Wesley and the Moravians a3
Wesley and the Moravians W. P. Stephens The Moravians are inseparable from the decisive events of 24
May 1738.' Indeed we can assert that without them there would have been no evangelical conversion on that day. Before his contacts with them Wesley had been searching for salvation through a life of holiness. It was they who helped him to see that he had been trusting in his own righteousness, and through them that he came to trust in the righteousness of Christ (Journal
I, 465-72)."
Wesley first met the Moravians (or Germans, as he also calls them) on his journey to America in 1735. He came to know them more intimately during his time in Georgia. Then in the months after his return in 1738 he received the help which led to his conversion at Aldersgate Street and the visit to Herrnhut which followed it.
His relations with the Moravians changed dramatically in 1739 and never regained that first fine careless rapture of 1735, yet his sense of indebtedness to them never wavered and his esteem for them persisted even in the sharpness of controversy.
The sense of indebtedness may be seen in his letter to Mrs Hutton on 22 August 1744, 'I love Calvin a little, Luther more, the Moravians, Mr Law, and Mr Whitfield far more than either' (Letters II, 25). The esteem is evident a month earlier on 24 July in the preface to Part Four of his Journal in which he presented his disagreements with them.
What unites my heart to you is the excellency (in many respects) of the doctrine taught among you .
. I magnify the grace of God which is in many among you, enabling you to love
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives Him who hath first loved us... I praise God that He hath delivered, and yet doth deliver, you from those outward sins that overspread the face of the earth .
. I love and esteem you for your excellent discipline, scarce inferior to that of the apostolic age .
. (Journal II, 310-11).
This account of Wesley and the Moravians looks at five periods: the voyage, the time in Georgia, the meetings with Bohler on his return to England, the visit to Herrnhut, and the controversy with Molther and Zinzendorf.
(i) The voyage On Friday, 17 October 1735, three days after boarding the ship Simmonds as a missionary for America, Wesley refers to his meeting with them.
I began to learn German, in order to converse a little with the Moravians, six-and-twenty of whom we have on board, men who have left all for their Master, and who have indeed learned of Him, being meek and lowly, dead to the world, full of faith and of the Holy Ghost (Journal I, 110).
Four days later Wesley could write of a regular pattern of life in which he learned German from nine to twelve (Journal I, 112), while some of the Moravians had begun to learn English. His contact with them was varied — visiting their sick, studying their hymns, conversing, and singing and worshipping with them.
They made a profound impression on him by their life and by their faith. In the ordinary circumstances of life on a ship they stood out as extraordinary. On Sunday, 25 January 1736, his journal includes an impressive testimony to them in the midst ofa dramatic account of a storm at sea. It was the third storm during the voyage, one which he described as 'more violent than any we had had before'.
At seven I went to the Germans. I had long before observed the great seriousness of their behaviour. Of their humility they had given a continual proof, by performing those servile offices for the other passengers which none of the English would undertake; for which they desired and would receive no pay, saying,
'It was good for their proud hearts', and 'their loving Saviour had done more for them'. And every day had given them
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occasion of showing a meekness which no injury could move. If they were pushed, struck, or thrown down, they rose again and went away; but no complaint was found in their mouth. There was now an opportunity of trying whether they were delivered from the spirit of fear, as well as from that of pride, anger, and revenge. In the midst of the psalm wherewith their service began, wherein we were mentioning the power of God, the sea broke over, split the mainsail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began among the English. The Germans looked up and without intermission calmly sang on. I asked one of them afterwards, 'Was you not afraid?' He answered, 'I thank God, no.' I asked, 'But were not your women and children afraid?' He replied mildly, 'No; our women and children are not afraid to die.'
From them I went to their crying, trembling neighbours, and found myself enabled to speak with them in boldness and to point out to them the difference in the hour of trial between him that feareth God and him that feareth Him not. At twelve the wind fell. This was the most glorious day which I have hitherto seen (Journal I, 142-3).
Their simple confidence in God searched out the character of Wesley's own faith in God, as their devotion to God and to others challenged one who had for years been given to the pursuit of 'the holiness without which no one will see the Lord'. Here were people who were exemplars of holy living and holy dying. Theirs was not that 'fair summer religion' of which Wesley could accuse himself at the end of his journey back to England in 1738. Then he was to write, 'But ina storm I think, What if the gospel be not true?' 'I can talk well; nay, and believe myself, while no danger is near. But let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled' (Journal I,
418). Wesley saw in them what he himself lacked: a living faith — and they wakened his longing for it.
(ii) In America Wesley's intimacy with the Moravians continued after their arrival in America in the first week of February 1736. The day after he 'set foot on American ground' he met Spangenberg, to whom he later referred as 'that good soldier of Jesus Christ'
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives (Journal 1, 371). The following day, Sunday 8 February, he recorded a strikingly direct conversation in which he reveals the nature of his own faith at this stage.
I asked Mr Spangenberg's advice with regard to myself— to my own conduct. He told me he could say nothing till he had asked me two or three questions. 'Do you know yourself? Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?' I was surprised, and knew not what to answer. He observed it, and asked, 'Do you know Jesus Christ?' I paused and said, 'I know He is the Saviour of the world.' 'True,' replied he; "but do you know He has saved you?' I answered, 'I hope He has died to save me.' He only added, 'Do you know yourself?' I said, 'I do.' But I fear they were vain words (Journal I, 151).
Spangenberg's view of Wesley was less critical than Wesley's later reflection, for he recorded in his diary, 'I noticed that genuine grace dwells and rules in him.' (The later emphasis on the witness of the Spirit can be seen here.) Just over two weeks later Wesley and Delamotte went to lodge with the Moravians. Once again it was the way they lived that impressed him: their activity, their relations, and the absence of evil.
We had now an opportunity, day by day, of observing their whole behaviour. For we were in one room with them from morning to night, unless for the little time I spent in walking.
They were always employed, always cheerful themselves, and in good humour with one another; they had put away all anger, and strife, and wrath, and bitterness, and clamour, and evilspeaking; they walked worthy of the vocation wherewith they were called, and adorned the gospel of our Lord in all things
(Journal I, 169).
It is the same concern for holiness that had engaged him for years.
But in them there was the holiness of life, not the holiness of books.
The contacts were constant and were both personal and ministerial. Wesley consulted them in matters as diverse as his mission to the Choctaw Indians and his possible marriage to Sophy Hopkey (Journal I, 238-9, 315-16), and he also employed their method of discerning God's will in the latter question by the
Wesley and the Moravians
use of lots. They sang and preached together and he also led their worship. (Indeed with his growing command of languages he could be found leading worship in Italian and French as well,
Journal I, 396—7.) His study of German, which had begun after his first meeting with them, now bore fruit in his translation of German hymns, both Pietist and Moravian. But his translations were not an academic pursuit They were part of a piety in which the singing of hymns had a vital place, so that both the hymns and the singing of hymns were part of his debt to the Moravians.
There was also the appeal of the primitive church which Wesley saw manifested in them in their election and ordination of a bishop, reminding him of an assembly presided over by 'Paul the tent maker or Peter the fisherman' (Journal I, 170-1). Others were uneasy about his contacts with the Moravians, as James Hutton was in relation to the validity of their ordinations. For Wesley, however, it was God who had opened the door to the Moravian
Church, and the style of that church, as of its bishops, was radically different from that of much of the Church of England as Wesley knew it. Alongside this was the way they ordered their life as a church — all that is embraced in the word discipline. Small intimate groups for Christian fellowship were not wholly new to Wesley any more than a reverence for the early church. What the Moravians did was to set them in a new key and breathe new life into them.
Yet Wesley clearly had a number of reservations about the Moravians and in particular about Zinzendorf, as can be seen for example in some of the questions and answers in his conversation with Spangenberg on 31 July 1737 and the comment for the following day with its reference to the 'Count's exposition of Scripture and method of public prayer'. Wesley was convinced of Zinzendorf 'that he likewise is but a man'. The concern expressed about 'openness and plainness of speech' was one that was often to recur afterwards (Journal I, 372-6).
Wesley left America hurriedly at the end of 1737 after the break-up of his friendship with Sophy Hopkey. He returned bereft of the great hopes with which he had gone to America. As he approached Land's End in January 1738 he wrote, 'I went to America, to convert the Indians; but oh, who shall convert me? who, what is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief?' He sees that what he lacks is a living faith, a faith that 1s
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives free from sin, fear, and doubt (Journal I, 418-20). Yet Wesley is now aware of what he lacks — and the stage is therefore set for the next act.
(iii) England and Peter Bohler The Moravians are again his companions on this final stage of his journey to Aldersgate Street. Indeed within days of landing came his first meeting with Peter Bohler who was to be the crucial person in his life in the weeks from February to May. Significantly he is the only person to be mentioned by name in Wesley's brief summary of his contacts with the Moravians in a letter to Thomas
Church in 1746 (Letters I1, 179-80).
He met him with others on Tuesday 7 February, 'a day much to be remembered', and took every opportunity 'of conversing with them' (Journal I, 436-7). Yet Wesley confesses that he did not understand Bohler, especially when he told him, 'that philosophy of yours must be purged away' (Journal I, 440). By Sunday 5
March, however, Wesley was 'clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith, whereby alone we are saved'. This naturally led him to think he should stop preaching, but Bohler rejected such a thought and, in response to Wesley's question 'But what can I preach?', said 'Preach faith ¢z// you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.' On the following day he records: 'I began preaching this new doctrine, though my soul started back from the work. The first person to whom I offered salvation by faith alone was a prisoner under sentence of death' (Journal I, 442).
The task was doubly difficult as for years he had asserted the impossibility of a deathbed repentance. It is but one example of Wesley's obedience to his spiritual counsellors and his putting matters to the test — both of scripture and of experience. Three weeks later a condemned man (perhaps the same person) came to an assurance of faith and the enjoyment of perfect peace through prayer and preaching (Journal I, 448).
It was from this period that Wesley was himself increasingly persuaded from scripture of the nature of saving faith, of the happiness and holiness that are its fruits (from Romans 8 and 1
John 5 with their reference to the witness of the Spirit, and from 1 John 3 with its reference to the person born of God not committing sin), and of the instantaneous way in which it is given (from the Acts of the Apostles). But still Wesley could not believe that God
Wesley and the Moravians
acted in his day as he did in the apostolic age until Bohler produced for him living witnesses who testified that God had given them 'ina momentsucha faith in the blood of His Sonas translated them out of darkness into light, out of sin and fear into holiness and happiness.
Here ended my disputing. I could now only cry out, "Lord, help Thou my unbeliefl""' Again Wesley thought he should stop teaching others, but Bohler's response was 'No; do not hide in the earth the talent God hath given you.' Accordingly ten days later, Tuesday 25
April, he spoke 'clearly and fully' to others, including his brother, 'of the nature and fruits of faith' (Journal I, 455-6). With Bohler's encouragement he continued to teach 'the faith as it is in Jesus'.
Others found it strange, as did Charles, who was 'strongly averse from what he called ''the new faith"'' (Journal 1, 457-8) (Charles stated that the issue was not the nature of faith but whether conversion was gradual or instantaneous.) But this preaching led — on each of the three Sundays before 24 May — to the closing of churches to him (Journal I, 460, 462, 464) On 24 May he came himself to that living faith—a trust in Christ "as my Christ, as my sole justification, sanctification, and redemption'. This faith involved 'a sense of pardon for all past and freedom from all present sins'
(Journal 1, 472).
In his account of his life up to that point Wesley spoke of how he had lived under law and not under grace and how it had been the Moravians who had first endeavoured to show him 'a more excellent way'. But although 24 May may have been the climax in Wesley's search for a living faith in Christ, it was not the end of the way. The days that followed showed a man much buffeted. He had peace, but not joy. There was victory, but there were also fear, temptation, doubt, and heaviness. On Friday 26 May he was consulting a Moravian, John Toltschig, and it is not surprising that he decided soon after that the time had come to 'retire for a short time to Germany', something he had determined to do while still in America. As he put it in his journal on 7 June:
My weak mind could not bear to be thus sawn asunder. And I hoped the conversing with those holy men who were themselves living witnesses of the full power of faith, and yet able to bear with those that are weak, would be a means, under God, of so establishing my soul, that I might go on from faith to faith and 'from strength to strength' (Journal I, 482-3).
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives In a way this was to be the last stage of his pilgrimage towards a living faith.
(iv) In Germany The journey through Holland and Germany lasted six weeks.
Wesley, however, was no ordinary tourist, for when asked in Weimar why he was going as far as Herrnhut, he replied, "To see the place where the Christians live'. On the way there Cologne struck him as 'the ugliest dirtiest city I ever yet saw with my eyes' and its cathedral as 'a huge mis-shapen thing', whereas the Orphan
House in Halle was 'so conveniently contrived, and so exactly clean, as I have never seen any before' (Journal II, 7-8, 17; cf. Letters
II, 249). It was supported in part by the selling of books and medicines — and was in more ways than one an example to Wesley.
After three weeks the party reached Marienborn where Wesley met Zinzendorf and where the sight of a multinational community of ninety people provoked the cry, 'Oh how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" Journal II, 11), and—ina letter to his mother — the comment: 'I now understand those words of poor Julian, "See how these Christians love one another!""'
(Letters 1, 250).
In Germany he found what he was searching for: 'living proofs of the power of faith', people saved from inward and outward sin and from doubt and fear. (Journal II, 13). That is where the emphasis lay in the conversations he recorded (Journal II, 28-56).
The people he talked with were continued evidence that what God had done in the first century in giving holiness and happiness, and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, he could do in the eighteenth, and that the only way to this was faith in Christ crucified for us (Letters
I, 254). Although at Marienborn he had alluded to certain reservations, yet they were 'smaller points that touch not the essence of Christianity'. He would not concern himself with them but rather with those who are witnesses that 'Every one that believeth hath peace with God and is freed from sin, and is in Christ a new creature.' For what had impressed Wesley was that young and old 'breathe nothing but faith and love at all times and in all places' (Letters I, 250-1).
Ina letter to his mother on 6 July he had compared Zinzendorf's behaviour with that of Christ in the gospels (Letters 1, 250), and his letter to Zinzendorf after the visit was warm and appreciative,
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although it also voiced his concerns (Letters 1, 265-6). In a letter sent much later, though begun in September 1738, he raised these points, including the personality cult of Zinzendorf (Letters I,
257-8). Another criticism, that was also to persist was the lack of 'plainness of speech', something which Wesley was certainly not lacking, as his earlier letters to William Law testify. (His letter to Hutton from Herrnhut implies a concern here.) For him there is the dominical command to tell someone his fault directly (Letters I,
256).
The record that Wesley made of personal testimonies and Moravian history show divergences among the Moravians, some of which were to surface later in Wesley's dealing with them, such as the emphasis on either Christ in us or Christ for us, the relation between holy communion and a person's faith and between justifying faith and the assurance of faith, and the possiblility of agreement on the foundation while differing on some points of doctrine (Journal II, 28-56).
The visit to Marienborn and Herrnhut helped to complete theologically and experientially the process that had reached its climax for Wesley on 24 May. He had the evidence of that living faith in Christ in which the love of God is shed abroad in the heart and in which the Spirit bears witness with our spirit. He continued to think about the nature of faith and consulted the Moravians on this, as his letter to Charles on 28 June testifies (Letters 1, 248). But his return from Germany marks in a way his independence of the Moravians. The visit perhaps had done for him something of what
Paul's visit to Jerusalem and his time in Arabia had done for him.
They had led him to faith. They had given him a host of witnesses to a living faith whose testimony could lead to the sharing of that faith with others. They had shown how men, women, and children could be built up in faith and love with forms of pastoral care that were both individual and corporate. They had expressed their faith in ways that were social as well as spiritual, above all with the orphan house in Halle. It is not surprising therefore that the critical letter of September 1738 should begin:
I cannot but rejoice in your steadfast faith, in your love to our blessed Redeemer, your deadness to the world, your meekness, temperance, chastity, and love of one another. I greatly approve of your conferences and bands, of your method of instructing
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives children, and in general of your great care of the souls committed to your charge' (Letters I, 257).
There is a sense in which his farewell words on 14 August show just this: that Herrnhut marked an end and a beginning. 'I would gladly have spent my life here; but my Master calling me to labour in another part of His vineyard .
. I was constrained to take my leave of this happy place... (Journal II, 28).
,, (v) Controversy A commemoration of 1738 leaves the relations of Wesley and the Moravians at a high point. There were the seeds of disagreement between them but no division and no conflict. In 1739 and 1740 the situation changed with the arrival of Philip Molther in October 1739.3 With it a period of controversy began, that was to cloud relations for decades.
Wesley describes the development of his conflict with Molther, Spangenberg, Zinzendorf, and others} in the fourth part of the Journal (Journal 11, 307-500), in the period from 1 November 1739 to 3 September 1741. Among the many issues raised, two stand out: quietism (or stillness) and antinominianism, both issues that can trouble revival movements.+* Molther encouraged those who did not have true faith, that is who doubted, who did not have the free assurance of faith, to be still (that is to abstain from the means of grace). They were to wait for God to act and not to use outward means, as there is no other means than Christ, and using them would be putting their faith in them rather than in Christ. Outward works were also discouraged for the same reason. As a result those whom Wesley regarded as 'strong in faith and zealous of good works' considered themselves as needing faith, with the consequence that they must abstain from good works (Journal I1, 312-13; cf. Letters 1, 347).
For Wesley this teaching worked havoc with those in his pastoral care. He spoke of people as 'in great confusion', of their being 'cold, weary, heartless, dead' (Journal II, 343). He and his brother Charles, except when Charles was also under the sway of stillness, used every available means to win back those who had succumbed and overcome those who had persuaded them. There were private conversations and public disputes (Journal II, 316,
343, 345). There were the letters and tracts in which both the
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Moravians and their views were attacked. There was the explaining of 'true stillness'
(Journal II, 331, 464). There was the exposition of scripture (Journal II, 354-62), with sermons on appropriate texts such as 'Do this in remembrance of me' against stillness and the use of the Epistle of James, 'the great antidote against this poison' (Journal II], 349), against antinomianism.
There were hymns on the means of grace. There was the witness of those whose experience supported him, whether in their degrees of faith or their receiving of faith in the Lord's Supper (Journal II,
315, 345, 349), though some testified on the other side (Journal II, 366). There was the dramatic intervention in the meeting of the Fetter Lane society on Sunday 20 July, unanimously agreed on two days earlier, when John read a prepared text and invited those who agreed with him to leave.
The sum of what you asserted is this:
1. That there is no such thing as weak faith: That there is no justifying faith where there is ever any doubt or fear, or where there is not, in the full sense, a new, a clean heart.
2. That a man ought not to use those ordinances of God which our Church terms 'means of grace', before he has such a faith as excludes all doubt and fear, and implies a new, a clean heart.
You have often affirmed that to search the Scriptures, to pray, or to communicate before we have his faith is to seek salvation by works; and that till these works are laid aside no man can receive faith.
I believe these assertions to be flatly contrary to the Word of God. I have warned you hereof again and again, and besought you to turn back to the Law and the Testimony. I have borne with you long, hoping you would turn. But as I find you more and more confirmed in the error of your ways, nothing now remains but that I should give you up to God. You that are of the same judgement, follow me' (Journal II, 370).
The controversy shows that there were elements in Wesley's theology which antedated his contact with the Moravians and which persisted after that contact. The Articles, the Homilies, the Prayer Book and the writings of Anglican divines, not least
William Law, had all contributed to his formation and left their mark, and they account in part for his opposition to stillness and
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives antinomianism. Ironically the question of stillness showed Wesley as more Lutheran than the Moravians. His insistence on the means of grace was in keeping with Luther in his attack on the spirituals, although Wesley drew on his Anglican tradition rather than on Luther. Molther, with his urging of those who did not have true faith to be still and wait for God to act, ignoring the means that God had appointed, was closer to the spirituals.
The question of antinomianism (in doctrineyrather than in practice) showed Wesley as the critic of Luther, whom he saw as 'the real spring of the grand error of the Moravians' (Journal II,
467). (Already in 1738 he had written of 'some Lutheran and Calvinist authors, whose confused and indigested accounts magnified faith to such an amazing size that it quite hid all the rest of the commandments', Journal I, 419.) The insistence on faith alone, and the describing of the law as something from which the Christian is freed, and the virtual rejection of the Epistle of James, conflicted with another part of Wesley's Anglican background: that insistence on the whole law of God, on 'the holiness without which no one will see the Lord'. The influence of William Law and others did not disappear, for all Wesley's criticism of Law in 1738, for not pointing him to the one thing needful: faith in Christ's death for our sins (Letters I, 239-44).
Once joined, the controversy developed. There were sharp, not to say, bitter expressions on both sides. Wesley referred to the Moravians as 'the German wolves' in contrast to Christ, the great shepherd (Journal III, 499), and Zinzendorf and the Moravians spoke with equal vigour. There were reasons for this.
Wesley held that in many places the Moravians had 'well nigh destroyed the work of God' (Letters IV, 36), and that their views both went beyond scripture and were contrary to scripture
(Journal II, 419-20). The Moravians also had their serious concerns. They were troubled by the sighing and groaning in Methodist meetings, regarding as animal spirits what Wesley considered the joy given by God. They considered Wesley's stress on the law as legalism and his stress on perfection as a denial of Christ as our sole perfection.
The controversy sharpened the differences, though it sometimes brought moments where the positions seemed close to each other, a difference of words or of emphasis rather than of substance. This seems the case in A Second Dialogue between an
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Antinomian and his Friend in 1745 with the reference to 'a liberty to walk in the Spirit and not fulfil the lust (or desire) of the flesh' (Works X, 271).
Wesley's criticism was usually of some Moravians and some of their teaching or practice, not of all, and it must be set alongside his continuing sense of indebtedness and his desire for unity. He experienced pain in the separation, and a longing to be with them (Journal II, 441-2) and could recognize 'how much holier some of them were than me, or any people I had yet known'
(Journal I1, 378). He wrote on 8 December 1745 to the Synod of the Moravian Brethren at Marienborn asking whether they might not 'in a free and brotherly conference
. 3. Settle how far we might unite .
. even if there should be some points wherein we cannot avoid speaking contrary to each other?' (Letters II, 54).
And while Bohler was dying in 1775 he wrote to him, 'By the grace of God I shall go on .
. loving your Brethren beyond any body of men upon earth except the Methodists' (Letters VI, 141).
To Hutton he had written 'If we do not think alike, we may at least love alike' (Letters V, 294).
The main debt of Wesley to the Moravians is their role in his coming to a living faith, a faith marked by the love of God shed abroad in the heart and the witness of the Spirit with our spirit.
Through them he moved from formal to vital religion. Others influenced him before and after, but without that contribution the influence of the others would have borne little fruit. The Moravians also helped to shape the development of the Methodist movement in the whole pattern of fellowship, devotion, and oversight that was to be found in the bands. Wesley had already learnt from this in Georgia, but his visit to Germany extended this experience. However, Wesley did not simply copy what he saw, and so he did not establish communities of those who lived together as in Marienborn and Herrnhut but created societies of those who met together, although they lived separate from each other in the world. In Professor Rupp's words, 'it was to the Moravians more than to any other single source that Methodism owed its pattern of devotion and discipline, of bands, societies, conference, of vigils, love-feasts — within the sacramental and liturgical frame of the Church of England'.°
Yet with many things it is not a question of direct dependence (as perhaps in the use of the lot) but rather a sense of family
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives likeness — in matters as diverse as the orphan home, the singing of hymns, the admission of children to holy communion, the response to physical hostility, and the being a society or church within the church.