Wesley solved the problem by declaring that his father wrote Sacheverell's defense.' There is no other evidence for this, but it seems improbable that John
Wesley would have made such a statement on insufficient authority, and this authority was no doubt either his father or Sacheverell himself, whom John
Wesley as a boy visited at his father's request.
As to Samuel Wesley's militant orthodoxy, it is enough to cite his membership in the Lower House of Convocation which censured Whiston's Arian views, a subject on which the elder Wesley felt so strongly that his wife had engraved upon his tombstone the words: "As he liv'd so he died in the true Catholic
Faith of the Holy Trinity in Unity, and that Jesus Christ is God incarnate: and the only Savior of Mankind. Acts iv: 12."
In the enforcement of discipline, too, Wesley was of the strictest sect, punishing adulterers by public penance, compelling them to stand barefooted and — wrapped in a white sheet in the various churches of the parish. It was, in fact, partly this rigid discipline of the rector which aroused his parishioners to opposition during the earlier years of his incumbency. He was strict also, according to the standards of the day, in keeping the fasts and ceremonies of the Church.
He advised reading prayers on every holiday and on Wednesdays and Fridays, and he would like to have read prayers also on the eves of holidays. It was his custom to administer the Lord's Supper once a month,
Wesley's Training at Epworth and Oxford which was the practice of pious clergymen in that period.® But Wesley was not only a High Churchman and something of a politician; he was also a poet. True he was a very minor poet, but he was important enough to have been lampooned by Garth, by Swift, and by Pope. He wrote a more or less metrical version of the Old and New Testaments and numerous occasional pieces. But he was the friend of many of the well-known literary men of the day, and Swift and Pope both held him in high regard in spite of his poetry. From his journeys to London the rector must have come back with news of other matters than the squabbles of High and Low Church; and the lonely rectory in the lowlands of Lincolnshire was at least in second-hand touch with the literary world.
Quick-tempered but capable of sustained enthusiasm, a scholar although somewhat pedantic, a poet if a minor one, Samuel Wesley gave life and ambition to his household; and if he did not inspire love in his children, from his sons, at least, he called forth the deepest respect.
Less needs to be said of Susannah Wesley, for she is one of the most praised women in Christendom. Like her husband, Susannah came of good family. Her father was a distinguished Noncomformist preacher,
Dr. Samuel Annesley, whose uncle was an earl. She was, according to contemporaries, a woman of great charm, some thought of greater beauty than her sister who was painted by Lely. At an early age she was reading the Fathers and making up her mind about theological problems concerning which her elders
John Wesley and Modern Religion wrangled—and making up her mind that her distinguished father was wrong. Mrs. Wesley was of strong will, learned for a woman of her day, possessed of patience and of an ability for discipline which has remained a marvel to all students of Methodism.
In politics Mrs. Wesley was of the same belief as her husband; in fact going even further, since she refused to pray for King William. She showed an unfeigned belief in the supremacy of her husband, so that his poetic tribute to her, which is sometimes taken as a sign of the rector's overweening autocracy, is as truly a reflection of her sentiments as of his:
She graced my humble roof, and blest my life, Blest me by a far greater name than wife; Yet still I bore an undisputed sway, Nor was't her task but pleasure, to obey; Scarce thought, much less could act, what I denied,
In our low house there was no room for pride.® Writing to John, in February, 1735, she made clear her belief that "the visible order of providence" and civil government could not be established 'tand the due subservience of one man to another preserved without ensigns of authority, and difference in houses, furniture and apparel, all which are marks of distinction, and as such, in obedience to the will of God and not for vain glory, they ought to be used, and he that breaks his rank and goes out of character so far as he does so, so far he breaks the eternal order of the universe and abuses his Christian liberty." *° It was not from Samuel alone that the Wesley children learned to be Tories.
Wesley's Training at Epworth and Oxford The same principle Susannah carried over into religion, so that she firmly convinced the young collegian,
John, that faith is not assent to that which reason approves, as that budding theologian had contended.
"T am, therefore," wrote John to his mother in 1725, "at length come over entirely to your opinion, that saving faith (including practice) is an assent to what
God has revealed because He has revealed it and not because the truth of it may be evinced by reason." '* Susannah's mind, unlike that of her poetic husband, was methodical to a fault. Her theological ideas were held with tenacity but with pedestrian logic, and the little treatise on theology which she wrote for one of her daughters is a dry, rationalistic compendium. The story of her training and governance of the family has been often told, but must be remembered by all who would assess the mind of her distinguished son.
At John's request she wrote out, in her old age, an account of her principal rules in educating her children; and John included the letter in his published
"When turned a year old (and some before), they were taught to fear the rod, and to cry softly; by which means they escaped abundance of correction they might otherwise have had, and that most odious noise of the crying of children was rarely heard in the house, but the family usually lived in as much quietness as if there had not been a child among them." '"
With nineteen children, all told, although several died in infancy, such an arrangement had its adJohn Wesley and Modern Religion vantages. But the methodism of Susannah had only begun.
"They were so constantly used to eat and drink what was given them, that, when any of them was ill, there was no difficulty in making them take the most unpleasant medicine; for they durst not refuse it, though some of them would presently throw it up.
This I mention to show that a person may be taught to take anything, though it be never so much against his stomach. In order to form the minds of children, the first thing to be done is to conquer their will, and bring them to an obedient temper... . In the esteem of the world they pass for kind and indulgent whom
I call cruel parents, who permit their children to get habits which they know must be afterwards broken."
That Mrs. Wesley brought up her children by these strict rules is, of course, well known. They were to do this; they were not to do that. But she extended her rules also to their religious training.
"The children of this family were taught, as soon as they could speak, the Lord's Prayer, which they were made to say at rising and bed-time constantly; to which, as they grew bigger, were added a short prayer for their parents, and some collects; a short catechism, and some portions of Scripture, as their memories could bear."
After the fire which destroyed Epworth rectory, the children were scattered out among several families; and there they learned bad habits.
"When the house was rebuilt, and the children all brought home, we entered upon a strict reform; and then was begun the custom of singing psalms at beWesley's Training at Epworth and Oxford ginning and leaving school, morning and evening.
Then also that of a general retirement at five o'clock was entered upon, when the oldest took the youngest that could speak, and the second the next, to whom they read the Psalms for the day, and a chapter in the New Testament; as, in the morning, they were directed to read the Psalms and a chapter in the Old; after which they went to their private prayers, before they got their breakfast or came into the family."
This is enough to give an idea of Mrs. Wesley's method, although the whole letter is interesting and should be read if Susannah's mind is to be understood.
In the letter it is hinted that there was some difficulty in getting Samuel Wesley, Sr., to abide by the rules.
"Rules," "'habits," "obedience," are the great words.
There is no way of knowing whether Mrs. Wesley had read Locke's works on education; but the belief that anything can be taught, regardless of natural inclination, provided proper habits are built up is nothing if not Lockian.
It was no mean feat to command a household of so many children who had a poet for a father, but Susannah Wesley's pragmatic genius was sufficient.
Nor did her reverence for authority override her practical sense. When her husband was absent and his curate dry, she herself read prayers in the rectory; and the neighbors were admitted at their request.
The Rector objected, but he did not actually forbid the gatherings; and Susannah went her way sure that this was the sensible thing to do. A letter which she wrote to John when he was at Charterhouse is the last word in practicality. The boy had written her of John Wesley and Modern Religion some students who had met a ghost near Oxford; his mother replied:
"TI do not doubt the fact; but I cannot understand why these apparitions are permitted. If they were allowed to speak to us, and we had strength to bear such converse,—if they had commission to inform us of anything relating to their invisible world that would be of any use to us in this,—if they would instruct us how to avoid danger, or put us in a way of being wiser and better, there would be sense in it; but to appear for no end that we know of, unless to frighten people almost out of their wits, seems altogether unreasonable."
Even Mrs. Wesley's ghosts had to be practical.
No little scorn has been poured upon John Wesley for having engraved upon his mother's tombstone a verse which says that she Mourned a long night of griefs and fears,
A legal night of seventy years, because it was not until her old age that she found the peace and love which her father had experienced for forty years, although he did not preach about it.
Even Methodist historians usually preserve a discreet silence about the epitaph. Mrs. Wesley was a remarkable woman and is, in many ways, the founder of Methodism; but it is possible that John was better acquainted with his mother than are his modern critics.
Such was the home in which John Wesley spent the first eleven years of his life, and the influences upon his mind are apparent enough. From his mother he
Wesley's Training at Epworth and Oxford must have received his notions of methodicity and of the importance of habit, and from her also he possibly learned the lesson of moral independence, the grounding of action upon consideration. At six he would not accept bread or fruit if offered out of ordinary mealtime, but would reply, "I thank you, I will think of it." But from his father he possibly derived his urge to travel which later sent him to America, to Germany, and, in fifty years, to almost every corner of the three kingdoms. From his father, too, came his poetic bent, which was never as pronounced as in his brother Charles, but cropped up now and again, not only in poetry but in a suppressed and seldom revealed emotional strain. From both of them came his intellectual curiosity, which, while disdaining the critical scholarship to which his father would have urged him, manifested itself in a lively interest in all that was being done or written in that lively age.
While there is not enough evidence concerning his childhood to satisfy those psychologists who believe that mortal fate is fixed at a tender age, there is some material for those who would understand the mind of the foremost religious leader of the century. In the first place, it is certain that the rectory of Epworth was hospitable to the supernatural. The famous ghost story, that of Old Jeffrey, the Jacobite ghost who haunted the rectory when John was sixteen and in the Charterhouse in London, cannot be taken as determining the set of John's mind. It is rather an indication of what that set was. The care with which the schoolboy assembled and massed the evidence testifies at once to his curiosity about such matters and to the John Wesley and Modern Religion state of "expectancy" which existed in the Wesley household. Even more direct evidence is in the letters which John wrote to his mother, retailing stories of haunted houses, of boys who were snatched into the air by diabolical means, of men who saw ghosts and turned white as ashes. These are schoolboy tales, but they were obviously written to a mother who would listen to them sympathetically.
In his fifth year, the rectory was burned down, and John was at the last moment snatched from the burning building. The overjoyed rector dropped to his knees and gave God thanks for the salvation of the boy. That the incident left a deep impression on the boy's mind is evidenced by the fact that one of the earliest prints of Wesley showed, below his picture, a burning building and the words, "Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?" Forty years afterward,
Wesley recalled the very day and hour on which he was rescued. There is reason to think that the incident heightened Wesley's sense of vocation.
Isolated in a distant parish, surrounded by people known, even much later, for their churlish character, who cared little for the Rector and less for his politics, the Wesleys developed no little self-esteem. Of good birth themselves, they could not avoid some accentuation of family pride in their surroundings. It is noteworthy that Wesley seems to have had much trouble about the virtue of humility. The word occurs again and again in his self-examinations. When Wesley felt that he did trust in Christ and that his sins were taken away, he immediately began to pray for those
'""who had in a more especial manner despitefully used Naoribarm Wesley's Training at Epworth and Oxford me and persecuted me." ** It was a Christian act, but one suspects that for Wesley it was a very Christian act. His own opinions were often held with obstinacy, although at other times he was the most humble of men. But there was in him an aptitude for government, and his childhood would make this more pronounced.
It may have been during his childhood at Epworth that Wesley contracted a fear of the sea. His biographers have ignored this fear, possibly thinking it of no account or at most an idiosyncrasy; but, as will appear later, Wesley's fear of the sea plagued him no little during his American experience, and his struggle with it was tied up with his whole religious problem.
The sea, Wesley once said, using for him strangely emphatic language, he had both "dreaded and abhorred" from his youth. It is impossible now to determine the origin of this fear, although it may quite possibly have been caused by some mishap in a childhood excursion to the sea, or, more probably, by a misadventure in the overflowed area around Epworth, for during part of the year the rector had to visit
Wroote, in his parish, by boat. In London and at Oxford John apparently forgot this fear so that it reappeared the more unexpectedly on his voyage to America.
One other result of his home experiences must be noted. Wesley was apparently by nature rationalistic, but as has been seen, he had a poetic strain in his make-up. In many things his father and mother agreed: in High Church opinions, in politics—in the main—and in their ideas of social class. But in their
a John Wesley and Modern Religion characters and in their ideas of training they were worlds apart. "Reason and piety," said his mother.
"Child," said his father, "you think to carry everything by dint of argument; but you will find how little is ever done in this world by close reasoning."
It was his mother who most influenced Wesley's method of thinking. In a home where normal assocition with other children was impossible, the Wesleys were thrown upon themselves, and the result was unhappy for several of them. There is reason to think that John Wesley's emotional nature was buried under the methodical and reasoned life which he led even as a child. Some psychologists have thought that John's devotion to his mother was one of the reasons for his failure to make a successful marriage, but the reason may lie deeper than that. Susannah had a strain of asceticism in her, and she discouraged emotion in herself and in others. In Oxford, John recalled somewhat wistfully that his mother had more than once said that she loved him too well and would strive to love him less. The little boy who went up to Charterhouse in 1714 was trained to a pragmatic regime in which emotion had little play. He was sufficiently master of himself to be able to undergo the hardships of a public schoolboy with reasonable equanimity, and he obediently and methodically ran thrice around the schoolhouse yard every morning for — aJ: *'exercise. But his emotional life was not dead; it only
It is unnecessary to dwell upon John Wesley's experiences at the Charterhouse. There he seems to have relaxed a little the religious discipline to which e Wesley's Training at Epworth and Oxford he had been accustomed; and he was not happy. In later life, Wesley assumed that his childhood unhappiness was owing to a lack of religion; and he strove to supply a similar lack in the lives of the children at his school in Kingswood and elsewhere by a forbidding attack upon their sensibilities. Their lives, too, were doubtless unhappy, although they heard enough of religion. Schoolboys of Wesley's days, bullied by older students and subjected to a brutal educational system, were likely to be unhappy. But his own experiences underlie Wesley's later emphasis upon happiness through religion.
The Oxford to which John Wesley went up in 1720 as a student of Christ Church was at a low ebb educationally and religiously. Outward loyalty to the Church was a matter of pride, but any strict observance of its religious requirements was far to seek.
Instruction was little better. Satirists of the century made merry with the formal disputations which were a large part of the requirements for degrees, and sober historians admit that tutors were woefully lax in the performance of their duties.1° What Wesley actually studied cannot be determined exactly. In his diaries appear Latin and Greek classics, Hebrew and French and English literature. Following his ordination he. records a formidable and diversified list of books which he read, ranging from the Bible to Juvenal and from Locke to Milton.'7 Certainly he could not escape logic, and it was in many ways a subject suited to his mind and earlier training. After his election to a fellowship of Lincoln College, smallest of the OxJohn Wesley and Modern Religion ford colleges but in good repute for learning, Wesley became Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes.
As moderator Wesley would preside at the disputations. An unfriendly critic writing during the very time when Wesley was an undergraduate describes these disputations as follows:
'The persons of this argumentative drama are three, viz. the Opponent, the Respondent, and the Moderator. The Opponent is the person who always begins the attack....The Respondent sits overagainst the opponent, and is prepared to deny whatever he affirms, and always comes off with flying colours. ... The Moderator is the hero, or principal character of the drama, and is not much unlike the goddess
Victoria, as described by the poets, hovering between two armies in an engagement, and with an arbitrary nod, deciding the fate of the field. .. . Academical disputations are two-fold, ordinary and extraordinary, ordinary disputations are those which are privately perform'd in college every day, or twice or thrice a week (according to different customs or statutes) in term-time; extraordinary disputations I call those which are perform'd in the public schools of the university, as requisite qualifications for degrees: the method of both is the same, and equally arduous is the performance." ** The description which the writer gives of the public disputations is ludicrous in the extreme, and the sample of Latin argumentation, with the syllogistic fencing of opponent and proponent and the decisions of moderator, were intended for satire. But there is much truth in it,'® and Wesley himself, in later years,
Wesley's Training at Epworth and Oxford frequently spoke disparagingly of the whole system.
Nevertheless, logic remained part of his equipment, and he later gave thanks for his experience as moderator, since it gave him advantage as a controversialist.
Indeed, the experience of a moderator, who, according to the satirist, "struts about between the two wordy champions, during the time of action, to see that they do not wander from the question in debate," was no mean preparation for an eighteenth-century contender in the printed battles of the day. But it was an experience calculated to cramp the imagination if it did not kill it. At the best it was a strengthening of that reverence for exact disciplining of thought which had been inculcated into the child of the Epworth rectory.
During these years, Wesley read something of Locke, how much cannot be determined. In his old age, he read or re-read the Essay and objected particularly to Locke's disparagement of Aristotelian logic, concluding that the philosopher must have had "an unskilful master and read bad books upon the subject." 7° He makes his own predilection clear in another objection to Locke's remarks about logic, declaring that "'the true use of it (logic) is the noblest means under heaven to prevent or cure the obscurity of language." "To divide simple terms," he continued, "according to the logical rules of division, and then to define each member of the division according to the three rules of definition, does all that human art can do, in order to our having a clear and distinct idea of every word we use." ** "Clear and distinct ideas" play no small part in es) John Wesley and Modern Religion Wesley's theological and philosophical writings.
These he concluded to be the necessity of all knowledge and the aim of learning, but he did not go further with Descartes. Whether he read Locke's Essay earlier or later, he accepted the dictum that man has no innate ideas, but gets all his knowledge through the senses, excepting only some religious knowledge. And Wesley also decided early that knowledge should be limited to useful knowledge, approaching therein the pragmatic strain implicit in Locke and his followers.
In January, 1727, he wrote to his mother:
"Tt am shortly to take my Master's degree. As I shall from that time be less interrupted by business not of my own choosing, I have drawn up for myself a scheme of studies, from which I do not intend, for some years at least, to vary. I am perfectly come over to your opinion that there are many truths it is not worth while to know. Curiosity, indeed, might be a sufficient plea for our laying out some time upon them, if we had a half dozen centuries of life to come; but methinks it is great ill-husbandry to spend a considerable part of the small pittance allowed us — in what makes us neither a quick nor a sure return."
Thus he had come-over to his mother's opinion, which was not his father's, who wished his son to follow the path of critical learning. Knowledge should © be not obscure but useful. In his later life, he expressed his belief that God has purposely limited our knowledge, exactly proportioning it "to our state."
"We may know whatever is needful for life or godliness, whatever is necessary either for our present or eternal happiness. But how little beside can the most
Wesley's Training at Epworth and Oxford penetrating genius know with any certainty! Such pains, so to speak, hath God taken to hide pride from man; and to bound his thought within that channel of knowledge wherein he already finds eternal life." ?°
In Oxford, then, Wesley came to the conclusion that knowledge is common and useful. 'To possess abstruse and esoteric learning was to lay oneself open to "pride" in the eighteenth-century sense, lifting oneself above the common lot of man.
But Wesley could not restrain his restless mind. In his earlier, undergraduate days, he had read many plays and romances, including one work which he called the "Pyrates," perhaps Robinson Crusoe. His preference, throughout his life, for "the sentimental and romantic in literature" has been noticed by more than one student."* Moreover, he was a poet; and while he forsook the formal and trivial lines of his youthful muse, he added no little to English hymnody both by original composition and by translation and editing. In his youth the preponderance of influence upon his mind was undoubtedly toward discipline, order, conformity. But the other strain was not lost, and there was for Wesley the possibility of a continuing conflict between the two, at least until they could
be fused into a higher unity. In 1725, his life took a direction which it was to hold until his death sixtysix years later; and it was in this direction that the two tendencies in his nature and training were to find their confluence. o/ CHAPTER IV WESLEY IN OXFORD AND AMERICA WHEN John Wesley was about twenty-two, his father urged him to enter into holy orders. This was possibly the occasion of his beginning to think more seriously about religion. The next year he came across
Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying. His account of this event in his life is found in the story of his religious progress which begins the treatise, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, published in 1765. ('In reading several parts of this book [Holy Living and Dying]," he said, "I was exceedingly affected; that part in particular which relates to purity of intention. Instantly I resolved to dedicate all my life to God, all my thoughts and words, and actions; being thoroughly convinced, there was no medium; but that every part of my life —
(not some only) must either be a sacrifice to God, or myself, that is, in effect, to the devil." *; Five years later, when he laid the cornerstone of City. Road
Chapel in London, a great moment for him and for Methodism, Wesley again dated the beginning of the Methodist Movement in the year 1725.
In recent years, the importance of Wesley's experience in 1725 has been recognized, and some have gone so far as to call this his ""conversion." Others have adopted the terminology of the mystics and have
Wesley in Oxford and America referred to this as his "awakening." The latter term is perhaps the right one, if it is remembered that Wesley was not a mystic in the exact sense of the word, and that he did not go through the full course of awakening, purgation, illumination, and union often experienced by the mystic soul.
Influenced by Taylor, Wesley began to keep a diary, which he continued for sixty-five years. In 1726, according to the account in Christian Perfection, he began to read 4 Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. "The nature and extent of inward religion, the religion of the heart, now appeared to me in a stronger light than ever it had done before. I saw, that giving even all my life to God (supposing it possible to do this, and go on farther) would profit me nothing, unless I gave my heart, yea, all my heart to him. I saw, that 'simplicity of intention, and purity of affection,' one design in all we speak or do, and one desire ruling all our tempers, are indeed 'the wings of the soul,' without which she can never ascend to the mount of God." * A year or two afterward, Wesley read William Law's two great books, Christian Perfection (1726) and A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy
Life (1729). 'These convinced me more than ever," he wrote, "'of the absolute impossibility of being half a Christian; and I determined, through his grace (the absolute necessity of which I was deeply sensible of), to be all-devoted to God, to give him all my soul, my body, and substance." * From this time Wesley sought nothing less than Christan Perfection.
It is necessary to stress what has been too often for- - gotten, in spite of Wesley's reiterated statement, that 59 ) John Wesley and Modern Religion Wesley in Oxford, before he ever went to America, held the doctrine of Christian Perfection essentially as he held it throughout his life. Indeed, it is impossible to understand Wesley's religion and theology without grasping the central fact, that Christian Perfection, holiness, was the controlling idea in his life and teachings and the continuous goal of his experience; and it should be remembered that he at this time was "deeply sensible" of the "'absolute necessity" of grace. To make his ideas clearer one needs to look closer at William Law's teaching concerning perfection.
This little book, Christian Perfection, which Law wrote in 1725, is one of the most attractive religious books in the English language. Many of Law's sayings must have been doubly attractive to a young man whose family tradition was a well-turned phrase:
"But how unlike are Christians to Christianity"; "if therefore there be not an Entire Change in the Way to Heaven, if the once strait Gate be now a wide and open passage to all full, fat, and stately Christians...'; "More senseless than the Man, who should think he had hard Usage to be saved from a Shipwreck, unless he were carried off upon a Cedar
Plank." But Law's ideal of Christian Perfection, no less than his language, was also acceptable to Wesley's © mind.
Sometimes perfection appears in Law as a simple imitation of Christ in outward behavior, "a right Performance of all the Duties of Life, as is according to the Laws of Christ." He insists that "every Duty or Virtue of the Christian Life is founded in Truth
Wesley in Oxford and America and Reason, and is required because of its Fitness to be done, and not because God has Power to command what he pleases."" But Law insisted also that perfection is a "Perfection of the Heart," a "Habit of the Mind"; and he who has this must have been born again. "Christianity is another Birth, that brings into a Condition as new as when we first saw the Light. We begin again to be, we enter upon fresh
Terms of Life, have new Relations, new Hopes, and Fears, and entire Change of Everything that can be called good and evil." *® This is not simply a matter of adding virtue to virtue. Attention will be called later to Law's belief that human nature is diseased, that mankind is "ta Race of fallen Spirits.' *® If he had not believed it before, Wesley would have learned from Law a doctrine of original sin which necessitates "a new principle of life." Law's language as to the nature of perfection is explicit: "It is not therefore any Number of moral Virtues, no partial Obedience, no modes of Worship, no external Acts of Adoration, no Articles of Faith, but a new Principle of Life, an active Change of Temper, that makes us true Christians." * On January 1, 1733, Wesley preached at St. Mary's,
Oxford. In this sermon, to which reference will be made again, Wesley declared that the condition of one who is "in a state of acceptance with God" is not attested by "baptism, or any other outward form, but a right state of soul, a mind and spirit renewed after the image of Him that created it." More specifically, he spoke of seeking "that habitual disposition of soul which, in the sacred writings, is termed holiJohn Wesley and Modern Religion ness; and which directly implies, the being cleansed from sin...and by consequence, the being endued with those virtues which were also in Christ Jesus; the being so 'renewed in the spirit of our mind,' as to be
'perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.'?" Nor did Wesley think of this holiness as something that might be attained by human endeavor alone. "Our gospel, as it knows no other foundation of good works than faith, or of faith than Christ, so it clearly informs us, we are not His disciples while we either deny Him to be the Author, or His Spirit to be the Inspirer and Perfecter, both of our faith and works...+ He alone can quicken those who are dead unto God, can breathe into them the breath of Christian life, and so prevent, accompany, and follow them with His grace, as to bring their good desires to good effect." His next paragraph goes further. "From what has been said, we may, thirdly} learn, that none is truly 'led by the Spirit,' unless that 'Spirit bear witness with his spirit, that he is a child of God'; unless he see the prize and the crown before him, and 'rejoice in hope of the glory of God.' "'®
Thirty-two years later, Wesley wrote to a friend concerning this sermon, that it "contains all that I now teach concerning salvation from all sin, and loying God with an undivided heart. In the same year
I printed (the first time I ventured to print anything) for the use of my pupils, A Collection of Forms of Prayer, and in this I spoke explicitly of giving 'the whole heart and the whole life to God.' This was then, as it is now, my idea of perfection, though I should have started at the word." °
Wesley in Oxford and America In other points, too, Wesley was holding doctrines which continued to characterize his preaching throughout his life. To his brother he wrote in 1731:
"(1) As to the end of my being, I lay it down for a rule that I cannot be too happy, or therefore too holy; and thence infer that the more steadily I keep my eye upon the prize of our high calling the better, and the more of my thoughts, and words, and actions are directly pointed at the attainment of it. (2) As to the instituted means of attaining it, I likewise lay it down for a rule that I am to use them every time
I may. (3) As to prudential means, I believe this rule holds of things indifferent in themselves: whatever I know to do me hurt, that to me is not indifferent, but resolutely to be abstained from; whatever
I know to do me good, that to me is not indifferent, but resolutely to be embraced." *° That he was seeking holiness, Christian Perfection, is sufficiently clear. Concerning his second point, the use of the "instituted means," Wesley's sermon, written in 1732 for his pupils, "On the Duty of Constant
Communion," is a sufficient illustration. In _ this communion: "the benefits of doing it are so great to all that do it in obedience to him; viz., the forgiveness of our past sins, the present strengthening and refreshing of our souls... . Now, when we are convinced of having sinned against God, what surer way have we of procuring pardon from him, than the 'showing forth the Lord's death'; and beseeching him, for the sake of His Son's sufferings, to blot out all our sins?"
"The grace of God given herein," he adds, "confirms John Wesley and Modern Religion to us the pardon of our sins, and enables us to leave them." "This is the food of our souls: This gives strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection." 'The Lord's Supper, according to Wesley, is a real "means of grace" and not a figurative or poetic gesture.'* In 1787, Wesley reprinted this sermon in the Arminian Magazine; and in the note prefixed to the sermon he says that he had added very little but retrenched much, "'as I then used more words than I use now." But he asserted: "I thank God, I have not yet seen cause to alter my sentiments in any point which is therein delivered." 7"
But there can be no question that, in 1732, Wesley's High Churchmanship was excessive. (It is probable that John Clayton, one of the Oxford Methodists, had influenced the group in the direction of an excessive reverence for certain supposed authorities of the Early Church. Particularly did Wesley esteem the Apostolic Constitutions, which he later decided—and rightly—were not of such antiquity or authority as he had supposed. But the high authority of the Fathers of the Primitive Church was an article of faith which he had inherited from his father, had had confirmed in Oxford, and, as will appear later, was never entirely discarded. Wesley was also influenced in his earlier period by reading Fleury's Manners of the Ancient Christians. In his study of the ancient
Church he found matter congenial to his ideas of Christian Perfection. In the Apostolic Constitutions, the episcopal blessing of catechumens is that God
"may give them a new heart, and renew a right spirit in their inward parts, that they may both know Wesley in Oxford and America and do thy will with full purpose of heart, and with a willing soul." ?* It was this for which Wesley was striving; and commandments to austerity of life and godliness fitted into the ideals of the Oxford Club. In the Apostolic Constitutions, wearing gold, dressing the hair, and like superfluities were forbidden; and men were admonished to be industrious, "for no one of those who are dedicated to God ought to be idle."
After 1729, when "a serious man" warned him that he must seek companions, that the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion, Wesley sought holiness, not by himself, but as a member of a religious society. The Oxford Club, the beginning of which he found when he returned to Oxford after serving for a time as his father's curate, was the new religious society with which his name and Methodism are forever linked.
The history of this society is too well known to need repetition here. The serious studies of the members, not only in devotional works but in the Bible, their meticulous keeping both of the rules of the University and of the observances of the Church, their charities, especially their work with prisoners, earned for them the contempt of those to whom serious striving after a high religious ideal was matter for ridicule. It is true that Wesley spoke of religion as "the cheerfullest thing in the world" *° and identified holiness with happiness, but the asceticism of the group is beyond | question. As has been suggested, their excesses were perhaps inevitable to a group of serious young men who were in deadly earnest about religion in surroundings decidedly unfavorable to such endeavor.
But Wesley believed that "singularity" was necessary.
John Wesley and Modern Religion When he was being examined for priest's orders, his examiner had said to him: "Do you know what you are about? You are bidding defiance to all mankind.
He that would live a Christian priest ought to know that, whether his hand be against every man or no, he must expect every man's hand should be against him." *® And Wesley adduced the contempt in which he and his group were held as evidence of their rightness. Indeed, he was in danger of taking some little pride in it.
In a pathetic paragraph, he begged his mother to grant him that "little part of Thursday evening" which she formerly used to correct his judgment, that she might now correct his heart. Humility is the "surest and safest way" to renounce the world; "But how the question recurs, How am I to do this? To own the necessity of it is not be he humble." '* He had early objected to Jeremy Taylor's doctrine that one must hold oneself the worst in every company.
But he agreed that it is possible to have "absolute humility" before God.'* But what did this humility before God imply? The truth is, that Wesley was wrestling with the problem of assurance. Can aman be humble and at the same time know himself a Christian? |
As far back as 1725, Wesley wrote to his mother concerning Bishop Taylor's views, objecting to an interpretation which he could not accept but which he could not answer to his own satisfaction. He quoted Taylor on repentance: "Repentance contains in it all the parts of an holy life from our return to our death. A man can have but one proper repentWesley in Oxford and America ance—viz., when the rite of baptism is verified by God's grace coming upon us and our obedience. And after this change, if we ever fall into the contrary state there is no place left for any more repentance." *® Such a position implied the denial of any real assurance to the Christian: "A true pentitent must all the days of his life pray for pardon and never think the work completed till he died. Whether God has forgiven us or not we know not, therefore still be sorrowful for ever having sinned."
This seemed to Wesley to contradict Taylor's teaching concerning the grace given by the Holy Spirit in the Lord's Supper. 'Now, surely," he wrote his mother, "these graces are not of so little force, as that we can't perceive whether we have them or no; and if we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us, which He will not do till we are regenerate, certainly we must be sensible of it." °° And in a later letter he put his finger on the difficulty. "That we can never be so certain of the pardon of our sins as to be assured that they will never rise up against us, I firmly believe.
We know that they will infallibly do so, if ever we apostatize, and I am not satisfied what evidence there can be of our final perseverance till we have finished our course. But I am persuaded we may know if we are now in a state of salvation, since that is expressly promised in the Holy Scriptures to our sincere endeavours, and we are surely able to judge of our own sincerity." ?! Already he was convinced of the truth which he was to hold throughout his ministry, that a man may know that he is saved.
All this lies behind the stern precisianism of his conJohn Wesley and Modern Religion duct, the meticulous observance of forms and ceremonies, the anxious spirit which he betrays particularly in his letters explaining his refusal to succeed his aging father at Epworth."" In methodical fashion, reflecting the character of his mind and of his training, he marshalled his arguments to his father. He must have as his only consideration, the glory of God.
But that means to promote holiness in ourselves and others. These must go together. At Oxford, this holiness is most nearly possible because of his religious friends, of retirement, of freedom from trifling acquaintance, of freedom from worldly cares, of opportunity for public prayer twice a day, and of weekly communion. There is also abundant opportunity to benefit others. This is evidenced by experience, which "is worth a thousand reasons."
In his search for perfection Wesley had sought help wherever he could find it, but a sound instinct forbade his accepting anything which would depreciate the value either of good works or of the Church. The tenacity with which he clung to these two is illustrated in his reaction to European Protestant ideas and to mysticism. Two or three years before he sailed for America, he "fell among 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. ... I did not then see [he added] that this was the natural effect of their overgrown fear of Popery; being so terrified with the cry of merits and good works, that they plunged into the other extreme. In this labyrinth I was utterly lost; not being able to find out
Wesley in Oxford and America what my error was, nor yet to reconcile this uncouth hypothesis either with Scripture or common sense." 2°
There is shrewd criticism here, but it is to be noted that faith is lumped with "the rest of the commandments." Wesley never finally gave over his distrust of too great emphasis upon faith alone; and he was later to resolve the difficulty by a psychological analysis of "salvation." 7* Also he came later to a truer appreciation of the non-intellectual elements in faith.
But at the time he fell back upon the Anglican compromise as he understood it, being helped by Beveridge, Taylor, and Nelson, although their differing interpretations of Scripture confused him. At least, the Anglican position, he thought, preserved both faith and good works.
By the mystics, of whom he later spoke with unusual harshness, Wesley meant apparently the Quietists, who taught that man must wait quietly and passively without moral striving or institutional helps for the moving of the Spirit of God. In 1736, he wrote to his brother, Samuel, from Georgia: "I think the rock on which I had the nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the writings of the Mystics; under which term I comprehend all, and only those, who slight any of the means of grace." "? Later he drew up a longer indictment against the mystical writers, accusing them of relying on inward tempers for salvation. Groping as he was for a more satisfactory experience, Wesley was sure of some things. He sought an inwardly realized religion, but he was certain that the Scriptures and reason and the means of grace must be preserved. _
John Wesley and Modern Religion After declining to accept the succession to Epworth, Wesley seems to have reconsidered; but it was too late, and the parish was given to another. This may have made easier Wesley's acceptance of an invitation to accompany General Oglethorpe to Georgia as missionary to the Indians. Charles was to go along as secretary to Oglethorpe.
In setting forth his reasons for consenting to go to Georgia, Wesley expressed a fear that "favourable judges" would think more highly of him than they should, evidence that he feared an interpretation of his motives directly opposite to that which modern writers have given to them. His chief motive, he wrote to Dr. Burton, one of the Georgia trustees,
"is the hope of saving my own soul." 7° Methodists, who are reputed to have considerable interest in their souls, have been strangely unkind in their comments on this statement. Wesley was seeking perfection, and when he spoke of saving his soul he was thinking of this goal which he held always before him, not merely of saving his soul in heaven. If seeking Christian Perfection is a legitimate goal, then there is nothing illegitimate in avowing it. The fact that Wesley was willing to go to America with this in view is, indeed, startling; but this is perhaps no compliment to the startled.
'That Wesley should think his pilgrimage easier among the red Indians is understandable when one remembers how the Indians were idealized by the eighteenth century. They were supposed to have escaped the corruptions of civilization and to have retained their primitive simplicity. Wesley expected to learn
Wesley in Oxford and America the "sense of the gospel of Christ" by preaching to them, for they were as little children who would
"know of every doctrine whether it be of God." With them he could mortify the flesh, for he would have no incitements to abuse his natural appetites.
Wesley's second motive in going to America was his desire to impart to the heathen "'a saving knowledge of the gospel of Christ." He felt that he could not successfully preach to the heathen until perfection was reached. "It is not for me, who have been a grievous sinner from my youth up," he wrote, "and am yet heavy laden with foolish and hurtful desires, to expect God should work so great things by my hands; but I am assured, if I be once fully converted myself, He will then employ me both to strengthen my brethren and to preach His name to the Gentiles, that the very ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God." More than is here must not be read into this letter. At some later time he inserted the word "fully," indicating that he realized that his search had been for perfection. He does not, however, say that he was a sinner at the time he wrote, and the foolish and hurtful desires which he talks about are such imperfections as he was to learn later are associated with man's natural infirmities. But he was groaning for perfection, and he was fully persuaded that among the simple, idyllic Indians of America he might attain the goal.
Father Piette thinks that Wesley contemplated removing the Holy Club and Oxford to Georgia, there to establish in an idyllic wilderness the society of seekers after God."" There is some evidence for this, since
John Wesley and Modern Religion several of the Club expected to go, and Benjamin Ingham did accompany Charles and John Wesley. If Wesley intended such a transfer of the Holy Club, it would explain more satisfactorily his acceptance of the Georgia mission so soon after refusing the parish of Epworth. It would also illustrate again the romantic side of Wesley's character and religion. But, however that be, Wesley departed for Georgia to save his own soul as well as to preach Christ, being, as he said later, devoted to the Bible, the Primitive
Church, and the Church of England. :
The expedition to America, with all its disappointments and disillusionments, storms at sea, struggles with the ungrateful colonists, including a terrible experience with a dissolute woman who tried to destroy his reputation, and his unfortunate love affair with Sophia Hopkey, had importance for Wesley in three things: he learned more about himself, about people of a class with which he had little acquaintance, and about a type of religion to which he was a stranger.
In Georgia he learned not only that the red Indians were really savages and not the picturesque, noble creatures of eighteenth-century imagination, but that the whites, many of them, were also savages. Heretofore, he had dealt with the lower classes as a gentleman scholar and a clergyman. He had served them and preached to them and taught them, but it was as a gentleman receiving the gratitude of the humble poor. Now he met men face to face in situations which gave full vent to their passions and evil will.
His belief in natural depravity received no setback here; it is likely that he saw more clearly than ever ri aa Wesley in Oxford and America that Christian Perfection is an ideal not to be obtained but by the grace of God.
Wesley's natural sensitiveness, which was protected even in the prison of Oxford and among the poor by the proximity of familiar objects and people and by a refuge in his rooms in Lincoln College, was increased by the sight of human sufferings in surroundings which accentuated them and the seeming callousness of fellow human beings. His account of the impression produced upon him by the sufferings of one of the women emigrants in childbirth is poignant evidence. "This," wrote Wesley in his Journal, "is the second time I have been witness—there being only a door between us—of one of the deepest distresses which life affords. The groans of the sick person had very short intermissions. And how were they filled up by the assistants? With strong cries to God?
With counselling her that was encompassed with sorrows of death to trust in Him? With exhortation to each other to fear Him who is able to inflict sharper pains than these? No; but with laughing and jesting, at no time convenient, but at this least of all." °°
Wesley was an Oxford don of limited experience, and America was a school wherein he learned much. The importance of his experiences there is frequently overlooked or restricted to his contact with the Moravians.
It was on the voyage to America that he began to discover that, with all his self-discipline and education of mind and will, he had not attained to mastery over his emotional life. This discovery was the more important because Wesley was aiming, not merely at right conduct or at salvation by performance of John Wesley and Modern Religion duties, but at inward peace and holiness. On January
25, 1736, in the great storm which he so graphically describes in his Journal, Wesley was confronted by his own fear of death and by the spectacle of simple
German peasants, the Moravians on board, singing and waiting on the other passengers, unafraid."
Curnock observed that this was a crucial hour in the history of Wesley, and Father Piette thinks that Wesley learned here that religion is not an affair only of the intellect and of the will.*° In the first place, the Oxford don was humiliated by a revival of his fear of the sea in its most intense form, a fear all the more excruciating in that it was possibly a survival of some childhood experience in the fenlands. With all his disciplining of himself, his development of right habits, and with all his intellectual training he was at the mercy of anemotion. Not that his fear was marked, for the officers seem to have been as afraid as Wesley; and his conduct was exemplary. But to a sensitive man it was enough that he was afraid.
Moreover, the contrast between the gentleman and scholar and the simple peasants was in itself humiliat-_ ing. Not only had they demonstrated their humility by attending other passengers in the most servile duties, but their self-possession and unfeigned trust in God stood out in painful contrast to the fear of the leader of the Oxford Methodists. Here was something which Wesley had not met before. He was not only being humbled, but he was also learning something new about Christian humility before God.
Other of Wesley's experiences in America, particularly those in which he learned that he was an impresWesley in Oxford and America sionable young don and not the cast-iron creature of habit and reflection that he seems to have thought himself, were likewise revealing to him. That Sophia
Hopkey was in love with him Wesley seems not to have found out; but that he was in love with her he suspected—to his own misery. His belief in the way of renunciation, the conviction which he then held concerning the celibacy of the clergy, both combined to make him interpret his own emotions as the wiles of Satan. "So I was once more 'snatched as a:brand out of the fire,' ?* he wrote when Mr. Causton, the girl's guardian, had interrupted a conversation with Sophia which was getting on dangerous ground.
There is pathos in the young clergyman's self-abasement when one remembers his goal and the tormenting sense that he was preserved for some great end.
"She went, and I saw myself in the toils. But how to escape I saw not. If I continued to converse with her, though not alone, I found I should love her more and more. And the time to break it off was past. I felt it was now beyond my strength. My resolutions indeed remained. But how long? Yet a little longer, till another shock of temptation, and then I well knew they would break in sunder as a thread of tow that has touched the fire. I had many times prayed that if it was best our intercourse should break off, and that if I could not do it she might. But this I saw less and less reason to expect. So that all these things were against me, and I lay struggling in the net; nay, scarcely struggling, as even fearing to be delivered." *?
As a love affair, it is amusing; as part of the epic of a soul, it is tragedy.
John Wesley and Modern Religion Wesley had disciplined his will and his mind, to use the old-fashioned terminology; but he had not been able to control his feelings. His emotional life was rising up in the very new world into which he had come, to reveal how large a part of life is beyond our thought and resolutions. More than once the Oxford don in the American wilderness must have recalled his father's words: "Child, you will find how little is ever done in this world by close reasoning." His mother had taught him to develop proper habits— habits of thought, habits of speech, habits of action.
Man can accomplish anything by right habits. Method is the thing. But even a methodist may be afraid of the sea. Even a methodist may awake to the stirrings of love when lonely and homesick in the southern savannah-land. Even a methodist can wax angry when evil men—and worse, men of low degree—oppose one's every effort for their good. In all this
Wesley was learning that one must love God not only with all one's mind and with all one's strength, but also with all one's "heart." This dawning recognition of his emotional lack lies behind the self-analysis | which Wesley made on board ship returning to England:
"By the most infallible of proofs, inward feeling, I am convinced, "1, Of unbelief; having no such faith in Christ as will prevent my heart being troubled; which it could not be, if I believed in God, and rightly believed also in Him; | "2. Of pride, throughout my life past; inasmuch as I thought I had what I find I have not:
Wesley in Oxford and America "3. Of gross irrecollection; inasmuch as in a storm I cry to God every moment; in a calm, not:
"4, Of levity and luxuriancy of spirit, recurring whenever the pressure is taken off, and appearing by my speaking words not tending to edify; but most by my manner of speaking to my enemies."
But in spite of these disappointments and despairs it must not be assumed that the Georgia expedition was either all sorrow or fruitless. The Charleston
Hymnbook, which Wesley published in 1737, is a study in his spiritual condition. Dr. Simon remarked on the evangelical quality of many of the hymns which Wesley edited and published and wondered that he did not take them more to heart. The answer is that from the first Wesley held much closer to the so-called evangelical position than has usually been allowed. At least the main lines of his faith are evident in such verses as these from the 1737 hymnbook:
God's Image which our Sins destroy Thy Grace restores below, And Truth and Holiness and Joy From Thee, their Fountain, flow.
We wou'd no longer lie Like Slaves beneath thy Throne:
O let us Abba, Father, cry And thou the Kindred own.
Ten Thousand Thousand precious Gifts My daily Thanks employ; Nor is the least a chearful Heart That tasts those Gifts with Joy.
Alas, O Lord, we cannot love Unless thou draw our Heart! if John Wesley and Modern Religion But there's a Voice of sovereign Grace Sounds from thy sacred Word, Here ye despairing Sinners come And trust upon the Lord.
Tis not by Works of Righteousness Which our own Hands have done; But we are saved by sovereign Grace Abounding thro' thy Son.*+ These verses are not untrue to Wesley's earlier convictions unless it be in the greater insistence upon faith, and it is very easy to overemphasize this. Wes~ ley had always believed in faith, faith joined with works. And he had always believed that love is the gift of God and that men are saved by the grace of God. Moreover, in spite of all his self-torture, Wesley was not living in unrelieved misery. Curnock remarks that the fourth Savannah Diary shows him so busy and happy that he has not time to be much tempted, and it was from Georgia that Wesley wrote to Mrs. Chapman his beautiful letter on "Christian
Cheerfulness." *° In his search after Christian perfection he was practicing, in his mistaken devotion | to some documents which he imagined to represent the early Church, an annoying High Churchmanship which offended reasonable men in the colony. He was still fighting for Christian humility and look-— ing for a converted heart. But he had made some gains.
In estimating the influence of his Georgia experiences one must not overlook the books which Wesley was reading. Further study convinced him that the Apostolic Constitutions were of later date, and thereWesley in Oxford and America fore of less authority, than he had thought. He was, consequently, somewhat relieved from some of his extremely High Churchmanship. But he was also reading works which he afterwards listed as the most precious of all to him, outside the Bible. These were the Imitation of Christ (which Wesley always called the "Christian Pattern") "and the small remains of Clemens Romanus, Polycarp, and Ignatius" and the Life of James Haliburton, onetime Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews.*® The importance of faith is expressly taught in three of these.
"Let us cleave then to His blessings," wrote Clement, "and consider what are the means of possessing it....
For what reason was our father Abraham blessed? was it not because he wrought righteousness and truth through faith?' ** And Clement adds that those worthies who were descended from Abraham "were highly honoured, and made great, not for their own sake, or for their own works, or for the righteousness which they wrought, but through the operation of His will. And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men." ** It is hard to believe, in the light of Wesley's later teaching, that he overlooked that exquisite saying of Ignatius, in his epistle to the Ephesians: "'For the beginning is faith, and the end is love." *° It was probably in Georgia that Wesley first met with the Life of Haliburton, a book which, Wesley
John Wesley and Modern Religion thought, described the life of God in the soul of man better than any he had seen.*® This book tells of the Scot's conversion in moving language: "It was in this extremity God stepped in. . . . Towards the beginning of February, 1698, this seasonable relief came.
I was then, as I remember, at secret prayer, when he discovered himself to me, when he let me see, that there are forgiveness with him and mercy, and plenteous redemption. Y now with wonder beheld Christ in his glory, full of grace and truth. I saw that he, who had before rejected all my offerings, was well pleased in the Beloved, being fully satisfied, not only that there is forgiveness of sins, through the redemption which is in Jesus, but also, that God by this means might be just in justifying even the ungodly that believe in him. ... And yet more, when he let me see, that to me, even to me, was the word of this salvation sent; that even I was invited to come, and take the water of life freely." ** Reference will be made in another chapter to a book Wesley read at this time, that set forth a definition of faith in words almost identical with those used © by Wesley. For the present, it is sufficient to recall that in 1735, 1736, and 1737, Wesley was reading A.
H. Francke's Nicodemus: or, A treatise on the Fear of Man. Would he who thought himself ''a brand plucked from the burning" for some great purpose have overlooked this sentence: "A single man, setting aside the fear of flesh and blood, and going forth in the name of the living God, hath frequently saved. a whole nation''? *"
In the light of his reading, as well as in consideraWesley in Oxford and America tion of express statements which he made concerning grace and faith before leaving Oxford, it is impossible to claim that Wesley was taught the doctrine of justification by faith in 1738, after he returned to England. But his gains in America were largely in fields other than theological. In February, 1738, he reflected on his stay in America:
"Hereby I trust He hath in some measure 'humbled me and proved me, and shown me what was in my heart." Hereby I am come to know assuredly that, if 'in all our ways we acknowledge God,' He will, where reason fails, 'direct our path,' by lot or by other means which He knoweth. Hereby I am delivered from the fear of the sea, which I had both dreaded and abhorred from my youth."
In the wilderness, he had been able to rely upon his position as Fellow of Lincoln, or as John Wesley, Gentleman, and his reason was often helpless where there was no precedent to guide. In this condition, he had cast his cares upon the Lord; and, however superstitious the method, at bottom it was trust which saved him. His reference to conquering fear is explained by his Journal of January 13th. In "a thorough storm," on the homeward journey, he had lain down without fear; and the next day he had applied » the word of God to every soul on board with a consequent loss of "that fearfulness and heaviness" which he had almost continually before.** Already he
was learning, not intellectually but by experience, the psychological value of humble faith.
In his wider acquaintance with men he had learned not only the depth of human depravity but the good John Wesley and Modern Religion residing in those who were outside the ecclesiastical fold to which he belonged. His extreme High
Church views were not gone, but he had come to respect the Moravians. His acquaintance with them had shown him a simple people whom he believed to live in the simplicity of the Apostolic Church, and their devotions had opened to him the riches of German hymnody. In his Diary are frequent references to German hymns he was translating. Several are in the hymn book he compiled which was published in Charleston in 1737. Not only these hymns but those which he later translated, some of them added thus to the treasuries of English devotion, must have been first read and appreciated in America. Attention has already been called to the evangelical note in the hymns of the Charleston book, but the student ought not to overlook the deepened emotional values which Wesley gained in this way. That Wesley translated for his hymn book such a hymn as C. F. Richter's,
'""My soul before thee prostrate lies," is evidence that he felt the power of such verses as these:
Ye Sons of Men, here nought avails Your Strength, here all your Wisdom fails; Who bids a Sinful Heart be clean?
Thou only, Lord, supreme of Men.
When my warm'd Thoughts I fix on thee And plunge me in the Mercie's Sea, Then ev'n on me thy Face shall shine And quicken this dead Heart of Mine.
So ev'n in Storms my Zeal shall grow, So shall I thy hid sweetness know, And feel (what endless Age shall prove) That thou, my Lord, my God art Love!
CHAPTER V WESLEY'S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE InN 1738 Wesley returned to England under conditions which increased the nervous strain noticeable in his earlier religious quest. He left Georgia with his enemies apparently triumphing. They had indicted him for various alleged offenses (mainly, it is true, of an ecclesiastical nature) , and his return boded an uneasy session with the trustees of the colony.
The latter treated him with courtesy and stood by him, but they accepted his resignation with a readiness which did not salve his feelings. Several summaries of his stay in America and of his spiritual history evidence the growing strain under which he was laboring.
He had summed up the Georgia years by citing his gains. He had learned to know what was in his heart; to beware of men; to trust God to direct his path.
He had been delivered from his fear of the sea. He had become acquainted with many of God's servants, particularly the Moravians, and had gained access to the writings of holy men through his acquirement of German, Spanish, and Italian. The gospel had been preached in Georgia. Moreover, the trustees now had a chance to learn the truth about their colony. He was going to tell them, and he did.'
John Wesley and Modern Religion On the voyage home he had summed up his spiritual history, beginning with the well-known words: "I went to America, to convert the Indians; but oh, who shall convert me?" He thought that, if the gospel be true, he was safe; but in a storm he sometimes doubted. He had been taught not to lay too much stress on outward works or on faith without works, and he believed that he had not. He had avoided both the Lutheran and the mystical extremes; and he had learned the good rule in interpreting Scripture, Consensus veterum: quod ab omnibus, quod ubique, quod semper creditum." 'Thus he mused about himself.
But later, he grew more self-condemnatory.
Now he had learned that, whereas he went to America to convert others, he "'was himself never converted." His later corrections of this and other statements will be considered in due course. When he returned from America he had decided that his heart was "altogether corrupt and abominable," that he was
"a child of wrath"; that he had only the faith of devils. The faith which he lacked was "'a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of |
Christ, my sins are forgiven, and I reconciled to the favour of God." "I want that faith which none can have without knowing that he hath it... . And he is freed from doubt, 'having the love of God shed abroad — in his heart, through the Holy Ghost which is given unto him'; which 'Spirit beareth witness with his spirit, that he is a child of God.' " ® In short, Wesley had decided that he was not a Christian, and that to be a Christian he must have a kind of faith which would drive out doubt and fear