churches—none of which denied him its pulpit.
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.68
Stories abound of hecklers and riot-leaders who were silenced or chased away by those gathered to hear the Wesleys minister. As the brothers' reputation grew, the crowds themselves provided all the protection the Wesley brothers needed from those who would do them harm. Their supporters began to outnumber their adversaries, and the Wesleys were able to expand their reach with decreasing opposition, especially as the Church of England became more exclusive, corrupt, and irrelevant to the common person.
After ten years of traveling through England, reaching northward and into the more remote areas, John Wesley's itinerancy took him to Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. In August 1747, during his first trip to Ireland, he had such widespread success that he continued to minister there for the next six years, crossing the Irish Channel forty-two times. John's first visit to Scotland was in 1751. He paid the Scots twenty-two visits, stirring up all of the Scottish churches—none of which denied him its pulpit.
The strength of the Wesleys' ministry was their burning desire to seek out and minister to the forgotten people of Britain. This became the driving motivation behind their open-air preaching campaign. It has been said that early capitalism in England was actually strengthened by the Wesleyan emphasis on the spiritual and corporal dignity of every man. John Wesley transformed the character of his countrymen by preaching about the importance of cleanliness, temperance, thrift, and, above all, faith. Societal transformation would be achieved from the inside out, one individual at a time, each person undergoing a personal reformation.
Marrying the Wrong Woman
On April 8, 1749, John officiated at the wedding of Charles to Sarah "Sally" Gwynne. Soon afterward, Charles retired from the greater part of his traveling ministry to settle down with his growing family in Bristol. Charles and Sally enjoyed a happy union, pursuing a common interest in music and worship as they oversaw the Bristol headquarters and ministered together locally. They had eight children, but only the youngest three reached adulthood: Charles Jr. (1757–1834), Sarah (1759–1828), and Samuel (1766–1837). Each
grew to become an accomplished musician.
It appears that Charles's marriage inspired John to put the heartache of Sophia Hopkey behind him and finally marry for himself. In the meantime, he had written a good deal on the blessedness of singleness, but he seemed unwilling to settle for bachelorhood for the rest of his life. Fortunately, he knew who his wife should be. The previous August, he had fallen ill in Newcastle and was nursed back to health by a beautiful young woman named Grace Murray. John determined to make her his wife.
The widow of a seaman, Grace Murray had first met John in 1740, when she was still married. She became a member, and soon a leader, of a Methodist society in Newcastle. Leadership for women was unprecedented at the time, but the Wesley brothers valued women's input and respected the call God placed on their lives as ministers. Certainly their attitude toward women was influenced by the roles of their mother and sisters in their spiritual formation. Their older sisters had been cherished confidantes and counselors. Later in her life, their sister Hetty proved invaluable to them as a teacher and administrative aide in London. John once said, "May not women as well as men bear a part in this honorable service? Undoubtedly they may; nay, they ought; it is meet, right and their bounden duty. Herein there is no difference, 'there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus.'"69
Grace Murray's husband drowned at sea in 1742, but she continued to be a dedicated Methodist despite her loss. She traveled through the northern counties of England and into Ireland to meet with the female societies there. She had also nursed many traveling preachers who fell ill from the strain of their ministry. Over the years, she had tended to at least seven such preachers, the most notable of whom were John and another minister by the name of John Bennet, whom she served for six months as a nursemaid. "Wesley commended her work by saying, 'I saw the work of God prosper in her hands. She was to me both a servant and friend, as well as a fellow-laborer in the Gospel.'"70 It is easy to see why, when John thought of marriage again, Grace was the first person to come to mind. In fact, after she had nursed him back to health, he had told her, "If ever I marry, I think you will be the person."71
John had first proposed to Grace in August 1748, but the timing never seemed right to actually marry until after Charles had wed. At the time, Grace
had answered, "This is too great a blessing for me; I can't tell how to believe it. This is all I could have wished for under heaven."72 Not wanting John to leave, she ended up traveling with him through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, providing great help to him along the way. John finally left her for a time in Bolton, which just happened to be the district of John Bennet, whom she had previously nursed for so long.
It seems that Bennet, too, had become smitten with Grace and soon began pursuing her hand in marriage. Grace seemed unable to decide between her two admirers. At one point, she even wrote to John to tell him she felt it was her duty to marry Bennet. In response, a week after Charles's wedding, John took Grace with him to Ireland, where she helped him as he ministered for three months. In Dublin, she finally agreed to marry John.
When they returned to England, they traveled together extensively and were scarcely apart for the next five months. While they were in Epworth, Bennet came for a visit and told John that Grace had sent him all the letters Grace and John had exchanged. Chafing at this news, John wrote to tell Grace that he now felt she should marry Bennet. She wrote back, however, "I love you a thousand times better than I ever loved John Bennet in my life. But I am afraid, if I don't marry him, he'll run mad."73 John again hesitated over the matter and decided to win his brother's approval before he pursued marriage any further. This proved a fatal error.
Charles was shocked by the idea of John marrying Grace; he was still caught up in that day's societal expectations. Sarah Gwynne came from a family of high position and notable heritage; Grace Murray had been a servant before marrying her seafaring husband. Charles felt that if John's marriage wasn't of a similar status to his own, such disgrace would cause the preachers in many of their societies to abandon them. While Grace was at her home in Newcastle, Charles met John at Whitehaven to express his reservations. John replied that Grace's character, piety, and worth far outweighed any shame her lowly birth might cause. Charles saw that John would not be convinced otherwise.
On the way to Newcastle, Charles met Grace at Hindley Hill. He kissed her on the cheek and said, "Grace Murray, you have broken my heart."74 They returned together to Newcastle, where they found Bennet. Grace then fell at
Bennet's feet and begged his forgiveness for using him so badly. They married less than one week later, October 3, 1749. Oddly enough, it was Whitefield, who John met in Leeds for a conference, who broke the news to him of Grace's sudden marriage. When Charles and Sally arrived there the day after, John told his brother, "I renounce all intercourse with you but what I have with a heathen or a publican."75 However, Whitefield and another associate, John Nelson, prayed, wept, and entreated the brothers to reconcile until they fell on each other's neck asking forgiveness for what they had done. Bennet and his new wife arrived three days later. John greeted Bennet with a holy kiss, but said nothing more to him. He would not see Grace again for nearly thirty years.
For his part, Bennet soon left the Wesleys' fellowship and struck out on his own. He took with him 110 members of his Bolton congregation of 129. All of those at Stockport joined him as well, except for one woman. Bennet accused Wesley of being a puppet of Catholicism and defamed him bitterly. He died in 1759, leaving Grace with five sons. She afterward moved to Derbyshire and rejoined the Methodists. Through a mutual friend, she met John again in 1788. Biographer Henry Moore described the meeting:
Mr. Wesley, with evident feeling, resolved to visit her; and the next morning, he took me with him to Colebrooke Row, where her son then resided. The meeting was affecting; but Mr. Wesley preserved more than his usual selfpossession. It was easy to see, notwithstanding the many years which had intervened, that both in sweetness of spirit, and in person and manners, she was a fit subject for the tender regrets expressed in those verse which I have presented to the reader. The interview did not continue long, and I do not remember that I ever heard Mr. Wesley mention her name afterward.76
"Those verses" were from a poem written by John entitled "Reflections upon Past Providences, October, 1749." While the poem consists of thirty-one six-line stanzas, here is an excerpt:
Oft, as through giddy youth I roved, And danced along the flowery way, By chance or thoughtless passion moved, An easy, unresisting prey, I fell, while love's envenomed dart Thrilled my nerves, and tore my heart.
Borne on wings of sacred hope, Long had I soared, and spurned the ground, When, panting for the mountain top, My soul a kindred spirit found, By Heaven entrusted to my care, The Daughter of my faith and prayer.
In early dawn of life, serene, Mild, sweet, and tender was her mood; Her pleasing form spoke all within Soft and compassionately good; Listening to every wretch's care, Mingling with each her friendly tear.
I saw her run, with winged speed, In works of faith and labouring love; I saw her glorious toil succeed, And showers of blessings from above Crowning her warm effectual prayer, And glorified my God in her.77
Two years after his brother's marriage, in the same year he first visited Scotland, John met and married Mary "Molly" Vazeille, the widow of Anthony Vazeille, who had four children, after a close confidante convinced him that he should marry. John had slipped on the ice on the middle of London Bridge and struck his ankle against the stone side so hard he couldn't walk. He was taken to Molly's home to recuperate, and he was there one week. He preached on his knees that Sunday, married Molly that Monday, October 18, 1751, and preached on his knees again Tuesday because of the injury. What conversation must have happened during that week in Molly's home to make him marry her so quickly, one can only speculate.
Where John's hesitancy with both Sophia Hopkey and Grace Murray had cost him a bride, his hasty marriage to Molly would cost him a great deal more. The honeymoon was brief; within two weeks, John was on the road again. Molly had assured him his constant travel would not be an issue, but she quickly discovered she was not cut out to be the wife of an itinerant minister. Molly soon grew lonely and jealous while John was away. Only four months
after the marriage, Charles found Molly in tears. He did what he could to reconcile her, and it was agreed she should travel more with John, which she did a great deal over the next four years. But when a mob attacked their carriage in Hull, she ceased to travel with him.
Growing ever more jealous and bitter by John's constant absence, Molly began opening his mail and reading through his personal papers, berating him for any references to or correspondence with other women. Her temper became notorious to those close to the family. In anger, she began passing his private papers to enemies or publishing them in the newspapers, sometimes even rewriting the way the letters would appear to make her husband look even worse. She would travel a hundred miles just to see with whom John was traveling in his carriage when he arrived in a town. Once, she locked Charles and John in a room in order to confront them with their faults, and they only escaped by quoting Latin poetry to her until she could stand no more. Another time, one of John's staff members found John and Molly in their hotel room— an enraged Molly was standing over John, clutching a tuft of his hair by which she had been dragging him around the room. Molly left John several times but always returned in response to his entreaties. In 1771, she left him for more than a year before returning. Not until Grace passed away in 1781 was peace restored to John's home. It had been thirty grueling years.
Throughout all of this, John continued to itinerate, keeping up his former pace of preaching daily and managing the increasingly complicated demands of an international ministry. He did his best to meet on a quarterly basis with a majority of the societies in the largest circuits of the chief districts throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland.
"The Peculiar Talent Which
God Has Given Me"
For five decades, John Wesley traveled throughout the countryside, preaching, teaching, counseling, and praying with tradesman, laborers, farmers, and common folk of every kind. He left in his wake groups of converts who were instructed to meet among themselves weekly to confess their sins, encourage one another in prayer, and strengthen their faith through common Bible study. He taught adherence to a prescribed standard of moral conduct. John often preached, "The soul and the body make a man; the spirit and