Oxford and the Manchester Non-Jurors
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dence that John took up his program. Instead, he soon turned in another direction.
Oxford and the Manchester Non-Jurors John Wesley's alma mater functioned in much the same manner as his father had done for him: it supplied a channel through which Anglican culture engaged him in the formative period of his life between 1720 and 1735. At Oxford, however, Wesley encountered a sort of Anglican subculture whose distinctive vision of Christian antiquity would send Wesley on quite a different trajectory than his father had envisioned. Oxford had been a center for patristic studies as well as a _ stronghold of the conservative Anglicanism which employed the early _Christian writers in its defense. Johann Ernst Grabe had been chaplain of Christ Church early in the century; George Bull had been a member of the same College as Wesley's father; William Wake had been a scholar, then a canon, of Christ Church before his election as Archbishop of Canterbury. If Wesley had followed in the train of these
Oxford scholars, again, his uses of Christian antiquity might have conformed to what we have described as the "conservative" configuration; but this was not to be the case.
There is, in fact, little evidence that Wesley followed the program of ancient Christian studies outlined by his father or that had been favored by conservative Oxford scholars. His diaries record his readings in only a few patristic works in the years between 1725 and 1730.
He read mostly in Augustine and Justin Martyr, naming only Augustine's Confessions and the supposititious work De Meditatione
(attributed to the Bishop of Hippo). Wesley also noted in his diary that he had translated Justin Martyr's Apology.'
Almost every indication from his Oxford years suggests that even then Wesley's vision of Christian antiquity was used more in what we have called a programmatic manner than a conservative one. The first
'suggestion of a more intense interest in early Christianity on Wesley's part appears in a letter from one of his companions, Mary Pendarves dated 4 April 1730. Pendarves wrote, "I honour Primitive Christianity, and desire you will let him know as much when you next meet him."®
The circle of John and Charles Wesley, Robert Kirkham, and Kirkham's three sisters had affected the custom of referring to one another by classical nicknames, "Cyrus," "Varanese," "Aspasia," and others. The name Primitive Christianity in the letter from Mary Pen-
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darves is thought to refer to John Wesley, an indication of his interest in the ethos of the early church.
By 1730, however, Wesley had become involved in an Oxford society, his association with which appears to have led to a more intense interest in ancient Christianity on his part. Originally intended as a fellowship for the study of the New Testament and classical literature, the interests of the group shifted towards the cultivation of piety. In the spring of 1732, they began to observe fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays in imitation of the practice of the early church. The group may have known of this practice from Robert Nelson's Companion to the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England, which Wesley had read as early as 1731. Nelson was a friend of the Wesley family, whose book observed that The ancient Christians were very exact, both in their weekly and annual fasts. Their weekly fasts were kept on Wednesdays and Fridays, because on the one our Lord was betrayed, and on the other crucified. These fasts were called their stations, from the military word of keeping their guard as Tertullian observes. . .
. For these fasts usually lasted till after three in the afternoon, as did their public assemblies.!° In June of 1732 Wesley resolved "To abstain from food till 3 on 16th,
Wednesdays, Fridays, and Fasts appointed by the Church," and from this date his diaries note his regular observance of these fasts."!
The weekly fasts became a particularly serious matter with Wesley, and he attempted to convince his students to observe them. This brought accusations that the group's asceticism was extreme.!? An attack on the Oxford Methodists in Fog's Weekly Journal for Saturday, 9
December 1732, accused the group of taking Origen as their pattern in an attempt to rise to the contemplation of spiritual things and to divest their senses of attachments to earthly objects by means of ascetic practices.!? There is no evidence that the Oxford group had actually espoused Origen's asceticism, although the account in Fog's may reflect a garbled rumor that the group's practices were supposed to have been grounded in patristic teachings.
Wesley's readings beginning in the middle of 1732 show a vigorous interest in the early church: between June and December of that year he read in the Apostolic Constitutions, the Apostolic Canons,
William Cave's Primitive Christianity, and Ephraem Syrus."* The socalled Apostolic Constitutions, a collection of church law from the second half of the fourth century, were attributed to Clement of Rome by some seventeenth and eighteenth century scholars. The compiler of the Constitutions is thought to have had Arian sympathies (Samuel
Wesley had suspected this himself).'° Ephraem Syrus was a Syrian hermit, biblical exegete, and spiritual writer of the fourth century. A
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
list of Wesley's anticipated reading from the same period includes the Decreta Conciliorum, and under "desiderata" lists "Patres Apost." and "translate the Fathers till 350."7° John Wesley acknowledged that the suggestion of observing the weekly fasts came from his friend John Clayton, and his diaries note that his study of the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons in August of 1732 was carried on in Clayton's company.!" John Clayton was a native of Manchester and a member of Brasenose College (across from the back of Lincoln) who had been admitted to the Oxford Methodist society in 1732. The fact that Clayton identified himself with a group of Non-Jurors who laid an extraordinary stress on the writings of the early church most adequately explains the renewal of interest in early
Christian life and thought which appears in Wesley after 1732. The Non-Jurors, in general, were those members of the Church of England who refused to take Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to William and Mary, on the grounds that their so doing would violate their previous oaths to James II. Because of their loyalty to James, they were sometimes referred to as "Jacobites," and were suspected of "popish" inclinations, since the Stuart monarch had found asylum in France and had converted to Roman Catholicism. The nine Anglican bishops and approximately four hundred clergy who adhered to Non-Juring principles were deprived of their livings.1® The Non-Jurors were strongly attached to the Anglican reverence for Christian antiquity, and in 1716 their bishops had promulgated "A Proposal for a concordate betwixt the orthodox and catholic remnant of the British churches, and the Catholic and Apostolic Oriental Churches" based on adherence to the ecumenical councils.' Oxford, it may be noted, was a center of Jacobite sympathies in the early eighteenth century." John Wesley himself had been exposed to the Non-Jurors' opinions early in his life; his mother, prior to John's birth, had refused to say "amen" to Samuel's prayers for William and Mary. Wesley was impressed by an Oxford sermon of Dr. George Coningsby in 1727 which, according to V. H. H.
Green, "fringed on treason" in its praise for Charles I, and for which Coningsby was forbidden from preaching before the University. Wesley was also familiar with other Non-Jurors, such as Robert Nelson and William Law.#4 The particular circle of Non-Jurors to which John Clayton was attached, and into which John Wesley was drawn, differed in some respects from the majority of Non-Jurors. Whereas most Non-Jurors were willing to use the Book of Common Prayer, only omitting the name of the sovereign in their prayers, a schismatic faction led by Bishop Archibald Campbell and later by Dr. Thomas Deacon of Manchester (who was irregularly consecrated bishop by Campbell in
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1733) insisted on the use of the 1549 Prayer Book of Edward VI, which advocated mixture of water and wine, prayers for the dead, an epiclesis (prayer for the descent of the Holy Spirit on the eucharistic elements), and an oblatory prayer in the eucharist. The Manchester group came later to use Deacon's Compleat Collection of Devotions (1734), which also insisted on these practices. The Manchester group was also referred to as the "Usagers" because of their advocacy of these particular "usages" from the 1549 Prayer Book." John Wesley himself referred to them as the "Essentialist" Non-Jurors." The "usages" had been defended by Jeremy Collier in his tract, Reasons for Restoring Some
Prayers, Etc. (1717), who, in the case of each of the usages, attempted to show that the practice in question was not Papist, but grounded in the "constant usage of the Primitive Church." In his defence of the usages
Collier cited Tertullian, Cyprian, Cyril of Alexandria, Ambrose, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Augustine, the Apostolic Constitutions,
Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus."
Thomas Deacon, in particular, laid a peculiar stress on the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons in his defence of the usages, as well as other ancient Christian practices such as trine immersion, the allowance of public baptism only between Easter and Pentecost, the rule that baptisms must be performed by members of one's own sex (and thus by deaconesses for women), and the inclusion of a form of exorcism to be used at baptism." The Deacon-Clayton circle may not have been innocent of Arian leanings, since Deacon, like Whiston, was an ardent advocate of the Apostolic Constitutions, and since at a later date Clayton sent Wesley a copy of Whiston's catechism to take to Georgia."
John Wesley met Thomas Deacon in June 1733 when Wesley traveled with John Clayton to Manchester. Clayton had already convinced
Wesley of the importance of the "stationary" fasts, and had led Wesley to study the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons. Their correspondence after the trip to Manchester reveals a continuing interest in the customs of the ancient church. In July 1733 Clayton responded to a question from Wesley about the Christian observance of Saturday.
Clayton recommended keeping "both the sabbath and the Lord's Day" as separate festivals, with prayers at the "primitive hours" and also morning and evening prayers taken from the Apostolic Constitutions, with Friday as a (fast) day of preparation for both festivals. Clayton also noted in this letter that Dr. Deacon's studies in "the worship and discipline of the Primitive Church" had so taken up his time that he had not read the ancient Christian writers with an eye to their moral doctrines, about which Wesley had inquired." In September Clayton responded to a question of Wesley's about "reading the ancients," and
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
recommended Cotelier's edition of the Apostolic Fathers, and Beveridge on the Apostolic Canons, which Clayton regarded as "vindicated" along with the Apostolic Constitutions.¥ Similarly, in a letter of August 1734, Clayton wrote, Fit books for you and every Christian priest are all the Fathers of the first three centuries, whereby you may be enabled both to know and profess the faith once delivered to the saints, and to steer your course in the due medium between the monkish mysticism of the fourth century and the lukewarm indifferency of the present age."
Clayton stated further in this letter that the stationary fasts were to be replaced by festivals in the fifty days of Eastertide, according to the Apostolic Constitutions."
Further evidence of the impact of the Manchester Non-Jurors on Wesley in this period appears in an undated manuscript in Wesley's hand on a single leaf of paper taken from a notebook. Along with notes on the Apostolic Canons and Constitutions there appear the following comments:
I believe myself it a duty to observe, so far as I can without breaking communion with my own church:
1. To baptize by immersion.
2. To use Water, oblation of elements [and] alms, invocation and a prothesis, in the eucharist.
3. To pray for the faithful departed.
4. To pray standing on Sunday and in Pentecost.
5. To observe Saturday, Sunday and Pentecost as Festival.
6. To abstain from blood and things strangled.
I think it prudent (our own church not considered):
1. To observe the stations.
2. Lent, especially the Holy Week.
3. To turn to the east at the Creed .*!
Items two and three of the "duties" listed above will be seen to correspond to the "usages" of the Manchester Non-Jurors. Items one and five of the "duties," and item one of those considered "prudent," have been noted above as encouraged by either Deacon or Clayton. Frank
Baker has shown, moreover, that each of the items on this list has a direct parallel in the Apostolic Constitutions or Canons."
Wesley's readings in works on early Christianity in 1733 and 1734 show the continuing influence of the Manchester Non-Jurors. He read
Horneck's Happy Ascetick and Marshall's Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church. His reading of the Commonitorium of Vincent of Lérins exposed him to the "Vincentian Canon," the claim that Christian doctrines and practices are to be judged by that which has been accepted "every, always, and by all." The Vincentian canon was un-
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derstood by Beveridge, Deacon, and others as reinforcing the authority of the post-canonical church. He read Wake's translation of the Apostolic Fathers, and Lactantius's De Mortibus Persecutorum, which described in grisly detail the deaths of those who had persecuted ancient Christians.* In 1734 and early 1735 he read I Clement, William
Reeves's translation of the second-century Apologists, Clement of Alexandria, Beveridge's Codex Canonum, and the "Shepherd" of Hermas.* Thomas Deacon was impressed with Wesley, for in the September following their meeting he sent word through Clayton that he would appreciate Wesley's advice on a collection of Psalms Deacon was preparing for publication. Although it is not known what advice
Wesley may have afforded Deacon on this matter, Wesley did submit to the Non-Juring bishop an "Essay upon the Stationary Fasts," of which Deacon published an excerpt in his Compleat Collection of Devotions the next year. Wesley must have been at work on this essay prior to his trip to Manchester, for he read and "collected" (wrote out summaries of and quotations from) Beveridge on the Wednesday fasts in April of 1733, and read Gunning and Hooper on the "stations" in July of that same year. As noted above, his regular observation of the stations had begun in the preceding year.
Although Wesley's "Essay" has not come down to us in complete form, there exist at least two portions of it, both of which shed light on Wesley's view of the authority of Christian antiquity at this time. The first is a manuscript in Wesley's hand entitled "Of the Weekly Fasts of the Church" which appears in a notebook later used for his third
Georgia diary. This manuscript appears to date from the period 17321734 when Wesley was under the influence of the Manchester NonJurors. The essay begun in it is incomplete, but an outline given in the second paragraph shows the following structure (my summary):
1. It is the duty of all Christians to obey the ancient injunctions of the universal church; 2. the ancient church universally enjoined fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays; therefore 3. it is our duty as Christians to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.
The remainder of the manuscript gives the text of the first point of the essay as given in this outline. The entire segment is translated from a comment on I Corinthians 11:16 in William Beveridge's Thesaurus
Theologicus. Wesley evidently gave full approval to Beveridge's argument that practices which were universally observed in the ancient church are binding upon all modern churches, and, moreover, that a church is schismatic if it fails to observe customs universally observed by the church in antiquity.""
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
The other extant portion of Wesley's essay is that which was published by Deacon in A Compleat Collection of Devotions (1734). Wesley's essay appears in "An Appendix in Justification of this Undertaking, consisting of Extracts and Observations taken from the Writings of very eminent and learned Divines of different Communions."* The selection from Wesley purports to show "That the stations were instituted by the Apostles," which Wesley would demonstrate from the universality and antiquity of the practice, and from the express testimony of ancient writers concerning the practice. This may correspond to point two of the outline given in the manuscript portion of the essay. Only the first demonstration (from the universality and antiquity of the practice) is included in the published extract. Wesley quoted Augustine and Vincent of Lérins to the effect that whatever customs were universally observed in ancient Christianity must have had an apostolic origin. He then quoted Bishop Gunning, who asserted that not to follow scripture "as we find it interpreted by the Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church, as they received it from those before them" amounts to allowing every person to form his or her own opinion of the meaning of scripture, and this would inevitably lead to heretical opinions. Because the practice of observing the stationary fasts was universally observed in Christian antiquity, Wesley argued, and because there is a dominical warrant for fasting in general, the practice must be binding upon Christians of every particular ecclesiastical communion."
A fragment of another manuscript bears resemblances to these portions of Wesley's "Essay upon the Stationary Fasts" and suggests
Wesley's developing concern with ancient Christian liturgical practices. This manuscript is of an "Essay on Water Baptism" dated
December 1733, in which Wesley argued for the use of "water baptism" (presumably this refers to baptism by immersion, upon which Clayton and Deacon insisted), on the basis of the usage of Christ, the apostles, and "the Catholic Churches ... after them.""
Further evidence of the view of Christian antiquity which Wesley was developing at this time comes from Benjamin Ingham's diary.
Ingham was one of the Oxford Methodists who began observing Saturday-evening watches on 4 May 1734 after reading of the practice in Horneck's Happy Ascetick." After John Wesley arrived in Oxford from a trip to Epworth, the two men had breakfast together, where they discussed the Saturday watches. Ingham's record of the conversation is as follows:
Religious Talk of the Obligations of the Apostolic Church; every particular Church may conform to it entirely; every Member of any particular Church may conform to it so far as he is at Liberty; in particular instances we must consider their nature and necessity;
PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY IN THE WILDERNESS
Standing on Sundays only decency; religious talk of Watching, acceptable, but not necessary for all.
Although the verb "may" seems inappropriate for a discussion of "Obligations," it seems clear that Ingham's and Wesley's thoughts on watches and other customs were guided by the criterion of conformity to the consensus of teaching in the ancient church. In this respect, the ideas expressed in this conversation parallel very nearly those enunciated in Wesley's "Essay upon the Stationary Fasts."
Wesley's concern with the ancient church in general, and with its fasts in particular, continued through his departure for Georgia. As he sat on board the Simmonds awaiting his departure in September 1735, he received a letter from Clayton, promising to send him William
Whiston's "catechesis," and admonishing him to "Be sure remember [sic] to dip when you baptize, if it can be possibly done, according to the church's direction."" Wesley wrote Richard Morgan, Jr., expressing a doubt about whether the Wednesday fast was "strictly obligatory; though," he continued, "I believe it very ancient, if not apostolira)
What all of this shows is that in Wesley's later years in Oxford (1732 through 1735), the cultural and religious forces operative on him were not those of the conservative Anglicanism recommended to John
Wesley by his father. Rather, they were almost uniformly what we have called "programmatic," that is, they were directed toward the reinstitution of early Christian practices and the renewal of the ancient
Christians' moral and spiritual character. Wesley's extensive readings in Beveridge, Marshall, Cave, and Horneck in this period, as well as his exposure to the programmatic intentions of the Manchester NonJurors, would have mediated this programmatic concern to him. Wesley's conceptions of Christian antiquity in this period seem to have been dominated by an interest in ancient liturgical and disciplinary practices, such as the ancient weekly fasts. Given the concern for just these matters in the Apostolic Canons and Constitutions, one can understand the prominence these works held in Wesley's conceptions of Christian antiquity in this period. Wesley's "Essay upon the Stationary
Fasts" and the record of his conversation with Benjamin Ingham show that by 1734 Wesley had made this programmatic intent his own, and was anxious to see his own church conform in detail to practices he believed to have been universally observed in Christian antiquity.
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
Primitive Christianity in the Wilderness Under the influence of the Manchester Non-Jurors, and immediately after the death of his father, John Wesley decided to go to North
America as a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. His readings, writings, and practices in this period show that he originally saw the Georgia mission as an opportunity to restore ancient Christian disciplinary and liturgical customs in an environment similar to that of the ancient Church. On board the Simmonds he resolved with his brother Charles and with his friends Benjamin Ingham and Charles Delamotte to rise early every morning for prayers, an hour of Bible study, and an hour of reading "something relating to the primitive church."" During the voyage, he read from Deacon's
Compleat Collection of Devotions and Nelson's Companion to the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England.* Wesley's intentions for the Georgia mission appear prominently in a record of a conversation between him and Moravian leader August
Gottlieb Spangenberg, recorded in the diary of the latter during the Atlantic crossing. Martin Schmidt summarizes Spangenberg's earliest impressions of Wesley in the following terms:
[Wesley] had stressed his plan for evangelizing the Indians and the fact that he desired to carry this through in the manner of the early church. He thought that one of the brethren from Herrnhut might go with him, but there ought to be also ordained deaconesses in order to be able to conform to the early Christian practice of baptism by immersion for women. His standard for primitive Christianity in general was the consensus of opinion from the Fathers of the first three centuries.'"
Here one may note the emphasis on the consensus of patristic teaching, as well as Deacon's belief in baptism by immersion, to be performed by members of the catechumen's own sex. Here also one may see most clearly Wesley's vision of evangelization on the pattern of the early church.
In a further conversation, Spangenberg again noted Wesley's preoccupation with Christian antiquity:
[Wesley] has moreover several quite special principles, which he still holds strongly, since he drank them in with his mother's milk. He thinks that an ordination not performed by a bishop in the apostolic succession is invalid. Therefore he believes that neither Calvinists nor Lutherans have legitimos doctores and pastores. From this it follows that the sacraments administered by such teachers are not valid: this also he maintains.*® Spangenberg went on to explain that Wesley refused to share in the eucharist with, or accept the baptisms of, persons from traditions
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where the apostolic succession of bishops was not maintained. Wesley acknowledged, Spangenberg stated, that the Moravians did have a valid claim to the apostolic succession. (In fact, the British Parliament recognized the Moravian Unitas Fratrum as "an ancient Protestant
Episcopal Church" in 1749.) Spangenberg then explained the authority which Wesley claimed for his views,
All these doctrines derive from the view of the episcopacy which is held in the Papist and English churches and which rests upon the authority of the Fathers. Above all he believes that all references in Scripture of doubtful interpretation must be decided not by reason, but from the writings of the first three centuries, e.g., infant baptism, footwashing, fast days, celibacy and many others."
The contrast expressed in the phrase "not by reason but from the writings of the first three centuries" shows the distinction Spangenberg must have seen between a conventional Protestant view of the interpretation of scripture, which would have stressed the use of reason and the integrity of the scriptural text itself, and the view of Anglicans who had stressed the importance of Christian antiquity in interpreting scripture. Spangenberg's references to "footwashing, fast days, celibacy and many others" suggests Wesley's concern for reinstituting ancient customs which had fallen into disuse.
Wesley's readings throughout his stay in Georgia illustrate his continuing interest in the ancient church. Between 16 March and 2
April 1736 he was involved in reading Laurence Echard's General Ecclesiastical History (1702), a chronological history of Christianity from the birth of Christ until the establishment of the church under Constantine. Echard's work acknowledged its debt to Cave, Dupin, Tillemont, Fleury, Pearson, Stillingfleet, and Wake, among others. It is interesting to observe (in light of Wesley's changing views noted below) that this work rejected the theory of early authorship of the Apostolic Canons.* Later that year Wesley read in Ephraem Syrus and studied Cotelier's Greek edition of the Apostolic Fathers with the Moravians. He read in the works of William Cave (probably Primitive
Christianity), in the "Spiritual Homilies" attributed to Macarius of -¥Egypt, and in numerous works of French Bishop Claude Fleury, many of which treated the early Christian church." In his second year in Georgia, he was involved in the study of Wake's translation of the Apostolic Fathers, mentioning specifically I Clement and the Epistle of Polycarp in his diaries. Along with these he read Irenaeus and Stillingfleet.*
During his stay in Georgia John Wesley produced a manuscript abridgement of Claude Fleury's Moeurs des Chrétiens which illuminates / the conceptions of Christian antiquity which he held at that time. His
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
Journal and diaries indicate his frequent study in Fleury's works, and manuscripts of Wesley's versions of Moeurs des Chrétiens and Fleury's
historique, written in notebooks bound in the same manner as the Georgia diaries, have survived. Wesley's manuscript originally entitled "An Abridgement of Fleury's Manners of the Christians" displays significant alterations of Fleury's text. Whereas Fleury's work treated the life of the church through the seventh century, Wesley's abridgement included only those parts of the work concerned with the first three centuries, ending with the age of Constantine. Even within the parts of Fleury's work he included, Wesley omitted chapters dealing with the eucharistic mysteries, relics of martyrs, confessors, excommunication, and ascetic orders. Of the chapters Wesley included, he omitted considerable detail, and almost all of the numerous references to patristic sources which Fleury had given. Wesley replaced Fleury's chapter on penance with a chapter abridging Marshall's Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church, and replaced
Fleury's chapter on the clergy with a short chapter, perhaps of Wesley's own devising, explaining the orders of bishop, priest, deacon, and deaconess in the early church.™ The result of this labor of excision, abridgement, and addition is a compressed portrait of Wesley's vision of Christianity in the anteNicene period: a Christianity having its perfection in Christ, whose example the apostles and their disciples in turn imitated. It is a vision of a Christian community holding its possessions in common, exercising a strict discipline over its catechumens, worshiping together at daily canonical hours, observing Wednesdays and Fridays as fasts, celebrating the eucharist weekly, and expressing its faith in its ordinary meals and even its modes of dress. It is a vision of a church that disciplines with excommunication its offenders, and receives them again, only once, and only upon their temporary segregation from the community, their public confession of sin, and their formal absolution by the bishop. It is a vision of an orderly communion, governed by bishops in succession to the apostles, ministered to by its priests, and served by its deacons and deaconesses. It is a vision of a community suffering under persecutions, providing for the needs of its own constituents, first, then for the rest of humankind so far as it is able. In some points of detail, Wesley's version of "The Manners of the Christians" affirmed chrismation as the appropriate mode of confirmation, prayer facing the east, the frequent use of the sign of the cross, elaborate penitential discipline including public confession and segregation from the church, and trine immersion as the normative mode of baptism.®
PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY IN THE WILDERNESS
Wesley's practices in Georgia illustrate further his intentions for a renewal of the life of ancient Christianity. Twenty days after arriving in the colony, Wesley baptized an infant "according to the custom of the first church, and the rule of the church of England, by immersion."
"The child was ill then," Wesley wrote, "but recovered from that hour."°* This practice reflects not only the views of Deacon, Clayton, and Fleury, noted above, but also the instructions in the 1549 Prayer
Book, to which the Manchester Non-Jurors were attached. Two weeks later, Wesley informed his congregation of his intention to "divide the morning service on Sundays in compliance with the first design of the church."*' This, too, reflects the 1549 Prayer Book's separation of the office for morning prayer from the eucharistic liturgy, which might be justified on the basis of the ancient distinction between the missa catechumenorum and the missa fidelium, as Cave and others had described it.
What emerges from a close examination of John Wesley's study and work in Georgia, then, is that his original inspiration for the mission was a religious vision of the renewal of ancient Christian practices and institutions in the primitive North American environment.
His vision, at this point, was colored by his encounter with the Manchester sect, and by their stress upon the Apostolic Canons and Constitutions and the consensus of ancient conciliar teachings.
His experience in Georgia, however, led him to alter some of his conceptions of the ancient church. There can be little doubt that these changes were due to his encounter with Continental Pietists, who had their own ideas about Christian antiquity. Wesley's approval of the Moravians, in particular, may be seen in his comments on a Moravian episcopal election and consecration which he attended three weeks after arriving in America:
After several hours spent in conference and prayer, they proceeded to the election and ordination of a Bishop. The great simplicity, as well as solemnity, of the whole, made me forget the seventeen hundred years between, and imagine myself in one of those assemblies where form and state were not; but Paul the tent-maker, or Peter the fisherman presided; yet with the demonstration of the Spirit and Power.*® The "great simplicity" of the Moravian service would have contrasted with an Anglican episcopal ordination. Secular occupations of bishops
were maintained by the Moravians. This contrasts with the Anglican pattern as well, although it may be noted that Thomas Deacon was a physician who maintained his medical practice after his episcopal ordination."
In the autumn of 1736 Wesley was engaged in the study of early Christian texts in the company of the Moravians. On the thirteenth of
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
September, according to the account in his Journal, Wesley took up William Beveridge's Synodikon (subtitled Pandectae), a collection of conciliar canons including the Apostolic Canons, with Charles. Delamotte. His entry in the Journal for this date reflects an uneasiness over the authority of ancient church councils:
Mon. 13.—I began reading, with Mr. Delamotte, Bishop Beveridge's Pandectae Canonum Conciliorum. Nothing could so effectually have convinced us, both that Particular and 'General Councils may err and have erred'; [and of the infinite difference there is between the decisions of the wisest men and those of the Holy Ghost recorded in his
Word;] and that things ordained by Councils as necessary to salvation have neither strength, nor authority unless they be taken out of Holy Scripture.
This passage reflects an alteration of the high approbation of conciliar orthodoxy expressed by Wesley's father and such Anglican apologists as George Bull and John Pearson. Because the Synodikon contained the Apostolic Canons, this comment must be taken as referring to them as well. There is a discrepancy between this passage and Wesley's diary for this date, which observes that he began the Codex Canonum, Beveridge's defence of the Apostolic Canons, with Delamotte on this date." This suggests that Wesley's subsequent recollection of the events, when he composed his Journal account, may have been in error; although the diary shows Wesley as reading the "Councils" a week later. It is probable that Wesley had taken up both of Beveridge's works during this period."
The Apostolic Canons are the subject of a further observation in the Journal a week later that shows the same tone of disappointment:
Mon. 20.—We ended the Apostolical Canons, of which I must confess I once thought more highly than I ought to think. Of them Bishop Beveridge observes that they are the decrees of the several Synods, which met at several places, and on several occasions, in the second and third age after Christ; and therefore called Apostolical, because partly grounded upon, partly agreeing with, the traditions delivered down from the Apostles. He farther observes [That as they were enacted by different Synods, so they were collected by different persons; till, about A.D. 500, John, Bishop of Constantinople, placed them at the head of the Canons, which he then collected into one code; since which time they have been in force in the Eastern Church.
But then' he adds] (Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Primitivae, p. 159; and why did he not observe it in the first page of the book?), 'they contain the discipline used in the church at the time when they were collected; not when the Council of Nice met, for then many parts of it were useless and obsolete.'
On the page referred to in the parenthetical comment, Beveridge is responding to a challenge against the authority of the Apostolic
PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY IN THE WILDERNESS
Canons raised by Jean Daillé. Daillé asked why, if the Apostolic Canons had been acknowledged to have been of apostolic origin, or even of venerable antiquity, they had not been inserted in the most prominent position among other collections of ancient canons, such as those of the Council of Nicea. Beveridge responded that very often later councils did not include in their own lists of canons such canons as had been in effect earlier in their own provinces, since earlier canons might not be relevant at the time of the later Council. Beveridge gave as an example the fact that the code of canons of the ancient African church did not include the canons which had been promulgated under Cyprian, or by earlier African councils. Beveridge suggested, further, that the suspension of persecutions by Constantine may have made some secondand third-century canons obsolete by the time of the Council of Nicea." Wesley's objection to the Apostolic
Canons, then, was not that they were post-Nicene, for he seizes upon Beveridge's observation that some of them were obsolete by the time of Nicea. Rather, Wesley finally realized at this point that the Apostolic Canons could not have expressed the consensus of early Christian practice if in fact some of them were not in use in some areas by
A.D. 325.
A similar pattern of criticism may be observed in a manuscript in Wesley's hand containing notes on the Apostolic Constitutions. Wesley's diaries show that he was studying the Constitutions, sometimes with Delamotte, sometimes with "the Germans," in late September and early October 1736. One item in this manuscript has the note
"therefore S. Hilary knew not these Constitutions, for he calls Philemon a layman." Wesley questioned whether other parts of the Constitutions were extant before the Council of Nicea, but dated some parts from the third century. The remark about Hilary not knowing the Constitutions would have conveyed an important objection to any theory, such as that of Deacon, that the Constitutions reflected the consensus of ancient Christian practice.
A clearer statement of Wesley's changing evaluation of Christian antiquity appears in a manuscript dated 25 January 1738. At this time,
Wesley was on board ship, returning to England. After explaining some earlier phases of his theological development, Wesley noted his attachment to the Vincentian canon, and problems he had begun to perceive with it:
5. But it was not long before Providence brought me to those who showed me a sure rule of interpreting Scripture, viz.: Consensus veterum: quod ab omnibus, quod ubique, quod semper creditum. At the same time they sufficiently insisted upon a due regard to the one
Church at all times and in all places. Nor was it long before I bent the bow too far the other way: a9
JOHN WESLEY AND CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
1. By making antiquity a co-ordinate rather than a subordinate rule with Scripture.
2. By admitting several doubtful writings, as undoubted evidences of antiquity.
3. By extending antiquity too far, even to the middle or end of the fourth century.
4. By believing more practices to have been universal in the ancient church than ever were so.
5. By not considering that the decrees of one provincial synod could bind only that province; and that the decrees of a general synod bound only those provinces whose representatives met therein.
6. By not considering that the most of these decrees were adapted to particular times and occasions; and, consequently, when these occasions ceased, must cease to bind even those provinces."
This passage suggests that Wesley continued to regard the consensus of teachings and practices in the ancient church (hence his citation of the Vincentian Canon) as "a sure rule of interpreting Scripture," brought to his attention—providentially, in his own view—by the Manchester Non-Jurors.
He also acknowledged, however, that he had come to recognize errors in their views of Christian antiquity. The errors listed are of two sorts. First, there were excesses in the application of this principle, as noted in items one and three. In this document, Wesley himself takes responsibility for these errors, and does not attribute them to the Manchester Non-Jurors. Second, there were errors of scholarly judgment involved in the application of this principle, as items two, four, five, and six note. The "doubtful writings" referred to in item two would be the Apostolic Canons and Constitutions; the "practices" in item four would be the "usages" and other practices emphasized by the Manchester Non-Jurors; and the attenuations of the rule noted in items five and six correspond to the criticisms raised about the Apostolic Canons and Constitutions in his studies in the autumn of 1736, that is, the criticisms that these documents, of whatever antiquity, did not reflect the consensus of ancient Christian teachings and practices.
In 1737, then, John Wesley had come to hold a different vision of Christian antiquity than he had held before. Having come to question the authenticity of the Apostolic Canons and Constitutions, he would have had much less support for the views of ancient liturgical and disciplinary practices he had espoused before. Having recognized the eccentricity of his earlier uses of Christian antiquity, he would try in the future to see antiquity as a supplement to the authority of scripture; but his religious vision, in fact, would still rely upon his sense of the purity of the ancient church.