If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, I heard a voice, ''believe no more,"
And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the Godless deep, A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered, "I have felt."
John Wesley and Modern Religion In a transition period, this appeal to experience undoubtedly saved Christian apologetics from becoming simply an echo of arguments which had long since lost their meaning. It was natural that theology should turn its attention to the analysis of this experience. Thus was opened up a fruitful field; and much good work, some of it of enduring value, was done in the study of the varieties of religious experience. At last, it seemed that religion could become a science, or, at the least, the object of disinterested, scientific investigation. If little could be known directly about God, the soul of man could be examined in conversion, in faith, in love. It was also natural that interest should be aroused in directing religious experience; and hence arose the important work of religious education. These modern preoccupations are rooted in the doctrine of Christian experience. One cannot be educated in religion who is merely the passive recipient of uncontrollable grace.
So far as preparation for these developments of modern religion is concerned, much must be attributed to the influence of Methodism. And it is not accidental that the Methodist churches have gone far — in religious education, although their contributions to the psychology of religion have not been so noteworthy. In some other ways, the influence of Methodism is discernible. It is tempting to find Wesley's — influence in the social gospel so characteristic of recent years in England and America. Perhaps the widespread interest of Methodists in social reform is a transfer of their belief in individual perfection to a belief in the perfect society. But Wesley's influence
John Wesley and Modern Religion here is doubtless rather in the strongly ethical tone of his teaching.
Certainly, humanitarianism as a whole owes much to the Evangelical Movement. Not only Wesley but all those who rediscovered the poor and aroused pity for them are responsible for modern humanitarianism. And the Methodists did their part to promote benevolent feelings. However inadequate as a motive for social action, the broadening of the horizon of Christian people is one of the heartening achievements of modern religion.
Eighteenth-century Methodism's passion for perfection has not been so prominent in modern Methodist circles. However faulty and dangerous the movements, unquestionably the various types of Pentecostalism have been largely the witnesses of the abiding power of genuine desire for perfect obedience and a life given "wholly to God." Too often these have taken the forms of a "spiritualism"'"—in the older theological sense—divorced from ethical and churchly meanings. But this influence is yet active in numerous sects and cults which have great appeal among the masses. ae In America, Methodism has aided also that extreme individualism which transformed the Church into a mere association distinguishable from other organizations only by its interest in religion. A passion for multiplying organizational machinery has become in many groups the only sign of corporate life. It is not accidental that the Methodists in America have led in the race to create the maximum number of boards and committees. The somewhat inJohn Wesley and Modern Religion volved machinery of Methodism from the beginning gave a proper start for this, and the gibe that Methodism suffers from "wheels within wheels" has become increasingly true. But, in the meantime, the Church idea has been lost and its place taken by the notion of Christianity as an individual possession and experience which really needs, except for promotional purposes, no corporate expression.
Along these lines must Wesley's influence in the nineteenth century be traced: the mitigation of orthodoxy, the softening of older, mechanical, and harsh conceptions of God and His relations to the world; the exaltation of Christian experience; the dominance of ethical interest; a marked humanitarianism; a lingering, if sporadic, interest in perfection; and a predilection for organization. But these have prepared the way for exaggeration and for developments which have gone farther than the devout ever dreamed. Indeed, the preaching of Methodists and of Methodistic denominations prepared the way for much which would not have been accepted widely if the shibboleths of popular religion and of theology had not often been the same. And these developments. have brought at last a storm of criticism which bids fair to bring all that is called '"'modern religion" into disrepute. This is not the place to review the whole field upon which there is to-day so much marching and countermarching that the main impression obtainable by the onlooker is simply that there is something vitally wrong with religion. The purpose here is to consider only those attacks which are directed at elements in modern faith which have relation, howJohn Wesley and Modern Religion ever remote, with Methodism. On the whole, the charges against religion to-day are that it is not religious, and that, such as it is, there is no efficient gearing with the problems of contemporary life.
That religion has in large part lost its vitality, and more especially in the areas where the cultural level is relatively high, needs no particular proving. Certainly there remains, in sections of Protestantism at least, little sense of the awfulness of God, of Otto's mysterium tremendum. If the God of Calvinism is dead, his place has been taken by an Indulgent Being who is surprisingly like a complacent American father.» The story of the prodigal son no longer astonishes by its portrayal of forgiveness. 'The modern reaction is: "What else could the father have done?"
And the a fortiori argument once so popular against the Calvinistic conception of an angry God, that the Deity could not do what a good man would not do, has been changed to read that God does only what a good man does.
But more directly is attack being made against an overemphasis upon Christian experience. If we can learn about God only from our own experience, then
God may be only an experience of man. And so He has become for many only a projection of man's ideals, social and individual. So far has this gone that a serious student of worship is compelled to begin with the question whether a modern man can worship.* All this has been helped by the domination of science, which has intrenched man and his experiences within the closed system of the natural order. .If man can know God only through his own experiences and man
John Wesley and Modern Religion is only a part of the natural order, then God becomes simply one factor, if one, in the Universe that man knows.
Religion, so conceived, loses its autonomy and becomes only a part of the cultural life of man. Indeed, the term is broadened to include all man's non-egoistic interests. In 1915, President McGiffert recognized this tendency in modern religion, when he commented on the influence of Schleiermacher: "'one of the most notable things in the modern situation is the vast enlargement and enrichment of the idea of religion to which the emancipation from the old servitude has led. It is widely recognized to-day that whenever a man is interested in something else than the life of the mere senses, or is devoted to something eeeenoS else than his own selfish welfare, there is religion." ®
If God has been humanized, and if religion has been reduced to a cultural phenomenon, the ethical side of religion has been exalted. Be religious in order to be good was the watchword of the Enlightenment; but modern religion has tended to say that morality is religion. And in compensation for the loss of God, man has deified his moral passion. Consequently, the very age that saw the attenuation of traditional religion saw the rise of an even deeper ethical interest.
This was also a part of man's modern outlook. Since God, such as He is, is to be found in man's moral ideals, these ideals may be realized. Utopiais just around the corner. 'Therefore, in America especially, the emotional drive formerly directed toward God and canalized in love toward God and toward men because they __ are His children, was utilized for reform. But this
John Wesley and Modern Religion very reform has run into strange waters. Whereas the western world seemed on its happy way to a promised land of motor cars and high wages, the debacle of the post-war period has left men hopeless as to the ultimate attainment of social perfection. So long as "'progress" seemed always to win, it was enough if religion furnished the cheering section in our economic and political stadium. But progress fumbled, and the cheer leaders have been strangely quiet. With a somewhat sickening abruptness it has become evident that modern religion has little to say when the Chamber of Commerce fails.
In another way, there is disillusionment. So sure was everyone that the battle for religious tolerance had been won, that it has been difficult to persuade some that there is actually being fought out again the old struggle between man's conscience and the State.
And it is hard to meet the logic of a State which claims to be the embodiment of man's national and racial ideals and demands the right to take its place in the pantheon of gods who are themselves simply the projections of man's ideals. It is true also that much of the demand that the Church shall be free to speak on every issue, political, economic, and moral, seems beside the point when one remembers that the Church has little or nothing to say.
The dilemma of modern Christianity is plain enough. Having reduced religion to the experience of the religious man, having refused to seek God except in consciousness, modern man has awakened to the fact that God has been lost in the Universe of which man is so small a part. And man, the magnifJohn Wesley and Modern Religion icent conqueror of the nineteenth century, has been lost also. The war informed many people of a depth in human depravity which had been forgotten or ignored. This was followed by a popular literature which left no cupboard unopened. Whereas it had been the thing to look on the sunny side of the street, readers came to expect nothing less than incest and murder in their mildest novels. The list of evils from which people pray to be delivered in the Litany seemed to many a woefully inadequate account of human perversities. Especially was this true for those whom psychoanalysis taught to believe that the minds of clergymen and superannuated maiden aunts are sinks of iniquity. It was a bad time to talk of the evidences of Christian experience.
It has become, moreover, a bad time to talk of the possibility of "educating" men into the Kingdom of God. If human beings are as they have been pictured in popular literature and in popular "'scientific" books for the last decade or so, then the doctrine of Calvin and Jonathan Edwards are understatements of mankind's predicament. And what is true of religious education is true also of the "social gospel."
The prohibition debacle marked the end of an era in man's hope for social regeneration. Right or wrong, the prohibition crusade in America was the result of a great faith in man's betterment by social control; and its end was for many a terrible disillusionment.
In the field of politics the same thing is to be seen.
Religious writers tiring of smooth talk about a better world are saying openly that moral man lives always in an immoral society. It is a poor time for idealists
John Wesley and Modern Religion and for the hope to build Jerusalem in England's fair and pleasant land.
It is perhaps unnecessary to say that many voices have been raised against the reduction of religion to human aspirations or to a corollary of modern optimism. In this country, notable efforts have been madeto establish a "realistic theology" which will do justice to the hard facts of life without sacrificing all that has been gained by earlier emphasis upon Christian experience and moral effort.® But the major attacks which have been launched against modern religion have gone at the roots.
The most widely advertised of these is a reassertion of the transcendence of God. God is in heaven, man is upon earth. There can be no commerce between them save as God breaks through from beyond upon man's passivity. "All experience is itself relative.
Wherever experience is taken as the starting point, the religious relationship from the very first is based upon something human and relative which cannot possibly represent the Absolute."* And man is evil; there is a positive something blocking the way between him and God which can only be removed by the Atonement of Christ. There is no room for earthbound man to seek assurance and comfort, save in his knowledge of his own sinfulness and of the revelation made in Christ. Certainly, there is little place here for a social ethic based upon the possibility of man's achieving a better world here and now. The return is to a more than Calvinistic conception of God yonder and man here, and to man's utter dependence upon the will of God, unconditioned, absolute.
John Wesley and Modern Religion There is also an attack being made upon modern religion from another quarter.' The subjectivism and optimism of religion is assailed by Catholic doctrine.
Man has nothing to worship because he finds God only in himself. Against this is set the "objective" worship of Catholicism; man is made dependent upon the grace of God mediated through the Church. Authority is not in the religious consciousness but in the institution. Over against the anarchic character of present-day religion, Catholicism sets the unified authority of the Church which interprets and directs and mediates for man. Catholicism spends no time talking about bringing in the Kingdom of God by the natural efforts of men of good-will. Christianity is a supernatural life, and only those whose lives have been raised to the supernatural plane by the infusion of grace can hope to be lifted above the evils inherent in the natural man.
It would be useless to elaborate upon the importance of these two movements, which have been brought to attention in this country mainly by the followers of Karl Barth and by Anglo-Catholicism.
Their attacks are against liberalism in religion, and the term takes in much more than the characteristicsof modern religion which have been detailed here. But both strike at any religion which gives a primary place to Christian experience; and Barthianism seems to many to make ethical striving not indifferent but apparently useless for this world. Both correct tendencies in modern religion which most theologians now deplore; and it would seem that, unless there is amendment of these obvious fallacies, there must be a comfe
John Wesley and Modern Religion plete reorientation of the religious thought of this generation.
It has been the purpose of this study to determine, as accurately as possible, the facts concerning John Wesley's experience and theology. In the course of the study it has become apparent that in many ways his thought differed from that which has been popularly ascribed to him. Undoubtedly his influence in the nineteenth century was along lines coinciding with the Romantic interests manifested in so many fields in that century. But the full significance of Wesley cannot be understood by a study of those parts of his message which were most readily appreciated by his contemporaries or by his immediate followers. Every generation hears according to its predilections, and often the very assumptions which a prophet holds as primary are lost. This, the present writer ventures to think, is precisely what happened to John Wesley.
The real Wesley, seen in the light of his full intention, has.a word not only for a generation exulting in spiritual freedom and in the employment of their emotions in religious experience, but for a time that has seen the results of overemphasis upon these elements of religion.
Over against a humanistic religion it is entirely proper to set Wesley's religion of grace.® Religion, for Wesley, is God-given. This, it must be repeated, is not the note of one Christian system but of historic
Christianity from the beginning. Religion is directed toward God, not as a natural law, not as a projection of man's ideals, not as the creation of his social ''consciousness," but as objective reality. Only, it would
O15 John Wesley and Modern Religion be untrue to Wesley and to countless other Christian thinkers, to make God completely_ objective in the sense that man and the world are outside of him as a table is objective to the cabinet worker who makes it. In so far as eighteenth-century terminology made it possible, Wesley expressed his belief in a God who is both transcendent and immanent. Modern nervous- "ness over "both-ands" ought not to make us forget that some things are both-and. Wesley's belief in God as objective Reality and his God-centered religion of grace did not commit him to a God who is
"completely other," whose commerce with man is only by a breaking through from the beyond upon man's incapacity and passivity.
Wesley's opinion of the nature of man cannot be described simply by saying that he accepted the dogma of the Fall. It is truer to say that Wesley expressed his essential ideas of man through this doctrine, adapted and interpreted in the light of eighteenthcentury philosophy, natural science, and psychology, as well as eighteenth-century theology. Whether
Wesley would have believed in the dogma of the Fall of Man if he had lived in the nineteenth century no one knows, but for Wesley in the eighteenth century there was no other explanation possible to a religious man educated as he had been. But it is evident to all who read his writings that he was sure that the contemporary picture of man bore out the doctrine that man is evil. His own experiences and his observations of war and slavery were his evidences. There is a universe of difference between man as Wesley knew him in America and Europe and the "natural
John Wesley and Modern Religion man" of Rousseau's rosy dreams. Yet the inference must not be pushed too far.
Wesley did not conceive of man as absolutely corrupted and helpless to the point that he can be saved only by the breaking through of the irresistible grace of God. If there were such a thing as a purely "'natural man," this would be so. But there is no "'natural man." All men have the preventing grace of God which enables them to co-operate with grace. Man is thus dependent upon God, but man is also dependent upon his own efforts; for no grace is effectual without the response of man. This is neither Calvinism nor Rousseauism. It is a realistic view of man's evil, individual and social, coupled with a belief that man can be rescued from his dire condition by the grace of God seconded by man's effort.
"The bias of nature is set the wrong way," said Wesley; and he did not mean that the universe is made wrong, but that things are out of joint. And what modern writer, psychoanalyzing his grandfather or viewing the iniquities of society, will say that he was in error? But something can be done about it besides waiting for the irresistible grace of God or of Economic Forces. In a little pamphlet directed against the teachings of Rousseau's Emile, Wesley states one thing that can be done. "Education," he wrote, "'is designed to set it right. This, by the grace of God, is to turn the bias from self-will, pride, anger, revenge, and the love of the world, to resignation, lowliness, meekness, and the love of God.'® Wesley's interest was primarily in the individual, and it may be said, once for all, that his educational methods were usually
John Wesley and Modern Religion wrong; but his conception of the place of education for Christian living was right. Man, co-operating with the grace of God, can do something to change the bias.
But Wesley's realism in regard to man extended beyond a pessimistic opinion of man's bias toward evil.
He did not expect that man's experience of conversion and of present salvation would necessarily produce a Christian life. Therefore, he included in the program of his societies a system of education and of discipline. For this he made use of the traditional exercises of the Christian Church, fasting, meditation, prayer, and constant good works, as well as the guidance of religious societies -and classes. 'There is no claim that Wesley's system is one which could be adopted in all ages and times. It was freely charged in the middle of the last century by writers in the main sympathetic, that the structure of Methodism narrowed the life of its adherents, perpetuated a cramping and erroneous set of doctrines, and encouraged an uncontrolled emotionalism. Whether this is true or not is beside the point. What Wesley intended for a people, largely uneducated and cared for by no religious agency, and what may have come of his system are different things. But in a day when religion is rebuked for an unwarranted trust in a discredited human nature, Wesley stands out as a realistic leader who believed that the bias of human nature can only be changed by the grace of God plus discipline and education.
And this was to be carried on within a Church.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, Isaac Taylor John Wesley and Modern Religion criticized the Methodists for the "sectarianism" of their organization. But Wesley did not intend for his followers to be organized into the close system of a sect, much less into an imitation of a modern business corporation. The Church was to furnish the broader outlook, while the societies within the Church provided intense discipline and training. If Methodists turned their societies into a "gathered" church, a sect for the converted, Wesley isnot toblame. While he denied divine authority to any type of organization, he never conceived of Christianity without a Church. To him the ministry is a ministry sent of God but set apart by the Church, and the sacraments are means of grace. The true Church is always the invisible company of God's children, but the visible
Church is necessary for a Christian's life here. There must be corporate life and worship within the "'catholic seminary of divine love."
Wesley could not have shared the hope of the nineteenth century—and many of. his followers—that God in His goodness is automatically bringing the world nearer and nearer to the Utopia of the Kingdom. A Tory, he did not share the growing enthusiasm of his age for social reform. The reason is largely that he was a Tory; but another reason is that he did not believe human nature sufficiently good for such large-scale experiments. Human nature must be changed first. True he would have nothing of the limitations of providence which were current in orthodox eighteenth-century theology. God is in everything, nature, history, and in the actions of the man who would respond to grace. He held to a belief in Sh John Wesley and Modern Religion God's personal providence that is impossible for this age; but he did not believe in inevitable progress. The individual or nation that sinneth shall die. Only changed men can bring a changed world. It was oldfashioned in the days of Rousseau and Cordorcet; it is new-fashioned now.
It is unnecessary to add to what has already been said about Wesley's ethical teaching. Man must goon striving; and so highly did Wesley value moral effort that he was sure that God would finally reject none who feared Him and worked righteousness. For the heathen this meant those who followed the light they had. But the true Christian lives a supernatural life: it is the life of God in the soul of man. And living so, there is no compromise with worldly orders or ideas. This gives the anachronistic tone to his teaching about money. Man's vocation is in the world, and so far as he can he lives in it; but he judges the world by Christian standards. In this Wesley recaptured, or rather carried over, the traditional autonomy of Christianity. There can be no surrender to the time-spirit: Christians in their outlook on life must be something more than mirrors of contemporary economic and political theories; in Wesley's own words, they must be "'singular" or be damned.
Wesley was also, it must not be left unsaid, a son of the Enlightenment. The great movement which did so much to free Western men from the shackles of superstition did much also for the founder of Methodism. If the modern revolt against what is called liberalism means a return to unworthy ideas about God, to aristocratic doctrines of the elect, to a John Wesley and Modern Religion fanatical shutting up of the grace of God to those who can pronounce theological shibboleths or to those who belong to certain cults, then the world had better go on with liberalism. And Wesley is not a forerunner of any such crusade for obscurantism. If his heterodoxies have become orthodoxies, it is his spirit that counts. He conceived of the Christian life as extending through all the stages from little children to perfect men and women. Little children are little children, and adults are adults; but God is the Father of all, and the Church is the home for all who desire to flee from the wrath to come and to be saved from their sins and who desire the help of the people of God in working out their salvation.
Notable in Wesley's liberalism is his doctrine of Christian authority. If the nineteenth century—and some modern commentators—have erred in calling
Wesley as a witness to the sole authority of Christian experience, so do they err who make Wesley a fundamentalist who would have nothing but the naked
-word of Scripture. He knew the Christian tradition and respected it; the early Fathers are the best interpreters of the Scriptures: but man's reason and experience must also be called in. We know little of God, according to Wesley, speaking of natural theology, save as we know him in the world about us: and all man's knowledge must be brought into play here.
In terms of eighteenth-century thought, old-fashioned enough now, Wesley was contending that man must use all the channels open to human personality that by all means he may reach the ultimate authority
John Wesley and Modern Religion E For Wesley, then, God is God and not man; and man is a sinful creature living in an imperfect body, as his times—and ours—attest. Nor can education or social efforts alone suffice to bring order to his chaos and righteousness to his ways. But neither is the unassisted grace of God, mediated through sacraments or experienced in emotional moments, conversion or anything else, sufficient for the regeneration of man and his society. There must be constant moral struggle, the effort of man in education and discipline. The grace of God is given, but it must be accompanied by man's effort. And not alone; there is no such thing as "'solitary religion."> Man must have a corporate religious life, and the sacraments are means of grace, material accompaniments of God's continuous favor. In all there must be the free exercise of man's mind working on the material of tradition, of the world about him, and of his own experience.
But to say this and no more would be to repeat the — error of the nineteenth century in another way.
Wesley's religion was a personal experience of the love of God and of the love of man. In him lived again the spirit of the great mystics, not their ecstasies but _ their sense of the nearness and goodness of God. With him religion became once more a flaming fire, a pas-_ sion for perfection which swept aside economic theories and ancient respectabilities. He was not in the genteel tradition, but in the way of the prophets.
Entrenched social wrong and individual evil alike became the enemies of the Almighty. But he was also a prophet of the joyful heart. Again and again, John
Wesley warned his followers that he was not responJohn Wesley and Modern Religion sible for the theology of Charles' hymns; but he kept on singing them. Religion is joy and peace, as well as righteousness. If God is a hidden God, He may be found, in part at least, in the experience of man; for religion is the life of God in the soul of man.
It is this combination of mystical experience with the ethical, the rational, and the institutional elements in religion which gives Wesley his place in the history of Christianity. Phrased in another way, it may be said that he joined the tendencies toward regulation and control, toward uniformity and universality, with the tendencies toward emotion, diversity, and freedom.
And he did this without sacrificing either the doctrine of grace or the ethical interests of religion: 'The earth brings forth no corn (as the}soul no holiness)," he wrote, "without both the care and toil of man, and the benign influence of heaven." For our times, therefore, he is a prophet warning against the separation of God and man by minimizing the place of either. But above all he is a prophet calling men to 'repentance. The problems of our fathers have given
place to the dilemmas of the modern world. But the ancient word lives on. And those who would make normative neither the traditions of past ages nor the latest findings of contemporaries, may well turn to one who stood at the beginning of our modern world, bringing with him old-world conceptions of Christianity and merging them with the intuitions of the newer time.
NOTES THE basis of modern editions of the works of John Wesley is the third edition, edited by Thomas Jackson in 1831. Quotations from the works in these notes are from an 1872 reprint of this edition in 14 volumes. The pagination differs somewhat in different issues, but the references can be easily found. The standard edition of the Journal was edited by Nehemiah Curnock in 8 volumes, London, Epworth Press,
1909-16; of the first 53 sermons, the Standard Sermons, edited by Edward H. Sugden, 2 vols., London, Epworth Press, 1921; of the letters, The Letters of John Wesley, edited by John Telford, 8 vols., London,
Epworth Press, 1931. The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, collected and arranged by G.
Osborn, 13 vols., London, Wesleyan Methodist Conference Office, 1868-72, are also frequently referred toin the notes. The bibliography of the Wesleys is by Green, second edition, London, Methodist Publishing
House, 1906. The Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society are indispensable aids to all students of Wesley.
CHAPTER I 1. For unfavorable criticism of Methodism as a social and political force, see especially the works of J. L. and B. Hammond, e.g., The Town Labourer,
1760-1832, New York, Longmans, 1919. A more favorable view is taken by Elie Halévy, History of the English People in 1815, London, Unwin, 1924.
Recent books which display a sound knowledge of the Wesleyan Movement and of English social and political history are: Wellman J. Warner, The Wesleyan Movement in the Industrial Revolution, London, Longmans, 1930;
Maldwyn Hughes, John Wesley and the Eighteenth Century, New York, John Wesley and Modern Religion Abingdon, 1933; E. R. Taylor, Methodism and Politics, 1791-1851, Cambridge, University Press, 1935.
2. Herbert Heaton, art., "Industrial Revolution," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences.
3. See Maldwyn Hughes, op. cit., chap. vi.
4. Johnson's England, Edited by A. S. Turberville, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1933, vol. ii, p. 29.
5. Cf. William Allan Neilson, Essentials of Poetry, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, c. 1912.
6. Robert M. Wernaer, Romanticism and the Romantic School in Germany, New York, Appleton, 1910, pp. 6-7.
7. Cf. Irving Babbitt's works, esp. Rousseau and Romanticism, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1919. On the different definitions of Romanticism, see Paul Kaufman, "Defining Romanticism," Modern Language
Notes, vol. 40 (1925), pp. 193-204; Arthur O. Lovejoy, "On the Discriminations of Romanticisms," Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, vol. 39 (1924), pp. 229-253. The most extensive bibliography of Romanticism is in Babbitt's Rousseau and Romanticism. A later, but much shorter, bibliography is appended to G. Ant. Borghese's art., "Romanticism," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. .
8. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, New York, Macmillan, 1927, p. 118.
9. E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, London, Kegan Paul, 1925, p. 299.
10. See Chauncey Brewster Tinker's charming book by this title, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1922. -See also H. N. Fairchild, The Noble Savage,
New York, Columbia University Press, 1928.
11. Arthur O. Lovejoy, "Optimism and Romanticism," Publications of the Modern Language Association, vol. 20 (1927), pp. 921-945.
12. J. H. Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1926, p. 391.
13. H. L. Stewart, "Theology and Romanticism," Harvard Theological Review, vol. 13 (1920), pp. 361-389.
14. Otto Pfleiderer, The Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of Its History, — Eng. Trans., London, 1886-88, vol. i, p. 262.
15. John Baillie, The Interpretation of Religion, New York, Scribners, 1928, pt. ii, chap. iii.
16. A. C. McGiffert, Protestant Thought before Kant, New York, Scribners, 1915, p. 175. For suggestions as to the relations between Methodism and the Romantic Movement in Literature, see A. W. Harrison, '"Romanticism in Religious Revivals," Hibbert Journal, July, 1933; F. Brompton Harvey,
"Methodism and the Romantic Movement," London Quarterly and Holborn Review, July, 1934.
CHAPTER II 1. Norman Sykes, Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, 1669-1748, Oxford, University Press, 1926, p. 5.
Notes 2. Sydney G. Dimond, The Psychology of the Methodist Revival, Oxford, University Press, 1926, p. 25.
3. Johnson's England, vol. i, p. i.
4. Matthew Tindal, Christianity as Old as Creation (first edition, London, 1730; the edition quoted was published in Newburgh, 1798), pp. 188-190
5. Arthur O. Lovejoy, "The Parallel of Deism and Classicism," Modern Philology, vol. 29 (1932), p. 3.
6. The Art of Preaching: in Imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry. London:
Printed for R. Dodsley, at Tully's Head, in Pall Mall.
7. The classical account of the Religious Societies is Josiah Woodward, Account of the Rise and Progress of the Religious Societies in the City of London. 'The sixth edition of this work was published in 1744. For good accounts of the societies, see John S. Simon, John Wesley and the Religious
Societies, London, Epworth Press, 1921, chap. i; J. Wickham Legg, English Church Life from the Restoration to the Tractarian Movement, London,
Longmans, 1914, chap. ix.
8. Legg, op. cit., p. 309.
9. Ibid., p. 310. - 10. Ibid., pp. 295-296, 313.
11. J. H. Overton, Life in the English Church, 1660-1714, London, 1885, pp. 216-219; cf. Simon, op. cit., p. 21.
12. Legg, op. cit., p. 338. On devotional works in this period see below, chap. xi.
13. On Wesley's indebtedness to Jeremy Taylor, see Curnock's Introduction to the Standard Edition of the Journal, vol. i, p. 51, and Wesley's Preface to the first journal, vol. i, p. 83. Wesley was not introduced to Taylor, nor for that matter to Kempis and other devotional writers, by his mother, as has often been suggested. Curnock thought that the most likely person was a younger daughter of the Rev. Lionel Kirkham, rector of Stanton.
(Journal, vol. i, pp. 15-16.) 14. Simon, op. ci#., p. 51.
16. Thomas Comber, Christianity no Enthusiasm, London, 1678, p. 88.
17. See G. M. Trevelyan, England under Queen Anne: Blenheim, London, Longmans, 1930, p. 52.
18. Legg, op. cit., p. 383.
20. Samuel Wesley, Poems on Several Occasions, London, 1736, pp. 65-77.
21. Trevelyan, op. cit., p. 70.
22. Robert Nelson, Practice of True Devotion, in relation to the End, as well as the Means of Religion, London, n.d., p. xx.
24. R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, London, John Murray, 1926, p. 227.
25. On this phase of seventeenth-century English religious life, see Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, London, Macmillan, 1909; and Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries, London, Macmillan, 1914. On John Wesley and Modern Religion the early Quakers, see William Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism,
London, Macmillan, 1912. Margaret Lewis Bailey, Milton and Jakob Boehme, New York, Oxford University Press, 1914, attempts to trace the influence of Boehme in England, particularly on Milton. I have tried to trace the doctrine of immediate inspiration in this period in my Historical Backgrounds of Early Methodist Enthusiasm, New York, Columbia University Press, 1931.
26. Lee, op. cit., pp. 56-57, and the references given there.
CHAPTER III THERE are numerous lives of John Wesley; but the classic work is still Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of John Wesley,
3 vols., London, Harper & Brothers, 1870. The facts of Wesley's life and much related material have been brought together in the light of recent research in five volumes by the late Dr. John S.
Simon: John Wesley and the Religious Societies, London, Epworth Press, 1921; John Wesley and the Methodist Societies, London,
Epworth Press, 1923; John Wesley and the Advance of Methodism, London, Epworth Press, 1925; John Wesley the Master Builder, London, Epworth Press, 1927; John Wesley, the Last Phase, London, Epworth Press, 1934. The last volume was completed by Dr. Simon's son-in-law, Dr. A. W. Harrison. Among the shorter lives of Wesley may be mentioned John Telford, Life of John Wesley, London, new edition revised, Epworth Press, 1924
(first edition, 1886); W. H. Fitchett, Wesley and His Century, London, Smith Elder, 1906 (often reprinted, in this country by Cokesbury Press); W. H. Hutton, John Wesley, London, Macmillan, 1927 (in "Great Churchman" series) ; Umphrey Lee, The Lord's Horseman, New York, Appleton-Century, 1928; Arnold
Lunn, John Wesley, Zondervan, 1929. Robert Southey's The Life of John Wesley, 2 vols., London, 1820, is still worth reading.
. Works, vol. xiii, p. 272.
. Hutton, John Wesley, p. 13.
Letters, vol.) ¥i,)\p.0t5 6.
. Works, vol:, viii,' p:' 227.
MsRhWN. Arminian Magazine, vol. i (1778), p. 141.
6. Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, A.M., London, Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1866, p. 439.
Te Tbid ip 339) 8. Ibid., pp. 383, 387; see Legg, English Church Life, p. 35.
9. Tyerman, op. cit., p. 127.
Notes 10. Letters, vol. viii, p. 269.
Piheipie-. vol; 1, po 25.
12. For this and the following quotations, see Journal, vol. iii, pp. 33-39.
13. Tyerman, Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. i, p. 23.
14. Journal, vol. i, p. 476. tS. fyerman, op, cit., vol. i, 'p..18.
16. On Oxford in the eighteenth century see C. E. Mallet, A History of the University of Oxford, Oxford, University Press, vol. iii, 1927. Short, popular accounts of eighteenth-century university education are given in Preserved Smith, A History of Modern Culture, New York, Henry Holt, 1930, vol. ii, p. 414, and in Johnson's England, vol. ii, chap. xxii, "Education,
Schools, and Universities," by C. E. Mallet.
17. Journal, vol. i, pp. 65-66. See the whole of Curnock's description of Wesley's first Oxford Diary in Journal, vol. i, pp. 36-70.
18. N. Amburst, Terrae-Filius: or, the Secret History of the University of Oxford; in Several Essays, London, first edition, 1726. The quotations are from the third edition, 1754, pp. 102-104.
19. See references cited above, n. 16.
20. Works, vol. xiii, p. 460.
22. Letters, vol. i, pp. 39-40.
23. Works, vol. xiii, pp. 498-499.
24. Cf. F. M. Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, New rok Macmillan, 1905 (now published by Truth Seeker), p. 148.
CHAPTER IV . Works, vol. xi, p. 366.
. Ibid., vol. vii, p. 421.
. Ibid., vol. xi, pp. 366-367. hwnN~ ibsd., vol. xi, p. 367.
5. The Works of the Reverend William Law, London, Privately reprinted for G. Moreton, 1892-93, vol. iii, pp. 6, 98, 8, 7, 25.
6. See below, p. 120, and note.
7. Works of the Reverend William Law, vol. iii, p. 25.
8. Sermon xiii, Standard Sermons, vol. i, pp. 267-268, 276.
Suaberrers, vol. iv, p..'299.
10. Ibid., vol. i, p. 114.
11. Sermon ci, Works, vol. vii, p. 148.
12. Ibid., vol. vii, p. 147.
13. Apostolic Constitutions, bk. viii, par. vi. 'The translations are those of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
14. Ibid., bk. ii, par. lxiii. On gold and costly apparel, see bk. i, par. iii.
15. Letters, vol. i, p. 217. Cf. letter to Mrs. Chapman, Ibid., pp. 218220) :
16. Ibid., vol. i, p. 113. On Wesley's asceticism in his later teaching, see below, chap. viii. ; John Wesley and Modern Religion 17. Ibid., vol. i, pp. 119-120.
18. Toth, Vola, p. 21.
19. This and the following quotation are from Lef##ers, vol. i, p. 19.
20. Ibid., vol. i, p. 20.
21 Nba. VOunsy ps eee 22. Ibid., vol. i, pp. 166-178.
23. Journal, vol. i, p. 419.
24. See below, chap. vii.
25. Letters, vol. i, p. 207.
26. Wesley's letter to Dr. Burton is in Lefters, vol. i, pp. 188-191.
27. Maximin Piette, La réaction wesleyénne dans Vévolution protestante, Brussels, Albert Dewit, 1925, p. 426.
28. Journal, vol. i, p. 152.
29. Ibid., vol. i, pp. 142-143.
30. Curnock's note to Journal, vol. i, p. 141; Piette, op. cit., pp. 430-431.
31. Journal, vol. i, p. 328.
32. Ibid., vol. i, pp. 328-329.
33. Ibid., vol. i, p. 415.
34. The quotations are from a reprint of the Charleston Hymnbook made by Rev. G. Osborn in 1882. There are only two copies of the hymnbook known to be extant; one of these is in the New York Public Library, 42d
Street and Fifth Avenue.
35. Letters, vol. i, pp. 218-220.
36. Preface to Haliburton's Life, which Wesley published in 1739, The quotation is given from Works, vol. xiv, p. 212.
37. Epistle of Clement, chap. xxxi.
38. Ibid., chap. xxxii.
39. Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, chap. xiv.
41. "Life of Haliburton," Wesley's Works, First Collected Edition, Bristol, 1771-1774, vol. x, pp. 295-296.
42. First Collected Edition of Wesley's Works, vol. viii, p. 239.
43. Journal, vol. i, p. 435.
44, Ibid., vol. i, p. 417.
45. Hymn xx of "Psalms and Hymns for Wednesday and Friday" ia the Charleston Hymnbook.
CHAPTER V . Journal, vol. i, p. 435.
. [bid., vol. i, pp. 418-420. weNe. [bid., vol. i, pp. 421-424.
4. Ibid., vol. i, p. 440.
5. The Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley, A.M., London, Wesleyan Methodist Book Concern, n.d., entry for April 25, 1738, vol. i, p. 85.
6. John Wesley's Journal, vol. i, p. 455, entry for April 23, 1738.
7. Piette, La réaction wesleyénne, p. 445.
Notes 8. Journal, vol. i, p. 461.
9. Ibid., vol. i, p. 462.
10. For a discussion of Wesley's translation of Bohler's Latin, see Proceedings Wesley Historical Society, vol. v, p. 25.
11. Journal, vol. i, pp. 470-471. ~ 12) Tbid:, \vol. |i, p.472.
13. Ibid., vol. i, pp. 475-476.
14. Dimond, Psychology of the Methodist Revival, p. 78. Dimond's discussion of Wesley's ''Religious Sentiment" in chap. iv is a penetrating psychological study of his conversion.
15. Letters, vol. i, p. 262.
16. Journal, vol. i, p. 476.
17. Journal, vol.ji, pp. 125-126. "The summary is in the third person, but there is no reason to doubt that it is Wesley's own condition here described.
Both Curnock and Sugden so understand it.
18. Quoted by J. E. Rattenbury, Wesley's Legacy to the World, Nashville, Cokesbury, 1929, p. 77.
19. Journal, vol. i, p. 298.
20. Letters, vol. v, p. 16.
21. Ibid., vol. iii, p. 320.
22. Ibid., vol. vii, p. 319.
23. The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., First Collected Edition, Bristol, 1771-1774, vol. i, "To the Reader."
24. These corrections are given in the Standard Edition of the Journal, ad loc.
25. George Croft Cell, The Rediscovery of John Wesley, New York, Holt, 1935, pp. 179-180. The statement that Wesley never allowed these corrections "to get into print at all nor is he responsible'? for their publication, is the less understandable since two of Wesley's best-known biographers,
Whitehead, 1793, and Tyerman, 1870, both explicitly refer to the appearance of these corrections in the errata to volume xxvi of the First Collected
Edition. It is in perfect accord with Wesley's habits that he did not trouble to correct the edition of the first and second journals which was appearing in 1775. He had prepared his corrections for the Collected Edition, and, despite his printer, he got them into print and was responsible for their publication.
26. Works, vol. xiii, p. 307.
27. See Works, vol. vii, pp. 422-424.
28. Ibid., vol. xiii, p. 307.
29. Letters, vol. v, p. 281.
30. Ibid., vol. vii, p. 298.
31. Dimond, op. cit., p. 100.
32. Piette describes the faith which Bohler urged upon Wesley as "'l'amour de Dieu intensement percu," La réaction wesleyénne, p. 445. Piette's discussion of Wesley's religious experience is very suggestive.
33. Eugene W. Lyman, The Meaning and Truth of Religion, New York, Scribners, 1933, pp. 144-145.
John Wesley and Modern Religion 34. Journal, vol. viii, p. 127.
35. Ibid., vol. v, p. 94.
36. Letters, vol. v, p. 147.
37. Ibid, i.vol.owiup. 949.
38. Sermon xxi, Standard Sermons, vol. i, pp. 430-431.
39. Letters, vol. v, p. 206.
40. Ibid., vol. iv, pp. 344-345.
41. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 120.
42. Ibid., vol. iv, p. 103.
43. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 44.
44. See below, chap. x, for fuller reference to the Sunday Service.
45. See T. H. Barratt, "The Place of the Lord's Supper in Early Methodism,"> London Quarterly Review, July, 1923.
46. F. Luke Wiseman, Charles Wesley, New York, Abingdon, 1932, p. 172.
CHAPTER VI On Wesley's theology, the student should consult: H. B.
Workman, "The Place of Methodism in the Catholic Church," introductory chapter in A New History of Methodism, 2 vols., London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1909; Maximin Piette, La Réaction wesleyénne dans Vévolution protestante; George Eayrs, John Wesley: Christian Philosopher and Church Founder, London, Epworth
Press, 1926; Howard Watkins-Jones, The Holy Spirit from Arminius to Wesley, London, Epworth Press, 1929; J. Ernest Rattenbury, Wesley's Legacy to the World, Nashville, Cokesbury,
1929; R. Newton Flew, The Idea of Perfection in Christian T heology, Oxford, University Press, 1934. After this manuscript was completed, there came to hand a Heidelberg theological dissertation by Dr. Erich von Eicken, Rechtfertigung und Heiligung bei
Wesley dargestellt unter Vergleichung mit den Anschauungen Luthers und Luthertums, 1934. I am glad to be able to cite this excellent monograph in support of a number of points in this and the following chapters.
1. See especially, C. C. J. Webb, Religious Thought in the Oxford Move- — ment, London, S.P.C.K., 1928, p. 53. See also R. Newton Flew, 'sMethodism and the Catholic Tradition," in Northern Catholicism, Centenary Studies in the Oxford and Parallel Movements, ed. by N. P. Williams and Charles Harris,
London, S.P.C.K., 1933.
2. Cf. Trevelyan, Blenheim, pp. 60-61.
3. Works, vol. x, pp. 350-351.
Notes 4. Sermon v, Standard Sermorts, vol. i, p. 121. See Letiers, vol. vi, p. 298; vol. iii, pp. 108-109.
§. Works, vol. vi, p. 198; cf. vol. viii, pp. 197-198.
. Sermon Ixvii, Works, vol. vi, p. 316.
. Sermon xviii, Standard Serurcns, vol. i, p. 364.
WNCON. Sermon Ixvii, Works, vol. v:. pp. 320-322.
9. Works, vol. vili, p. 465.
10. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, chap. v.
11. Works, vol. x, pp. 361-363, his tract, "Thoughts upon God's Sovereignty."
12. See for idea of scale of being, Wesley, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation; or, a Compendium of Natural Philosophy, London, 1784, vol. iv, pp. 72-114.
13. Sermon Ix, Works, vol. vi, p. 246.
14. Sermon Ixvii, Works, vol. vii, pp. 222-223.
15. Sermon Ix, vol. vi, p. 244. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part) 1,-2)\q. I, art.$:'q: 5: ad)23 q. II, art. 2; Plotinus, Enneads I, 4 and\5;
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, x, 1176a. (1 am indebted for these references to Professor Robert. L. Calhoun of Yale.) Lactantius, Divine Institutions, iti, x, says that "the chief good of man is in religion only: for the other things, even those which are supposed to be peculiar to man, are found in the other animals also."
16. Sermon Ix, Works, vol. vi, pp. 249-250. Wesley advances this as a "conjecture."
18. Sermon lvii, Works, vol. vi, p. 223.
19. Law's Works, vol. iii, p. 22.
20. Wesley's Works, vol. ix, p. 221. Wesley's treatise, "The Doctrine of Original Sin," is in Works, vol. ix, pp. 192-464. Sermon xxxviii, "Original
Sin" (Standard Sermons, vol. ii, pp. 207-225); Sermon xxxix, "The New Birth" (ibid., vol. ii, pp. 225-243); and Sermon Ivii, "On the Fall of Man"
(Works, vol. vi, pp. 215-224), should also be consulted for Wesley's views on the subject.
-21. On man's loss of the power of intuitive knowledge by the Fall, see "An Earnest Appeal," Works, vol. vii, pp. 13-15. Wesley's conception of faith will be discussed below, chap. vii.
22. Works, vol. x, pp. 470-471.
23. C. C. J. Webb, "The Nature of Religious Experience," Hibbert Journal, vol. xxxii (1933), pp. 18-19.
24. Sermon Ixxxv, Works, vol. vi, p. 512.
25. Charles Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion, Philadelphia, Hooker, 1860, p. 201.
26. Tyerman, The Life and Times of Samuel Wesley, p. 145. Cf. Beveridge, Ecclesia Anglicana Ecclesia Catholica; or, the Doctrine of the Church of England consonant to Scripture, Reason, and Fathers, Second edition, revised, Oxford, at the University Press, 1846, p. 279. The whole of BeverJohn Wesley and Modern Religion idge's chapter on Article X (pp. 274-285) should be read. Dr. Eicken, op. cit., sees that the doctrine of preventing grace is characteristic of Wesley's theology, and that it became increasingly important for him as Wesley grew older, causing him to modify some of the more extreme statements which he had made concerning man's total depravity.
27. The following quotations are from these two short tracts, Works, vol. xX, pp. 457-480. See Dr. Eicken's short excursus on "Wesley and Arminianism." In listing the influences which moved Wesley to reject determinism,
Eicken gives first place to the influence of Wesley's home, the atmosphere of which was that of Laudian Anglicanism. Only later did Wesley show any influence from the Remonstrant theologians. This seems to me corfect.
28. Sermon xxxii, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, p. 96.
29. Sermon xxxv, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, p. 154.
30. Letters, vol. ii, p. 387.
31. Works, vol. x, p. 484.
32. Letters, vol. vii, p. 106. In his Preface to the "Epistles of the Apostolical Fathers," Wesley used yet stronger language: "The plain inference is, not only that they were not mistaken in their interpretation of the gospel of Christ; but that in all the necessary parts of it, they were so assisted by the Holy Ghost, as to be scarce capable of mistaking. Consequently, we are to look on their writings, though not of equal authority with the holy Scriptures, (because neither were the authors of them called in so extraordinary a way to the writing of them, nor endued with so large a portion of the blessed Spirit,) yet as worthy of a much greater respect than any composures which have been made since; however men have afterwards written with more art, and a greater stock of human learning, than is to be found not only in the following pieces, but even in the New Testament itself." (Works, vol. xiv, p. 225.) | This was published in the first volume of the Christian
33. Lancelot Andrewes, Responsio ad Apologiam Cardinalis Bellarmini, Oxford, Parker, 1851, p. 233.
34, Herbert Thorndike, The Theological Works, Oxford, Parker, vol. ii, pt. ii, pp. 426-7. On the Nonjurors, see J. H. Overton, The Nonjurors, New York,
'Whittaker, 1903. For a short account of the Tractarians' interest in the early Fathers, see H. P. Liddon, Life of E. B. Pusey, London, Longmans, 18931897, vol. i, chap. xviii, "The Library of the Fathers." The exigencies of controversy with the Roman Catholics made it desirable to emphasize the Fathers of the undivided Church. 'The controversy with the Calvinists perhaps turned attention to the Fathers before Augustine.
35. Letters, vol. v, p. 364.
36. Ibid., vol. iv, p. 368.
37. Works, vol. viii, pp. 10-15.
39. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 339; cf. Sermon xviii, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 364: "we are to see the Creator in the glass of every creature."
40. Letters, vol. viii, p. 89.
41. Letters, vol. i, p. 172.
Notes 42. Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 383-385.
43. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 383.
44. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 136.
45. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 129.
46. Ibid., vol. vii, p. 392. See Journal, vol. i, p. 415n.
47. Cf. letter to Ann Loxdale, June, 1781, Letters, vol. vii, p. 67.
48. See H. B. Workman, "The Place of Methodism in the Catholic Church," introductory chapter to A New History of Methodism.
49. Letters, vol. i, p. 274.
50. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 120.
§1. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 387.
$2. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 290.
53. Ibid., vol. v, p. 24.
CHAPTER VII 1. See Letters, vol. iv, p. 297; Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 150; Works, vol. vii, p. 29. | 2. Letters, vol. viii, p. 218.
3. Works, vol. viii, pp. 10, 47.
4. Sermon xv, Standard Sermons, vol. i, pp. 301 ff.
7. Works, vol. viii, p. 48.
8. Letters, vol. vii, p. 298. Cf. the statement of one of Wesley's oftenquoted Fathers, Macarius: 'So very various is the way of grace in them, and such variety is there in the manner after which it conducts the soul, refreshing it according to the will and pleasure of God." (Homily x.)
9. Works, vol. viii, p. 24.
10. J. Agar Beet, "The Methodist Revival,' London Quarterly Review, January, 1920, pp. 54-69. But see H. B. Workman, New History of Methodism, vol. i, p. 54n.
11. George Croft Cell, op. cit., p. 199. On p. 153, Professor Cell speaks of Luther as the only authority, besides the Scriptures, which Wesley ever acknowledged "for his own doctrine of faith."
12. Letters, vol. iii, p. 321.
13. [bid., vol. iv, pp. 173-174.
14. Works, vol. viii, p. 13.
15. Ibid., vol. viii, p. 198.
16. "The Life of God in the Soul of Man," quoted from reprint in First Collected Edition of Wesley's Works, vol. viii, p. 301.
17. Works (third edition), vol. viii, p. 428.
18. Ibid., vol. viii, p. 48.
19. Sermon xxxi, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, p. 81.
20. Works, vol. vii, pp. 256-263.
21. See Augustine, "On Rebuke and Grace," chap. 40; Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. xviii.
John Wesley and Modern Religion 22. Sermon cxxxviii, Works, vol. vii, p. 492.
23. Journal, vol. i, p. 191.
24. Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 13-14.
25. Works, vol. viii, p. 282.
26. Letters, vol. ii, p. 46.
27. Quoted by Sugden. Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 82n., from Southey, Life of Wesley, vol. i, p. 295.
28. Quoted by James Moffatt, Love in the New Testament, New York, Richard R. Smith, 1930, p. 141.
29. Art., "Justification," in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
30. Letters, vol. iii, p. 161.
31. Sermon x, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 208.
33. Works, vol. viii, p. 3.
34. C. C. J. Webb, Religious Thought in the Oxford Movement, pp. 91, 89. Cf. also Yngve Brilioth, Evangelicalism and the Oxford Movement,
Oxford, University Press, 1934, p. 48. Dr. Eicken has a similar statement in which he attributes to Wesley the conception which characterized the Oxford Movement: "Die Frage ist eben, ob das Leben des Glaubigen sich mehr am Karfreitag oder an Osten und Pfingsten, am 'Christus fiir uns' oder am gegenwartigen, sieghaften, allmachtigen 'Christus in uns' aufzurichten hat.
Fir Luther bleibt lebenslang der 'Christus fiir uns' im Vordergrunde des Interesses, fiir Wesley aber hinsichtlich des Wiedergeborenen 'der Christus in uns." (Rechtfertigung und Heiligung bei Wesley, p. 67.)
35. Sermon xix, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 390.
36. Letters, vol. i, pp. 63-65.
37. Quoted in Ekstatische Konfessionen, edited by Martin Buber, Leipzig, Insel Verlag, 1923, p. 33.
38. Journal, vol. v, p. 244; cf. Letters, vol. iii, p. 356.
39. Works, vol. viii, p. 361. The date given in the Works, 1740, is evidently a mistake. See Green, Bibliography, ad loc.
40. See John Bennet's Copy of the Minutes of the Conferences of 1744, 1745, 1747 and 1748; with Wesley's Copy of Those for 1746, published as Number I of the Proceedings Wesley Historical Society, London, 1896.
41. Letters, vol. ii, p. 227.
42. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 46.
43. Arminian Magazine (1779), pp. 119-123.
44. Journal, vol. ii, p. 467.
45. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 174.
46. George Bull, Harmonica Apostolica, Oxford, Parker, 1842.
47. Letters, vol. ii, p. 187.
48. Works, vol. viii, pp. 336-338.
49. David Benham, Memoirs of James Hutton, London, Hamilton, Adams, 1856, p. 112, } 50. Fletcher wrote a "Vindication of the Minutes" in five letters, which is his First Check to Antinomianism. This has often been reprinted. The reference here is to Letter iv, 5.
Notes 51. Letters, vol. v, p. 275.
Fletcher, First Check, Letter iv, 5. Cf. St. Thomas, Summa, Part I, 2, q. 114, art. 3.
53. Fletcher, Fourth Check, Letter i.
54. Letters, vol. vi, pp. 202-203.
55. Sermon cvii, Works, vol. vii, pp. 204-205.
CHAPTER VIII 1. The best discussion of the doctrine of Christian Perfection in Western theology is R. Newton Flew, The Idea of Perfection in Christian Theology; chap. xviii deals with William Law and xix with Wesley. There is now also the study of Eicken, Rechtfertigung und Heiligung bei Wesley. Students should read also H. B. Workman, "The Place of Methodism in the Life and Thought of the Christian Church," in The New History of Methodism. Dr.
Sugden has written an illuminating introduction to Sermon xxxv, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, pp. 147-150.
2. Letters, vol. iv, pp. 298-299. Cf. Works, vol. xi, p. 444.
3. "The ripe fruit of medieval Christianity as concentrated in the life of the Cloister," is Dr. Inge's description of the Imitation (Christian Mysticism, London, Methuen, 1925, p. 194).
4. Standard Sermons, vol. i, pp. 263-279.
V.e10id., pd. 277-278.
Gur ierd... p.! 2770, 7. Ibid., pp. 269-270 and note. Cf. Works, vol. xi, pp. 384-385.
8. Works, vol. xi, p. 370. See Journal, vol. ii, p. 49 and note. In the Journal, the words of Gradin are expanded to include what Henry Moore said was a description of Gradin's own experience, not a general definition: verbo, cor quod antea instar maris turbulenti agitabatur, in summa fuit requie, instar maris serenis et tranquili. It is possible that only later did Wesley see that this described Gradin's own experience, but not necessarily the experience of every child of God. See Journal, vol. ii, p. 49 and note 3.
9. The Poetical Works, vol. i, pp. 197-204.
10. See Sugden's note, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 234. The word "adult" is inserted in the First Collected Edition, as also the warning.
11. These changes are to be found, Works, vol. xi, pp. 379-380; Poetical Works, vol. i, pp. 199-201. For further evidence of Wesley's change of views concerning the state of those born again, see Standard Sermons, vol. i, p.
12. Standard Sermons, vol. ii, p. 156.
13. Law, Works, vol. iii, p. 27.° 14. Flew, op. cit., pp. 340-341.
15. Wesley, Works, vol. xi, p. 419.
17. Standard Sermons, vol. ii, p. 156.
18. Minutes of the Conference of 1744, Works, vol. viii, p. 285.
19. On Charles Wesley's views, see Luke Wiseman, Charles Wesley, pp.
John Wesley and Modern Religion 20. Works, vol. xi, p. 446.
21, Sermon cxx, dated Madeley, March 26, 1790, Works, vol. vii, p. 317.
Pap Works, vol. viii, pp. 68-69.
23. Works, vol. viii, p. 279.
24. Cell, Rediscovery of John Wesley, p. 347.
2 Sie Works, vol. xi, p. 417.
26. Sermon 1, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, pp. 457-458. payis Sermon xlvii, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, p. 389.
28. Art., Southwestern Christian Advocate, Feb. 19, 1935.
Zo; Works, vol. xi, p. 401.
30. Ibid., vol. xi, p. 420.
Shy Sermon xvii, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 343.
326 Ibid., pp. 342-343.
33. Ibid., pp. 343-344.
Soye Sermon xix, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 390.
36. Sermon xxvi, ibid., p. 542. wee For a brief account of the Christian doctrine of vocation, see R. L.
Calhoun, God and the Common Life, New York, Scribners, 1935, pp. 17-33.
38. John M. Mecklin, The Story of American Dissent, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1934, p. 279.
39% Law's Works, vol. iv, p. 14.
40. Letters, vol. i, p. 113.
41. Standard Sermons, vol. ii, p. 280. The following quotations are from this sermon, pp. 281-292.
42. The General Rules are reprinted in all Books of Discipline of American Methodists, and in Works, vol. viii, pp. 269-271.
43, Works, vol. viii, p. 354.
44, Ibid., vol. xi, p. 473.
45. Letters, vol. vii, p. 12.
46. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 47.
47. Works, vol. xi, pp. 458-459.
48. .Ibid., vol. viii, p. 286; Proceedings Wesley Historical Society, no. i, p. ean 49, Ibid., vol. viii, pp. 323-324.
50. R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, p. 248.
Shy Sermon xliv, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, pp. 319-320.
D2. Tawney, op. cit., p. 191.
53. Standard Sermons, vol. ii, pp. 316-317. The following quotations are from this sermon, "The Use of Money," pp. 309-327.
54. Sermon li, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, pp. 476-477. s/s Cell, op. cit., chap. xvi.
56. Sermon xxviii, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, p. 36.
7% Sermon cvi, Works, vol. vii, p. 199. Cf. Sugden, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 61n; Letters, vol. vi, pp. 272-273.
58. Sermon Ixxxix, Works, vol. vii, p. 28.
Notes 59. Ibid., p. 29.
60. Works, vol. xi, p. 430.
CHAPTER IX 1. Works, vol. viii, p. 348.
2. See description of Wesley by John Hampson, a preacher who left the connection, in Memoirs of the late John Wesley, Sunderland, 1791, vol. iii, pp. 167-168.
3. Journal, vol. i, p. 85.
4. Law, Works, vol. iv, p. 10.
5. "The Oxford Methodists, Being some account of a Society of Young Gentlemen in that City, so denominated," quoted by Simon, John Wesley and the Religious Societies, pp. 97, 98. Simon thinks this pamphlet was written by William Law.
6. Samuel Wesley, Poems on Several Occasions, pp. 109-110.
7. Journal, vol. i, p. 101. Cf. Simon, op. cit., pp. 95-96.
8. Edwyn Bevan, Hellenism and Christianity, New York, Doran, 1922, p.
9. Letters, vol. i, p. 219.
10. Ibid., vol. i, p. 152.
11. Ibid., vol. i, p. 158.
12. Ibid., vol. i, p. 160.
13. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 6.
14. Ibid., vol. v, p. 28.
15. Ibid., vol. iii, p. 152.
16. Works, vol. viii, p. 32.
17. Journal, vol. vi, p. 7.
18. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 54.
19, The copy of The Sunday Services of the Methodists in North America, with Other Occasional Services (London, 1784) which I have used, does not have as a preface the letter in which he notices these changes. Instead there is prefaced Wesley's letter to Coke and Asbury of September 10, 1784. The other preface appears in later editions. I have not checked other copies of the first edition to see whether the copy which I have used is deficient or Green is mistaken. Nolan B. Harmon, Jr. (The Rites and Ritual of Episcopal Methodism, Nashville, Cokesbury, 1926, p. 41) thinks that the omission of the holy days from the Sunday Services "was doubtless in conformity to the heavy emphasis that the early Methodist put on the practice of Scriptural holiness in season and out of season."
20. Letters, vol. vii, p. 256.
21. Sermon xxii, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 467.
22. Sermon cxvi, Works, vol. vii, pp. 288-289.
23. Journal, vol. vi, p. 495n.
24. Letters, vol. vi, p. 44.
25. Ibid., vol. iv, p. 100.
26. Ibid., vol iv, p. 103.
J3/ John Wesley and Modern Religion 27. Ibid., vol. iv, p. 272.
28. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 7.
29. Green, Bibliography, no. 74.
31. Works, vol. vii, p. 274.
32. Ibid., vol. viii, pp. 322-323.
33. Proceedings W. H. S., no. 1.
34. Works, vol. viii, pp. 258-259.
35. Ibid., pp. 255-256.
36. Journal, vol. ii, p. 536.
37. Letters, vol. ii, p. 287.
CHAPTER X 1. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Church, New York, Macmillan, 1931. For summary of his three types see vol. ii, p. 993.
2. Poetical Works, vol. iii, pp. 57-58.
3. Letters, vol. i, pp. 118 ff.
4. Works, vol. xi, p. 207.
5. Journal, vol. i, p. 133n.
6. For Brevint's preface, see Poetical Works, vol. iii, pp. 185-214.
7. Works, vol. x, pp. 188-201.
8. Works, vol. x, p. 208.
9. Journal, p. 93n and Charles Wesley's Journal for Oct. 20, 1738, and Nov. 14, 1738.
10. Journal, vol. iii, pp. 229-230.
11. Works, vol. viii, pp. 280-281.
12...10id.,: pp. 235) Bs 13. Quoted by Tyerman, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 202.
14. Letters, vol. iii, pp. 144-147.
15. Works, vol. viii, p. 31.
16. Sermon Ixxiv, Works, vol. vi, p. 397.
17. Letters, vol. iii, p. 138.
18. See Troeltsch, op cit., vol. ii, pp. 721-724.
19. Quoted by Simon, Advance of Methodism, p. 151.
20. Works, vol. viii, pp. 321-322.
21. Journal, vol. vii, facsimile facing p. 16. On Wesley's purpose, see J. A. Faulkner, Burning nore s in Historic Christianity, New York,
Abingdon, 1930, chap. xiii.
22. Works, vol. viii, p. 48.
23. Sermon xxxix, Standard Sermons, vol. ii, p. 238; see Sugden on baptism, vol. i, pp. 280-282.
24. J. Ernest Rattenbury, Wesley's Legacy to the World, pp. 176-195.
25. Sermon xii, Standard Sermons, vol. i, pp. 237-262.
26. Poetical Works, vol. iii.
27. Sermon xii, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 253.
28. Journal, vol. ii, pp. 361-362.
Notes 29. Sermon ci, Works, vol. vii, pp. 147-156.
30. Letters, vol. iv, p. 272.
31. Ibid., vol. viii, p. 41.
32. Letters, vol. i, pp. 349-350.
33. Ibid., vol. iii, p. 182.
34. Summa Theologica, suppl. q. xl, v. "It was pointed out long ago by Jerome and by several of the Greek fathers, that there is no passage in the New Testament which compels the assumption that the terms 'Episcopos' and 'Presbyter' are the names of two different offices." (B. H. Streeter, The Primitive Church, New York, Macmillan, 1929, p. 114.)
35. Reliquiae Baxterianae: Or, Mr. Richard Baxter's Narrative of .... his Life and Times, London, 1696, bk. i, p. 206.
36. Charles J. Abbey, The English Church and its Bishops, 1700-1800, London, Longmans, 1887, pp. 369-370 and notes.
37. Edward Stillingfleet, The Irenicon, or Pacificator: being a Reconciler as to Church Differences, Philadelphia, Sorin, 1842, p. 438. Stillingfleet
(1635-1699) first published his Irenicon in 1659.
39. Peter (Lord) King, An Enquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity, and Worship of the Primitive Church, New York, 1841, p. 61. King (16691734) published his Enquiry in 1691.
42. Letters, vol. iii, p. 192.
43. Letters, vol. vii, p. 262.
44, Ibid., vol. iii, p. 182.
45. Sermon cxv, Works, vol. vii, pp. 273-281. See John S. Simon, "Wesley's Ordinations," Proceedings W. H. S., ix. 7, pp. 145-154.
46. Samuel Drew, The Life of the Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D., New York, 1818, p: 64.
47. Tyerman, Life of John Wesley, vol. iii, p. 429.
48. Ibid., vol. iii, p. 434.
49. Journal, vol. vii, p. 15, Diary entry for Thursday, Sept. 2, 1784.
50. Thomas Jackson, Life of Charles Wesley, London, Wesleyan Conference office, 1841, vol. ii, p. 386. St. Thomas also uses the word "superintendent"
(Summa Theologica, part Il, 2, q. clxxxi, art. vi). He quotes Augustine, the relevant passage being si velimus, latine "'superintendere" possumus dicere. (De
Civitate Dei, xix, 19.) On origin of office of bishop as overseer of practical, including the financial, affairs of church, see Hans Lietzmann, Geschichte der
Alten Kirche, Berlin and Leipzig, Verlag, Walter D. Gruyter, 1932, p. 148.
51. Henry Moore, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. ii, pp. 193, 203.
52. On all this, see John Emory, A Defence of "Our Fathers," and of the Original Organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, New York, 1856.
53. Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, ad loc.
54. Episcopacy, Ancient and Modern, edited by Claude Jenkins and K. D.
MacKenzie, London, S.P.C.K., 1930, p. 368.
John Wesley and Modern Religion CHAPTER XI ° Sermon lxviii, Works, vol. vi, pp. 325-337.
. Sermon xiii, Standard Sermons, vol. i, p. 279.
. Letters, vol. viii, p. 63.
. Wesley's Veterans, ed. by John Telford, London, n. d., vol. iii, p. 11.
. Works, vol. xi, p. 430.
. [bid., vol. xi, pp. 366-367.
HEAYAYNoN. Sermon xiii, Standard Sermons, vol. i, pp. 263-279.
9. Sermon cxxxix, Works, vol. vii, p. 497.
10. Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, pp. 130-131.
11. Sermon Ixxvii, Works, vol. vi, p. 430.
12. It is easy to overstate the place of fear as a motive in the Wesleyan Revival, especially so far as Wesley himself is concerned. After studying
Methodist conversions, Dimond concludes that 'the essential root of the emotional element in almost all the cases under review is the fear of loss to the essential self consequent upon a suddenly acquired sense of the reality and holiness of God, and the moral law by which their lives are at once judged and condemned." (Dimond, Psychology of the Methodist Revival, p. 201.)
13. Letters, vol. v, p. 320.
14. See F. Luke Wiseman, Charles Wesley, pp. 181-182.
15. Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, pp. 163-166.
16, Journal, vol. i, pp. 110-111.
17. Ibid., vol. iii, p. 180.
18. Works, vol. viii, p. 112.
19. Dimond, op. cit., p. 117; on the subject of this and the following paragraph, see Dimond's discussion, pp. 116-124.
20. Letters, vol. viii, p. 83.
21. Ibid., vol. v, p. 320.
22. Ibid., vol. vi, pp. 206-207.
23. Journal, vol. iv, p. 422.
24. Works, vol. xi, pp. 59-79.
25. Sermon cxxx, Works, vol. vii, pp. 404-405.
26. Sermon 1, Works, vol. vi, p. 129.
27. Journal, vol. iv, p. 176.
28. Sermon xcix, Works, vol. vii, p. 137.
29. Babbitt, op. cit., p. 143.
30. Cf. Wesley's attitude toward reception of the Lord's Supper:
And shall I let Him go?
If now I do not feel The streams of living water flow, Shall I forsake the well? co . e e ° 2 e Notes His will is good and just:
Shall I His will withstand?
If Jesus bids me lick the dust, I bow at His command.
—Poetical Works, vol. iii, pp. 276-277.
31. Letters, vol. vi, p. 18.
32. George Lavington, Bishop of Exeter, The Enthusiasm of the Methodists and Papists compar'd, London, 1749-1751, pt. i, p. 26.
CHAPTER XII 1. See, for example, the two excellent books by Professor Van Dusen, The Plain Man Seeks for God, New York, Scribners, 1932; and God and These
Times, New York, Scribners, 1934.
2. For Schleiermacher, see W. B. Selbie, Schleiermacher, New York, Dutton, 1913.
3. In his review of Edwin Lewis, Christian Manifesto, New York, Abingdon, 1934, Bishop Francis J. McConnell recalls somebody's gibe that in our day the preaching of a divine fatherhood has become the preaching of the divine grandfatherhood—with all the suggestion of a grandfather's doddering inability to mark sharp distinctions between right and wrong and to treat them differently. (Religion in Life, vol. iii, no. 4, p. 616.)