayer which we were accustomed to use there.
Neither do I purpose to be confined to them any
more, but to pray indifferently, with a form or with
out, as I may find suitable to particular occasions."
The new wine was threatening to burst the " old
bottles ; " presently " new bottles " were to be pro
vided, so that the wine should not be lost. Mean
time, in the record last quoted, we recognise the main
principle of Wesley's ecclesiastical course. His singu
larity, and independence of decision and action, had
nothing factious about them ; they resulted from the
simple, disinterested, paramount principle of using
whatever means or methods of action clearly promised
to do the most good. He enters into no abstract
controversy as to praying with or without forms ;
probably his experiences among the Moravians, yet
more than his intercourse with the Presbyterian
minister and congregation, had served to emancipate
him from the bondage of custom and servile ecclesi
asticism as to this particular, while an acute Oxford
Churchman was not likely to adopt a sweeping
condemnation of forms of prayer, which would not
only have prohibited the use of the Liturgy of his own
Church, ever by him so deeply loved, but even of the
Lord's prayer. But he finds free prayer, under certain
conditions of feeling, to be more congenial, more
adequate, and more affecting, than any form could
be ; therefore he determines henceforth to hold him
self at liberty, according to the occasion, to pray with
or without forms. As to any reproach of singularity
or enthusiasm, while he by no means courted such
reproach, the time had long gone by when it could
have any terror for him. Here, then, we have a

112 THE LIVING WESLEY.
typical instance, thus early in his course, of the spirit
and principles which governed Wesley's proceedings
through life. The ritualist was already greatly
changed ; a new inspiration was welling up within
him. His bonds had been for some time melting
away ; there was soon to be an end of them. Already
the manacles had dissolved from the hands of devo
tion ; soon the fetters would be broken which had
bound his feet from running in the evangelical way.
Already he had been impelled to use the blessed
privilege of free utterance in prayer, and to avail him
self of the large liberty to pray with " all prayer and
supplication in the Spirit ; " the day was very near,
when, by his preaching also, the Word of the Lord
was to " have free course and be glorified."
On the 22nd of April, Wesley met Bohler again in
London. As to the nature of faith, the Moravian had
prevailed, and also as to the fruits of faith ; but Wesley
still doubted whether there was scriptural authority
for the penitent, prayerful, waiting soul to expect to
receive the power and gift of faith immediately through
the operation of the Holy Ghost ; whether it could
really be imparted in a moment. Here, again, he
records in his Journal that he was silenced by an
appeal to the Scripture, where, to his " utter astonish
ment," he " found scarce any instances there of other
than instantaneous conversions, scarce any so slow as
that of St. Paul, who was three days in the pangs of
the new birth." Wesley, however, was not by any
means easily beaten out of his English and Church of
England 1 habits of thought in respect to the faith of a
1 Church of England, as that Church actually was and had long
been, but not as the Homilies teach.

WESLE YS E VANGELICAL CONVERSION. 1 1 3
Christian. He urged that, whatever might have been
the case in apostolic times, there was no proof that
God worked in the same manner now. From this last
hold of doubt and incredulity he was dislodged the
next day (Sunday, 23rd) by the evidence of "several
living witnesses." " Here," he says, " ended my dis
puting. I could now only cry out, ' Lord, help Thou
mine unbelief.' "
It is evident that up to this time, far as he had
been brought on his way toward the great Gospel
truth, Wesley had yet never been able to free himself
from the feeling that Christian faith was largely an
intellectual exercise ; and that, where it ceased to be
intellectual, it became a humanly moral act ; that it
was " of the operation," not " of God " (Col. ii. 1 2), but
of a man's own understanding and responsible moral
inclination or will. The great truth that the power
descends from God — that it must be waited and looked
for in the way of prayer and penitent seeking and
service — that it is a spiritual, supernatural act and
habit of soul, at once the fruit and seed of a Divine
life-stirring, uniting in itself the characters of penitent
humility, of self-renunciation, of simple trust, of absolute
obedience, both of understanding and will, indissolubly
joined with loving rapture and self-consecration — that
it is, to use Wesley's own words, " the loving, obedient
sight of a present and reconciled God " — this was a
truth which Wesley had not conceived of, and found
it very hard to accept. So true is it, that "the
natural man, receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God ; for they are foolishness unto him : neither can
he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
Wesley, indeed, was not, at the time when he first met
11

114 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Bohler, a merely " natural man," any more than the
disciples were before our Lord's resurrection. But he
was not yet, in the full and proper sense, " a spiritual
man." He was a servant of God ; but still he was
" carnal." He was not yet fully born into the kingdom
of heaven, with its spiritual light and blessedness,
although he was " brought to the birth," and was very
near the hour of his enlargement into the "glorious
liberty of the children of God."
Wesley, in his own epitome of what passed between
Bohler and himself, thus sums up the final result,
so far as it respected the change which had been
wrought in his doctrinal views : " I was now thoroughly
convinced ; and, by the grace of God, I resolved to
seek it (that is, faith) unto the end : 1. By absolutely
renouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon
my own works or righteousness, on which L had really
grounded my hope of salvation, though L knew it not,
from my youth up. 2. By adding to the constant use
of all the other means of grace, continual prayer for
this very thing — justifying, saving faith ; a full reliance
on the blood of Christ shed for me ; a trust in Him as
my Christ, as my sole justification, sanctification, and
redemption." x
Wesley continued to consort with Bohler. It was
on the 23rd of April (Sunday) that he was finally
convinced. He was in continual intercourse with his
teacher for several days following, until the 26 th,
when Bohler accompanied him some miles on his
way out of town. His brother's illness brought him
back to London on the 1st of May, where he found
his friend and guide again. On the 4th Bohler left
1 Wesley's Works, vol. i. p. 102.

WESLEY S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION 115
London to sail to Carolina. Wesley's note in his
Journal on Bohler's departure corresponds with the
emphatic " Memorandum " inscribed over the date of
their first meeting, and reveals also how deep and
strong in Wesley's soul was that conviction of his
own momentous work and vocation to which I have
referred : " 0 what a work hath God begun since his
coming into England ! such a one as shall never come
to an end till heaven and earth shall pass away ! "
Meantime Wesley had not yet obtained the treasure
he had sought for so long and so diligently, though
for a long time in wrong directions. He had not
himself, as yet, been able to " believe unto salvation."
His brother Charles had not yielded to Bohler's argu
ments until a fortnight after himself, and indeed had
for a short time angrily opposed John on this point ;
nevertheless, partly, as it would seem, through the
ministry of sickness, he was made a partaker of "joy
and peace through believing " earlier than John.
While John was entering this Bethesda, Charles
stepped in before him. This was on Sunday, the 21st
of May. It was not until Wednesday, the 24th, that
John Wesley, according to the beautiful and familiar
account which we have in his own words, " felt his
heart strangely warmed, felt that he did trust in
Christ, Christ alone, for salvation," and had " an assur
ance given him that Christ had taken away his sin,
and saved him from the law of sin and death." This
day, May the 24th, 1738, is a great landmark in the
history of the Wesleyan movement.
Until Wesley learned the doctrine of " salvation by
grace, through faith, not of ourselves," but as the " gift
of God," he had been a ritualist ; and it had been his

116 THE LIVING WESLEY.
doctrine that salvation was secured by moral and
ritual conformity to what the Church requires. From
this time forth he taught that salvation was not by
works or rites, but by that faith of the new creation,
that faith in " Christ and Him crucified," which unites
the soul with Christ through His Spirit, which intro
duces the soul into " newness of life," so that the
believer is made a child and heir of God and a "joint
heir with Christ." Faith he was to teach hereafter as
the principle and inlet of the Divine and Christian
life in the human soul. But this change entirely
revolutionised the character and tenor of his ministry.
To constrain, by the authority of Christ and His
Church — rby virtue, very mainly, of Church discipline
and law — men and women to obey the requirements
of the Church, had been his vocation heretofore ; he
had been an ecclesiastical magistrate, a disciplinary
officer, a moral and ritual watchman, in the service of
the Church ; his work had been to carry out discipline
and instruction in detail. But now he was to be
something very different. It was to be his business
to preach salvation through Christ Jesus to all men.
His first and chief work now was to point the way to
Him. The rest would follow for those who repaired
to Him. He was not to be a priest, observing, enfor
cing, carrying out a ritual ; but, like the Baptist, whose
priestly office was merged in his great prophetic
function, he was to be a herald and a witness whose
one vocation was to direct sinners away from himself,
from the Church, from all else whatsoever, to Christ,
as " the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of
the world." Faith henceforth was to be his doctrine ;
he was to teach that men are saved by faith. But

WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 117
" faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of
God." From this hour, accordingly, this ritualistic
priest and ecclesiastical martinet was to be transformed
into a flaming preacher of the great evangelical salva
tion and life, in all its branches and its rich and varied
experiences. Hence arose Wesleyan Methodism and
-all the Methodist Churches.
In his famous correspondence with Law, which took
place during the period of his intercourse with Bohler,
but before he had attained to peace through believing,
Wesley has expressed very distinctly what he at the
time regarded as being the essential defect of his faith
up to the period of his receiving Bohler's instructions.
His faith up to this time he describes as a " speculative
notional shadow, which lives in the head, not in the
heart." He has also described very pointedly the sort of
doctrine which, in contrast to his own conceptions here
tofore, Bohler had insisted upon. " This faith, indeed,"
that " holy man " had told him, " is the free gift of
God. But seek, and thou shalt find. Strip thyself
naked of thine own works, and fly to Him. ' For
whosoever cometh to Him, He will in no wise cast
out.' " And his complaint against his former instructor
is : " Why did I scarce ever hear you name the name
of Christ ? Never, so as to ground anything upon
faith in His blood." l

1 Miss Wedgwood's observations on this correspondence are acute,
and contain a measure of truth, although here as elsewhere she has
misconceived Wesley's character as regards the point of insight aud
sympathy with particular minds. Wesley wrote as he did to Law
because he believed himself to be bound both to God and man, and
especially to Mr Law, to do his utmost to point out to him, in full
light, what he regarded as his most mischievous doctrinal defect and
error. Wesley's manner of doing this was a remnant of his old hier-

118 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Miss Wedgwood has firmly grasped the significance
of Wesley's experience at this critical period of his
history. She reads aright the meaning, at least in
general, of his experience during the voyage home,
and she sees very distinctly the nature of the revolu
tion in his views and aims which was effected by his
conversion. "Wesley's homeward voyage in 1738,"
she says, " marks the conclusion of his High Church
period. He abated nothing of his attachment to the
ordinances of the Church either then or to the last
days of his life, and he did not so soon reach that
degree of independence of her hierarchy and some of
her rules which marks his furthest point of divergence ;
but his Journals during this voyage chronicle for us
that deep dissatisfaction which is felt whenever an
earnest nature wakes up to the incompleteness of a
traditional religion ; and his after life, compared with
his two years in Georgia, makes it evident that he
passed at this time into a new spiritual region. His
archical character and temper ; a derivative from the views which he
had held so long, and the influences under which his character for so
many years had been moulded. It was not to be expected that
the conscientious dogmatism which such opinions as he had held
cannot fail always to produce, should all at once pass away, even
when he had begun to look away from his Church to his Saviour. If
Wesley had not embraced the. doctrines of grace, and salvation by
faith, he must have retained, as his official temper, such arrogant
austerity as he had already shown in Georgia, notwithstanding the
brightness and candour of his natural disposition. Mr. Tyerman
as usual, takes the severest view of Wesley's share in this correspond
ence. Not content with condemning Wesley as petulant and harsh,
he speaks of his letter to Law as an " intolerable outrage. " Canon
Overton, on the contrary, although himself the admiring biographer
of Law, " utterly disagrees " with any such opinion, and vindicates
Wesley's temper and purpose in what he wrote to his old teacher.
—Overton's William Law, pp. 82-87.

WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 119
Journals are marked by a depression which we never
meet with again."1 Having referred, a few pages
further on, to the religious societies of which Dr.
Woodward has left us an account, and which had
preceded Methodism, Miss Wedgwood makes the fol
lowing discriminating and acute observations : — " The
religious societies of the seventeenth century were in
organisation a feebler and more liberal Methodism.2
It was, however, only in organisation that the two
things were alike. The spirit of the older societies
was not only unlike Methodism, but it was the very
spirit from which Methodism was a reaction. They
were distinctively Church bodies, and they belonged
characteristically to the Church at that time ; they
embodied the principles of that party whose watch
words were virtue and vice, and who were not afraid
to speak of the support of a good conscience, and of
the everlasting rewards which ' were worthy of all the
care and toil which were to be spent in the pursuit of
them ' (Dr. Woodward). The reader will at once
appreciate the chasm which phrases like these indicate
between the speakers and the school of Wesley. . . .
Adherence to the Church was no longer the first
condition of membership in any society with which
he was in sympathy. The birthday of a Christian
ivas already shifted from his baptism to his conversion,
and in that change the partition line of two great
systems is crossed." 3
1 John Wesley, p. 140.
2 By "more liberal" Miss Wedgwood means " less strict." But the
observations which follow show that being Church societies, these less
strict societies were ecclesiastically more exclusive, and therefore less
"liberal." 3 John Wesley, p. 157.

120 THE LIVING WESLEY.
The last sentence quoted admirably expresses the
master-truth which explains the whole sequel of
Wesley's life — which furnishes the key to the whole
development of Wesleyan Methodism. Mr. Tyerman
has given a full and excellent account of Wesley's
religious experience during the whole of this critical
period in his history ; with the minuteness character
istic of a student and preacher of evangelical theology,
he has exhibited on the surface of his pages those
instructive fluctuations in Wesley's own views and
experience, during the early months after his con
version, which Wesley himself sets forth fully in his
Journals, and which show that Wesley's views respect
ing the nature of the Spirit's witness, and the character
and extent of regeneration, were, as was to be expected,
not fully defined or finally settled until some time
after his conversion ; and in particular, as Mr. Tyer
man intimates, that they had been not a little disturbed
and perplexed by what he had heard among the
Moravians during his visit to them in Germany,
almost immediately after he had " found peace." But
Mr. Tyerman fails to show the critical nature of the
change which Wesley underwent through the teaching
and instrumentality of Bohler. It is possible to
maintain that, in a certain and a true sense of the
word, Wesley had been " converted " — that is,
thoroughly and graciously awakened into sincere
repentance — before he knew Bohler ; but, neverthe
less, what marked and made the absolute revolution
in his mind and character, with all his prospects and
motives, was his full acceptance of that doctrine of
evangelical faith which the Moravian was the means
of making known to his spiritual apprehension, and his

WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 121
embrace of the Saviour by that faith, as his own Saviour
in ever-present virtue and plenitude. By making the
most of Wesley's antecedent preparation of heart, and
by laying too much stress on those fluctuations of
spirit and of view, and those self-depreciatory state
ments respecting his own experience soon after his
conversion, the like of which are so commonly found
in the experience of humble and conscientious young
converts, who, as yet, are necessarily wanting in
experience of spiritual difficulties, perplexities, and
temptations, and whose natural but unwarranted
expectations of settled joy and tranquillity have been
painfully disappointed, it is possible to diminish the
proportions and to obscure the relations of the great
cardinal change in Wesley's spiritual character on
which we have been dwelling. Miss Wedgwood,
however, clearly sees the importance and the critical
nature of that change, and has admirably stated it m
the passage we haA-e quoted. Wesley had embraced
the cardinal doctrine of " salvation by faith." Now,
to quote again the classical text which was quoted a
short while ago, " faith cometh by hearing, and hearing
by the word of God." In other words, the preaching
of the truth of God, and not the administration of the
sacraments as such, becomes to the evangelical believer
the great means of spreading salvation — of conveying
life to those who are in a state of spiritual death.
Christians are to be " sanctified '' by " the truth," even
by the " word of God ; " to be " born again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of
God, which liveth and abideth for ever." It is not
the sacraments, as rites duly administered, which, of
themselves, become spirit and life to the recipient,

122 THE LIVING WESLEY.
but it is the truth in the sacraments spiritually
apprehended and embraced, which fills them with
blessing to the believer. The " expulsive power,"
accordingly, of the new principle which Wesley had
embraced, could not but before long cast out the
sacramental Ritualism which had held him in bondage.
He did not, of course, cast all his grave-clothes off
at once ; but rapidly, though gradually, he did cast
them away. Meantime he preached his new doctrine
with new and startling power ; and so entered upon
that grand course of preaching which was to lay the
foundation for all his organisation — for his whole
fellowship and " Connexion." Wesley the Ritualist
was transformed into Wesley the Preacher. Wesleyan
Methodism is derived, not from Wesley the Ritualist,
but from Wesley the Preacher.
Let me here be permitted to quote some sentences
which have already been published. " With Wesley's
Eitualism his High Churehmanship could not but also
wither away. A number of old and long customary
prejudices and predilections — habits of thought and
feeling which had become a second nature — still clave
to him for awhile ; but these dropped off one by one,
until scarcely a vestige of them was left. All the
irregularities of the Methodist leader, — his renuncia
tion of Church bigotry and exclusiveness ; his partial,
but progressive and fundamental, separation from the
Church which imposed shackles on his evangelical
activities, and frowned upon his converts, and the
ultimate separation, in due sequence, of the Church he
had founded from the Church in which he was
nurtured, — all these results were involved in this
change. Newman renounced justification by faith,

WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 123
and clung to apostolic succession, therefore he went
to Eome; Wesley embraced justification by faith,
and renounced apostolic succession, therefore his
people are a separate people from the Church of
England." *
1 See London Quarterly Review (July, 1868, pp. 293-4).

CHAPTEE III.
WESLEY THE PREACHER.
WESLEY'S special character, and the secret of his
extraordinary power as a preacher, have not
been generally understood, even by writers of his own
communion. If Southey went astray when he sought
to explain the mystery by reference merely to human
qualities and accidents, to place, time, and circum
stance, superadded to personal endowments of mind
and manner and bodily appearance, it would be
equally an error, although in an opposite direction, if
we were merely to resolve the whole of his character
istic power, in all its varieties of play and application,
into the special influence of the Spirit of God. For
other men, no less devoted in spirit, and equally
orthodox in doctrine, have preached to men, high or
low, of the like condition and character with those
whom Wesley addressed, but no one else has ever
produced habitually, and as a rule, such effects as
ordinarily attended John Wesley's earlier ministry, and
often attended his ministry in middle and later life.
There was a specific quality about his preaching, and
there was a specific character belonging to the effects
which his preaching produced — the question is to dis
cover and define the specific quality of his preaching,

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 125
which stands in relation with the specific effects
produced. His was not the character of mind, nor had his been
the training and experience, which might have been
expected to make a popular religious orator, or an
awakening preacher of electrical and overwhelming
power over all classes, but especially over the working
masses of the people. For nearly twenty years he had
led the life of a student. He was an accomplished
scholar, a logician without a rival among his coevals
at the University, a man of nice and sensitive taste.
He belonged to an unbroken ancestral succession of
English gentlemen, of whom at least his three immedi
ate predecessors were scholars and divines. On the
mother's side, as well as on the father's, the like
would seem to have been true. No fibre of hereditary
connection between himself and the artisan classes, or
the peasantry of England, can be traced in all his long
pedigree ; and yet this was the man whose words were
to take hold of colliers and weavers, of tinners and
stone-masons, and hard-handed workers generally, as
no man's words had done before for centuries, if ever,
or have done since. He was as true and thorough an
English gentleman as Wycliffe, the hero and reformer
of his own University, whose breeding and lineage
seem to be reflected in the kingliness of his features
and his person ; but, unlike Wycliffe, who was a doctor
among scholars, and a preacher and witness before
nobles and statesmen, but not — perhaps for want of
opportunity — a preacher to the people, Wesley was as
much a preacher to the multitude, whether of town or
country, as Hugh Latimer himself, the man of yeoman
birth, although, herein unlike Latimer, he never, in his

126 THE LIVING WESLEY.
plain words to the plainest, the poorest, the least in
structed, employed any other language than would
have been suitable for a gentleman to use in addressing
educated men. His temperament and his religious
course and training were not, any more than his in
tellectual tastes and college life, such as might have
been expected to fit him for the work of pioneer
preaching, of what would now be called mission-
preaching, among the masses. He was remarkable for
the calmness of his temperament. He had been
addicted to no course or habit of excitement. From
his youth he had led a regular religious life. He loved
Church forms and usages, not only before his " con
version" in 1738, but all his life afterwards. He
retained the tastes of a cultivated High Churchman
all his life, even although he had in early middle life re
nounced High Church superstitions, whether theolo
gical or ecclesiastical. His most congenial element to
the last would"* have been found rather in the cathedral
solemnity than in the zest of open-air addresses to an
uninstructed multitude. And yet this man became
the greatest open-air preacher England has ever seen,
while for taming a mob, or overawing desperadoes, by
serene steadfastness, and calm remonstrance and per
suasion, history has never known his equal.
Doubtless Wesley, as a speaker, had many and great
natural advantages. His person, although of small
stature, was symmetrical, elegant, and manly. His
carriage and address were frank and graceful. His
features were handsome and expressive, combining
dignity and sweetness, sensibility and firmness, and not
without a certain air of mild and unconscious authority.
The pure transparency of his fair complexion and the

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 127
vivid power of his eye — his eye was of many moods,
and must, I think, have been of a bright hazel colour
— added to the charm and impressiveness of his
personal aspect. Even before he had attained to the
life and peace of evangelical faith, we are told of him
by his college friend Gambold, that he had " often seen
him come out of his closet with a serenity that was
next to shining." The same witness describes him as
a man of the " most transparent sincerity," at the
same time that he also describes him as having " some
thing of authority in his countenance," though " he
never assumed any to himself above his companions."
Dr. Kennicott, the famous Hebrew critic, heard Wesley
preach his last sermon before the University of Oxford,
his subject being " Scriptural Christianity," — a sermon
of remarkable fidelity and force, a lucid and en
gaging exposition of evangelical doctrine, followed by
a most close and searching application, at once severe
— yet with a mitigated severity — and pathetic, with
a spiritual yearning and earnestness that are all the
more powerful for the dignity and self-restraint of the
preacher. This was in the year 1744, six years after
Wesley's conversion, and when he was in his very
prime, being little more than forty years of age. '' His
black hair," says Dr. Kennicott, by no means a too
partial witness, "quite smooth, and parted very
exactly, added to a peculiar composure iu his counte
nance, showed him to be an uncommon man." He
speaks of his " agreeable emphasis " in reading. He
refers with approval to " many just invectives " in his
sermon, but with disapproval to the "zeal and un
bounded satire with which he fired his address when
he came to what he called his plain, practical con-

128 THE LIVING WESLEY.
elusion." If " his censures " had only been "moderated,
and certain portions omitted," Kennicott says, " I think
his discourse, as to style and delivery, would have
been uncommonly pleasing to others as well as myself."
He adds, " He is allowed to be a man of great parts."
Such a man was naturally qualified to be an able
and interesting expositor, or a powerful advocate, or,
with adequate inspiration and afflatus, a great preacher
to the conscience. Beforehand, however, it would
hardly have been anticipated that he would become a
mighty field-preacher, a wielder of vast multitudes, who
moved under his word as the trees of the forest under
a great wind. Unlike Whitefield, he had no pictorial
power or dramatic inspiration, nor had he, like the
same great preacher, a special power of effusive pathos.
Though tenderness and controlled, suggestive pathos
were eminently his, he had not the near and ready
"gift of tears " which belonged to Whitefield, and also
to Charles Wesley, who seems, in some respects, when
at his best, to have occupied, as a preacher, a position
intermediate between his brother and Whitefield. He
excelled in statement and exposition, in argument
which had the closest coherency and force of logic
without any of its forms, without a trace of pedantry
or of the manner of the schools, in analysis of reaons
and motives, in home-thrusts of application, in plain
and earnest appeal ; as a speaker he was, in brief,
lucid, engaging, expressive, impressive. But his use of
rhetoric was sparing, of fancy or imagination there is
scarcely a trace in all his writings ; while what would to
day be described as sensational preaching would have
been abhorrent to his taste. The power by which
he gripped and held and overwhelmed the souls of

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 129
his hearers was partly logical, partly spiritual. Its
inspiration was merely faith and love — the Christian
faith, the Christian love. He could not have been
a descriptive lecturer or a dramatic orator. His
intellectual gifts, apart from his spiritual inspiration
and fervour, would not have made him, either in
the last century or at the present day, a speaker
to fascinate a popular audience, or to command and
enthrall a mob. Whitefield's pictorial and dramatic
power drew vast and delighted crowds, not only of
the lower, but of the upper classes, who resorted to
him again and again, apart from all spiritual sensibility
on their part, because, like the prophet, he was a
pleasant player on an unrivalled instrument of popular
eloquence. Multitudes resorted to Wesley — even
greater multitudes than crowded round Whitefield — ¦
because he " reasoned of sin and righteousness and
judgment ; " some for the sake of opposition, hating
the preacher and his doctrine ; some because of the
mere fame of his spiritual power, and of the wonderful
effects produced ; some because, though they feared the
preacher and his doctrine, they were yet so far amen
able to spiritual influence, had so much of spiritual
sensibility, that they felt mysteriously drawn and
fascinated by the prophet-like force and gifts of the
man ; some because they were deeply awakened, or at
least beginning to feel after God, and recognised in
Wesley a man of spiritual faculty and insight to deal
with cases such as theirs. Whatever their motives,
those who came were obliged to feel that they were
in the presence of one who totally forgot himself in
his theme. His presentation of the truth was so
direct, that they were brought face to face, not with
1

i3o THE LIVING WESLEY.
him, but with his Divine Master and the Divine
authority ; and he was so inspired with the spirit of
Divine love, as well as the sense of the Divine
holiness, that the awakened hearers thought not of him,
but rather of Christ the Saviour as reasoning with them
and entreating them to be reconciled unto God. Doubt
less here we touch the real secret of that overwhelming
power which so commonly attended Wesley's preaching,
which made the huge gatherings of people that sur
rounded him sometimes assume the appearance of a
routed army, with men and women on all sides round,
first stricken to the earth, and then crying for
mercy. His was pre-eminently a convincing and awakening
ministry. His appeal was not to the fancy or the
imagination, still less did he enforce his applications
by reference to material terrors or painted horrors —
although he never attempted to conceal or suppress
God's revelation of wrath against all unrighteousness —
nor was his appeal to sentimental sensibilities or to
considerations of what may be described as moral
taste ; although his beautiful and noble sermon on the
" Original of the Law " shows that, on fitting occasion,
he could speak as a Christian Plato might have spoken
in regard to the beauty of holiness ; — his appeal was
chiefly and essentially to the conscience. But all was
done with a manly tenderness which disarmed pre
judice and pride, and broke down stubborn opposition.
" The love of Christ constraineth us " was his experi
ence and his inspiration.
The story of brave John Nelson, of whose noble
character and excellent plain sense Southey in his
Life of Wesley cannot speak too highly, may serve

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 131
to illustrate what I have now been trying to express.
" In the spring," says Nelson, " Mr. Whitefield came
into Moorfields, and I went to hear him. He was to
me as a man who could play well on an instrument,
for his preaching was pleasant to me, and I loved the
man ; so that if any one offered to disturb him, I was
ready to fight for him. But I did not understand him,
though I might hear him twenty times for aught I
know," i.c, he may have heard him twenty times.
Shortly afterwards he writes as follows : " In all this
time I did not open my mind to any person, either by
word or letter ; but I was like a wandering bird cast
out of the nest, till Mr. John Wesley came to preach
his first sermon in Moorfields." [This was in 1739.]
" 0, that was a blessed morning to my soul ! As soon
as he got upon the stand, he stroked back his hair
and turned his face towards where I stood, and, I
thought, fixed his eyes upon me. His countenance
fixed such an awful dread upon me, before I heard
him speak, that it made my heart beat like the pen
dulum1 of a clock ; and when he did speak, I thought
his whole discourse was aimed at me. When he had
done, I said, 'This man can tell the secrets of my
heart ; he hath not left me there ; for he hath showed
the remedy, even the blood of Jesus.' Then was my
soul filled with consolation, through hope that God
for Christ's sake would save me." The work, how
ever, in Nelson's soul was not yet accomplished.
Faith was not yet full-born in him, and he fell back
into doubt, almost into despair, and into outward sin.
He heard Wesley a second time, many weeks having
intervened, and thus describes the second sermon:
"When he began to speak, his words made me tremble.

1 32 THE LIVING WESLEY.
I thought he spoke to no one but me, and I durst not
look up ; for I imagined all the people were looking at
me. . . . But before Mr. Wesley concluded his sermon
he cried out, ' Let the wicked forsake his way, and the
unrighteous man his thoughts ; and let him return
unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him ;
and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.' I
said, ' If that be true, I will turn to God to-day.' "
From this time the reformed penitent continued, as
far as possible, to attend Wesley's preaching. A little
afterwards, we read in his Journal that on a certain
" evening after preaching, under Mr. Wesley's sermon,
he could do nothing but weep, and love, and praise
God for sending His servant into the fields to show
him the way of salvation."
Further illustration of the nature and source of
Wesley's power is afforded by some passages in his
Journal, relating to a period somewhat later than the
date of Nelson's conversion. In 1742, Wesley for the
first time visited Newcastle-on-Tyne. He walked into
the town, and never, as he tells us, had witnessed so
much drunkenness, cursing and swearing, from the
mouths of little children as well as of adults, in so
short time. Most characteristically — with a touching
and beautiful tenderness — upon this he exclaims,
" Surely this place is ripe for Him who ' came not to
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' " On the
Sunday morning he went, with a single friend, being
altogether unknown to the townspeople, and, taking
his stand in the very centre of the worst quarter of
the town, began to preach. His congregation grew till
more than 1200 people stood, around him. " As usual,"
says Dr. Abel Stevens, " when he addressed the vicious

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 133
poor, he discoursed on one of the most consolatory
texts, ' He was wounded for our transgressions ; He
was bruised for our iniquities ; the chastisement of our
peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are
healed.' " When he had done, the poor people stood
" gaping and staring " upon him with astonishment.
He told them his name, and announced that he would
preach there again in the evening. He did preach to
an immense crowd — a vaster crowd, he tells us, than
he had ever seen at Moorfields or Kennington Common ;
and so began the wonderful work of Methodism among
the colliers of Newcastle and round about, a work
which was to spread from that centre into all the
dales of Northumberland, Durham, and North York
shire, transforming the mining and yeomanry popu
lation with a power similar to that which, at the
other extremity of the kingdom, was seen in the
reformation of Cornwall, which remains to this day so
widely and so rootedly Methodist.
To be savingly converted is to receive and " obey
the truth through the Spirit." Accordingly, where
the Divine and saving truth is most clearly, purely,
and simply preached in its gospel directness and ful
ness, with the least of human colouring or admixture,
there the power of the Spirit of God may be expected
to produce the most direct and decisive effects.
Wesley's preaching conspicuously answered to these
conditions. There was nothing in his preaching
that looked like human art or device ; the language
was simpler and more transparent than that of other
speakers ; and so " the truth " shone more clearly and
fully through. There was less of what " man's wisdom
teacheth," less of what was fanciful, or elaborate, or

134 THE LIVING WESLEY.
artificial ; there was more, therefore, of the Spirit's
operation, more of "the demonstration of the Spirit and
of power." Hence the " excellency of the power " in
Wesley's preaching, a power which was felt to be " not
of man, but of God."
Such power, indeed, can only attend the preaching
of gospel truth in its sublime simplicity and purity.
It cannot be associated with mere Eitualism ; it cannot
exist in the atmosphere of Pharisaism. The soul
acknowledges and feels the grandeur and tenderness
of the doctrine of " Christ crucified ; " preaching
which knows not this Gospel doctrine is powerless for
the renewal of the soul in righteousness. When our
Saviour would awaken the spiritual consciousness of
the Pharisee " master in Israel," he spoke to him of
God's love to the world in the gift of His only-begotten
Son for the world's salvation ; when Paul preached to
the Corinthians, the ever-present and inspiring motive
which gave soul to his ministry was that the " love of
Christ constrained him." The one unchanging staple
of his doctrine was " Christ crucified, to the Jews a
stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness, but to the
saved, whether Jews or Greeks, Christ the power of
God, and the wisdom of God." But neither his
Oxford Eitualism, nor even his best and highest
thoughts as a High Church moralist, could furnish
Wesley with any such ideas or motives as these, where
with to bring home spiritual truth and the vision of
God in Christ to the souls of his hearers. Here, then,
was the grand inspiration of Wesley the evangelist.
He had learnt, by his own experience, that the Gospel
doctrine received into the soul by a living faith made
the believer a " new creature in Christ Jesus ; " and he

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 135
had felt, accordingly, that to preach this forgotten
doctrine, to bring forth into the view of the Church
and the world this long obscured and neglected
" mystery of Christ," must henceforth be the business
of his life. But still further, when he began to preach
this Gospel truth, he felt, and all that heard him felt,
that a new life and power had been infused into his
preaching. Now, for the first time, the whole man
was kindled and inspired by a Divine conviction and
force. All his faculties and affections, of body, soul,
and spirit, were united and harmonised in their highest
intensity and their most complete development,
and found expression — concentrated expression — in
his preaching. Before this period he had been an
excellent preacher within his range, and on certain
topics. But his range was limited. In regard to the
highest sphere of spiritual realities — the realities of
spiritual experience — he had no vision, no force : he was
" weak as other men." But the " Spirit of the Lord
was upon him" now, and he preached as one inspired
especially when dark and benighted thousands stood
around him, looking with blank wonder and vague
expectation on his rapt and solemn countenance.
Such a preacher, under such circumstances, could
not be a sermon-reader or the reciter of a discourse.
Full of his subject, and possessing, from natural gifts
and long culture and discipline, a perfect command of
plain and proper language — aiming, also, at nothing
else than just to say plainly what so pressed for
utterance — he and his audience stood at once in living
contact and sympathy with each other, mind with
mind, soul with soul, and not only face to face. Hence
the hold which he maintained upon them while, half-

136 THE LIVING WESLEY.
hour after half-hour, time unnoted by him or them, they
hung upon his lips. Hence, whilst, with all his solemn
intensity, he stood for the most part outwardly calm
and self-controlled, the crowds before him were stirred
and swayed by feelings that could not be restrained ;
tears, sobs, outcries, burst forth on every side. His
words, more than those of any preacher of whom there is
record, seemed to go with a direct impact, not seldom
with a sudden and startling shock, into the very core
of the awakened sinner's consciousness and heart, and
shrieks, sudden fits, cases of fainting and insensibility,
of men and women "dropping down as dead," were of
no infrequent occurrence. And yet this was not
because his preaching dealt in horrors. Eather it was
because he described, with peculiar vividness and
power, at once the holiness and the tender compassion of
God as at once the Judge and Saviour of men. Men,
convinced by the same sudden spiritual revelation of
their own grievous sin against their God and of the
loving-kindness of that God towards them, especially
as revealed in the gift and mission, the life and death
of Jesus Christ the Son of God, were overwhelmed by
the startling view of this new world of spiritual truth
and meaning. It was as if at a stroke the vision was
opened to them, of heaven above and hell beneath.
Armed with such " weapons of warfare " against the
kingdom of darkness, John Wesley, after his own
spiritual conversion through the instrumentality of
his Moravian teacher, Peter Bohler, went forth to do
his life-work as a soldier of Christ. He began to be
everywhere followed and everywhere spoken against.
Wherever he preached, crowds gathered in larger and
larger volume to hear him ; but, at the same time,

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 137
church after church was shut against him. As Gam
bold, at this period, said in a letter to Wesley, it was
the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ's sacrifice
and atonement which seemed to constitute the special
offence of the Cross.
This doctrine strips men altogether of their own
righteousness, and so offends their pride ; it also
teaches the " real presence " of the Divine Spirit ;
insists on the present supernatural power of God
to inspire repentance and faith, and to renew the
soul ; on the present supernatural power of Jesus
Christ to save the sinner ; and thus to the " natural
man," to the " mind of the flesh " which " receiveth
not " these " things of the Spirit of God," it is a
" stumbling-block " and " foolishness." There was
nothing else but this " offence of the Cross " in the
case of John Wesley to stir up special enmity
against him. He offended no man's prejudice
wantonly ; he committed no sins against propriety
or cultivated taste ; he preached like a scholar and a
gentleman. Nevertheless the prejudice and offence
spread and deepened, till, after no great while, scarce
a church in London or elsewhere was left open to him,
while the crowds that waited upon him, whenever he
did preach, were greater and greater. This led him,
after preaching for a while in his own room at the
" Foundery '' and elsewhere, eventually to become a
"field-preacher." It is well known that his first
out-door sermon was preached near Bristol, in April,
1739, after Whitefield had already set him the
example. From this time open-air preaching became
one of his great means, perhaps his greatest means, of
mission pioneer work. It was, of course, in his open-

138 THE LIVING WESLEY.
air sermons that his great characteristics as a preacher
were most fully developed.
Of the effects which attended his preaching, some
illustrations have already been incidentally given. I
can only further give a very few specimens. But
what must have been the power of the preaching,
which, for eight evenings in succession, in the
splendid early summer season of 1742, held vast
crowds spell -bound, while in Epworth churchyard
Wesley preached from his father's tomb, his last
discourse being his most powerful and prolonged, and
addressed to the largest multitude. On the last day
but one (Saturday, June 1 2th), a striking circumstance.
took place. Wesley's subject in preaching was, the
righteousness of the law and the righteousness of faith.
" While I was speaking," says Wesley in his
Journal, " several dropped down as dead ; and among
the rest such a cry was heard of sinners groaning for
the righteousness of faith, as almost drowned my
voice. I observed a gentleman there who was
remarkable for not pretending to be of any. religion
at all. I was informed that he had not been at
public worship of any kind for upwards of thirty
years. Seeing him stand as motionless as a statue,
I asked him abruptly, ' Sir, are you a sinner ? ' He
replied with a deep and broken voice, ' Sinner enough,'
and continued looking upward, till his wife, and a
servant or two, who were all in tears, put him into
his chaise and carried him home." The stricken,
staring, statue-like master, the weeping wife and
servants, the broken-down man lifted into his carriage
like a helpless load, and carried off, deep wounded, to
his house — what a picture have we here !

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 139
One other illustration I will give. Those who will
go to Wesley's Journals may find many more. This
is of a different cast from the others I have given. In
the midst of a mob, " I called," Wesley writes, " for
a chair. The winds were hushed, and all was calm
and still. My heart was filled with love, my eyes
with tears, and my mouth with arguments. They
were amazed ; they were ashamed ; they were melted
down ; they devoured every word." 1
Such was Wesley as a preacher when in the prime
of his powers, and when fierce opposition concurred
with providential call and opportunity to stir and
kindle all his faculties and energies for the greatest
work which God can summon any man to do.
I am, of course, aware that the description I have now
given of the character of Wesley's preaching will sur
prise some, even of my well-informed readers, and that
it is not in accordance with the popular conception of his
preaching. It is many years since the late Dr. James
Hamilton, in an article in the North British Review,
gave pictorial expression, in his own vivid way, to the
mistaken idea which has grown up in some quarters
respecting Wesley as a preacher. He sketched him
as, " after his morning sermon at the Foundery,
mounting his pony, and trotting and chatting and
gathering simples, till he reached some country
hamlet, where he would bait his charger, and talk
through a little sermon with the villagers, and re
mount his pony and trot away again." A more un
founded and misleading specimen of fancy-painting
than this it would be impossible to imagine ; and one
can only wonder where good James Hamilton picked
1 Wesley's Journal, October 18, 1749.

140 THE LIVING WESLEY.
up the ideas or the fictitious information which he
deliberately put into this written form. He was
altogether at fault in his picture. As Wesley was,
during the greater part of his life, simply the most
assiduous horseman, and one of the most spirited of
riders, in the kingdom, riding ordinarily sixty miles
(let it be remembered what the roads were in the
middle of the last century) clay by day, besides
preaching twice or thrice, and not seldom riding
eighty or ninety miles in the day ; so, for many years,
Wesley was frequently a long preacher — was often
one of the longest preachers of whom I have ever read
or heard — and never stinted himself of time when the
feeling of the congregation seemed to invite him to
enlarge, and when opportunity favoured. Of course,
however, he preached at all times many more short
sermons than long ones, because he preached commonly
three times every week-day, and four or five times on
the Sunday, and because his earlier sermons on the
Sunday needed to be over in time for his hearers to
attend Church service. But when he preached after
Church hours, whether in the afternoon or the later
evening, and on special occasions even on the week
evening, he was, as I have said, for many years often
a very long preacher. Let me give some instances of
this, only premising that all the special instances of
protracted preaching which I am about to cite occurred
after Wesley had taken to field -preaching. He had
been an earnest, and not unfrequently a long preacher
before ; but it was not until he began to address
crowds of thousands in the open air, that his larger
and grander powers as a preacher were called forth.
About sixteen or seventeen months after his con-

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 141
version, Wesley writes in his Journal as follows,
under date October 7th, 1739 (Sunday): —
" Between five and six I called upon all who were
present (about three thousand) at Stanley,1 on a little
green, near the town, to accept of Christ as their only
" wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption."
I was strengthened to speak as I never did before,
and continued speaking near two hours ; the darkness
of the night and a little lightning not lessening the
number, but increasing the seriousness of the hearers."
Wesley had already, before this service, preached
three times on that day ; and he preached yet once
after it, " concluding the day '' by " expounding part
of our Lord's Sermon on the Mount to a small, serious
company at Ebly." Five services, therefore, that day,
and among them one in which his sermon alone was
nearly two hours long !
On Friday, the 19th of the -same month, Wesley
preached at Newport, in Monmouthshire, in the morn
ing, and, coming to Cardiff about the middle of the
day, he preached in the Shire Hall twice — in the
afternoon at four, and again at six in the evening.
He had a large congregation — " almost the whole
town " — and, preaching from the six last beatitudes,
he says, " My heart was so enlarged I knew not how
to give over, so that we continued three hours." On
Sunday, June 13th, 1742, he preached in Epworth
churchyard — his own and his father's Epworth —
standing on his father's tomb, and continued the
service " for near three hours." This was his fourth
service that day. On Wednesday, May 24th, 1745,2
at Birstal, he " was constrained to continue his dis-
1 Near Stroud. 3 The anniversary of his conversion.

142 THE LIVING WESLEY.
course near an hour longer than usual, God pouring
out such a blessing that he knew not how to leave
off." On Whit Sunday, the 14th of May, 1749, at
Limerick, he began to preach at five in the morning,
and, there being no liturgy and no lesson, but only the
simplest service, three short singings, one short prayer,
and a final benediction, besides the sermon, he yet
kept the congregation till near seven, " hardly know
ing how the time went." At Whitehaven, on a
Saturday evening in September,1 1749, he preached
from six to eight — a simple week-night service —
which must have implied a sermon of not less than
an hour and a quarter long ; and at eight he met the
Society. These instances may suffice to show how
Wesley enlarged under special influences. Even when
he was more than seventy years of age, he sometimes,
on a week-night evening, was so drawn out as to
" preach a full hour " in the open air — as, for instance,
in the market-place of Caermarthen on the 21st of
August, 1777.
In Dr. Hamilton's article, to which I have referred,
it was said that while Wesley could "talk through a
little sermon with the villagers," he " seldom coped
with the multitude." In the Wesleyan Methodist
Magazine for December, 1847, will be found a paper
from the pen of the venerable Thomas Jackson, who
died in 1873, in the ninetieth year of his age, which
examines and reproves the errors of that article. Mr.
Jackson thus deals with the point now under notice : —
" That he preached to ' villagers,' so as to be under
stood by them, as his blessed Lord had done, will not
1 September 23rd.

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 143
be denied ; but that he ' seldom coped with the
multitude ' is notoriously at variance with fact. No
man was accustomed to address larger multitudes, or
with greater success. At Moorfields, Kennington
Common, Kingswood, Bristol, Newcastle, in Cornwall,
Staffordshire, and Yorkshire, immense multitudes of
people were accustomed to congregate around him
through a long series of years, and that with un
diminished interest ; and it may be fairly questioned,
whether any minister in modern ages has been instru
mental in effecting a greater number of conversions.
He possessed all the essential requisites of a great
preacher; and in nothing was he inferior to his
eminent friend and contemporary, except in voice and
manner. In respect of matter, language, and arrange
ment, his sermons were vastly superior to those of
Mr. Whitefield. Those persons who judge of Mr.
Wesley's ministry from the sermons which he preached
and published in the decline of life, greatly mistake
his real character. Till he was enfeebled by age, his
discourses were not at all remarkable for their brevity.
They were often extended to a considerable length, as
we learn from his Journal ; and yet, according to his
oft-repeated statements, he did not know how to leave
off and dismiss the people, for his mind was full of
evangelical matter, and his heart was richly charged
with heavenly zeal. In a sense higher than ever
entered into the thoughts of Archimedes, as he himself
states, he was often ready to exclaim, when addressing
vast multitudes in his Master's name, ' Give me the
where to stand, and I will move the world ! ' "
Such is the testimony of Thomas Jackson, the

144 THE LIVING WESLEY.
author of the full and admirable Life of Charles
Wesley, and the very accurate editor of Wesley's
voluminous Works ; who was himself born before the
death of Wesley ; who made all that related to him
his life-study ; who knew well some of the men who
had known Wesley best ; and who should himself
have accomplished for the life of John Wesley what he
has so excellently done as the biographer of Charles.
The case being as Mr. Jackson has stated it, and as
the extracts from the Journal, which have been given,
prove it to have been, it is proper to explain how the
erroneous ideas which have been current as to the
character of his preaching have originated. Three
causes may be assigned to account for them. One is
hinted at by Mr. Jackson in the extract we have
given. Mr. Wesley's was a very long life. Those of
his people who had known him in his prime of
strength and energy, had died before himself. The
traditions as to his preaching, which have been current
during the present century, have been mostly derived
from those who had only heard him in his extreme
old age, and, in many instances, on his hasty visits
from place to place, when he would preach at seven
o'clock on the week-night evening, or at five o'clock
in the morning. But another, and perhaps more
influential cause has been, that an inference as to the
length and style of his spoken sermons has been
erroneously drawn from his published sermons. How
unwarranted any such inference must be, may be
shown by a remark of his elder brother Samuel, made
at the very beginning of Wesley's preaching career,
— before he had begun field-preaching. In a letter
addressed to Charles Wesley, but which refers to both

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 145
the brothers, Samuel says, under date December 1st,
1738: "There is a most monstrous appearance of
dishonesty among you ; your sermons are generally
three quarters of an hour or an hour long in the
pulpit, but when printed are short snips ; rather notes
than sermons." 1 If this was the case so soon after
the brothers had broken away from the bondage of
sermon-reading in the pulpit, it is certain that, in
after years, except in special cases — such as a sermon
to be preached before the University — Wesley's
written sermons, which were ordinarily compositions
having a definite purpose of theological statement and
definition, must be regarded as altogether different in
character from his preached sermons, delivered extem
pore, often after little or no written preparation.
Still another cause of the error I have been expos
ing must probably be found in the urgency with which
Wesley, in various places, enjoins on his preachers, as
a rule, to preach short, and the emphatic way in which
he insists to them on the evils of long preaching.
But it must be remembered that the great majority of
Wesley's preachers were men whose stock of knowledge
was very small, and who had received no intellectual
training whatever. They resembled the plainest and
most fervid of the Methodist local preachers or
exhorters of to-day. The same rule could not be
applicable to him as to them. But, indeed, the great
Methodist preachers of Wesley's lifetime — his most
powerful lay-helpers — were, as a matter of fact, none
of them short preachers, while most of them were
often, if not usually, very long preachers. Such were
Walsh and Bradburn, and Benson and Clarke.
1 Jackson's Life of Charles Wesley, vol. i. p. 151.
K

146 THE LIVING WESLEY.
The fact, at any rate, is as I have stated it, so far
as respects the preaching of Wesley ; and although I
must abstain from being entangled in this study with
the thread of Charles Wesley's bfe, closely associated
though he was with his brother, yet I may add, in
passing, that for not a few years Charles Wesley was
as long and often as powerful a preacher, even as he
was as hard-riding and hard-working an itinerant
evangelist, as his brother John.
In showing that Wesley, instead of being a talker
of neat little sermons, was, in his prime of life,
frequently a long preacher, and sometimes one of the
longest preachers of whom we have any knowledge, I
have not only shown how mistaken has been the
popular tradition respecting his special characteristics
as a preacher, but I have also proved that there must
have been a remarkable charm about his preaching.
No one has done such justice to Wesley's gifts as a
preacher as Southey, especially in the interesting
chapter in the first volume of his biography of Wesley,
entitled Scenes of Itinerancy. Not only, indeed, in the
Life of Wesley, but in The Doctor, and in his Common
place Book, he has given evidence of the careful study
he bestowed on the subject, and the admiring apprecia
tion with which he realised the preaching powers of
Wesley. Cowper's lines on Wesley will not be forgotten
while we are on the subject of his preaching. They
were written when the fire and flame of Wesley's
early manhood were long gone by. He speaks of him
as one — " Who, when occasion justified its use,
Had wit as bright as ready to produce ;

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 147
Could fetch from records of an earlier age,
Or from Philosophy's enlightened page,
His rich materials, and regale your ear
With strains it was a, privilege to hear.
Yet, above all, his luxury supreme,
And his chief glory was the Gospel theme:
There he was copious as old Greece or Rome,
His happy eloquence seemed there at home ;
Ambitious not to shine or to excel,
But to treat justly what he loved so well."
I apprehend that the last four lines give a most
true and happy description of Wesley's ordinary
ministry, while, so far as any mere written composition
can give an idea of how Wesley preached, when his
aim was specially to convince and awaken, perhaps
his last sermon before the University, to Kennicott's
description of which I have already referred, and the
wonderful " applications " contained in his first Appeal
to Men of Reason and Religion, may help us to such an
idea ; but it must always be remembered, that no
written compositions can really approach the energy
and directness with which Wesley preached when vast
crowds hung upon his lips, to whom- he was declaring
" the whole counsel of God."
Of the clear, strong, intense style in which Wesley
could, if he felt it to be necessary, combine doctrinal
argument with declamatory invective of the most
scathing terribleness, we have an instance in his
famous sermon on "Free Grace." But for the publica
tion of that sermon, we should at the present time
have had no conception of what his powers were in
that kind ; and it was owing only to very special
circumstances, and much against his liking, that Wesley
felt himself constrained to publish that sermon.
It is well known that Dr. Johnson had a great

148 THE LIVING WESLEY.
reverence for Wesley, and much enjoyed his society.
In a letter to Wesley himself, he compliments him
as " Plato." Cowper, also, in the lines we have quoted,
refers to Wesley's power, in social conversation, of
bringing forth the treasures of ancient philosophy.
Let any competent judge read the plainly written but
elevated and beautiful sermon on " The Original of the
Law," mentioned some pages back, and he will at once
recognise the impress of a mind which, while it avoided
all display of learning, was deeply imbued with the
training and results of philosophy — of the highest and
best philosophy, whether ancient or modern — so far
as philosophy had advanced in Wesley's day.
Wesley the evangelical preacher, not Wesley the
ritualist priest, is, I repeat, the founder of Methodism.
The whole of Methodism unfolded from this beginning.
To provide and promote Gospel preaching and spiritual
fellowship was the one work of original Methodism ;
fellowship including a perpetual individual testimony
of Christian believers as to salvation by grace,
through faith. Preaching and fellowship — this was
all, from first to last ; true preaching, and true,
vital Christian fellowship, which involved opposition
to untrue preaching, and to fellowship not truly and
fully Christian. From this unfolded all Wesley's
history as an ecclesiastical leader. His co-operation
for a season with the Moravians, and then his separa
tion from them, when their teaching became for the
time mixed up and entangled with demoralising error ;
the foundation of his own Society — that of " the people
called Methodists ; " his separation from his " brother
Whitefield " and from Calvinism ; his field-preachings ;

WESLEY THE PREACHER. 149
his separate meeting-houses and separate communions ;
his class-meetings, and all the discipline of his Society ;
his Conference and his brotherhood of itinerant
Methodist preachers ; his increasing irregularities as
a Churchman ; his ordinations, and the virtual though
not formal or voluntary separation of his Societies from
the Church of England — all resulted from the same
beginning— from his embracing the doctrine of " salva
tion by faith " — from his receiving the instructions of
Peter Bohler, the Moravian minister — from his going
forth to preach the true old Gospel to the world.
On these matters I can but slightly touch in thi3
volume. They demand separate treatment.1 The
personal character and gifts and the inner humanity
of Wesley the evangelist is my leading theme.
1 I have dealt with them in my volume on The Churchmanship of
John Wesley.

CHAPTEE IV.
WESLEY'S ITINERANCY AND PERSECUTIONS.
THE churches were closed against Wesley ; only in
London, and a little later in Bristol, had he even
rooms in which to preach. Nor, if he had had command
of rooms, or, indeed, even of churches, would they have
been of any use in presence of the crowds, often
numbering many thousands, that flocked to hear him
preach. Therefore he had no alternative but to
preach in the open air, while the crowds gathered
around him in the fields. But for his field-preaching,
accordingly, he could not have been a pioneer preacher
— he could not have done in England the work he
was to do.
But it was not on this account alone that field-
preaching was a necessity for Wesley. In 1740 the
lowest working -classes were not only much more
ignorant and barbarous than are even the most de
graded classes of colliers and iron-workers at the
present day, but they were, by even a deeper and
wider gulf, alienated from all the public services of
religion. Such classes can never — they could not
then, they cannot now — be attracted within well-
appointed and well-ordered places of worship, with
their well-dressed congregations, by any eloquence, or
any power of startling speech, or any influence what-

WESLE Y'S ITINERANC Y. 151
ever. But they flocked in thousands to hear the great
field-preacher. " What multitudes," says Wesley, in
1745 (in his last Appeal to Men of Reason and
Religion), " both in Kingswood and the fells about
Newcastle, some years since, spent the Lord's Day
either in the alehouse, or in idle diversions, and never
troubled themselves about going to church, or to any
public worship at all. . . . By what other means was
it possible they should have been plucked out of the
fire ? Had the minister of the parish preached like
an angel, it had profited them nothing ; for they heard
him not. But when one came and said, ' Yonder is a
man preaching on the top of the mountain,' they ran
in droves to hear what he would say ; and God spoke
to their hearts. It is hard to conceive anything else
which could have reached them." For such preaching,
besides the qualifications spoken of in the last chapter,
Wesley had also the advantage of a voice of unequalled
range, although there was nothing stentorian in
its tones. On one occasion he had the distance
measured to the farthest point where his voice could
be distinctly heard — the distance was one hundred
and forty yards. He was therefore in every way
peculiarly fitted for the work, from which he did not
finally desist till more than half a century had passed
away, his last open-air sermon having been preached
at Winchelsea, in 1790, only a few months before his
death. But, however well fitted he might be for the
work, it was a work involving the severest self-
sacrifice, and very often much hazard and hardship.
It was not easy or pleasant work for "flesh and
blood." In the same Appeal from which I have
already quoted, he thus breaks out in an apostrophe

152 THE LIVING WESLEY.
to his fellow-clergy of the Church of England : " Who
is there among you, brethren, that is willing (examine
your own hearts) even to save souls from death at
this price ? I do not speak now with regard to
conscience, but to the inconveniences that must
accompany it. Can you sustain them, if you would ?
Can you bear the summer sun to beat upon your
naked head ? Can you suffer the wintry rain or
wind, from whatever quarter it blows ? Are you able
to stand in the open air without any covering or
defence, when God casteth abroad His snow like wool,
or scattereth His hoar-frost like ashes ? And yet
these are some of the smallest inconveniences which
accompany field-preaching. For beyond all these are
the contradiction of sinners, the scoffs both of the
great vulgar and the small ; contempt and reproach
of every kind ; often more than verbal affronts, stupid,
brutal violence, sometimes to the hazard of health or
limbs or life. Brethren, do you envy us this honour ?
What, I pray, would buy you to be a field-preacher ?
Or what, think you, could induce any man of common
sense to continue therein one year, unless he had a
full conviction in himself that it was the will of God
concerning him ? " Wesley's words in this description
and appeal were well within the actual truth. There
is here no exaggeration, as will presently be seen.
Already, in 1739, soon after he began field-preach
ing, Wesley had announced in his published Journal
the broad principle which was to govern his after
life : " I look upon all the world as my parish."
Accordingly, his business was to obey every call
which beckoned him into the midst of a large,
necessitous, and accessible multitude — going, as far

WESLEY'S ITINERANCY. 153
as possible, first of all to those who seemed to need
him most. There were conditions and circumstances
which hindered him, more or less, all through his
course, from visiting — or, if he visited once or twice,
from revisiting — certain parts of the country.
It is a popular error to suppose that John Wesley
preached in all parts of England, or that he left
Societies behind him studding all the land over.
There were wide stretches of England — and even
some almost entire counties — in which, while Wesley
lived, Methodism was all but unknown. He well
understood the conditions which were prohibitory of
success, so far as the establishment of Methodism was
concerned, or at least of his own Methodist Society,
and he knew better than to waste his labour any
where, while he found his strength and time and
resources all too little for the work which lay before
him in accessible and inviting fields.
Wesley devoted his labours chiefly to districts of
the country where the population was large, where
there was free opportunity for them to follow his
ministry, if they had a mind to do so, and where he
would have it in his power, night after night and
visit after visit, at not too long intervals, to follow up
his work by blow after blow, by stroke upon stroke.
He gave little labonr or attention to fashionable
places of resort. These, with the fashionable circles
of London, were wisely left to another branch of the
general Methodist movement, to the care of the
Countess of Huntingdon and her chaplains, including
among these, from time to time, Whitefield when he
was in England. He left almost unvisited most of
the purely agricultural regions of England, the sparse

154 THE LIVING WESLEY.
peasant population, bound to their field work, the
torpid tenant farmers, the coarse squires, made up a
state of society which offered the heaviest impediments
and the fewest opportunities for his work. The
collier, and in general the miner, of whatever class,
the foundry-man, the hand-loom weaver, and, in the
later years of his ministry, the water-power-loom
worker ; the spinner, in cotton, flax, or hemp ; the
" statesman " freeholder, especially when, as in the
northern dales, he was found in the neighbourhood
of the lead-miner ; or the small yeoman, where he
neighboured, as in Cornwall, on the miner or the
fisherman ; — these, and such as these, with the skilled
artisan and the day-labourer of the towns, formed
the material on which Wesley chose to bestow his
labours. If Epworth and the surrounding region had
been wholly and purely agricultural, he would not
have been able for eight successive days to command
in the churchyard crowded congregations. But the
inhabitants of Epworth not only grew hemp and flax,
but spun them and manufactured them into sacking
and bagging. And those that grew such crops, like
the hand-loom weaving small farmers of Lancashire,
Yorkshire, and many other parts of England, were a
very independent class of people. These things should
be borne in mind in following the course of Wesley's
labours. He found the agricultural population of
Ireland very different from that of England, and
much more impressible. During Wesley's lifetime
the success of Methodism in Ireland was relatively
very great. Indeed, it was the only form of
Protestantism which can be said to have won any
spiritual success there. Emigration, for the last fifty

WESLEY'S ITINERANCY. 155
years, has drained away Irish Methodism to an extent
very injurious to that island, however beneficial to
America. The chief fields of labour, outside of London, which
Wesley pioneered during the first ten years of his
itinerant work, were Bristol and its neighbourhood,
Newcastle-on-Tyne, with the dales westward, and
towards the south as far as Leeds and the neighbour
hood, Cornwall, and Staffordshire, with some inter
mediate districts, which, however, were not of equal
importance. In after years, when persecution had,
for the most part, ceased to arrest or attract him,
Wesley's itinerancy was distributed more and more
widely over the kingdom. For many years before he
died, it included, annually, the three kingdoms and
parts of Wales. To the end, however, Cornwall and
Newcastle with the dales received special attention
from him. He delighted to visit these extremities of
England. His three homes, so to speak, were London,
where he spent several months every year, Bristol (or
Kingswood School in later life), and Newcastle, in the
Orphan House (so called, but not actually used accord
ingly). Here he had rooms, and in the retirement of
Kingswood or Newcastle he loved to read or write,
although his best-beloved places of rest and quiet for
such purposes were in the houses of intimate friends
near London. His own calculation, made and verified
several times during the later years of his life, was
that he never journeyed less than 4,500 miles in any
year. The average must have been greater than this.
He rose always at four, and preached every morning,
with very rare exceptions, at five. He preached two,
often three, sometimes four times, in the day. On

156 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Sundays especially it was not unusual for him to
preach four times. His ordinary sermons — generally
preached to village congregations — were short, as well
as plain and simple. But on special occasions he was
not only, as we have seen, one of the most powerful,
but one of the longest preachers of whom we have
any record. Mere exhortations, indeed, or brief
anecdotal addresses, would not, unless brought in
occasionally as a variety, have agreed with the
principles on which he based his awakening ministry.
For, to use his own expression, he never failed to " lay
a deep foundation of repentance." This made his
proclamation of a free and present salvation for truly
convinced and penitent sinners, as safe and true a
message to declare as it was welcome to the awakened
souls who accepted and embraced it.
Wesley's appointments to preach on his itinerating
rounds were made many weeks beforehand. In order
to meet them, it was necessary for him to keep up
an extraordinary average rate of travelling, whatever
might be the state of the roads or the weather. His
determination, indeed, not to derange his plans or dis
appoint those who waited for him, led him to encounter
almost incredible hardships, and to perform journeys
such as, it would be quite safe to say, except by him,
and the companion he carried with him, were never
performed either for love or money. Till he was in
his seventieth year, all his journeys were done on
horseback. To ride from sixty to seventy miles,
besides preaching twice or thrice, and this day after
day, was an ordinary performance with him. There
were times when he went far beyond this measure.
It must be borne in mind that, in those days, except

WESLEYS ITINERANCY. 157
the main road from York — and possibly also from
Preston — to London, there were no turnpike roads in
England north of the Trent, and that even the turn
pike roads in those days, long before Macadam, were
often very far worse for travelling than the worst
by-roads of to-day. Yet Wesley tells us in his
Journal, on one occasion, that, the direct road being
under water from the floods, he rode in one day a
distance of more than ninety miles between Bawtry
and Epworth, and, at the end, " was little more tired
than when he rose in the morning." Another time,
in Scotland, he reached Cupar, " after travelling near
ninety miles," and " was little more' tired than when he
rose in the morning."
In the early weeks of 1745 the winter was
exceedingly severe. Deep snows had covered the
ground in the north of England. A thaw had followed,
and then a hard frost, so that the ground was like
glass. In such weather Wesley was journeying
towards Newcastle. He and his companion were
obliged to dismount and lead their horses, the poor
animals, notwithstanding all the care that could be
used, falling down again and again. After 8 P.M.
they reached Gateshead Fell, which was a pathless
waste of snow ; but in their perplexity a Newcastle
man overtook them, and guided them safe into the
town. " Many a rough journey," Wesley says, " have
I had before, but one like this I never had, between
wind and rain, and ice and snow, and driving sleet
and piercing cold." Even in such circumstances he
had travelled two hundred and eighty miles in six
days on horseback.
The winters of 1746 and 1747 seem to have been

158 THE LIVING WESLEY.
as severe as that of 1745, and Wesley had similar
hardships to endure. In February, 1747, horse and
man were well-nigh swallowed up in the snow-drifts
near Stamford. One morning, the servant said to
Wesley that there was no travelling that day ; such a
quantity of snow had fallen that the roads were quite
blocked up. "At least we can walk twenty miles a
day with our horses in our hands," was Wesley's reply,
and off they went accordingly.
Perhaps the longest, hardest, and most trying ride
ever done by Wesley was one of twenty hours, between
Shrewsbury and Lampeter, in- July, 1764, when
he was sixty-one years old, a journey which indeed
was one of no little danger as well as hardship.
An account of this journey is given in Wesley's
Journal, but is too long to quote. One of the most
striking of his many " hair-breadth 'scapes and moving
accidents by flood and field " was that which took place
at Lelant, near Hayle, in Cornwall, when Wesley was
on his way from Helston to preach at St. Ives. In
order to keep his appointment it was necessary to cross
the sands, where the tide was already setting in with
perilous swiftness. Wesley, nothing daunted, told the
driver to " take the sea," and go fearlessly across. The
horses swam, and the chaise, after a sharp and alarm
ing struggle, got safely through. Driver and passenger
were both completely drenched. Wesley having taken
care to get the driver warm clothing, a good fire and
excellent refreshment, and having also cared for the
horses, went himself to preach according to appoint
ment, without waiting for a change or refreshment.
The driver lived to tell the story long years after
Wesley's__death.

WESLEY'S PERSECUTIONS. 159
Energy, promptitude, punctuality, governed his
itinerancy till the end. Long after he was eighty
years of age, he continued his journeyings with little
abatement of the work accomplished, only that he used
a carriage, and no longer rode on horseback, as he had
done till ten or fifteen years before. When he was
seventy-one years old, a sudden call reached him at
Congleton to go to Bristol on pressing business. He
took chaise forthwith, and drove to Bristol, gave two
hours to his business, and immediately returned to
Congleton, having done the distance of two hundred
and eighty miles, and his business, in little more than
forty-eight hours, and "no more tired," he records, than
when he set out.
All other labours, trials, or hardships that he met
with in the course of his itinerancy were, however, of
trifling account in comparison with the cruel and
ferocious persecutions which he encountered from
mobs, often, unhappily, led by those who were of
superior station, and called themselves gentlemen —
by military men, or, more frequently, by magistrates
and clergymen ; these last, indeed, more than any
other class, being the prompters of these disgraceful
assaults. It must be remembered, in connection with
these sad histories, that Wesley never gave any pro
vocation or pretext for persecution. He was not only
in his conduct always the gentleman ; he was always,
both in conduct and appearance, the clergyman, the
calm and scholarly clergyman. It was his custom to
preach in his gown and cassock, and his deportment
and language in preaching were devout and becoming.
Nor, in his discourses, did he use a style of language
and address which could be regarded as offensive. On

160 THE LIVING WESLEY.
the contrary, as on his first visit to Newcastle, of
which I have spoken, so always he strove, especially
in the opening of his discourses, to win the attention
and conciliate the confidence of his hearers. When
Wesley was sharp and cutting, it was in dealing with
the more cultivated classes. He approached an out
door multitude with words which were gentle as well
as earnest. It was contrary alike to his temper and
his tactics, to his courtesy, and to his common sense,
to say or do anything which might justly offend the
taste of those with whom he had to do. He brought
with him no followers, and he had no accompaniments
which were likely to create disorder. Nor, as a matter
of fact, did his crowds, the crowds that merely gathered
to hear him preach, ever create disorder or give reason
able ground of annoyance. His audiences out of doors
were more orderly than those which assembled within
the churches. They covered the moorland, the
common, the wide pasture-land, but no fences were
broken, and no mischief was done. An " awful still
ness," as we often read, pervaded the vast assemblies,
broken only by the touchingly sweet as well as solemn
sound of the vast volume of singing, by the clear,
sonorous, musical voice of the speaker, which floated
far away over the ranks of the hearers, or by the sobs,
now and again, or sometimes even the outcries, of the
spiritually awakened. In all this there was nothino-
to give offence, nor in fact were outbursts of persecu
tion ever provoked from among his hearers by his
preaching. The persecutions were organised before he
came on the ground. The mobs were gathered to
forestall him, and prevent him from preaching. At
the bottom of all was the " offence of the Cross " the

WESLEY'S PERSECUTIONS. 161
dislike of the clergy to the doctrine which Wesley
preached. With misrepresentations of the doctrine
were mixed up all sorts of false rumours and reports. It
was said that the Wesleys were friends of the Pretender,
were Papists in disguise ; and much more worse than
this. Considering the Jacobitism which had always
prevailed among High Churchmen, especially Oxford
men ; considering that some of the original Oxford
Methodists, as well as William Law, formerly so
highly esteemed among them, had been Nonjurors and
" Divine Eight " men ; and considering that the worst
persecutions took place during that period of our
history which is marked by the plotting, hatching,
and outburst of the Jacobite Eebellion of 1745, — it
is the less difficult to understand how it was possible
for such unfounded and scandalous reports to obtain
currency in regard to the Wesleys, and for such
ferocity to be exhibited by the mobs, not in one place
only, but in many different parts of the kingdom.
The root of the matter, however, was the hatred by
the clergy of the " new doctrine," so called, although
it was the doctrine not only of St. Paul, but of the
Articles and Homilies of the Church of England. And
the point just now to be noted is, that Wesley gave
no just occasion for the persecutions which assailed
him and his people, but that the persecutions were
organised by men of the classes and professions which,
most of all, were likely to have influence with the
populace, and which also, most of all, were bound to
observe the law, and keep the public peace.
In these terrible persecutions, which were chiefly
in Staffordshire, Cornwall, Yorkshire, and Durham,
Wesley's perfect placid intrepidity, his loving calm-

1 62 THE LIVING WESLEY.
ness and serenity of spirit, amid whatever rage of
violence, and under whatever provocations and assaults,
must always remain a wonder to the historian. His
heroism was perfect ; his self-possession never failed
him for a moment ; the serenity of his temper was
never ruffled. Such bravery and self-command and
goodness, in circumstances so terrible and threatening,
was too much for his persecutors everywhere. He
always triumphed in the end.
Those who would gain any true idea of the out
rageous extremities of barbarous and heartless cruelty
which the frenzied mobs of Staffordshire, Cornwall,
and elsewhere — Staffordshire most of all — inflicted on
the Methodists during the period to which I refer,
must consult Wesley's Journal or Dr. Stevens' History
of Methodism. I cannot here give more than a few
instances of Wesley's own way of enduring persecu
tion, when he went to share his followers' tribulations
and to comfort and encourage them.
At Walsall, in 1743, Wesley received many savage
blows whilst he was dragged during the night through
and round the town, and from magistrate to magistrate.
The noise on every side, he says, was like the roaring
of the sea. Many cried, " Knock his brains out ! down
with him ! kill him at once ! crucify him ! " " No,
let us hear him /first," shouted others. He at last
broke out aloud into prayer. The ruffian who had
headed the mob, a bear-garden prize-fighter, was
struck with awe, and turning to him, said, " Sir, I will
spend my life for you ; follow me, and not one soul
here shall touch a hair of your head." Then an
" honest butcher " cried out for him, and, laying hold
bravely on four or five of the most violent of the

WESLE Y'S PERSECUTIONS. 1 63
rioters, thrust them away. The people fell back, and,
escorted by the prize-fighter, he escaped to his lodgings.
The next day Wesley went away, but rode through the
town. He says, "Every one I met expressed such
cordial approbation, that I could scarce believe what I
saw and heard." He went to Nottingham, where his
brother Charles was then preaching. "He looked,"
says Charles Wesley, " like a soldier of Christ. His
clothes were torn to tatters." Charles Wesley soon
after visited Wednesbury and Walsall. He received
into " the Society," among others, the late captain of
the mob. Charles asked him what he thought of his
brother. " Think of him ? " said he, — " that he is a
man of God ; and God was on his side when so many
of us could not kill one man."
This was in Staffordshire in 1743. In 1745 he
visited Cornwall, where fierce persecution had arisen.
A warrant was taken out against him, and he was
taken into custody. When, however, his persecutors
saw what manner of man he was, they were filled with
confusion, and instead of taking him to prison, with
awkward politeness they conducted him to his inn,
saying that they would call again the next day. But
he saw no more of them. The same evening, when he
was preaching in the open air at Gwennap, three
" gentlemen " ro'de furiously into the crowd. They
cried out to seize him for the army, and when the
people sang a hymn, as their reply to the interruption,
they struck at them right and left, one of them seizing
Wesley by the cassock and dragging him away by the
arm. Soon, however, finding that he had laid hold on
no fanatic, but a gentleman of a calibre and quality
quite surprising to himself, he pretended that he

1 64 THE LIVING WESLEY.
meant no harm, and requested Wesley's company at
his own house, an honour which Wesley declined.
At Falmouth the next day still more serious perils
awaited him. Here there was a terrible riot. Wesley
was driven to his lodgings. The mob, following him,
forced their way into the house, and breaking down,
by main force, the door of the room where he was, he
stood before them. Wesley stepped forward bare
headed, and said, "Here I am. Which of you has
anything to say to me ? To which of you have I done
any wrong ? To you ? or you ? or you ? " He con
tinued speaking till he reached the middle of the
street ; there he took his stand, and addressed them as
his " neighbours and countrymen." He had his usual
success. Several of the crowd cried out, " He shall
speak. Yes ! yes ! " Others swore that no man should
touch him. He was conducted in safety to a house,
and soon after left the town in a boat.
It was in proportion to the recency and imperfection
of the social civilisation of different parts of the
country that persecution held its ground against the
Wesleys. Where general barbarism lingered most,
and law and order had not been long and deeply
established in the habits of the population, and by the
organisation of a competent magistracy, the mob was
allowed to have its own way. For months together
riot was triumphant in Staffordshire, and was suffered
to go to the lengths of pillage, and all but consum
mated murder. In or near London, on the contrary,
and at Bristol, mob violence was put down firmly and
effectively at the very beginning of the Methodist
field-preaching, four or five years before the riots in
Staffordshire and Cornwall came to an end. In these

WESLEY'S PERSECUTIONS. 165
districts it was the moral ascendency of the Wesleys
and their followers which gained the victory at length.
In Ireland, somewhat later, the Methodists were
assailed with ferocity which equalled that of the
English mobs, and Charles Wesley, with several of the
preachers, was presented by the grand jury of Cork
as " a person of ill-fame, a vagabond, and a common
disturber of His Majesty's peace," with the prayer
added that he might be " transported." There, how
ever, the visit of John Wesley, close following this
infamous presentment, during the summer of 1748,
was a peaceful and happy progress.
Perhaps the most systematic and carefully-organised
of all the outrages on law and on humanity which the
records of English history can supply, was the riot in
North-East Lancashire, from Colne as a centre, to
which John Wesley and his friend Grimshaw, the
famous parson of Haworth, were exposed in 1748.
This riot was deliberately planned and arranged by
"George White, M.A., minister of Colne and Marsden,"
who invited popular support in his antagonism to
Wesley in a published sermon, which was preached
both at Colne and also at Marsden, in the summer of
1748. The mob which this clergyman raised by
systematic enlistment and public proclamation, brutally
beat Wesley and Grimshaw, and cruelly ill-treated
many of the Methodists, some of whom they threw
into the river from a rock twelve feet high.
Wesley, however, far outlived all persecution, at
least as directed against himself personally. In his
latest years he records with amazement how he had
come to be everywhere an honourable person. The
churches had been shut to him for nearly fifty years.

1 66 THE LIVING WESLEY.
At length they were opened to him on every hand.
Bishops paid him reverence, clergymen flocked to hear
him and to assist him in administering the Lord's
Supper. Most of all was public honour done to him
in those neighbourhoods where fifty years before he
had been most fiercely persecuted. It was in 1738,
when he was thirty-five years old, that he was con
vinced by Peter Bohler of his theological errors, and
came to his Saviour first by the way of a simple living
faith. In 1739 he began field-preaching. In 1791
he died, full of years and honour. In 1790, at
Winchelsea, he preached his last open-air sermon.

CHAPTEE V.
WESLEY'S DEALING WITH ANTINOMIAN PERVERSIONS OF
EVANGELICAL DOCTRINE.
WHEN the level sun shines through a fog, every
object is itself distorted, and casts an exagger
ated and distorted shadow. So every great truth, seen
through the medium of false bias and of misconception,
wears the aspect of counterfeit error. This is true
even of the cardinal doctrines of the Gospel. We
learn from St. Paul's writings, that his teaching as to
the righteousness of faith was by some so perverted
as to undermine the rightful authority of God's holy
law. It is no wonder, accordingly, if false doctrine
arose, from time to time, among Wesley's followers.
The special feature of the Wesleyan theology was, that
it not only taught salvation by faith, but that this
salvation was a conscious salvation, conscious reconcilia
tion with God, conscious power over sin. The charac
teristic danger, accordingly, connected with this special
teaching was, lest illusion should be mistaken for true
spiritual consciousness ; an illusive self-persuasion of
pardon and acceptance, for the true peace of God
through believing, wrought by the Spirit of adoption ;
an illusive self-persuasion of spiritual consecration and
inward holiness, for the genuine Christian love of God
and man, bringing forth at once in heart and in life

1 68 THE LIVING WESLEY.
all the fruits of holiness, both experimental and
practical, all the " fruits of the Spirit." Wesley was
well aware of this danger, and he endeavoured to
guard against it. Most strenuously and incessantly
did he insist that the profession of justification through
faith should be tested by the " outward " as well as
the " inward " witness, — by a reformed life and power
over sin in daily practice, as well as by the experience
of conscious peace. Nor was he less strenuous or
persistent in inculcating that no mere feelings, no
excitement or rapture or inward exaltation, could of
themselves afford any assurunce at all of inward
consecration and matured holiness, apart from the
daily evidence, in sight of all men, of a " holy walk
and conversation."
From the beginning, however, he found his work
hindered and scandals produced by such errors as
have now been indicated. The Antinomian quietism
of the teaching of Molther, and other unworthy but
seductive Moravian teachers, at Fetter Lane in 1739,
was his first great trouble. Other troubles followed
from a different quarter, but which agreed in the
result that they tended to Antinomianism ; and from
time to time he was harassed by outbreaks of the
same general description, resulting from the erroneous
teaching, sometimes combined with the scandalous
practices, of some of his own preachers.
The effect of all this was to lead Wesley to a
severity of censure in regard to spurious and anti-
nomianly luscious evangelical preaching, so called,
not less wholesome than unusual. What I am about,
indeed, to quote is from a private letter to Miss
Bishop, one of his most esteemed correspondents ; but

WESLEY ON ANTINOMIANISM. 169
though more plain-spoken than any of his public
utterances was likely to have been, it is all the more
valuable in its private and informal character, as
showing the inmost spirit of the writer, and the
character which he desired to see impressed both upon
the teaching of his preachers and the lives of his
followers. " To speak freely," he says, " I find more
life in the Church Prayers than in any formal extem
porary prayers of Dissenters. Nay, I find more profit
in sermons on either good tempers or good works than
in what are vulgarly called Gospel sermons. The
term has now become a mere cant word. I wish
none of our Society would use it. It has no deter
minative meaning. Let but a pert, self-sufficient
animal, that has neither sense nor grace, bawl out
something about Christ or His blood, or justification by
faith, and his hearers cry out, 'What a fine Gospel
sermon ! ' Surely the Methodists have not so learned
Christ." This was written in 1778, when Wesley
was seventy -five years old, but had still thirteen
years to live. At this time Antinomianism was taking-
strong hold, here and there, of Dissenting Churches.
The history of James Wheatley, indeed, one of
Wesley's own preachers, between 1750 and 1760,
had deepened the dislike of Wesley to the luscious,
sentimental kind of preaching, which has often been
mistaken for Gospel preaching, and which is so
commonly associated with Antinomian tendencies.
This man, after, for a time, achieving an extraordin
ary popularity, was in 1751 proved, by undeniable
and superabundant evidence, to have been teaching
privately, and also practising, gross immorality. For
this cause, because he had " wrought folly in Israel,"

170 THE LIVING WESLEY.
and "given occasion to the enemies of God to blas
pheme," Wheatley was disowned by the Wesleys in
1751, but among certain latitudinarian professors at
Norwich found a congenial sphere, and was for some
years exceedingly popular in the city, until at length,
in 1759, he had to leave in disgrace, arising out of
numerous and flagrant scandals. This man's preach
ing having corrupted the taste of the Methodists,
Wesley wrote a letter upon the subject. He describes
his preaching as having been an " unconnected rhapsody
of unmeaning words," like Sir John Suckling's
"Verses, smooth and soft as cream,
In which was neither depth nor stream. "
" Yet," he adds, " to the utter reproach of the Methodist
congregations, this man became a most popular
preacher." Of the other preachers not a few were led
to preach after his manner, first in Ireland and then
in England. Wesley describes " this new manner of
preaching, entirely new," as he says, to the Methodists,
" as a preaching of what is spoken of as the Gospel,
without any reference to the law ; as speaking much
of the promises, little of the commands." He says,
" The Gospel preachers (so - called) corrupt their
hearers ; they vitiate their taste, so that they cannot
relish sound doctrine ; and spoil their appetite, so
that they cannot turn it into nourishment ; they, as it
were, feed them with sweetmeats, till the genuine
wine of the kingdom seems quite insipid to them."
He says that these men had " exalted themselves
above measure," as if they alone " preached Christ,
preached the Gospel;" and at the same time had
deeply despised their brethren, calling them "legal

WESLEY ON ANTINOMIANISM. 171
preachers, legal wretches," and (by a cant name)
" Doctors " or " Doctors of Divinity." He traces the
effects of such preaching in the grievous decline both
in numbers and in godly earnestness and consistency
of the Societies to which such preachers had ministered,
and contrasts these injurious effects with the actual
fruits of John Nelson's work in Yorkshire, John
Nelson being one of the old-fashioned preachers whom
the new " Gospel preachers " had taught the people to
despise. " These," he says, in a sharp address to such
as had been led away by Wheatley's example and
popularity, " had been fed with that wholesome food
which you could neither relish nor digest. From
the beginning they have been taught both the law
and the Gospel. God loves you ; therefore love and
obey Him. Christ died for you ; therefore die to sin.
Christ is risen ; therefore rise in the image of God.
Christ liveth evermore ; therefore live to God, till you
live with Him in glory."
Nothing gave Wesley more disappointment and pain,
or more hindered his work, and for a while injured his
credit, than the extravagances (in 1762-3) of George
Bell and others who held with him. These persons
were professors of " Christian perfection," but had not
received, and did not teach the doctrine as Wesley
taught it. As taught and professed by them, it
amounted, without doubt, to a self-delusion. They
had a subjective sense or impression of Divine influence
and perfect self-consecration, and therefore they be
lieved and maintained that they were in all things
filled and led by the Spirit. No man could teach
them. They professed, George Bell especially, to be
endowed with extraordinary spiritual gifts, and, in

172 THE LIVING WESLEY.
particular, with the gift of prophecy. Bell went
great lengths, indeed, followed by his infatuated
admirers, and even foretold the day of the world's end.
Such examples of extravagance, connected with un
guarded and really Antinomian doctrine on the same
subject of " Christian perfection," have reappeared
from time to time, and may be traced even in recent
history, on both sides of the Atlantic. Wesley seems to
have been much too tender and too tardy in dealing
with Bell and his extravagances. His Societies
suffered greatly in consequence. But some of his
words, addressed to those who were more or less
infected with Bell's spirit and tendencies, are worth
reproducing in this chapter. Dealing with the pro
fessors of perfection, whom he desired to instruct and
bring to a true judgment of themselves, he urges
them with a succession of paragraphs of which I will
quote the headings. They professed that they had
been filled through the Spirit with " love, joy, peace."
Wesley reminds them that the complete and insepar
ably united " fruit of the Spirit," in truly sanctified
persons, according to the teaching of St. Paul, included,
besides " love, joy, peace," and as no less indispensable,
" gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, temperance "
(Gal. v. 22, 23). And accordingly he proceeds to
say, " Some are wanting in ' gentleness.' " [Here
particular and searching instances or illustrations are
given.] " Some are wanting in ' goodness.' " [Then
again come illustrations.] " Some are wanting in
' fidelity,' a nice regard to truth, simplicity, and godly
sincerity. Their love is hardly without dissmula-
tion," etc., etc. " Some are wanting in ' meekness,
quietness of spirit, composure, evenness of temper,'

WESLEY ON ANTINOMIANISM. 173
etc. " Some are wanting in ' temperance,' etc 
You have not what I call perfection; if others will
call it so, they may. However, hold fast what you
have, and earnestly pray for what you have not."
It would have been interesting to trace the charac
teristics of the preachers who most fully imbibed his
own spirit : of John Nelson, as remarkable for sobriety
as for zeal, for love and good works as for faith and
fervour, for sound sense as for devotion, whose word
it seemed as if no adversaries could gainsay, and of
whom Southey says that " he had as high a spirit and
as brave a heart as ever Englishman was blessed
with;" of John Downes and Christopher Hopper, of
Alexander Mather and Joseph Cownley, and of others
of his lay-helpers, who, in preaching, were mighty
both to awaken from sin and to build up in faith and
holy doctrine, who " fed " the early Methodists " with
knowledge and understanding." But this cannot be
done in this volume. I can only say that, by their
preaching, and by their spirit and life, these men
accomplished work scarcely inferior in solidity and
thoroughness to that wrought by their chief.
Such was Wesley's manner of dealing with " false
prophets " who taught an Antinomian counterfeit of
the Gospel doctrine of justification by faith ; and with
high-soaring professors who taught a spurious doctrine
of " holiness " or " perfection," such as " made void the
law," and lost sight of the practical tests and fruits of
sanctified and matured Christian character.
The great body, however, of Wesley's itinerant
helpers preached a truly " saving Gospel," a Gospel of
salvation by faith, which was wonderfully attended
and attested by the fruits of righteousness.

CHAPTER VI.
WESLEY AS THE ORGANISER OE A NEW EVANGELICAL
COMMUNITY.
/"^ REATER justice has been done to Wesley in his
VX character and capacity as an organiser than
perhaps in any other respect. Much has been written
in regard to the organisation which he established —
his Society, his Conference, and all thereto appertaining.
Probably there has been some exaggeration in the
view given of this aspect of his character. I have
explained that it is not my purpose in this volume to
deal at any length with a subject on which I have
written elsewhere in separate publications, and on
which so much has been written by others.1 I
am chiefly concerned with aspects of his character
which have not hitherto, in my opinion, been shown in
their true light, or brought out in just relief — especially
with his human affections, his intellectual character,
and his gifts and powers as a preacher. Nevertheless,
in his work of organisation as well as his other work,
Wesley kept in view the same objects which governed
his whole life, and under the inspiration of which he
became the preacher and apostle that he was. There-
1 The separate publications chiefly referred to above are, The Con-
nexional Economy of Methodism, and Church Organisations — Primi
tive and Protestant. 174

WESLEY AS AN ORGANISER. 175
fore I am about to give in this chapter a very brief
and succinct outline of that organisation which, for
purely evangelical ends and purposes, he was instru
mental in moulding and maturing. In so doing, I
shall also furnish information which will help to a
fuller understanding of some other parts of this
volume. His conversion made Wesley an evangelist. He
had a forgotten Gospel to preach — the Gospel by which
men were to be converted, as he had been, and to
become " new creatures." This result, this new birth,
he had learnt once for all, was not dependent on any
priestly prerogative or service, or on any sacramental
grace or influence. " Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the Word of God." To raise up, accord
ingly, by his preaching and personal influence, a body
of converted men who should themselves become
witnesses of the same truth by which he himself had
been saved, was henceforth to be Wesley's life-work.
This was the inspiration under which he became a
mighty preacher, a flaming evangelist, " a burning and
shining light." This also made him an organiser of
his living witnesses into Societies and Society classes.
In appeal to the multitude was the preacher's public
power ; in the class-room or the Society meeting was
the private and personal influence. The vital link
between the pulpit and the class-meeting was the
doctrine and experience of "conversion." Thus it
plainly appears that the organised fellowship of
Methodism has its vital descent, not from Wesley the
ritualist of Oxford, but from converted Wesley the
evangelist. In 1739, Wesley became possessed of an old build-

176 THE LIVING WESLEY.
ing in Moorfields, called the " Foundery," and trans
formed it into a meeting and preaching house. About
the same time, in Bristol and the neighbouring colliery
district of Kingswood, he found himself obliged to become
the owner, much against his will at first, of premises for
the purpose of public preaching and religious meet
ings. Here was the beginning of that vast growth of
preaching-houses and meeting-rooms, all of them for
nearly fifty years settled on Wesley himself, which
became afterwards, through Wesley, the property of
the Methodist Connexion.
The Society which Wesley established at the Foundery
in 1739 — near to where City Road Chapel now stands
— was the first Society under the direct control of
Wesley, and herein was the actual and vital beginning
of the " Methodist Society," that is, of Wesleyan
Methodism and all its kindred Churches. Hence the
Wesleyan Methodists celebrated their Centenary in
1839. In 1743, Wesley published the rules of this
Society. His brother Charles's name was joined with
his own at the foot of these rules in their second
edition, dated May 1, 1743, and so remained in all
later editions while Charles Wesley lived.1 Those
rules are still the rules of Wesleyan Methodism, so far
as relates to membership of the Church. Since
Wesley's death they have not been altered. In 1742
the Societies were divided into classes, each class being
placed under the charge of a "leader." The class-
leaders of Methodism, together with the local stewards,
became in course of time, and have remained for nearly
a century past, the ordinary disciplinary council in
every Society, known as the Leaders' Meeting.
1 He died in 1788.

WESLEY AS AN ORGANISER. 177
From first to last there is no trace or colour of any
specially Anglican character in the organisation of
Wesley's Society or Societies — for the Societies col
lectively constituted "the Methodist Society," or the
" United Society." Moravians or Dissenters might
have entered the fellowship, and, before long, many did
enter it who had either been Dissenters, or, at any rate,
had seldom or never entered a parish church. What
would to-day be called the " unsectarian " character of
his Society, was indeed, in Wesley's view, one of its
chief glories. All the time, however, this "unsectarian"
Society was only another sect in process of formation.
Indeed, Wesley himself, for many years before his
death, had seen that, unless the rulers of the Church
should come to adopt, in regard to his preachers and
preaching-houses, a liberal policy of recognition, this
might, after his death, be the outcome of his life-work.
Nor did he, in his latest years, shrink with any repug
nance from the prospect ; rather at the last he would
appear to have even rejoiced in it. Very early, indeed,
Wesley had been driven, sorely against his will, to
make a distinct separation of his Societies in London
and at Bristol from the Church of England. The
clergy not only excluded the Wesleys from their
pulpits, but often repelled both them and their con
verts from the Lord's Table. This was first done on a
large scale, and with systematic harshness and persist
ency, at Bristol in 1740. The brothers believed that
they had no alternative but to administer the Sacrament
themselves in their own preaching-rooms. The practice
having thus been established at Bristol, the original
Society at the Foundery naturally claimed the like
privilege, the more so as too many of the London
M

178 THE LIVING WESLEY.
clergy acted towards Wesley's followers in the same
manner as those at Bristol. These administrations,
once begun, were afterwards steadily maintained — one
of the Wesleys, or else some co-operative or friendly
clergyman, being always present, whether in London
or at Bristol, to take the service. Both on Sundays
and on week-days, in these first centres of Methodist
work and influence, full provision was made for the
spiritual wants of the Societies, quite apart from the
services of the Church of England. The only link
with that Church was that the sacramental adminis
trators were clergymen.
In 1741, Wesley began to employ lay-preachers.
The story is well known how he hastened up to London
from Bristol, to put an end to his schoolmaster Maxfield's
preaching at the Foundery. He took his venerable
mother's wise advice, however, and heard Maxfield
preach himself. Thenceforth lay-preaching became a
Methodist institution. One High Church prejudice
after another was giving way; and this story
registers the last struggle of one of these prejudices.
Wesley could by no means have done his work with
out his lay-itinerants ; he would have been as helpless
as a general without officers. These itinerant preachers,
stationed from year to year in wide " circuits," con
ducted the simple services in the Methodist preaching-
rooms, and were in effect, as to most points, the
spiritual pastors and guides of the Societies. But they
did not administer the Sacraments, for the reception of
which the members had to go to Church, if they were
allowed to have them there, or else to wait — often for
long months or even years — for the coming round of
Wesley or his brother Charles, or, in later years, of

WESLEY AS AN ORGANISER. 179
Dr. Coke. Long before Wesley's death, however, there
was a growing desire among the Societies, especially
as the itinerant preachers improved in quality and
faculty, to have the Sacraments administered by their
own preachers. This came to pass universally after
Wesley's death, and he himself took steps in the later
years of his life which prepared the way for it.
In the beginning of 1738, Wesley had been a High
Churchman ; and even after his conversion in that
year he continued for several years to hold, in the
abstract, High Church views as to points ecclesiastical.
But in 1746 he abandoned once for all his ecclesi
astical High Churchmanship. He relates in his
Journal, under date January 20, 1746, how his views
were changed by reading Lord (Chancellor) King's
account of the primitive Church. From this time
forward he consistently maintained that " the uninter
rupted succession was a fable which no man ever did
or could prove." One of the convictions derived by
him at this time from reading Lord King's book was,
that the office of bishop was originally one and the
same with that of presbyter ; and the practical infer
ence drawn by Wesley was, that he himself was a
" scriptural episcopos," and that he had as much right
as any primitive or missionary bishop to ordain ministers,
as his representatives and helpers, who should administer
the Sacraments instead of himself to the Societies
which had placed themselves under his spiritual charge.
This right, as he conceived it to be, he was often
moved to exercise, that he might satisfy the needs and
outcries of his Societies ; but he refrained until he felt
it was impossible to resist the call of Providence on
behalf of the American Methodist Societies. In 1784,

180 THE LIVING WESLEY.
when the Colonies had become an independent nation,
Wesley ordained his trusted friend and helper, Dr.
Coke, a clergyman of the Church of England, as
Superintendent (EirLo-KOTro^) for America, where Coke
ordained Francis Asbury presbyter and also super
intendent, and where Coke and Asbury together
ordained the American preachers as presbyters. Thus
American Methodism was constituted an independent
Church. To-day the Methodism of America, taken
collectively, is the largest aggregate of national
Protestantism in the world. In 1785, Wesley
ordained Methodist ministers for Scotland. In 1786,
he ordained a minister for Antigua and another for
Newfoundland. A number of other preachers were
ordained by him during the next three years. In
particular, he ordained Alexander Mather, in 1788, not
only deacon and elder, but also superintendent ; and
on Ash- Wednesday, 1789, he ordained Henry Moore
and Thomas Rankin presbyters, for the especial service
of the Societies in England.
In 1784, Wesley had legally defined his Yearly
Conference. His preachers had been accustomed for
forty years to meet with him in annual Council or
" Conference." To " the Conference " — consisting
legally of a hundred ministers, chosen and appointed
by name, who themselves are required to fill up the
vacancies in their number from year to year — the legal
instrument or Deed of Declaration of 1784 gives
supreme jurisdiction as to the appointment of preachers
to the chapels of the Connexion,1 and as to the admis
sion and expulsion of ministers. In practice, all the
powers, whether original or acquired, of the Conference
1 For a term not to exceed three years.

WESLEY AS AN ORGANISER. 181
have, since Wesley's death, been shared by all the
ministers attending the yearly sessions of the Confer
ence, whether members of the " Legal Hundred " or
not. There is yet one point which should be referred to
in this brief' sketch of Wesley's work of organisation.
The preaching-houses — afterwards called chapels — of
" the Connexion " (as Wesley's community of ministers
and Societies came to be called) were all, as I have
stated, settled originally on Wesley himself, so far as
respected the appointment of preachers to officiate in
them; afterwards they were, under the powers of
Wesley's Deed of Declaration, similarly and to the
same limited extent settled on the Conference, which
became the heir of Wesley's powers and prerogatives.
On no point did Wesley insist more strenuously than
this. To give the appointment of ministers to the
trustees was the custom of Presbyterians and Dissenters.
Wesley saw that such a settlement of his places of
worship would destroy the itinerancy, which he knew
to be vital to the existence of the Connexion. He saw
also that it would leave no security for continuity of
doctrine, in accordance with his own views and teaching,
as set forth in his standard works. As a matter of
history, he knew, moreover, that meeting-houses under
trustees had become the burial places at once of ortho
doxy and of earnestness, as proved by the history of
the Presbyterian and of a considerable number of the
Dissenting Churches. For such reasons Wesley rigidly
adhered to his own principles, in spite of great in
fluence brought to bear upon him as respects this
question. In the West Riding especially, the strong
hold of Presbyterianism and of Dissent, as for example

182 THE LIVING WESLEY.
at Dewsbury and Birstal, the struggle of the laymen
was very resolute to obtain their own way in this
matter. But, with an inflexibility such as Wesley
only showed when great principles were clearly at
stake, he resisted them at all cost, preferring the loss
of some adherents, or even of the meeting-houses
themselves, at the time, rather than the adoption of a
policy which he was convinced would have been fatal
to all the ends of his evangelical work. The organisa
tion of preaching-houses and Societies. which he left
(under his own well - considered safeguards and
conditions), remains still as the strong foundation on
which has been built up the vastly enlarged and
developed Methodism of later generations.

PART IV.

WESLEY'S INTELLECTUAL POWERS, HIS DISPOSITION
AND CHARACTER, AND HIS LATER LIFE.

CHAPTER I.
WESLEY AS A THINKER.

BECAUSE Wesley was eminently a man of action,
it seems to have been inferred by some writers
that he was not a man of contemplation ; he is
admitted to have been an acute logician, but he is
represented as having been comparatively wanting in
the capacity of philosophic reflectiveness. On this
subject I have already said something, and have had
occasion to furnish one notable example of his philo
sophical insight and capacity. But it seems to deserve
more full and explicit notice than in any incidental
references I have been able to give to it. I have no
wish to exaggerate Wesley's philosophical capacity ;
but it is an entire mistake to suppose him to have
been at all wanting either in the taste or the capacity
for philosophic study and reflection. His intellectual
tastes inclined him very strongly to the study, not
only of languages, but of philosophy and theology —

1 84 THE LIVING WESLEY.
of philosophy, perhaps, hardly less than theology. His
Journals supply abundant evidence that, in the midst
of his life of incessant activity and absorbing care, and
devotional intensity of feeling, he yet kept up his
interest in philosophic studies. He read and criticised
Locke with acute intelligence. He not only read, but
explained to his preachers, Bishop Browne's great work,
The Procedure of ihe Human Understanding, preferring
Browne to Locke. In his letters to Mr. John Smith,1
he says that " in the midst of all his labours he had
abundantly more temptation to be a saunterer inter
sylvas academicas, a philosophical sluggard, than an
itinerant preacher." His reflectiveness, indeed, tended
even to scepticism. In the same remarkable letters,
he says that "he had a thousand times doubted of the
divinity of the Scriptures after the fullest assurance
preceding." In his sermon on " The Good Steward," he uses the
striking language which I am about to quote : —
" It is so far from being true that there is no
knowledge after we have quitted the body, that the
doubt lies on the other side, whether there be any such
thing as real knowledge till then ; whether it be not a
plain, sober truth, not a mere poetical fiction, that
" 'All these are shadows, which for things we take,
Are but the empty dreams which in death's sleep we make,'
only excepting those things which God Himself hath
been pleased to reveal to man. I will speak for one.
After having sought the truth with some diligence for
half a century, I am, at this day, hardly sure of any
thing but what I learn from the Bible. Nay, I
1 Dr. Seeker, Bishop of Oxford, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.

WESLEY AS A THINKER. 185
positively affirm that I know nothing else so certainly
that I would dare to stake my salvation upon it." 1
It was, in fact, the strength of the contemplative
element in Wesley which largely helped, during not a
few years of his earlier life, to give Mysticism so con
siderable a power over him. He loved his college,
and his cloister, and his " academic groves ; " he loved
"To join with him calm Peace and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet;
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure ;
But first, and chiefest, with him bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
The cherub Contemplation."
He seems to have had little love for any philosophy
that had not an element of Mysticism in it ; he would
' ' Unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook."
He found delight in Tauler's philosophic and
mystical theology, and in Madame de Bourignon's
poetry. It is true, he was of a very social temper,
also, when he could find congenial companions ; and
this balanced his recluseness. It is also true that,
while his mere intellect and his tastes craved for
solitude or select society, his moral sensibilities and
1 Here, again, we are struck with that resemblance and yet contrast
between Wesley and Newman to which I have referred already.
Substitute merely " the Church " for " the Bible " in the above extract,
and it expresses the views of the author of the Apologia pro Vitd
Sud and of the Grammar of Assent. All hinged upon Wesley's
accepting Scripture teaching instead of traditional influence and
prescription.

1 86 THE LIVING WESLEY.
his conscience continually prompted him to go abroad
and minister to bodily and spiritual need and distress ;
but that did not annul the other side of his nature.
It was, doubtless, the strong contemplative element in
Wesley which formed so close a link between himself
and his friend Gambold, who was first an Oxford
Methodist, then a Mystic, and then a Moravian, and
always predisposed to Quietism. Wesley was very
fond of Gambold's poetry — poetry of superior merit
and of great refinement, marked especially by a subtle
and spiritualistic philosophic tendency — and he not
seldom quotes it.
I have quoted Wesley's own words in regard to the
philosophical scepticism which was a leading feature
of his intellectual character. So conscious was he of
his tendency to scepticism, that he was afraid, as he
tells us, to prosecute the study of mathematics, because
he found it to undermine his faith in all moral con
clusions. He was one of the keenest and most
sceptical of historical critics, as I shall immediately
show; but, like Dr. Johnson, while acutely and
intrepidly critical in regard to matters which he con
ceived to lie fully within the scope of his critical under
standing and faculty, he durst not indulge the same
temper of mind, or assume the same right of critical
judgment, in regard to the world of spiritual powers
and realities. The principle on which he acted in
judging of things pertaining to the world of conscious
ness, and of invisible spirits and forces, he himself
explains in his comments on a certain case which he
records in his Journal. I give his words : —
" One of the strangest accounts I ever read ; yet I
can find no pretence to disbelieve it. The well-known

WESLEY AS A THINKER. 187
character of the person excludes all suspicion of fraud ;
and the nature of the circumstances themselves ex
cludes the possibility of delusion. It is true, there are
several of them which I do not comprehend ; but this
with me is a very slender objection ; for what is it
which I do comprehend, even of the things I see daily ?
Truly not ' the smallest grain of sand or spire of grass.'
I know not how the one grows, or how the particles of
the other cohere together. What pretence, then, have
I to deny well-attested facts, because I cannot com
prehend them ? " 1
Thus did the philosophical sceptic justify what
religious sceptics stigmatised as his credulity. On the
other hand, he was not slow to retort against the
sceptics of his day the charge of credulity as respected
common mundane things.
In historical criticism, Wesley was fifty years in
advance of his age ; many illustrations might be given
to show how penetrating, independent, and impartial
were his views as a student of history. He recognised
fully and immediately the merits of Hooke's Roman
History, pronouncing it far the best he had seen. He
says, " I admire him for doing justice to many great
men who have been generally misrepresented ; Manlius
Capitolinus, in particular, as well as the two Gracchi."
At the same time he objects that " he recites at large
the senseless tales of Clelia swimming the Tiber,
Mucius ScEEVola, and twenty more ; and afterward
knocks them all on the head. What need, then, of
reciting them ? We want history, not romance, though
compiled by Livy himself." 2
" To-day," he says, " I read upon the road a very
1 Works, vol. iii. p. 324. 2 Ibid. iii. p. 449.

1 88 THE LIVING WESLEY.
agreeable book, Mr. Dobb's Universal History. . . .
But I still doubt of many famous incidents which
have passed current for many ages. To instance one :
I cannot believe there was ever such a nation as the
Amazons in the world. The whole affair of the
Argonauts I judge to be equally fabulous, as Mr.
Bryant has shown many parts of ancient history to
be; and no wonder, considering how allegories and
poetic fables have been mistaken for real histories." 1
"I read to-day," he writes (April 25th, 1748),
" what is accounted the most correct history of St.
Patrick that is extant; and, on the maturest considera
tion, I was much inclined to believe that St. Patrick
and St. George were of one family. The whole story
smells strong of romance. To touch only on a few
particulars : — I object to his first setting out ; the
Bishop of Rome had no such power in the beginning
of the fifth century as this account supposes ; nor
would his uncle, the Bishop of Tours, have sent him
in that age to Rome for a commission to convert
Ireland, having himself as much authority over that
land as any Italian bishop whatever. Again, I never
heard before of an apostle sleeping thirty-five years,
and beginning to preach at threescore. But his success
staggers me the most of all : no blood of the martyrs
is here ; no reproach, no scandal of the Cross ; no
persecution to those that will live godly. Nothing is
to be heard of, from the beginning to the end, but
kings, nobles, warriors, bowing down before him.
Thousands are converted, without any opposition
at all ; twelve thousand at one sermon. If these
things were so, either there was then no devil in
1 Works, vol. iv. pp. 388-9.

WESLEY AS A THINKER. 189
the world, or St. Patrick did not preach the Gospel of
Christ. " J
In a similar spirit of critical scepticism he com
ments on Dr. Leland's History of Ireland, repudi
ating altogether the notion that the Irish " were
ever a civilised nation, till they were civilised by the
English." He is bold enough to deny that " Ireland
was, in the seventh or eighth century, the grand seat
of learning ; " and especially singles out as incredible
the pretence that in the college at Armagh, one of the
"many famous colleges" of the island, there were
seven thousand students. All this he " ranks with
the history of Bel and the Dragon.2
On the page following these remarks he quotes
with approval his friend Dr. Byrom's explanation of
the origin of the name of England's patron saint.
" I think," he says, " that there can be no reasonable
doubt of the truth of his conjecture that Georgius is a
mistake for Gregorius ; that the real patron of England
is St. Gregory (who sent Austin, the monk, to convert
England), and that St. George (whom no one knows)
came in by a mere blunder." 3
I do not by any means intend to adopt or vouch
for all Wesley's criticisms ; I wish only to show the
critical quality of his intellect. His whole treatment
of the history of England, of which he wrote himself
a succinct epitome, was distinguished by remarkable
independence of mind. He held to the side of Horace
Walpole in his Historic Doubts, so far as respected the
character of Richard III. He gave up, after investiga
tion, the strong prejudices of his youth in favour of
"the Martyr" (Charles I.); and when his brother
1 Works, vol. ii. p. 94. 2 Ibid. iii. p. 501. 3 Ibid. p. 502.

1 90 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Charles, in a letter, remonstrated with him on this
account, his reply was that he could not " in con
science say less evil of him." High Tory as he was
by nurture and education, he not only revised, but
altogether changed, his views respecting the contro
versies of Charles the Second's reign. Referring to
Baxter's life, he says in his Journal, " In spite of all
the prejudice of education, I could not but see that
the poor Nonconformists had been used without either
justice or mercy ; and that many of the Protestant
bishops of King Charles had neither more religion nor
humanity than the Popish Bishops of Queen Mary." *
And again he says, referring to the persecutions of the
Presbyterians in Scotland, " 0 what a blessed governor
was that good-natured man, so-called, King Charles
the Second ! Bloody Queen Mary was a lamb, a mere
dove, in comparison of him ! " 2 Candour pure and
impartial, perfect honesty of purpose in research, and,
in judging, incorruptible love of truth, — this is the
prime and highest qualification in a historian or a
historical critic. More than anything else, it helps to
the attainment of the truth in history. This quality
John Wesley possessed — pure and fearless honesty and
candour. Wesley himself, as I have said, often laughed at
the credulity of his sceptical contemporaries. He
criticises severely, and in some detail, the Abbe"
Raynal's History of the Settlements and Trade of the
Europeans in the Indies. He stigmatises " several of
his assertions as false in fact," singling out in particular
the assertion that Batavia is a healthy place. He
declares that his account of China is " pure romance,
1 Works, vol. ii. pp. 311-2. a Ibid. iii. p. 311.

WESLEY AS A THINKER. 191
flowing from the Abbe's fruitful brain." He "supposes"
that the account of the Peruvian nation is taken from
" that pretty novel of ' Marmontel.'" He inquires if
" many of his assertions do not so border upon the
marvellous, that none but a disciple of Voltaire could
swallow them, — as the account of milk-white men, with
no hair, red eyes, and the understanding of a monkey."1
He was very keen in his criticism of all contem
porary books of travel, very suspicious of " travellers'
stories." In the bosom of " the lovely family at
Balham," he writes, " I had leisure on Tuesday,
Wednesday, and Thursday, to consider thoroughly the
account of the Pelew Islands. It is ingenious, but I
esteem it a dangerous book. ... I cannot believe
that there is such a heathen on earth as Abba Thulle,
much less such a heathen nation as is here painted.
' But what do you think of Prince Lee Boo ? ' I
think he was a good-natured, sensible young man,
who came to England with Captain Wilson, and had
learned his lesson well ; but just as much a prince as
Tomo Chachi was a king." 2 This entry was made
within about fifteen months of Wesley's death, when
he was eighty-six years old.
It was impossible that such a thinker as has now
been described could be in any sense a narrow
Christian. Dean Stanley has, I believe, claimed
Wesley as being, in some sort, the father of modern
Broad Churchmanship; and although Wesley's theology
was not by any means in harmony with that of our
Broad Church leaders, being thoroughly evangelical,
there is some colour of plausibility in the claim.
Wesley was a very large-souled and loving-hearted
1 Works, vol. iv. pp. 120-1. 2 Ibid. p. 476.

192 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Arminian. He insisted on the heart and the life as
the seat and test of Christian character, not on the
creed. " I read," he says, " to-day part of the medita
tions of Marcus Antoninus. What a strange Emperor !
And what a strange heathen ! Giving thanks to God
for all the good things he enjoyed, — in particular for
his good inspiration, and for twice revealing to him, in
dreams, things whereby he was cured of otherwise
incurable distempers. I make no doubt but this is
one of those ' many ' who shall ' come from the east
and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob,' while ' the children of the Kingdom ' —
nominal Christians — are ' shut out.' " 1
1 Journal, October 11th, 1745.

CHAPTER II.
WESLEY'S DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER.
I HAVE written at some length of Wesley's intel
lectual characteristics, because, so far as I know,
justice has never been done to them. No biographer has
brought out the side of his character on which I have
last dwelt. As to his accomplishments as a linguist,
in which few men in England excelled him — as a
logician — as a poetical critic of remarkably true and
severe taste, and as himself no mean poet — as to his
temper, skill, and admirable talents as a controversialist
— and his eminent merits as one of the purest and
best writers of English in his own or any age — I
say nothing. These subjects have been dealt with by
others. But my sketch of his personality w6uld be
defective indeed, if I did not, in addition to the in
tellectual side of his character, hold up to the light a
view of Wesley as regarded on the side of his temper
and disposition as a man with men and women, as a
kinsman and friend, as a comrade and leader. What
will be said in this chapter, indeed, on the subject will
be but partial and fragmentary. The volume I am
writing will have failed in its purpose, if Wesley's
character, in all its leading phases, does not come
increasingly into view, as the reader follows its course.
Still, it will be convenient to bring into view in this
N

194 THE LIVING WESLEY.
chapter some points of importance which do not fall
within the scope of any of the other chapters.
It is not necessary to deny that in listening to
men's own statements about themselves, Wesley's
charity was so extreme as fairly to lay him open to
the charge of credulity. On his properly intellectual
side he was, as I have shown, no more credulous than
Dr. Johnson or Cardinal Newman. On the side of
charitable hopes and judgments he may have been
open to the charge. His brother Charles, somewhere
in his Journal, writes that John " was born for the
benefit of knaves." John hardly denied the impeach
ment. When it was necessary to investigate or to
watch and study a suspicious case, he would send for
his brother Charles to come and assist him. The
greater suspiciousness of his brother, and his occasion
ally keener penetration and insight into personal
character, were of advantage by the side of John's
unsuspicious confidingness. Nevertheless, we have
John's own distinct statement, that, after all, he
was more seldom deceived in his estimate of men,
and more seldom betrayed by them, than his brother
Charles. He had in fact, and in no ordinary measure,
precisely what Miss Wedgwood thinks that he was
lacking in — great faculty of syfnpathy and insight, as
respected individuals; always, however, seeing more
directly and fully the good or the capacity of good
in them than the evil. He was necessarily, indeed,
to a very large extent, an absorbed and preoccupied
man. He had no leisure to give his mind to trifles,
and sometimes, especially in his earlier years, omitted
to relate to those interested, pleasant and proper
intelligence respecting friends or relatives. But this

WESLEY'S DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER. 195
was not owing to any real want of keen and ready
sympathy with others. He was, by the testimony of
all who knew him — of such witnesses as his friend
and follower, Henry Moore, and as his friend, the
Irish Churchman, Alexander Knox — one of the most
pleasant, sunny, sociable of companions, although he
could not give more than two hours at a time to Dr.
Johnson, who highly esteemed him and his society,
whereat the great dictator was sorely disappointed and
chagrined. Wesley was a quick-tempered man, and sometimes,
in his haste, said sharp things ; but he was yet
quicker to apologise, if he had spoken too strongly,
than to be angry. He was incapable of malice ; he
was one of the most forgiving of men. He was any
thing but a Stoic, but he never indulged in vain
regrets any more than in settled resentment. Scarcely
any other man could have carried such vast cares so
lightly as he did. " I feel and I grieve," he says,
" but, by the grace of God, I fret at nothing."
He was full of wit and pleasant humour, as all
who have read his Journal, or any of the larger
biographies of him, well know. Southey, Stevens, and
Tyerman all give excellent instances of this. The one
fact which I have found it difficult to reconcile with
any sense of humour, and with his general sunniness
and kindliness of disposition, is the seemingly morose
asceticism of his rules for the management of Kings-
wood School. In an earlier page of this volume I
have suggested what appears to be the only solution
of this apparently strange incongruity — this monastic
unkindliness. Public schools, in Wesley's time and
for many years afterward, were rude and harsh

196 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Spartan republics, where play meant coarse violence,
and where free, unfettered intercourse among the boys
meant mutual barbarising and demoralisation. Those
who dp not know the now happily almost incredible
truth as to the state of public boarding-schools in the
last century, will not be able to do justice to Wesley
in this respect. Wesley himself had had a bitter
experience at the Charterhouse. As for the mere
hardness of the Kingswood regulations, it must be
remembered that the regulations of all public schools
were hard : very early rising, regular hours for prayer
and worship, rigid fare, semi-monastic rules and usages,
and special dress, prevailed everywhere alike — in
Church of England schools, in Quaker schools, and in
Moravian schools.
While writing on the subject of Wesley's temper
and disposition, I cannot but make some special refer
ence to the manner in which Mr. Tyerman has, as
to certain points, dealt with the character of Wesley in
his mature and later life.
I wish to say a word, in the first place, about the
history of Mr. Alexander M'Nab, and the affair at Bath
with respect to this preacher and the Rev. Edward
Smyth, of Dublin, in 1779. • Mr. Tyerman has given a
full and careful history of the whole affair, for which he
deserves our thanks. But while he enters fully into the
position and convictions of the preacher who thought
himself aggrieved, he does not seem truly to have
realised Mr. Wesley's own position and necessities.
While we cannot but strongly sympathise in a certain
sense with the case of M'Nab, it is, I think, clear that
Wesley could not have acted otherwise than he did,
and that his conduct in the whole affair deserves the

WESLEY'S DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER. 197
highest praise. It was a crisis in which Wesley could
not have given way. But although he remained firm,
he respected the feelings and convictions of his
preacher ; treated him with generous consideration, and,
notwithstanding the opposition of his brother, afterwards
received him back into favour. So long as Wesley
lived, he could not absolutely part with his personal
power over his preachers. He used it in this case to
provide an opening for an Irish Methodist clergy
man for. whom it seemed necessary to provide ;
various and important interests, both in England and
in Ireland, appearing to require that he should so
provide. He was accustomed to move his preachers
from place to place according to the exigency of the
hour ; nor could his great work have ever been carried
on without the exercise of his discretion and authority
in so doing. Some years before, he had been obliged
suddenly to remove Mr. M'Nab from Edinburgh, where
he had had no more wisdom than to preach con
troversially against the doctrine of "final persever
ance," and so had made his position too hot to bear.
In the present case, the special ground of complaint
against Mr. Wesley was that M'Nab was removed from
Bath to make way for Mr. Smyth, who had come
over to labour under Mr. Wesley, and for whom,
as an ordained clergyman, Bath seemed to be a
peculiarly suitable sphere. Surely Wesley cannot be
blamed for using his admitted power in the present
instance. M'Nab rose up against Wesley with
ecclesiastical arguments, arguments as to pastoral
rights and so forth, which could have no force as
against Mr. Wesley, because of the specific and undeni
able relations which subsisted between the Patriarch of

198 THE LIVING WESLEY.
the Methodist itinerancy and his followers, and which
were a necessary element in the covenant subsisting
between them. M'Nab's arguments and his resist
ance were no doubt edged very keenly by his antipathy
to the Church of England, and his jealousy of any
superiority claimed by, or allowed to, her clergy.
But Wesley could not have submitted himself, and all
his prerogatives and powers, to the theoretical claims
of one of his junior preachers, a strong Scottish
doctrinaire, a Presbyterian theorist, however amiable
or estimable, without breaking down his authority and
discipline altogether. He showed, however, no vin-
dictiveness, and hastened, at the earliest opportunity,
to reinstate his contumacious follower, who, one is
not much surprised to learn, ended his course as an
Independent pastor, having, before he left Methodism,
been for a time in correspondence with the unfaithful
preacher whom Mr. Tyerman brands as " the traitor
Atlay." In this, as in some other matters, a larger
general view of Wesley's position and principles — of
the whole situation — would, I cannot but think, have
led Mr. Tyerman to a different conclusion from that
which he has pronounced.
It appears to me that Mr. Tyerman has failed to
apprehend fully the position in which Wesley found
himself as to the Church of England, or the powerful
reasons which made it impossible for him to accept in
full the position of the founder of a new and distinct
Church — a Church outside the Church of England,
and apart from all other Churches. I do not hesitate
to declare my own deepening conviction, that Wesley
could not, as a wise man — could hardly as a sane
man— have taken any other position than that to

WESLEY'S DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER. 199
which he held so fast. He was not called by
Providence to organise a distinctly and fully in
dependent Church. If he had undertaken the task, he
must have undertaken responsibilities which, at his
time of life, in his circumstances, and with his
antecedents, he could not possibly have sustained.
He did all he could to meet the feelings and views of
those who demanded separation. He was not obstinate
or immoveable; he was eminently candid and open-
minded. He yielded whenever it was necessary to
yield. He moved as far as he was obliged, though no
farther. This, I think, was not weak timidity on his
part, but was dictated by considerations of wise
Christian expediency. Nothing else in Wesley would
have been consistent or tolerable.1 In the many
instances, accordingly, in which Mr. Tyerman censures
Wesley for not fully recognising the claims of his
preachers to the full status of pastors, and to con
stitute of and by themselves the supreme and
independent governing authority for the Societies, I
think him to be in error. I do not admit that the
Methodist preachers had any necessary Divine right
to be ordained as presbyters, still less to be constituted
the supreme and sole governing body and fountain of
authority for the Societies of Methodism, as erected
into an independent and organised Church.
At the same time, I, of course, fully recognise the
fact (as Wesley himself, with beautiful candour,
always did, notwithstanding the violent antagonism of
his brother Charles), that, from their point of view,
the demands of the preachers were very natural, and
1 This subject is admirably treated by Dr. Gregory in his Handbook
of Church Principles, pp. 80-82.

200 THE LIVING WESLEY.
not at all unreasonable ; that, apart from Wesley's
personal history and necessities, and from the pre
judices and feelings of many within Methodism, and
of many without, very much was to be said for the
claims they urged.
In the first part of this volume I have spoken of
the austerity with which Mr. Tyerman deals with
Wesley, in all cases in which the propriety of his
conduct seems at all open to controversy. This
characteristic appears very strongly in his manner of
treating the history of Wesley's relations with two
eminently useful and devoted women, and in his
judgments respecting the women themselves. In the
instances to which I refer, he seems to me to have
done unintentional but serious injustice, not only to
Wesley himself, but to these excellent women — women
with whom Wesley was in intimate relations.
It will be anticipated that I refer, as one of these
cases, to Wesley's relations with Grace Murray. As
to this case, Mr. Tyerman sums up his judgment in
these strong words : " John Wesley was a dupe ; Grace
Murray was a flirt ; John Bennet was a cheat ; Charles
Wesley was a sincere, but irritated, impetuous, and
officious friend." 1 I confess that I cannot accept this
summary judgment. The case is unquestionably one
of no little difficulty and perplexity. But Mr. Tyer
man cuts the knot with a coarse knife, whereas it
needs to be untied with a skilful hand. Grace
Murray is not justly described as " a flirt." All we
know of her, apart from this affair, renders it very
improbable that she should have proved herself to be
such in this case. She was a woman, not only of
1 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. ii. p. 55.

WESLEYS DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER. 201
singular tact, but of attractive modesty, of perfect
propriety, and of deep piety.1 All we know of her
would lead to the conclusion that she would have
been not an unworthy helpmeet for John Wesley.
Wesley worked in her company during many months,
and closely watched her for years. We have his
distinct, deliberate, and emphatic testimony as to her
gifts and graces, her whole character and deportment.
Her Diary remains to us ; and we know the
superiority of her character and the savour of her
piety in her long after-life as the wife and widow of
John Bennet.2 Mr. Tyerman himself has furnished
full evidence on this point. Such a woman it is hard
to suspect of being guilty of " flirtation " with John
Bennet, still more with one so revered as Wesley,
and more still with Bennet and Wesley together.
The temper of " a flirt " would certainly have shown
itself much rather in her relations with inferior men
than with Wesley. No doubt she was strongly
attached to Bennet, on whom she had attended
assiduously as a nurse for six months, and who seems
to have thought himself secure of her affections, and
of her acceptance of himself whenever he should be
prepared to ask it. But if others had not interfered
— had not represented to her that she would be
sinning against Christ and His Church, that she was
under temptation herself, and was making herself a
1 There is nothing in the history of her residence at the Orphan
House, as read by a fair interpreter, inconsistent with this conclu
sion. 2 She married Bennet in 1749. He died in 1759, having, soon
after his marriage, left Wesley and become the independent pastor of
a number of scattered congregations. Mrs. Bennet died in 1803, at
the age of 84.

202 THE LIVING WESLEY.
tempter or cause of temptation to Wesley — she would,
no doubt, have gratefully and humbly made herself
Wesley's helper and cherisher for life. Those who,
for various reasons, were opposed to Wesley's marrying
Grace Murray, played continually upon her sensibility
and tenderness of conscience, and thus kept her in
most painful oscillation or vacillation. Sometimes,
also, they did what they could to sow jealousy
and suspicion in her mind, so as to alienate her, if
possible, from Wesley. These persons naturally sup
ported Bennet's suit and claim. Bennet himself
exerted all his authority and influence in the same
direction. It is possible to understand the perplexed
history to which I have referred without imputing
heartless trifling to Grace Murray, although she
undoubtedly showed not a little weakness in the
affair; but it is impossible to clear either John
Bennet or Wesley's brother Charles from all obliquity
of conduct in the part they took in this matter.
Throughout, the character of Wesley himself shines
most beautifully in connection with this affair, to
him, without question, the most painful trial of his
life. His own touching and beautiful poem on the
subject remains in evidence of his feelings in the
case. From Mr. Tyerman's criticisms on the case of Mrs.
Ryan I still more strongly dissent than from his
judgment in the matter of Grace Murray. I think
the principles on which he has dealt with this case
are altogether wrong. The unfavourable antecedents
of her early life are made much of — far too much of,
in my judgment. But notwithstanding those ante
cedents, whatever they were, her proved character and

WESLEYS DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER. 203
merits were such as to recommend her to the esteem
and intimate friendship of some of the most excellent
Christians of her time — Christians of high social
propriety and breeding, as well as of pre-eminent
Christian character, among whom Miss Bosanquet
(Mrs. Fletcher), after John Wesley, was one of the
most conspicuous. To assume that such a woman,
•because of her early life and connections, ought not to
have been employed by Wesley as his housekeeper at
Bristol, and a class-leader, is, I think, particularly
unworthy of a Methodist historian, and opposed to the
spirit of Christ's Gospel of grace. That Wesley was
right in the confidence he gave to Mrs. Ryan, was
demonstrated by the result. She was eminently use
ful and respected in situations of important trust, in
which Wesley placed her. Where others had failed,
she succeeded. No other woman could compare with
her as matron and manager. She was a remarkably
gifted and a most devoted woman. Her life, to
its close, justified the confidence which Wesley
reposed in her.1
Mr. Tyerman's judgment in these cases is singularly
severe, as respects all the parties concerned, not
excepting Mr. Wesley. He reflects upon Wesley for
taking Grace Murray with him on a pillion in his
journeys, several times, when there was special work
for her to do. Surely he cannot be ignorant of the
universal custom of Wesley's day for women to ride
on pillion behind men, either father, brother, husband,
affianced lover, trusted and reputable friend of suitable
age, or man-servant. Mrs. Charles Wesley travelled
many miles in this way behind preachers or man-
1 She died at Miss Bosanquet's Yorkshire Home and Orphanage in 1768.

204 THE LIVING WESLEY.
servants. To impute imprudence to Wesley in the
matter in question is exceedingly strange. Mr. Tyerman
condemns Grace Murray, again, because in her earlier
life, being under terrible temptation at the time —
temptation which assailed the very foundations of her
faith — she yet persevered in meeting her class, and
in all her other public engagements. To those
familiar with the memoirs of such men as Richard
Baxter, in former times, and Richard Treffry, jun., in
later times and in Methodist circles, a censure of Grace
Murray on such an account must seem passing strange.
But Mr. Tyerman appears to have very little sympathy
with spirits exercised by sore doubt and temptation.
Wesley's doubts and fears and self-condemnation, soon
after his conversion, appear to him to be a painful
mystery ; whereas to most others they will appear
to have been not only natural in themselves, but an
appropriate and valuable part of the discipline through
which such a teacher and leader as Wesley could not
but be expected to pass.
Mr. Tyerman more than intimates that Wesley was
imprudent in keeping up an extensive and confidential
correspondence with a large number of female disciples.
Of that correspondence many samples have been
printed. I would ask any one familiar with those
letters, or who has fairly realised what Wesley was to
the leading spirits throughout all his societies — their
special personal pastor and spiritual father — or in
what relation his personal instructions and influence
stood to the whole work of Methodism throughout all
the kingdom and in Ireland, to judge what Methodism
would have lost if such a correspondence had not
been kept up. It is scarcely too much to say, that

WESLEY'S DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER. 205
Methodism could hardly have been well sustained with
out it. Because of the wicked and insane jealousy
of Mrs. Wesley, Mr. Tyerman decides that Wesley's
correspondence with Mrs. Ryan, " pure and pious " as
he justly declares it to have been, ought not to have
been continued.
In this connection I may quote, as an illustration of
Wesley's relations with interesting and superior women,
part of what Alexander Knox writes to Hannah More
as to Wesley's fellowship with Miss Knox. Having
transcribed a note to himself, in which Wesley sends
an earnest message to " My dear Sally Knox," declar
ing that he "loves her dearly, and shall be glad to
meet her at our Lord's right hand," Mr. Knox
proceeds as follows : " John Wesley's impressible
nature inclined him to conceive such attachments, and
the childlike innocence of his heart disposed him to
express them with the most amiable simplicity. The
gaiety of his nature was so undiminished in its sub
stance, while it was divinely disciplined in its move
ments, that to the latest hour of his life there was
nothing innocently pleasant with which he was not
pleased, and nothing naturally lovely, which, in its due
proportion, he was not ready to love. To interesting
females, especially, this affection continually showed
itself : of its nature and kind, what he says of my
sister gives a striking manifestation."
One marked feature of Wesley's character un
doubtedly was his magnanimity — a magnanimity with
which no strain of pride or self-sufficiency was
blended. Forgiveness to him was easy. To malignity,
in any form or degree, he seems to have been an entire
1 Knox's Remains, vol. iii. pp. 478-9.

206 THE LIVING WESLEY.
stranger. He was often greatly tried and provoked,
but he calmly held on his way.
He was compelled sorely against his will to take
part in doctrinal controversies, but they were never
raised or prolonged by him upon high dogmatic or
purely theological grounds. For the most part, his
controversial writings were defensive. But whether
defensive or otherwise, it was always against practical
Antinomianism, breaking out in practice among his
Societies, or threatening seriously to infect them, that
he found himself constrained to descend into the
controversial arena. And in his controversy he never
returned railing for railing, or invective for invective.
His own evangelical theology, indeed, was strictly
defined, but the faith of which he spoke and wrote
was always "the faith which works by love and
purifies the soul." He was in truth one of the most
catholic of men. He thought little of doctrinal differ
ences where there was the unity of Christian love in
the heart. His beautiful sermon on a " catholic spirit "
exemplifies his own true spirit and uniform practice.
One of the griefs of his life was the difference, and,
for a while, controversy, between Whitefield and him
self in regard to the questions of election and predes
tination ; but the two great evangelists were not very
long in agreeing to differ ; they loved each other
warmly. Whitefield appointed Wesley his executor,
and Wesley preached his funeral sermon.
The great trial of his life, and one that lasted for
thirty years, was undoubtedly his ill-advised marriage to
a vain and vindictive woman who was altogether un
worthy of him ; but even in regard to this his saying
of himself was true : " I feel and I grieve, but by the

WESLEYS DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER. 207
grace of God I never fret." Well known as the
incident is, I do not like to omit in this connection a
reference to perhaps the most grievous wrong which
his wife inflicted on him, and the manner in which he
received and endured it. Mr. Tyerman gives an
account of it in his third volume (p. 233). A number
of his letters had been stolen by his wife. She had
interlined, falsified, forged names, made the letters
bear a vile construction, and sent them to the Morning
Post. When they came out in that paper, Wesley
had arranged to start the next morning for Canterbury,
where he had to preach, and to take his niece, Sarah
Wesley, with him. Miss Wesley has described the
interview between her father, Charles Wesley, and his
brother in her father's own words.
" I shall never forget," said Miss Wesley, " the
manner in which my father accosted my mother on
his return. ' My brother,' said he, ' is indeed an ex
traordinary man. I placed before him the importance
of the character of a minister, and the evil conse
quences which might result from his indifference to
it, and urged him, by every relative and public motive,
to answer for himself, and stop the publication. His
reply was, Brother, when I devoted to God my ease,
my time, my life, did I except my reputation ? No.
Tell Sally I will take her to Canterbury to-morrow.'"1
1 Mr. Wesley was  ii ii lij' hi I1111II1111 Hi illi to Mrs. Vazeille,
a merchant's widow, in 1751 1 she died in 1781.

CHAPTER III.
WESLEY'S LATER LIFE AND LAST DAYS.
TILL within a few years of his death it might
almost have seemed as if Wesley had no old age,
but only a protracted youth. At the age of eighty he
was far more active' and capable of enduring toil and
travelling than most young men. The buoyancy of
his spirits at the same time was remarkable. I quote
from Mr. Tyerman's Life the following passage in
illustration of what I have just said : " Wesley himself,
according to his own correspondence, seemed to grow
younger as he grew older. In a letter to the Rev.
Walter Sellon, dated London, January 10th, 1784, he
writes, 'On the 28th of last June I finished my
eightieth year. When I was young I had weak eyes,
trembling hands, and an abundance of infirmities, but,
by the blessing of God, I have outlived them all. I
have no infirmities now, but what I judge to be in
separable from flesh and blood. This hath God
wrought ! I am afraid you want the grand medicine
which I use — exercise and change of air.' " x
In one thing, however, the experiences of life had
made a change in him. His judgments were more
indulgent, both as to himself and as to others, in his
later than in his earlier years. There are three of
1 Tyerman's Wesley, vol. iii. p. 408.
208

WESLEY'S LATER LIFE AND LAST DA VS. 209
the sermons of his later life which will serve to
illustrate what I have just said. I refer to Sermons
106 on "Faith," and 110 on "The Discoveries of
Faith," in which he describes those who, though not
" sons," are yet " servants " of Christ ; and to Sermon
89, entitled "The More Excellent Way;" — sermons
which are remarkable for the mild liberality with
which he judges those imperfect but sincere Christians,
who had not attained to the strict standard of devo
tion and the full assurance of faith which he regarded
as proper to the complete character of a "man in
Christ Jesus." The notes also which he inserted
in the later editions of his Journals, relating to the
account of his own religious character and experience
given by himself about the time of his conversion,
show how the severity of his standard in regard to
religious character and experience had been softened.
Perhaps his illness in 1751, when he seemed to be
dying of a consumption, and had for some months to
keep his house and often his room at Bristol, and
during which time he wrote his Notes on the New
Testament and reviewed his life, may have helped
somewhat to modify the tone of his judgment in
regard to points of personal religious attainment. As
the years went on he seems to have become increas
ingly gentle, lively and sunny, and he was more and
more the delight of all the circles that he visited.
On Sunday morning, March 4th, 1787, when he
was in his eighty-fifth year, he conducted a service at
Plymouth, which lasted from half-past nine till nearly
one o'clock ; and in the evening the throng was such,
that, in order to reach the pulpit, he was literally
lifted over the people's heads. At five o'clock the
o

210 THE LIVING WESLEY.
next morning the house was again crowded, and at
six he left by coach for Exeter, to which city he
travelled through a continuous rain, and again preached
" to as many as could possibly squeeze " into the
chapel ; and says, " I know not that I ever saw such
an impression made on the people of Exeter before."
In 1783, when he was eighty years of age, he
had enjoyed for the first time (to use Mr. Tyerman's
phrase) " the luxury of a ministerial holiday." He
went to Holland with three of his closest friends
among the ministers, and he went partly at least for
relaxation, though, never losing sight of the great end
of his life, he took the journey also, as Mr. Henry
Moore says, " that he might indulge and enlarge his
catholic spirit by forming an acquaintance with the
truly pious of other nations." On this visit ministers
of religion welcomed him, and persons of high rank
showed him honour.
At Rotterdam he preached twice in the Episcopal
Church to large congregations. At the Hague, in the
house of a lady of high rank, he expounded part of
the 13 th chapter of the 1st of Corinthians to a
company of ladies and military men. He visited
some Moravian congregations, spending part of his
eightieth birthday at a Moravian children's love-feast.
His seventeen days' visit was one of the pleasantest
and most refreshing passages in his long life.
His days of persecution were over ; honours came
thickly upon him wherever he went. At Whitehaven,
in 1784, he had all the Church ministers to hear him,
and most of the gentry in the town, of whom he says,
" That they all behaved with as much decency as if
they had been colliers." The once proscribed and

WESLE YS LA TER LIFE AND LAST DA YS. 211
reviled evangelist had come to be the object of almost
universal honour. The churches which had been shut
against him for nearly half a century were now opened
on every hand. Bishops paid him reverence. Clergy
flocked to hear him, and to take part with him in
administering the Lord's Supper.
The great charm of his old age was its happiness
and goodness. Alexander Knox has furnished a
description which forms a fine counterpart to Mr.
Gambold's picture of him at Oxford as he was fifty years
before. " It would be far too little to say," writes
Mr. Knox, " that it was impossible to suspect him
of any moral taint, for it was obvious that every
movement bespoke as perfect a contrariety to all
that was earthly or animal as could be imagined
in a mortal being. His countenance, as well as con
versation, expressed an habitual gaiety of heart which
nothing but conscious virtue and innocence could
have bestowed. My acquaintance with him has done
more to teach me what heaven upon earth is implied
in the maturity of Christian piety than all that I have
elsewhere seen or heard or read, except in the sacred
volume." It is no wonder that such a man was
welcomed among the pure and good of all ages and of
every circle, or that children especially loved and
delighted in him, as he loved and delighted in them.
Tender and intense philanthropy, care for the poor
and needy, was as striking a characteristic of Wesley
as love for the good and pure, and for children. He
seems, in the years of terrible poverty and distress
which followed the war with the American colonists,
and preceded the miseries that came upon Europe
during the Revolutionary period, to have made it his

212 THE LIVING WESLEY.
custom, at the opening of the New Year, to give him
self personally to the toilsome work of collecting money
to relieve the distress, of which so much came to his
knowledge, both within and beyond his own Societies,
and which, even then, seems to have abounded most,
and in its most extreme form, in the neighbourhood of
Bethnal Green. Thus in 1787, when he was verging
on eighty-four, he gave the first five days of the year
to walking through London, street by street, to collect
subscriptions for such relief. Hard winter toil for
the aged saint ! Severe but blessed task work !
Heavenly example ! Christ-like self-sacrifice !
During the last six years of his life, however,
Wesley gradually began to show signs of growing
weakness and some of the infirmities of old age, though
he kept up his travelling and preaching almost to the
last. In 1789, less than two years before his death, he
paid his last visit to Ireland. One instance may
show how he was received in the homes of
the people. When he was about to leave a house
where he had stayed, " one and another," he says,
" fell on their knees all round me, and most of them
burst out into tears and earnest cries, the like of
which I have seldom heard, so that we scarce knew
how to part." Though suffering much now and again,
on his return to England, from the thirst and fever of
constitutional decay, he continued his customary task of
journeying from province to province. A month after
leaving Ireland he was visiting Cornwall, and in the fol
lowing spring (1790) he took his last northern jour
ney, in the course of which at Newcastle he preached
to the children in the Sunday school, according to

WESLEY'S LATER LIFE AND LAST DAYS. 213
his common custom, a sermon which, to quote Mr.
Atmore's words, " was literally composed and delivered
in words of not more than two syllables." This was
a remarkable test of the mental vigour and freshness
still remaining in the aged man of eighty-seven years.
It is also one out of many instances of the love for
the little ones which made the heavenly - looking
ancient man, with silvery locks, such an object of
wonder and delight to all the children who came near
him. Later in the same year, 1790, he visited the
eastern counties. Crabbe, the poet, heard him at
Lowestoft, and was struck, not only by his venerable
appearance, but by the way in which he quoted
Anacreon's lines with an application to himself : —
" Oft am I by woman told,
' Poor Anacreon ! thou growest old ;
See, thine hairs are falling all ;
Poor Anacreon ! how they fall ! '
Whether I grow old or no,
By these signs I do not know ;
But this I need not to be told,
'Tis time to lire, if I grow old."
On the same journey he preached at Lynn, where
every clergyman in the town was in his congregation
except one who was lame.
In these last days people gazed on Wesley with
veneration as he passed through the streets. He
returned their friendly greetings in the words of his
favourite apostle, " Little children, love one another."
At every place he visited he gave the Society his last
advice " to love as brethren ; fear God, and honour
the king." He generally closed these touching ser
vices with the verse which he gave out so often in

214 THE LIVING WESLEY.
the family circle at the preacher's house in City
Road : — " 0 that, without a lingering groan,
I may the welcome word receive,
My body with my charge lay down,
And cease at once to work and live."
He had intended to take his usual' journey to the
north in the spring of 1791, but was unable to
carry out his intention. His feebleness increased
upon him. He preached for the last time in City
Road Chapel, on Tuesday, February 22nd, and next
day he preached at Leatherhead his last sermon. On
Thursday, the 24th, he wrote his last letter — the
well-known letter to Wilberforce as to the horrors of
slavery. On the Friday he returned to the City Road
house to die. His death was in harmony with his life.
" The best of all, God is with us," were almost his
last words. The last hymn that he sung, and tried
once again to sing, when very near his end, was the
one which begins, —
" I'll praise my Maker while I've breath,
And when my voice is lost in death,
Praise shall employ my nobler powers ;
My days of praise shall ne'er be past,
While life, and thought, and being last,
Or immortality endures."
He died on March 2nd, 1791, being eighty-seven
years old. His last word was a simple " Farewell,"
addressed to his old companion, Joseph Bradford, one
of his most loved and best trusted preachers.

PART V.

SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.
THE PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM DURING
THE CENTURY SINCE THE DEATH OF WESLEY.
IN the year of Wesley's death, there were in Eng
land about 79,000 members of Society, and 312
ministers employed in Circuits, mostly of very wide
extent, covering a large part of England and Ireland,
as well as some part of Scotland.
In America generally, including what are now the
United States and a few outlying posts in Canada,
the number of members was between forty and fifty
thousand. The growth and progress of Methodism in America
after Wesley's death was simpler, swifter, and more
sweeping than in England, for reasons which will
presently appear. The Methodist Church there had
already for some years been an independent organisa
tion, owning no allegiance to any hierarchical or
religious communion whatever. When the colonies
achieved their independence, it was necessary for
Wesley to organise absolute independence for the
Methodism of the now independent States. The vast

216 THE LIVING WESLEY.
fields of- American territory were for the most part
absolutely unoccupied by any religious organisation.
Only in New England were they powerfully dominated
by any Church. There the Calvinistic Congrega
tionalists (or Congregationalised Presbyterians) were
established in the strictest and hardest sense, and, at
the time of Wesley's death, the Methodists could
scarcely be said to have even begun to make a lodg
ment in that part of the United States. But, with
this exception, and with the partial exception of New
York, the whole territory lay freely open to occupa
tion and evangelisation. The Church of England, at
this period, was all but extinguished in the States.
There was a great call for Methodism to do its work.
There was nothing to hamper it in doing that work.
Wesley accordingly ordained Coke and Asbury in the
year 1784, to the episcopal office (which, however,
he preferred to call the office of Superintendent). ,by which
was given to them a power of initiative, and a kind
and degree of authority, very closely resembling what
had been exercised by Wesley himself in England.
It is no wonder that, starting without a rival in its
own kind, as an itinerant evangelising agency, in a
new and boundless territory which rapidly expanded
from year to year, the Methodism of Wesley should
have very speedily attained, in the United States, a pre
eminent position such as Methodism in England could
not hope to attain ; should have become, in fact, over
the vast area of the North American continent, by
far the most powerful and widely diffused of evan
gelical organisations. Into the New England section
of States, Methodism entered comparatively late, and
it only forced its way slowly and with great difficulty ;

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 217
for that section of the Union was full of anti- Wesleyan,
anti-Methodist, ideas and prejudices, being the strong
hold of Calvinistic Congregationalism. But the
character and development of American Methodism
were formed and determined among the solitary home
steads, the lonely hamlets, the forest trysting-places,
where the adventurous Methodist rider — the itinerant
with his saddle-bags — found his way, and where often
he was the only visitor from the world of social inter
course and general intelligence that ever reached spots
so sequestered. To cope with the necessary work of
evangelising such a sphere of labour, with adequate
force and rapidity, it was necessary, not only to have
itinerant bishops who made the whole of the colonies
their episcopal circuit, but under them to have a sub-
episcopal order, whose labours were confined within
appointed limits, vast, indeed, but sufficiently defined.
These ministers were called Presiding Elders. In the
Methodism of the United States, they corresponded in
general character and functions, as nearly as. circum
stances allowed, to Wesley's assistants, after his
death called Superintendents, in English Methodism.
But while English circuits were very wide, the
American districts, for which the presiding elders
directed the evangelical forces, were vastly wider.
These presiding elders were lieutenants, acting under
the bishops, but they were lieutenant-generals who, in
their command, might be guided, but were scarcely
fettered, by the authority of their episcopal chiefs.
Within the districts of the presiding elders, subordinate
ministers, each with his own special but still extensive
sphere of labour, were stationed. They were called
Elders — simple elders — or, if not yet ordained, Deacons.

218 THE LIVING WESLEY.
Such, in rough outline, was the picture of American
Methodism, as it was already taking form when
Wesley died ; and, upon the foundation here slightly
sketched, the Methodist Church of the States has been
built up. Pastoral authority has always been a great
and leading feature of American Methodism, much
more so than of English Methodism. This has arisen
naturally out of the fact that, under such conditions
as I have described, only the extraordinary energy of
devoted itinerant pastors and preachers could have
effected the establishment throughout the States of the
evangelising work and life of the Methodist Church.
If, for a considerable period, American Methodism had
been confined within narrow limits around Baltimore
and Philadelphia — towns of considerable size, in which
it early obtained a powerful footing — and thence had
worked its way, by comparatively slow degrees, wher
ever fair-sized towns were established with a fringe of
townships or hamlets around them, it might have
developed in a way more nearly resembling the develop
ment of Methodism in England. There would then
have been leaders' meetings, watching over concentrated
Societies; and there would have been quarterly meetings
of the Circuits, in which meetings, under the presidency
of the elder or minister, the leaders of the Societies
and the stewards of the leaders' meeting would have
formed the chief constituent elements. But the rate
at which, through the forest, over the mountains, across
the prairie, the " saddle-bags " of the pioneer preacher
followed the " rifle and axe " of the settler, fixed
another law of development for the Church. The
ubiquitous bishop, whose flight was wonderfully swift,
and whose movements, made as he liked, were so

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 219
mysterious, whose visits were welcomed as those of a
celestial guide and teacher, and the daring, devoted,
heroic presiding elder, whose work and whose qualities
made him an absolute leader and disciplinarian, — these
carried Methodism over the whole land, and what,
under Providence, they thus created and were still
creating, the people looked to them and no others to
rule and preserve. Among a simple and primitive
people this practical economy was the only one
possible. American Methodism thus became a system
of evangelising agencies, largely worked, indeed, by
class-leaders, exhorters, and prayer-leaders, and other
lay-helpers, but throughout guided, animated, inspired,
sustained, by an itinerant preaching pastorate, under
the government of itinerant bishops and presiding
elders. Hence when, towards the end of the decade
which began with 1860, public attention at length
woke up widely to the wonderful spectacle of a vast
Church in the American Republic, entirely and all but
absolutely governed by its clergy, there was, for those
who believed strongly in lay rights, plenty of ground
for criticism.
I have already intimated that Methodism ex
perienced a difficulty in making its way in Puritan
New England. There English Puritan civilisation,
with its principles and prejudices, its theology and
its culture, with its Church schools and its denomi
national colleges, had taken deep and strong hold.
Nothing else was tolerated for the most part through
out that region. After the process of disestablishment
in the States was completed, some sixty years ago,
Methodism began to make much more rapid progress in
the North-Eastern States than it had done before, though

220 THE LIVING WESLEY.
doubtless, during the antecedent period, its labours and
aggressive evangelism had had much to do in acceler
ating the process of disestablishment, so that poll-tax
and property-tax should no longer be exacted from all
the population towards the support of the Congregational
clergy and their churches. But even of recent years the
progress of Methodism in that part of the Union has
not been among the old families of the oldest States,
but, for the most part, among the more recent deposits
of population. Neither has Methodism ever held a
leading position in New York, where the Presbyterians,
including the Dutch Reformed, hold a high place ; nor
in Brooklyn, the sister city of New York, where the
Congregationalists, having come over to Long Island
from New England, are most powerful. But in
Philadelphia, Methodism holds a very strong position,
and in Baltimore it is, I believe, the most powerful
Protestant denomination. Its great conquests, how
ever, have from the first been among the new settlers
that have filled up region after region towards the
west and south, and recently the north-west. One
reason of the great hold it has taken on Philadelphia,
is the fact that Philadelphia was the gateway leading
to the Alleghanies and to Ohio, and all the region
which, one hundred years ago, was for American
settlers the great Far West — the region of forests and
mountains and prairies and Indians. Of Baltimore
it took hold, because there and throughout the colony,
of which Baltimore was the chief city, and where the
English Episcopal Church had a powerful hold before
the Revolutionary War, Methodism stepped into the
place of the Church of England, during and after the
War of Independence, and Methodists ministered to

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 221
the flocks from which the English clergy (a Loyalist
clergy) had retreated under stress of civil conflict,
which they could not but regard as rebellion — so be
coming rebels themselves to the victorious Federalist
government. Methodism in that way became the
leading Church in Maryland ; and, because of its
missionary genius and spirit, speedily spread far away
down south and south-west. But Philadelphia and
Baltimore were but the narrow and limited frontier
and base of a dominion which extended through an
immense continental interior, much more apparently
vast a hundred or even fifty years ago, and extending
into regions far more apparently remote, because far
more inaccessible, than the most distant and least
frequented regions of the utmost and newest north
west and Indian border of to-day. Thus Methodism
became the religion of the great untracked wilderness
first, that it might in after years become the ruling
religion of the great States, from the Atlantic to the
bases of the Rocky Mountains, which now occupy the
area of that once trackless wilderness. The same
causes in fact determined the hierarchical form into
which American Methodism developed, and also
gave it the continental expansion into which it has
grown. To the form of Church government which has
now been sketched, American Methodism has proved
faithful to this day. Within the last twenty years,
however, it has introduced the element of lay
representation into its General Conferences, which
meet every four years. The Annual Conferences,
which carry on the ordinary discipline of the body
from year to year, under the guidance of the bishops,

222 THE LIVING WESLEY.
remain purely clerical bodies ; and the functions of
the presiding elder remain unaltered, at least as yet.
In 1844 the Slavery Controversy brought about a
separation between the northern and southern sections
of the Church, nearly coincident, geographically, with
the line of demarcation between what were at that
date the free and the slave-holding States of the Union.
There is now, accordingly, a large Methodist Episcopal
Church south. The principles, however, on which the
two Churches are organised and disciplined remain
essentially the same. There are, indeed, no fewer than
five different Methodist Episcopal Churches in America,
all organised on the same general model, of which three
are coloured Churches. Besides these Churches there
are non-Episcopal off-shoots from American Methodism,
as might naturally be expected, which have been
established on the basis of what are claimed as lay
rights. The earliest of these is the Protestant
Methodist Church, which was founded in 1830, and
which in sixty years has very slowly attained to a
position of some influence, although its numbers, in
comparison of the Episcopal Methodist Churches, are
still exceedingly small. The others are inconsiderable.
It seems at first sight a marvellous thing that, in a
democratic country like the States, an ecclesiastical
constitution so strongly hierarchical as that of
American Methodism should have been so very widely
accepted. But the causes which have led to it have
been partly indicated.
At the opposite extreme is the Baptist denomina
tion; and it is remarkable that this denomination,
next to Methodism, should be the most widely diffused
throughout the States : the two extreme contrasts, in

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM.

223

other words, find the largest number of adherents.
But the two bodies have their resemblances as well as
contrasts. Both are homely and popular in their
modes of worship and fellowship ; both are free and
easy in their style, so long, at least, as they dwell and
spread in the wilderness, or outside of the largest
towns ; both have held strong doctrine, and preached
it in strong phrases. The Baptist denomination is
very heterogeneous, including an exceedingly large
variety of congregations gathered on every conceivable
principle, and distinguished by an extraordinary
variety of different names.
American Methodism holds the central position
among the Churches. Less solid and less educated
on the whole than the powerful and well-ordered
Presbyterian Churches of Scottish or Dutch descent ;
less scholarly, less philosophical, less refined, but also
less latitudinarian than the Congregationalist Com
munion, which it outnumbers eightfold — it is far more
solid, more cultivated, and more disciplined than,
speaking generally, the Baptist Churches can be said
to be. Methodism has touched the broad heart of
the nation, and taken hold of its central classes — its
average business men, whether farmers or store-keepers
— as no other denomination has ; without sweeping as
low as the Baptists or the Roman Catholics, it is the
most popular Church in the States. The Protestant
Episcopal Church, which may be called the Anglo-
Episcopal Church of the States, is not congenial, on
the whole, to the character of the Republic. It stands
very low, numerically, on the list of Churches. It,
however, includes elements of culture and refinement
which lend it great distinction. Not a few of the

224 THE LIVING WESLEY.
wealthiest men in the States belong to it. It has
become exceedingly active and aggressive, putting
forth great mission efforts in newly-colonised and
sparsely-populated districts. The character and gifts
of its leading bishops, and the generosity of its leading
laymen, attract to it not a little attention and admira
tion, especially from English visitors of Episcopalian
predilections. The development of High Ritualism,
during the last generation, has been its curse ; and
now a discipline of sectarian exclusiveness is enforced
upon its clergy by some, at least, of its synods with
a strictness unknown in this country.1
I have already hinted at the contrast between the
conditions under which Methodism developed in the
United States and in this country. Difficulties similar
to those which blocked the progress of Methodism in
New England were found almost throughout the whole
of this country. Our national Church establishment is
deep rooted everywhere. Not seldom, also, the influences
of a Calvinistic Puritanism, not less prejudiced, not
less hard and impenetrable, than any which could be
found in New England, have added another element
of difficulty. The whole soil is preoccupied. Some
times it is preoccupied with a tangle of mixed and
ancient roots and growth ; and often it has been very
hard indeed for Methodism to gain any rooting. To
this day, such is the case, to an extent little under-
1 In 1776 eleven different denominations were counted in the
American Colonies. The Methodists were at the bottom of the list,
with eleven churches and twenty ministers. The four first in order
were Congregationalists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians.
At the present time the Methodists head the list ; and the five next
following are Baptists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Congrega
tionalists, Episcopalians.

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 225
stood north of the Trent, throughout the southern
counties almost from sea to sea, and also in the
south-midland counties generally. In these regions
Methodism gained scarcely any foot-hold during
Wesley's life, except here and there in a mining or
manufacturing locality.
When Wesley was taken from the head of his
people, — when the great and almost ubiquitous personal
force, which had been more and more acknowledged
and reverenced for many years, was for ever removed,
— the loss was irreparable. For John Wesley there
could be no substitute any more than any successor.
The news of Wesley's death — though his preachers
of course were looking for it — came almost like
the shock of a revolution upon both preachers and
Societies. How they were to be delivered from
confusion and something like chaos was the deep
perplexity. To make this state of things worse still,
the preachers and Societies were divided into three
parties. There was a strong Church of England party,
ready to quote Wesley's name for many things that
Wesley never intended, and would not have approved ;
a party, many of whom desired the settlement of
the chapels, if it could be so managed, on trustees,
with ordained Wesleyan ministers as their clergy, in
connection with the Church of England. There was
ah opposite extreme, composed of radical Dissenters,
at that particular period sharing in the intense
democratic excitement and enthusiasm which was
connected with the earlier stages of the French
Revolution. There was a middle class, happily larger
than either of the extremes, or than both put together,
consisting mostly of plain practical men, with little
P

226 THE LIVING WESLEY.
regard for Church theories, but no relish for impro
prieties or democratic excesses in church discipline
or congregational life. These desired that, as Wesley
had ordained some of his preachers before he died
to administer the Sacraments, the process should be
continued now that he was gone, and applied on a
larger scale, if not in the way of actual ordination
by ceremony and consecration, yet, at any rate, by
authority given to the ministers generally to administer
the Sacraments where the people, including the leaders
and trustees, generally desired it. The years of con
troversy during which these questions were simmering,
and occasionally breaking out into paroxysm, were
years of great trial to the orphaned Connexion. The
wonderful history has often been written, and is now
pretty well understood. Wonderful was the wisdom,
patience, and practical skill and equity shown in the
legislation of the momentous years, 1791-97. The
measures then adopted laid the foundation of all the
development of Methodism in the following years.
Preachers became pastors; the leaders' meetings became
church courts for the Societies ; quarterly meetings
became in effect mixed Circuit Synods ; the district
meetings — the characteristic new creation of this
period, and which were organised in the first Con
ference following Wesley's death — were Provincial
Synods ; while over the whole, the Conference, with
its President elected year by year, held sway.
The secession of 1796, raised on grounds similar
to the American secession of 1830, by which the
Protestant Methodist Church was founded in the
States, produced very little disturbance, when once
the moment of decision came. Six thousand followed

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 227
Mr. Kilham into the New Connexion field. Since then
the process of organisation in Wesleyan Methodism
has been going forward in two directions : the ministers
have become a fully-equipped body of clergy, with
their training colleges and a formal ordination for the
office and work of the ministry, while the correlative
official functions and the co-organised influence and
partnership of the laity have at the same time been
continually developed. The services of the sanctuary,
which in Wesley's days, except in the few places
where he and his brother Methodist clergymen con
ducted the liturgical service of the Church of
England, were slight and short and informal, bearing
the marks of a secondary and supplementary character
which had originally belonged to them, gradually be
came throughout the whole Connexion rich with all
that befits the devotional services of a Christian Church
— rich not only in free prayer, but especially rich in
sacred song and music. Thus Methodism stands now
before the public eye of England as a fully-organised
and an independent Church of the nation. These steps
were not gained without much friction and much con
troversy. The way to stable settlement lay through such
friction and controversy. To have yielded at every turn
to the objectors on one side and the other would have
involved greater friction, worse controversy, together
with a fatal result. One of the secessions grew out
of what was called the " organ question," rather more
than sixty years ago. Another took for its pretext
the proposal to provide theological education and
pastoral training for the ministry. The last, a very
great and lamentable secession, was one which grew
out of a schism, kindled originally upon purely

228 THE LIVING WESLEY.
personal grounds, but which absorbed into itself and
rekindled the smouldering remains of former agita
tions. It is not for me in this sketch to describe
these agitations, least of all the last. The history is
one to be read with deepest sorrow. Doubtless, also,
it has its lessons, to be well pondered and to be made
use of in the future.
But, besides the Churches which arose out of what
may be called formal secessions, there are two that
grew in each instance out of local zeal, which refused
to be guided or limited by discipline. These zealous
and useful bodies are now known as the Primitive
Methodists and the Bible Christians, the former having
sprung up among the excitable potters and colliers of
Staffordshire, some twenty years or more, after the
death of Wesley, and the latter among the still more
excitable inhabitants of the border ground on the
confines of Cornwall and Devonshire, some ten years
later. Between them and the parent body there has,
for the most part, been a friendly understanding.
Such outbreaks of individualism in Churches — for
good as well as sometimes for evil — are sure to take
place, and no wisdom or generosity of administration
could avail to prevent them. These two instances
would seem to have been providentially overruled.
If we look at Methodism now in England, with all
the bodies that have arisen out of it in the manner
that has just been indicated, we find that the same
general principles of doctrine, though in the case of
some of the smaller bodies hardly held with the same
strictness or tenacity or formal security as in the parent
body, form the substance of the teaching throughout
all its Churches or Societies.

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 229
Evangelical Arminianism is the doctrine of all the
Methodist bodies. In all of them, also, the principle
of experimental and oral church fellowship is en
shrined at the centre of the organisation, although, as
regards the two principal secessions to which I have
referred, the authority of the class-meeting has not
been maintained with the same sacredness as in the
parent body. Nevertheless, with whatever variations
or deductions, the various Methodist bodies, collectively,
may be said to represent throughout the country the
doctrinal principles and spiritual fellowship character
istic of Wesley's Societies. They may thus be re
garded as combining to represent in the life of the
people the great features of Wesley's ecclesiastical
creation. Those of them in whose constitution and
connexion al fabric democratic principles, with a
distinct political colouring, are intermingled, find
access, on this very account, to a class of persons
who do not know how to distinguish between strongly
held political principles and moral or religious con
victions. On the other hand, those who prefer a
politically neutral Church, where they may find rest
at least within the sanctuary borders from the echo
and from the spirit of political dispute and animosity,
will continue to prefer the older body, especially with
its highly-developed recent organisation, including as
that does both ministerial and lay agency, with
mutual counsel and joint authority, and providing as
it does for high ministerial training and culture.
Considering the difficulties under which the work of
Methodism in England has had to be prosecuted for
these one hundred years, difficulties at which I have
but very slightly glanced, and the contrasted advan-

230 THE LIVING WESLEY.
tages and facilities which have favoured the progress
of Methodism in the United States, there seems no
reason for doubting that the work accomplished in
this country has in proportion been as great as that
accomplished in the United States.
In Canada there were different varieties of Method
ism, including samples of almost every kind known
either in the States or in England, from Episcopal
Methodism of American descent to the Bible Christian
Connexion. These bodies have all found the way,
during the last few years, to unite in one Connexion
and on a common basis, which seems to approach al
most nearer to the Episcopal Methodism of the United
States than to any other form of Methodism, and which
may be presumed to be peculiarly adapted to the
requirements of that vast territory and young empire
which is known as the Dominion of Canada.
The Methodist mother Church in England has, of
course, extended through the English Colonies. In
Australasia and Polynesia the Mission Churches
became administratively independent thirty-five years
ago, under an affiliated Colonial Conference. For
ten years past the Australasian Conference has been
financially as well as ecclesiastically quite independent
of the mother Church. The powers of the English
Yearly Conference, in regard to Connexional property
in Australasia and Polynesia, to the appointment of
ministers, and to legislation and discipline, were trans
ferred to the Australasian Conference under the
sanction and powers of an Act of the British Parlia
ment. The Australasian Connexion has now for some
years past been under the government of a General

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 231
Conference, which meets once in three years, and of
four Annual Conferences : one centred in New South
Wales ; a second for Victoria and Tasmania ; a third
for South Australia ; and a fourth for New Zealand.
The constitution and order of the Conferences are in
general agreement with the English model.
In Southern Africa, including the English Colonies
and some portion of the territory beyond their limits,
the Mission Churches were in 1882 constituted into
a Connexion under an Affiliated Conference, with a
considerable annual grant from the Foreign Missionary
Fund of the mother Church, which, however, is, during
a course of years, being gradually reduced. Similar
arrangements were made in 1884 in regard to the
Methodist Churches in the West Indies, which are
placed under an Affiliated General Conference and two
Annual Conferences.
Methodism in France has always been feeble in
numbers, though its operation as a spiritual force
among the French people has been most helpful in
quickening French Protestantism during the last sixty
years into some degree of evangelical life. There has
been an Affiliated French Methodist Conference since
1852, which remains largely dependent on English
Missionary Funds. In France, however, it should be
added, English Methodism has also its own distinctly
organised evangelising agencies under a General Super
intendent. The parent Church has missions in Continental
India, Ceylon, and China, in Southern and Western
Africa, in the Bahamas, in British Honduras, and other
parts of the South American Continent, in Germany,
Italy, and France.

232 THE LIVING WESLEY.
The following table, taken from the Wesleyan
Methodist Kalendar for 1891, gives a summary'of the
statistics of Wesleyan Methodism at home and
abroad : —
STATISTICS OF WESLEYAN METHODISM. Members, including
ivmiisieis.
Great Britain
Ireland
.Foreign Missions
French Conference
South African Conference
West Indian Conferences
Australasian Conferences 3,517 760,158
To these may fitly be added the num -
bers for the Methodist Church in
Canada  1,588 227,034

Ministers.

those on Tr

. 2,004

512,440

. 232

25,976

366

39,144

36

1,504

. 171

43,510

90

48,378

618

89,206

5,105 987,192
The following are the corresponding numbers for
the two Methodist Churches which, though what may
be regarded as irregular offshoots from Wesleyan
Methodism, were not in the nature of hostile
secessions : —
Primitive Methodists (at home and
abroad)  1,049 193,658
Bible Christians (at home and abroad) 271 32,335
Of the Methodist bodies which originated in distinct
secessions from the parent Connexion, the following
statistics are given : —
Methodist New Connexion (at home
and abroad)  202 35,775
United Methodist Free Church (at
home and abroad) .... 417 85,461
Wesleyan Reform Union (at home and
abroad)  19 8,096

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 233
The Methodist Churches of the United States are
conveniently divided into two classes : the Episcopal
Churches, all of which have substantially the same
government by means of bishops and presiding elders ;
and the Non-Episcopal Churches, which, for what may
be described as democratic ecclesiastical reasons, have
rejected Episcopacy. The Protestant Methodist Church,
already referred to, is by far the largest of these, count-
ins more than one-half of the total number of members
in this class.
„ . . ... , ... . , Members, including
Episcopal Churches. Ministers. those on Trial.
Methodist Episcopal Church . . 15,095 2,237,526
Methodist Episcopal Church (South) 4,687 1,132,480
African Methodist Episcopal Church . 2,550 405,000
African Methodist Episcopal Church
(Zion Church) . . .2,110 314,000
Coloured Methodist Episcopal Church
of America  1,729 165,000
Evangelical Association . . . 1,187 145,703
United Brethren Church, . . . 1,566 195,278
28,924 4,594,987
Non-Episcopal Churches . . . 4,072 201, 2641
As respects the American Methodist Churches, it is
proper to observe that the slavery question, in one or
other form, has been the cause of the divisions indicated
by the first five lines in the above statistics — the dis
tinctions in discipline amongst all the five Churches
being comparatively insignificant. There has been a
good deal of discussion on the subject of re -union
between the Church South and the parent body, but as
yet this question does not seem to ripen. In the
meantime it cannot be doubted that the divisions
1 These figures are taken partly from the American Methodist Year-
BookiovnW, and partly from the Wesleyan Methodist Kalendar, 1891.

234 THE LIVING WESLEY.
enumerated above have been more conducive to real
Christian unity of feeling and mutual fraternal rela
tions than any forced organic union could have been.
Most of the denominations in question cultivate a
mutual interchange of deputations and salutations on
the occasion of their great Conferential gatherings, and
I am not aware that between any of them there is any
unfriendly feeling.
Various estimates have been made as to the total
mass of the world's population gathered into connec
tion with Christian worship and organisations, which
may be regarded as standing in definite relation
with these various branches or offshoots of the
Methodist family of Churches. On the whole, I think
it better to attempt no estimate myself. If Sunday-
school children had been included, the general total
would have been enormously increased, there being, in
connection with the British Wesleyan Methodist Church
alone, no fewer than 932,888, of whom, however, a
considerable proportion are Church members. Pro
bably it might be reasonable to multiply the number of
Church members in Wesleyan Methodism by from four
to five in estimating the total household population
connected with the Church. The Wesleyan Methodist
rule as to membership is very strict, and therefore in
proportion to the number of communicants the total
number of the population connected with the Church,
including children and household dependents, would be
a larger multiple than in the case of less strict Churches
— as, for example, the Church of England. The rule of
Methodist membership in the United States is less strict
than in England ; a fact which, whilst it undoubtedly
contributes to the nominal increase of American Method-

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 235
ism from year to year, has not contributed to the increase
of spiritual life or the strengthening of moral power.
The largest Church in a great country, which holds the
central commercial position in the nation, tends to
increase in the number of its nominal adherents, for
reasons other than those merely of spiritual conviction
and growth. To be connected with such a Church —
especially in a church-going country — yields a distinct
advantage, when regarded from a secular point of view.
Nevertheless, though American Methodism may be
laxer than English Methodism in the respect referred
to, it is still beyond question more strict in regard to
its conditions of membership than the Anglo-Episcopal
communion of Churches on either side of the Atlantic.
Taking all points into fair consideration, there is
sufficient ground for concluding that the Methodist
Churches of the world represent a larger aggregate of
Christian organisation than the Churches of any other
Protestant denomination. How far their spiritual power
to-day, on the whole, may be regarded as proportionately
equal to the spiritual power of Methodism on both
sides of the Atlantic fifty years ago, is a difficult and
serious question as to which I shall not hazard any
opinion. As regards Wesleyan Methodism, however, in parti
cular, there are some special features of its modern
development so conspicuous and important, that it
seems proper, even in a slight and summary view such
as the present, to make some reference to them.
Modern Methodism is proving itself, at least in one
respect, to be increasingly inspired by the primary
impulse of its founder, to mission and reclaim the
most spiritually needy and neglected of the population.

236 THE LIVING WESLEY.
For Home Mission work, English Methodism appears
to have received, during the last twenty years, a fresh
baptism. Extraordinary zeal and enterprise and
generosity have marked the recent developments of
its work in this department of Christian service. The
fame of its great and comprehensive Home Mission
work in London has reached the ends of the earth.
Not only in London, however, but in most of the
great towns of England, and especially in Manchester,
Liverpool, and Birmingham, similar work is being
carried on with no less energy and zeal, and with at
least equal success. Not less remarkable — though
less known and perhaps even more difficult — is the
work of evangelising the spiritually dark and excep
tionally poor stretches of rural England into which
Wesley and his fellow-workers were unable to extend
their evangelistic labours. Alike in the great towns
and in the more and more sparsely populated rural
regions of England, modern Methodism, under changed
conditions, which have greatly enhanced the difficulties
of the work, is filling up the measure of its
founder's grand missionary inspiration, by means of
men of zeal and devotion not unworthy to be com
pared with the early Methodist itinerants. Together
with this mission work, social agencies of religious
rescue for society's lost ones, and for childhood's
hapless waifs and strays, have also been set in opera
tion, and are enlisting, to an encouraging extent, the
sympathy and co-operation alike of the mature who
have zeal and wisdom to guide, and of young converts
who give their fresh energies, their leisure, and no little
of their worldly means to this eminently Christian
work. These are exceedingly hopeful signs in con-

PROGRESS OF UNIVERSAL METHODISM. 237
nection with modern Methodism in England, and
show that the spirit and sympathy of Wesley survive
in the hearts of the Methodist people of to-day.
In America a similar spirit has shown itself very
generously, in the provision of homes for the widowed
and destitute among members of the Church, and
orphanages for children. In the younger country,
however, the special needs and difficulties of Old
England have not yet attained to what may be re
garded as an acute stage of development. Accordingly,
such Home Missionary and social efforts and enter
prises as those I have referred to have scarcely, as
yet, begun to be developed in Transatlantic any more
than in Colonial Methodism.
There is a further point which I should name
as a characteristic feature of the English Methodism
of to-day. I refer to the remarkable intelleckial
development of the last twenty or thirty years. In
former generations, Methodism, in comparison with
other forms of English Nonconformity — not to speak
of the Established Church — was confessedly wanting
in respect of cultivated intellectual power on the part
of its ministers. That is no longer the case. It
would be invidious to mention names, but it may
be said that alike in theology, philosophy, Biblical
exegesis, Christian apologetics, and general literature,
Methodism can show an array of superior writers,
whose name and reputation are coming to be recognised
by Christian students of all Churches. Several also of
the ministers of Methodism have proved themselves
to possess uncommon gifts, not only as preachers but
as sermon writers. It is not an insignificant fact
that the one Nonconformist Quarterly Review, of the

238 THE LIVING WESLEY.
highest class, and competent to deal with the great
Christian and social questions of the day, is published
at the Wesleyan Methodist Book-Room, and sustained
chiefly by a staff of Wesleyan Methodist writers.1
The large Connexional staff of tutors and professors,
which is distributed over the different theological
and other colleges of the Connexion, including the
Leys School, under the head-mastership of the present
learned and distinguished President of the Conference,
shows an aggregate of cultivated intellectual power,
in all that belongs to the learning necessary to a
Christian Church, such as may well compare with the
College Faculties of other Churches.
In a Centenary Volume, like the present, such
statements as the foregoing, I venture to think, may
well be regarded as not unbecoming, but as even called
for by the occasion.
I close this chapter and this volume by setting down
a statement, the truth of which, in view of all that
has now been set forth, will hardly be questioned.
With whatever abatements, and notwithstanding all
imperfections, the Methodism of the world stands out
in this Centenary year of Wesley's death, as incom
parably the most wonderful result which the world's
history has shown as arising from the labours of
any Christian leader, at least since the time of Luther.
1 The London Quarterly Review.

MORRISON AND QIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

Shortly lo be published, Second Edition, Revised, aud Enlarged by a
New Chapter on American Episcopal Methodism,
A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF CHURCH ORGANIZATIONS,
PRIMITIVE AND PROTESTANT,
WITH A
Supplementary Chapter on
METHODIST SECESSIONS AND METHODIST UNION.
BY THE
EEV. JAMES H. RIGG, D.D.
Demy 8vo, 5s.

" We have seldom read a book, especially an ecclesiastical book, with
greater interest. . . . The broad, generous, and, in the best sense, critical
spirit in which the various chapters are written, is such as to conciliate
interest and attention in a more than usual degree." — The Presbyterian
Messenger. "He has accomplished his task in a manner highly creditable to his
candour, good sense, and scriptural learning, so as to leave behind no
single impression of un-Christian temper, or unfair criticism of rival
theories. ' ' — English Churchman.
" With a large portion of its contents we are in entire sympathy, and
when we are constrained to differ from the author, we have been reminded
of the saying that ' the errors of a wise man are more instructive than the
truths of a fool.' . . . We tender him our best thanks for the splendid
service he has rendered in a controversy " [that relating to the claims and
position of Anglicanism] " which will ere long be the great controversy of
the age. . . . The difficulties in the way of ' Methodist Union ' are clearly
and temperately put ; and cannot, as we 'Link, be speedily removed." —
Methodist Free Churclies Magazine.
" Though we differ from Dr. Bigg, we none the less regard his work as
an able contribution to the discussion of Church principles." — Primitive
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