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This volume of the Classics of Western Spirituality is unusual in that it features two people. The spirituality it portrays is not that of John Wesley as a separate person, nor that of Charles Wesley as an autonomous figure; it is the spirituality of the Wesleys together.

It is unlikely that there are many, if any, volumes in this series that analyze the spirituality of more than one person; certainly it is unlikely that any other volume would engage in the task of examining the spirituality of two members of the same family, not to mention that of two brothers.

Yet it is appropriate that the Wesleys should be considered together. Their brotherhood was not merely natural, it was also spiritual. They not only shared the youthful fellowship of the family environment of Epworth Rectory in Lincolnshire, but also attended the same Oxford college, Christ Church; they shared the life of the same Holy Club at Oxford; they went out to Georgia together; they shared a similar spiritual experience in 1738 after their disappointment in Georgia; their mutual aim was that of perfect love for God and man; they retained their joint love for the Church of England while leading the Methodist revival; their spirituality was similar and also complementary. It would seem as strange to consider the spirituality of Charles Wesley's hymns in isolation from the life of John

Wesley as it would seem strange to analyze the spirituality of John Wesley apart from Charles Wesley and his hymns.

It would be wrong, of course, to assume that the Wesleys were carbon copies of each other. This was far from being the case. Of the two, John was the more natural leader and organizer; John's mind was more wide-ranging than that of Charles; in spite of the excellence of John's early translations of German pietist hymns, it was Charles who had the greater poetic gifts. Methodist writers such as Ratten-

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bury have stressed the differences between the Wesleys in regard to their stance toward the Church of England and in regard to their attitude toward the crucial spiritual doctrine of perfect love.' In addition to these temperamental and theological divergences, it is also clear that Charles exercised his spirituality within the parameters of a happy family life with his wife and children whereas John's attempts at nuptials were little short of disastrous—his failure to marry

Sophia Hopkey in Georgia triggered a series of events that led to the court case whereby he left America; later he did not marry Grace

Murray, who would have shared his preaching as well as his love; finally he did marry a widow, Mrs. Vazeille, who was an unsuitable partner. Not only this, even had he married Grace Murray, they had an arrangement whereby any children they might have would be brought up at Wesley's Kingswood School leaving the parents free to travel. John's spirituality became essentially that of the traveling preacher; Charles's became that of the more sedentary spiritual leader in Bristol and later in London. However, in spite of these differences, it is remarkable how close the Wesley brothers were in their basic spirituality. Within the Methodist context, Rattenbury and others are correct to point out the minutiae that separated the Wesley brothers.

When we examine the brothers within the context of Western spirituality, even when we examine them within the broader Methodist context, their dissimilarities pale into insignificance beside the basic unity of their hearts and minds.

Previous analyses of the theology and spirituality of the Wesleys have tended to concentrate on part of the work of the Wesleys so that a partial rather than an integral view of their spirituality has emerged. The reasons for this are perfectly natural. Roman Catholic writers such as Piette and Todd have emphasized the continuity of the Wesleys within the Catholic tradition; Anglican writers such as Allchin and Hodges have stressed the essentially Anglican liturgical and eucharistic framework within which the Wesleys worked;3 con- 'See J. E. Rattenbury, The Evangelical Doctrines of Charles Wesley's Hymns (London: Epworth, 1941); and The Eucharistic Hymns of John and Charles Wesley (London: Epworth, 1948).

Piette, John Wesley in the Evolution of Protestantism (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1937); J. M. Todd, John Wesley and the Catholic Church (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1958), °H. A. Hodges and A. M. Allchin, A Rapture of Praise (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966).

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tinental writers such as Orcibal have dwelt on the influence exerted by continental mystical writers on the Wesleys;* a Methodist early church historian such as Outler has illuminated the importance of Eastern Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa for the work of the Wesleys;> traditional Methodist writers have tended to underline the centrality of John's Aldersgate experience of May 1738, and the parallel experience of Charles Wesley, as leading to the Methodist revival and therefore to the rise of the Methodist Church. There is truth in all these insights. The Wesleys, as we shall see, were indeed influenced by the Christian tradition they inherited and took for granted; they were faithful to the liturgy, doctrines, and sacraments of the Church of England; they were influenced by the Eastern Fathers and by Roman Catholic mystical writers; the central insight of the Protestant

Reformation mediated to them by the Moravians and Luther's commentaries, and experienced at Aldersgate Street, was crucial; the Methodist revival assimilated the work of many Christians and many movements through the organizing and conceptualizing genius of John Wesley. However, the Wesleys were not the sum total of the influences on them. They did not consciously synthesize various strands of thought and organization and thereby create a great movement. To suggest this would be reductionism. What rather happened was that the Wesleys inherited a Christian tradition at the beginning of the eighteenth century that contained a cluster of elements that provided the background wherein they could develop their vision of God. But what developed was their vision of God. This vision of God, this spirituality, transcended the influences that helped to produce it and led in turn to a radical renewal of the tradition they had inherited. In other words, the key to the Wesleys is their spirituality, their vision of God and His purpose for the life of man. The spirituality of the Wesleys helped to create what we now know as the Methodist

Church—but it is not bounded by, or limited to, the Methodist Church. It is wider than that. It is a gift, so far mainly appropriated by the people called Methodists, but available in essence to all Christians.

Although our aim is to highlight the spirituality of both the Wes4J. Orcibal, The Theological Originality of John Wesley and Continental Spirituality, pp. 81-111 in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, Vol. 1 (London: Epworth, 1965).

5A. C. Outler, John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).

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ley brothers, exigencies of space dictate that we impose some sort of order and selectivity on the material. To this end, the first part of our volume will examine selected passages from the works of John Wesley to bring out the nature of his spirituality; the second part of our volume will concentrate on the hymns of Charles Wesley, which, as Bernard Manning put it, rank with the Psalms, the Book of Common

Prayer, and the Canon of the Mass within Christian spirituality;° and the third part of our volume will examine John Wesley's main prose work on the notion of Christian Perfection, which lay at the heart of the Wesleys' spirituality.

The problem in attempting to delineate the spirituality of Protestants is alluded to by John Wesley in his life of Fletcher of Madeley, who was probably the saintliest of all the early Methodists.

The pious members of the Church of Rome make a conscience of concealing anything from their Directors, but disclose to them all the circumstances of their lives, and all the secrets of their hearts: Whereas very few of the Protestants disclose to others, even their most intimate friends, what passes between God and their own souls; at least not of set purpose.'

This sentence is partly true of John Wesley himself. He has left no long account of the intimate communion of his soul with God (we are not sure whether the recent cracking of the code of his diary will remedy this), and therefore we have to make do with extracts from different works that give us glimpses of his inmost self. Neither has he left any one long spiritual commentary for the guidance of others.

His Plain Account of Christian Perfection is a book of doctrine as well as of spirituality, and his more intimate writings, some of which we include here, are shorter in length. Nevertheless it appears that, in the passage quoted above, Wesley is tacitly acquiescing in a somewhat

. static view of spirituality that he is ready to question elsewhere. In order to clarify this matter, we will now look at the background of the life of John Wesley in order to place the selected passages within °B. L. Manning, The Hymns of Wesley and Watts (London: Epworth, 1942), p. 14.

'The Works of the Rev. Jobn Wesley, A.M., with the Last Corrections of the Author, ed. Thomas Jackson, London, 1829-1831, 14 vols. (henceforth cited as Works), vol. XI, pp. 340-41, Life of Mr. Fletcher. We quote from the 3rd edition.

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context and in order to determine the meaning of "spirituality" within these passages and within the life of John Wesley himself. We concentrate on John Wesley for reasons of economy of space, and will pass on to Charles Wesley when we come to examine his hymns.

John Wesley was born at Epworth in 1703 into a family that could already boast two generations of ministers. His parents were both strong-minded people who were Church of England by conviction in contrast with Wesley's grandparents, who had been Dissenters by conviction. His family had a deep influence on John Wesley, and also on his brother Charles, who was born four years later in 1707. Their mother, Susanna Wesley, was a woman of very strong character who ruled the children through a benevolent despotism that involved "breaking their wills" by the time they were aged one.

Nevertheless, although it is not surprising that only Charles of the ten children was able to enjoy a really happy marriage, both Susanna and Samuel Wesley had a decisive impact on the lives of their offspring. At the Epworth rectory John learned the value of prayer and Bible study, moral values and frugal living, religion in the home and instruction of children. He learned too the value of church discipline together with a model of the parish as the focal point of the world

(culled from the Church of England Puritans and Richard Baxter and later exemplified in Fletcher of Madeley) along with a sense that the world could be one's parish (through the family's reading about the Danish missionaries in India, and Samuel's interest in the mission field and in Georgia). When John barely survived a fire at the rectory at the age of seven, Susanna had an intuition that he was destined for great things, and she spared no effort to aid his spiritual development.

By her weekly private conferences, by her letters, by her advocacy of spiritual masters such as Pascal, by her religious instruction in the Apostles' Creed and the Ten Commandments, by her own personal example, she fueled the mind and imagination of her son. From his father, John learned to value the sacraments, to take seriously the Protestant and Roman Catholic mystics, to distrust Calvinistic particularism, to be assiduous in the work of the ministry, to value the fellowship to be found through the Church of England Societies, and, not least, to cherish inward religion. "The inward witness, son, the inward witness, that is the proof, the strongest proof of Christianity"—these were Samuel's dying words to John.* The elements of 8Quoted in letter to John Smith March 22, 1748, in Works, vol. XII, p. 100.

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Wesley's later spirituality were already there in germ in the rectory at Epworth.

Wesley spoke and wrote little about his time as a schoolboy at Charterhouse. His sojourn at Oxford University was to be more important. He entered Christ Church in 1720, and was elected to a fellowship at Lincoln College in 1726, the same year that Charles enrolled at Christ Church. Oxford was significant for Wesley in a number of ways. At the practical level it gave him a base of operations in that an Oxford fellowship enabled him to preach without having a parish. Insofar as it is well nigh impossible to be demoted from an Oxford fellowship, this meant that he could "look upon the world as his parish" without the need for incumbency in an actual parish. When he was granted the fellowship this consideration was, of course, far from his mind. In later years it would prove to be important.

Oxford enabled Wesley to train his keen intellect and to build up his formidable mind. Throughout his life, he was to retain a curiosity about many divergent subjects and in later years he would continue to investigate new areas of thought. To these he brought a logical, reasoning mind that was sharpened at Oxford by his teaching of Greek and philosophy, and above all by his (at one stage) daily leading of disputations among the undergraduates. This enabled him to pierce quickly to the heart of a complicated sequence of thoughts, and this habit would remain with him.

In the course of time two mistaken impressions have arisen about Wesley's intellectual life. One was that he was, as he described himself, a homo unius libri, a man of one book (the Bible), in a literal sense.

The other was that he distrusted reason in favor of emotion and that his preaching was aimed at the emotions rather than the intellect.

These impressions are at best half-truths and are all the more misleading because there is an element of truth in them. It is true to say that the Bible became and remained the primary source of Wesley's theology and spirituality. Yet his reading on spiritual and nonspiritual matters remained wide. Indeed Green, in an appendix to his book The Young Mr. Wesley, spends fourteen pages merely listing the books read by Wesley between 1725 and 1734.9 When writing became more central to Wesley's endeavors, he covered a vast range of topics in his at- °V. H. H. Green, The Young Mr. Wesley (London: Edward Arnold, 1961), Appendix I, pp. 305-19. For homo unius libri see Works, vol. V, p. iii, Preface to Sermons.

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tempt to transmit not merely spirituality but a basic education to the needy people of the land. His horse, as it were, became his study. He rode with a slack rein and, after the early dangerous persecutions at Wednesbury and elsewhere, he rode in peace, managing to avoid the highwaymen and the potholes that beset other travelers. "History, poetry and philosophy I commonly read on horseback," he wrote in his journal in 1770, "having other employment at other times."!° The employment during the stops in the journeying was that of leading one of the great religious movements in the history of the Church. In between times he was busy reading and writing, as well as praying.

His literary output became truly staggering for one who was the main preacher and organizer of the eighteenth-century religious renewal. His edited works contain—in addition to four volumes of his journal, three volumes of his sermons, two volumes of his letters, and numerous other religious treatises—English, Latin, French, Greek, and Hebrew grammars, the revised and abridged works of numerous authors including the fifty volumes of his Christian Library, and volumes entitled Compendium of Logic, History of England, Dictionary, and Compendium of Natural Philosophy.!! His occasional papers covered any number of subjects from dew on coach-glasses to popular medicine to pronunciation and gesture to slavery. Oxford gave to Wesley a breadth of intellectual interests that remained with him later and his spirituality, while centered on the Bible, comprehended the need to sustain the mind as well as the soul of man. The secret of his wideranging spirituality lay in the fact that he was a "Methodist," methodical in his use of time, so that interiority, preaching, reading, writing, and organizing were attended to in their due order within his overarching purpose of loving and communing with God in all that he did.

The notion that Wesley gave little weight to reason loses credence by a simple reading of any one of his treatises, even the 4 Plain

Account of Christian Perfection contained in this volume. Indeed, we may sometimes wish that he had given greater bent to the more irrational and mystical part of his nature. His plain yet majestic prose proceeds inexorably with its succession of logical headings and weighed utterances. In the attention he gave to reason Wesley was in 10 Works, vol. III, p. 393, Journal for March 21, 1770.

11See Works.

A new Oxford Edition of Wesley's Works is being prepared by Dr.

Frank Baker of Duke University.

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fact a child of the eighteenth century. The crux lies in the use that he made of reason. His concern was not for reason and philosophy for their own sakes. He was not motivated purely by reason, nor was he interested merely in the mental faculties of his fellows. His concern was for the whole personality and he appealed to the emotions and wills of men through the mind. His concern was for biblical theology rather than philosophical theology. His concern was for faith rather than religion as a doctrinal phenomenon, either natural or revealed. As he later put it, "orthodoxy, or right opinions, is at best but a very slender part of religion, if it can be allowed to be any part of it at all."'!2 His use of reason was not, then, to philosophize about re- -ligion, although he did not despise the efforts of those who, like Bishop Butler, attempted to defend the Christian tradition philosophically. Nor did he spend a great deal of time in explicating the great doctrines of the Christian tradition. He took them for granted and was willing to applaud the work of men such as Jones of Nayland who did uphold, in writing, the doctrine of the Trinity. Belief as such was, for Wesley, a secondary category. His main concern was for spirituality itself, for knowing God in the heart by faith, for practicing the presence of God, for seeking after perfect love. He "believed" the basic Christian doctrines but so, as he put it, did the devils. The point was to put those doctrines into practice in one's life and heart.

For Wesley Christianity was not primarily a set of beliefs, it was an experimental way, a process, an inwardness based on orthodox doctrines and resulting in outward practice. Accordingly, his main theological concern was for those doctrines most directly concerned with experiential Christianity, namely prevenient grace, justification by faith, assurance, sanctification, and perfect love. He used his formidable powers of reason to commend experiential Christianity and those doctrines most fitted to apply it within the lives of ordinary men and women. The most notable examples of his use of reason in this way are to be found in his An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion of 1743 and in the three parts of his A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion of 1745, but the same principle applies throughout his work and he owed his facility in logic to his training at Oxford.

It was at Oxford that Wesley immersed himself in the reading of spiritual writings. It was there too that he heard the call to a life of 'Orcibal, Theological Originality, p. 109.

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spirituality. Paradoxically for an Oxford man, he was first influenced by the Cambridge Platonists, Smith and Cudworth, who pointed to an experience of interiority whereby the inward world of spirituality rather than the outward world became one's authentic habitat. More importantly he read Taylor, a Kempis, and William Law. In 4 Plain

Account of Christian Perfection he describes how his reading of Bishop Taylor's Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying in 1725 led to his seeking for purity of intention by dedicating all his life, thoughts, words, and actions to God. In 1726 a reading of 4 Kempis' Christian's

Pattern persuaded him that he must seek after an inward religion of the heart. "I saw that 'simplicity of intention and purity of affection,' one design in a// we speak or do and one desire ruling all our tempers, are, indeed, 'the wings of the soul,' without which she can never ascend to the mount of God."!5 A year or two later his grappling with William Law's Christian Perfection and Serious Call persuaded him of the impossibility of being "'half a Christian" and of the need to devote himself wholly to God. This period of growing spiritual seriousness, from 1725-1728, coincided with his entry to the priesthood—he was ordained deacon on September 19, 1725, and priest on September 22,

1728, by Bishop Potter of Oxford.

Discussion has raged as to whether this awakening to the necessity for interiority and dedication constituted Wesley's conversion.

Piette and Todd assert that it was effectively Wesley's conversion and they are followed by Outler who terms it "'a conversion if ever there was one."'!+ Much depends, of course, on what we mean by conversion and on whether we feel the need to highlight one precise moment as being determinative for Wesley's spirituality. It was clearly an important stage in his spiritual development and heralded his entry into a life of genuine spirituality. However, it was only one such stage. There were further stages to follow. The most significant point to be made about this episode in Wesley's pilgrimage is that it determined the aim of his life and spirituality. Christian Perfection, perfect love, became and remained Wesley's purpose in following the Christian way. Although the Methodist tradition did not follow him in everything, it attempted to follow him in this. His own purpose was to aim at and to achieve holiness in love, and through him the grand depositum of the Methodist tradition became that of scriptural d3Seeip2 299.

14Outler, John Wesley, p. 7.

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holiness. It is likely that the goal of perfect love would have remained Wesley's own personal spiritual end; without some of his later spiritual experiences it is unlikely that it would have become the object

— of the people called Methodists. In this volume we publish Wesley's main thoughts on this subject of perfect love in his A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, as believed and taught by the Reverend Mr. Jobn

Wesley, from the year 1725 to the year 1777.

Wesley's interest in writings on mysticism and interiority continued throughout his stay in Oxford, and indeed beyond it. His Oxford interest in mysticism extended to include non-British and non—

Church of England writers, including the Roman Catholics Pascal, Scupoli, Quesnel, Fénelon, de Renty, Mme Bourignon, Mme Guyon,

Tauler, the Theologica Germanica, and Molinos with their emphasis upon pure love and total resignation. His later contact with the Moravians made him react for a time against the mystics. As he put it in 1738, "These considerations stole upon me as I grew acquainted with the mystic writers, whose noble descriptions of union with God and internal religion made everything else appear mean, flat, and insipid. But, in truth, they made good works appear so, too; yea, and faith itself, and what not."!> He later reacted against the Moravians themselves, who took faith and fellowship seriously but who sat loose to the requirements of the means of grace and even outward works in their zeal for inward mystical faith. The extracts in this volume from Wesley's journal for this period illustrate this stage in his development. However, the notion that Wesley suddenly repudiated the mystical influences on his development and abandoned them forever is an erroneous one, just as erroneous as the notion that because he was suspicious of the antinomian tendencies he saw in Luther and Calvin that he therefore abandoned those reformers. He assimilated the things that were helpful to him, and to the movement that grew up as a result of his work, from any and every source. The fifty volumes of his Christian Library of 1750-1756 contained no works by Luther and Calvin but they did include the works of five French and three Spanish Roman Catholic mystics, namely, Pascal, Brother Lawrence, Fénelon, Mme Guyon, Mme Bourignon, John of Avila, Lopez, and Molinos. In all, Wesley synthesized and abridged the work of seventeen continental experts in spirituality who were virtually unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world of the eighteenth century. It may

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well be, as Orcibal suggests, that he gained help from the work of the Huguenot Poiret, whom he met in 1730 and who had already worked on Mme Bourignon, Mme Guyon, Molinos, Arndt, Nicholas, de

Renty, Lopez, Fénelon and Brother Lawrence.!© The question remains as to why he should bother, at the height of the Methodist Revival, when he had more than enough work to do, to publish unknown spiritual masters if they had not been important for him, and if he did not feel they were important for Christians in Britain.

It is reasonable to suggest that mystical considerations were less important for Wesley between 1738 and 1765 when he was overwhelmed by the practical superintendency of the early Methodist tradition.

Nevertheless, during that period he did publish selections from a number of the mystics, and by that time he had selected and assimilated some of their ideas in such a way that Cell's comment to the effect that Wesley combined the Protestant stress on faith with the Catholic stress on holiness is peculiarly appropriate.!7 The mystical writers we have mentioned played their part in Wesley's reconciliation of the seemingly opposed theological notions of justification, sanctification, and Christian perfection. These were, for Wesley, not merely doctrines but stages in the integral process of spirituality.

In addition to the stipend and ecclesiastical freedom, the logical training and the predisposition to inwardness, gifted to Wesley by Oxford, he also gained much from his leadership of the Holy Club.

This group of students had formed around Charles Wesley to engage in Bible study, systematic devotions, and regular communion—and to investigate studiously, and to analyze the implications of, the works of the fourth-century monastic fathers and the liturgical practices of the early Church. After John's return to Oxford in 1729 he assumed leadership of this group. Vulgar nicknames were given to this serious-minded fellowship of people who were keen about religious practices. The one that stuck was the name "Methodist."

It is fascinating to record, in passing, how the names of famous religious traditions have come into being. Some have arisen descriptively: "Hindu" was the name given to the people who lived over the Indus in India, "Shinto" was derived from the Chinese Shen-Tao to signify in Japanese the "Way of the gods." Others have arisen as 16See Orcibal, Theological Originality, p. 111.

17G. C. Cell, The Rediscovery of Jobn Wesley (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1935), p. 361.

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terms of abuse that later become terms of honor, such as "Christianoi," given to the Christians in Antioch; "Quakers," given to that group in 1650, and "Methodists" given to the Holy Club in Oxford.

It was in this Methodist environment of the Holy Club that Wesley learnt to be methodical not just in his study of the Bible but in the discipline of his whole life. The secret of his spirituality lay in his careful and prayerful use of time. It was his methodical habits consecrated to God that later enabled him to accomplish so much. Within the Holy Club he led a disciplined personal life, visited the prisoners in Oxford gaol, showed concern for the debtors, helped start a school, went to the relief of the poor, discovered he could live on £28 a year, and maintained a high-church stance in regard to the sacraments, the fasts of the church, confession, penance, and mortification. Together with the study of the mystics mentioned above, Wesley also more importantly entered on a serious study of the early Fathers with the help of a Patristics student named Clayton, who was a fellow-member of the Holy Club. His concern was not merely with the pre-Nicene

Fathers but also with 'St. Chrysostom, Basil, Jerome, Austin, and, above all, the man of a broken heart, Ephraim Syrus.'!® In other words, Wesley immersed himself not only in the Western Fathers but above all in the Eastern Fathers. His spirituality was influenced by Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Christianity. His two heroes were

Ephraim Syrus and Macarius the Egyptian, and Outler and Jaeger have shown that the Homilies of Macarius, extracted by Wesley for his

Christian Library, were in fact written by a fifth-century Syrian monk who was deeply influenced by one of the greatest Eastern monks and writers on perfection, Gregory of Nyssa.!9 By returning to the early

Fathers, especially Gregory of Nyssa through Macarius, Wesley was able to feast his soul with the treasures of the early Eastern Church before the medieval split between East and West had imposed a Latin captivity on the West. In the extract in our volume from Wesley's letter to Middleton immediately following A Plain Account of Genuine

Christianity, he applauds the primitive Fathers "Clemens Romanus, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus, Cyprian; to whom I would add Macarius and Ephraim

Syrus." "I exceedingly reverence them," he writes, "as well as their writings, and esteem them highly in love. I reverence them, because

'8See Address to the Clergy, Works, vol. X, p. 484.

See Outler, John Wesley, pp. 9-10.

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they were Christians, such Christians as are above described. And I reverence their writings, because they describe true, genuine Christianity, and direct us to the strongest evidence of the Christian doctrine."?° From this source Wesley discovered and marked that true holiness was not merely consecration of the will as a Kempis suggested, it was not merely inward quietism as Mme Guyon and Molinos

(and later the Moravians) suggested, it was active, lived holiness in the Church and in the world. Wesley's reaction to the continental Catholic mystics from 1738-1765 was not matched by a similar reaction to the early Fathers, whom he continued to revere as interpreters of, rather than determiners of, scripture.

The Holy Club set Wesley's search for and study of holiness within a social context. For him spirituality, though inward, was not a solitary thing. Indeed, in A Short History of the People Called Methodists, he stated bluntly that "the first rise of Methodism, so called, was in November 1729, when four of us met together at Oxford."?!

He felt that fellowship was vital to Christian spirituality and that there was no such thing as a solitary Christian.

The Holy Club also set Wesley's search for holiness within a total social context. As he put it, "In 1730 I began visiting the prisons, assisting the poor and sick in town, and doing what other good I could by my presence or my little fortune to the bodies and souls of all men."2? As we shall see later, in the context of the eighteenth century, he was to become an eminent social reformer and he was not slow to stress that inward holiness of the heart had necessarily to find fruit in outward works and social involvement of one sort or another.

Wesley's life-style in later times remained consistent with his Holy Club ideal of living on £28 a year. In our ecological age, when the rich of the world continue to get richer and the poor poorer, Wesley may have a message for us not only in regard to inward spirituality but also in regard to outward Christian life-styles. For him spirituality was both outward and inward.

The Holy Club also set Wesley's spirituality within a liturgical context. The members of the Club agreed to communicate as often as they could, to observe the fasts of the ancient Church every Wednesday and Friday, and to attend seriously to the means of grace and to 2uSeerpal3o:

21 Works, vol. XIII, p. 273.

22Seerp 03:

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the liturgy of the Church. Although Wesley's high-churchmanship somewhat abated in later life, he retained his love for the means of grace and for the liturgy of the Church of England. In his great sermon Means of Grace, he was later to write, "By 'means of grace,' I understand outward signs, words, or actions, ordained of God and appointed for this end, to be the ordinary channels whereby he might convey to man, preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace.... The chief of these means are prayer, whether in secret or with the great congregation; searching the scriptures, and receiving the Lord's Supper."23 After 1738, John Wesley remained a high-churchman in his stress on the sacraments, especially that of the Lord's Supper. In 1740, one of the great years of the Revival, he communicated twice a week and about a hundred times during the year. He later published the sermon The Duty of Constant Communion.** He insisted that the times of the Methodist services should be kept separate from the times of parish communion services so that all the early Methodists could attend communion dispensed by a minister of the Church of England.

Throughout his life, Wesley nourished his devotion by means of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. This provided the liturgical framework for his spirituality. After the American

War of Independence, when it was clear that new arrangements would have to be made to speak to the new situation of the American

Methodists, Wesley drew up for them a liturgy that was essentially an abridged version of the Book of Common Prayer. In a letter dated

September 10, 1784, taken to America by Coke, Wesley wrote, And I have prepared a Liturgy little differing from that of the Church of England (I think the best constituted National

Church in the world), which I advise all the travelling preachers to use on the Lord's Day in all the congregations, reading the Litany only on Wednesdays and Fridays and praying extempore on all other days. I also advise the elders to administer the Supper of the Lord on every Lord's Day.?5

23 Works, vol. V, pp. 187-88, Sermon XVI.

4 Works, vol. VII, pp. 147-57, Sermon CI. See also J. C. Bowmer, The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in Early Methodism (London: Epworth, 1951).

25See Works, vol. XIII, p. 252.

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There was no need in the America of 1784 to adhere to the Church of England as it was clear that the American Methodists were destined to become a separate body. The letter represented Wesley's convictions. The American Methodists remain to this day more liturgical than the British Methodists, and both bodies have strayed from Wesley's ideal of constant communion. It became an ideal during his

Holy Club days at Oxford, and the ideal persisted throughout his ministry.

Wesley had learned much from the Holy Club, but he was not fated to remain in Oxford, nor to succeed his father at Epworth after his father's death in 1735. Instead the opportunity arose for the Holy

Club to move its sphere of activities to Georgia, and Charles and John Wesley and Ingham from the club, together with Delamotte, took ship for America to missionize the Indians and the Georgian colonists. George Whitefield of the Holy Club promised to follow after ordination. To Georgia, Wesley took a piety that was real, but not yet truly effective, sacramental and liturgical principles that were admirable but somewhat high church, a desire for social involvement as part of a total spirituality, and a willingness to abandon himself fully to God and to seek after perfect love. As we look back on the development of Wesley's spirituality, we see that from 1725-1729 he had realized the necessity of devoting himself wholly to God and had begun the spiritual and mental preparation to make this possible; from 1729-1735 he had engaged in a disciplined life of liturgical, sacramental, social, and communal involvement in the Holy Club that enabled him to begin to actualize some of his aspirations after perfect love.

Three of the extracts in our volume illustrate his spirituality at this period: his Oxford Scheme of Self-Examination, the preface and two selections from Forms of Prayer of 1733, and his advice on spiritual reading, adapted from the Cologne Praemonitio ad Lectorem of 1682, inserted in 1735 within his preface to the translation of Thomas 4

Kempis' Imitation of Christ. These are not mere period pieces, and the advice on spiritual reading illustrates his approach not just to 4 Kempis but to all the masters of the spiritual life.

Hitherto, Wesley had led a fairly cloistered life at Epworth, or at school, or at Oxford. The parameters within which his spirituality had developed had been well defined, and he had been able to impose his own pattern on that development under God. His decision to go to Georgia was a leap into the unknown. It would have been more

INTRODUCTION

understandable if he had gone to Georgia earlier, as his father had desired. It would have been more logical if he had stayed in England, or even succeeded his father at Epworth, when his mother became a widow. Instead, three weeks after that tragic event, he was away to Georgia to attempt to deepen his spirituality in new circumstances and to discover his life's work. The bare facts of his Georgian expedition are printed in the records of the colony: "Minister at Savannah; embark'd 14 Oct. 1735; arrived Feb. 1735-6; run away 3 Dec.

1737.26 They appear to constitute a débacle. In reality they represent a period of bewilderment and spiritual seeking after the relative repose of his earlier discipline during which he was able to explore more fully his own self and the will of God for his life.

Wesley took with him to Georgia an enlightenment view of the American Indians as "noble savages." Although impressed on occasions, he generally found that they conformed more to Hobbes's view of human nature as being '"'nasty, brutish, and short." In fact, he spent more of his time with the colonists at Savannah. His good work there was marred by the unsuitability to the context of his highchurch principles, and by the souring of his amorous entanglement with Sophia Hopkey. Yet when he finally did "run away" from Georgia to escape legal action, it had contributed much to his spiritual development. It was here that he began to condense a number of mystical works; it was here that he began the theological work on the Old and New Testaments that would bear fruit later; it was here that he experimented with some of the features of his later organization including societies, bands, lay leaders, extempore prayer and preaching, love feasts, and chapel buildings; it was here that he learned German and beautifully translated a number of German hymns.

This translation work, and his contact with the Moravians who taught him German, were crucial to Wesley's spiritual development.

Through them he encountered a faith that was fearless, joyful, and inwardly felt and known. During the voyage to America on the HMS

Simmonds, they sang during a violent storm and were not afraid to die.

The Moravian Spangenberg put to Wesley the challenging questions, "Do you know Jesus Christ?" and "Does the Spirit bear witness with your spirit?" Wesley replied in the affirmative, but knew that his words were vain. In particular, the Moravians put Wesley into con26K. M. Coulter and A. B. Saye, eds., 4 List of the Early Settlers of Georgia (Athens,

Georgia, 1949), p. 57.

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tact with the German language and some of the greatest German pietist hymns. Wesley's superb translations of thirty-three of those hymns have become justly honored within Anglo-Saxon spiritual hymnody, and they were also important in his own spiritual progress.

Six of his translations are included in this volume. And so, at this period in his spiritual burgeoning, Wesley was wrestling with the German and translating into fluent English verses such as these:27

Jesu, to thee my heart I bow; Strange flames far from my soul remove; Fairest among ten thousand thou, Be thou my Lord, my Life, my Love.

(Zinzendorf) O Jesu, source of calm repose, Thy like nor man nor angel knows, Fairest among ten thousand fair!

Even those whom death's sad fetters bound, Whom thickest darkness compass'd round, Find light and life, if thou appear.

(Freylinghausen) Close by thy side still may I keep, Howe'er life's various currents flow; With steadfast eye mark every step, And follow thee where'er thou go.

(Richter) Savior, where'er thy steps I see, Dauntless, untired I follow thee:

Oh, let thy hand support me still, And lead me to thy holy hill.

(Zinzendorf) Shall I, for fear of feeble man, Thy Spirit's course in me restrain?

27See J. L. Nuelsen, John Wesley and the German Hymn, trans. T. Parry, S. H.

Moore, and A. Holbrook), Hymns 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 15, 16, 18, 23, 24, 32, (Holbrook, Calverley, 1972), pp. 111-61.

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Or, undismay'd in deed and word Be a true witness to my Lord?

(Winckler) Jesu, thy boundless love to me No thought can reach, no tongue declare:

Oh, knit my thankful heart to thee, And reign without a rival there.

Thine wholly, thine alone I am:

Be thou alone my constant flame.

(Gerhardt) O God, of good the unfathom'd Sea, Who would not give his heart to thee?

Who would not love thee with his might?

O Jesu, Lover of mankind, Who would not his whole soul and mind With all his strength to thee unite?

(Scheffler) Be heaven even now our soul's abode, Hid be our life with Christ in God, Our spirit, Lord, be one with thine:

Let all our works in thee be wrought, And fill'd with thee be all our thought, Till in us thy full likeness shine.

(Zinzendorf) My Savior, how shall I proclaim, How pay the mighty debt I owe?

Let all I have, and all I am Ceaseless to all thy glory show.

(Gerhardt) Hence our hearts melt, our eyes o'erflow, Our words are lost: nor will we know, Nor will we think of aught beside "My Lord, my Love is crucified."

(Anna Nitschmann)

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What can we offer our good Lord (Poor nothings!) for his boundless grace?

Fain would we his great name record, And worthily set forth his praise.

Dear Object of our growing love, To whom our more than all we owe, Open the Fountain from above, And let it our full soul o'erflow.

(Spangenberg) We do not know why Wesley chose thirty-three particular hymns to translate out of all the possibilities open to him, but it is fair to assume that he chose them both on the basis of their inherent merit as hymns and also because of their relevance to his own need.

He first heard them in 1735 and finished translating them in 1737; his involvement in them was relatively brief in respect of time. Nevertheless, through the excellence of his selections and the caliber of his translations he enriched Anglo-Saxon spirituality and opened up the prospect of a new cross-fertilization between German and Anglo-Saxon piety. He realized the potential significance of hymnody as a resource for spirituality, and prepared the way for his brother Charles to make a far deeper contribution to this medium of spiritual nurture.

He also spoke to his own soul. His grappling with the words of these hymns, with their notions of praise, love, faith, surrender, prayer, joy, and assurance, set him on the road to the seeking of a new inner dynamic that would creatively integrate all his other gifts. The future ingredients of his life and spirituality were already present: mysticism and inner religion, a liturgical and sacramental framework,

.a penchant for organization, a desire for social involvement, a seeking after perfect love. His contact with the Moravians provided the spark of an inner dynamic that was to bring out his gifts, and he became persuaded that justification by faith and living by faith were not merely doctrinal notions but could become inward realities.

The final and decisive Moravian influence was that of Peter Bohler, who guided Wesley in London between February 7 and May

4, 1738. The trauma of the flight from Georgia had heightened Wesley's desire to experience inwardly a sense of trust and confidence in God. Both he and Charles, who had also returned bewildered from Georgia, needed some resolution concerning the future direction of

INTRODUCTION

their outward lives. They needed to ascertain the will of God for them. They needed some relief from their inner and outer uncertainty. Bohler convinced Wesley that inward peace was graspable. On February 18 he said, "My brother, my brother, that philosophy of yours must be purged away." On March ¢ he said, "Preach faith tll you have it; and then because you have it, you will preach faith." He then produced witnesses to persuade Wesley that it was possible to experience an inner assurance of faith. Now Wesley's search for an inner trust and reliance on God was in dynamic process. His brother

Charles realized this experience on May 21, 1738. On May 24, John opened his New Testament at the words of 2 Peter 1, verse four,

"There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of the divine nature." The afternoon anthem at St. Paul's was "Out of the deep have I called unto Thee."

In the evening he went "unwillingly" to a society in Aldersgate Street where someone was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. His journal summarizes succinctly and brilliantly what happened: 'About a quarter before nine while he was describing the change that God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." The extracts from Wesley's Journal included in this volume catalog the details of the preceding events in Wesley's own words.?®

A number of inaccurate myths have grown up in relation to the Aldersgate Street experience of John Wesley. The two main ones are that of Piette, who tends to undervalue it by comparison with Wesley's "conversion" of 1725, and that of a traditional strand within the Methodist tradition, which tends to overvalue it by denigrating what had gone before and by isolating it from a cluster of other experiences realized by Wesley in 1738-1739. The truth would appear to lie somewhere in the middle. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of the Aldersgate experience. As Wesley put it, before it he had been sometimes if not often conquered, after it he was always the conqueror. Doubts and problems would continue, but from now on he was always master of them. And it is plain matter of fact that his effectiveness as a Christian leader increased after this time out of all recognition. From being the Georgia stumbler, he eventually became the 28See pp. 105-107.

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leader of the revival. On the other hand, except in this celebrated journal entry, Wesley himself did not stress the Aldersgate Street event. In the Plain Account of Christian Perfection, Wesley leaps straight from Georgia to his visit to the Moravians in Germany, completely omitting his experience of May 24, 1738. He does the same in his Short

Fiistory of the People Called Methodists, wherein he traces what he calls "the three rises of Methodism" not to Aldersgate Street but to the Holy Club in November 1729, to Savannah in April 1736 "when twenty or thirty persons met at my house," and to London on May

1, 1738, "when forty or fifty of us agreed to meet together every Wednesday evening, in order to a free conversation, begun and ended with singing and prayer."29

In fact, the rise of Methodism as a distinctive tradition did not immediately succeed the Aldersgate experience. There is a sense in which, eighteen days later, on June 11, Wesley preached what may be construed as the opening salvo of the Methodist movement at St.

Mary's Oxford in his sermon Salvation by Faith, which he termed "the rock and foundation of the Christian religion."3° However, in the summer of 1738 he disappeared to Germany in order to visit the Moravian leader Zinzendorf at Herrnhut. He benefited from the opportunity to observe the organization, the Christian education, the classes and bands, the love feasts, the watch nights, and the hymn singing of the Moravians. As yet, though, he was still an observer rather than a leader. When he returned to England, he happened to read an account of the striking results of the preaching of Jonathan

Edwards in Northampton New England in 1737. He was deeply impressed by the fruits of Edwards's preaching if not by his high Calvinistic theology.?! In spite of his debt to the Moravians, he was beginning to have doubts about their quietism, and these doubts came to a head during the course of a number of disputes that arose in the Fetter Lane Society to which Wesley belonged. It seemed to Wesley that in their zeal for justification by faith the Moravians were not sufficiently emphasizing the need to attend to the means of grace and the 29 Works, vol. XIII, p. 307.

30Works, vol. V, p. 15.

31See Journal for October 9, 1738, in Works, vol. I, p. 160. Wesley later extracted and published 4 Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton... in New England, and later still four other works by Jonathan Edwards.

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obligation to engage in good works. This led him to examine again the homilies of the Church of England that expounded justification by faith.32 He found his own view confirmed therein and he finally separated from the Fetter Lane Society. His spirituality had been deeply influenced by the Moravian stress on the inwardness of faith, but now the cord was snapped and the danger that he too would so emphasize faith as to diminish works, the means of grace, and perfect love was gone at last.

Finally, on March 29, 1739, he set out for Bristol in response to a letter from George Whitefield asking Wesley to deputize for him in Bristol while he visited America. Whitefield's preaching had begun to produce results similar to those of Jonathan Edwards. Wesley rode to Bristol in fear and trembling, realizing that for the first time he would have to preach deliberately in the open air without the benefit of a church building. On April 2, as he put it, "I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people."%? His text was an appropriate one,

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor: He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." His preaching was successful—to Wesley's surprise and joy. The events at Bristol and his text were symbolic for the future. This marked the real beginning of the Methodist movement qua movement. It was the final episode in a sequence of spiritual events that had led Wesley from Aldersgate Street to St. Mary's

Church Oxford to Germany to Jonathan Edwards to the synergism of the Anglican Homilies and finally to Bristol. From now on, John

Wesley's spirituality would be inextricably bound up with that of the Methodist tradition. This is not to say that Wesley aimed to impose his own spirituality on the Methodist movement.

It is doubtful whether any great religious leader has consciously founded a religious movement. Rather he was ready to respond to the call of God, and as an indirect result a great religious movement came into being.

His past experiences clicked into place. He went out like Abraham, 32Journal for November 12, 1738, in Works, vol. I, p. 164.

33Journal for April 2, 1739, in Works, vol. I, Pamlsoe

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not knowing where he was going, but willing to adapt his methods to a dynamic, evolving situation. Inevitably, within this process, Wesley's own spirituality was crucial within the evolution of the movement that he was to lead.

The year 1739 represents a watershed in the development of Wesley's spirituality. Up to this time, he had been learning from others. From now on, although he continued to learn, others would be far more influenced by him. In 1725 he had heard the call to a deeper spiritual life; in 1729 he had led a band of Oxford men who together, in sheltered circumstances, sought after perfect love; in 1735 he had gone into the wilderness—almost literally in Georgia, symbolically in his soul—to ascertain God's will for the future and to do some good in the present; in 1738-1739 he discovered an inner dynamic that fused together the other elements in his interior life, and an outward role that would enable him to convey his own spirituality to others.

The rest of his life was basically the story of how Wesley endeavored under God to communicate his personal spirituality to countless thousands of others.

At this point, it is appropriate to reintroduce Charles Wesley into our narrative. It would be unnecessary labor to examine minutely the development of his spirituality, which had followed the general course taken by that of his brother. Charles had studied at, and become head boy of, Westminster School, whereas John had gone to Charterhouse. Charles had been offered the opportunity of leaving his own family and becoming the heir of a relative in Ireland. He had rejected the chance, which had gone instead to a Wellesley who became a forefather of the Duke of Wellington. Charles had become a student then a lecturer at Christ Church Oxford, and the first leader of the Holy Club before the return of his brother in 1729. They had both gone out to Georgia, John to Savannah, and Charles to be secretary to Oglethorpe, the leading spirit in the new plantation. Charles quit Georgia before John in July 1736 and he arrived home without any resolution of his inner spiritual need for a personal assurance of faith and of his vocational need for a set direction for his ministry.

On May 21, 1738, three days before his brother, he received an inward assurance of faith. Influenced by Luther's commentary on Galatians, he heard an inward voice asking him to arise and believe, and through the medium of interior words such as these and scripture passages such as Isaiah 40, verse 1, "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my peo-

INTRODUCTION

ple, says your God," he found a new inner dynamic.** He also found a new vocation, for he felt compelled to put his experience into the words of a hymn. Although famous, it is not one of the best of his hymns. Nor, indeed, was it the first, for Mrs. Oglethorpe mentions hymns he had written in Georgia. Yet it pointed to a latent gift for hymnody that had been uncovered by this new development in his spirituality. Like John, he was destined to preach, undergo persecution, organize, and travel in the course of his work, but the main thrust of his spirituality lay in the hymns that now began to pour from his pen. And this particular hymn, although rough-hewn, symbolizes more clearly than the related events in John's life the possibilities that were to follow. He marvels at the grace of God for him,

'Where shall my wondering soul begin? How shall I all to heaven aspire?" he asks. "O how shall I the goodness tell, Father, which thou to me has showed?" he continues. He knows that the grace of God that he has found is available to all men, especially those in greatest need.

Outcasts of men, to you I call, Harlots, and publicans, and thieves!

He spreads his arms to embrace you all:

Sinners alone his grace receive; No need of him the righteous have; He came the lost to seek and save.

"He calls you now, invites you home; Come, O my guilty brethren, come!" he cries.3° The personalism, the adoring wonder, the immediacy, the universal invitation that were to be characteristics of the early Methodist movement are already present in this poetic composition of Charles Wesley. On this day he was writing a hymn for himself. Before long he would be writing for a wider audience.

What then was the religious stage onto which the Wesleys were about to enter with dynamic force? New towns were growing up in the north of England largely bereft of spiritual sustenance. At the be4See W. F. Lofthouse, Charles Wesley, in A History of the Methodist Church in Britain, vol. I (London: Epworth, 1965), pp. 115-44. See also The Journal of the Rev. Charles

Wesley, M.A., ed. T. Jackson, vol. I (London, 1849), pp. 92-123.

Hymn 29 in the 1780 Hymnbook; Hymn 361 in The Methodist Hymnbook (London: Methodist Publishing House, 1933).

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ginning of the eighteenth century, Manchester had 8,000 inhabitants; by the end of the century it would have 95,000 people within its boundaries. Churches and ministers were not present to meet the growing needs. When Fletcher later went to Madeley he found himself in an area of Shropshire where Darby of Coalbrookdale was heralding the rise of the Industrial Revolution, and where he would be able to marvel at the first iron bridge in the world. Over in Wales

William Williams would write the famous hymn "Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this barren land," as an allegory of the Christian pilgrimage but also as a prophetic vision of the beautiful

Rhondda valley soon to be scarred by the outward signs of a new economic and social situation. While the psychological and social face of Britain changed, religious slumber prevailed.

The Church of England was not lacking in good or even great men as once was thought. Norman Sykes and others have portrayed the faithfulness of many ministers in different places, men who (like

Samuel Wesley) labored silently and unsung.?° The problem lay rather in the structure of the church. The Convocation had not met since

1717, nor was it destined to meet again until 1855. There was no central body to think strategically for the church. There was no structural potentiality for concerted action on any matter, not least on the question of how to utilize the Wesleys, as the medieval Church had utilized Saint Francis. The bishops spent months at the House of Lords yet lacked the power to effect meaningful change. Dioceses and parishes tended to go their separate ways and to act congregationally rather than regionally or nationally. They existed mainly in southern

England away from the growing areas of population. The whole of America was hypothetically directly under the influence of the Bishop of London.

The problem lay also in the ineffectual spirituality of the church.

Fine brains battled with the opponents of the church, but on the opponents' terms. Attention was focused on the heavenly city of the eighteenth-century philosophers, namely earth. Nature, creation, the Divine Reason, the existence of God, and religion provided the material for discussion at the expense of inner, experiential concerns.

Archbishop Herring's visitation returns for 1743 give the impression 36See, for example, N. Sykes, Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century,

Historical Association Pamphlet 78 (Cambridge, 1934).

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of a band of not unworthy ministers attempting to fulfill their work according to the standards of their day.?7 The trouble was that the standards of 1743 were not noted for inwardness or spirituality. Into this situation rode the Wesleys, inwardly equipped, and outwardly ready in the case of John, to ride a quarter of a million miles to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. They came not just as evangelists, although they were certainly that, but also as conveyors of an integral spirituality. Their evangelism was part of their spirituality.

From 1739 onward, it is impossible to analyze the spirituality of the Wesleys without examining their role in the Methodist Revival.

In preference to giving a history of the early Methodist movement, I intend to interpret their spirituality by reference to the other groups within the eighteenth-century renewal. Earlier Methodists tended to assume that the Methodist Revival began at Aldersgate

Street and that the whole movement was led by John Wesley. We have seen that the first claim is inaccurate, and the same is true of the second. We can understand better the achievement and spirituality of the Wesleys by analyzing their place within the whole spectrum of the revival.

In fact there were five main streams within the revival, and also five somewhat differing interpretations of spirituality. All of them agreed on the basic question of justification by faith, but they differed in other ways. The first group was that led by the Wesleys themselves, and we will examine the spirituality of this group as we briefly investigate the others. The towering stature of the Wesleys has tended to obscure the fact of the four other separate, if related, groups, which contributed by their divergence to the continuing evolution of the Wesleys' spirituality. The hymns, journals, letters, treatises, sermons and tracts that from now on encapsulated the spirituality of the Wesleys were not written in a vacuum. They emerged as catalysts and responses within a dynamic situation within which the Wesleys were the dominant but not the only factor.

The first of the other four groups within the revival was the Moravians themselves. We have noted their positive influence on the Wesleys from 1735-1738, and from 1739 onward they continued to be an influence, but in a more negative fashion. They did not immediately decline after the defection of the Wesleys but continued as a vig37S. L. Ollard and P. C. Walker, Archbishop Herring's Visitation Returns, vol. 1, 1743, p. XVIII.

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orous group. Indeed, after the Wesleys had left the Fetter Lane Society, Moravian influence in England increased rather than the reverse, and for the next fifteen years their influence spread in different parts of the land. One of Wesley's most famous early lay preachers,

John Cennick, was ordained by Béhler in September 1749 and it was by no means clear to anyone alive in 1750 that the future lay with the Wesleys rather than with the Moravians.

The Moravians' theology tended toward quietism—being quiet before God, and leaving everything to God. They also had the habit of referring in a somewhat sentimental way to the intimate details of Christ's death on the cross. The Wesleys reacted, in their spirituality, to all these facets of the Moravian tradition. They interpreted justification by faith, which they had learned experientially from the Moravians, through the medium of the Church of England homilies, liturgy, and sacraments. They acknowledged the primacy of God's grace, but insisted that man must respond to the prevenient grace of God in the process of leaving all to God. They stressed the means of grace and active involvement in the world over against the quietism of the Moravians. John Wesley had already modified the sentimentality of Moravian descriptions of the death of Christ in his translations of their hymns, for example by reducing the nineteen verses of Zinzendorf's "Jesu, to Thee my heart I bow" to six, and he was a constant influence for good in insisting on the poetic propriety of Charles

Wesley's hymns, even to the extent of criticizing the "sentimentality" of one of Charles's greatest hymns, "Jesu, Lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly." The spirituality of Charles Wesley's hymns was influenced positively and negatively by the Moravians. This is brought out in the preface and selection of hymns from the 1780 hymnbook that we use in this volume. As John puts it in the preface,

'Here are, allow me to say, both the purity, the strength, and the elegance of the English language; and, at the same time, the utmost simplicity and plainness, suited to every capacity." However, "That which is of infinitely more moment than the spirit of poetry is the spirit of piety," and John commends the hymnbook as a means of quickening the spirit of devotion, of confirming faith, of enlivening hope, and of kindling and increasing love to God and man.°*® It has amply fulfilled this task during the intervening years. It has done this by including the Moravian assurance of faith and the Moravian pas38See pp. 176-177.

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sion within its integral spirituality, while avoiding the Moravian sentimentality and infelicity of language.

In 1745 Charles Wesley's Hymns on the Lord's Supper was first published with a preface extracted by John Wesley from Dean Brevint's

Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice. We include some of the hymns in this volume, and they too were occasioned partly by the Wesleys' reaction against Moravian quietism. During the same period, Charles

Wesley also wrote a number of hymns on the great festivals of the Church, including the celebrated "Hark! the Herald-Angels Sing" and "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today." This corpus of hymns assumed the background of the liturgical year and sacramental practice of the Church of England and was not included in the 1780 hymnbook, which stressed the distinctive spirituality of the Methodist movement. We include in this volume a number of Charles Wesley's hymns from the 1876 supplement to the 1780 hymnbook, including some on the great festivals of the Church. We do this to illustrate the development whereby, after the Wesleys' attempt to keep the Methodist movement within the Church of England had. posthumously failed, the various Methodist churches felt constrained to include, in their hymnbooks, hymns on the sacraments and festivals that had been written originally to speak to the Church of England context.

In general, the later Methodists paid less attention to the sacramental hymns than did the Anglicans, and the Church of England paid less attention to the hymns in the 1780 book than did the Methodists. The Wesleys themselves combined a mutual stress on sacramental and evangelical spirituality. They contributed toward a sacramental revival within the Church of England that was later commented on by the High Anglicans, as well as to the evangelical revival in all the churches. We will glance briefly at some of the aspects of the sacramental spirituality of Charles Wesley's hymns, which were in themselves a partial reaction to the Moravian quietism.

The first part of Hymns on the Lord's Supper consists of twentyseven hymns (of which we selected three) that look at the Eucharist as a memorial of the sufferings and death of Christ; the second part consists of sixty-five hymns (of which we selected thirteen) that look at it as a sign and means of grace; the third part consists of twentythree hymns (of which we selected three) that look at it as a pledge of heaven; the fourth part consists of twelve hymns (of which we selected two) that look at it as a sacrifice; the fifth part consists of thirty hymns (of which we selected two) that look at it as involving a sac-

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rifice of our persons; and the final part, which consists of nine hymns, concentrates on the postcommunion period. The final hymn of Wesley's (our second selection from part six) is an extraordinary composition, extending to twenty-two verses [97].39 In it Charles looks back to the golden age of the early Church during which, he suggests, communion was partaken every day.

In holy fellowship they lived, Nor would from the commandment move But every joyful day received The tokens of expiring love.

He goes on to suggest that the beauty of the lives of the early Christians was influenced by their eucharistic practice.

Throughout their spotless lives was seen The virtue of this heavenly food; Superior to the sons of men, They soared aloft and walked with God.

The sacramental food also sustained them in death.

Strong in the strength herewith received, And mindful of the Crucified, His confessors for him they lived, For him his faithful martyrs died.

What then has happened, he mourns, to the Church of the eighteenth century?

Why is the faithful seed decreased, The life of God extinct and dead?

The daily sacrifice is ceased, And charity to heaven is fled.

He longs for the return of sacramental seriousness, not merely for the sake of the "faithful seed" but also for its cosmic significance for the world.

39See Hymn 97. Hymn numbers are henceforth indicated in square brackets.

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Return and with thy servants sit, Lord of the sacramental feast; And satiate us with heavenly meat, And make the world thy happy guest.

The sacrament is an anticipation not only of heaven but also of the millennium on earth.

Erect thy tabernacle here, The New Jerusalem send down, Thy standard in the heavens display, And bring the joy which ne'er shall end.

This is a remarkable example in a series of impressive hymns of eucharistic devotion. They cross ecclesiastical boundaries, and as the Roman Catholic layman Todd writes, "the great majority of Charles's hymns on the Eucharist could be sung in a Catholic church.'"'4°

The predominant note sounded by Charles is that of the joyful presence of the Lord among his people at his own supper.

We need not now go up to heaven, To bring the long-sought Savior down; Thou are to all already given, Thou dost even now thy banquet crown:

To every faithful soul appear, And show thy real presence here. [92] The words "real presence" are not used in any polemical sense. It was a plain statement of eucharistic fact that the Lord's Supper was a means of grace whereby one could know the presence of the risen

Christ. On occasion the stress is on the Holy Spirit's bringing Christ's presence to the congregation.

Come, thou Witness of his dying, Come, Remembrancer Divine, Let us feel thy power applying Christ to every soul and mine. [74] "Todd, John Wesley and the Catholic Church, p. 148.

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On occasion the emphasis is on the Spirit's presence in the elements.

Come, Holy Ghost, thine influence shed, And realize the sign; Thy life infuse into the bread, Thy power into the wine. [85] It is not so much a matter of theology, it is a question of spirituality.

The same is true of Charles's references to the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist. The philosophical or theological nature of the sacrifice is not his concern; he is joyfully aware that Christ has died sacrificially for all men and that in the Lord's Supper this is personally and poignantly obvious.

With solemn faith we offer up, And spread before thy glorious eyes That only ground of all our hope, That precious bleeding Sacrifice, Which brings thy grace on sinners down, And perfects all our souls in one. [93] In response to the sacrifice of Christ, the Christian sacrifices himself to God in the Eucharist.

Our souls and bodies we resign, With joy we render thee Our all, no longer ours, but thine Through all eternity. [58] There is a sense too in which the corporate sacrifice of the Church is united to Christ's own sacrifice and offered up by him to God.

With him, the Cornerstone, The living stones conjoin, Christ and his church are one One body and one vine; For us he uses all his powers, And all he has, or is, is ours. [94]

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Insofar as the Lord's Supper necessarily centers on the death of Christ, there is an overlap between preaching and sacrament in Charles' spirituality. Although not uninterested in doctrines of the atonement, his main concern is with the reality of the experience that Christ has died for our sins. This could be known personally by means of preaching, or by means of the sacrament. Christ's death was part of God's whole design for man, which included Christ's incarnation, life, resurrection, ascension, and kingship as well as his death.

It resulted in man's sanctification and union with God in perfect love, as well as in man's justification. In a nonsacramental hymn, written a year after his spiritual experience of May 21, 1738, Wesley summed up the ineffable mystery of the death of Christ.

*Tis mystery all! The Immortal dies:

Who can explore his strange design?

In vain the firstborn seraph tries To sound the depths of love divine!

"Tis mercy all! let earth adore, Let angel-minds enquire no more. [18] The same adoring wonder shines forth in a number of his hymns on the Eucharist as a memorial.

Endless scenes of wonder rise With that mysterious tree, Crucified before our eyes Where we our Maker see:

Jesus, Lord, what hast thou done?

Publish we the death divine, Stop, and gaze, and fall, and own Was never love like thine! [75] Participation in the Eucharist as a means of grace that mediated the death of Christ was a meaningful resource for triumphant living on earth.

Jesu, we follow thee, In all thy footsteps tread, And pant for full conformity To our exalted Head. [95]

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Faithful use of the Lord's Supper was also an earnest of heaven.

To heaven the mystic banquet leads; Let us to heaven ascend, And bear this joy upon our heads Till it in glory end. [90] In Charles Wesley's sacramental hymns we find a salutary corrective to the stillness of the Moravians; we also find a spiritual resource for the whole Church in our ecumenical age. In them he managed to combine an evangelical passion with a sacramental stress, and in so doing he held together elements that have so often, in the history of the Church, been put asunder.

The same applies to his hymns on the great festivals of the Church that are to be found in this volume. They follow the liturgical year, they outline God's plan of salvation in Christ, but they make those great events personal. Christ's birth, ""Our God contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made man" [107]; Christ's death, "Would Jesus have the sinner die? Why hangs he then on yonder tree?" [5];

Christ's resurrection, "Love's redeeming work is done, Fought the fight, the battle won" [111]; Christ's ascension, "Him though highest heaven receives, Still he loves the earth he leaves" [112]; Christ's return, "Lo! he comes with clouds descending, Once for favored sinners slain" [101]; Pentecost, "Granted is the Savior's prayer, Sent the gracious Comforter" [116]—all these become spiritual events in the life of the singer as well as points on a liturgical calendar. At the same time, liturgical and sacramental integrity is safeguarded.

The second alternative group that comprised the Methodist Revival (after the Moravians) was the Calvinistic Methodists. They were loosely organized around George Whitefield and the Countess of Huntingdon. They became strong in Wales, where John Wesley rarely went. Indeed, before Aldersgate Street, and before the Wesleys were even on the scene, a Welshman, Griffith Jones, had been converted, preached in the open air, conceived a circuit system, and been persecuted for his zeal. Although loosely attached to the Church of England, the Calvinistic Methodists, like John Wesley, were wont to ignore parish boundaries in the interests of preaching the Gospel to those who needed it most. Like him, they preached in the open air, employed lay preachers, and in other ways were in danger of infringing the strict letter of the canon law of the Church of England. For

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this reason, both groups were opposed by the regular evangelical clergy of that church.

George Whitefield was almost certainly a greater preacher than John Wesley.41 He may well have been one of the greatest preachers of all time. However, Wesley called his work "a rope of sand." The reason was that Whitefield was not an organizer. Wesley, on the other hand, was probably one of the most gifted organizers the Church has known. He not only preached, he organized those who responded to his preaching so that they in turn could deepen their own spirituality and pass it on to others. This did not happen according to a preconceived plan. John Wesley applied what he had learned from his father, from the Church of England Societies, from the Holy Club, from Georgia, from the Moravians, to the situation of the Methodist

Revival as it developed. Looking back in 1787 he wrote that he and Charles had had no plan at all.

They only went hither and thither, wherever they had a prospect of saving souls. But when more and more asked,

'What must I do to be saved?" they were desired to meet all together. Twelve came the first Thursday night; forty the next, soon after, a hundred. And they continued to increase till, three or four and twenty years ago, the London Society amounted to about 2,800.42

By means of prayerful improvisation, Wesley built up a strongly organized Methodist movement, a kind of missionary society, within the Church of England. The organization was provided by the situation rather than imposed upon it. His aim was '"'not to form any new sect; but to reform the nation, particularly the Church; and to spread

Scriptural holiness over the land.''43 This was the mission, but Wesley knew, like Loyola, that mission must be organized, and organization has remained a strong point of the Methodists ever since.

Wesley's organization was based on the local society, and wherever he went he formed societies. Within the early societies, band meet- *1See, for example, J. C. Pollock, George Whitefield and the Great Awakening (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973).

42See Works, vol. VII, p. 207, Sermon CVII, On God's Vineyard.

*3See Works, vol. VIL, p. 299, The Large Minutes.

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ings sprang up for more intense fellowship. However, in 1742 the Bristol Methodists met together to discuss the financing of the New

Room. A certain Captain Foy offered to visit a class of eleven members to collect one penny a week from them, and others offered to follow his example. Wesley's fertile brain intuited that the "class" could become a medium of spirituality rather than of pure finance, and henceforth he divided the societies into class meetings for fellowship.

He was influenced, of course, by his experiences at Epworth, at the Church of England Societies, at the Holy Club, in Georgia, and among the Moravians, but he adapted his spirituality to the new

Christians who were flocking into the movement. He saw that Christian fellowship, koinonia, was not inimicable to organization, indeed it was intrinsic to the Christian life. The koinonia of the early Methodists was immortalized in some of Charles Wesley's hymns.

He bids us build each other up; And, gathered into one, To our high calling's glorious hope We hand in hand go on.

We all partake the joy of one, The common peace we feel, A peace to sensual minds unknown, A joy unspeakable.

And if our fellowship below In Jesus be so sweet, What heights of rapture shall we know, When round his throne we meet. [98] The Methodist class meeting became the quintessence of the intimate

Christian fellowship group, which has become so important in the more recent history of the Church. An early description of the early

Methodist societies and classes is given in the extract in our volume entitled The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Socteties, in London, Bristol, Kingswood, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, &c. In reading this, we see that Wesley commends an ascetic as well as a joyful spirituality. The society was '"'a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to

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receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation."*4

Salvation, however, was not just an inward experience. It must evidence itself in fruits. These fruits included not just faithful attendance on the means of grace, but also a negative abstention from evil and a positive attachment to good. The Methodist societies and classes, in spite of their successful spread, were no soft options. The ultimate aim was scriptural holiness, perfect love, and this involved conforming one's whole life to the will of God. In other words, the societies and classes were a social contextualization of Wesley's own spirituality.

Leadership was needed for the societies and classes. At first Wesley was loathe to accept laymen as preachers. His own mother eventually persuaded him in the case of Thomas Maxfield. "It is the Lord," she said, "let Him do what seems [to] Him good."4> Laymen assumed increasing importance in the growing movement as preachers, society stewards, class leaders, and so on, and they have remained important in Methodism ever since.

The societies were never meant to be independent from one another. They were from the first united or connectional societies. Before long, the idea of the "round" or "circuit" developed. Traveling lay preachers were put in charge of a number of societies organized into circuits, and they in turn were organized by Wesley's Annual

Conference under his own supervision. Thus there arose a remarkable system of connected caring. At grass roots Methodists were joined in classes, classes were joined in societies, societies were joined in circuits, and circuits were joined together under the conference superintended by John and Charles Wesley with the help of faithful laymen. The point is that this connectional system was not merely a stroke of administrative genius, it was a system of connected spirituality. The organization per se was not the important factor; what mattered was the spirituality that was channeled through the system.

This same system of annual conferences, circuit riders, and local societies, when transplanted across the Atlantic, was to be even more

"4See p. 108. See Journal for April 25, 1742, for his first appointment of Class

Leaders, in Works, vol. 1, p. 364.

the Minutes of 1746 Wesley later described the lay preachers, in a striking phrase, as "extraordinary messengers, designed of God to provoke the others to jealousy." See publications of Wesley Historical Society, no. I, p. 34, 1896.

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successful in the American west than in Britain. It resulted in the extraordinary growth of American Methodism so that by 1855, from a standing start in 1771, it was the largest Protestant body in the United States, with a million and a half members. In the process of adaptation the original spirituality of the Wesleys became modified as well. Nevertheless the notion of the necessity and usefulness of organization, and the notion that spirituality must be shared both intimately and widely, remained a legacy of the Wesleys. In this they differed from Whitefield and the Calvinistic Methodists.

They differed also in regard to doctrine. The theology of the Wesleys was Arminian, that of the other group was Calvinistic. This doctrinal divergence amounted also to a divergence of spirituality.

There are, of course, different brands of Calvinism, as indeed there are different brands of Arminianism. As John Wesley wrote in the Minutes of Conference of 1745, '"'We stand on the very edge of Calvinism," and he shared the Calvinistic stress on the grace of God and justification by faith.4¢ His Arminianism was not quite that of Arminius himself, nor that of the seventeenth-century Laudians. Likewise the moderate Calvinists often looked on the Wesleyans more in sorrow than in anger. Yet there were deep, underlying differences that sometimes became acute. These emerged obtrusively in the Calvinistic Controversy that ensued in the 1770s after the death of Whitefield. They emerged less destructively, but also more importantly, right at the beginning of the Methodist Revival. Again it was

Charles Wesley's hymns, as well as John's more labored prose, that responded to the situation in Hymns on God's Everlasting Love of 1741.

These hymns put into poetry what John was to put into prose and what both the brothers were to speak with their mouths and act out in their spirituality. The Wesleys stressed that, through the prevenient grace of God, man has free will. No man, they claimed, is predestined to damnation. The "'heathen," they asserted, can be saved if they follow the light they have. God does not force our wills, was their conviction. Yet God's grace, though boundless, is not cheap; he requires holiness as well as faith. But the perfect love that he requires of us stems from the fact that the ground of his being is love, and that love is available to all, whether beggar or prostitute, worthy or not.

Charles's hymns conveyed these prosaic truths in poetic form. What 46Minutes of 1745, Question 23, "Wherein may we come to the very edge of Calvinism?" in Works, vol. VIII, p. 285.

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he had found, a// could find. The Wesleys combined a deep personalism with an Arminian longing that the whole world might find the grace of God. 'For all, for all, my Savior died," Charles wrote. Both the "my" and the "all" were of paramount importance. In ringing verses, Charles pressed his convictions home.

O let me kiss thy bleeding feet, And bathe and wash them with my tears; The story of thy love repeat In every drooping sinner's ears, That a// may hear the quickening sound:

If I, even I, have mercy found! [5] Many of the verses of these hymns have a haunting, even an imploring appeal to the emotions through the minds of men. Their urgency speaks to us even now.

O let thy love my heart constrain, Thy love for every sinner free, That every fallen soul of man May taste the grace that found out me; That a// mankind, with me, may prove Thy sovereign, everlasting love. [5] The fact that the underlined words are torpedoes aimed at the Calvinist position is secondary to the appealing spirituality built into the phrases. In these verses, the Wesleys' Arminian spirituality took wings.

O for a trumpet voice On all the world to call!

To bid their hearts rejoice In him who died for all; For all my Lord was crucified, For all, for all my Savior died. [6] And so the appeal of God's love in Christ for all men rang out in a poetry and a music that was sung and experienced and acted on.

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"Tis Love! 'tis Love! Thou diedst for me!

I hear thy whisper in my heart; The morning breaks, the shadows flee, Pure, universal Love thou art; To me, to ail, thy mercies move:

Thy nature and Thy name is Love. [14] Countless thousands responded to the implicit appeal of the message contained in these rapturous hymns.

Would Jesus have the sinner die?

Why hangs he then on yonder tree?

What means that strange expiring cry?

(Sinners he prays for you and me) "Forgive them, Father, O forgive They know not that by me they live!" [5]

Most of these verses were written at a fair speed in the midst of a busy, traveling, preaching ministry. They were written from the heart. The phrases rolled on, "For a// thou hast in Christ prepared sufficient, sovereign, saving grace,"

Father, whose everlasting love Thy only Son for sinners gave, Whose grace to all did freely move, And sent him down a world to save. [121]

The Calvinists generally disagreed. They felt that the Wesleys' spirituality set all on man, on man's will, on man's choosing, on man's taking pains, on man's being a good husband of God's grace, whereas the point was to emphasize God's grace, God's will, God's choosing, God's distinguishing love. It is easy to overstress but also to understress the differences between the two groups. The Wesleyan

Revival was unusual in that it was Arminian in approach. Other midcentury Protestant renewals have usually been Calvinistic in tone ranging from Calvin himself in the sixteenth century, through the Puritans of the seventeenth century, the non-Wesleyans of the eighteenth century, the 1858 movement of the nineteenth century, to the Barthians of the twentieth century. The Wesleys were both evangeliao

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cal and Arminian. In this, as in other ways, they were catholic in their spirituality.

The third group in the eighteenth-century revival (after the Moravians and the Calvinistic Methodists) was the half-regular Evangelical clergy. Like the other groups, they stressed justification by faith.

In contrast with Wesley they remained in a parish and worked from there. Men such'as Thomson, Bennett, Grimshaw of Hawarth, Venn of Huddersfield, Berridge of Everton, and Fletcher of Madeley had parishes where they preached, and visited, and addressed the usual parish meetings. But they were also ready to use the parish as a base for outside preaching, open-air preaching, building meeting houses, supporting lay preachers, joining in circuits, and attending Wesley's conferences. The regular Evangelicals therefore accused them of breaking church order, but at the same time the half-regulars were bound to a parish and not free to preach where they wished. Some of them were moderate Calvinists. Fletcher of Madeley was not. He was the most authentic example of the Wesleyan spirituality in action. He was the archetypal Wesleyan "'saint."" We include an extract from John Wesley's Life of Fletcher in this volume, and will pause for a while to examine him, both for the sake of his Arminian spirituality and as an example of the half-regulars.*7

Here was a saint. Of him, John Wesley commented, "So unblameable a character in every respect I have not found either in Europe or America; and I scarce expect to find another such on this side of eternity."*8 Friends and opponents, parishioners and acquaintances, agreed together concerning his saintliness. Tradition has it that testimony is available from an unlikely quarter. John Fletcher's brother-in-law, Monsieur de Bottens, was an intimate friend of Voltaire. The persistent story, first printed by Abbey and Overton in The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, tells how Voltaire was asked if he knew anyone whose life corresponded with that of Christ in the Gospels.*? Voltaire replied that he did know of such a person. And he quoted John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley.

Here too was the man asked by Wesley, with the agreement and "7Fletcher's Works were edited in London by Joseph Benson in 1806-1808. See G.

Lawton, Shropshire Saint (London: Epworth, 1960).

*8 Works, vol. XI, p. 365, Life of Fletcher.

J. Abbey and J. H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1887), p. 343.

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acclaim of the early Methodist preachers, to succeed him as the leader of the Arminian Methodists. Fletcher never did succeed Wesley. Wesley lived; Fletcher died. Fletcher's health got worse in the 1770s; Wesley's health recovered during the 1770s, and he survived to lead on.

Fletcher was designated as, but did not become, Wesley's successor.

However, he did become Wesley's penman. It was Fletcher who took up the pen to defend Wesley during the Calvinistic Controversy. It was Fletcher who put Wesley's thought into a system, and he was the first systematic theologian of the Wesleyan movement. His early theological fame did not survive, his reputation for saintliness did.

There is a certain romance in Fletcher's spirituality. John Fletcher of Madeley was really Jean Guillaume de la Fléchére of Nyon in Switzerland. In a Swiss valley he grew up. In a Swiss university he was educated. Like Saint Francis, he almost became a soldier. By the margin of a maidservant's clumsiness, he was kept in Europe, he was kept out of the army, and his life was saved. And so, from the Swiss mountains, de la Fléchére improbably made his way to Britain to make a significant contribution to the Methodist movement.

In Fletcher, there was not the romance of constant travel, as with Wesley. He could not claim "the world is my parish," as did John

Wesley. Here is the more subtle piety of one who could claim that the parish was his world. For Fletcher knew that God had given him Madeley, and that at a time when it was becoming a center of the early

Industrial Revolution. In 1759 Nathaniel Gilbert had asked Fletcher to go with him to the West Indies to begin preaching the Gospel there. If he had agreed, he would have been one of the early Protestant missionaries. But he refused, and ended up in Madeley where he exercised his spirituality, like the Curé D'Ars, in the care of souls. His main diversion, while at Madeley, was to travel periodically to Trevecka in Wales where he became the first Visitor, or president, of one of the earliest theological colleges. Even this ended with the onset of the later Calvinistic Controversy, and he was free to serve and love the people of Madeley alone. Although an Arminian Methodist like

Wesley, he was bound spiritually to a// the people of a particular parish. His spirituality was circumscribed but enriched by Madeley.

However, although not irregular in regard to certain facets of church order, as was Wesley, Fletcher was not completely regular in his churchmanship. He was a half-regular. He was willing to build preaching houses in his parish. He was willing to preach in the open air and outside his parish. He used Madeley as the center of a sort of al

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circuit, and he used other Methodist practices such as class and band meetings. He played a significant part in Wesley's conferences of 1777, 1781, and 1784, and supported Wesley and the Methodist preachers in other ways.

For this reason, Fletcher and the half-regulars, as well as the Moravians, the Calvinistic Methodists, and the Arminian Methodists, incurred the displeasure of the group of regular Evangelical clergy that formed after 1746 around Samuel Walker of Truro.°° This group represented the fifth and final stream within the revival. Walker's group differed from the Wesleys in regard to both doctrine and church order. The doctrinal disagreement illustrated a difference of opinion concerning spirituality, and the discussion in regard to church order illustrated some of the reasons why the Wesleyan movement, although designed as a movement of mission within the Church of England, eventually became the separate Methodist Church.

The two points of doctrine and spirituality that lay at the center of the discussion between Walker and the Wesleys were those of Assurance and Christian Perfection. As far as Walker was concerned, the notion of Assurance formed an Achilles Heel within the Wesleyan position. It was a matter of temperament rather than faith. An assurance of faith, spiritually experienced, was not essential to genuine

Christianity. Although not insisting that it was essential, the Wesleys stressed that Assurance, the witness of God's Spirit with our spirit that we are His children, was not only possible but desirable for Christian spirituality. Equally, Walker cast doubts on the Wesleyan emphasis on Christian Perfection. He felt that it was not possible of attainment in this life, and that it was unwise to propose perfect love as an ideal for this life. It was obtainable only in heaven. As far as Wesley was concerned, Christian Perfection, or perfect love, was at the center of his spirituality. His purpose was to aim for perfect love in his own life, and to "spread scriptural holiness through the land."

It was not an optional extra added to faith, it was a deeper achievement within the life of faith, and a necessary consequence of true faith. His most comprehensive statement concerning Christian Per- °°Walker arrived in Truro and Hervey published his Meditations in 1746; by 1748

Romaine was in London, and by 1753 Adam had begun his friendship with Walker.

Hervey through his writings, Romaine in the capital city, Adam as lieutenant to Walker, and above all Walker himself as leader were important in the beginnings of the regular Evangelical movement. ai

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fection is included in this volume in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

Rather than analyzing the exchanges between the Walker group and the Wesley group concerning Assurance and Christian Perfection, we will now briefly use the context of that discussion to analyze the overall progression within the Wesleys' spirituality as it became actualized within the Arminian Methodist movement. As we have seen, it was developed within the parameters of the Church of England liturgy and sacraments, and within the framework of an Arminian theology that stressed that this spirituality was potentially available for all men. Recent thinking on the Wesleys has emphasized the fact that they had a genuine theology centered on the connected doctrines of original sin, prevenient grace, repentance, justification by faith, assurance, sanctification, perfect love, and glorification.®!

This is true, and it is correct that their divergence from Walker was a doctrinal disagreement about Assurance and Christian Perfection, and that their dispute with the Calvinists was a theological disharmony concerning free will, predestination, the imputed righteousness of Christ, and the role of works and the law in salvation. Without disputing the claim that the Wesleys together with Fletcher did have a worked-out theological system, it is our contention that this system was the handmaid of a distinctive spirituality. The theology and the spirituality went together, and the theology was meaningful not so much in itself but according as it contributed to the deepening of Christian experience and practice. Again, Charles Wesley's hymns exemplify the progression within this spirituality.

Spirituality as the Wesleys understood it begins with the stirrings of "conscience," which are activated by the prevenient grace of God. This conscience, this free will, this embryonic spirituality, is not a natural gift of man; it is triggered by the prevenient grace of God. Nevertheless, because the prevenient grace of God operates in all men, all men have this embryonic spirituality, including the Jews and those outside the Judaeo-Christian world. The Jewish dispensation vouchsafed to Moses is lower than the Christian dispensation but higher than the heathen dispensation. Salvation in the lower dispensations belongs to anyone who in God's account sincerely and uprightly follows the light of his dispensation, albeit through the merits

51See Outler, John Wesley, p. 28: "That Wesley should have become the patron saint of the theological indifferentism is mildly outrageous."

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of the unknown Christ. Spirituality is present therefore at a lower level in the non-Christian dispensations. This notion was, of course, contrary to Calvinistic beliefs.

However, the main concern of the Wesleys was not with nonChristian religion, nor with a mediocre form of Christian faith. They agreed that it was possible to have a faith that remained at the level of that of a servant but, as John Wesley put it, his aim was "to promote, so far as I am able, vital, practical religion; and by the grace of God to beget, preserve, and increase the life of God in the souls of men."5? This was true spirituality; it was the faith of a son. It combined inward faith with outward works, individual interiority with communal fellowship, the grace of God with the response of men, spiritual experience with social involvement, ascetic intent with a purpose to actively love all men. These characteristics of spirituality have often been held separately, or even severally; rarely have they been held integrally.

Like the other groups in the overall Methodist movement, the Wesleys recognized the centrality of justification by faith, which involved basically "pardon, the forgiveness of sins." Their originality lay in linking justification with a more positive spiritual sensation that they described in terms of spiritual birth, or new birth. Faith was not merely a passive acceptance of what God has done for us in Christ, it was also a "spiritual sensation." The Wesleys were now passing beyond the realms of doctrinal formulation into the area of spiritual experience. This inwardness was not amenable to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. It was not even amenable to the empiricism with which they sympathized, for even that was too limited in its concept of experience. The new birth was an entry (analagous to natural birth) into a new, spiritual environment wherein our hitherto embryonic spiritual senses could be quickened by the Holy Spirit.

The importance of this can be illustrated by their emphasis on "feelings." Feeling was for them no mere emotional state, but analagous to the sense of touch. It was not a physical or human attribute but a spiritual attribute, comparable perhaps to our outward feelings yet an inward not an outward sensation. They were pointing to an inner, invisible realm that cannot be seen but whose internal reality, when activated by faith, is more certain than so-called rational or empirical evidences. As Wesley wrote, in A Plain Account of Genuine Christianity

52 Works, vol. XIII, p. 197, letter to Samuel Walker dated September 3, 1756.

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(included in our volume), faith "gives a more extensive knowledge of things invisible, showing what eye had not seen, nor ear heard, neither could it before enter into our heart to conceive. And all these it shows in the clearest light, with the fullest certainty and evidence."53

What Christianity promised doctrinally it accomplished inwardly: "It is holiness and happiness, the image of God impressed on a created spirit; a fountain of peace and love springing up into everlasting lite. ?>4 According to the Wesleys, not only justification but this new spirituality was open to all. It was not the prerogative of spiritual masters, or monastic inhabitants, or priests, or even long-established

Christians. It was the potential birthright of every human being.

Through the preventing grace of God, each person was equipped with an embryonic spirituality; through the justifying grace of God, each person could receive forgiveness, and have activated 'faculties suited to things invisible." As Charles Wesley put it,

Come, sinners, to the gospel feast, Let every soul be Jesu's guest; Ye need not one be left behind, For God hath bidden all mankind.

Sent by my Lord, on you I call, The invitation is to all:

Come, all the world: come, sinner, thou!

All things in Christ are ready now. [2] The invitation to forgiveness and pilgrimage, when accepted, sparks a person's latent spirituality.

To him that in thy name believes Eternal life with thee is given Into himself he all receives, Pardon, and holiness, and heaven.

The things unknown to feeble sense, Unseen by reason's glimmering ray, esoeerp al 2S:

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With strong, commanding evidence, Their heavenly origin display.

Faith lends its realizing light, The clouds disperse, the shadows fly; The Invisible appears in sight, And God is seen by mortal eye. [11] These lines were written not primarily for kings or landed owners, but for miners and workers in the Londons, Bristols, and Newcastles of the eighteenth century—for men mostly new to the Church and the Christian tradition.

The teaching of the Wesleys on justification and the new birth led naturally to their teaching on Assurance. Walker of Truro, in objecting to this, was objecting to the spirituality that lay behind it. The implication of the Wesleys' teaching was not only that one's spiritual senses could be activated but that one could know that this was the case, one could have the witness of God's Spirit with one's own spirit that one was a child of God, that one was "on the way." This inward assurance was not essential, but plainly it was desirable in the life of spirituality. Again Charles Wesley expresses this beautifully in verse.

We by his Spirit prove And know the things of God, The things which freely of his love He hath on us bestowed; His Spirit to us he gave, And dwells in us, we know; The witness in ourselves we have, And all its fruits we show. [12] According to Walker, it was arrogance; according to Bishop Butler,

"the pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing." Wesley retorted that it was not extraordinary at all but "what every Christian may receive and ought to expect and pray for.''>> It was not an assurance about oneself, but an assur- .

Works, vol. XIII, p. 500, Conversation with the Bishop of Bristol. J. S. Lawton in Miracles and Revelation (London: Lutterworth, 1959, pp. 107-11) argues that Wesley

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ance about God conveyed by God. It was not a permanent state but an assurance about one's present situation. As such, it was a joyful experience. And some of Charles Wesley's most infectious verses were written to rehearse this experience.

My God, I am thine; What a comfort divine, What a blessing to know that my Jesus is mine!

In the heavenly Lamb Thrice happy I am, And my heart it doth dance at the sound of his name. [20]

My God! I know, I feel thee mine, And will not quit my claim, Till all I have is lost in thine, And all renewed I am. [45] According to John Wesley, the ante-Nicene Fathers, such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Origen, had both taught and known assurance of faith, and it had been a possession of true Christians in the Church down the ages.

For the Wesleys, the crux of spirituality lay not in justification and spiritual birth, whether accompanied by assurance or not; it lay rather in Christian Perfection or perfect love. According to them, spirituality involved an ongoing process of sanctification, the aim of which was to love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself. They knew that the high peaks of spiritual experience were not usually possible on a continuing basis. For many people there were times of spiritual conflict, dullness, and backsliding, and recovery from them. Times of inner dryness were liable to supervene. As Charles put it,

Jesus, the all-restoring Word, My fallen spirit's hope, After thy lovely likeness, Lord, Ah, when shall I wake up? [104] a a a pointed Apologetics in a new direction, away from miracles in the external world toward the miracles of inward spirituality wrought by God.

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The theoretical backing for the spirituality of sanctification rested in their notion of the differing nature of justification and the new birth, even though they might be, in spiritual experience, inseparable from each other. John Wesley wrote that justification implies only a relative, the new birth a real, change. God in justifying us does something for us; in begetting us again, He does the work in us.... The one restores us to the favor, the other to the image, of God. The one is the taking away of the guilt, the other the taking away the power, of sin: so that, although they are joined together in point of time, yet are they of wholly distinct natures.°°

The other groups in the revival, to a greater or lesser extent, emphasized the role of justification and faith in spirituality; the Wesleys laid the greater stress on sanctification, holiness, love, and Christian Perfection. In a sense the other groups were being faithful to the classical theology and spirituality of the Reformation, which had stressed the fact of man's sin and the centrality of the death of Christ in redeeming man from sin. The Wesleys stressed man's sin and Christ's death, but as part of a greater whole. The glorious mystery of Christ included not only His death, but also His birth, life, resurrection, ascension, and glorification. The glorious mystery of the Christian life included not only forgiveness for sin, but also sharing the divine nature, dwelling in God, entering into unity with the divine, living in union with God, attaining perfect love for God and man, and entering into Christ's glorification. In other words, there is a return to the notion of the early Church, and especially the Eastern Fathers, that God became man so that man might become divine. Again Charles Wesley's hymns clothe the ideas in words:

Heavenly Father, Life divine, Change my nature into thine!

Move and spread throughout my soul, Actuate and fill the whole!

Be it I no longer now Living in the flesh, but thou. [50] °° Works, vol. V, pp. 223-33, Sermon XIX, The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God.

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Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart!

Come quickly from above, Write thy new name upon my heart, Thy new, best name of love. [42] I shall fully be restored To the image of my Lord Witnessing to all mankind, Jesu's is a perfect mind. [43] This vision of a spirituality of perfect love and being restored to the image of God occurs also outside the hymns that deal with Christian

Perfection. It is the purpose of Christ's incarnation.

He deigns in flesh to appear, Widest extremes to join; To bring our vileness near, And make us all divine:

And we the life of God shall know, For God is manifest below. [107] Or, as a verse of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" puts it,

Adam's likeness now efface, Stamp thine image in its place:

Second Adam from above, Reinstate us in thy love. [105] Perfect love is the end purpose of all Christ's work on earth. It is the purpose for which man was created. Man can know it on earth. It will be consummated in heaven. As Charles Wesley's great ascension hymn states (in another little-known verse):

There we shall with thee remain, Partners of thy endless reign; There thy face unclouded see, Find our heaven of heavens in thee. [112]

The Wesleys' spirituality of Christian Perfection contained a cluster of interlocking ideas. Perfect love was at the center, purity of

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heart was important, the possibility of obtaining a character free from known sin was there, purity of intention was central, the fruits of the Spirit were paramount, the possibility of an inner experience of perfect love was present, and above all lived a conviction that there were no limits to what God could do with a human life if it was fully given into His hands. Although John and Charles Wesley were not fully at one in their notion of perfect love—Charles had a more exalted view of it whereas John was more inclined to stress it as a present possibility—they were agreed in essentials. For them, perfect love was the fulfillment of faith. It amounted to holiness. It, like faith, was the product of God's grace, which was not given all at once but from moment to moment. Yet it was real holiness within the life of the Christian. As John Wesley asserted, "The imagination that faith supersedes holiness is the very marrow of antinomianism.">" Perfect love was both inward and outward holiness. It was possible for all men.

It was the point of human life. In Meditation on the Lord's Prayer, extracted from one of John Wesley's sermons and included in this volume, he longs for the time when "all the inhabitants of the earth, even the whole race of mankind, may do the will of their Father which is in heaven, as wi/lingly as the holy angels; that these may do it continually, even as they, without any interruption of their willing service, yea, and that they may do it perfectly."°® In this sense, Christian perfection was utter surrender and resignation to the will of God.

However, perfect love normally took a long time to be manifested in the spirituality of a Christian. Indeed Walker, and Wesley's other opponents, denied that it was possible at all in this life. It normally presupposed a long process of sanctification. It presupposed inward prayer, faithful attendance on the means of grace, social involvement, and kotnonta. It presupposed not only spiritual conflict but spiritual striving. In the 1780 Hymnbook there are seven sections for believers.

The first is "for believers rejoicing," and certainly joy was a primary characteristic of the Wesleys' spirituality.

With calmly reverential joy, O let us all our lives employ In setting forth thy love:

°7 Works, vol. VII, p. 317, Sermon CXX, The Wedding Garment.

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And raise in death our triumph higher, And sing with all the heavenly choir, That endless song above. [19] Spirituality, however, was not all joy. The second section is "for believers fighting."

Soldiers of Christ, arise, And put your armor on, Strong in the strength which God supplies

Through his eternal Son; Strong in the Lord of hosts, And in his mighty power, Who in the strength of Jesus trusts Is more than conqueror. [30] Alongside fighting, there was the inward joy and labor of praying, and the third section is "for believers praying."

Jesus, my strength, my hope, On thee I cast my care, With humble confidence look up, And know thou hear'st my prayer.

Give me on thee to wait, Till I can all things do, On thee, almighty to create, Almighty to renew. [31] Spirituality also involved watching, and the fourth section is "for believers watching."

Be it my only wisdom here To serve the Lord with filial fear, With loving gratitude; Superior sense may I display, By shunning every evil way, And walking in the good. [33] Watching, however, was not to be substituted for working, and the fifth section is "for believers working." x1

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Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go, My daily labor to pursue, Thee, only thee, resolved to know, In all I think, or speak, or do. [35] Spirituality also involved suffering, and the sixth section is "for believers suffering."

Who suffer with our Master here, We shall before his face appear, And by his side sit down; To patient faith the prize is sure, And all that to the end endure The cross, shall wear the crown. [40] Thee, Jesus, full of truth and grace, Thee, Savior, we adore, Thee in affliction's furnace praise, And magnify thy power. [39] This part of the hymnbook ends with a section on "believers seeking for full redemption," in other words for Christian Perfection, and thus the point is made that Christian Perfection is normally the culmination of a long process of giving one's whole self and one's whole possibilities to God.

Let us, to perfect love restored, Thy image here retrieve, And in the presence of our Lord The life of angels live. [41] Give me a new, a perfect heart, From doubt, and fear, and sorrow free; The mind which was in Christ impart, And let my spirit cleave to thee. [51 variant]

Refining fire, go through my heart, Illuminate my soul; Scatter thy life through every part, And sanctify the whole. [45] y2

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Savior from sin, I wait to prove That Jesus is thy healing name; To lose, when perfected in love, Whate'er I have, or can, or am:

I stay me on thy faithful word, "The servant shall be as his Lord." [47] It is important to remember that the hymns we have quoted, and the many more we have included in this volume, were not primarily private devotional pieces. They were written to be sung. In practice, many Methodists and others down the years have cherished these hymns as devotional aids and as food for the individual soul. However, their main function was as hymns. They were sung in the societies and classes and eventually in other Christian circles. The result was that hymn singing as such became an increasingly important vehicle for communal worship and for spirituality. At the same time, the fact that the hymns were often sung tended to commend the spirituality contained in them to those who did the singing. The poet

Southey remarked that "perhaps no poems have ever been so devoutly committed to memory as these.... The manner in which they were sung tended to impress them strongly on the mind: The tune was made wholly subservient to the words, not the words to the tunes???

However, in spite of the importance of hymns and fellowship in the Wesleys' spirituality of perfect love, in spite of their emphasis on social involvement, which we will analyze shortly, in spite of their

Arminian stress that God's love can utterly transform a// men, there remains their insistence on the personal nature of the spirituality of Christian Perfection. It was not merely "the loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength," but a personal awareness that this is the case. It was the conscious conviction, in a present experience, of the reality of one's utter love for God and man in response to God's own love. It was a luminous experiential self-awareness of the fact of perfect love in one's own life. John Wesley writes:

If a man be deeply and fully convinced, after justification, of inbred sin; if he then experience a gradual mortification of 59R. Southey, Life of Wesley, vol. II, new ed. (London, 1925), p. 97.

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sin, and afterwards an entire renewal in the image of God, if to this change, immensely greater than that wrought when he was justified, be added a clear, direct witness of the renewal; I judge it as impossible this man should be deceived herein, as that God should lie.®° Christian Perfection implied that all one's thoughts, words, and deeds were governed by pure love, but it did not imply perfection in knowledge or freedom from infirmities or freedom from temptation. Nor did it imply an inability to grow further in grace, nor an inability to fall from grace. It was not perfection in the Latin sense of "faultless," nor was it an absolute state; it was part of a dynamic, ongoing process that would end in glorification with Christ. The present experience of Christian perfection in regard to one's conscious will and premeditated actions was not a future guarantee, nor a leap into a fresh state of grace, but a spiritual experience of conformity with Christ in perfect love.

The Wesleys' differences with Walker and his group extended beyond doctrinal disagreements concerning Assurance and perfect love. Walker highlighted the question of Wesley's relationship to the Church of England. His friend, Adam of Winteringham, asserted roundly to Walker in 1756 that "Methodism as to its external form is such a deviation from the rule and constitution of the Church of England that all attempts to render them consistent must be in vain.''®!

Walker was crystal clear in his own mind about Wesley's lay preachers and he stated plainly that their permission or appointment was in fact a partial separation from the Church of England, the essence of which, considered as such, consisted in her orders and laws, rather than in her doctrines and worship, which constituted her a Church of Christ. Wesley replied that he was loyal to the Church of England, that the preachers were not ordained, and that his people went to the parish churches for communion. He also partly admitted Walker's points. "We have," he said, "out of necessity, not choice, slowly and warily varied (from the Church) in some points of discipline, by 60See p. 335.

Edwin Sidney, The Life, Ministry and Selections from the Remains of the Rev.

Samuel Walker, B.A., formerly of Truro, Cornwall (London: Baldwin and Cradock, 1835), pp. 220, 222, 280-82.

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preaching in the field, by extempore prayer, by employing lay preachers, by forming and regulating societies, and by holding yearly conferences. But we did none of these things until we were convinced we could no longer omit them but at peril of our souls."6? To preach the Gospel was ultimately more important within the Wesleys' spirituality than to obey the minutiae of church rules when those rules hindered the Gospel's being preached. A strong but flexible central body would probably have kept the Wesleyan movement within the Church of England, as Saint Francis had been kept within the confines of the medieval Church. Such a body was not present. The Wesleys asserted,

'"'We look upon ourselves, not as the authors or ringleaders of a particular sect or party—it is the farthest thing from our thoughts—but as messengers of God, to those who are Christians in name but heathens in heart and life, to call them back to that from which they are fallen, to real, genuine Christianity."®? From the standpoint of his Oxford ordination and Lincoln fellowship Wesley could look on the whole world as his parish®* and mobilize his traveling preachers as itinerant purveyors of his vision of spirituality.

The Wesleys were sincere in their desire and steadfast in their intent to keep their movement within the Church of England—Charles even more so than John—but Walker pinpointed the dilemma, and the preachers themselves began to become restless in later times. The very success of the Wesleys exacerbated the possibilities of tension as the movement spread not merely into the new urban centers where there was a minimal ecclesiastical presence but into other areas as well.

One must realize that it was not just the outward signs of potential separation that were important—notably the Deed of Declaration of 1784 giving the Legal Hundred (i.e., the conference) authority to succeed Wesley after his death, his ordaining on September 20, 1784, of Whatcoat and Vasey as presbyters and Coke as superintendent for the postrevolutionary American Methodist Church bereft of the sacraments, and the licensing of Methodist chapels in 1787. The crux of the matter lay in Wesley's spirituality itself, which centered on the 62See Wesley's letters to Walker, Works, vol. XIII, pp. 193-207, especially p. 195.

63 Works, vol. XIII, pp. 227-28, Reasons Against a Separation from the Church of England.

64Quoted in letter to Hervey, March 20, 1739. See Outler, John Wesley, p. 72.

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grace of God. It was God's preventing grace that enabled one's conscience to search for forgiveness and wholeness; it was God's saving grace that enabled one to receive justification by faith and activation of one's embryonic spiritual faculties; it was God's sanctifying grace that enabled one to grow in love and the fruits of the Spirit; it was

God's cooperating grace that enabled one to respond to the limits of perfect love; it was God's sacramental grace that used the sacraments and other outward and visible signs as responsive means. To be sure, man's response was vital, but it was a response. It was a response that all men could make if they would. Insofar as institutions stifled the possibility of man's response, to that extent they stifled the grace of God and supporting institutions must be allowed to supplement their deficiency. What arose as a supplemental movement, a missionary society within the Church of England, to deepen that Church's largely dormant spirituality and to convey the grace of God not just to those who needed it but to those who needed it most—this Methodist movement was destined, after the Wesleys' deaths, to develop into separate churches. Perhaps it is no accident that in recent ecumenical times

Methodist Churches have often been "Bridge Churches." They have developed their own structures and attempted to keep in trust what they inherited from the Wesleys and others, but they have maintained a healthy awareness of the basics that unite them with others. Those basics center on spirituality. For the Wesleys, spirituality lay at the heart of everyday Christianity. "Is your heart right, as my heart is with your heart?" asked Wesley of others in his sermon Catholic Spir14;° "If it be, give me your hand," he replied. His dying words were

"the best of all is God is with us." In 4 Plain Account of Genuine Christianity he says of the genuine Christian, "Forgive his particularities of opinion and (what you think) superstitious modes of worship.

These are circumstances but of small concern and do not enter into the essence of his character. Cover them with a veil of love and look at his substance: his tempers, his holiness, his happiness." "This," he writes, "is the plain, naked portraiture of a Christian."'6

Lest we leave the simplistic impression that the spirituality of the Wesleys is primarily an individual interiority, let us return briefly to the more social side of their concern. John Wesley was, in the context of his day, a great social reformer. The springs of his love for his fel5 Works, vol. V, pp. 492-504, Sermon XX XIX. eeSee palo.

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lowmen reveal themselves in a beautiful passage from 4 Plain Account of Genuine Christianity. This love, he writes, soars above all these scanty bounds, embracing neighbors and strangers, friends and enemies; yea, not only the good and gentle but also the froward, the evil and unthankful. For he loves every soul that God has made, every child of man, of whatever place or nation. And yet this universal benevolence does in nowise interfere with a peculiar regard for his relations, friends, and benefactors, a fervent love for his country and the most endeared affection to all men of integrity, of clear and generous virtue.®7

John (in contrast with Charles) was not successful in his marriage.

With this exception his commitments matched his words. He and Charles were faithful to each other throughout their long lives, and he was loyal to his friends and relatives. He had a strong but not blind commitment to his church and country. His universal love had a firm local base. He supported his king, even during the American

War of Independence, despite the embarrassment of the American preachers. He despised the frivolity of the rich yet was not opposed to the class structure. There is a small element of truth in the famous claim that Wesley saved England from revolution.®* This was not so much because he opposed the French Revolution, which came at the end of his life, or because he was aware of the deeper implications of the Industrial Revolution that was evolving around him, but because his work constituted in itself a social leaven. His motto, "go to those who need you most,"®? took him into areas of need, and his constant travel from Cornwall to Scotland via Bristol, London, Newcastle, and the industrial regions of the north brought him into contact with the new and rootless artisan-type class, which had the most obvious basic insecurities. His approach to them was not sociological (Durkheim would come a hundred years later) but one of involvement and concern for all aspects of their lives. eee rpm.

68Dr. Whitehead's oration at Wesley's funeral service stressed the leavening influence of Methodism in a politically restive situation.

6%Included in the Minutes of 1745 as an injunction to the preaching Assistants, this provided Wesley's own motivation. oy)

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John Wesley was not afraid to speak prophetically about social evils. In 1767 he wrote Word to a Smuggler?° to combat the evils of smuggling when to do so, especially in Cornwall, was rather like challenging the Mafia in modern times. In his Word to a Freeholder,'' attacking bribery and corruption in politics, he advised voters to vote incorruptibly as though each election depended on them. In his

Thoughts on Slavery?? of 1774 he was the first leading Britisher to attack that institution, and he persuaded the American conference of 1780 to declare it as being against the laws of God. One of the last acts of his life was to write to Wilberforce in 1791 the letter included in this volume encouraging Wilberforce to persevere "in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away."'73

Wesley continued the work, begun in the Holy Club, of helping debtors and prisoners, and alleviating poverty. In addition to writing numerous religious articles, he also produced a lot of cheap literature on general subjects for the poorer populace; he founded schools in places such as London, Bristol, and Newcastle; he encouraged the Sunday School movement, stimulated by the work of Hannah Ball,

Robert Raikes, and Fletcher of Madeley, as a medium of popular education. He ranks as a notable educator.

In short, his spirituality had a strong social component built into it. For himself and others, spirituality could never be a purely inward thing. It applied to the whole of life. "Christianity is essentially a social religion," he wrote, ''and to turn it into a solitary religion is indeed to destroy it."'* Accordingly, he advised his people in regard to stewardship, self-denial, conversation, use of time, temperance, the conduct of business, the choice of a career, courtesy, reading habits, the use of money, leisure, joy in daily living, and practical ways of helping others.'> However, he was aware that social involvement must remain part of an integral spirituality and not become an end in itself. He foresaw the dilemma of the Protestant Ethic, 'wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which 70 Works, vol. XI, pp. 174-78.

71Works, vol. XI, pp. 196-98.

72Works, vol. XI, pp. 59-79.

74Works, vol. V, p. 296, Sermon on the Mount IV.

See P. S. Watson, The Message of the Wesleys, pp. 175-94 (London: Epworth, 1964).

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in the natural course of things must beget riches."7° The danger then was that riches would replace God as a motivating principle. His advice was to gain all one could, save all one could, and give all one could. The social and material life of man was part and parcel of the central search for perfect love. As he put it, serious Christians "not only abstained from all appearance of evil, were zealous in good works in every kind, and attended all the ordinances of God, but likewise used all diligence to attain the whole mind that was in Christ, and labored to walk in every point as their beloved Master."77 For Wesley spirituality was holistic. It was based on the utter dedication of the total life to God. This central aim was summed up in the Covenant Service adapted by Wesley from the service of Richard Alleine, the Puritan.7* This has developed into one of the finest devotional services in the Christian Church, and we include Wesley's 1780 service and a more modern Methodist adaptation of it in this volume in the hope that those unacquainted with it will begin to use it as a devotional treasure of the "Great Church." The words of the adapted covenant, usually held now at the beginning of the year, can hardly fail to move the heart, and they sum up Wesley's conviction that spirituality is the surrender of every part of a person's whole life to God.

I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be exalted for you or brought low for you, let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed

God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you are mine, and I am yours. So be it. And the Covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.7?

At John Wesley's funeral service in 1791 the presiding minister read the familiar words "forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God to take unto Himself the soul of our dear," and at that point he

76Works, vol. VI, p. 290, Sermon CXVI, Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity.

77 Works, vol. VII, p. 28, Sermon LXXXIX, The More Excellent Way.

78See D. Tripp, The Renewal of the Covenant in the Methodist Tradition (London:

Epworth, 1969).

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paused and added the words "father here departed.""*° Much has happened since Wesley's death as the "father in God" of the Arminian

Methodists. The American Methodists had already begun to follow their divergent way. Wesley and Fletcher of Madeley had written against the American Revolution, and Fletcher had been offered preferment for his efforts, to which he had typically replied that he did not want promotion but "'more grace." Wesley's stature, and Fletcher's saintliness, survived their opposition to American independence.

However, it was in the nature of things that at the Baltimore Christmas Conference of 1784 the American Methodist Episcopal Church was set up with Asbury and Coke as its first bishops. Asbury became the American Wesley as far as travel was concerned. When he had been sent out by Wesley in 1771 there had been no Methodist

Church—only six evangelists and a thousand adherents. When he died in 1816 there was a fine church, 695 preachers and 214,000 members. He adapted Wesley's methods to the American frontier and became the "prophet of the long road," eventually dying in another's house trying to take a missionary collection.®! By 1810, one American in thirty-nine was a Methodist; in 1860, a third of all American Protestants were Methodists. The American Methodists inherited the Wesleys' spirituality as far as the Arminian doctrines—fellowship, evangelism, and organization—were concerned. Less evident was the Wesleys' concern for the sacraments, spiritual writers, the early

Church, inwardness, and the "ladder of sanctification." One strand in American Methodism pursued the path of "holiness" interpreted as a second blessing experience that elevated one into a superior state of grace.'* The Pentecostals and Charismatics were later to adapt this in different ways. Insofar as Wesley had talked about the possibility of Assurance and Christian Perfection as conscious experiences, they could find echoes in their spirituality of his own. The difference was that he thought of these experiences as part of a dynamic, ongoing, developing spirituality wherein these experiences were not ends in themselves but signposts on the way to perfect love consisting of outward and inward holiness. Other strands within American Method8°See M. Edwards, John Wesley, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, p. 77.

81See H. Asbury, 4 Methodist Saint: The Life of Bishop Asbury (New York: A. A.

Knopf, 1927).

; 82See J. L. Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism (New York: Abingdon, 1956),

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ism concerned themselves with social involvement, either in particular concerns such as slavery, race, and ethnicity, or in a conviction that social involvement in general was the key to effective spirituality. The Wesleys had stressed social concern but within the context of a wider spirituality.

Of the five groups within the Methodist Revival in Britain, the Moravians and the half-regulars were no longer thriving forces at Wesley's death. The Calvinistic Methodists continued, although hampered by their loose organization. The future lay with the Evangelical regular clergy, who remained within the Church of England, and the Methodists, who developed into a separate church. By 1833, there were 300,000 British Methodists. During the nineteenth century three main groups arose among their number: the Wesleyan Methodists, who stressed the authority of the conference hierarchy; the Primitive Methodists, who worked less formally and more democratically, and were also active among the working class miners of the north and agricultural laborers of the south; and a number of smaller groups, stressing spontaneous evangelism and the role of laymen, who became the United Methodists. These three bodies united in 1932 to form the British Methodist Church. The British Methodists inherited, along with the American Methodists, the spirituality of the Wesleys. John Wesley's Sermons and Notes on the New Testament became the "canon" of the British Methodists. However, more important than

John's prose works, which outlined Methodist doctrinal orthodoxy, were the Wesleys' works of spirituality and especially Charles Wesley's hymns. As Bett describes it, "Those hymns were our devotional and experimental standard. They expressed and safeguarded the norm of Methodist experience, and helped to re-create it from generation to generation, because they were in constant use both in public worship and private devotion." Those hymns had an importance transcending Methodism and rank, after the Bible, as one of the most significant religious influences on Anglo-Saxon Christianity.

Another development, less spectacular than those in Britain and America yet even more exciting, was that on the mission field. Thomas Coke, co-leader with Asbury of the American Methodists, was a symbol of the missionary thrust built into Methodism. He was not content to stay in America and make it his parish, like Asbury; he literally looked on the world as his parish, and he died on May 3, 1814,

83H. Bett, The Spirit of Methodism (London: Epworth, 1937), pp. 241-42.

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on shipboard in the Indian Ocean on his way as a missionary to Ceylon.84 There are now Methodist Churches, or United Churches including ex-Methodists, in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and Australasia. The World Methodist Council, formed in 1881, links together Methodist groups working in about a hundred lands and serving a roll of about 45 million people, the largest concentration being the fourteen million members of the American United Methodist

Church formed in 1968 after an earlier union in 1939.

Present-day Methodists can move in four different directions. In the first place, they can remain more or less the same; second, they can look forward to establishing closer links within world Methodism and think in terms of a world Methodist community; third, they can seek unity with other Christians within particular national boundaries, and this has happened with the founding of united churches in countries such as Canada, Sri Lanka, India, and Australasia; and, finally, they can work for the global unity of the whole church through the medium of the World Council of Churches. These four aims are not necessarily mutually incompatible.

But whatever happens, whether Methodists remain in separate churches or unite in wider churches, they hold in trust certain key deposits inherited from the Wesleys. And they are basically deposits centering on spirituality.

These deposits include: Charles Wesley's hymns, the Covenant Service, faith as living reality rather than belief per se, perfect love, mission based on the conviction that "for all, for all, my Savior died," the importance of laymen, fellowship as koinonia, the spiritual importance of organization, a creative tolerance based on the notion that true religion is inward and social rather than merely doctrinal, and a pragmatic openness to developing situations. These are held in trust, and offered by Methodists to the Coming Great Church.

However, the influence of the spirituality of the Wesleys cannot be confined within the Methodist tradition. As we have suggested, certain elements of their spirituality have been influential in other traditions. Their eucharistic hymns and notions were available for the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement's return to eucharistic seriousness, and they helped to increase sacramental observance in the lax eighteenth-century Church. Their view that Assurance and Christian Perfection could be realizable spiritual experiences (albeit in a °C. J. Davey, The March of Methodism (London: Epworth, 1951), p. 20.

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dynamic continuum) fed into the nineteenth-century holiness movements, and the twentieth-century Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. Their concern for social involvement has not gone unnoticed in the Social Gospel movement. Charles Wesley's hymns and John

Wesley's translations of the German hymns have fed into the spirituality of the whole Church.

The uniqueness of the Wesleys' spirituality was such that some elements in it have been largely neglected or unnoticed by most

Christian groups. Above all, they were unique for the integral nature of their spirituality. They were able to hold together what most

Christian groups, even today, tend to keep apart. In their prayer life, they combined liturgical prayer, extempore prayer, silent prayer, sung prayer, prayers of their own composition, prayers arising out of Bible study, and prayer stimulated by study of the spiritual classics.

Symbolical of this is the patch worn away on the wall of Fletcher of Madeley's study against which he used to kneel to offer his prayers— read, extempore, or silent. The Wesleys, like their friend Fletcher, not only prayed long and hard daily, they also used a variety of prayer forms. John Wesley in particular would have been thrilled by the Classics of Western Spirituality because it represents, in a major way, what he was attempting to do in his own day, namely to make available to all Christians Western spiritual writings not merely as academic treatises but as aids to prayer and spirituality.

Spirituality for the Wesleys was not confined to the prayer life of the individual. Fellowship with others was needed for its true expression. Although they built up a unique system that connected individual Christians with thousands of others through their societies, classes, circuits, and conferences, the crux of their organization was the intimate fellowship, the koinonia, of the class meeting. However, the fellowship group was itself part of a greater whole, the society, which in turn depended on the sacramental life and liturgy of the worshiping church. Preaching and sacrament, extempore prayer and communal liturgical prayer, were linked. They were different sides of the same coin.

The Wesleys did not confine spirituality to life in the Church, whether communal or individual. It had to do with the whole of life, and the whole of life included secular pursuits and wider society.

Love for God and love for man were linked. Arminian concern for all men included their material as well as their spiritual needs. Discipleship for the individual included his or her working life, family

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life, and leisure life, as well as church life. Social concern was therefore part of spirituality.

Spirituality was, in fact, both inward and outward. Inwardly, it involved the awakening of a person's spiritual faculties, prefigured in baptism, accomplished at justification and the new birth, deepened by sanctification, strengthened by advances along a ladder of inward holiness leading toward pure love, punctuated by spiritual experiences of Assurance and Christian Perfection, issuing in internal purity and goodness, and leading to the blessedness of glorification with Christ. Inward spirituality was a growing inner union with God in Christ, Whose nature was love. Outwardly, spirituality involved a growing love for one's fellowmen. Inward holiness and outward fruits went together. Outward spirituality involved not only helping others, and going to those who needed one most; it also involved adopting a frugal and wholesome life-style that would enable this more readily to happen.

Modern findings have raised question marks about some of the minutiae of the Wesleys' spirituality. Psychology has opened up the reality of our unconscious thoughts as well as the "known sins" of our conscious minds; sociology has opened up the influence of social structures as well as the influence individuals may have on society; our modern world of computers, cosmonauts, and communists has added technological revolution to the industrial revolution of the Wesleys' time. Nevertheless the general principles of their integral spirituality are as valid as ever, perhaps even more so in our age of ecological as well as inward need.

It is not so much that their spirituality has been tried and found wanting. Certain elements of it have been tried and have borne fruit especially through the medium of the Methodist tradition. Even so, in its wholeness the spirituality of the Wesleys has never been fully tried.

It is our hope that through this book the whole Church will be led again to look at the spirituality of the Wesleys and to so reinterpret it that its principles may be actualized in our present global situation.

BRIEF NOTES

SPECIFIC EXTRACTS

SECTION I: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM JOHN WESLEY

[1] Preface and Extracts from A Collection of Forms of Prayer for Every Day 1n the Week Reputed to be Wesley's first published work in 1733, it went through nine known editions by 1748. The prayers reflect Wesley's spirituality when aged thirty, as well as the ethos of the Holy Club and the needs of his Oxford pupils (for whom they were composed).

He used scripture quotations, collects, and adaptations from books of devotion by Hickes and Sphinkes, as well as his own ideas. He aimed to cover weekly the whole range of Christian faith and practice. F.

C. Gill's revised edition, John Wesley's Prayers, was published by Epworth, London, as recently as 1951. The Preface is from the sixth edition of 1775.

[2] A Scheme of Self-Examination Used by the First Methodists in Oxford A fragment attributed to Wesley and infrequently published since. It reflects Wesley's central concern, to love God wholeheartedly, and one's neighbor as oneself. Reflects the "methodical" spirituality of the Oxford Methodists but not their daily and weekly rounds of private and group devotions.

BRIEF NOTES

[3] Advice on Spiritual Reading Part of the Preface to Wesley's correction of Thomas a Kempis'

Treatise of the Imitation of Christ published in 1735. He adapts from the Praemonitio ad Lectorum prefixed to the Cologne edition of 1682. Wesley is important as an editor and publisher as well as in his own capacity as a writer. He extracted from and creatively abridged countless spiritual and other classics. His advice on spiritual reading is universally applicable (not just to a Kempis). At least three editions are known of this full (319 page) version of the Imitation of Christ. The shorter 1741 extract was widely printed.

[4] Translations of German Hymns In all, Wesley translated thirty-three German hymns: one each by Arnold, Bohmer, Deszler, Dober, Gmelin, Gotter, Ernst Lange,

Joachim Lange, Rothe, Spangenberg, and Winckler; two by Freylinghausen, Richter, and Tersteegen; four by Gerhardt and Scheffler; and eight by Zinzendorf. Of these, Maria Bohmer, Anna Dober,

Spangenberg, and Zinzendorf were Moravians, the rest Lutheran Pietists. Wesley had access to the Moravian Hymn Book, which in its

1735 edition had 991 hymns, and to the Freylinghausen Hymn Book, which contained 1,581 hymns. Although his thirty-three hymns were published in collections from 1737-1742 it is reasonably certain that all the translations were made in Georgia.

Wesley's translations reproduced the power of the originals in excellent English. Most of them appear in the collections of hymns that were of particular importance in the early Methodist movement, namely those of 1737, 1738, 1739, 1740, 1741, 1742, 1753, 1765, 1780, and 1785. Twenty-two of Wesley's thirty-three translations are still to be found in forty-nine of the best-known hymn books of the main churches in Britain and North America. They have been of deep spiritual influence in their own right as well as being a contribution to Wesley's development. The three numbers at the head of the six translations we use are our own, that of the 1876 Hymnbook, and that of the 1933 Hymnbook.

[5] Extracts from John Wesley's journal from January 8 to May 24,

From 1725 Wesley got into the habit of noting down the experiences and events of his life. The code of his diaries has recently been

BRIEF NOTES

broken, and eventually we will receive the fruits of this breakthrough. However, from time to time Wesley himself compiled and published Extracts of the Journal, and twenty-one of these extracts together made up the complete Journal that we have now. They are highly informative about the Methodist movement and the Britain of the eighteenth century; they are less so in relation to Wesley's own interior life. One particular passage that we quote has, nevertheless, achieved virtual parity with such famous accounts of spiritual experience as that of Saint Augustine in the Milan garden. We include not only the Aldersgate experience, but key passages covering the vital period of 1738, which were first published in 1740. All the passages are from the published Journa/ except the six paragraphs beginning

"1. For many years ..." and ending "6. yea, and faith itself, and what not," which are taken from J. Whitehead, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., vol. I, pp. 54-56, 1793-1796. In spite of the Journal's reticence about the interiority of Wesley's spirituality, it has been reprinted many times and is acknowledged to be a classic. Our text is a collation of Curnock's standard edition and the fifth edition of 1775.

[6] The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Socteties in London, Bristol, Kingswood, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, etc.

It first appeared in 1743, and by 1794 had gone through twentythree editions. It summarizes succinctly the ascetic spirituality and the organizational principles that motivated the early Methodist movement.

[7] A Meditation on the Lord's Prayer. An extract from Wesley's sermon entitled Sermon on the Mount VI Our extract contains the main part of this sermon, which was first published in 1748. It became one of the forty-four Sermons on Several Occasions, which, together with Wesley's Notes on the New Testament, constituted the standard doctrines of the Methodist Connection according to the Trust-Deeds of Methodist Churches. These fortyfour discourses were published in four volumes in 1746, 1748, 1750 and 1760, and have gone through innumerable editions from that time until the present day. It is interesting to note that three of these sermons have texts from the Old Testament, and twenty-one from the Gospels, leaving twenty sermons on texts from the rest of the

BRIEF NOTES

New Testament. This was one of thirteen sermons on the sermon on the mount. Although Wesley's sermons have become classics in their own right, this one relates more obviously to his spirituality.

[8] A Plain Account of Genuine Christianity First printed as a separate pamphlet in Dublin in 1753, this extract had already appeared as part of A Letter to the Reverend Doctor

Conyers Middleton, Occasioned by His Late Free Enquiry published in 1749:

Middleton (1683-1750) was essentially a Cambridge deist who published in 1749 A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which Are

Supposed to Have Subsisted in the Christian Church from the Earliest Ages through Several Successive Centuries: By Which It Is Shown that We Have

No Sufficient Reason to Believe, Upon the Authority of the Primitive Fathers, that Any Such Powers Were Continued to the Church After the Days of the Apostles. In his letter of reply, Wesley spent sixty pages in an inexpert academic riposte defending the Fathers against Middleton, but then he changed the ground of argument by depicting his vision of genuine Christianity, the point being that the genuine Christian life is in itself a miracle reflecting the supernatural power of God and his Spirit, which has been and remains with the Church down the ages. The latter part of the letter became a separate tract, 4 Plain Account of Genuine Christianity, which gives Wesley's portrait of the ideal

Christian, and as such it was widely circulated and became very well known. It is probably the most beautiful example of Wesley's tracts on spirituality. Our text is a collation of the first, third, and sixth editions (1753, 1761, and 1779). Section III, 11ff, was not part of A Plain

Account of Genuine Christianity, but was the conclusion of Wesley's letter to Middleton.

[9] Directions for Renewing Our Covenant with God Our text is Wesley's Covenant Service of 1780, which is based on the Vindiciae Pretatis of the Puritan Richard Alleine, which Wesley had abridged for his Christian Library in 1755. On December 25, 1747,

Wesley had urged the Methodists to renew their covenant with God, and his first service was held in the French Church at Spitalfields on August 11, 1755. The 1780 service was used for almost a century in that form but has since been revised to enable greater participation and is now one of the finest liturgical services within the whole

Christian Church. The Covenant Service is often held at the begin-

BRIEF NOTES

ning of the year but can be held at any time. From 1755 it has become a classical part of Methodist spirituality and increasingly is being integrated into the life of other churches. It epitomizes the complete giving to God of the whole self that was the essence of Wesley's own spirituality.

[10] Extract from A Short Account of the Life and Death of the Reverend Jobn Fletcher First published in 1786, this extract sums up the character of Fletcher of Madeley and is based largely on texts supplied by Fletcher's widow and brother. Wesley never vaunted his own spiritual prowess and was strangely quiet about his own achievements. In this piece he describes a colleague and friend who did begin to meet Wesley's requirements for an ideal Christian. Although the two were very different, we see in Fletcher something of Wesley himself. Fletcher was recognized as one of the saints of the early Methodists, and although his own writings later declined in popularity the reputation of his saintly spirituality remains.

[11] Eleven Letters of Spiritual Counsel, July 25, 1767 to February 24,

Telford's edition of Wesley's Letters (8 vols [London: Epworth, 1931]) contains 2,670 epistles written to a variety of people on a variety of subjects. They focus mainly on the pastoral, administrative, theological, and devotional matters thrown up by the Methodist Revival, and these concerns are sometimes mingled in the same letter.

Some of them have become famous in their own right, not least the final one, written at the end of Wesley's life, to encourage Wilberforce in his fight against slavery, a long-standing concern of Wesley's.

The other ten, all written to women, reveal Wesley's skill as a spiritual counsellor. The title at the head of each letter is my own.

SECTION II: CHARLES WESLEY'S HYMNS

[1] Selections from the 1780 Hymnbook We include the preface and 72 hymns from this most famous of all of the Wesleys' hymn books. The first number at the top of each hymn is our own; the second is the number that appears in the 1780

Hymnbook; the third is the number (if any) that appears in the latest

BRIEF NOTES

(1933) hymn book. Daggers beside particular verses indicate that these verses were present in the 1780 book but are absent in the 1933 book.

In all cases the whole of the original hymn is inserted. This has caused problems in regard to expressions that are regarded as infelicitous in the present age such as "worm" describing a person or "bowels" indicating compassion. I have preferred to keep the whole hymn as it was, and if necessary to leave out hymns, fragments of which have become famous, rather than to tamper with the verses or wording. I have however altered some of the titles of the sections in the Hymnbook to aid understanding. '""Exhorting, and beseeching to return to God" becomes "Adoration and return to God"; "For mourners brought to the birth" and "recovered" becomes "Praying for Light and Assurance"; 'For believers seeking for full redemption" becomes 'For believers seeking perfect love"; and "For believers brought to the birth and saved" becomes "For mature believers." At the bottom of each hymn is an indication of the collection wherein it first appeared.

Charles Wesley's hymns were not only written in beautifully fashioned English, they also had a structure giving internal direction to their spirituality. To take but one example, "Sons of God, triumphant rise," number 96. The first verse of this postcommunion hymn encourages us to rejoice in exaltation after the wonder of the communion service; the last line of the second verse announces the main theme, "pardon, grace and glory ours'; verses 3 and 4 expand on the theme of "pardon"; verses 5 and 6 expand upon the theme of "grace"; and verses 7 and 8 expand upon the theme of "glory." A basic structure appears in virtually all Charles Wesley's hymns.

They are also remarkable in their ability to quote or interpret scripture. The index to the 1780 Hymnbook indicates that only Ezra,

Obadiah, Nahum, and Zephaniah of the Old Testament, and III John of the New Testament, are not illustrated in the hymns. By the side of the first hymn in our selection we insert the scripture references alluded to within its verses. This instinctive use of scripture is typical of all the hymns.

The hymns have become classics for other reasons as well. They illustrate not only scripture but the main Christian doctrines in a creative way. They do not rest content with objective description but are experiential as well. They are also mystical in that they deal with an external world that transcends doctrine, history, and experience. Indeed, the 1780 Hymnbook is essentially a book of spirituality. The

BRIEF NOTES

hymns were sung spirituality, and could be used for private spirituality. In them, Wesley traces the progression in spirituality of those whom he calls, in the preface, "real Christians." He begins with hymns of adoration that are also exhortations to encourage commitment to God. He then points out why people should become committed to God under headings such as the pleasantness of religion, the goodness of God, the fact of death, the blessing that ensues, and the inwardness of religion. He continues with hymns that are prayers for light and assurance, and that actively seek commitment. When commitment is reached, he follows with hymns for Christians rejoicing, fighting, praying, watching, working, suffering, seeking for perfect love, achieving spiritual maturity, and interceding for the world. He ends with corporate hymns for the church or groups of Christians meeting, praying, and parting.

By 1812, the 1780 Hymnbook had already gone through twentyfour editions. It was supplemented in 1830 and 1876, and twentiethcentury hymn books have been more inclined to rearrange the hymns under different headings. Many of these hymns remain the crowning glory of Christian hymnody, as well as classics of Western spirituality.

Our text is a collation of the main editions of Wesley's lifetime.

[2] Selection of Charles Wesley's Hymns from Hymns of the Lord's Supper These were first published in 1745 and there was little change throughout the nine editions of Wesley's lifetime from the first. They were preceded by an extract from Dr. Daniel Brevint's The Christian

Sacrament and Sacrifice, which provided the basic headings under which the hymns are grouped. They were the most widely used of all the particular collections, although of course less so than the great general collections. They appeared during the same period (1744—

1745) as other famous particular collections of hymns for Easter, Ascension, Whitsun, and Trinity Sunday. The first number at the top of each hymn is our own; the second is the number that appears in the 1745 Hymns of the Lord's Supper; the third is the number (if any) that appears in the latest (1933) hymn book.

[3] Selections of Other Hymns by Charles Wesley from the 1876 Supplement The editors of the 1830 and 1876 hymn books included some

BRIEF NOTES

hymns in the canon of the 1780 Hymnbook that had not been inserted therein by the Wesleys, and they added a supplement to the resulting canon. We include some of the hymns added to the 1780 canon by the 1876 hymn book, and some from the supplement of the 1876 book.

The first number at the top of each hymn is our own; the second is the number that appears in the 1876 hymn book; the third is the number (if any) that appears in the latest (1933) hymn book. Any of the second numbers lower than 539 are additions, marked in the 1876 book by an asterisk, to the canon of the 1780 Hymnbook. Some of the hymns in this section are equally classics with the hymns that appear in the other two sections. This applies not just to the hymns for great festivals, which were deliberately excluded from the 1780 Hymnbook, but to other hymns concerning which the Methodist tradition was willing, as it were, to overrule the Wesleys' choice. Again we quote the whole of the original hymn and mark by a dagger the verses left out by the 1876 book.

SECTION III:

A PLAIN ACCOUNT OF

CHRISTIAN PERFECTION

Our text is based on a collation of the second edition of 1766 with the sixth edition of 1789. This text has gone through at least thirtyseven known editions. It provides a partial spiritual autobiography of John Wesley. It includes portions of his other works on Christian

Perfection, including The Character of a Methodist, which we would have included in this volume if it were not already substantially present in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. This work is one of Wesley's longer pieces. Because of the intense business of his life he specialized in shorter pieces. It summarizes his reflections on his most distinctive contribution to Western spirituality and on what he called the "Grand Depositum" of the people called Methodists. It also summarizes some of the main phases in early Methodist history as well as in John Wesley's own pilgrimage. Like many of Wesley's works it was written in haste rather than leisure and is mildly polemical in that he is responding to the charge that he had changed his teaching on Christian Perfection during the course of the revival. He claims that this central vision has been his from 1725 throughout his whole life and that he had not substantially changed it at all. He maintains that perfection is the whole point and purpose of the Christian life.

BRIEF NOTES

Appendix Wesley's beautiful Covenant Service has been adapted and renewed by the Methodist tradition during the last two hundred years.

We include a recent version of the Covenant Service that can be used contemporaneously by Christian individuals or groups to renew their own spiritual life. 4 Service for Such as Would Make or Renew Their Covenant with God was edited by George B. Robson and published by the Conference Office of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, 25-35 City

Road, London, E.C.1., before the union of the British Methodist Church in 1933. It transcends denominations. It is our hope that all who take this book will read it both carefully and prayerfully.

General Editorial Policy Direct quotations and paraphrases of scripture are underlined to indicate Wesley's reliance on scripture and his interweaving of texts.

His archaic verb forms, spelling, and punctuation are generally modernized, although most of his italics and some of his unusual capitalizations are kept to indicate his emphases. On one or two occasions archaic words incomprehensible to the modern reader are changed into modern synonyms. a3

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SELECTED WRITINGS

JOHN WESLEY

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