Introduction to Part One

Introduction to Part One

Introduction Or measure of a man's concern is what he is willing to add to a schedule already busy and overborne. It is typical of John Wesley that, from September 1745 to March 1748 —a time when his affairs were in especial turmoil — he took the time to engage in an extended and serious theological debate with an eminent but anonymous churchman who signed himself "John Smith." 1 It turned out to be a searching review of Wesley's theological methods and motifs. It was notable for its high level of competence and courtesy. In theological terms, the principal issue came finally to focus upon Wesley's theory of religious knowledge

— which "Smith" labels a doctrine of "perceptible inspiration." Besides holding a mirror to his mind, these letters are a notable study in psychological character, in their double reflection of Wesley's reactions to Smith's appraisals of him. From the outset it is clear that Smith is convinced that Wesley's doctrines and temperament are reciprocals:

I dare say you mean no harm; yet suffer me to say frankly, I think you unwittingly do a great deal.

. Cartwright and the old Puritans, I believe, meant no harm; yet what a scene of disorder did their lectures produce! Strict order once broken, confusion rushes in like a torrent at a trifling breach. You find yourself every day going farther and farther from the orderly paths; you are now come to ap1. In the form of twelve long letters, six from "Smith" to Wesley and six from Wesley in reply. A manuscript of the correspondence, a hundred and fourteen pages in Wesley's hand, is in the Library of Drew University; it is printed in Moore, Life,

II, 277-322. Wesley's letters are reprinted in Letters, Il, 42, 57, 68, 87, 97, 133. It is not possible with the available data to establish a positive identification of "John

Smith." Moore (who hints that he had the story from Wesley) reports that "Smith" was an "archbishop" (cf. Life, II, 61). If so, there would be two possibilities: Thomas

Secker (Bishop of Oxford, 1747-50, and Archbishop of Canterbury, 1758-68) and Thomas Herring (Archbishop of York, 1743-48, and of Canterbury, 1748-57). Herring's dates fit the puzzle better than Secker's, but not his theological interests.

Secker's theological stature and outlook would match those of the man who wrote these letters, but other internal details leave the question open. What can be said for certain is that John Smith was comparatively well informed' about Wesley and the Methodists, that he was a responsible churchman and a good theologian — and that Wesley took him seriously!

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prove of lay preachers.? "Well, if they preach the Gospel of peace, where is the harm?" But what if, order once broke, unsent persons take upon them to preach all sorts of error, discord and confuSION? 4s

It was past [the devil's] skill to make Tertullian a profligate, but he found the means to make him a Montanist. The son of a Wesley and an Annesley is in no danger of Jukewarmmness, but ought to take great care on the side of impetuosity and zeal. The tempter will never make you a saunterer or a sluggard, but if you are not upon your guard, may, possibly before you are aware, make you a Quaker. Nay,

"perceptible inspiration" admitted, you ought to be such; for I will be bold to say that, allowing that one false principle, Mr. Barclay's * isa very consistent and coherent system.*

In reply, Wesley professes not to recognize himself in Smith's characterization:

I sincerely thank you for endeavoring to assist me herein, to guard me from running into excess. I am always in danger of this and yet I daily experience a far greater danger of the other extreme. To this day, I have abundantly more temptation to lukewarmness than to impetuosity; to be a saunterer inter sylvas academicas®

—a philosophical sluggard — than an itinerant preacher.® This forced Smith to restate his point in slightly altered form:

I had warned you against an impetuous zeal, but it seems that this is not your weak side; your chief danger is from lukewarmness.

The overdone humility in the first paragraph of your last letter may serve to convince you of the contrary, if compared with paragraphs

93 and 94 of the Earnest Appeal." The comparison, I am persuaded, will show you that whatever side of the question is for the present uppermost in your mind, that you are apt to push with such impetuosity and excess as unavoidably occasions the appearance of great variety (not to say inconsistency) of sentiment.®

In his concluding letter, Wesley thanks his critic for his admonitions but declines to slacken his zeal for fear of any prospective trouble:

2. This had actually begun as far back as 1740, with Thomas Maxfield; by the time of this letter, Wesley had already organized his preachers into an annual conference; see below, pp. 134-35.

3. Cf. Robert Barclay, Apology for the True Christian Religion as the Same Is Set Forth and Preached by the People Called in Scorn "Quakers" (1678).

4. Moore, Life, II, 297-08.

5. "Within the academic grove"; cf. Horace, Epistles, Bk. II, Epistle ii, 1. 45.

6. Moore, Life, Il, 298.

7. See below, pp. 421-22.

8. Moore, Life, II, 303.

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I am not careful for what may be a hundred years hence. He who governed the world before I was born shall take care of it likewise when I am dead. My part is to improve the present moment. And whatever may be the fruits of lay-preaching when you and J are gone to our long home, every serious man has cause to bless God for those he may now see with his eyes, for the saving so many souls from death, and hiding a multitude of sins.®

Taken all together, these letters make plain that the salient traits of John Wesley's psychological character were well known. Even a stranger like John Smith recognized the fact that Wesley's strong-mindedness was something of a family trait, that caution and faintheartedness had been bred out of him; that he was constitutionally incapable of doing anything by half. Both Smith and Wesley agree in their testimony as to the latter's psychological pattern: hard-driving, yet also sensitive; intense, yet also patient; detached, yet also charming; self-disciplined, yet also intensely emotional; opinionated, yet also curious; open to counsel, yet impervious to pressure; brusque with bad faith, yet also tolerant of contrary opinions.

This "character," once identified, is discernible in every aspect and context of his entire career.

That career had begun in the rough fen country of Lincolnshire, June 17 (O.S.), 1703, at Epworth, where his father, the Reverend Samuel

Wesley, was the learned and rather eccentric rector. Samuel was a devout and faithful High-churchman, so ardent in his advocacy of Church and Crown that he was once jailed in Lincoln Castle, ostensibly for debt but actually because of the offense which he had given by his violent attacks upon the Dissenters.'° In prison (June 27, 1705) the sturdy royalist bears witness to his crusading spirit in a letter to a friend in London:

9. Ibid., 309.

10. Cf. A Letter from a Country Divine to His Friend in London, Concerning the Education of the Dissenters in Their Private Academies in Several Parts of This

Nation; Humbly Offered to the Consideration of the Grand Committee of Parliament for Religion, Now Sitting (1703). A prominent Dissenter, Samuel Palmer, fired back an angry Defence of the Dissenters' Education ... (1703). To this Wesley replied with A Defence of a Letter Concerning the Education of Dissenters...

Being an Answer to the Defence of the Dissenters' Education (1704). Palmer's return volley was an outraged Vindication of the Learning, Loyalty, Morals, and Most

Christian Behavior of the Dissenters Toward the Church of England. In Answer to Mr. Wesley's Defence of His Letter Concerning the Dissenters' Education in their

Private Academies. And to Mr. Sacheverel's Injurious Reflections Upon Them (1705).

It was this last that the Reverend Mr. Wesley was "answering", while in prison: A Reply to Mr. Palmer's Vindication . ... (1707).

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Thanks be to God, for my confinement is very easy and comfortable to me, since I need not have suffered it if I would have deserted the cause of the University and the Church of England.

I am now answering the Dissenters' last book against me, having but too much leisure; and will never drop the controversy unless I lay my bones here. God preserve the Church,whatever becomes of your most humble servant.

. .14

John's mother, born Susanna Annesley, was the daughter of a prominent Nonconformist minister in London.!2 She was both matriarch and saint, who presided with equal grace and firmness over the affairs of a large, impoverished family — mother, teacher, lodestar. She was capable of defying her husband in matters ecclesiastical and of debating with her sons on questions theological. In 1709 young "Jackie" was dramatically rescued from the burning Epworth rectory. This deliverance was taken thereafter, both by mother and son, as a sign of special providence for him.18

In 1714 he went up to the Charterhouse in London on a scholarship provided by the Duke of Buckingham. Six years later he was matriculated as a Charterhouse Scholar in Christ Church, Oxford, in the twilight of one of its most glorious epochs under a famous trio of deans: John Fell,

Henry Aldrich and Francis Atterbury. Despite the fact that Oxford was in the doldrums during Wesley's time there, it was still a splendid repository of books and learning where he could and did lay claim to a great cultural heritage.* With good tutors and a compulsive disposition, the young Mr. Wesley actually acquired an excellent education which continued to serve him well for his whole life long.

Up to the year 1725 his religious interests were typically immature.

Then came a sudden focusing of faith and personal commitment. One of his several reports of this Oxford "conversion" is given in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection:

11. From an unpublished manuscript in the Methodist Archives, Epworth House, London. For Samuel Wesley's alliance with Henry Sacheverell, cf. John Wesley,

A Concise History of England (1776), IV, 72-76.

12. Dr. Samuel Annesley (1620?-1696). Cf. his sermons in The Morning Exercise at Cripple Gate; or, Several Cases of Conscience Practically Resolved by Sundry

Ministers (1664), and his biographical notice in Edmund Calamy, The Nonconformist' Memorial ..

13. Cf. the somewhat premature epitaph which Wesley composed for himself in 1753: "Here lieth the body of John Wesley, a brand plucked out of the burning: who died of a consumption in the fifty-first year of his age .

. ." (Journal, IV, go).

14. Cf. A. D. Godley, Oxford in the Eighteenth Century (1908).

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In the year 1725, being in the twenty-third year of my age, I met with Bishop Taylor's Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying.

In reading several parts of this book I was exceedingly affected, by that part in particular which related to "purity of intention." Instantly I resolved to dedicate all my life to God, all my thoughts and words and actions, being thoroughly convinced there was no medium, but that every part of my life (not some only) must either be a sacrifice to God, or to myself; that is, in effect, to the devil... .

In the year 1726 I met with Kempis's Christian's Pattern. The nature and extent of inward religion, the religion of the heart, now appeared to me in a stronger light than ever it had done before. I saw that giving even all my life to God (supposing it possible to do this and go no further) would profit me nothing unless I gave my heart, yea, all my heart to him.

I saw that "simplicity of intention and purity of affection," one design in all we speak or do and one desire ruling all our tempers, are, indeed, "the wings of the soul," without which she can never ascend to the mount of God.

A year or two after, Mr. Law's Christian Perfection and Serious Call were put into my hands. These convinced me more than ever of the absolute impossibility of being half a Christian, and I determined, through his grace (the absolute necessity of which I was deeply sensible of) to be all-devoted to God: to give him all my soul, my body and my substance.'® Into this radical change —a conversion if ever there was one

— there had come many converging lines of significant influence: the rich nurture of a remarkable home and family, an emerging personal maturity in a university setting, the guidance of a "religious friend," ° and the radical demand for utter seriousness in religion as this had been presented to him by Taylor, a Kempis, and Law. For all their diversity, these three had actually taught him the same thing: that the Christian life is devotio, the consecration of the whole man in love to God and neighbor in the full round of life and death.

After his conversion and his consequent decision to prepare for ordination, Wesley's education altered form but did not slacken its pace.

Classics now gave over first place to Bible and theology. It was Wesley's way to read more widely than exactly, but it is worth noting how much

15. Works, XI, 366-67. For another version of the same experience, see below, pp.

61-62.

16. Cf. Journal, 1, 467. Miss Sarah Kirkham, sister of Robert Kirkham, later a fellow member of the Holy Club. Cf. G. Elsie Harrison, Son to Susanna (Nashville, Tenn,,

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of what he read he could thereafter recall and put to various uses, as preacher and author."

In 1726 he was elected fellow of Lincoln College. This established his academic status in the university and assured him of financial security so long as he remained celibate.'* This exemption from economic stringency was a very important factor in his being free to develop as he did, especially in the early days of the Revival. At Lincoln, he was moderator of the classes (the formal disputations arranged for the training of the students in logic), Greek lecturer, and claviger.'®

He was ordained deacon by Bishop Potter of Oxford on Sunday, September 19, 1725, and priested by the same bishop three years later

(September 22, 1728). He served as his father's assistant at Epworth and Wroot on two separate occasions, in 1726 and 1729.°° On his return to Oxford he found that a small semimonastic group had been gathered by his brother Charles for systematic Bible study, mutual discipline in devotion and frequent Communion."! This group had developed a keen interest in the ancient liturgies ?? and the monastic piety of the fourth-century

"desert fathers." It must have seemed natural to everyone involved when John assumed leadership of the group. Its strenuous piety was soon notorious among the lax undergraduates, and tempted them to coin what must have seemed clever and devastating nicknames: The Holy Club,

The Reforming Club, Bible Moths, Methodists, Supererogation Men, Enthusiasts. Methodist was the label that stuck fastest. Wesley disliked it, but with characteristic aplomb, he accepted it as a badge of honor and proceeded to define "the character of a Methodist" 74 as one who really believes and lives "the common principles of Christianity." On this

17. For an extensive list of books read by John Wesley in the period 1725-34, see

Appendix I in V. H. H. Green, The Young Mr. Wesley (1961), 305-19.

18. In February 1751 Wesley married, and on June 1 he submitted his resignation to the rector and fellows of Lincoln; cf. the text in Journal, Il, 513-16 and note; 527 and note. For a perceptive account of the unhappy marriage, see also Harrison, Son to Susanna, chap. XXXII.

19. Cf. Green, Young Wesley, chap. VI.

20. The entry in the Epworth parish register for 1726 seems to be that for the office of parish clerk; that for 1729 is "Johannes Wesley, Cure de Epwth."

21. Cf. Works, XIII, 303 ff. See also Journal, I, 89f., 467f., and J. Simon, John

Wesley and the Religious Societies (1921), 87 ff.

22. One of their guides was Robert Nelson, the learned Nonjuror whose Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England (1704) and Great Duty of Frequenting the Christian Sacrifice (1734) were mines of patristic learning.

23. And gave various accounts of its original referent, cf. Works, VIII, 334-48, 506.

24. Cf. Works, VIII, 346-47.

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premise, he was able to invite his detractors to join "the Methodists"!

With the help of one of his fellow "Methodists," John Clayton, who was a competent patristics scholar, Wesley began the study of ancient

Christian literature, newly available in editions produced in the patristics renaissance of the last half of the seventeenth century. In the thought and piety of the early Church he discovered what he thereafter regarded as the normative pattern of catholic Christianity.?> He was particularly interested in "Macarius the Egyptian" ?* and Ephraem Syrus. What fasci25. Cf. his Address to the Clergy (1756), Works, X, 484: ". .

. Can any who spend several years in those seats of learning [the universities] be excused if they do not add to that of the languages and sciences, the knowledge of the fathers

— the most authentic commentators on Scripture, as being both nearest the fountain and eminently endued with that Spirit by whom "all Scripture was given." [cf. 2 Tim. 3:16]

. I speak chiefly of those who wrote before the Council of Nicea. But who would not likewise desire to have some acquaintance with those that followed them

— with St. Chrysostom, Basil, Jerome, Austin, and, above all, the man of a broken heart,

Ephraim Syrus?"

26. Cf. Moore, Life, I, 292. See also Wesley's estimate of Macarius's piety in A Christian Library (Bristol, 1749-55), I, 72 (in the preface to his Extract from the Homilies of Macarius):

". .. such a victorious faith as overcomes the world and, working by love, is ever fulfilling the whole law of God." See also Letters, II, 387, and below p. 275 f. In Wesley's day it was generally agreed that the corpus Macarianum was the work of "Macarius the Egyptian," despite the fact that Gennadius, Rufinus and Palladius had all agreed in crediting the Egyptian Macarius with only a single writing (the so-called Epistula Magna, "To the Monks"). Recent scholarship has revolutionized the state of knowledge in this area and has opened up a hitherto unnoticed but highly significant linkage between the writings of "Macarius" and those of Gregory of Nyssa! In Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Christian

Literature: Gregory of Nyssa and Macarius (Leiden, 1954), Werner Jaeger has reviewed the recent studies of the historical and literary problems involved and has exhibited the evidence which demonstrates that the author of the so-called Macarian

Homilies (PG, XXXIV, 446-822) was not a fourth-century Egyptian "desert father," but rather a fifth-century Syrian monk, whose conception of Christian spirituality was derived almost exclusively from Gregory. The first part of the Macarian Epistula

Magna is in fact an abridgment of Homily XL (cf. PG, XXXIV, 762-67, and Jaeger, Two Rediscovered W orks, 208-30); the second part is an expanded metaphrase of Gregory's De Instituto Christiano (cf. ibid., 174 ff.). The rest of the Macarian

Homilies are similarly indebted to Gregory, as is also the striking little treatise ep!

Tererdrnros év UHvetudrs (PG, XXXIV, 842-52). Herman Dorries's assumed identification of Macarius as a Messalian (see RGG, IV, 619) is gratuitous. What matters most in connection with Wesley is that in the writings of what he thought was "Macarius the Egyptian," he was actually in touch with Gregory of Nyssa, the greatest of all the Eastern Christian teachers of the quest for perfection. Thus, in his early days, he drank deep of this Byzantine tradition of spirituality at its source and assimilated its conception of devotion as the way and perfection as the goa} of the Christian life.

Once this somewhat curious and roundabout linkage with the theological fountainhead of Orthodox monasticism is recognized, it is illuminating to read Wesley and

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nated him in these men was their description of "perfection" (reAciwors) as the goal (oxézos) of the Christian in this life. Their concept of perfection as a process rather than a state gave Wesley a spiritual vision quite different from the static perfectionism envisaged in Roman spiritual theology of the period and the equally static quietism of those Protestants and Catholics whom he deplored as "the mystic writers." 27 The "Christian

Gnostic" of Clement of Alexandria became Wesley's model of the ideal Christian.?® Thus it was that the ancient and Eastern tradition of holiness as disciplined love became fused in Wesley's mind with his own Anglican tradition of holiness as aspiring love, and thereafter was developed in what he regarded to the end as his own most distinctive doctrinal contribution.?°

Nevertheless, at this stage of his spiritual development Wesley found that the quest for perfection at Oxford was a dedicated chore. He did not weary in well-doing, but neither was life joyous or serene. He once considered the possibility of removing the Holy Club from Oxford to a more desolate environment where its members might be less distracted and overborne.*° In 1734 his family began to importune him to seek the Epworth living as successor to his aging, ailing father. This, plainly, would have been a very convenient arrangement for all concerned

— save for John himself. It seemed to him all too likely that the life of a parish priest would inhibit his ascetic discipline and would deprive him of the communal support of the Holy Club, on which he was still heavily dependent.

After a grim soul-searching, he rejected his father's proposal, arguing that his prime duty was to maintain himself in a corporate religious rule.*+

His father died April 25, 1735. Three months later Dr. John Burton, Trustee of the Georgia Colony and patron of the Society for the PropaGregory in dialogue with each other. This possibility has now been greatly enhanced by the publication of the first critical edition of Gregory's work (cf. Werner Jaeger,

Gregori Nysseni Opera Ascetica in Gregorii Nysseni Opera, VIII [Leiden, 1952]).

The echoes and resonances are striking in both directions. For a helpful summary of Gregory's theology of perfection in aid of a comparison of Wesley and Gregory, see Jaeger, Two Rediscovered Works, 26-29, 70-114.

27. See below, p. 46 f.

28. Letters, V, 43.

29. In September 1790 he wrote (to Robert Carr Brackenbury): "This doctrine is the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists, and for the sake of propagating this chiefly he appears to have raised us up" (Letters,

VIII, 238).

30. Cf. Whitehead, Life, I, 410-11; Letters, VI, 128.

31. Letters, I, 166-78. Cf. Journal, I, 109; but see also ibid., VII, 457-58.

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gation of the Gospel (S.P.G.), invited John Wesley to transfer the Holy Club to Georgia, as missioners to the Indians and the colonists.?? Here was a call "to the desert," indeed! #3 In September the invitation was accepted and formally approved by "the Georgia Society." ** The following January Wesley was formally appointed as an S.P.G. missioner.*® It proved impossible, however, to muster the entire Holy Club for the Georgia venture. Actually, only three members were aboard the Simmonds when she sailed from Gravesend, October 21, 1735: John, his brother Charles, and Benjamin Ingham.** A new recruit, Charles Delamotte, made a fourth.

George Whitefield, still at Oxford and not yet ordained, promised to join them later.

The Methodist mission to Georgia was a fiasco. Charles proved a maladroit secretary to General Oglethorpe; John, a tactless pastor, Ingham and Delamotte, ineffectual assistants. Their general frustration was further complicated by John Wesley's falling in love with Sophie Hopkey, the eighteen-year-old niece of the bailiff of Savannah. It was a preposterous and pitiful affair in which Wesley was torn between his long-standing inhibitions and his new-found affections. It was resolved by Sophie herself, who finally eloped with a rival suitor. Her jilted lover then barred her from Holy Communion, and was in turn sued for defamation of character by her new husband.*7 The result was a furious turmoil, cli32. Cf. Journal, I, 30, Letters, I, 187. See also Sir John Perceval, The Diary of the First Earl of Egmont (1920-23), Il, 194, 196, 200, 203, et seq.

33. Cf. Moore, Life, I, 144.

34. Cf. Perceval, Diary, 195-96.

35. Cf. Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G.... Based on a Digest of the Society's Records, C. F. Pascoe, ed. (1901), 26, 27.

36. Cf. the following entries in E. Merton Coulter and Albert B. Saye, eds., A List of the Early Settlers of Georgia (Athens, Ga., 1949), 56-57, 13, 25:

1608. Westey, Cha., A.B. — Embark'd 14 Oct. 1735; arrived Feb. 1735-6. Mr. Cha.

Wesley took the oath of Secy. for the Indian trade 19 Feb. 1735-6 but quitted the Colony & ret. to England, July 1736. Quitted July 1736,

1609.

, Jn, A.M.—Brother of Cha.; Minister at Savannah; embark'd 14 Oct.

1735; arrived Feb. 1735-6; run away 3 Dec. 1737.

336. Detamort, Cha. — Schoolmaster; embark'd 14 Oct. 1735; arrived Feb. 1735-6; ret. to Engl. 2 June 1738.

724. INcHaM, Ben.—A.M., Missioner to the Indians; embark'd 14 Oct.

1735; arrived Feb. 1735-6. He return'd to England to bring over more missioners, but never went back. A Methodist. Quitted 26 Feb. 1736/7.

See also Journal, I, 112 and 160 ff.

37. There is a holograph manuscript in the Methodist Archives, Epworth House, London, in which Wesley rehearses the whole story of his relations with Sophie

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maxed by a formal grand jury indictment of Wesley on twelve separate counts. The trial was dragged out, and after six months of harassment,

Wesley fled the tragic farce in disgust and high dudgeon.** Despite this sad reversal of his hopes and expectations, the Georgia mission had its positive value in Wesley's personal and theological development. It saw all but the final form of his doctrinal ideas hammered into their basic shape. From "Dr. Bray's Associates" *° Wesley had a generous subsidy for books, which he spent to gather a remarkable theological library for himself and his company. It numbered slightly more than sixty titles, the bulk of them by Anglican authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, a few by Nonconformists, and still fewer by Continental Protestants.*° The most impressive single item in the library was the massive two-volume folio of William Beveridge's Pandectae,*! a vast array of ancient Eastern liturgical texts.

It makes a picture — John Wesley and his Georgia Methodists, poring over Beveridge by lamplight at Savannah and Frederica! An interesting by-product of this study of early Christian worship was that Wesley was prompted to try his hand at liturgical experimentation." These innovations, as they were bound to be regarded by his parishioners, made for bewilderment and protest. The magistrate of Frederica (Mr. Horton) complained to him: "The people

Hopkey. A postscript reads:

"Transcribed, March 12, 1738.' There is, however, internal evidence that it was first written in Georgia and not long after Sophie's elopement and marriage. It is an uncommonly candid account of the commonplaces of the romance; one might guess that it was written for the eyes of his mother and sisters. It has never been published in its entirety.

38. Journal, I, 376-400.

39. Cf. Journal, I, 137, 319, 322. See also Thomas Bray, Bibliotheca Parochialis ...

(1707).

40. Of these last, one was already a classic of Lutheran pietism: A. H. Francke,

Pietas Hallensis; or, An Abstract of the Marvellous Footsteps of Divine Providence;

[Part I with a preface written by Josiah Woodward .

. .] To which is added a Short History of Pietism (1707).

41. ZuvddiKor, sive Pandectae Canonum SS. Apostolorum et Conciliorum ab Ecclesiae

Graecae Receptorum ... Totum Opus in duos Tomos Divisum (1672).

42. Cf. Journal, I, 175, where he reports spending three hours "revising" the B.C.P.!

At Wesley's house in City Road, London, there is a small octavo manuscript in Wesley's hand, commenting upon the Apostolic Canons and his own views of liturgy.

It has been published in R. Denny Urlin, John Wesley's Place in Church History (Edinburgh, 1870), 68-71; and in John C. Bowmer, The Sacrament of the Lord's

Supper in Early Methodism (1951), 233-37. Urlin dates the manuscript around 1741, but without convincing evidence; Bowmer thinks an earlier date is possible, but leaves it as "an open question." Judging by context, however, the Savannah episode

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. say they are Protestants. But as for you, they cannot tell what religion you are of. They never heard of such religion before. They do not know what to make of it." #* Eight of the grand jury charges against Wesley relate to these liturgical or ecclesiastical affairs.*# They could hardly have understood the sources and influences guiding Wesley in this aspect of his work.

A third positive development for Wesley in his Georgia experience was the acquaintance he formed with the Moravians

— who taught him, by example and precept, that faith should be fearless and that piety can be buoyant.* It was no accident that when he returned to England, he made immediate contact with the Moravians there, having already formed a plan to visit the Moravian communities in Germany as soon as possible.

He landed back in England, February 1, 1738, sadly discredited and painfully uncertain of his faith and his future. For a dozen years he had been toiling up the path to perfection, striving by the best models he knew to attain true blessedness. The Georgia mission, which had earlier seemed fantastic to some of his friends, now seemed so to him. He and his brother resolved "to retire out of the world at once

. ..." But, as he recalls it later, "We were dragged out again . .. and so carried on .

. without any design except the general one of saving souls." #* The (Journal, 1, 274-76) is a far more plausible circumstance for such a memorandum than any we know after Wesley's return to England. The text of the memorandum is as follows: "I believe [myself] it is a duty to observe, so far as I can [without breaking communion with my own Church]:

1. To baptize by immersion; 2. To use Water, Oblation of the Elements, Invocation, Alms, a Prothesis in the Eucharist;

3. To pray for the faithful departed; 4. To pray standing on Sunday in Pentecost; 5.

To observe Saturday and Sunday Pentecost as festival; 6. To abstain from blood, things strangled. I think it prudent [our own Church not considered]:

1. To observe the Stations; 2. Lent, especially the Holy Week; 3. To turn to the East at the Creed."

The words in brackets have a line drawn through them in the manuscript — but one cannot be sure that Wesley did this himself.

43. Journal, I, 234. Wesley was always picking up nicknames which reflect the bafflement of critics misled by the familiar stereotypes of Protestant polemics. He was, for example, dubbed "a papist," "a Jesuit," "a Jacobite," and, once, a "Presbyterian-papist" (Journal, III, 110)!

44. Cf. Journal, I, 385-86. Number 12 reads: "By calling himself 'Ordinary' and thereby claiming a jurisdiction which we believe is not due to him and whereby we should be precluded from access to redress by any superior jurisdiction." Wesley evidently understood "ordinary" as meaning pastor-in-charge

(mpweords, "abbot"); his critics took it to mean "bishop." Cf. The Prayer Book Dictionary, George Hanford and Morley Stevenson, eds. (n.d.), 510.

45. Cf. Journal, I, 142 f., 151 f., 168 f.

46. Works, VIIE, 227.

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marks of the great evangelist and practical genius had not yet appeared in Wesley's career.

Within two years, however, this paradoxical man, with his strange talent for stirring an emotional swirl around him while himself remaining calm, had become the acknowledged leader of a tremendous revival that was to grow and spread under his hand for half a century. The unique mixture of theological notions thus far accumulated was now to be smelted and forged into an integral and dynamic theology in which Eastern notions of synelthesis (dynamic interaction between God's will and man's) were fused with the classical Protestant sola fide and sola

Scriptura, and with the Moravian stress upon "inner feeling."

Wesley's own account of how all this happened is given in his dramatic story of "the Aldersgate experience." 47 This has come to be the most familiar event in Wesley's life. It often goes unnoticed, however, that it actually stands within a series of significant spiritual experiences, and is neither first nor last nor most climactic. There is ample evidence that fixes the year 1738 as the decisive period in Wesley's change from a faith in faith to faith itself, from aspiration to assurance. But the fact remains that the Aldersgate story as such drops abruptly out of sight after its publication in the second Extract of the Rev. Mr. John Wesley's

Journal (1740). Nor could it be reconstructed or even confirmed from other references in his writings. Moreover, the Aldersgate experience was followed by a long series of spiritual upheavals and frustration which lasted well into the spring of 1739.48

In the summer of 1738 Wesley visited the Moravians in their homeland at Herrnhut and Marienborn. It was, in effect, an attempt to test, at the source, the reality and power of the piety he had encountered in Spangenberg and Peter Bohler. His impressions of the German Moravians were mixed. On the one hand, he met many quite remarkable people; among 47. See below, pp. 51-69.

48. Cf. A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, par. 7-8 (Works, XI, 369-70), where Wesley, in a rehearsal of his early spiritual development, passes directly from Georgia to Germany with no mention of Aldersgate as intervening. See also Journal,

I, 414, where Wesley defines "uneasiness' as prima facie evidence of "unbelief." Yet his own reports of disturbances recur frequently after his heartwarming (Journal,

I, 481, 483; II, 125), and continue intermittently for ten months. On his visit to Germany, the Herrnhuters barred him from Holy Communion because they adjudged him homo perturbatus (cf. Daniel Benham, ed., Memoirs of James Hutton

[1856], 40). In the period from October 1738 through March 1739 there are dozens of references to severe fluctuations of mood and temper (cf. especially Journal, II,

89 ff., 103, 125, and Sermons [Sugden], II, 244).

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s them, one Arvid Gradin, who both defined and exemplified "the full assurance of Christian faith." 49 On the other hand, he was also quick to spot the signs of self-righteousness among them, and to be repelled by the cult of personality which had grown up around their leader, Count

Ludwig von Zinzendorf.®° He returned from Germany in September, rejoined his friends in the Fetter Lane Society *! and resumed his preaching in the churches. His zeal was unabated, and yet the results of his efforts were no more satisfying than before. The inner reality and outward force of the gospel, believed and preached never so faithfully, still were lacking. Then, almost by chance, while "walking from London to Oxford" (October 9, 1738), he began "to read the truly surprising narrative of the conversions lately wrought in and about the town of North Hampton in New England." °

It is an arresting and moving account, and it struck Wesley with terrific force.* The crisis which followed ranks with Aldersgate in importance if not in drama. It is significant that, thereafter, Wesley adopted Edwards's analysis of "the distinguishing marks of a work of the Spirit of God," and published an abridgment of it, along with a substantial "ex49. UAnpogopia miorews (Heb. 10:22); cf. Journal, Il, 49. See also Arvid Gradin's definition of sanctification as quoted in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection

(Works, XI, 369-70): "Repose in the blood of Christ; a firm confidence in God and a persuasion of his favor, the highest tranquility, serenity and peace of mind, with a deliverance from every fleshly desire and a cessation of all, even inward sins." This, said Wesley, "was the first account I ever heard from any living man of what I had before learned myself from the oracles of God.

. ." See also Journal, Il, 49.

50. See below, pp. 372-76.

51. For an account of the origin of the prototypes of the Aldersgate and Fetter Lane societies, see Josiah Woodward, An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Religious Societies in the City of London, ... and of their Endeavours for the Reformation of Manners, 3 ed. (1712).

52. Journal, Il, 83, 84. Cf. Jonathan Edwards, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton

. in New England. In a letter to the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Colman of Boston...

(57377). e Journal, Tl, 88-91: "An extract from this I wrote to a friend concerning the state of those who are 'weak in the faith' [Rom. 14:1]. His answer, which I received at [Oxford] on Saturday the 14th, threw me into great perplexity." Wesley adds a very revealing self-analysis as to the validity of his faith, which concludes: "Yet, upon the whole, although I have not yet that joy in the Holy Ghost, nor the full assurance of faith, much less am I, in the full sense of the word, 'in Christ a new creature' [2 Cor. 5:17], I nevertheless trust that I have a measure of faith and am

'accepted in the beloved' [Eph. 1:6]; I trust that 'the handwriting that was against me is blotted out' [cf. Col. 2:14] and that I am reconciled to God through his

Son" (p. 91).

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tract" of A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections —all of them with Edwards's high Calvinism carefully filtered out.*4 It is not too much to say that one of the effectual causes of the Wesleyan Revival in England was the Great Awakening in New England.

Meanwhile, developments in the Fetter Lane Society had faced Wesley more sharply than ever before with the conflict between Moravian quietism and Anglican synergism. How, for instance, can the same theologian consistently support the notions of justification by faith alone and still insist on good works as appropriate to repentance at one and the same time? Many of the members at Fetter Lane had come to agree with the Moravian position which, in Wesley's view, amounted to a fatal antinomianism. Pressed for an adequate alternative, he began, in mid-November, "more narrowly to inquire what the doctrine of the Church of England is concerning the much controverted point of justification by faith; and the sum of what I found in The Homilies I extracted and printed for the use of others." © It is very important to notice this conscious selfidentification with the English reformers. It marked the final stage of Wesley's maturation as a theologian and it continued to serve as the basic datum-plane for all subsequent developments in his thought. His pragmatic temper was prepared, of course, for contextual modifications of various sorts for new situations. But now at last

— with his "Moravian" conversion at Aldersgate, followed by his disenchantments with Moravianism in Germany and Fetter Lane, his encounter with Edwards and his vital reappropriation of his Anglican heritage — the frame of Wesley's theology was finally set, and would so remain thereafter.

In the four months following his review of The Homilies, we have a detailed record of Wesley's unremitting diligence, his intermittent anxieties and only occasional moments of joy and high-heartedness.®¢ On No54. Wesley extracted, published and distributed to his people the following works of Edwards: A Faithful Narrative ... (n.d. [1742?]); The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of God (1744); Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival in Religion in New England (1745); An Extract of the Life of the Rev. Mr. David Brainerd, Missionary to the Indians (Bristol, 1768; reprinted in Works [Pine], XII); An Extract from a Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (Bristol, 1773); rev. ed. of the Narrative, The Distinguishing Marks, and Thoughts (1773); a sermon of Edwards's entitled "God Is Love," in The Arminian Magazine for 1785. In his own Thoughts

Upon Necessity (see below, pp. 472-91) Wesley argues against Edwards's Freedom of the Will. It is plain from all this that Edwards — always minus his "Calvinism" — was a major source of Wesley's evangelical theology.

55. See below, pp. 123-33.

56. Cf. Journal, Il, 131; Tl, 440-41.

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vember 30, George Whitefield returned from his first American tour, flushed with success and eager to duplicate it in England. Wesley was impressed by this— yet he was also dismayed when Whitefield sought to conscript him as leader of a revival he had started in Bristol and was now about to leave.®* Wesley's account of this episode is quite remarkable: °° his own negative reactions, his pleas to his colleagues in Fetter

Lane for support in declining Whitefield's invitation, the opposition of his brother Charles, their final recourse to a pious sortilege and, finally,

John's reluctant decision to go to Bristol as to a martyr's death.

It turned out, of course, that he had come at long last to the threshold of his true vocation. "At four in the afternoon [April 2nd] I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the [Bristol] highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people." °° The next day he preached in the fields at Baptist Mills (a Bristol suburb), and on the following Sunday on Hannam Mount, to the desperate miners in the King's Wood. The reaction of the people was amazing, and to no one more than to Wesley himself. Here were great crowds of eager listeners, who apparently were hearing the gospel in his preaching, whose behavior was visibly affected, whose lives were being "revived." Conversions were taking place fully as impressive and real as he had read about in Edwards's "narrative." The Revival had begun. Moreover, these experiences served to signalize the full maturing of the revivalist as well.

It is most impressive to observe the marked effect this success at Bristol had on Wesley's spiritual equilibrium. Up to this point the story is full of anxiety, insecurity, futility. Hereafter, the instances of spiritual disturbances drop off sharply and rarely recur, even in the full records of a very candid man. Peter Bohler had exhorted him to "preach faith till you have it and then because you have it, you will preach faith."

At Aldersgate he had passed from virtual to real faith, from hoping to having. Edwards and Whitefield had shown him that the Word rightly preached bears visible fruit. And now, before his eyes, was a harvest of such fruit. What had happened was that he had preached faith until others had it, and now his own was confirmed by theirs! For the next half-century, in failure and triumph, tumult and peace, obloquy and fame, the picture rarely varies: a man with an overmastering mission,

572 Cf. ibid. Wy 115 ff.

58. Ibid., 156-67.

* 59. Ibid., Il, 172-73; Works, VII, 113.

60. Journal, I, 442.

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acutely self-aware but rarely ruffled, often in stress but always secure on a rock-steady foundation.

It is useful to notice the main phases of Wesley's career as leader of the Methodist Revival, even if only in the broadest outline.*1 The first decade (1739-49) was the most decisive. In it we can see the flowering of that practical genius thus far invisible but henceforth in constant evidence. It began with the formation of the United Societies and continued in the development of a distinctive pattern of order and discipline for "the people called Methodists." 2 With their organization of societies, classes and bands, the brothers Wesley ® provided their converts with a unique program of association and involvement, which included Christian nurture, discipline and pastoral care. This effectual stress upon organization and the use of lay preachers as associates in the Revival mark off the principal difference between the long-term, cumulative results of the Wesleyan movement and the rather more episodic successes of other popular evangelists in the same epoch (e.g. Whitefield, John Berridge, and others).

61. He has not lacked for dutiful biographers. The first ones (John Whitehead, Thomas Coke, Henry Moore and Luke Tyerman) set the stereotype of "the founder of Methodism," and this has dominated subsequent studies. Of these, the ablest and most complete is John Simon's five volumes of biography and history (1921-34).

Robert Southey's Life (1820) is easily the most distinguished literary monument to Wesley; Lecky's section on "The Religious Revival," in his History of England in the 18th Century, Il (1878), is still its most perceptive historical survey. But neither poet nor historian could comprehend the theologian. Of recent biographical studies, the most interesting are V. H. H. Green, The Y oung Mr. Wesley (1961) and Martin

Schmidt, John Wesley (1953; the English version, trans. by Norman Goldhawk, 1962).

They are, however, confined to the early years. Green focuses mainly on Wesley the Oxonian, whereas Schmidt makes him out virtually a Moravian. An adequate study of Wesley's life and thought is still greatly needed.

62. Cf. Wesley's account of this in The Nature, Design and General Rules of the United Societies (1743), and Works, VIII, 269-71, and A Plain Account of the People Called Methodists (1748) and Works, VIII, 248-68.

63. From the days of the Holy Club, Charles Wesley had been an almost constant companion to his brother, and his contributions to the Methodist revival

— in his remarkably effective preaching but chiefly in his incomparable facility as a hymnwriter

— were very substantial indeed. One may speak realistically of the theology of John in the hymns of Charles Wesley. Between 1737 and 1742 they had published six separate volumes — the first, in Charleston, S.C., the rest, in London: Psalms and Hymns, 1737 and 1738; Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739, 1740 and 1742, Psalms and Hymns, 1741. In 1742 Charles published a sermon on Eph. 4:14 ("Awake, Thou

That Sleepest"), which John chose to print with his own Sermons on Several Occasions (1744) and made normative for Methodist doctrine. For Charles's role in the Georgia mission and in the early stages of the Revival, see his own Journal, 1736-39,

John Telford, ed. (1909). See also Frank Baker, Charles Wesley (1948),

INTRODUCTION

This first decade also saw the guidelines of the Wesleyan theology delineated and spelled out circumstantially.°* Inevitably, this made for new tensions — with the Moravians over the question of faith and good works; with the Church of England hierarchy in respect of the irregularities of the Methodists and their "enthusiasm"; ® with the Calvinists on the question of "the decrees [of predestination ]." °

The bishops and clergy came to have a common image of the Methodists as a rabble of fanatical preachers and hysterical converts. This disapproving judgment was exacerbated by Wesley's decision to "employ" laymen as preachers and personal assistants. The bishops were unimpressed by the fact that Wesley carefully avoided calling his lay preachers "ministers" and steadily refused them any authority whatsoever to administer the sacraments. These men, he said, were his personal "helpers," directly responsible to him in their work, as he was responsible for them to the Church. With a few ordained colleagues and still fewer of his lay preachers, Wesley initiated an annual conference in 1744,°7 which came to be a unique instrumentality in shaping policy and doctrine in the Methodist movement.

By mid-century, and as it entered its second decade (1749-59), Methodism was a going concern, established as an evangelistic "order" within the Church of England, feeling and exercising a vigorous freedom to criticize and alter certain Anglican proprieties but deeply attached to the Church and determined to carry forward her true mission to the people.

Wesley conceived his own ministerial office as that of "a special messenger" — an evangelist raised up by the Holy Spirit to supply the defects of the crippled and ineffectual ministry then being rendered by the conventional clergy (sinisterium ordinarium). Convinced of the essential integrity of his mission within the Church of England, he steadfastly repudiated every charge of separatism and every push toward separation within the ranks of the Methodists.®* In the darkest days of the antiMethodist disorders (in the 1740's) he allowed the trustees of his "preaching houses" to register them under the Act of Toleration, but this was

64. See below, p. 134 ff.

65. See below, p. 389 ff.

66. Cf. Free Grace: a sermon preached at Bristol (1739); reprinted in Works, VII,

373-86.

67. See below, p. 134 ff. After 1745 Wesley's lay assistants began to outnumber his clerical associates.

68. Broached before, the issue of "separation" became an,open quarrel at the Twelfth Annual Conference of 1755, when Charles Perronet and others made a determined bid to lead the Methodists out of the Church of England into dissent.

INTRODUCTION

a technical move to gain legal protection from the mobs which had plagued the Methodists during their first decade.®°

Not even its stoutest advocates have argued that the eighteenth-century Church of England was either zealous or free." It had a minimum quota of saints and sages, but these were sadly thwarted in their efforts to lift the life of the Church to the challenge of the times. In polity, it was an Erastian establishment in a demoralized environment. The so-called Restoration Settlement had settled very little. Walpole and the Whigs had furthered the ruin of the Cavalier tradition, domesticating the Church within the web of a cynical secular policy and going so far as to suspend its convocations, thus depriving it of its machinery for progress and reform. Ironically enough, this disintegration had actually been re-enforced by the Act of Toleration—the solution preferred by an alliance of High-churchmen and Dissenters over any scheme of "comprehension" of the various parties within the Church of England. Over all there hung a stifling miasma of apathy and stale devotion.

In his attack upon such a situation, Wesley deployed his "assistants" as a sort of militia, moving them frequently from one assignment to another but insisting on their common task: evangelism and Christian nurture. "We look upon ourselves, not as the authors or ringleaders of a particular sect or party —it is the farthest thing from our thoughts

— but as messengers of God, to those who are Christians in name but heathens in heart and life, to call them back to that from which they are fallen, to real, genuine Christianity." 7! He was prepared to ignore various

Cf. Tyerman, Life, II, 198-212, for a circumstantial account of the controversy, avowedly in sympathy with the separatists. From Wesley's laconic note on that conference in the Journal (IV, 115), one could hardly guess how grave a crisis he had met and mastered. In the year following, Edward Perronet (author of the familiar hymn, "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name") published an intemperate denunciation of the Church of England in a long poem, The Mitre (1756). Wesley was sufficiently outraged so that he undertook to suppress the entire edition, with considerable success. Extant copies are extremely rare.

69. Cf. Max Beloff, Public Order and Popular Disturbances, 1660-1714 (1938), for an illuminating study of the general disorder of English life in this period. The Methodist histories give the impression that only the Methodists were victims of English mob violence at this time.

70. Cf. G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, 3d ed. (New York, 1945), Il, 309-10;

Ill, 27-34; Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 1714-60 (Oxford History of England, YX) (Oxford, 1952), chap. iv; Norman Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker (Campee 1959), VI; C. J. Abbey, The English Church and Its Bishops, 1700-1800 (1887),

I, chap. iii.

71. A Preservative Against Unsettled Notions in Religion, (1758) 241; cf. the

INTRODUCTION

at ' clerical protests that this involved the invasion of other men's parishes — since he was convinced that his own collegiate ordination had given him an extraparochial license which he was justified, in the actual circumstances, in extending to his lay preachers — but for preaching and teaching only, not for the administration of the sacraments. It was in this sense of minister extraordinarius that he came to look upon the world as his parish.7?

Just as he felt called to preach to any and all who would hear, so also he welcomed them into his audiences, including Dissenters and Roman

Catholics. He even accepted several Dissenters in the ranks of his lay assistants. At the same time, he deliberately constricted the liturgical form of Methodist preaching services so that the people would still need the normal ministrations of the Church for the full liturgy and the sacraments.'* As might have been expected, however, the Anglican hierarchy rejected the notion of this evangelistic order within the Church, and many Methodists became increasingly ill-at-ease in what they felt was an anomalous connection with a corrupt establishment. John Wesley recognized the complexity of the issue, but he stood equally unmoved by the pressures of the Dissenters from the one side or, from the other, the pained whole of sec. III, 240-46, for an uncommonly clear statement of Wesley's understanding of his own ministry and of Methodism as an evangelical order within the Church of England. See also below, pp. 73-76; 104-16. Cf. Letters, I, 322-23; Journal,

II, 217-18; Works, VIII, 309.

72. See below, p. 72. Wesley seems to have held the view that his Oxford ordination conferred on him the ius ubique praedicandi, the right of preaching everywhere. Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Frederick

Maurice Powicke and Alfred Brotherston Emden, eds. (Oxford, 1936), III, 136, notes that the Chancellor of Oxford had by tradition the right to "license preachers to preach in every diocese in England." This was evidently in Wesley's mind in his rejoinder to Bishop Butler's advice "to go hence" from Bristol in August 1739: "Being ordained as Fellow of a College, I was not limited to any particular cure, but have an indeterminate commission to preach the Word of God in any part of the Church of England. I do not therefore conceive that, in preaching here by this commission,

I break any human law" (Moore, Life, I, 270; cf. Journal, II, 257). In later controversy he was even more specific: "I was not appointed to any congregation at all; but was ordained as a member of that 'College of Divines' (so our statutes [of Lincoln College] express it) 'founded to overturn all heresies and defend the Catholic faith'"

(Works, VIII, 117; cf. Letters, Il, 236). Cf. F. Makower, The Constitutional History and Constitution of the Church of England (1895), 491: Canon 33 of "The Canons of 1604." Wesley also seems to have felt some sort of private assurance of King George's unofficial support of his itinerant preaching; cf. Journal, Ill, 494, and below, p. 113.

73. Cf. Works, VII, 321-22.

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outrage of his brother Charles and other ordained clergymen. But the pressures did not relax and, finally, Charles began to tire of the struggle and to fear its outcome. It was his aversion to schism, more than any other factor, which influenced his gradual and quiet withdrawal from the Methodist movement."* John stoutly denied that he intended to separate, or would allow it. His maxim, coined for the crucial Conference of 1755, was "that, whether it was lawful or not, it was no ways expedient" to separate from the Church." Three years later he repeated the formula in the opening paragraph of his Reasons Against a Separation from the Church of England."* But his chief concern in the whole matter was that the ecclesiological tumult over separation not be allowed to enfeeble the Revival or to distract the Methodists from their distinctive mission and witness.

The Revival's third decade (1759-69) saw its general spread and consolidation, along with new signs of acceptance and respectability. But this made for new strains in the patterns of group association and new dissensions amongst Wesley's lay assistants as to their status and prerogatives."7

Even more significant, however, from the standpoint of Wesley's theological development, was the increasing number of professions of "entire sanctification" by members of the societies, especially in the Midlands.78

"Holiness of heart and life" had been one of Wesley's cherished mottoes from the beginning. Now, as if somewhat belatedly, many people came forward to profess the gift of perfection which Wesley had explicitly taught them to expect. Himself no "professor," he was quite prepared to investigate the claims of others — and concluded that many of them were authentic. As a consequence, he began to stress more than ever before the vital urgency of "the fullness of faith" as a promise implied in God's gift of faith itself.

74. His last extended preaching tour was in 1756. He and his family were settled in Bristol until 1771, when they moved to London, to a house near St. Marylebone's

Church. He died there on March 29, 1788, and was buried in the churchyard, expressly refusing his brother's wish that they both be buried in the cemetery behind the City Road Chapel. For evidence of the protracted tension between the brothers on the issue of separation, see Letters, III, 129-36.

75. Journal, IV, 115.

76. Works, XIII, 225. See also Journal, IV, 186, V, 180; VII, 112, 192, Rega 77. Cf. Journal, IV, 535-42; 178-79.

78. Cf. The Arminian Magazine, Il, vi, where Wesley recalls "the year 1758, and a few of the following years, .

. that unusual outpouring of the Spirit with which both London and many parts of England and Ireland were favoured during that happy period." See also Tyerman, Life, II, 416, 426.

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To safeguard against "enthusiasm," however, he published a stiff warning against spiritual pride and self-righteousness, entitled Cautions and Directions Given to the Greatest Professors in the Methodist Societies.7®

In addition, he wrote three new sermons intended to reject any notion of perfection as static or "sinless": Wandering Thoughts (1760), On Sin in Believers (1763) and The Repentance of Believers (1768). In 1766 he published a review and digest of his thoughts and writings on the subject in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection as Believed and Taught by the Rev. Mr. John Wesley from the Year 1725 to the Year 1765.9

Our scheme of decades fails to provide a neat outline for the final score of Wesley's years. It was filled with turmoils, disasters and triumphs. In 1770 a controversy broke out between Wesley and his disciples on the one side and the Calvinist chaplains of the Countess of Huntingdon on the other.*! The Calvinists took huge offense at a carelessly drafted minute from the Conference of 1770.82 They renewed their attack upon what they labeled "Arminianism"

— even though Arminius himself had never been one of Wesley's really decisive "sources." However, as he had done before with the nickname Methodist, he turned this epithet into a badge and boldly christened his new house organ The Arminian Magazine (1778 et seq.). Against the Calvinists' doctrines of predestination and perseverance, he opposed his own conception of "conditional salvation within the universal redemption wrought by Christ." In the preface to the first volume he explains that . each number will therefore consist of four parts: first, a defense of that grand Christian doctrine, 'God willeth all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth', secondly, an extract from the life of some holy man, whether Lutheran, Church of England man, Calvinist or Arminian, thirdly, accounts and letters, containing the experience of pious persons, the greatest part of whom are still alive; and fourthly, verses explaining or confirming the capital doctrines we have in view.

79. See below, pp. 298-305.

80. Cf. Green, Bibliography, #238: "This tract underwent several revisions and enlargements, one of which appears in Volume XXIV of the collected Works, 1773.

In each successive edition the date of the most recent revision was specified. The last revision appears to have been made in the year 1777; and since that period, this date has been generally continued on the title page of the several editions."

81. Cf. John Stoughton, The Church in the Georgian Era (A History of Religion in England, V1) (1881), chap. xi-xii. See also John Hunt, Religious Thought in England (1873), III, 292-300; J. Simon, John Wesley, the Master Builder (1927), 276300; Tyerman, Life, III, 71, 108.

82. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences (1862), I, 95-96.

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While this furor was raging, Britain's conflict with her American colonies was ripening into war. Royalist and Tory that he was, Wesley's social conscience moved him to support the early pleas of the colonists for liberty and justice.** But when the American demand for "liberty" became the cry for "independence," Wesley's inbred loyalty to the Crown and his doctrine of nonresistance turned him violently against the rebels. In the six years of the Revolution he published no fewer than thirteen royalist tracts and open letters.** In them the American rebels appear as avatars of those seventeenth-century anarchists who had murdered

Charles I and brought England to the brink of ruin. In 1775 Wesley finally withdrew his trade from his printer, William Pine of Bristol — not for incompetence (as well he might),®* but for his espousal of the colonies' cause. Such views naturally complicated Wesley's relations with the American Methodists. They had either to bear the stigma of "Tory" or else disassociate themselves as far as possible from their leader.8° The consequences of this dilemma had far-reaching effects in the subsequent development of American Methodism. American independence weakened

Wesley's control over the American Methodists and at the same time strengthened the hand of the separatists in the Methodist societies in Britain (many of whom had been sympathizers with the American cause).

Wesley's "ordinations" for America in 1784 are better understood in this light than in terms of his general doctrine of the ministry. For one

83. Cf. his letters to the Earl of Dartmouth (Secretary of State for the Colonies) and to Lord North (First Lord of the Treasury), Letters, VI, 155-64.

84. 4 Calm Address to Our American Colonies (Bristol, 1775); A Sermon Preached at St. Matthew's Bethnal-Green, on Sunday, November 12, 17175

. for the Benefit of the Widows and Orphans of the Soldiers Who Lately Fell Near Boston in New England (1775); Some Observations on Liberty (Edinburgh, 1776); A Seasonable Address to the More Serious Part of the Inhabitants of Great Britain, Respecting the Unhappy Contest Between Us and Our American Brethren ... (Bristol,

1776); A Calm Address to the Inhabitants of England (1777), A Serious Address to the People of England with Regard to the State of the Nation (1778); An Account of the Conduct of the War in the Middle Colonies (1780); Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (1780); two letters on Lord Howe's inept conduct of the war ([1781]; cf. Letters, VI, 155-64; VII, 47-48); and three collections of hymns relating to the war ([1782]; cf. Green, Bibliography, #366, #367, #368).

85. For example, Pine had published Wesley's collected Works from uncorrected galley proofs. For Wesley's reference to his political views as "'barefaced treason," see

Letters, VI, 170.

86. Cf. Francis Asbury, Journal and Letters, Elmer T. Clark, ed. (1958), III, 62:

"There is not a man in the world so obnoxious to the American politicians as our dear old Daddy; but no matter, we must treat him with all the respect we can and that is due him."

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thing, the American Methodists — never well cared for by the colonial clergy —now had no church home in which they might receive the sacraments. The Church of England was moving very slowly in its arrangements for American bishops, and was altogether averse to Wesley's proposal that some of his preachers be ordained for ministerial service in the new nation. In this situation, therefore, there was an urgent need for Wesley to restore his authority in America, as far as this was possible. His concern is made plain in his letters to "Our Brethren in America" and to Freeborn Garrettson.** In circumstances too obscure to reconstruct fully and much too complicated to explain simply, Wesley decided to "appoint" two of his lay preachers, Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey, for a full ministry in America, and to commission his own closest associate, Dr. Thomas Coke

(himself a fellow presbyter of the Church of England), as "superintendent" of the American Methodists. It was his apparent design that Coke was to convey this commission to Francis Asbury, whom Wesley had sent to the colonies before the Revolution and who had emerged as the postwar leader of the American Methodists. Together, Coke and Asbury were to serve as Wesley's deputies, and to provide the Methodists with a necessary ministry. This plan was only partially successful. Asbury refused to accept Coke's transmissal of Wesley's commission until after they had both been elected "superintendents" by the free suffrages of the American preachers (at the "Christmas Conference," Baltimore, 1784).°° He and Coke then proceeded to supervise the organization of a new and autonomous denomination, the Methodist Episcopal Church. Asbury assumed the title "bishop," and blandly ignored Wesley's indignant rebuke for this pretension.*?

The Methodists in America were willing to reckon Wesley as their father in God but no longer as their actual leader.*? In 1786 they quietly

87. See below, p. 84.

88. Cf. Asbury, Journal and Letters, I, 471:

. | was shocked when first informed of [Coke's] intention. ..

. My answer ..

. was, if the preachers unanimously choose me, I shall not act in the capacity I have hitherto done by Mr. Wesley's appointment." See also Asbury's protest against the proposal of "our old Daddy ... to appoint a joint superintendent with me .

. ." (Journal and Letters, III, 63).

89. Cf. Letters, VIII, 91: "How can you, how dare you, suffer yourself to be called

'bishop': I shudder, I start at the very thought! Men may call me a knave or a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel and I am content. But they shall never by my consent call me

'bishop.' For my sake, for God's sake, for Christ's sake, put a full end to this!" go. Journal, VII, 295; Letters, VII, 294, 387; VIII, 73, 91; see also Asbury, Journal and Letters, I, 547 and note,

INTRODUCTION

dropped his name from the Minutes of the annual conferences, and in 1787 they ignored his explicit directive that Richard Whatcoat be elected "superintendent." ®t When Wesley's name reappeared in the Minutes of 1780, a clear distinction was drawn between his spiritual pre-eminence and his practical authority, His closing years were scarcely less intent or fruitful than the very first decade of the Revival. The reader of his Journal may rightly marvel, even as he himself did, at his continuing vigor and competence. He was often ill but rarely incapacitated. The visible signs of old age were scarcely noticeable until very near the end.°? He was planning yet another tour, just the month before his death — in London, March 2, 170%,

From the organization of the first society until the day of his death, Wesley maintained his role as the sole leader of the Methodists, people and preachers. Thereafter, his persona was perpetuated in a legal corporation of a hundred men chosen by Wesley to constitute "The Conference of the People Called Methodists." *? This Conference was designed to govern and guide the societies as Wesley had done, and to continue them within the Church of England, faithful to the doctrinal standards established earlier in the Model Deed.® For all this, however, the drift into schism was strong, and finally prevailed. Reverence for Wesley obscured the fact that when he died, he was the staunchly conformist leader of a nonconformist movement.%®

It is instructive, in trying to comprehend Wesley's way of working as a theologian, to notice the reiterative pattern in his doctrinal formulations.

Basic themes appear repeatedly, yet always freshly modulated to fit some new occasion or context. Wesley was a born debater. His training at Oxford had settled him in the habit of pitching on to the vulnerable links

91. For the Whatcoat affair and the dropping of Wesley's name from the Minutes, cf. Asbury, Journal and Letters, III, 49-53, 75» 943 see also David Sherman, History of the Revisions of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York,

1874), 68-69. For Wesley's own bitter comment on the breach, cf. Letters, VIII, 183.

There is also a curious comment on this affair in the Coke and Asbury preface to Volume I of their American edition of The Arminian Magazine (Philadelphia, 1789), v: "... he [Wesley] is not, as some have falsely advanced, in his second childhood;

- .

. his exercising the episcopal office for the forming of our church in America was not the fruit of infancy in him or in us."

92. Cf. for example, his annual tour of the societies in the spring and summer of 1788 in Journal, VII, 357-435.

93. Cf. The Deed of Declaration in Journal, VIII, 335-41; see also J. S. Simon, John Wesley; The Last Phase (1934), chap. xv.

94. Works, VIII, 329-31.

95. Cf. Letters, VIII, 58, 59, 66, 71,

INTRODUCTION

in an opponent's argument and trying to smash them, one by one. His polemical writings are not always fair and constructive; nowadays, at least, they make rather tedious reading. But they served their purpose in their time — which was more to lift the morale of his own people under the poundings of disapproval and the seductions of error than to silence or convert their enemies.

He seems never to have felt the impulse to produce anything resembling a comprehensive exposition of his theological ideas

— and this may have been just as well. Short doctrinal summaries are scattered throughout his writings,®* and these give ample evidence that his thought was consciously organized around a stable core of basic coordinated motifs. But there is no extended development of his system, and for the simple reason that there never seemed to be a practical need for such a thing. His single, sufficient motive in theologizing was to reinforce the spiritual and ethical concerns of his societies in particular and the Church in general. Theology, in this context, was a dialectical affair: ®7 faith seeking self-awareness and self-expression. This neglect of a developed systematic statement, however, has encouraged all too many of his followers to misperceive the organic unity of Wesley's thought, or to ignore the pivotal place or rational understanding in his mind and method.

Wesley himself cannot be invoked on behalf of an anti-intellectual attitude toward Christian truth.

It was of set purpose that he held the Revival to his own compounded premise of "salvation, faith and good works." This put him into tension with other viewpoints in which, as it seemed to him, the essential integrity between evangelical faith and Christian ethics was split, one way or the other. Against all such disjunctions, he asserted the reciprocal unity of belief and behavior. In the same mood and to the same effect, he strove constantly to enforce the distinction between faith itself and all conceptualizations of faith. What he meant by his phrase, "a catholic spirit" (and his favorite text on this theme, "if thy heart be as my heart, give me thy hand'),®* was the disposition to make and keep the vital reality of faith forever regnant over any and all of its verbalizations."

Many have supposed that this was meant to minimize the role of theology in the Christian life. Any such interpretation is as wide of Wesley's mark

96. Cf. Journal, III, 320, 534; IV, 419. See also Letters, IV, ce 149, 159, 235-2393

VI, 28; and Works, VIII, 46, 56, 67, 472; [X, 174.

97. Letters, IV, 181-82.

98. See below, p. 91 ff.

99. Cf. The Character of a Methodist, Works, VIII, 340 ff.

INTRODUCTION

as its antithesis would be — that "pure doctrine" and authentic faith are identical. In Wesley's mind, the data of faith provide the theologian with the problems he ponders; the results of his pondering are significant and valid only insofar as they further support the life of faith. Reason generates neither its data nor its presuppositions; faith does not provide its own self-evident conclusions. It is worth noticing in this connection that the familiar Wesleyan dictum — "we think and let think"

— refers, in his usage, solely to those "opinions" "which do not reach to the marrow of Christian truth." 1° That Wesley should have become the patron saint of theological indifferentism is mildly outrageous.

The great Protestant watchwords of sola fide and sola Scriptura were also fundamentals in Wesley's doctrine of authority. But early and late, he interpreted solus to mean "primarily" rather than "solely" or "exclusively." 1°! Faith is the primary reality in Christian experience but not its totality. It is, Wesley urged, a means—a necessary means—to a still higher end: "Faith .

. is only the handmaid of love.

. ." 1°? The goal of the Christian life is holiness, "the fullness of faith." This means the consecration of the whole self to God and to the neighbor in love. This, in turn, involves a process of corporate discipline and effort, guided by the motives of "devotion," by which he meant the delivering up of one's whole life to God. The outcome to be expected in this endeavor is the renewal of the imago Dei, mutilated by sin and ruined by waywardness.

But our aspiration to holiness is as truly a function of faith as justification itself is. The faith that justifies bears its fruits in the faith that works by love.

Wesley never doubted that the rightful expectation of the Christian life is love, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. But, certainly as a young man, strong feelings had normally been for him far more disturbing and demoralizing than creative. The program of Christian discipline as he had first practiced it was, therefore, an experiment in suppression. This rigid

100. Journal, VII, 389; Letters, IV, 297; Works, VIII, 340.

101. Letters, IV, 175: "We are justified by faith alone, and yet by such a faith as is not alone." Cf. Works, VIII, 46-70; see also An Earnest Appeal, below, pp. 386-88; and Works, XI, 373: ". .

. the year 1730, when I began to be homo unius libri, regarding none, comparatively, but the Bible" (why comparatively if unius meant "exclusively"?). See also "The Large Minutes" (Works, VIII, BUS) i Ute read only the Bible" ... This is rank enthusiasm. If you need no book but the Bible, you are got above St. Paul. He wanted others, too. 'Bring the books,' says he, 'but especially the parchments,' those wrote on parchment. 'But I have no taste for reading.' Contract a taste for it by use, or return to your trade."

102. See below, p. 226.

INTRODUCTION

self-control, however, had taken its toll in the "deadness" and the "lack of joy or peace" of which he complained so often

— before the Revival had got under way. It was not mere rhetorical flourish, therefore, when he said that, in the Aldersgate experience, his heart was "strangely warmed." In the later Wesley there is a remarkable balance between expression and restraint— and this marks a genuine transformation from what had earlier been his hunger for and fear of vivid emotion. There is impressive testimony to the fact that he came finally to understand that Christian maturity is chiefly faith's freedom to respond to God's grace without fear of rejection or pride of possession. This was the positive and dynamic view of sanctification that explains, in part at least, Wesley's own unwearied and unanxious diligence, his stress upon the serene strenuousness of the Christian life.

The essence of faith, whether at the threshold or in its fullness, has always to do with man's immediate and indubitable assurance of God's living and loving presence in his heart. Wesley followed Locke in the denial of "innate ideas" and appears never to have taken seriously the traditional "arguments" for the existence of God. In their place, he put an alternate notion of the self-evidence of God's reality as strictly implied in the faithful man's awareness of God's gracious disposition toward him.

This awareness of God's gracious "presence" is what Wesley meant by "experience," and it was, for him, as real and unmistakable a perception as any sensory awareness might be. This doctrine has often been construed as a subjective theory of experience in general. In Wesley's view, however, it is a theory of religious knowledge, a corollary of his view of revelation.

John Smith had been right, after all, about the fact that Wesley had a doctrine of "perceptible inspiration." But its reference is always confined to the experience of faith — that is, to that inner persuasion that God in Christ is graciously disposed and reconciling. This persuasion is wrought inwardly by the Holy Spirit ("the witness of the Spirit"), and it is as indubitable a perception as sight, sound or self-consciousness.1°3

The most delicate of all the balances which Wesley tried to maintain 103. Wesley's standard definition of faith is taken from Heb. 11:1 — ™payudrwr

Zeyxos ov Berouevwy — which he interprets as tangible evidence of the intangible reality of God's Spirit. Cf. "The Witness of the Spirit," Sermons (Sugden), I, 202-18;

"The Law Established Through Faith," ibid., II, 74-75; "The Wilderness State," ibid.,

244-63; "The Witness of the Spirit" (Discourse II), ibid., 341459; and "On the Discoveries of Faith," in Works, VII, 232 ff. As for the analogy between faith and sight, cf. Letters, 1, 255, 330; Il, 24, 48, 50, 64; IV, 116f., 126, 176, Works, VIII, 48, 408.

INTRODUCTION

in his conjunctive theology was the correlation between justification and sanctification. The striking of this balance was what had made 1738 his annus mirabilis. It was then that he finally came to know, once and for all, that faith alone is the sole ground of pardon and reconciliation; that no merit of any sort whatever can be linked to man's ultimate concern.

Here, said he, "I think on justification just as I have done any time these seven-and-twenty years and just as Mr. Calvin does. In this respect, I do not differ from him an hair's breadth." 1%

At the same time, he was equally insistent that the righteousness of faith is designed by God to promote actual righteousness in Christian living. He would therefore never allow the primacy of faith to weaken his stress on human responsibility or his concern for the self-understanding of the Christian as ethical agent. When George Whitefield and the Calvinists began to "preach up the decrees" (i.e. the doctrine of predestination) Wesley entered the lists against them, with small quarter asked or given.!% Similarly, when the Moravians protested his synergistic coupling of faith and discipline, Wesley denounced them as perverters of the whole gospel, and broke with them. When his doctrines of assurance and experience were labeled "enthusiasm," he carefully distinguished between "enthusiasm proper" 1°6 and that true earnestness based upon the Spirit's witness in our hearts. In these terms, he could insist, against all formalists, that until faith is deeply personal, it is not yet authentic.

The chief interest and significance of Wesley as a theologian lie in the integrity and vitality of his doctrine as a whole. Within that whole, the most distinctive single element was the notion of "Christian perfection." 1°7 In this he has been consistently misunderstood by all who would understand the English word "perfect" as a translation of the Latin perfectio. In medieval Latin perfectus meant "faultless" 1°8 — unimprovable!

That any human state can be perfect in this sense had rightly been denied 104. See below, p. 78.

105. See below, pp. 425-91.

106. See below, pp. 300-01, cf. Journal, III, 26, 202. Compare and contrast the sermons on "The Witness of the Spirit," Discourse II (Sermons [Sugden], II, 343-59), and "The Nature of Enthusiasm"

(ibid., 84-103). In the latter, after a review of various sorts of enthusiasm, Wesley comes down finally upon the worst "enthusiasm" of them all: "fancying you are a Christian when you are not."

107. See below, pp. 251-305.

108. Cf. J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, 1954-62), fascicle

9, 788.

INTRODUCTION

by Aquinas,1 and had been reserved by the Westminster Divines "for the state of glory only." 11° The Calvinists promptly decided that Wesley's stress on "perfection" was tantamount to a reintroduction of "works-righteousness" into the doctrine of sanctification. This is part of the implication of heterodoxy that went with the label "Arminian." They pointed to Wesley's insistence upon a time span separating the experience of saving faith and sanctifying faith as a necessary interval for Christian growth and discipline. The Calvinists, however, were not the only ones to misconstrue this doctrine according to their own particular prejudices. The Methodists in America, especially in the nineteenth century, contributed to a very considerable confusion by interpreting "perfection" in terms of "the second blessing" or "entire sanctification as a state of grace distinct from justification, attainable instantaneously by faith." 14

Wesley, however, had learned about the goal of the Christian life from a different tradition — the reAciwors of "Macarius," Gregory and Ephraem, the "holiness" of Jewel, Hall and Taylor. "Perfect love," as Wesley understood it, is the conscious certainty, im a present moment, of the fullness of one's love for God and neighbor, as this love has been initiated and fulfilled by God's gifts of faith, hope and love. This is not a state but a dynamic process: saving faith is its beginning; sanctification is its proper climax.'!" As faith is in order to love, so love is in order to goodness — and so also goodness is in order to blessedness. This complex pattern of means and ends is designed to unfold in the life process itself, and thus requires some sort of temporal interval for its fulfillment. It is almost as if Wesley had read dydézy in the place of the Clementine yvéus, and then had turned the Eastern notion of a vertical scale of perfection into a genetic scale of development within historical existence.?'*

It seemed so obvious to Wesley that no human state is absolute that he was constantly baflled by those who misconstrued his teachings to this effect. All human experience, being temporal and processive, is also pro109. In his Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. III, 47-48.

110. "Non nisi in statu gloriae"; cf. the Westminster Confession, IX, v; cf. XIII, ii.

111. For a review of this development, cf. J. L. Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism (New York, 1956), 129; see also 127, 169 f., 177-78.

112. Letters, IV, 173, 177; see also "Christian Perfection," in Sermons (Sugden), II,

150-77.

; 113. Cf. the hesychastic theme of "the ladder of the soul" («Aiwa Gelas dvofod), in St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Lazarus Moore (1959).

INTRODUCTION

visional. Men may lapse from perfection as tragically as they fall from grace at any other stage or point. There is no level of spiritual achievement from which pride or self-will may not topple us. So long as we are

"in the body," as Wesley puts it, we are fair prey to Satan's wiles. "Perfection" is the fulfillment of faith's desire to love God above all else and all else in God, so far as conscious will and deliberate action are concerned."* To deny this as at least a possibility seemed to Wesley to imply that deliberate sin is inevitable and unavoidable — which would be to say that man was made to sin and that his sinful disposition is invincible. But this effectively impugns God's sovereignty as well as his goodness. The assumption that our "wandering thoughts" have power superior to grace entails the consequence that sin inheres in man's created essence, and from this it follows that sin is a part of God's design and purpose!

In the normal course of Christian life, Wesley believed, the gift of perfect love is deferred until the "moment of death" (articulus mortis).

In the face of death a man is forced into a mood of "seriousness," if he is ever likely to be. It was, therefore, neither accidental nor morbid that Wesley should be so deeply interested in the ars moriendi, with so avid an interest in reports of "triumphant deaths" of all sorts.145 However, there is no good reason why a man may not come to be utterly earnest while still alive. Thus, the gift of perfection is to be sought and expected

— but never scheduled or advertised!

Nevertheless, what is given may also be cast away. A man may come to enjoy a pure intention to love God and his neighbor with all his witting powers. Still, in the actual course of implementing such an intention he will inevitably be led to further discoveries of hitherto unwitting faults, unrecognized and indeliberate reservations of his love. These moments of self-awareness precipitate recurrent crises in the course of Christian living. In the face of such self-discovery the man of faith repents

— or else he cancels his avowed intent and lapses from "perfection." Thus repentance belongs to the fullness of faith quite as truly as it does to faith at every other level.

114. Letters, IV, 155 f., 191, 208. See also Homily II ("On the Misery of Man") for a similar distinction between deliberate and indeliberate action, conscious and secret sins.

115. Cf. Journal, Il, 536; Ill, 197-99, 5273; IV, 33-34, 204-10, 246, 306, 4253, V035 75

389; VI, 43, 311; Letters, II, 111; IV, 222; V, 96; VI, 43-45, 264; Works, VIl, 320 ff. See also Elizabeth Richey's account of Wesley's own death, in Journal, VIII, 1 31-44, as a sample of this concern, shared by all the dramatis personae (including Wesley! ) that a triumphant end should rightly crown a faithful life.

INTRODUCTION

, The Christian life, in Wesley's view, is empowered by the energy of grace: prevenient, saving, sanctifying, sacramental. Grace is always interpreted as something more than mere forensic pardon. Rather, it is experienced as actual influence — God's love, immanent and active in human life. Its prior initiative makes every human action a re-action; hence, it is "pre-venting." It is a function of God's mercy that is over all his works; hence, it is universal. It can be "resisted"; hence it is co-operant rather than irresistible. And since it is always mediated in and through various outward and visible signs, grace is typically sacramental. But since it is always Goa's grace, it is never at man's disposal. Thus, it cannot be sequestered by any sacerdotal authority; it can neither be dispensed nor withheld, appropriately, by any recourse to magic or priestly rites.

Wesley's doctrine of the means of grace 1° illustrates the fact that both the most and least original elements in his theology belong together. His doctrine of grace as preventing, co-operant and sanctifying is hardly to be found, in the form he developed it, anywhere else in the body of Anglican divinity. It is worth remarking, however, that in this area he was never drawn into controversy, and consequently was never moved to write anything of his own in exposition or defense of his sacramental theology. He was, therefore, able and content to rely on suitable texts from others for the instruction of his people in the meaning of baptism and the proper uses of the Eucharist."

No summary review of Wesley's life and work can convey an adequate sense of constant vitality and cumulative force that comes with a sufficiently broad and sustained reading of Wesley himself. More than most theologians, he needs to be analyzed in terms of his historical context and the pressures that shaped his thought. His life and work make up a complex integer of action and reflection within the confusions and mutations of Georgian England. The following pages, one may hope, provide an opportunity for exploring his mind at firsthand, yet also in its unique setting and circumstances. What is here is only a sample — but such a sample as may make evident something of his total achievement and the import of the Christian traditions which converged in him.

116. Cf. his sermon, "The Means of Grace," Works, V, 185-201; Sermons (Sugden),

I, 237-60.

117. See below, p. 317 ff.

PART ONE of The Theologian Self-Interpreted

Introduction to Part One "

[een a compulsively busy life, Wesley kept a cool, clear eye on the passing scene and on himself as an actor in it. His Journal is a wide-angled mirror of his own life and of the eighteenth-century Britain in which he lived. It was a by-product of his habit of autobiography which had begun with his conversion in 1725: 1

It was in pursuance of an advice given by Bishop Taylor in his Rules for Holy Living and Dying, that about fifteen years ago I began to take a more exact account than I had done before of the manner wherein I spent my time, writing down how I had employed every hour. This I continued to do wherever I was, till the time of my leaving England. The variety of scenes which I then passed through induced me to transcribe from time to time the more material parts of my diary, adding here and there such little reflections as occurred to my mind. Of this journal thus occasionally compiled, the following is a short extract, it not being my design to relate all those particulars which I wrote for my own use only and which would answer no valuable end to others, however important they were to me.

For the span of two full generations he continued to keep a narrative record of the meaningful events of his life.? Besides his diaries, he usually carried about with him folded folio sheets on which he reported his doings and impressions. Along with this was his copious correspondence, which is also highly autobiographical. From the unpublished journal and these other sources he would from time to time produce and publish the so-called "Extracts of the Journal," such as the ones from which the following samples are taken. There were twenty-one of the "extracts"; together they constitute the published Journal. Thus it turns out that we have more autobiographical data from John Wesley than from any other figure in church history.

1. Preface to An Extract of the Rev. Mr. John Wesley's Journal from His Embarking for Georgia to His Return to London (Bristol, 1739). Cf. also Journal, I, 82-84.

2. Cf. ibid., 3-77. See also V. H. H. Green, The Young Mr. Wesley (1961), v-vi et passim.

THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED

In point of fact, however, Wesley was far less introspective than the typical diarist; he was certainly no exhibitionist. What was "extracted" for the published Journal was chosen by the same selective principles that guided him in the rest of his writing and publishing: the practical needs of his people and the furtherance of the Revival. As the central figure in the movement, he appears in all its accounts as a matter of course.

Nevertheless, it is very difficult to frame an authentic image of Wesley's psychological character. He was a candid and forthright man, yet also curiously reticent about his own personal feelings —as if his vital interest lay rather with events than with his own inner states. Generally speaking, therefore, the Journal is not an intimate document, as one may readily see by comparing it with Rousseau's Confessions or Pepys's Diary.

Rather, it is the carefully constructed narrative of Wesley's involvement in what he regarded as an unparalleled renewal of essential Christianity.'

This knack of semidetached, participant observation makes it possible for his readers to see Wesley's ways of working at close range. In this

Part One, then, we have selected samples of his self-understanding as a theologian, using the man himself as witness and interpreter. The selections are limited, but they are typical of the whole. Besides, the Journal is generally available to interested readers. Both of the following passages were written in the crucial year 1738. The first is a memorandum in which he rehearses the formation of his theological perspective from the beginning of his career to the end of his Georgia mission. The second is a reconstruction, after the fact, of the drama of "Aldersgate." His subsequent life story may be read in the remainder of the Journal and in the various summary accounts of the Revival and its progress which he prepared from time to time.

With the excerpts from the Journal are also included a small but quite typical group of autobiographical letters. Each of them reveals Wesley as he saw himself in one or another of the significant phases of his work.

They have all been published in the Telford edition.

3. Cf. A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Pt. Il, Works, VIII, 205.

See also below, pp. 41-69.

4. The Nature, Design and General Rules of the United Societies

(1743); A

Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Pt. Wl (1745); A Plain Agcount of the People Called Methodists (1749); A Short History of Methodism (1765); the sermon "On Laying the Foundation of the New Chapel Near the City Road," London

(1777) (Works, VII, 419-30); A Brief Narrative of the Revival of Religion in Virginia

(1778); "A Short History of the People Called Methodists," published as an appendix to A Concise Ecclesiastical History (1781).

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

From his hundred and fifty-one sermons, it seemed sufficient to present, in this particular part, the preface which Wesley wrote for the whole collection of Sermons on Several Occasions (1746) — which is a brief explanation of his theological method in general

— plus two self-interpreting sermons: "A Catholic Spirit," which characterizes his theological temper and aspiration; and "On God's Vineyard," his retrospective appraisal of the Revival after fifty years.

These pieces are intended to serve as a personal introduction of Wesley to the reader. As such, they form a sort of minimal background for the analysis and appraisal of the remainder of his essays in theological construction.

eee ee Fog ose te ogee

AN EARLY SELF-ANALYSIS }

Sun. 8 January 1738: — In the fullness of my heart, I wrote the following words: ?

By the most infallible of proofs, inward feeling, I am convinced:

1, Of unbelief — having no such faith in Christ as will prevent my heart from being troubled, which it could not be if I believed in God and rightly believed also in [Christ] ; 1. Cf. Journal, 1, 418-24. This passage is a conflation of a portion of the published

Journal with a memorandum from the unpublished journal, first printed in Whitehead, Life, II, 53-57, and reprinted in Moore, Life, I, 198-202. The copy text used is

Curnock's, corrected by that in the fifth edition (1775).

2. This entry is the comment of a frustrated man on his way home to report the failure of a mission. What makes it peculiarly significant is the theological memorandum in the middle, in which Wesley reviews his early theological development.

This sketch goes with what else we know of his education at Oxford, and it outlines the rough shape of his basic theological perspective, both then and thereafter.

In later years he was fond of insisting that the basic shape of his theology had been cast before the Revival began — although its accents and emphases had often changed under the heat and pressures of the Revival. For a careful survey of his reading at Oxford and in Georgia, cf. V. H. H. Green, The Young Mr. Wesley (1961), 305-19;

Appendix I, "Wesley's Reading, 1725-34." Also, the diary entries in the Journal (I,

110-314), compared with his subsequent theological writing, strongly suggest that, whatever may be said of his "heart," Wesley's mind-set was already firmly settled before "Aldersgate" — centered in Scripture, guarded by The Homilies and Articles, interpreted by a wide array of patristic and "modern" authors, mostly Anglican

(see below, p. 45 f.).

One crucial element, however, is poignantly lacking. Thus far, Wesley has "the faith of a servant," but lacks "the faith of a son." He has not yet experienced "the assurance of faith," which he had seen exemplified by the Moravians on board the Simmonds (Journal, 1, 141-43), and which Peter Bohler would soon press upon him again (ibid., 440-42, 454-62). The doctrine of justification by faith which he had received from his own tradition had not yet been fused with the assurance of faith which he had seen in the Moravians. For the time being, therefore, the well-furnished theologian is caught pathetically in the toils of discontent and self-reproach.

THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED

2. Of pride throughout my life past, inasmuch as I thought I had what I find I have not; 3. Of gross irrecollection, inasmuch as in a storm I cry to God every moment; in a calm, not; 4. Of levity and luxuriancy of spirit, recurring whenever the pressure is taken off; and appearing by my speaking words not tending to edify; but most by my manner of speaking of my enemies.

Lord, save, or I perish! Save me:

1. By such a faith as implies peace in life and in death; 2. By such humility as may fill my heart from this hour for ever, with a piercing, uninterrupted sense, nihil est quod hactenus feci;* having evidently built without a foundation;

3. By such a recollection as may cry to thee every moment, especially when all is calm. Give me faith, or I die; give me a lowly spirit: otherwise, mihi non sit suave vivere; 4 4. By steadiness, seriousness, cepvdrns, sobriety of spirit; avoiding, as fire, every word that tendeth not to edifying, and never speaking of any who oppose me; or sin against God, without all my Own sins set in array before my face.

This morning, after explaining these words of St. Paul, "I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God" [Rom. 12:1], I exhorted my fellow travellers with all my might to comply with the apostle's direction. But leaving them afterwards to themselves, the seriousness they showed at first soon vanished away.

On Monday the oth, and the following days, I reflected much on that vain desire which had pursued me for so many years: of being in solitude in order to be a Christian. I have now, thought I, solitude enough. But am I therefore the nearer being a Christian? Not if Jesus Christ be the model of Christianity. I doubt, indeed, I am much nearer that mystery of Satan which some writers affect to call by that name. So near that I had probably sunk wholly into it had not the great mercy of God just now thrown me upon reading St. Cyprian's works.> "O my soul, come

3- [Au.] "I have done nothing hitherto." [Ed.] Cf. The Imitation of Christ, Bk.

I, chap. 19, sec. i.

4. [Au.] "Let life be a burden to me." [Ed.] But cf. Terence, The Self-Tormentor, trans. by John Sargeaunt (Loeb ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1947), I, 164, 1. 482.

5. For Wesley, Cyprian's practical piety represented the counterbalance to mys-

AN EARLY SELF-ANALYSIS

not thou into their secret" [Gen. 49:6]! "Stand thou in the good old paths" [cf. Jer. 6:16].

Fri. 13 — We had a thorough storm, which obliged us to shut all close, the sea breaking over the ship continually. I was at first afraid, but cried to God and was strengthened. Before ten I lay down, I bless God, without fear. About midnight we were awakened by a confused noise of seas and wind and men's voices, the like to which I had never heard before.

The sound of the sea breaking over and against the sides of the ship I could compare to nothing but large cannon or American thunder. The rebounding, starting, quivering motion of the ship much resembled what is said of earthquakes. The captain was upon deck in an instant. But his men could not hear what he said. It blew a proper hurricane, which beginning at southwest, then went west, northwest, north, and, in a quarter of an hour, round by the east to the southwest again. At the same time the sea running (as they term it) mountains high, and that from many different points at once, the ship would not obey the helm; nor indeed could the steersman, through the violent rain, see the compass. So he was forced to let her run before the wind, and in half an hour the stress of the storm was over.

About noon the next day it ceased. But first I had resolved, God being my helper, not only to preach it to all but to apply the Word of God to every single soul in the ship; and if but one, yea, if not one of them will hear, I know "my labour is not in vain" [1 Cor. 15:58].

I no sooner executed this resolution than my spirit revived, so that from this day I had no more of that fearfulness and heaviness which before almost continually weighed me down. I am sensible [that] one who thinks the being iv orco,® as they phrase it, an indispensable preparative for being a Christian, would say I had better have continued in that state, and that this unseasonable relief was a curse, not a blessing. Nay, but who art thou, O man, who, in favour of a wretched hypothesis, thus blasphemest the good gift of God? Hath not he himself said, "This also is the gift of God, if a man have power to rejoice in his labour"? Yea, God setteth his own seal to his weak endeavours, while he thus "answereth him in the joy of his heart" [cf. Eccles. 5: 19-20].

Tues. 24.

We spoke with two ships, outward-bound, from whom ticism, as his episcopal polity represented a counterweight to 'papal supremacy. Cf. his defense of Cyprian against Conyers Middleton, Works, X, 48-52.

6. "In the jaws of death"; (orcus, the infernal regions).

THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED

we had the welcome news of our wanting but one hundred and sixty leagues of the Land's End. My mind was now full of thought, part of which I writ down as follows:

I went to America to convert the Indians but, oh, who shall convert me? Who, what, is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief? I have a fair summer religion. I can talk well, nay, and believe myself, while no danger is near. But let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. Nor can I say, "to die is gain" [Phil. 1:21].

I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun My last thread, I shall perish on the shore! 7

I think, verily, if the gospel be true, I am safe, for I not only have given and do give all my goods to feed the poor; I not only give my body to be burned, drowned, or whatever God shall appoint for me; but I follow after charity (though not as I ought, yet as I can) if haply I may attain it. I mow believe the gospel is true. "I show my faith by my works" [Jas. 2:18] by staking my all upon it. I would do so again and again a thousand times, if the choice were still to make. Whoever sees me, sees I would be a Christian. Therefore "are my ways not like other men's ways" [cf. Is. 55:8]. Therefore, I have been, I am, I am content to be, a "by-word, a proverb of reproach" [cf. 2 Chron.

7:20]. But in a storm I think, "What if the gospel be not true? Then thou art of all men most foolish. For what has thou given up thy goods, thy ease, thy friends, thy reputation, thy country, thy life? For what art thou wandering over the face of the earth —a dream, a cunningly devised fable? Oh, who will deliver me from this fear of death? What shall I do? Where shall I fly from it? Should I fight against it by thinking or by not thinking of it?" A wise man advised me some time since,

"Be still and go on." Perhaps this is best, to look upon it as my cross; when it comes, to let it humble me and quicken all my good resolutions, especially that of praying without ceasing, and at other times to take no thought about it, but quietly go on in the work of the Lord.

1. For many years § I have been tossed by various winds of doctrine.

I asked long ago, "What must I do to be saved" [Acts 16:30]? The 7 John Donne, "A Hymn to God the Father," in Poems, Herbert J. C. Grierson, ed. (Oxford, 1912), II, 369-70. Cf. ibid., I, 251-53, for evidence that this poem was frequently used as an anthem at St. Paul's.

8. The following six paragraphs were not in the published Journal. They were first printed in Whitehead, Life, II, 54-56.

AN EARLY SELF-ANALYSIS

Scripture answered, "Keep the commandments, believe, hope, love; follow after these tempers till thou hast fully attained (that is, till death) by all those outward works and means which God hath appointed, by walking as Christ walked."

2. I was early warned against laying, as the papists do, too much stress on outward works — or on a faith without works; which, as it does not include, so it will never lead to, true hope or charity. Nor am

I sensible that to this hour I have laid too much stress on either; having from the very beginning valued both faith and the means of grace and good works, not on their own account, but as believing that God, who had appointed them, would by them bring me in due time to the mind that was in Christ [cf. Phil. 2:5].

3. But before God's time was come, I fell among some Lutheran and Calvinist authors, whose confused and indigested accounts magnified faith to such an amazing size that it quite hid all the rest of the commandments. I did not then see that this was the natural effect of their overgrown fear of popery, being so terrified with the cry of merit and good works that they plunged at once into the other extreme. In this labyrinth I was utterly lost, not being able to find out what the error was, nor yet to reconcile this uncouth hypothesis either with Scripture or common sense.

4. The English writers, such as Bishop Beveridge, Bishop Taylor and Mr. Nelson, a little relieved me from these well-meaning, wrongheaded Germans.® Their accounts of Christianity I could easily see to be, in the main, consistent both with reason and Scripture. Only when

9. The latter part of the seventeenth-century witnessed a vigorous renaissance of patristic studies. Its slogan, as expressed by Thomas Ken, was "the faith professed by the whole Church before the disunion of East and West." William Beveridge

(1637-1708), Bishop of St. Asaph, was one of the most scholarly and influential of these "restorers of primitive piety." Wesley had read Beveridge's Sermons and Codex at Oxford, and had studied his Zvvéd:xoy in Georgia; see above, p. 12. Jeremy Taylor

(1613-1667), Bishop of Down and Connor, had already figured in Wesley's conversion of 1725 (see above, p. 7), and was perhaps the century's most eloquent spokesman for an evangelical catholicism both in faith and order. Robert Nelson

(1656-1715) was a Nonjuring layman whose lifelong concern for a revival of true religion in the Church of England was in some ways parallel to Wesley's (cf. Letters,

I, 136). Wesley's chief theological tutor was Bishop George Bull (Defensor Fidei

Nicaenae), but he numbered amongst his mentors many of the other great spirits of his time: Thomas Ken, John Kettlewell, George Hickes, John Sharp, George

Smalridge, and others. The common interest of all these men' was their rootage in a Christian tradition more primitive (and, in their eyes, more truly catholic) than the corruptions of the "papists" or the exaggerations of the "protestants."

THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED

they interpreted Scripture in different ways I was often much at a loss.

And again, there was one thing much insisted on in Scripture — the unity of the Church — which none of them, I thought, clearly explained or strongly inculcated.

5. But it was not long before Providence brought me to those who showed me a sure rule of interpreting Scripture, viz.: "Consensus veterum: quod ab omnibus, quod ubique, quod semper creditum."

At the same time they sufficiently insisted upon a due regard to the one Church at all times and in all places.

Nor was it long before I bent the bow too far the other way: 4

1. By making antiquity a co-ordinate rather than subordinate rule with Scripture.

2. By admitting several doubtful writings as undoubted evidences of antiquity.

3. By extending antiquity too far, even to the middle or end of the fourth century.

4. By believing more practices to have been universal in the ancient Church than ever were so.

5. By not considering that the decrees of one provincial synod could bind only that province; and that the decrees of a general synod

[bound] only those provinces whose representatives met therein.

6. By not considering that the most of those decrees were adapted to particular times and occasions; and consequently, when these occasions ceased, must cease to bind even those provinces.

These considerations insensibly stole upon me as I grew acquainted with the mystic writers,!2 whose noble descriptions of union with God

10. "The consensus of antiquity: that which has been believed by everyone, everywhere and always." This is Wesley's garbled version of the famous "Canon" of St.

Vincent of Lérins, in his Commonitorium, Bk. I, sec. ii: "In ipsa item catholica ecclesia magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus QUOD UBIQUE, QUOD SEMPER, QUOD AB OMNIBUS crEDITUM EsT" [PL, L, 640] "Moreover, in the catholic church herself, all possible care should be taken that we hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always and by everybody"). Here and elsewhere, Wesley's ecclesiology bears a strong resemblance to that of John Jewel, 1522-1 571; cf. W. M. Southgate, John Jewel (Cambridge, 1962), 192-216.

11. Influenced by such men as William Whiston (cf. Primitive Christianity [i711],

III) who placed the so-called Apostolical Constitutions very nearly on a level with the four Gospels; cf. C. J. Abbey and J. H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, 202-03; see also 210.

12. In this category Wesley lumped William Law, Michael Molinos, Fénelon, Francke's Nicodemus, Gaston de Renty, Frangois de Sales, Madame Guyon and the Theologia Germanica. Cf. Jean Orcibal, "Les Spirituels Francais et Espagnols chez

AN EARLY SELF-ANALYSIS

and internal religion made everything else appear mean, flat and insipid. But, in truth, they made good works appear so, too; yea, and faith itself, and what not? These gave me an entire new view of religion

— nothing like any I had before. But, alas! it was nothing like that religion which Christ and his apostles lived and taught.!* I had a plenary dispensation from all the commands of God. The form ran thus: "Love is all; all the commands beside are only means of love; you must choose those which you feel are means to you and use them as long as they are so." Thus were all the bands burst at once. And though I could never fully come into this, nor contentedly omit what

God enjoined, yet, I know not how, I fluctuated between obedience and disobedience. I had no heart, no vigour, no zeal in obeying; continually doubting whether I was right or wrong and never out of perplexities and entanglements. Nor can J at this hour give a distinct account how or when I came a little back toward the right way. Only, my present sense is this: all the other enemies of Christianity are triflers — the mystics are the most dangerous of its enemies. They stab it in the vitals, and its most serious professors are most likely to fall by them. May I praise him who hath snatched me out of this fire likewise,'* by warning all others that it is set on fire of hell.

We went on with a small, fair wind till Thursday in the afternoon, and then, sounding, found a whitish sand at seventy-five fathoms; but having had no observation for several days, the captain began to be uneasy, fearing we might either get unawares into the Bristol Channel, or strike in the night on the rocks of Scilly.

Sat. 28.— was another cloudy day, but about ten in the morning (the wind continued southerly) the clouds began to fly just contrary to the wind and, to the surprise of us all, sank down under the sun, so that at noon we had an exact observation; and by this we found we were as well as we could desire, about eleven leagues south of Scilly.

Sun. 29.— We saw English land once more, which about noon appeared to be the Lizard Point. We ran by it with a fair wind, and at noon the next day made the west end of the Isle of Wight.

John Wesley ...," Revue de lHistoire des Religions, 139 (1951), 50-109; Green, Young Wesley, 275-78; see also R. A. Knox, Enthusiasm ..

. (Oxford, 1950), 432-35, 378-82.

13. Cf. Letters,

14. An echo of the "brand plucked out of the burning" ab the Epworth rectory; see above, p. 6,

THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED

Here the wind turned against us and in the evening blew fresh; so that we expected (the tide being likewise strong against us) to be driven some leagues backward in the night: but in the morning, to our great surprise, we saw Beachy Head just before us, and found we had gone forwards near forty miles.

Toward evening was a calm, but in the night a strong north wind brought us safe into the Downs. The day before, Mr. Whitefield had sailed out, neither of us then knowing anything of the other. At four in the morning we took boat and in half an hour landed at Deal, it being

Wednesday, February 1, the anniversary festival in Georgia for Mr.

Oglethorpe's landing there.

It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity.

But what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why, what I the least of all suspected, that I, who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God.!® "I am not mad," though I thus speak; but "I speak the words of truth and soberness" [cf. Acts 26: 25], if haply some of those who still "dream" may "awake" and see that as I am, so are they.

Are they read in philosophy? So was I. In ancient or modern tongues?

So was I also. Are they versed in the science of divinity? I too have studied it many years. Can they talk fluently upon spiritual things? The very same could I do. Are they plenteous in alms? Behold, I gave all my goods to feed the poor. Do they give of their labour as well as of their substance? I have laboured more abundantly than they all. Are they willing to suffer for their brethren? I have thrown up my friends, reputation, ease, country; I have put my life in my hand, wandering into strange lands; I have given my body to be devoured by the deep, parched up with heat, consumed by toil and weariness or whatsoever God should please to bring upon me. But does all this (be it more or less, it matters not) make me acceptable to God? Does all I ever did or can know, say, give, do, or suffer, justify me in his sight? Yea, or the "constant use of all the means of grace" (which, nevertheless, is "meet, right and our bounden duty")? 16

Or that "I know nothing of myself" [1 Cor. 4:4]; that I am, as touching outward, moral righteousness, blameless? Or (to come closer yet) the having a "rational conviction" of all the truths of Christianity? Does all this give me a claim to the holy, heavenly, divine character of a Christian? By no means, if the oracles of God are true —if we are still to 15. Wesley later quietly corrected this: "I am not sure of this." Works (Pine), XX VI (errata).

16. Cf. the prayer before the Sanctus, Holy Communion, B.C.P.; see below, Pp. 65.

AN EARLY SELF-ANALYSIS

a abide by "the law and the testimony" [cf. Is. 8:20]. All these things, though, when ennobled by faith in Christ,17 they are holy and just and good; yet without it are dung and dross, [meet only to be purged away by "the fire that never shall be quenched" (Mk. 9:43, 45) ].18

This, then, have I learned in the ends of the earth — that I "am fallen short of the glory of God" [Rom. 3:23]; that my whole heart is "altogether corrupt and abominable," and consequently my whole life, seeing it cannot be that an "evil tree" should "bring forth good fruit" [Mt.

7:17-19]; [that, alienated as I am from the life of God, I am "a child of wrath" (Eph. 2:3),'® an heir of hell;] that my own works, my own sufferings, my own righteousness, are so far from reconciling me to an offended God, so far from making any atonement for the least of those sins (which "are more in number than the hairs of my head" [Ps. 40:12]), that the most specious of them need an atonement themselves, or they cannot abide his righteous judgment; that, "having the sentence of death" [cf. 2 Cor. 1:9] in my heart and having nothing in or of myself to plead, I have no hope but that of being justified freely, "through the redemption that is in Jesus" [Rom. 3:24]. I have no hope but that if I seek,

I shall find Christ and "be found in him, not having my own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" [Phil. 3:9].

If it be said that I have faith (for many such things have I heard from many miserable comforters), I answer: "So have the devils —a sort of faith — but still they are strangers to the covenant of promise. So the apostles had even at Cana in Galilee, when Jesus first 'manifested forth his glory' [cf. Jn. 2:11]; even then they, in a sort, 'believed on him,' but they had not then 'the faith that overcometh the world' [1 Jn. 5:4].

The faith I want ° is 'a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven and I reconciled to the favour of God.' 21 I want that faith which St. Paul recommends to all the world, especially in his Epistle to the Romans, that faith which enables every one

17. Here, too, an added note of Wesley's: "I had even then the faith of a servant though not that of a son." Cf. "The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption," Sermons

(Sugden), I, 178-98, and below, Minutes of The Conferences, 1746 (May 13, Q. and A. 11).

18. Bracketed passage omitted in the last edition.

19. In 1774 Wesley added an erratum in contradiction to this: "I believe not." In the last edition, the bracketed portion of the sentence is omitted.

20. Wesley's marginal note: "the faith of a son."

21. Cf. "Of the True and Lively Faith," in The Homilies, IV, for this phrase and a development of the contrast between formally orthodox faith and the faith that saves.

THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED

that hath it to cry out: 'I live not; but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me' [Gal. 2:20]. I want that faith which none can have without knowing that he hath it (though many imagine they have it, who have it not), for whosoever hath it, is 'freed from sin, the whole body of sin is destroyed' [Rom. 6:6, 7] in him; he is freed from fear, 'having peace with God through Christ and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God'

[Rom. 5:1-2]. And he is freed from doubt, 'having the love of God shed abroad in his heart through the Holy Ghost which is given unto him'

[Rom. 5:5], which 'Spirit itself beareth witness with his spirit that he is a child of God'" [Rom. 8:16].

ecm ts: muntce a sceumn Crem tstn ese I] * bob bt be ee +t ee

THE ALDERSGATE EXPERIENCE ?

Editor's introduction. This is easily the most familiar passage in all Wesley's writings. In the Methodist tradition, it stands as the equivalent of Paul's experience on the Damascus road and Augustine's conversion in the Milanese garden. It is often spoken of as Wesley's "conversion," as if before he had been a heathen or a hypocrite. There are, however, several odd angles to the story. The most striking is the fact that, apart from this one particular account of it, John Wesley makes just one other explicit reference to the Aldersgate event." There are, of course, numerous references to 1738 as the year when the brothers Wesley gained the assurance of faith, and there are several instances, both before and after "Aldersgate," where Wesley denies that he was or ever had been a Christian.? But, save for an indirect reference to it in Charles Wesley's

Journal for May 24, 1738, "Aldersgate" simply drops out of sight in the whole of Wesley's subsequent writings. Yet another curiosity is that before May 24 Wesley records moments of equal, or nearly equal, spiritual exaltation, and in the first six months after "Aldersgate" he reports numerous instances of acute spiritual depression, equal in severity to anything preceding.* This account is, therefore, something of an anomaly. Wesley's first biographers took it as his actual conversion to authentic Christianity, and succeeding generations have made of it a pious legend. Moreover, it is plain that Wesley himself here goes to unaccustomed lengths to present the experience as a dramatic climax. Why, then, do we hear of it no more

1. Journal, 1, 449-84; cf. Works, 1, 90-106. Amendments or additions are taken from the errata of the text in Works (Pine), XXVI, and the edition published by G.

Whitefield (1797).

2. In a letter to his brother Samuel, October 30, 1738 (shortly after he had encountered Jonathan Edwards

— see above, pp. 15-16. Letters, I, 262.

3. Cf. below, p. 71 and p. 81.

4. Cf. Journal, September 1738 to April 1739.

THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED

thereafter? At least a partial explanation comes from the fact that the Aldersgate experience had occurred under Moravian auspices; so that, as "the rift with the Moravians" > worsened, Wesley was disinclined to repeat the story of their decisive influence upon his career. Moreover,

"Aldersgate" had been followed by further crises of equal, or nearly equal, moment: the German journey, the impact of Edwards's Faithful Narrative, the rediscovery of the Homilies on salvation, faith and good works ® and, finally, the unanticipated response to his revival preaching at Bristol.

As his retrospect on this chapter of his autobiography lengthened, it is as if Wesley came to realize that "Aldersgate" had been one in a series of the "turning points" in his passage from don to missionary to evangelist.

Add to this his vivid aversion to the Moravian antinomianism and the independent development of his own societies, and his subsequent silence about "Aldersgate" becomes intelligible.

There can be no doubt, however, that what this experience represented is crucial to an understanding of Wesley's thought. Since his first act of self-dedication to God in 1725, he had striven to pass from faith's threshold to its fullness without a present, personal assurance of God's active grace in his heart. He had fallen in with the prevailing Anglican view — as this had been expressed by Arthur Bedford and others

— that distinguished between "the faith of adherence" (to the means of grace) and "the faith of assurance" (inner certitude), the latter being regarded merely as exceptional intensification of the former.? And yet, he had experienced many a doubt on this very score and had sought something more vivid and inward in the correlation of his faith and the inner feeling of the assurance of faith. His mother had taught him that the subjective essence of faith was pardon,® and he had read the same thing in the Homily "Of the Salvation of All Mankind." The especial role of Peter Bohler in this drama was to force Wesley to a crisis between faith as "hope" and faith as "assurance." "Aldersgate" was the outcome — the fusion of justifying faith with the "sure trust and confidence

5. See below, p. 353 ff.

6. See below, p. 123 ff.

7. Cf. Arthur Bedford, The Doctrine of Assurance (1738): "The 'faith of adherence' alone is sufficient to bring a man to heaven... . And, therefore, to limit salvation to a particular degree of faith ['assurance'] is to destroy all those promises on which thousands of Christians have hitherto depended for their eternal comfort.

. .. From which uncharitableness, false doctrine and heresy, Good Lord deliver us"

(36-37)!

8. Cf. Letters, I, 19-20, 22; cf. Martin Schmidt, John Wesley (Frankfurt, 1953),

48-63.

THE ALDERSGATE EXPERIENCE

in God that by the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven and he reconciled to the favour of God." ® From 1738 to 1747 Wesley affirmed the notion of "degrees in faith," but denied any such relativity in the matter of assurance. In 1747 he began to distinguish between the objective and subjective aspects of justification and assurance !° — to stress both, but in their correlation rather than identity.

The dramatic structure of the "Aldersgate" account is noteworthy.

Both Paul and Augustine are clearly in Wesley's mind. And yet the stage of the drama is plainly the Revival itself —that unexpected uprush of religious vitality into which Wesley had been plunged and whose leader he was to be for the succeeding half-century.

oe & + Sunday [April] 2 [1738] — Being Easter Day, I preached in our college chapel on "The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live" [Jn. 5:25]. I preached in the afternoon, first at the Castle, and then at Carfax, on the same words, I see the promise; but it is afar off.

Believing it would be better for me to wait for the accomplishment of it in silence and retirement, on Monday the 3rd I complied with Mr.

Kinchin's desire, and went to him at Dummer, in Hampshire. But I was not suffered to stay here long; being earnestly pressed to come up to London, if it were only for a few days. Thither, therefore, I returned, on Tuesday the 18th.

Saturday, [April] 22 [1738] —I met Peter Béhler once more. I had now no objection to what he said of the nature of faith; viz. that it is (to use the words of our Church) "a sure trust and confidence which a man hath in God, that through the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven and he reconciled to the favour of God." ! Neither could I deny either the happiness or holiness which he described as fruits of this living faith.

"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God" [Rom. 8:16] and "He that believeth hath the witness in himself"

[cf. Acts 10:43] fully convinced me of the former; as "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin" [1 Jn. 3:9] and "Whosover believeth is born of God" [cf. 1 Jn. 5:1] did of the latter. But I could not comprehend what he spoke of "an instantaneous work." I could not understand

9. Cf. above, p. 29 n.

10. Cf. Letters, II, 107-08.

1. See below, p. 128.

THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED

how this faith should be given in a moment: how a man could at once be thus turned from darkness to light, from sin and misery to righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost. I searched the Scriptures again touching this very thing, particularly the Acts of the Apostles: but, to my utter astonishment, found scarce any instances there of other than imstantaneous conversions; scarce any so slow as that of St. Paul, who was three days in the pangs of the new birth. I had but one retreat left; viz., "Thus, I grant,

God wrought in the first ages of Christianity; but the times are changed.

What reason have I to believe he works in the same manner now?"

But on Sunday the 23rd, I was beat out of this retreat, too, by the concurring evidence of several living witnesses; who testified God "had thus wrought in themselves," giving them in a moment such a faith in the blood of his Son as translated them out of darkness into light, out of sin and fear into holiness and happiness. Here ended my disputing. I could now only cry out, "Lord, help thou my unbelief!"

I asked Peter Bohler again whether I ought not to refrain from teaching others. He said, "No; do not hide in the earth the talent God hath given you." Accordingly, on Tuesday the 25th, I spoke clearly and fully at Blendon to Mr. Delamotte's family of the nature and fruits of faith. Mr. Broughton and my brother were there. Mr. Broughton's great objection was, he could never think that I had not faith, who had done and suffered such things. My brother was very angry, and told me "I did not know what mischief I had done by talking thus." And, indeed, it did please God then to kindle a fire which I trust shall never be extinguished.

On Wednesday the 26th, the day fixed for my return to Oxford, I once more waited on the Trustees for Georgia; but, being straitened for time, was obliged to leave the papers for them which J had designed to give into their own hands. One of these was the instrument whereby they had appointed me minister of Savannah; which, having no more place in those parts, I thought it not right to keep any longer.

Peter Bohler walked with me a few miles, and exhorted me not to stop short of the grace of God. At Gerrard's Cross I plainly declared to those whom God gave into my hands the faith as it is in Jesus; as I did next day to a young man I overtook on the road, and in the evening to our friends at Oxford. A strange doctrine, which some, who did not care to contradict, yet knew not what to make of; but one or two, who 2. Footnote in the edition of 1797: "He was in the right. I certainly then had the faith of a servant, though not the faith of a son."

THE ALDERSGATE EXPERIENCE

were thoroughly bruised by sin, willingly heard and received it gladly.

In the day or two following I was much confirmed in the "truth that is after godliness" [Tit. 1:1] by hearing the experiences of Mr. Hutchins, of Pembroke College, and Mrs. Fox; two living witnesses that God can

(at least, if he does not always) give that faith whereof cometh salvation in a moment, as lightning falling from heaven.

Monday, May 1 [1738] —The return of my brother's illness obliged me again to hasten to London. In the evening I found him at James Hutton's, better as to his health than I expected, but strongly averse from what he called "the new faith."

This evening our little society ? began, which afterwards met in Fetter Lane. Our fundamental rules were as follows:

In obedience to the command of God by St. James, and by the advice of Peter Bohler, it is agreed by us,

1. That we will meet together once a week to "confess our faults to one another, and pray one for another, that we may be healed" [Jas.

5:16]. z. That the persons so meeting be divided into several "bands," or little companies, none of them consisting of fewer than five or more than ten persons.

3. That every one in order speak as freely, plainly, and concisely as he can, the real state of his heart, with his several temptations and deliverances, since the last time of meeting.

4. That all the bands have a conference at eight every Wednesday evening, begun and ended with singing and prayer.

5. That any who desire to be admitted into the society be asked, "What are your reasons for desiring this? Will you be entirely open, using no kind of reserve? Have you any objection to any of our orders?" (which may then be read).

6. That when any new member is proposed, every one present speak clearly and freely whatever objection he has to him.

7. That those against whom no reasonable objection appears be, in order for their trial, formed into one or more distinct bands, and some person agreed on to assist them.

3. Another "religious society" of the sort described by Josiah Woodward (see above, p. 15. At first it was not a Moravian society

(this came later), but was heavily influenced by the tone and temper of Moravian quietisrn. Note the echoes of this in the ensuing account. Cf. Daniel Benham, Memoirs of James Hutton (1856), and also Journal, I, 458.

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8. That after two months' trial, if no objection then appear, they may be admitted into the society.

9. That every fourth Saturday be observed as a day of general intercession.

10. That, on the Sunday seven-night following, be a general lovefeast from seven till ten in the evening.

11. That no particular member be allowed to act in anything contrary to any order of the society; and that if any persons, after being thrice admonished, do not conform thereto, they be not any longer esteemed as members.

Wed. 3—My brother had a long and particular conversation with Peter Bohler. And it now pleased God to open his eyes; so that he also saw clearly what was the nature of that one true living faith whereby alone, "through grace, we are saved" [cf. Eph. 2:5].

Thur. 4 — Peter Bohler left London, in order to embark for Carolina.

Oh what a work hath God begun, since his coming into England! Such an one as shall never come to an end till heaven and earth pass away.

Friday and Saturday 1 was at Blendon. They now "believed our report." Oh may "the arm of the Lord" be speedily "revealed unto them"

4 | Sun. 7 —I preached at St. Lawrence's in the morning, and afterwards at St. Katherine Cree's church. I was enabled to speak strong words at both, and was therefore the less surprised at being informed I "was not to preach any more in either of those churches."

Tues. 9 —I preached at Great St. Helen's, to a very numerous congregation, on "he that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things" [Rom. 8:32]? my heart was now so enlarged to declare the love of God to all that were oppressed by the devil, that I did not wonder in the least when I was afterwards told, "Sir, you must preach here no more."

Wed. 10

— Mr. Stonehouse, vicar of Islington, was convinced of "the truth as it is in Jesus" [cf. Eph. 4:21]. From this time till Saturday 13th,

I was sorrowful and very heavy; being neither able to read, nor meditate, nor sing, nor pray, nor do any thing. Yet I was a little refreshed by Peter

Bohler's letter, which I insert in his own words:

Charissime et Suavissime Frater, Intentissimo amore te diligo, multum tui recordans in itinere meo, optando et precando ut quamprimum viscera misericordiae crucifixi

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Jesu Christi, tui gratia jam ante sex mille annos commota, menti tuae appareant. Ut gustare et tunc videre possis, quam vehementer te

Filius Dei amaverit et hucusque amet, et ut sic confidere possis in eo omni tempore, vitamque ejus in te et in carne tua sentire. Cave tibi a peccato incredulitatis, et si nondum vicisti illud, fac ut proximo die illud vincas, per sanguinem Jesu Christi. Ne differ, quaeso, credere tuum in Jesum Christum, sed potius promissionum ejus quae pertinent ad miserandos peccatores, coram facie ejus benigna sic mentionem fac, ut non aliter possit quam praestare tibi, quod multis aliis praestitit. O quam multus, quam magnus, [quam ineffabilis],4 quam inexhaustus, est illius amor! [lle certe jamjam paratus est ad auxilium; et nihil potest illum offendere nisi incredulitas nostra. Crede igitur.

Fratrem tuum Carolum et Hall, nomine meo saluta multum; et admonete vos invicem ad credendum, et tunc ad ambulandum coram facie Domini éxpi8és, et ad pugnandum contra diabolum et mundum vouipas, et ad crucifigendum et conculcandum peccatum omne sub pedibus nostris, quantum nobis datum est per gratiam secundi Adami, cujus vita excedit mortem prioris Adami, et cujus gratis antecellit corruptionem et damnationem prioris Adami.

Dominus tibi benedicat. Permane in fide, amore, doctrina, communione sanctorum; et breviter, in omni quod habemus in Novo

Foedere. Ego sum et maneo, Tuus indignus Frater, Petrus Bobler.

In Agris Southamptonianis, Die 8vo Mai, 1738.

I love you greatly ® and think much of you in my journey, wishing and praying that the tender mercies of Jesus Christ the crucified, whose bowels were moved towards you more than six thousand years ago, may be manifested to your soul: that you may taste and then see how exceedingly the Son of God has loved you and loves you still; and that so you may continually trust in him, and feel his life in yourself. Beware of the sin of unbelief; and if you have 'not conquered it yet, see that you conquer it this very day, through the blood of Jesus Christ. Delay not, I beseech you, to believe in your Jesus

Christ; but so put him in mind of his promises to poor sinners that he may not be able to refrain from doing for you what he hath done for so many others. Oh how great, how inexpressible, how unexhausted is his love! Surely he is now ready to help, and nothing can offend him but our unbelief.

. .® The Lord bless you! Abide in faith, love, teaching, the commun4. Bracketed phrase omitted in the 1797 ed.

5. Wesley's translation and italics, > 6. Wesley's translation here skips over the following paragraph:

"Wherefore have faith. Greet ardently in my name your brother Charles and

5 8

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ion of saints and, briefly, in all which we have in the New Testament. I am [and remain],

Your unworthy brother, Peter Boébler.

Sun. 14 —I preached in the morning at St. Ann's, Aldersgate, and in the afternoon at the Savoy chapel, free salvation by faith in the blood of Christ. I was quickly apprised that at St. Ann's likewise I am to preach no more.

So true did I find the words of a friend,' wrote to my brother about this time:

I have seen upon this occasion, more than ever I could have imagined, how intolerable the doctrine of faith is to the mind of man and how peculiarly intolerable to religious men. One may say the most unchristian things, even down to deism; the most enthusiastic things, so they proceed but upon mental raptures, lights, and unions; the most severe things, even the whole rigour of ascetic mortification; and all this will be forgiven. But 'if you speak of faith in such a manner as makes Christ a saviour to the utmost, a most universal help and refuge; in such a manner as takes away glorying, but adds happiness to wretched man; as discovers a greater pollution in the best of us than we could before acknowledge, but brings 'a greater deliverance from it than we could before expect

— if any one offers to talk at this rate, he shall be heard with the same abhorrence as if he was going to rob mankind of their salvation, their mediator, or their hopes of forgiveness. I am persuaded that a "Montanist" or a "Novatian," who from the height of his purity should look down with contempt upon poor sinners and exclude them from all mercy, would not be thought such an overthrower of the gospel as he who should learn from the author of it to be a friend of publicans and sinners, and to sit down upon the level with them as soon as they begin to repent.

But this is not to be wondered at. For all religious people have such a quantity of righteousness, acquired by much painful exercise and formed at last into current habits, which is their wealth, both for this world and the next. Now, all other schemes of religion are either

[Westley] Hall. Exhort one another in believing and in your walking before God axpiBes ["carefully", cf. Eph. 5:15] and in your warfare with the devil and the world, vouds ["lawfully"; cf. 2 Tim. 2:5] and in your being crucified [with Christ] and in trampling all sin under foot. We are able to do this, of course, only by the grace of the second Adam [Christ] whose life outweighs the first Adam's death and whose grace cancels the corruption and damnation brought on by the first Adam" [cf. 1

Cora 45)l 7. John Gambold,; cf. Moore, Life, I, 220 f,

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e so complaisant as to tell them they are very rich and have enough to triumph in; or else only a little rough but friendly in the main, by telling them their riches are not yet sufficient, but by such arts of self-denial and mental refinement they may enlarge their stock. But the doctrine of faith is a downright robber. It takes away all this wealth, and only tells us it is deposited for us with somebody else, upon whose bounty we must live like mere beggars. Indeed, they that are truly beggars, vile and filthy sinners till very lately, may stoop to live in this dependent condition — it suits them well enough.

But they who have long distinguished themselves from the herd of vicious wretches, or have even gone beyond moral men: for them to be told that they are either not so well, or but the same needy, impotent, insignificant vessels of mercy with the others — this is more shocking to reason than transubstantiation. For reason had rather resign its pretensions to judge what is bread or flesh than have this honour wrested from it —to be the architect of virtue and righteousness. But where am I running? My design was only to give you warning that, wherever you go, this "foolishness of preaching" will alienate hearts from you and open mouths against you.

Fri. 19. My brother had a second return of his pleurisy. A few of us spent Saturday night in prayer. The next day, being Whitsunday — after hearing Dr. Heylin® preach a truly Christian sermon (on "They were all filled with the Holy Ghost" [Acts 2:4]; "And so," said he, "may all you be, if it is not your own fault") and assisting him at the Holy Communion (his curate being taken ill in the church) —I received the surprising news that my brother had found rest to his soul.? His bodily strength returned also from that hour. "Who is so great a God as our

God" [Ps. 77:13]?

I preached at St. John's, Wapping, at three, and at St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, in the evening. At these churches, likewise, I am to preach no more. At St. Antholin's I preached on the Thursday following.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I had continual sorrow and heaviness in my heart; something of which I described in the broken manner

I was able, in the following letter to a friend:

Oh, why is it that so great, so wise, so holy a God will use such an instrument as me! Lord, "let the dead bury their dead" [Lk. 9:60]!

But wilt thou send the dead to raise the dead? Yea, thou sendest whom thou wilt send, and showest mercy by whom thou wilt show

8. John Heylin, Rector of St. Mary-le-Strand, author of the Theological Lectures which Wesley used in preparing his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament.

9. Cf. The Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley, John Telford, ed. (1909), 138-61.

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mercy! Amen! Be it then according to thy will! If thou speak the word, Judas shall cast out devils.

I feel what you say (though not enough), for I am under the same condemnation. I see that the whole law of God is holy, just and good

[cf. Rom. 7:12]. I know every thought, every temper of my soul, ought to bear God's image and superscription. But how am I fallen from the glory of God! I feel that "I am sold under sin" [Rom. 7:14].

I know that I too deserve nothing but wrath, being full of all abominations; and having no good thing in me to atone for them, or to remove the wrath of God. All my works, my righteousness, my prayers, need an atonement for themselves; so that my mouth is stopped. I have nothing to plead. God is holy; I am unholy. God is a consuming fire; I am altogether a sinner, meet to be consumed.

Yet I hear a voice (and is it not the voice of God?) saying, "Believe and thou shalt be saved. He that believeth is passed from death unto life. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life" [cf. Acts 16:31; 1 Jn. 3:14; Jn. 3:16].

Oh, let no one deceive us by vain words, as if we had already attained this faith! '° By its fruits we shall know. Do we already feel

"peace with God" and "joy in the Holy Ghost?" Does his "Spirit bear witness with our spirit that we are the children of God" [cf.

Rom. 5:1, 14:17, 8:16]? Alas! with mine he does not. Nor, I fear, with yours. O thou Saviour of men, save us from trusting in anything but thee! Draw us after thee! Let us be emptied of ourselves, and then fill us "with all peace and joy in believing" [Rom. 15:13], and let nothing separate us from thy love in time or in eternity.

What occurred on Wednesday 24th, I think best to relate at large, after premising what may make it the better understood. Let him that cannot receive it ask the Father of lights [Jas. 1:17] that he would give more light both to him and me.

1. I believe, till I was about ten years old, I had not sinned away that "washing of the Holy Ghost" [cf. Tit. 3:5] which was given me in baptism, having been strictly educated and carefully taught that I could only be saved "by universal obedience, by keeping all the commandments of God" — in the meaning of which I was diligently instructed. And those instructions, so far as they respected outward duties and sins, I gladly received and often thought of. But all that was said to me of inward obedience or holiness J neither understood nor remembered. So that I was

10. Wesley's note, added later: "That is, the proper Christian faith."

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' indeed as ignorant of the true meaning of the law as I was of the gospel of Christ.

2. The next six or seven years were spent at school, where, outward restraints being removed, I was much more negligent than before, even of outward duties, and almost continually guilty of outward sins which I knew to be such, though they were not scandalous in the eye of the world. However, I still read the scriptures and said my prayers, morning and evening. And what I now hoped to be saved by was (1) "not being so bad as other people; (2) having still a kindness for religion"; and (3) "reading the Bible, going to church and saying my prayers."

3. Being removed to the university for five years, I still said my prayers both in public and in private, and read with the Scriptures several other books of religion, especially comments on the New Testament. Yet I had not all this while so much as a notion of inward holiness; nay, went on habitually, and for the most part very contentedly, in some or other known sin — indeed, with some intermissions and short struggles, especially before and after the Holy Communion, which I was obliged to receive thrice a year. I cannot well tell what I hoped to be saved by now, when I was continually sinning against that little light I had, unless by those transient fits of what many divines taught me to call "repentance."

4. When I was about twenty-two, my father pressed me to enter into Holy Orders. At the same time, the providence of God directing me to Kempis's Christian Pattern, 1 began to see that true religion was seated in the heart and that God's law extended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was, however, very angry at Kempis for being too strict, though I read him only in Dean Stanhope's translation. Yet I had frequently much sensible comfort in reading him, such as I was an utter stranger to before. Meeting likewise with a religious friend, which I never had till now, I began to alter the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon "a new life." I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I communicated every week. I watched against all sin, whether in word or deed. I began to aim at, and pray for, inward holiness. So that now, doing so much and living so good a life, I doubted not but I was a good Christian."* 11. Cf. above, pp. 6-7. See also Wesley's alternative accounts of this same crisis in his letter to John Newton (below, pp. 79-80), in A Plain Account of Christian

Perfection, Pt. Il (Works, XI, 367 f.), and in the sermon "On Numbers 23:23" (Works,

VII, 419-30), where he distinguishes between his not being a Christian and his sincere

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5. Removing soon after to another college," I executed a resolution which I was before convinced was of the utmost importance

— shaking off at once all my trifling acquaintance. I began to see more and more the value of time. I applied myself closer to study. I watched more carefully against actual sins; I advised others to be religious, according to that scheme of religion by which I modelled my own life. But meeting now with Mr. Law's Christian Perfection and Serious Call*® (although

I was much offended at many parts of both, yet) they convinced me more than ever of the exceeding height and breadth and depth of the law of God. The light flowed in so mightily upon my soul that everything appeared in a new view. I cried to God for help and resolved not to prolong the time of obeying him, as I had never done before. And by my continued endeavour to keep his whole law, inward and outward, to the utmost of my power, I was persuaded that I should be accepted of him and that I was even then in a state of salvation."4

6. In 1730 I began visiting the prisons, assisting the poor and sick in town, and doing what other good I could by my presence or my little fortune to the bodies and souls of all men. To this end I abridged myself of all superfluities, and many that are called necessaries of life. I soon became a "by-word" for so doing, and I rejoiced that "my name was cast out as evil" [cf. Lk. 6:22]. The next spring I began observing the Wednesday and Friday fasts commonly observed in the ancient Church, tasting nofood till three in the afternoon. And now I knew not how to go any further. I diligently strove against all sin. I omitted no sort of self-denial which I thought lawful. I carefully used, both in public and private, all the means of grace at all opportunities. I omitted no occadesire to be one. The discrepancies in these various reports reflect the shifting lights in Wesley's memory of his life before Aldersgate. They underscore the fact that this particular account here was carefully reconstructed, not directly from the raw text of his diaries or journals, but as a dramatic story to be published after the Revival had begun and as an advertisement of his unique initiation into the experience of "assurance." Cf. Journal, Il, 89 et seq., for three separate memoranda on whether or not ay was a "Christian" during this period. See also the letter to James Hervey, below,

. 70 f, ' 12. See above, p. 8 f.

13. The first of these was published in 1726; the second, in 1728.

14. Wesley's footnote in the 1797 ed.: "And I believe I was."

15. Note that William Beveridge, in Sermon XXXIX (1720) recommends "fasting or abstinence only one day every week, to wit, Friday, which has always been observed in the church." This more rigorous schedule of "the stations" was commended to Wesley by Robert Nelson (Festivals and Fasts [1704]).

THE ALDERSGATE EXPERIENCE

sion of doing good. I for that reason suffered evil. And all this I knew to be nothing unless as it was directed toward inward holiness. Accordingly this, the image of God, was what I aimed at in all, by doing his will, not my own. Yet when, after continuing some years in this course, I apprehended myself to be near death, I could not find that all this gave me any comfort or any assurance of acceptance with God. At this I was then not a little surprised, not imagining I had been all this time building on the sand,' nor considering that "other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid by God, even Christ Jesus"

[z Cor. 3:11].

7. Soon after, a contemplative man'? convinced me still more than I was convinced before that outward works are nothing, being alone; and in several conversations instructed me how to pursue inward holiness, or a union of the soul with God. But even of his instructions (though

I then received them as the words of God) I cannot but now observe (1) that he spoke so incautiously against trusting in outward works that he discouraged me from doing them at all; (2) that he recommended (as it were, to supply what was wanting in them) mental prayer and the like exercises, as the most effectual means of purifying the soul and uniting it with God. Now these were, in truth, as much my own works as visiting the sick or clothing the naked; and the "union with God" thus pursued was as really my own righteousness as any I had before pursued under another name.

8. In this refined way of trusting to my own works and my own righteousness (so zealously inculcated by the mystic writers),'* I dragged on heavily, finding no comfort or help therein till the time of my leaving England. On shipboard, however, I was again active in outward works, where it pleased God of his free mercy to give me twenty-six of the Moravian brethren for companions, who endeavoured to show me a more excellent way [cf. 1 Cor. 12:31]. But I understood it not at first.

I was too learned and too wise, so that it seemed foolishness unto me. And I continued preaching and following after, and trusting in that righteousness whereby no flesh can be justified. g. All the time I was at Savannah I was thus "beating the air" [cef. 1 Cor.

16. Another amendment by Wesley here: "Not so. I was right, as far as I went."

17. Probably Joseph Hoole, rector of Haxey, near Epworth; cf. Moore, Life, I, 104.

18. In the second ed. (1743), at the height of the struggle with the Moravians (see below, p. 353 ff.), there is a denunciation of the mystic writers which was dropped from all editions after 1765: "whom I declare in my cool judgment and in the presence of the Most High God, I believe to be the one great anti-Christ."

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9:26]. Being ignorant of the righteousness of Christ, which, by a living faith in him, bringeth salvation "to every one that believeth" [Rom. 1:16],

I sought to establish my own righteousness, and so laboured in the fire all my days. I was now properly "under the law" [cf. Rom. 6:14]. I knew that "the law" of God was "spiritual; I consented to it that it was good."

Yea, "I delighted in it after the inner man." Yet was I "carnal, sold under sin." Every day was I constrained to cry out, "What I do, I allow not: for what I would, I do not; but what I hate, that I do. To will is indeed present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good which I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. I find a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me, even the law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and still bringing me into captivity to the law of sin" [cf. Rom. 7:14-23].

10. In this [vile, abject] state [of bondage to sin] !° I was indeed fighting continually, but not conquering. Before, I had willingly served sin, now it was unwillingly, but still I served it. I fell and rose and fell again.?°

Sometimes I was overcome and in heaviness: sometimes I overcame and was in joy. For as in the former state I had some foretastes of the terrors of the law, so had I in this of the comforts of the gospel. During this whole struggle between nature and grace which had now continued above ten years, I had many remarkable returns to prayer, especially when I was in trouble. I had many sensible comforts, which are indeed no other than short anticipations of the life of faith. But I was still "under the law," not "under grace" (the state most who are called Christians are content to live and die in), for I was only "striving with," not "freed from, sin" [cf. Heb. 12:4; Rom. 6:14]. Neither had I "the witness of the Spirit with my spirit" [cf. Rom. 8:16], and indeed could not, for I "sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law" [Rom.

9:32].

11. In my return to England, January 1738, being in imminent danger of death and very uneasy on that account,2" I was strongly convinced that the cause of that uneasiness was unbelief and that the gaining a true, living faith was the "one thing needful" [cf. Lk. 10:42] for me. But still I fixed not this faith on its right object: I meant only faith in God, not faith in or through Christ. Again, I knew not that I was wholly void of this faith but only thought I had not enough of it. So that when Peter

19. Bracketed words omitted in last edition.

20. Cf. Augustine, Confessions, Bk. III, chap. xi, sec. 20.

21, See above, p. 43 f.

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Bohler, whom God prepared for me as soon as I came to London, affirmed of true faith in Christ (which is but one) that it had those two fruits inseparably attending it, "dominion over sin, and constant peace from a sense of forgiveness," I was quite amazed and looked upon it as a new gospel. If this was so, it was clear I had not faith. But I was not willing to be convinced of this. Therefore I disputed with all my might and laboured to prove that faith might be where these were not, especially where the sense of forgiveness was not; for all the Scriptures relating to this I had been long since taught to construe away and to call all

Presbyterians who spoke otherwise. Besides, I well saw no one could, in the nature of things, have such a sense of forgiveness and not feel it. But I felt it not. If, then, there was no faith without this,?? all my pretensions to faith dropped at once.

12. When I met Peter Bohler again, he consented to put the dispute upon the issue which I desired, namely, Scripture and experience. I first consulted the Scripture. But when I set aside the glosses of men and simply considered the words of God, comparing them together, endeavouring to illustrate the obscure by the plainer passages, I found they all made against me and was forced to retreat to my last hold, "that experience would never agree with the literal interpretation of those Scriptures. Nor could I therefore allow it to be true, till I found some living witnesses of it." He replied he could show me such at any time; if I desired it, the next day. And, accordingly, the next day he came again with three others, all of whom testified of their own personal experience that a true living faith in Christ is inseparable from a sense of pardon for all past, and freedom from all present, sins. They added with one mouth that this faith was the gift, the free gift of God, and that he would surely bestow it upon every soul who earnestly and perseveringly sought it. I was now thoroughly convinced and, by the grace of God, I resolved to seek it unto the end, first, by absolutely renouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my own works or righteousness—on which I had really grounded my hope of salvation, though I knew it not, from my youth up; second, by adding to "the constant use of all the 'other' means of grace," ?* continual prayer for this very thing

— justifying, saving faith, a full reliance on the blood of Christ shed for me, a trust in him, as my Christ, as my sole justification, sanctification, and redemption."*

22. Wesley's later amendment (1747): "There is no Christian faith without it."

23. See above, p. 48.

; 24. This is the doctrine of The Homilies brought home and made intensely personal.

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13. I continued thus to seek it (though with strange indifference, dullness and coldness and unusually frequent relapses into sin) till Wednesday,

May 24. I think it was about five this morning, that I opened my Testament on those words, ré péyiota piv Kal Tima erayyéApata Sedopyrar, (va,

[8a rovrwr] yévnobe Gelas Kowwvoi pices, "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of the divine nature.2> Just as I went out, I opened it again on those words,

"Thou art not far from the kingdom of God" [Mk. 12: 34]. In the afternoon I was asked to go to St. Paul's. The anthem was "Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice. O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If thou, Lord, will be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it? For there is mercy with thee; therefore shalt thou be feared. O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy and with him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his sins." 76

14. In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street,27 where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans.?8 About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

15. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy suggested, "This cannot be faith, for where is thy

It became one of the chief distinguishing marks of Wesley's preaching. Cf. "The Scripture Way of Salvation," Pt. III, sec. 18; "Justification by Faith" (Pt. IV, sec. 2),

"The Witness of the Spirit" (Pt. I, sec. 1, par. 11), "The Marks of the New Birth" (Pt.

Il, sec. 4), "The Nature of Enthusiasm" (sec. 35), Sermons (Sugden), II, 442-60; I, 11230, 199-218, 280-97; II, 84-103, respectively.

25m lPAU. lez etent 4s 26. Ps. 130, De profundis, from the B.C.P. Psalter. Wesley habitually quoted the Psalms from this version.

27. This was a society more heavily dominated by the Moravians than Fetter Lane; cf. Journal, I, 458-59.

28. Cf. J. T. McNeill, "Luther at Aldersgate," in London Quarterly and Holborn Review (1939), 200-17, for an analysis of the text of Luther here referred to — viz. the 1632 edition of the English translation of Luther's Preface to Romans, done by one W. W. (William Wilkinson?) first published in 1594. Cf. C. M. Jacob's translation of the "Prefaces," in Works of Martin Luther (Philadelphia, 1932), VI, 447-62, and especially 452, 456-57.

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joy?" Then was I taught that "peace and victory over sin are essential to faith in the Captain of our salvation but that, as to the transports of joy

—that usually attend the beginning of it especially in those who have mourned deeply — God sometimes giveth, sometimes withholdest them, according to the counsels of his own will."

16. After my return home, I was much buffeted with temptations, but cried out and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes and he "sent me help from his holy place" [cf. Ps. 20:2,

B.C.P.]. And herein I found [in what] the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted. I was striving, yea, fighting with all my might under the law, as well as under grace. But then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now, I was always conqueror.

17. Thur. May 25.— The moment I awaked, "Jesus, Master," was in my heart and in my mouth; and I found all my strength lay in keeping my eye fixed upon him, and my soul waiting on him continually. Being again at St. Paul's in the afternoon, I could taste the good word of God in the anthem, which began, "My song shall be always of the lovingkindness of the Lord: with my mouth will I ever be showing forth thy truth from one generation to another" [Ps. 89:1, B.C.P.]. Yet the enemy injected a fear, "If thou dost believe, why is there not a more sensible change?" I answered (yet not I): "That I know not. But this I know, I have now peace with God. And I sin not today, and Jesus my Master has forbid me to take thought for the morrow."

18. "But is not any sort of fear (continued the tempter) a proof that thou dost not believe?" I desired my Master to answer for me, and opened his book upon those words of St. Paul, "Without were fightings, within were fears" [2 Cor. 7:5]. Then, inferred I, well may fears be within me, but I must go on and tread them under my feet.

Fri, May 26.— My soul continued in peace, but yet in heaviness because of manifold temptations. I asked Mr. Toltschig, the Moravian, what to do. He said, "You must not fight with them as you did before, but flee from them the moment they appear and take shelter in the wounds of Jesus." The same I learned also from the afternoon anthem, which was,

"My soul truly waiteth still upon God: for of him cometh my salvation, he verily is my strength and my salvation, he is my defence, so that I shall not greatly fall.

. O put your trust in him alway, ye people; pour out your hearts before him, for God is our hope" [Ps. 62:1, 2, 8, B.C-P.].

Sat. 27. — Believing one reason of my want of joy was want of time for prayer, I resolved to do no business till I went to church in the morn-

THE THEOLOGIAN SELF-INTERPRETED

ing, but to continue pouring out my heart before him. And this day my spirit was enlarged so that, though I was now also assaulted by many temptations, I was more than conqueror, gaining more power thereby to trust and to rejoice in God my Saviour.

Sun, 28. —1 waked in peace but not in joy. In the same even, quiet state I was till the evening, when I was roughly attacked in a large company as an enthusiast, a seducer and a setter-forth of new doctrines. By the blessing of God, I was not moved to anger, but after a calm and short reply went away, though not with so tender a concern as was due to those who were seeking death in the error of their life.

This day I preached in the morning at St. George's, Bloomsbury, on "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith" [1 Jn.

5:4], and in the afternoon at the chapel in Long Acre on God's justifying the ungodly; the last time (I understand) I am to preach at either. "Not as I will, but as thou wilt" [Mt. 26:39].

Mon. 29. —I set out for Dummer with Mr. Wolf, one of the first-fruits of Peter Bohler's ministry in England. I was much strengthened by the grace of God in him: yet was his state so far above mine that I was often tempted to doubt whether we had one faith. But without much reasoning about it, I held here: "Though his be strong and mine weak, yet that God hath given some degree of faith even to me, I know by its fruits.

For I have constant peace, not one uneasy thought. And I have freedom from sin, not one unholy desire."

Yet on Wednesday did I grieve the Spirit of God not only by not "watching unto prayer" [cf. 1 Pet. 4:7] but likewise by speaking with sharpness instead of tender love of one that was not sound in the faith.

Immediately God hid his face and I was troubled, and in this heaviness I continued till the next morning, June 1, when it pleased God, while I was exhorting another, to give comfort to my soul and, after I had spent some time in prayer, to direct me to those gracious words, "Having therefore boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering (for he is faithful that promised), and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works" [Heb.

10:22-24].

Saturday, June 3.—I was so strongly assaulted by one of my old enemies that I had scarce strength to open my lips or even to look up for help. But after I had prayed faintly as I could, the temptation vanished away.

THE ALDERSGATE EXPERIENCE

Sun. 4. — Was indeed a feast-day. For from the time of my rising till past one in the afternoon, I was praying, reading the Scriptures, singing praise, or calling sinners to repentance. All these days I scarce remember to have opened the Testament but upon some great and precious promise

Lef. 2 Pet. 1:4]. And I saw more than ever that the gospel is in truth but one great promise from the beginning of it to the end.

Tues. 6. —\ had still more comfort and peace and joy, on which, I fear, I began to presume. For in the evening I received a letter from Oxford which threw me into much perplexity. It was asserted therein that no doubting could consist with the least degree of true faith; that whoever at any time felt any doubt or fear was not "weak in faith" but had no faith at all; and that none hath any faith till the law of the Spirit of life has made him wholly free from the law of sin and death.?®

Begging of God to direct me, I opened my Testament on 1 Cor. 3:1

&c., where St. Paul speaks of those whom he terms "babes in Christ," who were "not able to bear strong meat," nay (in a sense), "carnal"; to whom nevertheless he says, "Ye are God's building, ye are the temple of God."

Surely, then, these men had some degree of faith, though, it is plain, their faith was "weak."

After some hours spent in the Scripture and prayer, I was much comforted. Yet I felt a kind of soreness in my heart, so that I found my wound was not fully healed. O God, save thou me, and all that are "weak in the faith," from "doubtful disputations" [cf. Rom. 14:1].

Wed. June 7.—I determined, if God should permit, to retire for a short time into Germany. I had fully proposed before I left Georgia so to do, if it should please God to bring me back to Europe. And I now clearly saw the time was come. My weak mind could not bear to be thus sawn asunder. And I hoped the conversing with those holy men who were themselves living witnesses of the full power of faith and yet able to bear with those that are weak, would be a means, under God, of so establishing my soul, that I might "go on from faith to faith and from strength to strength." %° 29. This was the Moravian contention that finally split the Wesleys from them.

See below, pp. 356-58 30. Ps. 84:7; Rom. 1:17. Since 1722 a branch of Unitas Fratrum under the leadership vf Court Ludwig von Zinzendorf had maintained strongly communal pietistic centers at Herrnhut and Marienborn. Cf. Wesley's version of his visit in Journal,

June 26 to August 28, 1738. But for a Moravian version, see Daniel Benham, Memoirs of James Hutton (1856), 40 —a very different account of Wesley's experiences in Germany.

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