This analysis of Wesley's religion may be confirmed by a study of what is a normative element in religious life: his experience of prayer. For almost sixty-six years, as the Diaries extant indicate, Wesley gave a large place to prayer. In the earlier Diaries, he used much the short prayers known as "ejaculatory," but always he notes the hours when he spent at least a few moments in prayer. And his last days were, in this, much as his first. For Monday, February 21,
1791, the pertinent entries are: "5 prayed... 7.30... eee 10... prayer... 5.45... prayer... 7... prayer." The next day, he notes again: "4.30 feed. 7.90... prayer...4... prayed...8... prayed." On Wednesday, the 24th, he wrote: '4.45
John Wesley and Modern Religion prayed .).:. 6.30\prayed .)...2..)... prayer). 930s prayed." ** This was six days before his death.
At times in the Journal, prayer is powerfully emotional; but these are almost always the prayers of other people. In 1764, Wesley told of a prayer by a woman in society. The prayer "was perfectly an original; odd and unconnected, made up of disjointed fragments, and yet like a flame of fire. Every sentence went through my heart, and I believe the heart of every one present. For many months I have found nothing like it. It was good for me to be there."
This is perhaps what Wesley meant by "passive prayer." "At some times," he wrote in 1769, "it is needful to say, 'I will pray with the Spirit and with the understanding also.' At other times the understanding has little to do, while the soul is poured forth in passive prayer." ?* Wesley thought that prayer is "but the desire of the soul expressed in words"; and for this reason he doubted that there is much value in teaching children to repeat prayers before they are awakened.*"
Wesley was alive to the subjective value of praying.
He was sure "that the end of your praying is not to inform God, as though He knew not your wants already; but rather to inform yourselves; to fix the sense of those wants more deeply in your hearts, and the senseof your continual dependence on Him who only is able to supply all your wants." ** But on the whole, Wesley's prayers were of the simple type which Heiler calls '"'prophetic prayers," asking for whatever is felt asa real want. In 1770, Wesley wrote to Mrs.
Barton: "For many years I had a kind of scruple with Wesley's Religious Experience regard to praying for temporal things. But three or four years ago I was thoroughly persuaded that scruple was unnecessary. Being then straitened much,
I made it matter of prayer; and I had an immediate answer. It is true we can only ask outward blessings with reserve, 'If this is best; if it be thy will.'
Wesley here refers to a personal scruple which may have inhibited his own praying; but he had before held that prayer may be for temporal as well as for spiritual blessings. He had written to Bishop Warburton in 1762, that he believed '""God now hears and answers prayer even beyond the ordinary course of nature; otherwise the clerk was in the right who, in order to prevent the fanaticism of his rector, told him, 'Sir, you should not pray for fair weather yet; for the moon does not change till Saturday.'
But if Wesley thought that prayer is the desire of the soul expressed in words and believed that one may sometimes pray with little exercise of the understanding, he would have nothing of prayer which depended upon impulse. 'In like manner," he wrote to a correspondent in 1748, "'you are as really moved by the Spirit to pray, whether it be in public or private, when you have a conviction it is the will of God you should, as when you have the strongest impulse upon your heart." ** And he urged his people to have fixed times for prayer, that they might acquire a "taste" which they had not. "Whether you like it or no," he advised a preacher, "read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way: else you will be a trifler all your days and a pretty, superficial preacher.
John Wesley and Modern Religion Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer." *?
Nor did Wesley care for the "mental prayer" of the mystics. He believed that "the Scripture by 'prayer' almost always means vocal prayer... . It is therefore our wisdom to force ourselves to prayer—to pray, whether we can pray or no. And many times while we are so doing the fire will fall from heaven, and we shall know our labour was not in vain."
In prayer, then, as in the rest of his religious life, Wesley valued "feeling," but did not much trust it.
Habit remained as real to him as in his Oxford days.
Man must seek by constant, regular activity, even in prayer; and if "the fire fall," the religious man is to be thankful.
No account of Wesley's religious life would be complete without reference to his constant use of the means of grace. It has apparently been assumed by some that his defense of the Church of England was owing to an inconsistent conservatism which moved him to oppose any change of allegiance on the part of the Methodists. In fact, Wesley was devoted to the Church of his childhood. He accounted her liturgy the best of any national Church in the world, and when he prepared the liturgy for the American Methodists he made only such changes as seemed to him advisable for doctrinal or prudential reasons.** His
Journal is full of references to the services which he attended, and he was moved deeply by her anthems and psalms. If he moderated his views of the Church and her orders, he maintained his belief in the value of the sacraments. It should not be forgotten that WesWesley's Religious Experience ley received the Lord's Supper on an average of once every five days "throughout his apostolic life." *
The ordinances of the Church were to him a real part of the ministry of the love of God.
In prayer, in attendance upon the ordinances of the Church, in activity Wesley spent his saintly life, seeking that Christian Perfection which was to him the summation of religion.
For him, whatever may have been true of some of his followers, the search was never ended in any final status; he lived, as the Minutes of 1770 phrased it, moment by moment. There was stability in his life, but it was the stability of growth, of a Pilgrim's
Progress; yet on the whole, the progress was that of a Happy Pilgrim. In his old age, some of his preachers said to him: "Mr. Wesley, you often ask us about our experience, we should like to be favoured with yours." Wesley's reply was to quote two stanzas of one of his brother's hymns, which were not an assertion but a prayer.
Jesus, confirm my heart's desire To work, and speak, and think for thee; Still let me guard the holy fire, And still stir up thy gift in me; Ready for all thy perfect will, My acts of faith and love repeat, Till death thy endless mercies seal, And make my sacrifice complete.*® eOa CHAPTER VI THE BASES OF WESLEY'S THEOLOGY FoR many years it was customary to speak of Wesley as a great evangelist and organizer whose doctrines were borrowed from German Pietists and English Dissenters. Recently this view has been challenged, but it is yet taken for granted by many that he was a reviver of half-forgotten doctrines. There is no intention to claim great theological originality for Wesley, but it is argued here that Wesley's position, theologically as well as otherwise, gives him importance for modern religion. It is necessary, therefore, to turn to a consideration of his thought.
The student who would understand Wesley's mature conclusions concerning Christianity must keep certain facts in mind. In the first place, he must remember that Wesley's background was Anglican-) ism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Many seeming inconsistencies in Wesley will disappear when one ceases to cramp him into the mold of Ger- ' man Pietism or of English Dissent. In the second \* — place, the student must keep in mind that Wesley was typically British in his major interest: holiness. From Hobbes to the nineteenth century, British philoso- — 5 phers and theologians have been chiefly moralists. It is not an historical accident that both the Oxford
Movements, that of Wesley in the eighteenth and that The Bases of Wesley's Theology of Newman in the nineteenth century, were orientated to this idea. If one seeks for symbolic coincidences, they may be found in the sermons which heralded the two movements. In 1733, Wesley preached at Oxford on "The Circumcision of the Heart'; in 1833, Keble preached at Oxford the sermon which Newman said ushered in the Tractarian Revival, on "National Apostacy." ?
But one must not lose sight of another fact, that Wesley's thought developed and matured through the years. It has long been recognized that he changed his views on several important matters about 1738, but too many have assumed that this was the only, or at least the last change which he made. But just as his interpretations of his own religious experience developed until he was almost seventy years old, so also his theology changed. The student of Wesley must make up his mind whether he calls the theology which Wesley held in 173 that which he held in 1738, or that which he held in 1770, "Wesley's theology."
It is assumed in this book that the views which Wesley reached in his later period represent his mature convictions. The changes must not be exaggerated; but they must be recognized. It is therefore necessary to trace their development in order to explain his mature views.
So much preliminary statement is required, and even this is not sufficient. Professor Clement C. J.
Webb referred to the difficulty of recovering the theology of the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century because of the changes in thought since that time. The doctrine of evolution and the wide
John Wesley and Modern Religion acceptation of the results of biblical criticism have naturalized certain categories until it is with effort that the student can think himself back into the earlier part of the last century. But the Oxford
Movement itself has added to the difficulty. Certain conceptions of Catholic theology have been so grafted to the idea especially of High Churchmanship that it is not easy to enter into the spirit of Anglicanism as it was before either Tractarianism or Evangelicalism.
John Wesley was of the eighteenth century; and he was nourished in High Church Anglicanism as that — was understood in the latter seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. One must be content to see him, therefore,in the light of his time. It may be that he is the more meaningful in that he stood close to an older and almost lost world.
To understand Wesley's thought one must beais with his assumptions, with those beliefs which underlay all his later amplifications and changes. And here one cannot ignore the mental atmosphere of his home and early training. Wesley was, for example, from an old-world family where, in spite of education and considerable sophistication, spirits and goblins yet lived. Nor is this to be dismissed as preparation only for superstition. Such an atmosphere kept minds pliable when mechanistic philosophies would have stamped out all the poetry of life. However deplorable as intellectual error, it was good that some in the eighteenth century never got completely away from — | old-world views; else would posterity have been the poorer for the lack of that poetry which is one of the gifts of that century to ours." It is in this light that The Bases of Wesley's Theology one should view the understratum of credulity in Wesley's mind. It leavened the too intellectualistic and too materialistic bent which was his both by nature and training.
In accord with his practical interests Wesley was ' concerned with theology principally as it bore on practical matters. Speculative doctrines Wesley usually accepted according to the prejudices of his education or to the appeal that the doctrine made to his common sense. He believed most heartily in the Trinity, but he would not contend for the term. He thought that Servetus was not really anti-trinitarian, although he dared not use the words "Trinity" or "Person." "I dare," commented Wesley, '"'and I think them very good words. But I should think it very hard to be burned alive for not using them; especially with a slow fire, made of moist, green wood." * Wesley's doctrine 2a aang seems to have been the conventional substitutionary theory, but he gave it a simple statement: "God will not inflict on that (justified) sinner what he deserved to suffer, because the Son of His love hath suffered for him." * Justifying faith, for him, was a confidence that "Christ died for my sins, that He loved me, and gave Himself for me.' Wesley's religious needs and his practical interests demanded this much; they did not demand more. It is true that the work of Christ had great
'importance in Wesley's eyes, for this work is the ground of man's salvation. But this is not to say that Wesley attached great importance to any doctrine of the atonement. The love of God in Christ was the essence of the matter for him. "
John Wesley and Modern Religion | For Wesley, God is, of course, the reality of realities. Of the two classical modes of conceiving God, as being or activity, the latter was always uppermost in Wesley's mind. While he did not use the jargon of modern theology, he clearly had in mind that which is meant by transcendence and immanence; and his position can be stated only by saying that God is both transcendent and immanent.
God is an objective reality, to use the modern terminology. Wesley would have had nothing of the talk about God as a "projection" of human ideals; but to assume that for this reason Wesley is to be catalogued _ with those who relegate God to immeasurable distance from mankind is to mistake his real meaning.
When he speaks of eternity, he is careful to warn his readers against assuming that God is any less mindful of his children. Man must remember that "nothing is little or great, that no duration is long or short before _
Him." ® Man may be aware of the infinite distance _ between God in heaven and man on earth, but this ~ distance means nothing to God. But it is not only ~ that this distance means nothing to God, but that God is actually near to man. a If God is transcendent, He is also immanent. How —
God sustains the universe, man does not know. "Perhaps what the ancient philosopher speaks of the soul, in regard to its residence in the body, that it is tofain toto, et tota in qualibet, might, in some sense be ~ spoken of the omnipresent Spirit, in regard to the ~
Universe." ° In his third discourse "Upon our Lord's_ "that God is in all things, and that we are to see the* 114 | The Bases of Wesley's Theology Creator in the glass of every creature; that we should use and look upon nothing as separate from God, which indeed is a kind of practical Atheism; but, with a true magnificence of thought, survey heaven and them all in being, who pervades and actuates the whole created frame, and is, in a true sense, the soul of the universe." 7
It would be folly to expect of Wesley a philosophical consistency untrue, not only to his nature and interests, but to his time. He did not work out the implications of his belief in the immanence of God for a philosophy of natural law. Indeed, there are times when he speaks of God in terms which show that he is, at the moment, thinking in the traditional way of a God outside his creation, as the God of the Deists was outside. But it is evident that Wesley's belief in God's closer, more intimate relation with nature, expressed in such passages as that quoted above, was his real answer to the mechanistic, deistic theories of his time. God is both transcendent and immanent.
It will be shown later that he would have nothing of the deterministic philosophy associated with Calvinistic transcendence, and it would be equally wrong to claim his suffrage for the determinism implied in - modern immanental philosophy. He held to a simpler theology. "That fine poet," Alexander Pope, was in error when he wrote:
He sees with equal eye, as Lord of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall.
John Wesley and Modern Religion This would be to reduce life to a uniformity which man cannot allow. God feedeth the fowls of the air; but "are not ye much better than they?" God does deviate from his general laws. Again Wesley quoted
Pope to disagree with him:
Shall burning Etna, of a sage required, Forget to thunder, and recall her fires?
On air or sea new motions be imprest, O blameless Bethel! to relieve thy breast!
When the loose mountain trembles from on high, Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?
Or some old temple, nodding to its fall, > For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall? :
To this Wesley replied, simply, yes. "If it please God to continue the life of any of his servants, He will suspend that or any other law of nature." ®
This attitude of Wesley may, in part, be attributed to the more credulous side of his nature; but it is rooted deep in his instinctive rebellion against a mechanized conception of the Universe. God is not a great machinist viewing his works with Olympian satisfaction. i Wesley's theology demanded a closer correlation of God with His world than contemporary thought allowed. He voiced this belief, in terms of traditional theology, by insisting that God has not precluded
Himself "from thus exerting His sovereign power from working miracles in any kind or degree, in any age, to the end of the world." ® It is hard for modern readers to understand that this point of miracles and — when they ended was a crucial one for pre-nineteenthcentury theologians. The whole relation of theology
The Bases of Wesley's Theology to a mechanized Universe was determined by the answer to this question: "Did God ever work miracles, and, if so, when did He stop working them?" The Catholic said: "God has never stopped; He may work miracles at any time." The Protestant said that God
"worked them in apostolic times, perhaps until the close of the third century." The skeptic said: 'God may never have worked them"'; and he could adduce
Hume's brilliant essay in support. As theology came} to terms with eighteenth-century natural philosophy, | it tried to push miracles more and more into the background. God's world is a beautiful machine, like
Paley's watch; its ordering must not, cannot be disturbed. True, we continue to worship God because He is a Great Mechanic; but He must not tamper with the machine.
Against such a conception, the Romantic poets took up a semi-pantheism, a belief in "something interfused." According to Professor Whitehead, they revolted against the lifeless mechanism of the New- | tonian world-machine toward a more organic conception of life.1? It must not be thought that Wesley was consciously attempting a philosophic correction of Newtonian physics. But he did come down on the side of a more fluid universe as against the carpenter idea of God. And he did it by taking the Catholic position, that the relations of God and his world remain as they have always been, intimate and effective.
Miracles ceased after the third century, not because God had withdrawn from his world, but because the love of men had grown cold. Man may live, if not in Tr?
John Wesley and Modern Religion expectation of God's intervention, at least in assurance of its possibility.
If God is not limited in His relations with his Universe by mechanical barriers, He is limited by His own nature. He cannot, for example, destroy out of the soul of man "that image of Himself wherein He made him"—a point to which the argument must return.
Moreover, God is not only sovereign but governor."
Here Wesley adopted the argument of Grotius. God is not only powerful but just, and this precludes Him from foreordaining part of His creatures to life everlasting and part to damnation. Everywhere Wesley insists upon the goodness, the mercy, the love of God.
However great, however far off according to human comparisons, God is the loving One whom men may love. To forget this is to ignore the heart of the Wesleyan message.
It is sometimes assumed that all Wesley had to say about man is contained in his doctrine of original sin. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Only in the larger setting of his doctrine of man can one understand his doctrines of sin, of evil, and of salvation.
In the first place, Wesley accepted the contemporary doctrine of a "universal chain of being" (Scala Naturae). In his A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation: or, a Compendium of Natural Philosophy, Wesley made use of Bonnet's Contemplation of Nature to expound this doctrine. 'The whole progress of nature is so gradual, that the entire chasm from a plant to man, is filled up with divers kinds of creatures, rising one above another, by so gentle an T he Bases of Wesley's Theology ascent, that the transitions from one species to another, are almost insensible." 1" In other words, man is but one species in a chain of beings which stretches from the plants to man. Wesley was sure that the chain went on to include angelic beings also.
But what is the demarcation between man and the brutes? Wesley did not believe that the line of division is reason. If one uses the word understanding, instead of reason, then it is plain that brutes also have understanding. He was sure, as he set forth in a very ingenious sermon on ""The General Deliverance," that the brutes had lost by the Fall of Man, and that, in consequence, some of them "have, at present, little more understanding than the earth on which they crawl, or the rock to which they adhere." ** But the dividing line between man and beast is not mental.
Man is made in the image of God, and what this means Wesley explains repeatedly. "God did not make him mere matter, a piece of senseless, unintelligent clay; but a spirit like himself, although clothed with a material vehicle. As such he was endued with understanding; with a will including various affections; and with liberty, a power of using them in a right or wrong manner, of choosing good or evil...."1* In this there is similarity to the brutes, which have will and affections and a measure of liberty, although these have been impaired, if not lost, in the Fall. But their affections and liberty are directed toward "loving obedience to man," while man's nature is capable of "loving obedience to God." This is the impassable barrier between man and the brutes, that they cannot know and love God.'® But Wesley hoped perth John Wesley and Modern Religion that the consummation when the "creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the sons of God," may mean that the brutes will be moved up the Scale to the position which man now occupies, while men are made "'equal to angels." '° Man, in his primitive purity, had, according to Wesley, both the natural and the moral image of God. ©
The natural image was his "power of self-motion, understanding, will and liberty." The moral image of God was man's original perfection. 'This was the supreme perfection of man... the continually seeing, and loving, and obeying the Father of the spirits of all flesh." *7 But in the Fall man lost "the moral image of God, and, in part, the natural." 1° Sin and evil are the results of man's possessing the natural image of God—that is, of his possession of liberty to choose how his affections are disposed. Having this liberty, man chose evil. He lost, therefore, the moral image of God, holiness and righteousness.
That Wesley regarded human nature as corrupt is too well known to need proof. This comes, in part, from his theological heritage. It has been mistakenly assumed that Wesley learned from William Law a mystical doctrine of the essential divinityof human nature. The assumption is the result of confusing
Law's earlier writings with his later ones, written under the influence of Jakob Boehme. Human nature, according to Law, in his Christian Perfection —
(1726), is diseased; mankind is 'ta Race of fallen Spirits." *° "Nor did the High Church Arminianism in which Wesley was trained teach the natural
120 The Bases of Wesley's Theology religious or moral ability of man. Arminianism was a doctrine of grace, presuming original sin in man. But the main support of the doctrine of original sin was for Wesley unquestionably his own observations. Before going to America, he had pictured the savages as living an idyllic life; but, after his return, he referred over and over to their depravity. Their "natural religion" seemed to him the grand answer to all doctrines of man's natural goodness. In the beginning of his treatise on original sin, Wesley devotes pages to a survey of history and of the contemporary world in proof of man's corruption. Some of his examples are strikingly modern: "There is a still more horrid reproach to the Christian name, yea, to the name of man, to all reason and humanity. There is war in the world! war between men! war between Christians! . . . Now, who can reconcile war, I will not say to religion, but to any degree of reason or common sense?"
This original sin of man is not simply the sum total of his evil acts but an inherent disposition toward evil.
Sin, for Wesley, is actual transgression, but this rooted in an evil tendency which man has by the Fall of Adam. As one commentator remarks, Wesley never freed himself entirely from the belief that sin is a , substance. 'The Christian may triumph over actual sin; but inbred, original sin remains in him until it has been removed by sanctification. But Wesley's common sense saved him from more than one awkward theory. In dealing with the practical needs of his people, he was a shrewd analyst and a helpful adviser, although his theoretical explanations sometimes
Se John Wesley and Modern Religion limped. It was plain to him that there is something radically wrong in the world; and so radical is this wrongness that Wesley could not see it simply as the mass of individual transgressions. 'The roots lie in a corrupt human nature made worse by a bad education. He freely criticized social wrongs, but he saw them always as the result of a corrupt heart.
Man lost not only the moral image of God, but, in part at least, he lost the natural image. His will became infirm, since his affections were not guided by an unerring reason. Likewise, his liberty ceased to be freedom "wholly guided by his understanding." In all this Wesley's emphasis upon understanding, or intelligence, must be noted. 'This emphasis is even more noticeable when it is inquired how the Fall of man affected his understanding. Before this lapse, man's spirit probably "discerned truth by intuition''; his knowledge was limited, but he was not subject to error. But with the Fall man's knowledge ceased to be by intuition; he knew not immediately but mediately.21 What Wesley thought about the nae ture of man's knowledge can be learned by studying his psychology, which in many respects was thoroughly Lockian. Especially did Wesley adopt the empirical side of Locke's psychology, whether or not di- — rectly from Locke. But Wesley was unwilling to push his empiricism to its logical conclusion. There — are no innate ideas, all ideas being received through the senses; but Wesley would not go on to question whether the senses may not be deceived as to the external world. Certainly, he would not agree that the The Bases of Wesley's Theology external world exists only in the representation of the senses.
In fact, Wesley would not go even so far as Locke in some matters. Whereas Locke concluded that "secondary qualities," colors and the like, being somewhat confused and vague, must be attributed to the mind of the observer, Wesley contended for the objective reality of both primary and secondary qualities. "When I say," wrote Wesley, " "That cloth is of red colour,' I mean its surface is so disposed as to reflect the red (that is, the largest) rays of light. When
I say, "The Sky is blue,' I mean it is so disposed as to reflect the blue (that is, the smallest rays of light)."
His decision was: "Colour therefore is a real material thing. There is no illusion in the case, unless you confound the perception with the thing perceived."
Except when the Holy Spirit has restored in man the image of God, the divine ways and purposes may be known to man, aside from revelation, only in God's works. And the intuitive knowledge possible even to the man in whom the image of God has been restored was greatly restricted by Wesley. Like Locke, Wesley distrusted mysticism. Professor Clement C. J.
Webb thinks that there is some connection between an empirical psychology which finds in sensation the only avenue to reality and religious movements stressing the feelings as "the test of spiritual contact with the object of religious faith." ** There is doubtless some truth in this observation, but Wesley did not depend much upon "'feelings," whatever his psychology.
Man, corrupted by the Fall, has lost the moral im- | 123 John Wesley and Modern Religion age of God, and, in part, the natural image also. How is this to be restored? Since the natural man is incapable of good, and impaired in will and understanding, it would seem that one is thrown back upon the _ irresistible grace of Calvinistic theology. But for Wesley the "natural man" is a logical abstraction.
Like the economic man or the caricatures set up today by amateur psychologists, anthropologists, and theogetas logians, the "natural man" does not exist. The truth is that "there is no man that is in a state of mere nature; there is no man, unless he has quenched the Spirit, that is wholly void of the grace of God. No © man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly f called natural conscience. But this is not natural: it is v" '4 more properly termed, preventing grace. Everyman has a greater or less measure of this, which waiteth not for the call of man. Every man has, sooner or later, good desires, although the generality of men stifle them before they can strike deep root, or produce any : considerable fruit. Everyone has some measure of \ — that light, some faint glimmering ray, which sooner or later, more or less, enlightens every man that cometh __ into the world. And everyone, unless he be of the small number whose conscience is seared as with a __ hot iron, feels more or less uneasy when he acts contrary to the light of his own conscience. So that no ~~ man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace which he hath." ** a _ This is Wesley's way of escape from the theological ¥ g and psychological dilemma which the doctrine of — original sin poses for all who adopt it. To understand how Wesley could hold to the doctrine of origThe Bases of Wesley's Theology inal sin and at the same time reject Calvinism, one must grasp this essential fact, that, for Wesley, the "natural man" is only a logical fiction. In this world man exists as a natural man plus the prevenient grace of God. And this grace is not the forgiving favor of God granted in what the Reformed theologians called justification; this grace is empowering grace. "Stir up the spark of grace which is now in you," exhorted
Wesley, "and he will give you more grace." On this road man may go, accepting greater and greater grace until God restores in him the lost image.
It is thus true to say that Wesley did not believe that man can by his own unaided efforts achieve any good thing. It is true that Wesley poured scorn on talk about natural morality and natural piety. There is no innate knowledge of God, no natural intuition of divine things. But there is possibility of good in man, for God has given him grace, a light which lightens every man that cometh into the world.
Twentieth-century readers may remark that there is little difference between a doctrine of natural ability and a doctrine of prevenient grace; but the eighteenth century saw a deal of difference. By the doctrine of prevenient grace two important truths could bepreserved. In the first place, proper emphasis could be laid upon "man'sS proneness to evil, a proneness which modern men, aware of social imperfections and of man's instinctive tendencies, will be the last to_ deny. In the sécond place, the divine initiative could be safeguarded. Religion is not the evolution of man's nature; it implies the emergence of new factors in the total situation. And a great company has always
John Wesley and Modern Religion testified that man's religious life begins and ends in God.
The contrast of Calvinistic theology with Wesley's is plain if one will consider the differing explanations which the two theologies offer of this dilemma of man dead in trespasses and sin. In accordance with Catholic theology, Wesley positeda prevenientgrace which enables man to accept increased grace and to go on by the help of God to higher:stages of the Christian. life. The Anglican Articleswereambiguous, and both Catholic and Calvinistic interpretations were put upon them. The tenth Article declares that man cannot "turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God"; wherefore "we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God without the grace of God preventing us, that we may have a good ~ will, and working with us, when we have that good will." Although the latter phrase is almost a direct quotation from Augustine, the Article was never quite satisfactory to the Calvinists. In 1643, the Assembly of Divines proposed a revision of the Articles, — desiring to interpolate in Article X words which would make clear that preventing grace works "so effectually in us, as that it determineth our will to that which is good." *> On the other hand, the Article was freely interpreted according to the Catholic __ conception of grace. It was in this sense that John
Wesley's father understood it. Samuel Wesley believed that no man can do an "action properly and perfectly acceptable to God by his own natural abilities, abstracted from the assistance of God's Spirit,
The Bases of Wesley's Theology but by His common assistance he may pray, abstain from sin, and practice duty; and, if he continues in these good actions, he will have still more aid, and go on to perfection." *® In contrast with this position, the Calvinists could see salvation possible only by the irresistible power of divine grace overwhelming helpless and hopeless man. 'The distinction is between mar empowered to choose and man compelled to obey; and in that distinction, however hidden under theo. logical subtleties, is the essential difference between two philosophies.
It has been pointed out above that present-day critics of Newtonian science stress the metaphysical implications of that science by which man becomes "the puny and local spectator," the "irrelevant product of an infinite, self-moving engine." Professor Whitehead has drawn the parallel between the irresistible grace of Calvinism and Jansenism and "'the irresistible mechanism of nature" with neither of which man can co-operate. It was precisely along this line that Wesley made one of his most fundamental attacks upon Calvinism. In two short papers, "Thoughts on Necessity" and "A Thought on Necessity," published in 1774 and in 1780 respectively, Wesley connects a mechanical philosophy of the world, a necessitarian psychology, and Calvinism." The mechanical philosophy he sets forth in a paraphrase of the words of Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782): "The universe is.one immense machine, one amazing piece of clock-work, consisting of innumerable wheels fitly framed, and indubitably linked together. Man is one of these wheels, fixed in the middle of this vast
John Wesley and Modern Religion automaton. And he moves just as necessarily as the rest, as the sun or moon, or earth. Only with this difference (which was necessary for completing the design of the Great Artificer) that he seems to himself perfectly free...." This is of a piece with the materialistic explanation of mind, which Wesley exhibits in another quotation: ""The soul is now connected with a material vehicle, and placed in the material world.
Various objects here continually strike upon one or other of the bodily organs. These communicate the impression to the brain; consequent on which such and such sensations follow. 'These are the materials a , on'which the understanding works, in forming all its simple and complex ideas; according to which our judgments are formed. And according to our judgments are our passions; our love and hate, joy and sorrow, desire and fear, with their innumerable combinations. Now, all these passions together are the will, variously modified; and all actions flowing from the will are voluntary actions; consequently, they are good or evil, which otherwise they could not be. And yet it is not in man to direct his own way, while he is — in the body, and in the world."
The associationist psychologist, David Hartley (1705-1757), began with Locke's sensationalism, as did Wesley also, and his scheme seemed "plausible" to Wesley. "Who can deny," he asked, "that not only the memory, but all the operations of the soul, are now dependent on the bodily organs, the brain in particular? insomuch that a blow on the back part of the head (as frequent experience shows) may take away the understanding, and destroy at once both
Rack 128 The Bases of Wesley's Theology sensation and reflection; and an irregular flow of spirits may quickly turn the deepest philosopher into a madman?" But this psychology implies determinism, "In all cases the choice must be determined by that motive which appears the best upon the whole.
But motives are not under our power. Man is passive in receiving impressions of things, according to which the last judgment is necessarily framed. This the will necessarily obeys, and the outward action necessarily follows the will."
Wesley followed the quotations just given by examining Jonathan Edwards' psychology and by an insistence on the dependence of Calvinistic theology upon deterministic philosophy. To Wesley, the picture of man helpless to co-operate with God was essentially the picture of man helpless before the Newtonian world-machine or helpless in the grasp of mechanical causes and effects working in himself. It is true that Wesley himself had no satisfactory answer to the questions raised by the determinists; he could only affirm his faith in the intention of "the God of Nature" to make man free and reasonable. Man is not a machine, however intricate and wonderful.
Nor—logician and logic-chopper that Wesley sometimes was—could he be satisfied with the finely-spun distinctions with which Edwards explained voluntary action. "The actions of men are quite voluntary," said Edwards; "the fruit of their own will. ... Now, if men voluntarily commit theft, adultery, or murder, certainly the actions are evil, and therefore punishable. And if they voluntarily serve God, and help their neighbours, the actions are good, and therefore
John Wesley and Modern Religion rewardable." But according to Calvinism their wills are not free, reiterated Wesley; they cannot help willing thus or thus. Here is the ancient antinomy: deterministic theories seem to demonstrate man's unfree will; but mankind knows itself to be free. It is significant that Wesley's answer is finally to quote from Milton:
For so I form'd them free: and free they must remain, Till they enthral themselves.
Even this brief discussion will be sufficient to show that in Wesley's fundamental doctrines of God and of man he rejected determinism. Although he worked with the traditional dogmatic materials which Anglican theology handed to him, he came down on the side of human freedom. Man is evil, but he has the prevenient grace of God, empowering grace which, if used, will enable a man to go on to repentance and faith, to the Christian life. Man is not a machine; of this Wesley was sure, even if he had to express his assurance in quotations from the poets. !
Before going on to-a more detailed examination of Wesley's evangelical doctrines, it is necessary to ask one more question about his assumptions: What did } <x. he regard as religious authority? The tendency with many in the eighteenth century was to adopt a simplified answer. If natural phenomena could be reduced to simple terms, so also could religious authority. The final authority of Christians is the Bible; — or reason, reduced to certain innate ideas, or the dogma of the Church as formulated by the ecumenical
The Bases of Wesley's Theology councils. It is customary to speak of Wesley as holding to some such simple religious authority: he was a Bible Christian, acknowledging no authority but the written word; he rested in the evidence of Christian experience; or, he combined the two.
Wesley called himself a Bible-Christian. He insisted that Christians should not require what is not found in the Scriptures, and that they should stand by all that is found there. 'To the law and to the Testimony," was his cry. "This," he wrote, "is the general method of knowing what is 'the holy and acceptable will of God.'" 8 To find the particular rule, one has only to apply the general. But he recognized that men may err in interpretation, and he enjoined caution because of this. One should be especially careful '"'with respect to those parts thereof which less immediately relate to practice." That men differ in interpretation is not proof that they are not children of God; "but it is a proof that we are no more to expect any living man to be infallible, than to be omniscient." *" But there are no mistakes in Scripture. Nevertheless, in his translations Wesley frequently anticipated the readings of later critics, and when he prepared the Sunday Services for America, he left out many psalms and parts of others
"as being highly improper for the mouths of a Christian congregation." Here, as often elsewhere, his practical sense overrode his theory.
But Wesley had another guide whose authority for him has not been so generally recognized. In the preface to the First Collected Edition of his works
(1771-1774), Wesley hoped he had written what was . 131
John Wesley and Modern Religion "agreeable to Scripture, reason, and Christian antiquity.' No one can follow Wesley with understanding without taking into consideration his high regard for the primitive Fathers. To Dr. Conyers Middleton,
Wesley explained this high esteem. By the primitive Fathers he meant particularly Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenzus, Origen, Cyprian, Macarius, and Ephraim Syrus. "I allow," he said, "that some of these had not strong natural sense, that few of them had much learning, and none the assistances which our age enjoys in some respects above all that went before."' He did not doubt, therefore, that one could find in their writings "many mistakes, many weak suppositions, and many ill-drawn conclusions." But he added: "Yet I exceedingly reverence them as well as their writings, and esteem them very highly in love. I reverence them, because _ they were Christians, such Christians as are above described. And I reverence their writings, because they describe true, genuine Christianity, and direct us to the strongest evidence of Christian doctrine. ...
They never relinquish this: 'What the Scripture promises, I enjoy. Come and see what Christianity has done here, and acknowledge it is of God.' " *°
The Fathers—'chiefly those who wrote before the Council of Nice'—are "the most authentic com-_ mentators.on Scripture, as being nearest the fountain, — and eminently endued with that Spirit by whom all
Scripture was given." *' This was written, not before 1738, but in 1756. And twenty-six years later, Wesley declared that he regarded no authorities but "the Ante-Nicene Fathers," although he would not accept
The Bases of Wesley's Theology them in opposition to Scripture.*" In 1784, he acted upon a conviction concerning the validity of presbyterial ordination which was rooted in his understanding of the practice of the Primitive Church.
Here again Wesley was in line with High Church Anglicanism. In the seventeenth century the Church of England had been remarkable for wealth of patristic learning. The appeal to antiquity was made by the Laudian divines in their controversies both with Rome and with the Puritans. And this appeal was made especially to the first six centuries, to the period of the undivided Church. But there was a tendency among English High Churchmen to narrow this still more. Bishop Andrewes, perhaps the most learned of the English divines, in the seventeenthcentury sense of the word, preferred for authority the Fathers before 500 A.D.*° Herbert Thorndike
(1598-1672), whose books occupy considerable space in The Anglo-Catholic Library, thought the Fathers before the fourth century should have preéminence, giving for this reasons very similar to those quoted above from Wesley.** The Nonjurors made their appeal to Scriptures, reason, and the Primitive Church; and with them patristic learning almost disappeared from the English Church until the Oxford Movement.
One of the first acts of the authors of "Tracts for the Times" was the publication of some of the writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
In listing his authorities, Wesley always coupled reason with Scripture. Here again Wesley was a child of the Enlightenment. "It is a fundamental principle with us," he wrote to Dr. Rutherforth, in 1768, "that John Wesley and Modern Religion to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand, and that all irrational religion is false religion." *° He did not, therefore, deny the value of so-called natural theology, and when taxed with having caricatured "natural religion" in his picture of the American Indian, Wesley replied that he was there speaking of "men's natural manners." °® He did not believe that natural religion is enough, for he insisted upon the necessity of revelation; but all religion is reasonable.
This is true, Wesley held, whether one means by reason, "the eternal reason, or the nature of things," or "the faculty of reasoning, of inferring one thing from another." The foundation of religion "stands on the nature of God and the nature of man, together with their mutual relations." And Wesley had no sympathy with mystic depreciations of reason. He contended that the Lord and his apostles were continually reasoning with their opponents, and that the Epistle to the Hebrews is "such a chain of reasoning or argumentation" as he did not know in ancient or modern times.*"
Wesley insisted that reasoning about religion is not fruitful unless "ideas" received by intuition are considered as well as those which come through the senses.
As will be seen later, he developed, in accordance with his Lockian psychology, a doctrine of faith which was, in reality, a theory of knowledge. Man may perceive certain truths directly instead of indirectly through the senses. These truths were, in fact, limited to Biblical doctrines personally applied; but Wesley believed that there was direct apprehension of these by The Bases of Wesley's Theology the mind. The materials of intuition, therefore, must be included by those whose reasoning on religion is to be sound.** In the main, however, Wesley agreed with his contemporaries that the reason must deal primarily with the natural world and derive therefrom its materials for a reasonable faith. 'The little which we know of God, (except what we receive by the inspiration of the Holy One)," he wrote, '"'we do not gather from any inward impressions, but gradually acquire from without. 'The invisible things of God,' if they are known at all, 'are known from the things that are made;' not from what God hath written in our hearts, but from what he hath written in all his works." *° Whatever one thinks of Wesley's conception of reason, however inadequate his theory may now seem, it is certain that he believed in the reasonableness of religion. 'The Scriptures are indeed the sole rule of faith and practice; but Wesley assumed that the Scriptures are themselves reasonable and must be so interpreted. Whatever is irrational is not religion.
While holding to this principle, Wesley shared the early eighteenth-century view that only practical matters are worth reasoning about. "I believe that most of the controversies which have disturbed the Church," wrote Wesley to Joseph Benson in 1788,
"have arisen from people's wanting to be wise above what is written, not contented with what God has plainly revealed there." 'Metaphysical disquisition" is worse than useless; it is dangerous." And Wesley was also too good a psychologist to encourage his converts to "reason" about their condition. His
John Wesley and Modern Religion exhortation was to simple trust and obedience. But there is no reason to doubt Wesley's sincerity when he repeatedly expressed his belief that religion is reasonable.
It has long been recognized that Wesley made a distinct contribution to modern religion by his emphasis upon Christian experience. What Wesley did, according to the usual interpretation, was to revolt against the eighteenth-pceneury conception of religion ual's Puch and posing Such an interpretation is only partially true. ~ In the first place, Wesley's interest in Christian experience is rooted in the same soil as the eighteenthcentury English interest in conduct. Just as he preferred reason devoid as far as possible of metaphysical subtleties, so he was interested in experience as a practical matter: the proper study of mankind is man.
In 1734, he argued with his father that Epworth was not the proper place for the true development of John Wesley's religious life. "But for the proof of every one of these weighty truths," he added, "experience is worth a thousand reasons." *? With Wes- | ley, religious experience, in the primary sense of the term, is the experience of God, or of the Holy Spirit.
But this experience is man's experience, and most of Wesley's concern was with the manward side. He believed and insisted upon the work of the Holy
Spirit, but any serious study of his writings must convince the student that Wesley was rather modest in his dealings with the Godward side of Christian experience. This is, in part, the explanation for his
The Bases of Wesley's Theology conservatism in theology. He would go no further than he thought reasonable interpretation of Scripture would allow when he spoke of God, but man's side of experience may be analyzed and expounded.
Wesley recognized the apologetic importance of introducing into theology the evidence of Christian experience. In his letter to Dr. Middleton, Wesley says that he conceives this '"'to be the strongest evidence of the truth of Christianity." Attacks upon the tradition "evidences" of Christianity had not destroyed those evidences, but some of the objections were weighty and did not a mit of self-evident answers. He doubted that the cause could long be maintained by appeal to these traditional evidences, and questioned "'whether, if they do not obey the loud call of God, and lay far more stress than they have hitherto doné on this internal evidence of Christianity, they will not one after another giv the external, and (in heart at least) go over se whom they are now contending with; so that in a century or two the people of England will be fairly divided into real
Deists and real Christians." ** To give up the outward evidences would mean for many very little.
They have neither faith nor love; they have no divine evidence of things unseen; they are neither happy nor holy; they have not learned, in whatsoever staté'they are, to be content; they do not walk as Christ walked.
But what does Wesley mean by experience? It is better to let him speak for himself. '"I now am assured that these things are so: I experience them in my own breast. What Christianity (considered as a doctrine) promised iis accomplished iin my own soul.
LGA John Wesley and Modern Religion And Christianity, considered as an inward principle, is the completion of those promises. It is holiness and happiness, the image of God impressed on a created spirit, a fountain of peace and love springing up into everlasting life." ** At another time, he wrote to one of his correspondents: '""We know there is nothing deeper, there is nothing better in heaven or earth than the God of love! So that we see distinctly what we have to aim at. We see the prize and the way to it!
Here is the height, here is the depth, of Christian experience! 'God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' " *4 Experience in these quotations refers to "inward" experience: the acme of it is love; for he that dwells in love dwells in God and God dwells in him. But | experience has a wider meaning for Wesley. In 1774,
Wesley explained to "Miss March" his method of estimating the experience of others. "I 'sum up the experience' of persons," he wrote, "in order to form their general character. But in doing this we take a different way of making our estimate. It may be you chiefly regard (as my brother does) the length of their experience. Now this I make little account of; I measure the depth and breadth of it. Does it sink deep in humble, gentle love? Does it extend wide in all inward and outward holiness? If so, I do not care whether they are of five or five-and-twenty years' standing." *° Here Christian experience includes not only inward but outward holiness. It is the experience of the whole man.
Wesley was alive to the possibilities of evidential value in the religious consciousness. He was especially The Bases of Wesley's Theology curious about claims to experience of the Trinity.
Some of his friends thought they had an experience similar to that of de Renty, the Catholic worthy whom Wesley so much admired, a direct experience of the three Persons of the Godhead. Among these was Lady Maxwell, to whom Wesley wrote in 1787:
"T think there are three or four in Dublin who likewise [he has named some others in London] speak clearly and scripturally of having had such a manifestation of the several Persons in the ever-blessed Trinity. Formerly I thought this was the experience of all those that were perfected in love; but I am now clearly convinced that it is not. Only a few of these are favoured with it." *® But Wesley was suspicious of peculiar experiences. Willing to allow for individual variations, he yet insisted upon "common salvation." *7 Whitefield had not done well to go against the judgment of the whole society, and Wesley's careful organization of his followers was designed not only to deepen but to regulate individual experience.
Besides, external authorities, the Scriptures, especially as interpreted by the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and reason (as he understood it) served as a check upon the vagaries of individual inner experiences. 'The conjunction of belief in the authority of an organic church with insistence upon the value and reality of individual experience as the final test," writes Dr. H.
B. Workman, "'gives to Methodism its special position in the Catholic Church." ** So much may be said of experience as an authority to which appeal may be made for the truth of Christianity. But there is another sense in which the John Wesley and Modern Religion Christian needs authority; that is, in the sense of guidance. What is the authority for one's actions at any given time? Wesley had to meet in his day the old claim to immediate inspiration, to guidance by direct impulses upon the mind and heart. Very early in his dealings with the Moravians he found them inclined to value highly this direction "'by the Spirit."
In November, 1738, he gave his opinion on some matter to James Hutton. "This may seem of very little weight to some of our brethren," he wrote, "especially when urged by one so weak as me; and they may think it deserves no other answer than 'He hath not the Spirit.""' *° Soon he learned to distrust this submission of matters to the tailors, mechanics, and other untrained men who were in the society; and he fell back upon the advice of men of like training with himself. Wesley's aristocratic system in his societies was not only because of his own predispositions, but because of his unsatisfactory experience with the impulses of his brethren.
Up until at least the middle of the 1740's, Wesley still resorted to lot or to some form of bibliomancy in determining his actions when he was at a loss how | to proceed. But this disappeared, and Wesley fell back more and more upon common sense and the Bible, interpreted by the early Fathers. ''How does the Spirit of God lead his children to this or that particular action? Do you imagine it is by blind impulse only? by moving you to do it, you know not why? Not so. He leads us by our eye, at least as much as by the hand; by light as well as by heat."
Wesley's belief concerning immediate inspiration The Bases of Wesley's Theology has been dealt with more fully in a monograph by the writer, but it is necessary to say that Wesley restricted the tendency to act upon impulses supposed to be of the Holy Spirit by safeguards which were intended to prevent any great reliance upon them. In practice they were not sufficient, and the documents which he himself collected from his friends, detailing their experiences, are replete with marvels. Believing as he did in the communion of the divine and the human,
Wesley could hardly exclude them a priori; but the dilemma was recognized, and he attempted to deal with it in his organization.
It must be remembered, however, that Wesley estimated the experience of others not only by their inner state of humble love but also by their inward and outward holiness. Experience, then, if one is to be true to the whole range of Wesley's thought, is not to be restricted to moments of experience, as in conversion, but includes the whole range of man's inner and outer life. It is in connection with this that one must observe a second meaning of experience. Not only one's own but the experience of other people has evidential value in religion. Men may learn something not only from their own seeing, but also from those who have been restored to sight.
"Now, transfer this to the case before us: and those who were blind, but now see—those who were sick many years, but now are healed—those who were miserable, but now are happy—will afford you also a very strong evidence of the truth of Christianity; as strong as can be in the nature of things, till you experience it in your own soul; and this, though it be
John Wesley and Modern Religion allowed they are but plain men, and in general of weak understanding—nay, though some of them should be mistaken in other points, and hold opinions which cannot be defended." °' This was Wesley's great evidence for the essential Christianity of Methodism. 'To the Bishop of London, Wesley appealed
"to plain facts." { "By the fruits shall ye know those of whom I speak; even the cloud of witnesses, who at this hour experience the gospel which I preach to be the power of God unto salvation. The habitual drunkard that was is now temperate in all things; the whoremonger now flees fornication; he that stole, steals no more, but works with his hands; he that cursed or swore, perhaps at every sentence, has now learned to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice in Him with reverence; those formerly enslaved to various habits of sin are now brought to uniform habits, of holiness. ... My Lord, can you deny these facts?" ®?'
Wesley felt that in his writings he was representing mature Christian experience. "In the Thoughts on Christian Perfection and in the Farther Thoughts," he wrote to one of his correspondents in 1766, "you have the genuine experience of the adult children of ©
God. Oppose that authority to the authority of any that contradict (if reason and Scripture are disregarded). iu.
The collections which Wesley made of religious autobiographies have furnished materials for more than one study in the psychology of religion. But Wesley was not merely a romantic, emphasizing the worth of the inner life. He was interested in man and his conduct. He would not admit the reduction
The Bases of Wesley's Theology of empirical psychology to the subjectivism which resulted in Hume's skepticism, but he did accept a practical consequence of empiricism, that one must turn to an analysis of man's experience for further light on the vexed questions of the relation between mind and reality.
In the light of this study of Wesley's fundamental assumptions, one may go on to examine his reconstruction of Christian doctrine. But the assumptions must be kept in mind. And not least among these assumptions is that of the nature of religious authority. It has been too easily assumed that Wesley simply reinstated orthodox theology and the letter of the Bible as Christian infallibilities, or that he set up
Christian experience as the final authority. The truth is that he felt the richness of Christian truth to be too great to allow so simple a solution. Inconsistent as his own treatment was, inadequate as was his attempt to give logical statement to his conviction, he did real- , ize how impossible it is to fit the manifold facts of hu-man experience into any one of the theological molds which were ready to his hand. In common with the historic Church, he recognized the Bible as the one rule of faith and practice; but he supplemented this by an acknowledgment of the priority of the primitive
Fathers as interpreters, and by a recognition of the place of reason; and to this he added the authority of experience, the religious experience of man in its broadest sense, but particularly the testimony of the "adult children of God.' No more consistent, no simpler authority would suffice: single and more logical molds were too rigid; the systems were too systematic.
CHAPTER VII THE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION ALTHOUGH Wesley expressed himself on such subjects as the nature of God, the nature of man and their relations, he was, as has been said, primarily interested in practical matters. He was sure that religion does not consist in orthodoxy or right opinions; they are but "a slight part of religion at best, and sometimes no part at all." If a man is a child of God, holy in heart and life, opinions are but the smallest part of his religion. If aman is a child of the devil, his opinions, however correct, are not religion at all.
Only the ingrained convictions of a lifetime can explain this tolerance, for in other matters Wesley was, during most of his life, contentious enough. In his old age he wrote of those who lie in bed eight or nine hours or more: "I do not say now (as I should have > been very apt to do fifty years ago) that all who indulge themselves in this manner are on the way to hell." ?
One of the most beautiful letters which John Wesley ever wrote was written to his nephew, Samuel, who had joined the Roman Catholic Church.
Samuel's defection troubled his uncle, but not because of his ""embracing such and such opinions (were they right or wrong). Wesley was troubled because his nephew had cut himself off from instructions
The Doctrine of Salvation which he sorely needed. His nephew lacked religion:
"Christ in you the hope of glory, Christ reigning in your heart and subduing all things to Himself." "I care not a rush," he wrote, "for your being called
Papist or Protestant. But I am grieved at your being an heathen. Certain it is that the general religion both of Protestants and Catholics is no better than refined heathenism." And, with delicate courtesy,
Wesley recommended to his Catholic nephew true religion, "'the religion which Kempis, Pascal, Fenelon enjoyed." "
The matter with which Wesley was most concerned was salvation. This is the doctrine which has been most expounded by his commentators and has been most extolled and condemned. It has been explained as a religion of feeling, as a revival of Luthero-Calvinian justification by faith, and as a doctrine formulated in reaction against Protestantism. A restudy of the doctrine of the Moravians, of the Reformers' faith, of the teachings of Arminius, are undoubtedly helpful; but the necessary thing is to examine carefully the teachings of that eighteenth-century son of the English Church, John Wesley. ;
In the first place, what did Wesley mean by salvation? He tells us in very understandable English.
"We mean," he wrote, "that the moment a man receives faith.... he is saved from doubt and fear, and sorrow of heart, by a peace that passes all understanding; from the heaviness of a wounded spirit, by joy unspeakable; and from his sins, of whatsoever kind they were, from his vicious desires, as well as words and actions. . . . By salvation I mean, not barely,
John Wesley and Modern Religion according to the vulgar notion, deliverance from hell, or going to heaven; but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy and truth; Salvation is here defined by a psychological analysis of the "saved" man. It is the state of the man who is the recipient of the saving grace of God. Wesley is using the framework of his theology of the Fall.
Man had lost the image of God; now it is restored.
He has been "'born again."
This new birth is "ta vast inward change, a change wrought in the soul, by the operation of the Holy Ghost; a change in the whole manner of our existence; for from the moment we are born of God, we live in quite another manner than we did before; we are, as it were, in another world." * In his sermon on ""The Great Privilege of Those that are Born of God,"
Wesley draws a long and interesting analogy between this new spiritual birth and natural birth. Before natural birth, the child exists, but without "senses." wb, 'All these avenues of the soul are hitherto quite shut up. Of consequence, it has scarcely any intercourse with this visible world; nor any knowledge, conception, or idea, of the things that occur therein." With birth, all is changed. "Every sense is employed upon HYay)4 such objects as are peculiarly suitable to it; and by pal:Pm]ii these inlets the soul . . . . acquires more and more knowledge of sensible things, of all the things which are under the sun."
The Doctrine of Salvation "So it is with him that is born of God." Man, hitherto existing without seeing or knowing the spiritual world, enters into new relationships. He is a man of a new heart and of a new life. "His soul is renewed after the image of God, in righteousness and in all true holiness. And having the mind that was in - Christ, he so walks as Christ also walked." The life of God in the soul of a believer implies 'the continual inspiration of God's Holy Spirit . . . . an unceasing presence of God; and an unceasing return of love, praise and prayer, offering up all the thoughts of our hearts, all the words of our tongues, all the works of our hands, all our body, soul, and spirit, to be a holy sacrifice, acceptable unto God in Christ Jesus." This implies "the reaction" of the soul; "God does not continue to act upon the soul, unless the soul reacts upon God." ° To Wesley, working as he did with adults to whom his preaching was new, new in emphasis and for most of them new in content, conversion was instantaneous. His converts were twice-born men. His own experience was not of this type, but he regarded instantaneous conversion as normal. But Wesley did not contend for this. From the time when a man is justified, "'salvation gradually increases in his soul."
And he said of the new birth: "Of the first sowing of this seed I cannot conceive to be other than instantaneous; whether I consider experience, or the word of God, or the very nature of the thing;—however, I contend not for a circumstance, but the substance: If you can attain it another way, do. Only see that you do attain it." *
John Wesley and Modern Religion Perhaps his best expression of the fact that there are marked differences in religious experience is in a letter which he wrote in 1785. He recalled his own dismay when he had listened to Spangenberg describe the "glorious privileges of a believer." He had immediately cried out: "If this be so, I have no faith."
Spangenberg replied: "Habes fidem, sed exiguam; You have faith, but it is weak."" Remembering this, Wesley applied it to his correspondent. 'The very same thing I say to you, my dear friend. You have faith, but it is only as a grain of mustard seed... .
There is an irreconcilable variability in the operations of the Holy Spirit on the souls of men, more especially as to the manner of justification. Many find Him rushing upon them like a torrent, while they experience 'the o'erwhelming power of saving grace.' This has been the experience of many; perhaps of more in this late visitation than in any other age since the time of the Apostles. But in others He works in a very different way:
He designs His influence to infuse, Sweet, refreshing, as the silent dews.
It has pleased Him to work the latter way in you from the beginning; and it is not impossible He will continue (as He has begun) to work in a gentle and almost insensible manner." ® The new birth, whether instantaneous or gradual, is connected with a realization of God's love for man