(i) Contemporary versus Historical Judgments
CHAPTER X
THE. EMERGENCE OF A PROPHET
ConTuMELY and persecution have been the birth pangs and growing pains of most movements which have cleansed society, and wrought deliverance to the soul of man.
As for the eighteenth century Revival, commonly known as the Evangelical Movement, it was cradled and reared in an atmosphere of insolence, contempt and abuse.
Yet the day was to dawn when the descendants of those who maligned it would acclaim it, "' the moral salvation of England," and a mighty inspiration to all mankind.
Few world movements, indeed, have ever emerged from the depths of slander to the heights of historical honour, with such consistent progress as did this remarkable revival of vital, practical religion.
(i) Contemporary versus Historical Judgments John Kirkby, Rector of Blackmanstoke, writing in 1750, twelve years after Wesley's "' conversion," speaks of " the horrid blasphemies and impieties taught by those diabolical seducers called Methodists."
'' They pray," he says, "' in the language of a saint to Beelzebub himself" ;1 and '"' their religion," he declares, " could be forged nowhere else but in the bottomless pit."2 John Wesley he designates as " that mystery of iniquity " and "emissary of Satan'? whose religion is "as opposite to Christianity as heaven is to hell," and whose '"' damnation will be just."
Then, warning the public against "' Methodist " meetings, he cries:
'' You should be as much afraid to come near their assemblies as you would be to put your hand into the den of a cockatrice.''® Bishop Lavington, referring to the disciples of Wesley and Whitefield, says:
"' Their whole conduct is but the counterpart of the most wild fanaticisms of the most abominable communion
1 J. Kirkby, The Impostor Detected, p. 23. bide pes .- 3 Ibid., p. 52.
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in its most corrupt ages."
Dr. Smollett, in his History of England (1760), exclaims:
'"' Imposture and fanaticism still hang upon the skirts of religion.
Weak minds were seduced by the delusions of a superstition, styled Methodism, raised upon affectation of superior sanctity and pretention to divine illumination.
Many thousands were infected with this enthusiasm by the endeavours of a few obscure. preachers, such as Whitefield and the Wesleys, who found means to lay the whole Kingdom under a contribution."?
Even as late as 1808, in the Edinburgh Review, Rev. Sydney Smith exhibits the same prejudice.
Referring collectively to the followers of Wesley, Whitefield and the Evangelical clergymen within the Establishment, but not connected directly with the Methodist societies, he sneers :
We shall use the general term of Methodism to designate those three classes of fanatics, not troubling ourselves to point out the finer shades and nicer discriminations of lunacy, but treating them all as in one general conspiracy against common sense and rational, orthodox Christianity.''® For decades, too, many magistrates, squires and civic officials not only winked at the brutal and drunken attacks of mobs and gangs upon peaceful, offenceless "' Methodist'? gatherings, but encouraged, if they did not actually direct, these intoxicated wretches in their criminal and barbaric brigandage.*
But priests, bishops, historians, journalists, magistrates and squires by no means monopolised this aggressive opposition.
Sir Robert Walpole the politician, Pope the poet, Fielding the novelist, Lord Northington the judge, Butler the theologian,
Foote the dramatist, Hume the philosopher, Hogarth the painter, Lady Buckingham the smart society leader, Horace
Walpole the literary man-about-town, and Cobbett the demagogue—these are but a few of the notabilities who enlisted as lieutenants in the solemn campaign to exercise the hated spectre of "' Methodism," which was haunting the arctic formalism of English life.
As early as 1740, more than one hundred anti-revival publications had poured from the Press ; by the close of the century, their number was Legion.
And certain of their titles are as ?
1 Enthusiasm of Papists and Methodists Compared 1750).
Lavington later was reconciled to Wesley, whose Journal (August 29th, 1762) says :
T was well pleased to partake of the Lord's Sup; ith my old opponent, yous Jevington:
O, may we sit down together the Kingdom of our ather !|"'
2 Vol. XV, pp. 121-2.
When, shortly before his death, Smollett wrote Humphrey Clinker, he had quite changed his attitude.
3 Edinburgh Review, No. XXII, art. V (Ingram on "' Methodism "').
4 Wesley's Journal references to these attacks are far too numerous to list
TMeE
EMERG ENCE
:O'F Ay PRO OP HET
amusing as their contents are revealing.
In 1743 appeared the scurrilous anonymous farce, Trick upon Trick, or Methodism Displayed.
The worthy Dr. Faustus, in 1757, published A Dozen Reasons Why the Sect of Conjurers, called Fortune Tellers, should have at least as much Liberty to Exercise their Abominable Art as is now granted to Methodists, Moravians, and other sorts of Conjurers.
In 1758 came, Die and be Damned (anonymous), the title being specially designed to '"' appeal to gentlemen."
S. Roe, in Enthusiasm Detected and Defeated (1768), charitably proposed legislative power to "cut out the tongues " of field preachers ; and the author of The Jesuit Detected (1769) could still prove that Wesley was a wily, " plotting Papist.""
The Serpent and the Fox (1777), by Auscultator, bore the luminous sub-title An Interview between Old Nick and Old fohn; while Bishop Challenor's Caveat against the Methodists (1787) was one among scores of attacks in an episcopal succession.1
Even the great High Church historian, J. H. Overton, points out that "among the numerous Bishops' charges, from 1740 to the end of the century, .
. there are few in which some blow is not aimed at the Methodists."'?
The foregoing, alas, are all too representative of contemporaries who, down the ages, have so proverbially stoned their greatest prophets.
To-day, however, the leaders of the eighteenth-century Revival, stoned, in more senses than one, by the polished, exclusive society of their own age, are not wanting for memorials immortalising their memory.
Professor Elie Halévy, in his monumental volumes on the modern History of the English People, discovers in this Spiritual Awakening the only consistent explanation of the highest social and moral achievements of modern England.
"In the vast work of social organisation which is one of the dominant characteristics of nineteenth-century England," says Halévy, "it would be difficult to over-estimate the part played by the Wesleyan revival.'
'We shall witness Methodism," says this great French historian, "bring under its influence, first the Dissenting sects, then the Establishment, finally secular opinion.
. We shall explain by this movement .
. what we may truly term the miracle of modern England, anarchist but orderly, practical and businesslike, but religious and even pietist."*
" Evangelical religion,"
1 For a selected, list of anti-Evangelical publications, see the author's book, Lord Shaftesbury and Social-Industrial Progress (in Bibliography pp. 422-3).
2 Overton's Fohn Wesley, p. 198.
3 Halévy, Vol. I, p. 372.
4 Ibid., p. 339-
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pronounces, "' the moral cement " of nineteenth century English society.
It "' restrained the plutocrats who had newly risen from the masses from vulgar ostentation and debauchery, and placed over the proletariat a select body of workmen, enamoured of virtue and capable of self-restraint.
Evangelicalism ... restored in England the balance momentarily destroyed by the explosion of the revolutionary forces.''4
Professor Thorold Rogers boldly asserts that he does " not believe the mass of peasants could have been moved at all, had it not been for the spiritual and educational stimulus which they received from Methodist organisations."2
J. R. Green claims for this Revival that it '' changed, after a time, the whole tone of English society."
'' The Church," he says, '' was restored to new life and activity.
Religion carried to the hearts of the people a fresh spirit of moral zeal, while it purified our literature and our manners.
A new philanthropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the slave-trade, and gave the first impulse to popular education.''®
Lecky, himself a Rationalist, avers that the Evangelicals gradually '" changed the whole spirit of the English Church.
They infused into it a new fire and passion of devotion, kindled a spirit of fervent philanthropy, raised the standard of clerical duty, and completely altered the whole tone and tendency of the preaching of its ministers."
Overton, too, writes:
' Of the faith which enabled a man to abandon the cherished habits of a lifetime, and to go forth ready to spend and be spent in his Master's service, .
. which made the selfish man self-denying, the discontented happy, the worldling spiritually minded, the drunkard sober, the sensual chaste, the liar truthful, the thief honest, the proud humble, the godless godly, the thriftless thrifty—we can only judge by the fruits which it bore.
That such fruits were borne is surely undeniable.''* The Cambridge Modern History, after enumerating some of the greatest men of the eighteenth century, adds:
"But more important than any of these in universality of influence and range of achievement, were John Wesley and the religious revival to which he gave his name and his life.'?5
Again, Augustine Birrell, K.C., writes : '' No man lived nearer to the centre than John Wesley, neither Pitt nor Clive, neither Mansfield nor Johnson.
You cannot cut him out of the national life.
1 Halévy, Vol. III (1830-1841), p. 166.
* Six Centuries of Work and Wages (1901 edition), p. 516.
® Short History of the English People, p. 736.
4 J. H. Overton, The Evangelical Revival in the Eighteenth Century, p.131.
* Vol. V1, p. 77 (by H. W. V. Temperley).
The Oxford History of England (Vol. VI, p. 386) is equally emphatic.