Wesley the Catholic
i) Wesley the Catholic Aelred Burrows OSB :
The Provost (breaking in with some heat): You will all see, Mr Wesley will finish up a papist. I knew his father a little, that was a bad husband of his own affairs, and has wrote up very bitterly against the Nonconformists. And as for the son, it is true what
Mr Shillett has told you, that he is become a dangerous sort of enthusiast; and there is no other way'of it, but such enthusiasm will carry a man to Rome; which is what I anticipate for Mr
Wesley, and other the like coxcombs with him.
Ronald A. Knox, Let Dons Delight, Chapter 5 Without commenting one way or the other on the spiritual logic proposed by Fr Knox's provost, it is still the usual reaction among many, especially perhaps of the Roman Catholic communion, to assume the innate Protestantism of John Wesley. This is surmised on the grounds that he founded a community of Christians, the Methodists, who eventually broke away from the Church of England in a generally non-episcopal, anti-ritualist direction. Just how true, however, is this assumption about Wesley? Is there a real sense in which Wesley's religion is more 'Catholic' than
'Protestant'? Is it possible for Christians of all the major denominations to see in Wesley a figure of considerable ecumenical importance, whose religious journey has ultimately assisted rather than hindered the healing of Christian disunity?
It might be of profit, therefore, to take a look at Wesley's life and teaching to see just how far he remained grounded in the traditional 'marks' of the Church: viz., one, holy, catholic and apostolic. His life as well as his teaching should be our subject of study because Catholicism involves orthopraxis — the living-out of
Wesley the Catholic
a Catholic life style — as well as orthodoxy, the adherence to correct teaching.
Wesley the unifier The dearest aspiration in the heart of John Wesley was the unity in love of all those who have received and responded to the grace of Christ. He rightly saw this unity of love as fundamental to the oneness of the body of Christ; Christians manifested disunity primarily because they did not love one another. For Wesley, the root of this unifying love was the apprehension by the individual
Christian within himself that God genuinely loves him; an apprehension which is primarily in the will, an acceptance of the heart (in the biblical sense of the seat of intelligence and decision), which may (as in the case of Wesley's 1738 conversion) or may not be accompanied by a certain emotional uplift.
To love and forgive others, then, is central to the Christian calling. Wesley in a remarkable passage in his Journal speaks with an impressive humility of this gift within himself:
I cannot but stand amazed at the goodness of God. Others are most assaulted in the weak side of their soul; but with me it is quite otherwise; if I have any strength at all (and I have none but what I have received) it is in forgiving injuries; and on this very side am I assaulted more frequently than any other. Yet leave me not here one hour to myself, or I shall betray myself and Thee (29 October 1752).
For example, throughout his difficult relationship with George Whitefield, an awkward and touchy ally in the Gospel, whose sincere commitment to Calvinistic predestination he could in no way share, Wesley made real efforts at reconciliation. Thus on 5
November 1755: 'Mr Whitefield called upon me. Disputings are now no more; we love one another and join hand in hand to promote the cause of our common Master.'
Much more remarkable is Wesley's attitude to Roman Catholics. Although he inherited the common anti-Popery tradition of early modern England, he gradually developed an openness and a truly eirenic mind towards the adherents of the old religion. This is all the more remarkable given the state of Catholicism in the mid-eighteenth century. The Popes, with the outstanding exception of Benedict XIV, were politically and personally unimpres-
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives sive and weak men, who eventually, under political pressure, suppressed the Jesuits, who had been the most loyal and effective instruments of Catholic missionary and educational advance. In its doctrine, liturgy and devotion, the Catholic Church was in the full flowering of Baroque forms and expression, a style which, despite Wren, Gibbs and Vanbrugh, was not naturally appealing to Protestant Englishmen. The English Catholics, the local representatives of this tradition, were not an impressive lot, despite the personality of Bishop Challoner. They were a tiny remnant, suspect in their allegiance, and politically tarred by the Irish connection.
Wesley would have come across very few Catholics in England in the normal course of his apostolate, though in Ireland he inevitably met very many. Often his outdoor congregations there largely consisted of Catholics who frequently made a good impression on him by their quiet attention. Wesley could, nevertheless, give vent to his inherited prejudices, as on the occasion in 1761 when upon reading an unimpressive life of St Catherine of Genoa he wrote that, 'We seldom find a saint of God's making sainted by the Bishop of Rome.' None of this therefore prepares us for the remarkable 'Letter to a Roman Catholic' penned in July 1749. This letter is ecumenical love in action, and is a remarkable anticipation of the best fruits of the ecumenical movement of our own time. Here the centrality of the 'religion of love' as the dynamic which unites the Church is most clearly expressed.
Wesley begins his letter by regretting the bad image Protestants and Catholics have of each other, leading to 'both sides less willing to help one another, and more ready to hurt each other'.
He then appeals to the common following of Christ which Catholics share with Protestants, as a basis for mutual love and respect: 'I think you deserve the tenderest regard I can show, were it only because the same God has raised you and me from the dust of the earth, and has made us both capable of loving and enjoying him to eternity; were it only because the Son of God has bought you and me with his own blood. 'Wesley then proceeds to outline the doctrinal and ethical agreement which already exists between Catholics and Protestants. 'Are we not thus far agreed?
Let us thank God for this and receive it as a fresh token of his love. But if God loveth us, we ought also to love one another.
Wesley the Catholic
O brethren, let us not still fall out by the way. I hope to see you in heaven.'
As a conclusion to his letter, Wesley suggests four resolutions for separated Christians. First, 'not to hurt one another' but rather to behave in as kind and friendly a way as we can towards each other.
Secondly, 'to speak nothing harsh or unkind of each other' and to look for opportunities to speak good of each other. Thirdly, getting to the internal roots of prejudice by resolving 'to harbour no unkind thoughts, no unfriendly temper towards each other'. Finally, to offer each other mutual help in 'whatever we are agreed leads to the Kingdom ... to strengthen each other's hands in God'. John
Wesley clearly understands that the heart of the unity of the Church lies in the love of Christ made manifest in mutual Christian love: 'If we cannotas yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike.'
Maybe only in our century are we beginning to take seriously Wesley's programme for healing our divisions.
It is not only, however, in relation to the Church that John Wesley is a man of 'unity'. He was also, in a very traditional
Catholic way, aware of the unity of all knowledge, natural and revealed, humane and scientific. His search was for a wholeness, an integrity of knowledge. This is seen not only in his absorption in the things of God but also in his wide breath of interest in natural phenomena and their causes, and in his imaginative curiosity. His
Journal records this immense breadth of imaginative interest, whether it is in waterspouts which surprisingly move on to land
(September 1760); the beneficial effects of electricity (January 1768); the History of Charles the Fifth by Dr Robertson, which Wesley found disappointing; the most unusual summer-house in the gardens of the Duke of Athol (April 1772); or the effect of music upon animal behaviour (December 1764). Wesley, unlike Luther, refused to despise reason; he was, after all, a man born into the 'Age of Reason'. Although no Deist (Wesley registers his distaste at finding this phenomenon at provincial Matlock —'a gentleman-like man asked me, "'Why do you talk thus of faith? Stuff, nonsense!"'
Upon enquiry, I found he was an eminent deist. What, has the plague crept into the Peak of Derbyshire?'), Wesley always valued the role of logic and reason in Christian and natural enquiry. In the great tradition of the Christian Fathers, and his English predecessor, the Venerable Bede, he saw all knowledge as one, ancillary to the study of theology, and centred on the Holy Scriptures.
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives Wesley the sanctifier '.. being as tenacious of inward holiness as any mystic, and of outward, as any Pharisee'. Thus Wesley at the age of eighty-four expressed the Methodist concern for sanctification. John Wesley throughout his life was as zealous as any Catholic should be for the holiness of the Church in each and all its members. As with most
Christians, Wesley owed his first apprehension of the love of Jesus Christ, and his first steps in holiness, to his family. Ne inherited an instinct to be true to his conscience, whatever the family pressure, from both his father and his mother's family. His own mother,
Susanna, clearly a woman of conscientious principle, for a long time refused to answer 'Amen' to the public prayers for the 'usurper' William III, which must have caused certain tensions for her husband. It was also from his parents that Wesley became familiar with that eighteenth-century High Church breadth of mind in things of the Spirit which received its nourishment not only from the devout Puritan tradition, and the Caroline and Non-Juring divines, but also from the French and Spanish
Catholic Counter-Reformation writers.
This blend of piety gave its colour to the whole of Wesley's life.
The truths he fed on, the spiritual values he most pursued, were those found in the great overlap (always more than is often imagined) between Roman Catholic and Protestant spirituality.
He came to esteem very highly the /mitation of Christ, the writings of St Francis de Sales, the works of Archbishop Fénelon, the insights of Pascal, and the life and reflections of that simple and attractive
Carmelite lay-brother, Br Lawrence. All of these writings bear witness to the great Catholic tradition of 'sanctification', centred in the awareness of the presence of Christ with us, and living in that presence in simplicity and holiness, in response to Christ's grace.
Wesley brought this 'Catholic' stress on sanctification into his 'Protestant' life of justification by faith; in fact he found himself at times unhappy with Luther when the latter seems to belittle or deny the need for sanctification:
I set out for London, and read over on the way that celebrated book, Martin Luther's' Comment on the Epistle to the Galatians'. I was utterly ashamed. How have I esteemed this book, only because I heard it so commended by others. How blasphemously does he speak of good works and of the law of God —
Wesley the Catholic
constantly coupling the law with sin, death, hell, or the devil; and teaching that Christ delivers us from them alike. Whereas it can be no more proved by Scripture that Christ delivers us from the law of God than that he delivers us from holiness or heaven
(15 June 1741).
Wesley saw our sanctification as a process, suited to our organic nature; it was not necessarily complete when a man came to an adult faith, to a 'conversion'; such might only be the beginning of 'working out our salvation'. This doctrine of Wesley is above all optimistic; he is confident that God will fulfil his promises and never abandon the souls that he loves. For Wesley, this faith and trust is bound up with his belief in God's abiding presence in all the circumstances of life — at Church, at home, at rest, or on horseback — a belief which he expressed on his deathbed, 'the best of all is, God is with us'. Hence his willingness to believe in 'providences', those divine 'coincidences' in which the believer can occasionally discern the will of God who is always present to us and in charge of all our ways. Thus he saw the direct hand of God in his remarkable escape from being dashed to pieces in the chaise on the road to Burslem (20 July 1763), and in the quiet attention which an ass gave to his sermon at Rotherham (31
March 1764). The way Wesley records such 'providences' links him firmly with the seventeenth-century Puritan tradition, but the underlying awareness that man is always living in God's presence links him with a much more ancient spiritual source, the Rule of St Benedict. There in the chapter on 'Humility', St Benedict reminds his monks that all the actions of their life are known, seen and watched over by God; hence the need to do everything as well as we can. After one thousand years this teaching reached simple Br
Lawrence in his Carmelite monastery in Paris, and it is his teaching on The Practice of the Presence of God which was probably the means by which the Benedictine teaching reached John
Wesley.
Wesley therefore saw the need for the Christian to live in the present moment, to grow towards Christian perfection by accepting and obeying God's will in each passing moment of time
('redeeming the time', Eph. 5.16). Wesley in fact refers directly to Ephesians 5.16 in his Journal on 22 August 1743. During his difficulties in trying to leave London that day he had been
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives presented with several opportunities to talk with people. So he writes: 'I mention these little circumstances to show how easy it is to redeem every fragment of time (if | may so speak), when we feel any love to those souls for which Christ died.' Twenty years later,
Wesley notes: '. .
. believers grow dead or cold. Nor can this be prevented but by keeping up in them an hourly expectation of being perfected in love. I say an hourly expectation; for to expect it at death, or some time hence, is much the same as,not expecting it at all' (15 September 1762). The same sense of sanctification in time is seen ina later reflection of Wesley's; "Today I entered on my eighty-second year and found myself just as strong to labour and as fit for any exercise of body or mind as I was forty years ago.
I do not impute this to secondary causes, but the Sovereign Lord of all...
. We can only say, '""The Lord reigneth!"? While we live, let us live to Him!' (28 June 1784).
Wesley the catholicizer Driving Wesley on like a dynamo was his deep personal love of Christ, a heartfelt devotion which fed everything else, and everybody else, he had to do with. Here again Wesley is feeding on the ancient Catholic tradition stretching from the nihil amori Christi praeponere of the scripturally-rooted St Benedict, to the sublime chapters of the Jmitation of Christ on the 'Love of Jesus above all things' and 'Of Familiar Friendship with Jesus'.
This christocentric spirituality found expression in Wesley's appreciation of the traditional means of Christian holiness: prayer, fasting, spiritual reading, personal discipline and the sacraments.
The practice of personal spiritual discipline on a daily basis was with Wesley as early as (if not before) his days in the 'Holy Club' at Oxford from 1729 to 1735. The value of such a discipline he found in the great tradition represented by Thomas 4 Kempis,
Jeremy Taylor and William Law. He saw the need to structure and regulate the day in such a way that the priority of the things of God remained uppermost. Each day was an opportunity to give a practical daily gift of himself by regular prayer times, by systematic reading of the Scriptures and other spiritual reading, by living frugally, by detailed regular examinations of his daily life into how he spent his time. His criterion always was: does my lifestyle tend to the glory of God? This was happily reminiscent of the Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam motto of the sons of St Ignatius Loyola. It
Wesley the Catholic
is often said with some justice that had Wesley been reared in the Church of Rome, he would have ended up as the founder of a religious order, with a large probability of posthumous beatification.
That Wesley loved reading and solitude was partly forced on him by his itinerant way of life. In old age he noted: 'I generally travel alone in my carriage and so consequently am as retired ten hours a day as if I were in a wilderness.
. I never spend less than three hours (frequently ten or twelve) in the day alone'. This element of quiet and recollection was complemented by his constant devotion to the public prayer of the Church, the liturgy of praise and sacraments. He was aware that the Cranmerian twofold daily office of the Church of England was rooted in the more frequent prayer times of the Patristic period — a frequency represented by the ancient Roman and Monastic breviaries. Thus in October 1760, as part of a day of fasting and prayer for God's blessing on the new King's reign, we find that, 'we met at five, at nine, at one, and at half-past eight'. He clearly regarded the traditional discipline of fasting (of both Catholic and Protestant provenance) very highly in these mature years of his life. Three years later, after advising his society at Barnard Castle 'to observe every Friday with fasting and prayer', he proceeds to reflect: 'Is not the neglect of this plain duty (I mean fasting ranked by Our
Lord with almsgiving and prayer) one general occasion of deadness among Christians? Can anyone willingly neglect it and be guiltless?' (7 June 1763).
However, for one who claims to be a Catholic it is always the sacramental and specifically Eucharistic piety of John Wesley which impresses and even surprises. There is no question of any acceptance by Wesley of the Roman teaching on transubstantiation; in so far as he thought he understood it — as a beliefin a 'local deity', as a material physical presence — he rejected it. But his teaching is far from a Zwinglian memorialism. He talks of the Eucharist as one of the indispensable 'means of grace', an awesome ordinance given by Christ to his Church, a real sacrament, a token or pledge, conveying a real grace. Hence, his life-long insistence upon the value of 'constant communion', 1.e. considerably more frequent than the eighteenth-century Anglican norm. In 1787, towards the end of his life, he republished in The Arminian Magazine a sermon which fifty-five years before he had
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives written on the subject 'that it is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord's Supper as often as he can'. He thanks God that over all those years since 1732 'I have not yet seen any cause to alter my sentiments in any point which is therein delivered'.
In discussing the duty of constant Communion, Wesley expands the idea of the Eucharist as a means of grace:
This is the food of our souls: this gives strength to perform our duty and leads us on to perfection. If therefore, we have any regard for the plain command of Christ; if we desire the pardon of our sins, if we wish for strength to believe, to love and obey
God, then we should neglect no opportunity of receiving the Lord's Supper. Then we must never turn our backs on the feast which the Lord has prepared for us.
He was as aware as the later Pope Pius X — Roman Catholics would have to wait another century for this — of how venerable was the tradition of daily Communion. Wesley refers to 'the first
Christians, with whom the Christian satrifice was a constant part of the Lord's day service. And for several centuries they received it almost every day: four times a week always, and every saint's day besides. Accordingly those who joined in the prayers of the faithful never failed to partake of the blessed sacrament.' The impression given here of the essential 'Catholicism' of Wesley's thought is borne out by the theological tone of Hymns on the Lord's Supper, written by himself and his brother Charles in 1745, and by the incidental references to his Eucharistic practice in his Journal. For example, we find him in August 1762 reflecting upon the Holy
Communion both as a focus of reconciliation and as eschatological pledge:
At the cathedral (Exeter) we had a useful sermon, and the whole service was performed with great seriousness and dignity.
. I was well pleased to partake of the Lord's Supper with my old opponent Bishop Lavington. Oh, may we sit down together in the kingdom of our Father!
In his outlook on worship and spirituality, therefore, it seems that Wesley was no individualist; he has an ecclesial dimension which permeates both his heart and intellect. Just as St Paul went first to the synagogues on his missions, so John Wesley gravitated towards the parish church; only when he encountered rejection
Wesley the Catholic
there did he move out to the fields and hedgerows. Indeed, Wesley felt very uncomfortable, in March 1739, when he began his outdoor preaching. It went right against his conservative grain:
I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he (Whitefield) set me an example on Sunday; I had been all my life, till very lately, so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin ifit had not been done in a church.
Throughout his life he remained attached to the Prayer Book, the Liturgy, and the ancient feast days of the Church of England. It distressed him when worship was conducted in a slovenly or negligent fashion; instance his comments on the morning service in the English Church in Aberdeen on Sunday 3 May 1772:
I could not but admire the exemplary decency of the congregation. This was the more remarkable, because so miserable a reader I never heard before; listening with all attention, I understood but one single word, Balak, in the first lesson; and one more, begat, was all I could possibly distinguish in the second. ... Why is such a burlesque upon public worship suffered? Would it not be far better to pay this gentleman for doing nothing, than for doing mischief and for bringing scandal upon religion?
Wesley the apostolic It is clear that missionary activity flows immediately from the very nature of the Church. Missionary activity extends the saving faith of the Church, it expands and perfects its Catholic unity. . .and bears witness toits sanctity. ..
. The Holy Spirit. .
. implants in the hearts of individuals a missionary vocation . .
. and they take on the duty of evangelization, which pertains to the whole Church, and make it, as it were, their own special task
(Vatican II, Decree on Missionary Activity, 6 & 23).
In the case of John Wesley this Catholic pattern also holds true, that his spirit of fervent evangelism flowed out of his participation in Christ's life in the Church. It was his faith and love, and his commitment to Christian orthodoxy, which overflowed into apostolic mission. His apostolic zeal is a remarkable example of a
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives truly caring 'episcope', of pastoral oversight. As befits an apostle of the one who identified with the poor and simple, Wesley made mission to the spiritually and materially deprived his special vocation. It was the tin-miners of Cornwall and the colliers of Newcastle whom he found more open to the Gospel than those fashionable ladies of Bath at whom he fired the sharp observation:
'I do not expect that the rich and the great should want either to speak to me or to hear me; for I speak the plain truth — a thing you little hear of, and do not desire to hear' (5 June 1739).
A major feature of Wesley's apostolate was his possession of the virtue of courage in a high degree. He certainly needed it when he faced frequent indifference or hostility from the establishment, and initial incomprehension or even mob violence in the dechristianized, virtually pagan, industrial towns: 'I came to Leeds, preached at five, and at eight met the society; after which the mob pelted us with dirt and stones a great part of the way home' (12
September 1745); 'As soon as ever we entered the town (Rochdale) we found the streets lined on both sides with multitudes of people, shouting, cursing, blaspheming, and gnashing upon us with their teeth' (18 October 1749). Wesley faced scenes such as these time and time again with a calmness and serenity stemming from his complete trust in God. Linked with this was his perseverance, his refusal to let up on the Lord's work, to be put off by problems and difficulties.
Despite the problems of eighteenth-century travel, of the English weather, and of local hostility, he gave himself to the work of missionary follow-up well into his eighties. And all the time he put the credit for his gifts, his stamina, his successes, down to God. He was aware of his growing measure of success. Yet, as the following extract shows, he saw it all as due to God's doing:
From a deep sense of the amazing work which God has of late years wrought in England, I preached in the evening on those words, 'He has not dealt so with any nation'; no, not even with Scotland or New England. In both these God had indeed made bare his arm; yet not in so astonishing a manner as among us (19
June 1755).
Without therefore trespassing further on the area to be covered by others in this volume, it is sufficient here to note that Wesley exemplified in his own life and activity that inner drive and those
Wesley the Catholic
specific virtues associated with a true Christian apostle. In short, John Wesley eminently fulfils the criteria of a Catholic missioner so admirably described by the Second Vatican Council:
Those people who are endowed with the proper natural temperament, have the necessary qualities and outlook, and are ready to undertake the work of mission, have a special vocation
. they go forth in faith and obedience to those who are far from Christ. ... When God calls, a man must reply without taking counsel with flesh and blood (cf. Gal. 1.16) and give himself fully to the work of the Gospel. .
. He enters upon the life and mission of Him 'who emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave' (Phil. 2.7). Therefore he must be prepared to renounce himself and everything that up to this he possessed as his own, and 'to make himself all things to all men' (1 Cor. 9.22) (Decree on Missionary Activity, 23-24).
'There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without interior conversion.' So teaches this same Catholic Council; and the interior conversion of John Wesley to his beloved Lord and Saviour set him on the path to that 'ecumenism', that reconciling of all men to Christ, and that reconciling of all Christ's followers with one another, which drove him to take the whole world as his parish, and to pen such a seminal document as his Letter to a Roman
Catholic. The phrase 'Wesley the Catholic' may still sound surprising, especially to members of my communion. It is true that for all sorts of understandable historical reasons, Wesley remained deficient in appreciating, even perhaps unaware of, the primacy and spiritual role of the Petrine Office within the church; for all his love of, respect for, and frequent reception of Holy Communion,
Roman Catholics would feel that it needed the completion of a fuller Catholic teaching both on presence and sacrifice.
Yet, without letting the side down, one must also admit within John Wesley, the presence of the essential substance of Catholic faith, life and worship, in and through which he was baptized, he lived and became holy. This essay has concentrated on 'Wesley, the one who lived a Catholic life', but we should remember too that his doctrine also was essentially that of Catholic orthodoxy. His rootedness in the great patristic truths of the Trinity, the Incarnation and Christology; his almost Tridentine orthodoxy
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives concerning the relationship between justification and sanctification; his doctrine of 'assurance' which, when carefully scrutinized, seems extremely close to the Catholic tradition of expected consolation, and grace-reliant optimism, found in Romans 8.28, or in Julian of Norwich ('but all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well'); his rejection of the Calvinist teaching on absolute predestination and limited atonement; his deep appreciation of the Gospel sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper — in all these ways, Wesley was a man of undoubtedly Catholic spirit. Who could deny that Wesley belonged by intention, heart and soul to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church? During his visit to Ireland in May 1748, Wesley was addressing a mixed congregation in Dublin when 'one of them, after listening some time, cried out, shaking his head, ""Ay, he is a Jesuit, that's plain." To which a popish priest who happened to be near replied aloud, "'No, he is not; I would to God he was." In so far as a genuine compliment was implied — and abstracting from its back-handed nature and unecumenical wording! — I would wholeheartedly agree with the anonymous priest.