"In My Heart and in My Mouth"

"In My Heart and in My Mouth"

88 |ll "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

wind in the night "brought us safe into the Downs."

They landed at Deal by boat while it was still dark on the morning of February 1, 1738.

Wesley discovered that the wind which had carried him in had carried George Whitefield out of the anchorage on board the Whitaker, eager to join John Wesley in Savannah.

Wesley must have heard in Georgia of the extraordinary religious revival which had begun in Bristol under Whitefield's preaching. He could not know that Whitefield was carrying letters for him from Charles, one of which described the astonishing scenes when Whitefield had preached his farewell sermons in London churches, helped by zealous friends: 'God has poured out his Spirit upon them," wrote Charles, 'so that the whole nation is in an uproar. ..

. They are already stigmatized for Methodists. We see all about us in an amazing ferment. Surely

Christianity is once more lifting up its head. O that I might feel its renovating spirit." Charles did not tell Jack

'that Whitefield's sermons ignored the rigorous demands of the Oxford Methodists and proclaimed "Free Grace"

_for sinners.

Wesley would have liked to have greeted Whitefield and warn him about Georgia, but the outward bound

Whitaker might have sailed beyond reach of a small boat hired from the harbor. She might, on the other hand, meet an adverse wind and return or lie in the downs becalmed. Wesley was in a quandary: whether to wait in Deal or hurry to London. He decided to draw lots. In the inn he wrote the alternatives on pieces of paper. Then he drew a lot and read: ''Let him return to London." He enclosed it in a hurried note which he left against Whitefield's possible return. He then read prayers and Scripture to a company who gathered at the inn, including fellow passengers from America and locals who had heard George Whitefield preach. Then he took the road for London.

The wind had dropped. Whitefield's ship lay in the downs. Hearing that his revered friend and mentor had arrived, he sent his servant ashore to arrange a meeting

but learned to his grief that Wesley had gone. Later, he received the note and the piece of paper, ''Let him return

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to London." He read it as referring to himself and was upset. He wrote a long letter to explain why he could not abandon his mission and return to London. His ship sailed for America next day.

Whitefield never forgot his distress that Wesley had | not waited or come aboard but apparently had expected him to turn tail and follow to London. When, years later, they fell out, the lot of February 1, 1738 would influence events.

Two afternoons later Charles Wesley, lodging at the Huttons' house in Westminster, was astonished to hear that his brother was in England and could not believe it until Jack walked in that night. Charles was expecting to return to Georgia as soon as health permitted, but Wesley intended to resign his appointment.

John Wesley spent the next days meeting old friends and relations, explaining himself to Oglethorpe, and offering the trustees a lamentable report. The trustees were annoyed; several supposed that Wesley intended mischief. And when he preached in London churches which wanted news of Georgia, his sermons were not what congregations expected. He took his favorite theme, "Naked to follow the naked Christ," rather than soberly informing them about the colony. Churchwardens were irritated that he preached without notes with "so very much action' and vehement emphasis. They disliked his remarkable appearance, wearing his own hair long instead of a respectable clerical wig. At St. John's, Millbank, and elsewhere, he was told he would not be invited again.

Wesley gloried in giving offense, yet his spirit was in turbulence, striving all the harder to obtain more faith.

On Tuesday, February 7 ('a day much to be remembered"'), he met a young German, Peter Bohler, newly arrived on his way to be a missionary in South Carolina.

Born in Frankfurt and educated at the University of Jena, Béhler, only twenty-six, had come by a sudden experience into a clear understanding of Justification by Faith.

90 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

He had joined the Moravian Brethren and been ordained by Count Zinzendorf. Wesley carried a letter for Zinzendorf and therefore sought out his representative in London, who introduced Boéhler and two other intending missionaries. Wesley found them lodging near his own in Westminster.

He immediately struck up a warm friendship with Béhler, whose happy faith contrasted with his own. They conversed in Latin, for Bohler could not yet speak English. At one point Bohler contended that a true faith in Christ always brought two fruits: ""Dominion over sin, and constant peace from a sense of forgiveness.'"" Wesley was "quite amazed, and looked upon it as a new gospel.

If this was so, it was clear I had not faith."

Wesley was not, however, prepared to accept Bohler's contention. He disputed ''with all my might," arguing that forgiveness and peace must be earned by unceasing effort. He admitted that he groaned under the heavy yoke and that the more he tried to be holy, the more he sinned. Bohler replied frankly: "Believe and you will be saved. Believe in the Lord Jesus with all your heart, and nothing shall be impossible to you! This faith, like the salvation it brings, is the free gift of God. Seek and you will find."

He added strong words which echoed those of the Moravians of Georgia, and they sank into Wesley's consciousness: 'Strip yourself naked of your own good words, and your own righteousness," said Bohler, ''and go naked to him! For everyone that comes to him he will in no wise cast out."

The Wesleys invited Béhler to travel with them to Oxford, and as the coach labored through the Chilterns, the three men debated. Bohler liked the two brothers but concluded that both were far from a true faith. 'The elder, John," he wrote to Zinzendorf, "is a good-natured man. He knew he did not believe on the Saviour, and was willing to be taught. His brother is at present very much distressed in his mind, but does not know how he shall begin to be acquainted with the Saviour."

At Oxford, since the Methodists had scattered to livings in town or country, Wesley took Béhler to meet one whose parish lay nearby. They also visited the Castle

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prison, where Wesley preached once again. They walked through the colleges together, and in one quadrangle

Wesley was recognized, and they were mocked. Béhler assured him that he took no offense: ""My brother, it does not stick to our clothes!"

At every opportunity they continued their discussion.

Wesley still did not understand Bohler's drift "and least of all when he said, 'My brother, my brother, that philosophy of yours must be purged away.' "

Wesley had to return to London to meet the Georgia trustees again. He then took a coach for the West Country, intending to visit Samuel at Tiverton. At his brotherin-law's parish near Salisbury, where his mother was living with Sister Patty, an urgent message reached him that Charles was dying of pleurisy at Oxford.

He hired a horse to ride across the Wiltshire and Berkshire downs, speaking about God to people at the inn where he spent the night. Alone in his room he renewed his resolution to be serious and wholly religious, even resolving never to laugh again unless he must.

After he found Charles out of danger, Wesley resumed his friendly disputation with Bohler on the meaning of faith. Whenever Bohler pointed to a passage of Scripture that supported his thesis, Wesley construed it differently.

But on Sunday, March 5, he suddenly saw that Bohler was right. The plain meaning leaped out of the Gree

Testament which they were studying together: "I was clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved."

Bohler had said, like St. Paul to the Philippian jailer, "Believe, and you will be saved." Wesley could not believe; his mind now assented but his heart refused the leap of faith.

"Immediately it struck into my mind, 'Leave off preaching. How can you preach to others, who have not faith yourself?' '' He put this to Bohler. Ignoring the gap in age and experience, Wesley begged for advice whether he should stop preaching.

"By no means," said Bohler.

"But what can I preach?"

"Preach faith till you have it. And then, because you) have it, you will preach faith."

92 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Wesley tried, rather gingerly, in the prison next day.

John Wesley, who had always zealously denied the possibility of a death-bed repentance, found himself telling a prisoner under sentence of death named Clifford that he could have 'salvation by faith alone."

While Bohler returned to London, Wesley traveled to Manchester and back with one of his Oxford Methodists,

Charles Kinchin, who now had a parish in Hampshire.

Wesley wanted to see John Clayton in his parish and Kinchin to visit his parents and to bring back his younger brother, Stephen, to Oxford. All the way the two clergymen tried to bring strangers and wayfarers to God,

"awakening, instructing, exhorting." Kinchin had been influenced already by Whitefield and rejoiced in "Free

Grace." Wesley's exhortings, as he knew, were in his mouth but not in his heart.

Back in Oxford after ten days, he found that young Bohler had returned, to amaze him further with stories of "the holiness and happiness" which he claimed were

"the fruits of living faith."

Wesley began to make a thorough study of his Greek New Testament to see whether these things were so. He was yet more amazed when he and Kinchin visited the prisoner Clifford in the condemned cell; he was to be hanged that day. They told him that he could be saved by grace, as a free gift, if he would trust Christ. They knelt in the straw. Wesley was so moved that after reciting collects, he broke with Anglican custom and prayed extempore, though he knew that his brother Samuel, if he ever heard of it, would be dismayed. Clifford had knelt down in gloom and confusion, conscious that he must shortly take an intolerable burden of sins into eternity. He rose from his knees and eagerly said, "I am now ready to die. I know Christ has taken away my sins; and there is no more condemnation for me." He stayed calm and composed when the jailer and sheriff called to take him to the gallows.

Welsey and Kinchin went in the cart with him. Wesley could not deny the calm assurance of this penitent thief as the noose was placed around his neck and the cart driven away, leaving him hanging, throttled, until he died; "in his last moments he was.

. . enjoying a perfect

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peace, in confidence that he was 'accepted in the Beloved.' "

On Easter Day, April 2, 1738, Wesley preached in Lincoln College Chapel, and at two other services, on the text: 'The hour cometh and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." He might preach but had sadly to record: "I see the promise; but it is far off."

Later in April the two Wesleys and Bohler were in London. Charles had resigned from the Georgia mission because of his health, though Oglethorpe was loath to release him. Neither of the brothers knew where the future might lie; Charles was now unemployed, and John was reluctant to resume his duties as an Oxford don.

John and Charles lodged above James Hutton's bookshop near Temple Bar. Bohler lodged elsewhere, but the Wesleys sought him out on the evening of Saturday, April 22.

In Bohler's words, they had 'a right searching conversation."

By now Wesley had accepted that his sins would be forgiven, and he would be reconciled to God through the merits of Christ alone, not through his own actions, however ardent or religious. When this happened, he knew | his life would change. On this evening Bohler went further. He maintained that the worst sinner, the most ungodly man, could be saved in an instant if he turned from his sins and trusted Christ alone. Charles was shocked.

John was astounded: "I could not understand how this faith should be given in a moment: how a man could at once be turned from darkness to light, from sin and misery to righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost."

He turned to the Acts of the Apostles. To his utter astonishment he found that almost all conversions which the Acts recorded were instantaneous: ''scarce any so slow as that of St. Paul, who was three days in the pangs of the new birth." Wesley lamely took refuge in the claim that God no longer worked in that way.

94 Il "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Next evening, Sunday, Béhler brought three Englishmen to meet John Wesley in James Hutton's parlor. They drank tea, sang hymns, and then all four testified that God had 'given 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."

Each of them stressed that this faith was the free gift of God.

Wesley looked thunderstruck but refused to be impressed. 'Four are not enough," he said. Bohler replied that he would bring eight more to testify that salvation is a gift. After more debate, Wesley cut them short and proposed that they sing a German hymn (which he had translated while in Georgia as "My Soul before Thee

Prostrate Lies''). While they sang lustily, BOhler noticed that Wesley several times wiped his eyes.

When the others left, Wesley took Bohler into his own room. He confessed his disputing was over: "I can only cry out, 'Lord, help Thou my unbelief.' '' He asked

Bohler again whether he should stop teaching others (he had preached in three churches that Sunday). Bohler replied: 'No. Do not hide in the earth the talent God has given you."

Next day Wesley rode down into Kent with a clerical friend, Thomas Broughton, to stay at Blendon, the mansion of Charles Delamotte's parents. The sugar merchant was away for a few days. Charles Wesley had already arrived.

The following evening they were all together in the jhouse chapel. ''We sang," recorded Charles in his Journal, "and fell into a dispute whether conversion was gradual or instantaneous. My brother was very positive for the latter, and very shocking; mentioned some late instances of gross sinners believing in a moment. I was

'much offended at his worse than unedifying discourse.

Mrs. Delamotte left us abruptly. I stayed, and insisted, a man need not know when first he had faith.'

John would not agree. 'His obstinacy,'' records Charles, "in favoring the contrary opinion drove me at last out of the room."

"My brother," records Wesley, "was very angry and told me I did not know what mischief I had done by

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talking thus." But, as both afterward realized, it was this dispute which kindled a fire in Charles.

Wesley rode back to London in the dusk and set out next day for Oxford on foot, Bohler walking with him the first hour. Three days later he returned hurriedly to London on news that Charles was seriously ill again at Huttons', where John found Charles better but "strongly averse from what he called 'the new faith.' '" Deep down, however, a "spark of desire" was kindling in Charles' soul.

That night, May 1, 1738, the Wesleys, Hutton, and two | or three others, advised by Béhler, formed ''a little soci- / ety" which should meet together weekly for mutual confession and prayer. They hardly realized what they had begun. This first meeting was poignant, for Bohler was due to sail to South Carolina three days later. Before he sailed, he had a talk with Charles, who now began to | long for the faith which could conquer sin "after ten years vain struggling."

Wesley now entered on a "dark night of the soul." For three days "I was sorrowful and very heavy, being neither able to read, nor meditate, nor sing, nor pray, nor do anything.'"" Charles could pray, despite bodily pain, but prayer brought no sense of Christ's presence. Both brothers were still lodging above James Hutton's shop near Drury Lane, but evidently Charles' room was needed. Old Mrs. Hutton at Westminster had prepared one of her best rooms when Charles suddenly decided to go to the modest home of a brazier named Bray, "a poor ignorant mechanic, who knows nothing but Christ." Bohler had introduced him, and Charles was certain now that Bray would lead him to conversion. Charles was therefore carried in a sedan chair to Bray's home on Little

Britain, the winding street near Charterhouse named after the Dukes of Brittany whose mansion and garden had once occupied the land.

Wesley called there on Saturday night. He was, records Charles, ""exceeding heavy. I forced him (as he had often forced me) to sing an hymn to Christ, and almost thought he would come while we were singing."

On Sunday Wesley preached in two churches on 'free salvation by the blood of Christ." The doctrine was clear

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to his mind yet still not in his heart. At one church he was told he would not be asked again; he supposed that the churchwardens were too religious to tolerate a faith so simple.

By the end of that week Charles again seemed to be _dying "but was sure I could not die till I did believe' as he earnestly desired. On Saturday, John Wesley gathered a few friends to spend all night in prayer for Charles, and on-the morning of Whit Sunday, May 21, they went to Little Britain and stood round his bed and sang a hymn to the Holy Ghost. John then walked westward to the baroque church, twenty-one years old, of St. Mary-leStrand. He heard "a truly Christian sermon," and since the curate fell ill during the service, he helped Dr.

Heylyn, the rector, to administer Holy Communion. As _ they came out of church, a group of excited friends met

with the news that Charles had at last believed.

He was at peace with God, they said, and rejoicing and already recovering his strength. Jack walked back fast.

The brothers prayed together, and Charles was disappointed that on this Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit did not fall on Jack. Instead, Jack lapsed into misery, seeking and praying on Monday and Tuesday for "'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."

He had thought that he must become holy before he could be saved. Now he knew "that I deserve nothing but wrath." As he wrote brokenly to his Oxford friend

John Gambold, who was passing through the same valley, ''All my works, my righteousness, my prayers, need an atonement in 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 on him should not perish but have everlasting life.' O thou Saviour of men, save us from trusting anything but thee!"

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Early on Wednesday morning, May 24, 1738, Wesley opened his Greek Testament at random as was his custom. The verse which his eye lighted upon and another verse later were encouraging. That afternoon he accompanied a friend to evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral. The choir sang Purcell's anthem 'Out of the Deep Have I Called unto Thee, O Lord." Every line of the singing encouraged him. The choir reached their climax: "O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his sins."

That evening he agreed, gregh. to accompan James Hutton, his host, to a little Moravian ESN ss the city. They walked through mean streets and past alleys and stews. They stepped over men and women lying drunk from cheap gin, waved away harlots, and kept an eye for pickpockets and thieves—all the very outcasts who, until lately, the Wesleys had believed could never be forgiven before prolonged penitence nor be intimate with Christ nor have power to live like him.

Hutton and Wesley reached Aldersgate Street, a few yards from Charterhouse, and turned into Nettleton

Court.'

What followed is described in the most famous passage of John Wesley's Journal:

"In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. 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 to me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

Wesley's Cavers Ge He began to pray at once in his heart for all who had 'despitefully used me." Then he testified openly to those who were there what he now felt in his heart, 'but it was not long before the enemy suggested, 'This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?' " He then learned that faith

98 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

does not depend on feeling; joy might be given or withheld. The others, rejoicing, hurried him to Charles: down

Aldersgate Street, turning right shortly before it passed under Aldersgate itself, and into Little Britain. Charles was up and writing a hymn to celebrate his own conversion, ''Where Shall My Wandering Soul Begin?'" He records:

Towards ten my brother was brought in triumph by a troop of our friends, and declared,

"Tl believe." We sang the hymn with great joy:

Outcasts of men, to you I call, Harlots and publicans and thieves!

He spreads his arms to embrace you all; Sinners alone his grace receives; No need of him the righteous have; He came the lost to seek and save.

Whether they picked up the words as Charles sang them verse by verse or leaned over his shoulders to read his manuscript, they sang it (to some familiar tune) right through to the ringing last lines:

For you the Prince of Glory died.

Believe, and all your guilt's forgiven; Only believe—and yours is heaven.'

Charles overflowed with joy. John had no such feelings. When he had walked back to Hutton's shop and home and climbed the stairs to his room, "I was much buffeted with temptations." But at once he took his new faith to its logical conclusion and proved it. He "cried out and they fled away." Instead of strife and failure, ''now, I was always conqueror."

He went to bed. The next morning, "'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."

Chapter Eleven Outcasts of Men John Toeltschig, the older Moravian who had been sympathetic about Sophy in Georgia, had arrived in London on the way to Germany. Wesley sought his counsel two days after the evening in Aldersgate and confessed himself puzzled. His soul was at last in peace, resting assured that his salvation did not hang upon good works or ceremonies; it was grounded on the death of Christ, accepted by faith alone. He knew he was born again. Yet he had no joy. "What shall I do?" he asked Toeltschig.

He was still buffeted by temptations.

Toeltschig answered: "You must not fight them as you did before. You must flee from them the moment they appear, and take shelter in the wounds of Jesus." Wesley left Teoltschig's lodging comforted and was further strengthened at evensong in St. Paul's by the words of the anthem. "My soul truly waiteth still upon God," sang the choir, 'for of him cometh my salvation; he verily is my strength and my salvation, he is my defense, so that I shall not greatly fall."

Day after day he prayed much, on his knees and as he' went about his affairs, not for his salvation as before but for his enemies and his friends. He found himself growing each day in strength "so that though I was now assaulted by many temptations, I was more than conqueror, gaining more power thereby to trust and to rejoice in God my Saviour." Yet the emotion of joy eluded him.

That first Sunday he preached twice on Justification by Faith. At the fashionable new church of St. George's,

Bloomsbury, with its curious pyramid spire topped by a statue of George I, he was told afterward that he would not be asked again. He was told the same at a fashionable chapel near the Prince of Wales' mansion.

100 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

On Sunday evening he went to the Westminster home of James Hutton's parents, the close friends and former neighbors of Brother Samuel. Since Parson Hutton, a non-juror, was forbidden to officiate in a church, he was in the habit of reading a published sermon to a large company in his spacious study. That evening he read one from a popular series on the Sermon on the Mount by a late bishop of Exeter, Dr. Offspring Blackhall. As he ended, "Mr. John got up," so Mrs. Hutton wrote to Samuel,

"and told the people that five days before he was not a Christian... and the way for them all to be Christians was to believe, and own they were not Christians. Mr.

Hutton was much surprised by this unexpected injudicious speech; but only said, 'Have a care, Mr. Wesley, how you despise the benefits received by the two

Sacraments.' "

After the company left, Wesley and five or six of his friends went into the parlor for supper with the Huttons, their son and daughter, and various relations and lodgers. Mrs. Hutton had not been in the study but was horrified when Wesley made the ''same wild speech" at supper in the parlor. Mrs. Hutton exclaimed: "If you was not a Christian ever since I knew you, you was a great hypocrite, for you made us all believe you was one.'"" Thus

Mrs. Hutton missed the point, though Wesley himself, years later, admitted that it might be said before Aldersgate that he had been a Christian, but with the faith of a bondservant, not of a son.

Mrs. Hutton, that Sunday, May 28, 1738, was sure that Mr. John 'would do great mischief among ignorant but well meaning Christians." She wrote to Samuel, imploring him to "convert or confine" his brother John, who "seems to be turned into a wild enthusiast or fanatic' and to be drawing their two children ''into these wild notions by their great opinion of Mr. John's sanctity and judgment."

Wesley could not be silent. Christ, so long a remote component of the doctrine of the Trinity, had become a living, intimate force in his life, the center of his devotion and assurance, one whom he wanted all to know. Inwardly he was still tempted by fears and doubts, the legacy of years of introspection, yet whenever he opened

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his New Testament, his eye fell on promises from God which he had never noticed before, RPT he claimed them, Christ drove away the tempter as he had in his own temptation in the wilderness. "And," noted Wesley,

"IT saw more than ever that the Gospel is in truth but one great promise, from beginning to end."

He had no grandiose ideas of leading a great revival nor even of building on the work of George Whitefield, now in America. Indeed, two weeks after Aldersgate,|

Wesley suddenly decided to leave England. Long ago in Georgia he had formed a resolution to visit the Moravians in Germany, and now the opportunity had come to accompany Toeltschig.

He hurried down to Salisbury to say farewell to his mother. He read her his newly written account, which would become famous when published two years later in his Journal, of the events leading to his conversion. He understood her to approve.

Then he rode once again across the downs to preach before the University of Oxford. Wesley had already preached seven university sermons, an unusually high number for a young don, and on his return from Georgia, he had been appointed again. The date had been set far ahead: Sunday, June 11, one week before Wesley's thirty-fifth birthday. This routine appointment had become an unexpected opportunity to proclaim his Gospel where it might be least expected, to set forth the message to which he would henceforth devote his life.

The vice-chancellor, the dons, and the scholars took their places in St. Mary's church (where Cranmer had given his dramatic last testimony before being burned at the stake) and heard Wesley announce his text, Ephesians 2:8—"By grace ye are saved through faith." As he warmed to his theme, Wesley emphasized that a saving faith was not merely "a speculative, rational thing, a cold, lifeless assent, a train of ideas in the head; but also a disposition of the heart. For thus saith the Scripture,

'With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.' And, 'If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe with thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.' "

He expounded this Salvation by Faith as ''a salvation

102 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

from sin and the consequences of sin, both often expressed in the word justification." Justification, he went on, implies a 'deliverance from guilt and punishment by the atonement of Christ actually applied to the soul of the sinner now believing on him; and a deliverance from the power of sin, through Christ formed in his heart; so that he who is thus justified or saved by faith is indeed 'born again.' He is 'born again of the Spirit,' unto a new 'life which is that with Christ in God.' "

As the customarily long sermon unfolded, Wesley countered the objections which often were raised against Justification by Faith. He stressed that one who was born again would experience an urge to holiness and good works, and that "those who trust in the blood of Christ alone, use all the ordinances which he hath appointed."

Later, in a passage which Wesley himself would have rejected a month before, he showed from the Acts of the Apostles that God could work this faith in men's hearts

"as quick as lightning falling from heaven."

The vice-chancellor and the heads of houses may have been surprised when Wesley, who perhaps had noticed that the congregation represented town as well as gown, proclaimed: "Here is comfort, high as heaven, stronger than death! What! Mercy for all? For Zaccheus, a public robber? For Mary Magdalene, a common harlot? Methinks I hear one say, 'Then I, even I, may hope for mercy!' And so thou mayst, thou afflicted one, whom none hath comforted."

He ended the sermon with a resounding call to the Church of England to promote, once again, the doctrine which had brought about the Reformation: Salvation by Faith. 'Nothing but this can give a check to that immorality which hath overspread the land as a flood," he said.

He urged each one of his hearers to trust once again in Christ and to "march on under the great Captain of thy salvation, conquering and to conquer."

The next day he left for London and sailed for Rotter-

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dam with Toeltschig, two Germans, Benjamin Ingham, and three Englishmen. They walked, admiring the neat

Dutch countryside, then took canal boats and later sailed four days down the Rhine "through a double range of rocks and mountains, diversified with more variety than ever painter can imagine." At Marienborn, beyond

Frankfurt on Main, they were received with utmost humility and graciousness by the legendary Count Zinzendorf, then aged thirty-eight but treated with veneration by his flock.

Wesley spent nearly three months with the Moravians at Marienborn and at their center, Herrnhut, in Saxony.

He was impressed yet not carried away, unlike Ingham, who later left the Church of England to lead the Moravians in Yorkshire. Wesley noted Moravian practices, which he would adapt to good use, but he preserved ns\ detachment and never wavered in loyalty to his own

Church.

He returned to England in September, describing his experiences with enthusiasm. His unhappily married sister Emily was not impressed: "For God's sake tell me how a distressed woman who expects daily to have the very bed taken under her for rent can consider the state of the churches in Germany."

Wesley found that Charles had been hard at work speaking about Christ to everyone who would listen and preaching wherever he was allowed. Wesley joined him.

"Though my brother and I are not permitted to preach in most of the churches of London," he wrote to his former hosts in Germany, "yet thanks be to God there are others left, wherein we have liberty to speak the truth as it is in Jesus." They were also invited to the religious societies of craftsmen, apprentices, and tradesmen, which had begun in London half a century earlier. These had declined in numbers and become little more than friendly societies within the Church of England, but their regular meetings offered the Wesleys a platform.

They moved their own "'little society,'" founded in May above Hutton's bookshop, to a larger room on Fetter

Lane, probably leasing the old Independent Chapel which had been replaced by a larger building on the opposite side of the street.' By October the Fetter Lane soci-

104 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

ety numbered fifty-six men and eight women. They divided themselves into bands of seven, the members to support each other's faith and practice, with criticism where needed. They were to pray specially for each other and to live in unity and love. Wesley regarded this society and the others which sprang up in private homes or borrowed rooms as religious societies of the Church of England; he rejected the cry of opponents that he was forming conventicles, which should be licensed under the Toleration Act.

The societies, new and old, gave the Wesleys opportunity every weekday evening to strengthen Whitefield's converts and to "publish the word of reconciliation, sometimes to thirty, sometimes fifty or sixty, sometimes to three or four hundred." The two brothers led the singing with their strong voices. The people sang German hymns which John had translated and the new hymns which were beginning to pour from the pen of Charles.

As they sang, prayed, and preached, the Wesleys sensed a new spiritual hunger in London.

On October 9 Wesley set out for Oxford on foot. When his companions had dropped off to their destinations, he passed the time, as often on a journey, in composing verses and in singing. Then he took out a new book, a description of a great awakening in a corner of New England a few years before, written by Jonathan Edwards, the pastor whose preaching had been its herald. Wesley was astonished and encouraged that the signs which they were beginning to see around them had been seen already in New England. His reading convinced him that his own land was about to experience a revival of religion, that the extraordinary scenes around George Whitefield while the Wesleys were in Georgia would be continued. God's ''blessed spirit," wrote Wesley to a Dutch friend on October 13, "has wrought so powerfully, both in London and Oxford, that there is a general awakening, and multitudes are crying out, What must we do to be saved?"

The original Oxford Methodists were not all following their former leader. Some clung to his former teaching, painfully working their methodical way toward righteousness; others were on the verge of his new 'Free

OUTCASTS OF MEN Ili 105

Grace." Some were puzzled, like William Law himself.

Wesley had complained that Law had misled him: Law had answered lamely that his books included Salvation by Faith if Wesley had looked hard enough, to which he replied that Law's writings wrongly assumed that the reader had faith already.

Some of Wesley's friends vigorously opposed his new direction. His brother Samuel, from the distance of Tiverton, argued strongly against him, fearing beyond all else that Brother Jack was about to head a schism in the Church. Wesley rebutted Samuel's arguments. "By a Christian,"" he wrote from London on October 30, "I mean one who so believes in Christ as that sin hath no more dominion over him. And in that obvious sense of the word I was not a Christian till May 24 last past. For till then sin had the dominion over me, although I fought with it continually; but since then, from that time to this it hath not. Such is the free grace of God in Christ." He stressed the witness of the Spirit in his heart, although admitting that he still waited patiently for joy. "No settled, lasting joy,'" he complained in the journal he kept.

"Nor have I such a peace as excludes the possibility of fear or doubt."

But the signs of a spiritual awakening were all around.

The bishop of London, the learned and hardworking Dr.

Gibson, received the Wesleys warily, neither stopping nor encouraging them, yet episcopal caution counted for nothing beside the widening opportunity to reach the poor and outcasts.

This was brought home to the Wesleys strongly on a raw day in November when they went very early to Newgate prison to minister to convicts who were to be hanged that noon.

Charles had already helped hardened criminals. He and Bray had once spent all night locked in the condemned cell, praying, teaching, comforting, and singing and had seen the men go to the gallows as if to a wedding. Both brothers had gone to Newgate frequently, and on November 9, 'at their earnest request," they went early in the morning "to do the last good office to the condemned malefactors."" After the Communion the brothers were not allowed to ride in the cart but followed

106 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

in a coach down Holborn. Outside St. Giles in the Fields the procession stopped in front of the new church for the ancient custom of allowing the condemned men to drink a last stoop of ale; the Wesleys were brought a dish of tea. By the time they had reached Tyburn at the northeast corner of Hyde Park, the usual immense crowd, avid to see the condemned men swing, had poured out from the backstreets.

The Wesleys sang hymns with the men as they were made ready for death. "It was the most glorious instance

I ever saw of faith triumphing over sin and death," said Wesley afterward. He asked one man who was weeping yet looking steadily upward with the rope already round his neck, ''How do you feel your heart now?"

"I feel at peace," he replied calmly, "which I could not have believed to be possible. And I know it is the peace of God, which passeth understanding."

A few moments later the hangmen led the cart forward, and the man hung until he died. Then both Wesleys preached, Charles giving an impassioned sermon on repentance, faith, and the love of God which reached to the edges of the crowd.

Chapter Twelve Into the Fields "We are all young men—though I hope few of you are so young in spiritual, experimental knowledge, as your poor brother, J. Wesley.'" Thus Wesley concluded a letter to James Hutton from Oxford on December 1, 1738. He felt unequal to the task of evangelizing England, especially since his team was so small. Help, however, was at hand. Eleven days after writing this letter, Wesley heard that Whitefield had returned from America—younger than Wesley in years but older in experience of faith.

Wesley set out on foot to London.

George Whitefield had returned to be admitted to Priest's Orders and to find recruits for Georgia and money for the orphanage in Savannah which Wesley had suggested and Whitefield hoped to open. On December 12 the two friends were reunited in London. Because Wesley had hurried foolishly from Deal in February, they had been apart for more than three years. Both felt the ede) nature of their friendship.

Whitefield remained a little in awe of the Oxford don, but the revival had begun through himself, not Wesley, and he was its leader. Wesley could not entirely forget that Whitefield was the junior in age and learning but freely acknowledged his spiritual maturity and the power of his ministry. Both addressed each other with humility. Whitefield was cheerful and quick to laugh whereas Wesley was graver by nature and still lacked joy.

Whitefield rejoiced that in London there seemed 'to be a great pouring out of the Spirit, and many who were awakened by my preaching a year ago are now grown strong men in Christ, by the ministrations of my dear friends and fellow-laborers, John and Charles

Wesley. . .

. The old doctrine about Justification by Faith

108 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

only, I found much revived." As letters to Georgia had missed him, he came on the scene unprepared and was all the more impressed.

They spent many hours together praying and singing and discussing in an upper room at the home of a Mrs.

West and her husband, Joseph, a weaver of Spitalfields, or in Whitefield's lodgings at a Mr. Dobree's. On the last day of the year, a Sunday, Wesley preached to a packed congregation (it even seemed to him to number, impossibly, "many thousands') at St. George's, Spitalfields, where many must have been Huguenot weavers. In the afternoon Wesley preached to an even larger congregation at Whitechapel on the text "I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely," while Whitefield, despite a heavy cold, preached at Spitalfields.

On the evening of January 1, 1739, the two Wesleys, their brother-in-law Westley Hall, Whitefield, and three other clergymen joined the sixty members of the Fetter

Lane society. They held a "love feast," symbolically sharing a little bread and water. They sang and prayed.

Whitefield kept awake, although his cold was heavy "and found this to be the happiest New Year's Day that I ever saw." 'About 3 in the morning," records Wesley,

"aS we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon aS we were recovered... we broke out with one voice, 'We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.' "

A few days after this Te Deum, the seven clergymen met in conference at Islington, the suburb where the parson, George Stonehouse, a somewhat timid convert of Charles, who was acting as his part-time curate without episcopal license. They conferred from half-past 8 in the morning until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. "Seven true ministers of Jesus Christ, despised Methodists," as George Whitefield described them, ""whom God has brought together from the East and the West, the North and the South. What we were in doubt about, after prayer, we determined by lot, and everything was carried on with great love, meekness and devotion."

The clergy had all been Oxford Methodists, and the

INTO THE FIELDS Ill 109

nickname now stuck to their new outlook. They felt carried forward by a wave of revival but with no clear idea how it would take shape. Wesley and others urged

Charles to settle at Oxford, where a parish was vacant, but he refused "without further direction from God."

Wesley's days passed in ceaseless activity—expound-\ ing in private homes, preaching in any church still open to him, 'conversing' with converts and helpers, anddrinking China tea.

Underneath lay uncertainties and doubts. Whitefield had written in his journal for January 4, 1739 that God's unmerited grace was making him more alive every day:

"My understanding is more enlightened, my affections more inflamed, and my heart full of love towards God and man." Wesley, however, had moaned in his own journal for January 3 that he was not a Christian, whatever he had thought in May: 'For a Christian is one who has the fruits of the Spirit of Christ, which (to mention no more) are love, peace, joy. But these I have not. I have not any love of God."" Whitefield had passed through similar times of dryness in the months after his conversion in 1735, and the more introspective Wesley, only eight months from Aldersgate, tended to worry whether his emotions were matching his new understanding.

He did not doubt that on May 24 he had found the truth. The rector of St. Antholin's, Richard Venn, who had continued to befriend Wesley when many London clergy refused their pulpits, had now turned against the Methodists after reading Whitefield's newly published

Journal of a Voyage from London to Savannah, an artless selection from letters which he had not intended Hutton to publish. Venn attacked Whitefield in a pamphlet.

Whitefield promptly attended his church, received the Sacrament at his hands, and sought an unhurried discussion.

Whitefield brought Wesley. Venn brought John Berriman, a popular London preacher, 'and some other strong opposers of the doctrine of the New Birth," as Whitefield described them. After they had eaten supper in peace and courtesy, Whitefield told them ''what God had done for my soul, which made them look upon me as a madman." They debated long into a January night.

110 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Whitefield wrote afterward: "I am fully convinced there is a fundamental difference between us and them.

They believe only in an outward Christ, we further believe that he must be inwardly formed in our hearts also." Venn and his friends were proof against Whitefield's testimony and Wesley's exposition. Venn died three weeks later after a brief illness, not yet fifty. His schoolboy son, Henry, took Holy Orders after Cambridge and became ''a despised Methodist" at the age of twentynine, a close ally and friend of both the men whom his father had rejected.

Four days before the debate with Venn, George Whitefield had called on John Wesley early in the morning about another matter. Charles and Ingham were in the room also. They had prayers, drank tea, and read letters, and then Whitefield unburdened his mind. The previous

Sunday, he told them, he had been across the Thames to preach at the parish church of Bermondsey, a suburb famous for its leatherworkers and pleasure gardens. Not only was the church full, but "I believe near a thousand people were in the churchyard, and hundreds more returned home that could not come in." The January weather was mild (in contrast to the terrible cold and snow of the next winter), and the crowds waited patiently for a sight of the famous young preacher. He could see them through the windows, but even George Whitefield's bell-like voice could not penetrate the walls to reach them. A thought had come to him that after the service he should climb on a tombstone and preach the sermon again. But he did not dare. Open-air preaching by clergymen was unknown.

amen, Whitefield now tentatively suggested to the Wesleys that they should all break precedent and preach outdoors to reach "outcasts of men... harlots, publicans, and thieves."

John Wesley rejected the idea "as a mad notion." It would be conduct unbecoming to a clergyman of the established church.

One of the letters which Whitefield may have shared was from a young Welshman of his own age, Howell

Harris, who had seen a copy of Whitefield's Journal and wrote of a revival which had begun independently in

INTO THE FIELDS |i! 111

Wales through himself and two clergymen. Harris, a layman, was preaching in the open air to large crowds.

The Wesleys, Whitefield, and Ingham knelt down ''and prayed that nothing may be done rashly."

Early in February Whitefield left London for Bristol, scene of his earlier triumphs. On the way he called at Salisbury. Old Mrs. Wesley, who had seemed to approve the experiences and activity of her younger sons, had later accepted the hostile arguments of her eldest; she became alarmed. Whitefield reassured her and wrote to Wesley that his mother's prejudices "are entirely removed, and she only longs to be with you in your societies in London. Arguments from Tiverton, I believe, will now have but little weight." Whitefield's conclusion was premature.

Wesley was now lodging at the home of John Bray, the hospitable brazier of Little Britain who had several lodgers in a house of moderate size. Wesley could not escape the clamor of the workshop below, the unceasing noise from the street, or the tendency of family and lodgers to sing hymns at all hours.

He therefore liked to go the short distance to the Charterhouse and exercise his right as an Old Carthusian to walk on Green where he had run and played as a boy.

He was amused to see how small the present generation of Carthusians looked compared with the big boys he remembered. He made friends with one of the pensioner brothers, Jonathan Aguttir (or Agutter), who must have been admitted younger than some, for he remained at Charterhouse another fifteen years. Aguttir opened his room and vacated his desk to Wesley. Sometimes Bray or others joined them, but the murmur of their extempore prayer would not have reached the gownboys.

There was much to meditate upon as Wesley walked round Green. Opposition seemed to be slackening; the revival might spread across the Church. When the Wesleys had taken the horse ferry to Lambeth, a little above

112 \ll "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

where London's second bridge was being built slowly at Westminster, they had been received with 'great affection" by the archbishop of Canterbury, John Potter, who had ordained them when he was bishop of Oxford.

His cautions were wise and gentle. They recrossed the Thames to call immediately on the bishop of London in St. James' Square. He too was kind, if somewhat dismissive of their influence, and merely remarked that "G.

Whitefield's Journal was tainted with enthusiasm, though he was himself a pious, well-meaning youth."

Societies, mostly informal, had sprung up at all social levels, including "a noble company of women" in fashionable St. James', where Wesley may have met the young Countess of Huntingdon for the first time. Two of her husband's sisters had been Whitefield's converts and recently had brought her into the revival.

This was keeping Wesley on the stretch seven days a week. On the last Sunday in February, he preached near the Tower at 10 o'clock in the morning, then walked to rural Islington for dinner and an afternoon service; the congregation was so numerous that St. Mary's church was positively hot despite the time of year. "I think I was never so much strengthened before," wrote Wesley to Whitefield, ''and the fields, after service, were white with people praising God."

He walked back to the city and expounded at 5 o'clock to a society, organized by a butcher, which used a large room in the Minories, the wide street of gunsmiths near the Tower. Three hundred men and women, he estimated, were present. An hour later he drank a quick cup of tea, then went to sing with a society brought together by a watchcase maker near Bishopsgate. Next, at 8:15, he was at his own society at Fetter Lane, and at last, at 9 o'clock in the evening, he returned to the Brays for yet another meeting before supper and prayer. When Whitefield read of all this, he rejoiced "in your indefatigable zeal, and great success in the Gospel of our dear Redeemer."

Before Whitefield wrote that, he had taken the "mad" step which he had proposed after Bermondsey: he had prcecped in the open air to coal miners as they left the orest pits in Kingswood, Bristol. These colliers (as they were usually called, rather than coal miners) were regard-

INTO THE FIELDS

113 ed as savages, and no parson ministered to them because their shacks lay on the edge of four parishes. Whitefield had been nervous when he stood on Hanham Mount to call out his text, but as he preached he saw the "white gutters made by their tears down their black cheeks."

When, a few days later, a young collier called Tom Maxfield found his way shyly to Whitefield's lodgings and begged him to come again, Whitefield had exclaimed: 'Blessed be God that I have broken the ice."

He now wanted Wesley's aid: 'There is a glorious door opened among the colliers. You must come and water what God has enabled me to plant." Wesley could form the converts into bands more skillfully than Whitefield, who was due to return to America. "I am but a novice,"

Whitefield wrote on March 22. "You are acquainted with the great things of God. Come, I beseech you, come quickly. I have promised not to leave this people till you or somebody come to supply my place.'" He had even arranged the loan of a horse for the journey.

Wesley did not wish to leave London, partly because he believed his health was about to collapse under the pressures of his ministry and he would soon be dead; all the Scriptures which sprang up at him whenever he opened the Bible at random after prayer seemed to warn him. On March 28 he put the question to the Fetter Lane society in accord with their rule that any member who intended a journey should consult the others.

Charles could scarcely bear to hear of it. ''We dissuaded my brother," he wrote in his journal, "from going to Bristol, from an unaccountable fear that it would prove fatal to him. A great power was among us. He offered himself willingly to whatsoever the Lord should appoint."" Charles opened his Bible to Ezekiel 24:16 and was shaken to read: "Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke; yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down." Charles took it as a message from God that Jack must leave them.

The others continued to demur. The more they debated, the more divided they were. Wesley at last proposed that they decide the issue by lot, 'and by this it was determined I should go."

Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

eeeee As Wesley dismounted at Marlborough on the second evening of his journey, his watch fell out of his pocket.

The glass flew off but did not break, nor was the watch damaged—as if to assure its owner that the extraordinary events which lay ahead would not break him.

The horse had been lent by a kindly tradesman who was riding and leading another horse; he had overtaken

Wesley a few miles back walking behind his own borrowed horse which was too tired to carry him farther. At the inn after supper, Wesley 'preached the Gospel to our little company," to the disgust of a well-dressed gentleman. The next day Wesley and his horse ("so tired he could scarce go a footpace'') continued along the Bath

Road. Over breakfast at Calne, Wesley rebuked a local landowner who talked in "so obscene and profane a manner as I never remember to have heard anyone do, no, not even in the streets of London." In the evening the weary horse and its rider came down from the hills into Bristol, the second city of England, and found their way to the home .of Whitefield's sister, Mrs. Grevil, above her husband's grocery shop on Wine Street.

George Whitefield welcomed him with joy: "I was much refreshed with the sight of my honored friend, Mr.

John Wesley, whom God's providence has sent to Bristol.

'Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace.' " They prayed and sang together. Wesley had taught the MethOdists to sing German tunes in doublequick time, not like a Bach chorale. Then Whitefield swept him off before supper to a meeting at Weavers' Hall, where the don of Lincoln College listened happily to the former servitor of Pembroke, only twenty-four years of age.

Early on the Sunday morning, before Bristol's church time, Whitefield preached to a considerable crowd in the open air at Bowling Green with Wesley beside him. After breakfast they went among the miners of Kingswood, who were outnumbered by the thousands of city folk as Whitefield preached from Hanham Mount. In the late afternoon, against the wind, Whitefield preached his farewell sermon from Rose Mount in Kingswood to an

INTO THE FIELDS II! 115

immense crowd. Wesley guessed it as thirty thousand; his exaggeration conveys the impact of countless listeners of all ranks of society, including the rich in their coaches, others on horseback, and most on foot.

Wesley was bemused by the extraordinary scene: "Ij could scare reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church."

In the evening while Whitefield expounded to one of the religious societies, Wesley expounded to another. He had chosen the Sermon on the Mount for his theme, and it crossed his mind that this was 'a pretty remarkable precedent of field preaching."

On Monday, Whitefield left after midday dinner to ride into Wales. That afternoon Wesley went out to a brickfield at the farther end of St. Philip's plain, which had been lent to Whitefield for preaching. Wesley's name meant little as yet to Bristol, but the revival had created such sensation that the people downed tools and trades early (detaining 'the Vulgar from their daily Labor," the Gentleman's Magazine had complained) and hastened to the brickyard.

"At 4 in the afternoon," Wesley afterward recorded, "I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about 3,000 people. The Scripture on which I spoke was this (is it possible any should be ignorant, that it is fulfilled in every true minister of Christ?): 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord' "

Luke 4:18).

Chapter Thirteen Signs and Wonders John Wesley had been even "more vile' than he had intended, for he had not preached in his canonicals— they were still on the road from London. ('Dear Jemmy," he wrote to Hutton, "I want my gown and cassock every day. O how is God manifested in our brother Whitefield!

I have seen none like him... .'') But, like Whitefield six weeks earlier, he had "broken the ice."

Bristol seemed hungry for preaching. The colliers always welcomed him. He preached at the brickfield, on (the bowling green, and at a nearby suburb, always to crowds beyond counting, although his solid preaching lacked Whitefield's vivid appeal. Indoors, Wesley preached regularly in the morning at the chapel of Bristol's Newgate prison, where the jailer, Abel Dagge, had been one of the earliest converts under Whitefield in 1737. In the.evening Wesley was at the religious societies.

Often the press to enter the rooms was so great that he would expound from a window to the overflow in the court or the street below, and on one occasion the floor sank but did not crash into the cellar. No one was hurt, and they continued to listen. Afterward they found that an importer had just stored numerous hogsheads of tobacco to the ceiling, giving the support which prevented tragedy.

( Wesley organized the converts into small bands of men and small bands of women. As in London, each band should meet privately to "confess their faults one to another and pray one for another that they may be healed."

Twice a week the bands came together into their religious society. The meeting might take nearly two hours.

Charles had been writing more hymns and John a few, and they were newly published. After the expounding

SIGNS AND WONDERS lll 117 and the singing came the prayers. Wesley would read out requests and then pray extemporily over each. A Dissenter from the Midlands was present one evening. He wrote:

Never did I see or hear such evident marks of fervency in the service of God. At the close of every petition a serious amen, like a gentle, rushing sound of waters, ran thro' the whole audience, with such a solemn air as quite distinguished it from whatever of that nature I have heard attending the responses in the church services.

. If there be such a thing as heavenly music upon earth, I heard it there: If there be such an enjoyment, such an attainment, as heaven upon earth, numbers in that society seemed to possess it. As for my own part I do not remember my heart to have been so elevated in divine love and praise as it was there and then for many years past if ever; and an affecting sense and savour thereof abode in my mind many weeks after.

Converts were joining the societies every week. When Brother Samuel wrote from Tiverton protesting that God does not work instantaneously, Wesley rejected his argument:

I have seen (as far as it can be seen) very many persons changed in a moment from the spirit of horror, fear, and despair, to the spirit of hope; and from sinful desires, till then reigning over them, to a pure desire of doing the will of God.

These are matters of fact, whereof I have been, and almost daily am, eyeor ear-witness.

Saw you him that was a lion till then, and is now a lamb; him that was a drunkard, but now exemplarily sober; the whoremonger that was, who now abhors the very lusts of the flesh?

These are my living arguments, for what I assert, that God now, as aforetime, gives remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost.

118 {ll "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Wesley added in this letter of April 4, 1739 that he did not expect they would meet again; he had nearly finished his earthly course. Samuel thought this nonsense and referred to "your iron constitution," yet they did not meet, for later that year Samuel was taken ill and died, aged forty-eight, arguing affectionately with Wesley by letter to the last.

To Wesley's surprise, many whose consciences were convicted by his unemotional preaching showed extraordinary physical reactions. "Some of them," he wrote some months later, 'drop down as dead, having no strength nor appearance of life in them. Some burst out into strong cries and tears, some exceedingly tremble and quake.'"' Others began to sweat or struggled as if in agonies of death so that strong men might have needed to keep a woman from hurting herself. Sometimes Wesley had to stop preaching and pray. Many of the afflicted persons would suddenly cease their struggles and begin to praise God; others would 'continue days or weeks in heaviness."

These manifestations had seldom accompanied Whitefield's colorful preaching in Bristol, although at his mass meetings in the open air near London a little later,

Charles Wesley recorded that ''the cries of the wounded were heard on every side."" And swoonings and agonies were common in the New England revival led by the austere Jonathan Edwards. Wesley never consciously encouraged these physical reactions, and often crowds listened to him ''with awful silence and great attention," but he did not discourage these reactions, and the rumors spread, inevitably exaggerated until even George

Whitefield was worried until he learned the facts.

Whitefield had made a whirlwind tour in Wales with Howell Harris, preaching from market crosses and on the commons against much opposition and uproar. He had come preaching through Gloucestershire, had been snubbed by the vice-chancellor of Oxford, and had

SIGNS AND WONDERS || 119

reached London. On Sunday, April 29, 1739, he made a dangerous decision. After hurriedly printed handbills had announced his intention, he went at sunrise with Charles Wesley and others to Moorfields, the fairground and archery grounds north of the city, where a large mob of London's poor had gathered to hear him. He knew he might unwillingly cause a riot or be arrested, but in spite of difficult moments, this first open-air preaching in London encouraged Whitefield to preach the same afternoon to an even greater crowd on Kennington Common, south of the Thames.

During the following week, all London was stirred as Whitefield preached in the open to thousands who) would seldom or never enter a church. Charles Wesley remarked that the devil had gained nothing from excluding Whitefield from the churches.

Wesley, meanwhile, that same Sunday had felt compelled to preach a sermon in Bristol which caused the first cracks in the unity, of the revival leaders.

Before Whitefield had left Bristol, he had warned Wesley to "enter into no disputes, least of all concerning predestination, because this people was so deeply prejudiced for it." Bristol had many Dissenters, and they had supported Whitefield, but among them were high Calvinists who put strong emphasis on St. Paul's words about predestination and ignored his equally clear words on free will. These Bristol Calvinists spoke much of Paul's teaching that God eternally decrees some to salvation and some to damnation (or "'reprobation'') but little about his teaching and preaching that ''whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13).

The roots of the controversy lay deep in the history of England since the Reformation. To Wesley, however, the overriding fact was that "the Lord. .

. is longsuffering to us—not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). Those who refused to repent would perish, but when Wesley urged his hearers to be saved by faith in Christ, he was not concerned with eternal decrees before the beginning of time; he feared that men who emphasized the predestination of some to eternal death would be inhibited from offering Christ freely to all. Wesley seized on Calvin's

120 Il "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

comment in his Institutes of the Christian Religion: 'The decree, I admit, is dreadful"

(in the original Latin, Decretum horribile) and referred to predestination as 'the horrible decree."

On Tuesday, April 24, he returned from the field and preached near Bath in pouring rain to a smaller congregation than usual. He went to Kingswood and preached to the coal miners, who took him afterward to see the hill in the middle of the forest, two miles each way from any church or school, where Whitefield had laid the foundation stone of the school they intended to build. On Wesley's return to Wine Street, he was handed a letter. Noticing the date, he learned that it had already been circulating for at least two weeks, widely read, before being sealed and taken to his lodgings.

The letter charged Wesley with "resisting and perverting the truth as it is in Jesus by preaching against God's decree of predestination''—on which in fact he had been silent. Another letter was shown him which warned the godly to avoid him as a false teacher. He decided to say nothing, but wondered whether he should publicly declare the truth of the issue as he saw it. Early the next morning, after he and his fellow lodgers and their hosts had sung hymns and before they had breakfast, he wrote a sermon on predestination. He was not sure whether he should preach it. He consulted the young man who had come down with him from London as his assistant and scribe, John Purdy, as they walked to Newgate. Purdy advised him to preach.

On Thursday he was again at the service at Newgate, preaching on the text 'He that believeth on me hath everlasting life' (John 6:36). Suddenly the prisoners and the city people who now crowded the prison chapel were startled. 'I was led, I know not how," Wesley recorded,

"to speak strongly and explicitly" against the doctrine that some could never be saved because they were predestined to be reprobates. The crowd heard him pray to God aloud as he preached that "'if I spake not the truth of God he would stay his hand, and work no more among us." Then Wesley cried, "If this is thy truth, do not delay to confirm it by signs following."

Wesley recorded that immediately 'the power of God

SIGNS AND WONDERS Ill 121

fell among us. One, and another, and another, sunk to the earth. You might see them dropping on all sides as thunderstruck." One, Ann Davis, cried out. Wesley went across and prayed over her, and she began to praise God.

Dagge, the jailer, was upset by the uproar in his chapel. Meanwhile, Wesley remained doubtful whether to preach formally against predestination. Purdy again urged him to do so. They therefore wrote out four cards with different courses of action on each. They drew the lot: 'Preach and Print."

On Sunday, April 29, early in the morning, Wesley went to the bowling green, where several thousand were waiting, and after they had sung, he called out his text from the Epistle to the Romans: '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)

"How freely does God love the world!" he began. He expounded his text briefly and exclaimed, "Verily, free grace is all in all." Then he contrasted the High Calvinist doctrine as he remembered it from a close study many ears before. He touched on its varieties but concluded:

"Call it therefore by whatever name you please...

It comes in the end to the same thing. The sense of all is plainly this—by virtue of an eternal, unchangeable, irresistible decree of God, one part of mankind are infallibly saved, and the rest infallibly damned." This, he contended, meant that the purpose of preaching "to save souls" was void.

Calvinists who heard him would have thought he was distorting their theology—as they had misrepresented his—but Wesley's mind was always inclined to drive a position to its bleakly logical conclusion, regardless of the illogicalities of life which may soften a theological position in practice. For him, the Calvinist interpretation de-, stroyed all God's attributes at once. "This is the blasphemy clearly contained in the horrible decree of predestination! And here I fix my foot. On this I join issue with every assertor of it. You represent God as worse than the} devil; more false, more cruel, more unjust. But you say you will prove it by Scripture!"

The long sermon continued, with much satire, until he reached his peroration with a resounding reiteration of

Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

great New Testament texts of free grace for all, such as the words of Jesus himself: "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink"; and St. Paul's: ""God commandeth all men everywhere to repent." ''All men, everywhere!" cried Wesley, '—every man in every place, without any exception, either of place or person."

| He had the sermon printed and published in Bristol.

sent copies to London for distribution by Hutton, who seems to have queried the order as controversial, for Wesley had to remind him that 'generally I speak on faith, remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost."

Hutton did not hurry to publish.

Wesley continued his round of preaching and of building up converts. He brought them into societies; within | these, the smaller bands were organized for mutual help.

The two original Bristol religious societies which Whitefield and Wesley had taken over were now too large for their premises. They came together, gave money, and bought land at the Horsefair on which to build ''the New

Room,'' which went up fast and became Wesley's headquarters.

He preached in any church which would allow him but mostly in the meadows or on commons, in the countryside around Bristol, and out to Bath. And thus occurred the celebrated incident of June 5, 1739 with ''Beau"' Nash, the uncrowned king of Bath.

Richard Nash was then nearly sixty-five, and though an adventurer and philanderer who lived by gaming, he had a kind heart. For thirty-four years he had been the arbiter of affairs at Bath, making the spa famous for entertainment and elegance; even royalty and duchesses obeyed his rules at the Pump Room. He was, however, a notorious scoffer at religion.

He became annoyed that people of all ranks should flock to hear Wesley. Beau Nash let it be known that he would stop him. When Wesley arrived at Bath at half past 1:00 on the afternoon of June 5 and was at dinner at

SIGNS AND WONDERS Ill 123

Mr. Dibble's, he was begged not to preach "because no one knew what would happen." He arrived at the meadow to find that "I had gained a larger audience than usual, including many of the rich and great" sitting in their chariots or on comfortable chairs.

; Wesley's heart went out to them, and he preached that all were guilty before God—rich and poor, high and low.

This doctrine surprised them, just as it would disgust his parents' old patron, the proud Duchess of Buckingham.

She would remark when invited to hear Whitefield at a drawing room meeting that "it is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches. that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting."

The fashionable audience that day at Bath was "sinking apace into seriousness, when their champion appeared."

Beau Nash always drove in a chariot drawn by six gray horses with footmen on the box who announced his coming by blowing on French horns. His arrival at the back of the crowd was thus an interruption, and the people made way when he walked ponderously, in his lace-covered coat and his enormous cream-colored beaver hat, toward Wesley as he preached in his cassock, gown, and bands.

Wesley paused. Nash demanded by what authority he was doing these things.

"By the authority,'" replied Wesley, ''of Jesus Christ, conveyed to me by the (now) Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid hands upon me, and said, "Take thou authority to preach the Gospel.' "

"This is contrary to Act of Parliament," said Nash.

"This is a conventicle."

"Sir, the conventicles mentioned in that Act are seditious meetings; but here is no shadow of sedition; therefore it is not contrary to that Act."

"I say it is; and, beside, your preaching frightens peole out of their wits!'

"Sir, did you ever hear me preach?" cNows "How, then, can you judge of what you never heard?'

"Sir, by common report."

"Common report is not enough," replied Wesley, as

124 |ll "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

the crowd warmed to this interchange. 'Give me leave, sir, to ask, is not your name Nash?"

"My name is Nash."

"Sir," said Wesley with a flash of wit which delighted his fashionable hearers, 'I dare not judge of you by common report: I think it not enough to judge by."

This retort reduced Nash to silence; finally he said, 'I desire to know what this people comes here for."

At that an old woman spoke up. "Sir, leave him to me: let an old woman answer him. You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body; we take care of our souls; and for the food of our souls we come here."

Nash walked away without another word.

Some days afterward Wesley hurried to London, having been warned that the Fetter Lane society was split by dissensions. Some were following a French prophetess; some were leaning toward Moravian customs, which did not sit easily in the Church of England. The system of small bands of believers keeping each other up to the mark had a tendency to sink into carping and priggery.

Wesley sorted out the problems as far as he could, and believed that he left the society humbled and united.

Whitefield had been prevented from sailing to America by an embargo on outward bound shipping, for England was on the verge of war with Spain (the "War of Jenkin's

Ear'). He was staying with the Delamottes at Blendon when Wesley arrived for dinner, having read, as he rode,

George Whitefield's new autobiography of his early life.

That evening they went to Blackheath, where a vast concourse had gathered.'

They had come to hear Whitefield. To Wesley's surprise Whitefield asked him to preach instead, "which I did (though nature recoiled), on my favorite subject,

'Jesus Christ, who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.' I was greatly moved with compassion for the rich that were there.

Some of them seemed to attend, while others drove away

SIGNS AND WONDERS

Ill 125 their coaches from so uncouth a preacher."

Whitefield had acted deliberately. "In the evening," he recorded, "had the pleasure of introducing my honored and revered friend, Mr. John Wesley, to preach at Blackheath. The Lord give him ten thousand times more success than he has given me!"

After that, Wesley was ready to field-preach in London. On the next Sunday, early on a June morning, he preached to a less vast crowd (he put it at six or seven thousand) at Moorfields while Whitefield preached on Kennington Common.

Among the crowd at Moorfields was a sailor's wife, Grace Murray. Wesley was unaware of the existence of this woman who was to cross his path so fatefully ten years later.

In 1739 she was unhappy: she had lost her child, her husband was at sea, her parents were far away in the North. A neighbor had spoken of the comfort received through hearing John Wesley preach. 'The next Saturday,"' related Grace Murray, ''the young woman sent to me again to tell me Mr. Wesley was come, and was to preach in the fields next morning. I slept little that night.

I rose at 3 and about 4 set out, though I knew not where Moorfields was. I overtook a woman going thither, who shewed me the way.

"When Mr. W stood up and looked round on the congregation, I fixed my eyes upon him and felt an inexpressible conviction, that he was sent of God. And when he spoke those words, 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God,' they went through me like a dart and I cried out, 'Alas! What shall I do? How shall I be born again?' After the sermon, a young woman

(Maria Price) seeing me all in tears asked, 'What is the matter with you?' I said, 'I don't know.' She said, 'I will tell you; the hammer of God's love is breaking your heart; only follow on, to know the Lord.' She spoke many other sweet words. I went home a mere sinner, not knowing what I wanted, an atonement for my sins."

Chapter Fourteen "A Horrid Thing, a Very Horrid Thing"

Two evenings later Wesley preached again at Bristol.

Whitefield's friend Howell Harris was among the crowd on Bowling Green.

The Welsh layman—he had been refused ordination by nervous bishops—whose preaching fanned the revival in the mountains and valleys, had heard Calvinist gossip

' that Wesley preached a universal redemption for all man- \ kind and not the Christian Gospel.

That June night, however, shortly after sunset as they sat down to supper, Harris called at Wine Street where

Wesley still lodged with Whitefield's sister and widowed mother, and he confessed that he had nearly avoided

Bowling Green. Harris told Wesley, 'I had not been long _ there before my spirit was knit to you, as it was to dear

Mr. Whitefield, and before you had done I was so over_ powered with joy and love that I could scarce stand, and with much difficulty got home." They talked together for two hours and through a second supper.

The visit of Harris was a much needed encouragement, for Wesley was afraid that "all our society was falling to pieces," although he had been away only eight days.

Some were arguing bitterly for or against predestination; others were being swept into frenzies ya evacthvieeGt

"French prophets,'"" a few men and women from among the exiled Huguenots who had settled in Bristol.

Wesley worked hard to heal divisions, blow away misunderstandings both among the men and the women, and restore peace. Far away in London, Whitefield felt that Wesley had helped to cause the trouble by the sermon on Free Grace. Not knowing that it was already published in Bristol, he wrote on June 25: "I hear, honored sir, you are about to print a sermon against predesti-

"A HORRID THING, A VERY HORRID THING" {Ii 127

nation. It shocks me to think of it. What will be the consequence but controversy? If people ask me my opinion, what shall I do? I have a critical part to act. God enable me to behave aright. Silence on both sides will be best. It is noised abroad already that there is a division between you and me. Oh! my heart within me is grieved."

Whitefield sympathized with the Dissenters' doctrines although he did not yet count himself a Calvinist. He wrote again on July 2 that he was "grieved from my soul" by rumor that someone who held predestination had been excluded from the society. "If so, is it right?

Would Jesus Christ have done so? Is this to act with a catholic spirit?' Before the end of his letter, he reverted again to the sermon on Free Grace. "Dear honored sir, if you have any regard to the peace of the Church, keep in your sermon on predestination. But you have cast a lot. Oh! my heart in the midst of my body is like melted wax. The Lord direct us all! Honored sir, indeed I wish you all the success you can wish for. May you increase though I decrease! I would willingly wash your feet.

...O wrestle, wrestle, honored sir, in prayer, that not the least alienation of affections may be between you and, honored sir, your obedient son and servant in Christ, G.W."

When Whitefield came to Bristol in mid-July, Wesley rebuked him for listening to rumors. They had long talks; they shared the preaching and rode together through the rain-soaked countryside as far as Gloucester for Whitefield's final farewell before America. They settled their differences. "I love you the more for reproving me," wrote Whitefield from London.

The New Room was going up fast, and the school at Kingswood only lacked a roof; Wesley preached inside it in the rain and again under a sycamore tree in the rain.

His work was unremitting. Even when his horse stumbled and pitched him on to the road and he bruised his shoulder, he did not fail the waiting crowd.

128 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

All this time he was thinking about the "unusual manner' of his ministry. He had no fear that he was swerving into heresy. Soon after his conversion, he had studied the homilies which had been authorized in the reign of Edward VI to be read out in parish churches when the minister did not preach a sermon of his own; Wesley then realized that he had rediscovered the forgotten teaching of the Church of England. He had promptly published an abridged edition, and when clergy attacked

Whitefield and him from pulpits or in pamphlets, he would reply by emphasizing 'in very plain words the difference between the true, old Christianity, commonly called by the new name of Methodism, and the Christianity now generally taught."

He could easily rebut wild charges that he led people to rely on visions and dreams or that he stirred up strife.

One London preacher had published a violent sermon branding the Methodists with "spiritual pride, enthusiasm, false doctrine, heresy, uncharitableness."' He charged that they preached 'crude, indigested notions of dismal consequences." Wesley wrote to him: "O Sir, how could you possibly be induced to pass such a sentence, even in your heart, till you had done us the common heathen justice of hearing us answer for ourselves?"

More serious was the charge that Wesley was disturbing the peace of the church and "stealing sheep" from the flocks of other parsons: "I do, indeed, go out into the highways and hedges to call poor sinners to Christ," he wrote to a distinguished pamphleteer, Dr. Henry

Stebbing,' "but not 'in a tumultuous manner,' not 'to the disturbance of the public peace' or 'the prejudice of families." Neither herein do I break any law which I know, much less 'set at naught all rule and authority.' Nor can I be said to 'intrude into the labors' of those who do not labor at all, but suffer thousands of those for whom

Christ died to 'perish for lack of knowledge.' "

Field preaching inevitably involved preaching in other men's parishes, for every acre of England was in a parish. As a fellow of an Oxford college, Wesley had a general license to preach, but this implied the permission of the local incumbent, and Wesley preached whether invited or not. He told an old friend who objected to these

"A HORRID THING, A VERY HORRID THING" III 129

proceedings: "God in Scripture commands me, according to my power, to instruct the ignorant, reform the wicked, confirm the virtuous. Man forbids me to do this in another's parish; that is, in effect, to do it at all; seeing that I have now no parish of my own, nor probably ever shall.

Whom then shall I hear, God or man?

"Suffer me now," he went on, "to tell you my principles in the matter." And he coined the phrase which was to be inscribed, long after, on his memorial in Westminster Abbey: "I look upon all the world as my parish."

This famous phrase, which Wesley first put into writing in the spring or early summer of 1739, he defined as meaning that in whatever part of the world he was, "I judge it meet, right and my bounden duty to declare, unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation. This is the work which I know God has called me."

He had been providentially disengaged 'for all things else that I might singly attend on this very thing, 'and go about doing good.' "

He could no longer be confined to church buildings.

This still shocked his eldest brother. John was unashamed. "How is it,"" he asked in the last letter which Samuel received a few weeks before he died, "that you can't praise God for saving so many souls from death, and covering such a multitude of sins, unless he will begin this work within 'consecrated walls?' Why should he not fill heaven and earth? You cannot, indeed you cannot, confine the Most High within temples made with hands. I do not despise them, any more than you. But I rejoice to find that God is everywhere.

"I love the rites and ceremonies of the Church. But I see, well-pleased, that our great Lord can work without them. And howsoever and wheresoever a sinner is converted from the error of his ways, and by whomsoever, I therein rejoice, yea, and will you rejoice!"

Field preaching and the physical reactions had antagonized the bishops. They now were willing to believe the

130 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

worst, so that Whitefield had written to Wesley in midsummer, "I hear we shall be excommunicated soon." Excommunication was unlikely, but a bishop might formally inhibit Wesley from preaching in his diocese; if Wesley defied the ban, he could be unfrocked. He could not then lawfully officiate or preach unless he took out a license under the Toleration Act as a dissenting minister. And that would dampen the flame of revival in the Church of England. Wesley's whole being was now concentrated on the twin aims of pleading with individuals to be reconciled to God, and returning the national church to the doctrines of the Reformation.

When, therefore, he was summoned by the bishop of Bristol on August 16, 1739, he knew that his ministry had reached a crisis. Joseph Butler, the philosopher who was much celebrated for his recent book The Analogy of Religion, had been bishop for less than a year. In the gloomy preface to his book he had complained that it was "taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is... discovered to be fictitious" and was a subject of mirth and ridicule. He had endeavored to prove the contrary by reasoned and original argument in a book which was already considered the greatest theological work of the age. When Wesley read it some years later, he thought it '"'a strong and well-wrote treatise; but, I am afraid, far too deep' for those to whom it was primarily addressed.

At forty-seven Dr. Butler was eleven years older than Wesley and comparatively young for a bishop, even of the poorest diocese in England. Wesley had already had a brief interview during the summer, and on August 16 he went to the palace, on which Butler was spending more than he could afford, at 11 o'clock in the morning.

The dean of Bristol was present.

They fell at once to disputing about justification by faith. The bishop contended that Wesley made God tyrannical: if some people were justified without previous goodness, why were not all?

"Because, my lord, they resist his Spirit, because they 'will not come to him that they may have life'; because they suffer him not 'to work in them both to will and to do.' They cannot be saved because they will not believe."

"A HORRID THING, A VERY HORRID THING" Ill 131

"Sir, what do you mean by faith?" asked the bishop.

"My lord, by justifying faith I mean a conviction wrought in a man by the Holy Ghost that Christ hath loved him, and given himself for him, and that through Christ his sins are forgiven."

The bishop, missing the point, remarked that "some good men have this, but not all'' and asked how Wesley proved this to be "the justifying faith taught by our

Church."

Wesley quoted from the authorized Homily on Salvation. They argued over its meaning.

Then the bishop said: "Mr. Wesley, I will deal plainly with you. I once thought Mr. Whitefield and you wellmeaning men. But I can't think so now. For I have heard more of you—matters of fact, sir. And Mr. Whitefield says in his Journal, 'There are promises still to be fulfilled in me.'

"Sir,'' exclaimed the bishop, in a sentence which would become famous, ''the pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing!'

"My lord, for what Mr. Whitefield says Mr. Whitefield and not I is accountable. I pretend to no extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost—none but what every Christian may receive, and ought to expect and pray for. But I do not wonder your lordship has heard facts asserted which, if true, would prove the contrary.

Nor do I wonder that your lordship, believing them true, should alter the opinion you once had of me. A quarter of an hour I spent with your lordship before. And about an hour now. And perhaps you have never conversed one other hour with anyone who spoke in my favor. But how many with those who spoke on the other side! So that your lordship could not but think as you do."

Wesley asked for the ''matters of fact." The bishop accused him of administering the Sacrament in the societies

(and thus in unconsecrated buildings, which was not lawful except at a sickbed). Wesley denied it: "I never did yet, and believe I never shall'—in which he prophesied wrongly.

"I hear, too, many people fall into fits in your societies, and that you pray over them,"

132 || "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

"I do so, my lord. When any show by strong cries and tears that their soul is in deep anguish, I frequently pray to God to deliver them from it. And our prayer is often answered in that hour."

"Very extraordinary indeed! Well, sir, since you ask my advice, I will give it you very freely. You have no business here. You are not commissioned to preach in this diocese. Therefore I advise you to go hence."

"My lord, my business on earth is to do what good I can. Wherever therefore I think I can do most good, there must I stay so long as I think so. At present I think I can do most good here. Therefore here I stay."

Wesley reminded the bishop that an ordained fellow of an Oxford college was not limited to a single parish but could preach ''to any part of the Church of England."

The bishop did not contest that and closed the interview.

Yet his lordship might still inhibit John Wesley by due _ process of ecclesiastical law. When, therefore, Wesley received a second summons two days later, he was nervous. Furthermore, he had received that morning a note from a well-wisher to warn him of two men who were resolved to murder him as he went out of town. Wesley had promptly written to each. Both had hastily denied the rumor.

Before going into the palace, Wesley attended evening prayer. at the cathedral and was much comforted by words of one of the set psalms and by passages in both lessons which seemed specially apt: 'Be not afraid of their terror, neither be ye troubled. ... Having a good conscience, that whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ'' (1 Peter 3:14, 16).

He went into the palace with a humbled but high heart, ready for persecution. Instead, he found the Reverend Reginald Tucker, vicar of All Saints and a future dean of Gloucester, with the bishop. Wesley had commented during their previous discussion that Tucker

(who had led the clergy in shutting the Bristol pulpits to Whitefield, and thus to Wesley) had said in a sermon that original sin needs no atonement. The bishop chose to treat this complaint as a formal presentment, which Wesley denied making. The three had an amicable debate

"A HORRID THING, A VERY HORRID THING" III 133

about the sermon; the bishop offered "several reasons why there must be something good in us before God could justify us, some morally good temper."

Wesley left the palace without converting either the bishop or, apparently, the future dean, although on the next Good Friday he was "much comforted by Mr. T's sermon at All Saints; as well as by the affectionate seriousness wherewith he delivered the holy bread to a very large congregation. May the good Lord fill him with all the life of love, and with 'all spiritual blessings in Christ

Jesus!' "

The bishop had not inhibited John Welsey from| preaching. Wesley's course was clear. He must "preach the Gospel wheresoever I am in the habitable world," as he had told the bishop. The long pilgrimage through Oxford, Georgia, and Aldersgate Street to the ''mad step" of preaching in the fields had brought him to his vocation.

His vast theological reading, his love of worship and deep knowledge of the Bible, his self-discipline and compassion had not saved him in themselves, but they were at the service of the Gospel for such years as might remain. He had reached a deep contentment, though his joy was not expressive like Whitefield's. Wesley indeed was still somewhat wary of laughter or jesting: he kept his sense of humor under strict control.

As if to set a seal on his vocation, good news awaited him at the end of the month in London, where his mother had moved from Salisbury with her daughter and sonin-law, Westley Hall. When Wesley had seen her during his brief London visit in July, she had reproached him for his account of the events leading to Aldersgate Street, which Samuel had sent her with criticisms; she had not realized that it was the same paper which Wesley had read to her a year before. But now, on September 3, she had a happy surprise for her Jack.

She told him that until a short time ago she had scarcely heard mentioned the good news that sins may be forgiven at once rather than at the final reckoning on the Last Day, nor that God's Spirit would make his presence felt in a person's heart. She quoted St. Paul's words in the Epistle to the Romans (8:16): 'The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God"

134 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

and said that she had never imagined that this was the common privilege of all true believers.

"Therefore,'"' said Susanna Wesley, "I never dared ask for it myself. But two or three weeks ago, while my son

Hall was pronouncing those words, in delivering the cup to me, 'The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee,' the words struck through my heart, and I knew God for Christ's sake had forgiven me all my sins."

Chapter Fifteen Unhappy Divisions By mid-January 1740 all southern England had lain under snow or hard frost for several weeks. Down at Bristol

John Wesley grieved for the poor, especially the day laborers in the countryside who had no work in the frozen fields and therefore no wages. He found families which were starving because several parishes were providing no relief although legally required to do so.

He took up a collection from the congregations at three services that week. Appointing helpers, he organized soup kitchens to feed about 100 and sometimes 150 daily while the severe weather continued.

The Kingswood colliers were still able to mine underground. Wesley could look around happily at their transformation thanks to Whitefield's courage and his own work: "The scene is already changed. Kingswood does not now, as a year ago, resound with cursing and blasphemy. It is no more filled with drunkenness and uncleanness, no longer full of wars and fightings, of wrath and envyings. Peace and love are there. Great numbers of the people are mild, gentle, and easy to be entreated.

Hardly is their 'voice heard in the streets,' or, indeed, in their own wood, unless when they are at their usual evening diversion, singing praise unto God their

Saviour."

Wesley himself returned unexpectedly to London, "called away in a manner I could not resist." A young man of good family, bad habits, and no religion named

Gwillam Snowde had come to Bristol the previous year, intending to seek his fortune abroad. Apparently converted under Wesley's preaching, he and another man became assistants at the new school for the colliers' children, but after a few months they disappeared with some

136 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

of the building fund. Snowde turned highwayman, was caught, and was now sentenced to death. He sent an urgent message begging Wesley to see him before he hanged. Willing to leave the crowded congregations of Bristol for the sake of one man who had betrayed his trust, Wesley set out. The stage coach could not make the hills, so he rode, a journey which took five days through that frozen countryside with a rest on Sunday at Newbury, where he preached in the parish church.

He went at once to Newgate. The man was truly penitent and so plainly ready for heaven that Wesley was not sure 'whether to rejoice or grieve'' when Snowde was reprieved and transported to the American colonies.

In London, the Thames was frozen over, and an ox had been roasted whole on the ice. Wesley, however, was still able to preach to crowds because the previous

November he had bought cheaply from the government the derelict King's Foundery on the edge of Upper

Moorfields. The Foundery had been built to recast the bronze cannon captured in the wars of Marlborough but was accidentally wrecked and the Royal Arsenal transferred to Woolwich. Methodists were now restoring the Foundery to make a roomy preaching hall with a spartan home for Wesley and Charles at the back.

The evangelical revival was spreading and coalescing; Wesley made two brief preaching tours in Wales, ''where there is indeed a great awakening. God has done great things by Howell Harris." In Yorkshire and the Midlands

Benjamin Ingham had become an itinerant evangelist.

"The Methodists make a mighty noise in the nation," wrote Wesley's sister Emily, asking her brother for information. ''Most people condemn their doctrines, yet whether out of curiosity or goodness I can't tell. Never were any preachers more followed."

Not only were numerous pamphlets being written to damn or defend them, but the Methodists began to meet violence. Twice in London that year, Wesley was sur-

UNHAPPY DIVISIONS Ill 137

rounded by howling roughs as he got down from a coach to enter his house. He calmly faced them and spoke to them about Christ until they listened quietly. In Bristol on April 1, he was expounding at the New Room when a mob came to disrupt the service: 'Not only the court and the alleys, but all the street, upwards and downwards, was filled with people shouting, cursing and swearing, and ready to swallow the ground with fierceness and rage. The mayor sent order that they should disperse.

But they set him at nought. The chief constable came next in person, who was, till then, sufficiently prejudiced against us. But they insulted him also in so gross a manner, as I believe fully opened his eyes. At length the mayor sent several of his officers, who took the ringleaders into custody, and did not go till all the rest were dispersed."

At the quarter sessions next day the rioters tried to excuse themselves by complaints against Wesley, but the mayor cut them short: "What Mr. Wesley is, is nothing to you. I will keep the peace; I will have no rioting in this city."

Yet the very next day a sheriff of Bristol refused to allow Wesley to minister to two criminals who had asked to talk with him before they were hanged. This alderman's brother, who was incumbent of a Bristol church, later repelled Charles Wesley and his collier friends from Holy Communion, even when Charles exclaimed: "You can see I am a clergyman."

The revival, however, faced a more subtle danger— (soteral disputes which threatened to extinguish what violence could not destroy.

Back in the autumn of 1739 a Moravian, Philip Molther, had stopped in London on his way from Germany to America. He had visited the Fetter Lane society while the Wesleys were both away and soon had such influence that he postponed his departure to the colonies. When the Wesleys returned, they found the society in confusion with many of their best friends following Molther's new teaching. He had persuaded them that unless faith was strong, it was not faith at all— "weak faith is no| faith'—and that those who lacked strong faith must not receive the Sacrament or go to church but be "still,"

138 || "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

awaiting faith. The society meetings, which once had been loud with hymns and exclamations of joy ("animal spirits,'" Molther had complained) were now for much of the time silent and still as the members waited for faith.

Wesley tried to turn them back to scriptural paths. He thought he had succeeded but, as Charles said six months later: ''How fatal was our delay and false moderation!" For by the spring of 1740 the Wesleys were losing

'their friends fast: the Delamottes, Hutton, and John Bray, in whose house Charles had been converted. 'I labored for peace," wrote Charles after disputing with Bray and others, '"but only the Almighty can root out those cursed tares of pride, contempt and self-sufficiency with which our Moravianized brethren are overrun."

Jemmy Hutton was fast turning Moravian. Writing to Count Zinzendorf, he complained that John Wesley was too ambitious. He thought Wesley should be content 'to awaken souls in preaching, but not to lead them to Christ. But he will have the glory of doing all things."

Meanwhile George Stonehouse, vicar of Islington, was so influenced by the new teaching that he refused to pray with an elderly dying woman who was not yet converted or to read the Bible to her or bring her the Sacrament. He told her daughter: "These outward things must be laid aside. She has nothing to do but to be still." When John

Wesley tried to reason with him, Stonehouse said he intended to sell the living of Islington when he could get his price, and leave the church: "No honest man can officiate as a minister in the Church of England," he asserted.

By midsummer, the 'Stillness' controversy had reached new heights. One evening Wesley was prevented from speaking at Fetter Lane, although he had sat patiently through an hour of "dumb show," as Charles called it. On another occasion Wesley recorded, "I went to Fetter Lane, and plainly told our poor, confused shattered society where they had erred from the faith. It was as I feared: they could not receive my saying."

On June 22, "finding there was no time to delay without utterly destroying the cause of God," Wesley struck

"at the root of the grand delusion." In a series of early morning expositions at the Foundery, he set forth the

UNHAPPY DIVISIONS Iii 139

differences between the new doctrines, which Molther had foisted on the Moravians and on the Fetter Lane society, and the plain teaching of Scripture. Early in July he went to the Fetter Lane meeting again, 'but I found their hearts were quite estranged." Two days later he met

'a little handful of them who still stand in the old paths" but were under great pressure. On July 18, certain that "the thing was now come to a crisis," he brought nineteen supporters together, including his mother, Lady

Huntingdon, and Benjamin Ingham (who later joined the Moravians). He conducted a Communion service for\ them, and they unanimously decided to leave Fetter,

Lane.

On the next Sunday evening, July 20, 1740, after preaching out of doors in Moorfields, Wesley went to Fetter Lane. Some ninety men and women were there.

Wesley sat silently through their silent "love feast'' and their shorter vocal service. Then he rose, took the platform, and read out a brief summary of his opponents' position. He concluded: "I believe these assertions to be | flatly contrary to the Word of God." He had warned them and begged them again and again, 'but as I find you more and more confirmed in the error of your ways, nothing now remains but that I should give you up to God.

"You that are of the same judgment, follow me!''

He walked out without another word. Only eighteen| or nineteen followed him. The next Wednesday "'our little company met at The Foundery instead of Fetter

Lane."" A total of some twenty-five men and women, including Mrs. Wesley and Lady Huntingdon, became the nucleus of a new society.

Fetter Lane turned Moravian. In 1742 it was formally | constituted a society of the (Moravian) Church of the United Brethren, which was later licensed in England as a dissenting body.

Wesley was to write during the following year: 'My belief is that the present design of God is to visit the poor

Church of England." If he were to be part of that design, he could not allow himself or the revival to become the property of a small foreign sect previously unknown in England, however much they had helped his spiritual

140 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

search. He had no alternative but separation from Fetter Lane.

Meanwhile, a more damaging dispute had blown up.

During 1740 letters were passing across the Atlantic between Wesley and Whitefield. Three months might elapse, even four, between the posting of a letter and the opening of the reply, however prompt.

Sometime in May Wesley received an affectionate letter ,dated Savannah, March 26. Whitefield, whose evangelism was having sensational success in the colonies, begged Wesley to "write no more to me about misrepre- 'sentations wherein we differ." He was "ten thousand times more convinced," he said, of the doctrine of Election and of the final perseverence "of those that are truly in Christ." '"You think otherwise," he wrote. '""Why then should we dispute when there is no probability of convincing? ... let us offer salvation freely to all by the blood of Jesus."

The Wesleys indeed gloried in offering 'universal redemption," by which they meant that all, however wicked, may respond to the Gospel and be saved if they repent and trust Christ. Whitefield, however, lived far away from the Wesleys and depended on sometimes garbled reports.

' As the year wore on, he became convinced that by _ "universal redemption" the Wesleys meant that all would

be saved whether they repented or not. Wesley, for his part, was wrongly beginning to identify Whitefield with _ the rigorous Calvinism of men like the Bristol bigot who,

until no longer admitted, had disrupted the society at the 'New Room by asserting vehemently to Wesley's face:

"You and your brother are false prophets. .

. You are all wrong. ...I hold that a certain number of mankind is elected from eternity, and these must and shall be saved: and all the rest of mankind must and shall be damned." ee attitude, to Wesley, implied that evangelizing was superfluous, as he had trenchantly contended in his Bris-

UNHAPPY DIVISIONS Iii 141

tol sermon against predestination.

In August two letters crossed somewhere in the Atlantic. Whitefield's letter deflected Wesley's implication:

"Since," wrote Whitefield, ''"we know not who are the elect, and who are reprobate, we are to preach promiscuously to all." Wesley's letter implied that he and Whitefield should each go his own way: "The case is quite plain. There are bigots both for predestination and against it. God is sending a message to those on either side. But neither will receive it unless from one who is of their own opinion. Therefore for a time you are suffered to be of one opinion and I of another." He added that God would bring them to one mind eventually.

Whitefield wrote back: "I cannot bear the thought of ,opposing you." The Bristol sermon, however, had been republished in America. Whether this was instigated by Wesley or by an interested party cannot be determined, nor whether Wesley had personally sent a copy to one of Whitefield's chief opponents in Charleston, South Carolina, as Whitefield complained. Whitefield reluctantly composed a reply to it to be published as an open letter to Wesley.

' Whitefield was fully engaged in the whirlwind preaching tour in New England which, more than any other factor, brought about the Great Awakening. He had no time to weigh every phrase of his public letter although he showed the draft to experienced Presbyterian clergy in America. He dated the letter December 24, 1740 and sent one manuscript copy to be printed in Charleston, left another at a Boston printer, and carried a third when he embarked on the Minerva for England to have it printed in London.

In January 1741 rumors of the letter's existence reached England, probably through one of the American clergy

'who had seen it in manuscript. "If," wrote Charles to | Wesley in Bristol on the night of January 10, "GW has

declared against the truth, GW will come to nothing.

Therefore leave him. He that believeth shall not make . haste."

Wesley was back in London by the end of the month.

Whitefield was still at sea, and on Sunday, February 1, he went down to his cabin and wrote a private letter to

142 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Wesley to be added to the pile which he would post on arrival in England. Sorrowfully but firmly he gave the \Wesleys notice that he was going into print.

He did not know that one of the men who had seen the letter in America had sent a copy ahead which a London printer pirated.

That same day, Sunday, February 1, Wesley rose at 4:30 a.m. at the Foundery, where he was now living with Charles and their mother and sister Kizzy, who died later that year, having never recovered from being jilted. After prayer and breakfast Wesley went to the preaching hall in the Foundery, where he would expound to a large congregation before going on to Communion, with many other of his Methodists, at a parish church. As he entered the hall, he learned that a pamphlet had been handed to worshipers as they approached the doors. He procured a copy and glanced at the title: "A Letter to the Reverend

John Wesley"... by the Reverend George Whitefield.

Wesley mounted the preaching platform and looked at the large congregation, the men and the women sitting separately as usual. Many held copies of the pamphlet.

Without comment, Wesley led the prayers and singing and preached his prepared sermon on the subject of marriage from a text in the Sermon on the Mount.

Then, a trifle dramatically, he announced: 'A private letter,.wrote to me by Mr. Whitefield, has been printed without his leave or mine. I will do just what I believe

Mr. Whitefield would were he here himself.'" He tore the letter into pieces. Everyone who had received the pamphlet did the same "so that in two minutes there was not a whole copy left."

Later in the month Wesley left London before daybreak by horse (he was therefore safe from "footpads''—robbers on foot) and came in midafternoon to Oxford, where he left the horse, which possibly he was bringing to its owner, for he continued by foot. After lingering over dinner at a household of friends, he set out with less than an hour of daylight to reach John Gambold at Stanton Harcourt rectory. ''Walked, rain, dark, weary! prayed!" runs the terse entry in his diary for February 17.

Behind the entry came a tale he loved to tell.

As night fell, a heavy rain drenched him. He lost his

UNHAPPY DIVISIONS ill 143 way, and even if he saw a signpost, no tinderbox could be lit in the rain. "I could not help saying in my heart

(though ashamed of my want of resignation to God's will), 'Oh that thou wouldst stay the bottles of heaven; or at least give me light, or an honest guide, or some help in the manner thou knowest.' " Soon the rain stopped. The moon emerged, and he could see where he was. Then "a friendly man overtook me, who set me upon his own horse, and walked by my side, till we came to Mr.

Gambold's door." Welsey rejoiced that a threefold prayer had received a threefold answer.

By foot and by horse he reached Bristol in two days more. He found the United Society split and quarreling.

John Cennick, his own chief assistant, the schoolmaster of the school that Whitefield had founded at Kingswood, was leading the opposition to his theology.

John Cennick (Wesley sometimes spelled his name "Cenwick'') was a young man from Reading whose grandparents were Quakers and his parents members of the Church of England. After a mildly dissolute youth, he had been overtaken by a longing for forgiveness and the knowledge of God, which he sought to achieve by rigorous acts of devotion, even contemplating crossing the seas to enter a monastery since none existed in England. On September 6, 1737, about two years after Whitefield and eight months before Wesley—and unknown to either—Cennick was transformed by a similar conversion. Wesley met him at Reading in March 1739—

"a young man, strong in the faith of our Lord Jesus'"— and later invited Cennick to be the schoolmaster at Kingswood and encouraged him to preach. Whitefield doubted Wesley's wisdom in allowing a layman who had never sought Holy Orders to act "in so public a manner."

Cennick was soon influenced by the Calvinist pusenis ers at Bristol, then by Howell Harris and Whitefield. By the time that Wesley had returned to Bristol in March |

1740, Cennick was convinced that truth, as he saw it, | must not be compromised or denied.

Wesley, from an opposite angle, believed likewise; his quarrel with Cennick lay with his behavior rather than his beliefs. "You have not done right in speaking against me behind my back,'"' said Wesley when Cennick and

144 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

some twenty others came up to him in the New Room after the sermon. He tried to show that they misunderstood his teaching, but Cennick was adamant and told

Wesley they would continue to attend the United Society but were already meeting by themselves to promote the doctrines which Wesley attacked.

"You should have told me this before," answered Wesley, 'and not have supplanted me in my own house, stealing the hearts of the people, and by private accusations, separating very friends.'' Cennick denied the charge. Wesley then read aloud a copy of a letter which Cennick had written to Whitefield and circulated in Bris_tol imploring him to come to their rescue.

To keep tempers low, Wesley adjourned the discussion to a private room. Cennick and his friends could not agree that they had been in the wrong. Wesley had no wish to see the United Society lapse into a theological debating club when its purpose was to save and build up

.souls, and he believed that Cennick and his friends had been guilty of 'tale-bearing, back-biting, and evil speaking, dissembling, lying and slandering.'' They had scoffed at the Wesleys behind their backs while expressing love and esteem to their faces.

An uncomfortable meeting of the United Society took place a few days later. Each member on the list was considered by others. "To those who were sufficiently recommended," as Wesley recorded, tickets to denote membership. were given on the following day. Wesley continued to urge the recalcitrants to a better mind, for he was

"still fearful of doing anything rashly, or contrary to the great law of love," but Cennick believed that he could form his own society while remaining a member of Wesley's.

On February 28 Cennick sat, as he usually did, on the platform beside Wesley and was shocked when Wesley publicly expelled him "by the consent and approbation of the band-society in Kingswood."" Cennick said nothing.

"T was a little surprised," he recorded in his diary, "yet I showed little of it to the souls, only they saw me weep as I went out."

Wesley's imperiousness demanded loyalty, but his affection for Cennick urged restraint. He begged Cennick to wrestle in prayer, hoping he would acknowledge his

UNHAPPY DIVISIONS Ill 145

faults and be readmitted. Cennick was sure that his offense in Wesley's eyes was a belief in predestination;

Wesley countered that he had not expelled him for his opinions. The final break came on Sunday, March 8, when Cennick and fifty-one others withdrew from the Kingswood society (mainly composed of converted colliers) and ninety stayed with Wesley. Thus, though Wes- | ley and Cennick continued in friendship, two competing

Methodist societies arose in Kingswood.

And Wesley was in danger of becoming isolated, for in| the east of England, Joseph Humphreys of the society at Deptford, a layman whom Wesley had appointed to preach and lead classes, had gone over to the Calvinists. |

Charles Welsey was leaning toward the Moravians, for | he dearly loved Stonehouse, Hutton, and the Delamottes. In a fit of "stillness," Charles had abruptly left off expounding at the Foundery in the middle of a series.

Wesley worked hard to hold him. The danger passed, yet when Peter Bohler returned to England a few weeks later, Wesley was so drawn toward this young missionary who more than anyone had led him to his trust in Christ that he almost longed to be a Moravian himself: "I marvel how I refrain from joining these men. I scarce see any of them but my heart burns within me. I long to be with them, yet I am kept from them."

Chapter Sixteen Whitefield Reconciled George Whitefield landed at Falmouth in Cornwall on March 11, 1741 and reached London on the Sunday four days later. Wesley first knew of his arrival when a letter came from Charles "in a panic about GW," urging immediate return. '"George Whitefield you know is come," he

'wrote in cipher, adding in longhand, 'His fair words are 'not to be trusted to; for his actions show most un- 'friendly."

Whitefield had arrived in time to preach to the great crowds which had gathered on Kennington Common and Moorfields to hear Charles, who, it seems, gladly gave him the open-air pulpit. Next day they met privately. George produced the manuscript of his intended open letter, but Charles refused to read it, urging George, by an apposite text, not to carry out his anti-Wesley attack.

The Wesleys found themselves in deep disagreement, and they wept as they prayed. That night when Charles began his letter to John, he advised that the Wesleys should not attack Whitefield either.

Early next morning when Charles was expounding at the Foundery on 'the believer's privilege: i.e., power over sin,'" George joined him on the platform. After a while, Charles invited him to preach. George thereupon, to Charles' dismay, inveighed against some of the Wesleys' doctrines as he understood them. He thought they had been preaching sinless perfection and had dressed up the doctrine of Election "in such horrible colors' that many of George's former friends were shunning him.

Whitefield was acting deliberately. As he wrote to his assistant in Georgia: '"'What is most cutting of all, I am constrained, on account of our differing principles, publicly to separate from my dear, dear old friends Messrs.

WHITEFIELD RECONCILED |i! 147

ea and Charles Wesley, whom I still love as my own soul."

Charles longed for peace, longed for his brother. Indeed, had John and not Charles been in London that week before Whitefield had published the open letter or preached against them, his sharper theological perception might have cleared mutual misunderstandings.

On March 25 Wesley rode out from Bristol in the dark, two hours before sunrise, and with short stops for meals and a brief night in Berkshire, reached the Foundery by early evening after nineteen hours in the saddle in two days.

Charles and Tom Maxfield, who had been Whitefield's first collier convert and afterward Wesley's assistant, told him of "Mr. Whitefield's unkind behavior since his re-| turn from Georgia." Wesley went round, with Westley

Hall as witness, to Whitefield's lodgings two days later.

They were frank with each other after experiencing the double-dealers of Bristol. Wesley approved Whitefield's plain speaking; as Wesley commented thirty years later,

"integrity was inseparable from his whole character."

Whitefield, speaking respectfully as he always did to| Wesley, insisted that he could not remain in fellowship | but was resolved publicly to preach against the Wesleys | because they and he "preached two different gospels." |

Wesley knew that Whitefield would never put friendship before principle: '"He was immovable .

. wherever his conscience was concerned." Both men were distressed. Whitefield probably showed it more openly, for (as Wesley said) '""he had a heart susceptible of the Pe generous and the most tender friendship. I have frequently thought that this, of all others, was the distin- | guishing part of his character. How few have we known_ of so kind a temper, of such large and flowing affect-. ions."

To the world they might soon appear rivals rather than friends, for Whitefield's supporters were erecting a wooden preaching hall (the Tabernacle) on the edge of Moorfields only a short distance from the Foundery.

Then Whitefield published his open letter, printed with} his authority, and Wesley was annoyed. On the morning of April 4, with Westley Hall again as witness, he con-

148 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

fronted Whitefield. For whatever reason, this next conversation took place in a coach, a location which softened the impression of an Oxford don of thirty-seven disciplining a graduate of twenty-six.

"Both love and justice," records Wesley, "required that I speak my sentiments freely." He sternly told Whitefield that the very act of publishing had given a weapon to their enemies, ''who loved neither the one nor the other." If Whitefield had felt that he must publish an answer to the Bristol sermon on Free Grace, he should have put out a treatise 'without ever calling my name in question." Thirdly, Wesley argued that the letter was 'a mere burlesque upon an answer, leaving four of my arguments untouched, and handling the other four in so gentle a manner as if he were afraid they would burn his fingers."

The heart of Wesley's annoyance, however, was that Whitefield had revealed a private matter. To underline his point that the drawing of a lot ('preach and print') might be false guidance, Whitefield had told the public about Wesley's lot at Deal in February 1738: 'Let him

'return to London.'"" Wesley regarded the revelation as irrelevant and treacherous: it would ''make an open (and probably irreparable) breach between him and me."

Even then the two friends might not have split asunder, but when Whitefield went down to Bristol, he found many matters which were not to his liking. He wrote to Wesley a letter which is lost. Urged on by his sister, Mrs.

Grevil, he laid claim to the ownership of the New Room and to the Kingswood School. Wesley answered him in a long letter at the end of April, point by point. Then he reverted to their dispute over the open letter: "To proceed as you have done is so far from friendship that it is not moral honesty." He asserted that Whitefield's sermons were holding him up to ridicule, but that he would not retaliate: 'This field you have all to yourself. I cannot dwell on those things which have an immediate tendency to make you odious and contemptible."

Both Wesley and Whitefield were relying on hearsay.

As Whitefield said afterward: ''Busybodies on both sides blew up the coals. We harkened too much to tale

\ bearers."

WHITEFIELD RECONCILED Iii 149

Both, in the privacy of their closets, poured out their distress to the same Saviour, whom they both proclaimed with love and fervor; yet unless Wesley and Whitefield could heal their breach, the evangelical revival might) peter out.

All through the summer of 1741 they were estranged. | Whitefield toured Scotland, where he preached to great audiences and was bullied by extreme Calvinists who were affronted that he would not leave the Church of England. Wesley toured the Midlands, preached before the University of Oxford, and worked in London and Bristol. He made no move toward Whitefield.

Early in October, Wesley toured in Wales. At Abergavenny some Calvinists who were "bitter in spirit' had stirred up such prejudice that he had no audience except in the household of a widow, Mrs. James, who "received us gladly as she had done aforetime."' Mrs.

James was to become Mrs. George Whitefield the following month. Wesley completed his tour and returned to Bristol. He had preached at Kingswood and was about to lie down when a message came from the Calvinist Howell Harris, newly arrived from London and ready to travel into Wales before dawn. Wesley went to his lodgings, where Harris and his two companions "immediately fell upon their favorite subject." After two hours of fruitless _ argument, Wesley "begged we might exchange contro- | versy for prayer. We did so, and then, parted in much_ love, about 2 in the morning."

I That prayer meeting was the dawn of reconciliation.

The next day (his journey being deferred) Harris came round to see Wesley. They found themselves in much closer agreement, and Wesley at short notice joined Harris when he set out for Wales, where they met Daniel

Rowlands, whose character and preaching impressed Wesley. Deeper into Wales, Harris and Rowlands took his part when two Calvinists tore into his doctrines and motives at a small meeting which had been intended "to provoke one another to love and good works." The next day Wesley went to a house where several men and women had been invited, including the two angry Calvinists. The room fell silent as he entered, but Mrs. | James, the future Mrs. Whitefield ('a woman of candor

150 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

and humanity''), sharply rebuked the two for criticising _ Wesley behind his back and not to his face.

Then Harris came in ''and God blessed the healing words which he spoke; so that we parted in much love, being all determined to let controversy alone, and to preach 'Jesus Christ and him crucified.' "

Harris wrote to Whitefield in Scotland. As Whitefield must have been courting his future wife by the mails, she may have written too. Late in October, Wesley in Bristol opened a letter from Aberdeen.' 'Reverend and dear brother," wrote Whitefield, "I have for a long time expected that you would have sent me an answer to my last etter, but I suppose that you are afraid to correspond with me, because I revealed your secret about the lot.

Though much may be said for my doing it, yet I am sorry now that any such thing diopped from my pen, and I humbly ask pardon. I find I love you as much as ever, and pray God, if it be his blessed will, that we may be all united together."

Whitefield hoped all obstacles would be removed. He held particular Election, he said, "yet I offer Jesus freely to every individual soul." Whitefield did not agree with Wesley's views on Sanctification, but this need not divide them. He expected to be in Bristol in three weeks. ""May all disputing cease, and each of us talk of nothing but Jesus and him crucified!"

When Whitefield reached Bristol in November, having escaped a highwayman in Scotland and married Mrs.

James in Caerphilly, he found Wesley recovering from a severe attack of "the ague'—malaria. ('My heart and lungs, and all that was within me, and my soul too, seemed to be in perfect uproar. But I cried unto the Lord in my trouble, and he delivered me out of my distress."')

In the garret at the New Room or, if Wesley was up, the "'little room, by the school, where I speak with the people that come to me," they healed their seven-month breach. Neither left a record of their talk.

( Affection returned, yet the close unity of the early days 'never was fully restored: the theological divisions which 'two centuries earlier had weakened the Reformation were dividing their minds though not their hearts, and each believed he was right. "I spent an agreeable hour

WHITEFIELD RECONCILED Ill 151

with Mr. Wh.,"" wrote Wesley in April 1742. "I believe he is sincere in all he says concerning his desire of joining hands with all that love the Lord Jesus Christ. But if (as some would persuade me) he is not, the loss is all on his

side. I am just as I was: I go on my way, whether he goes with me or stays behind."

Together they could have done even more for Britain and America—Whitefield the incomparable preacher,

Wesley the patient organizer. Instead, the evangelical revival would flow in two channels, although leaders and friends would often support each other. Both Wesley and Whitefield sought a more formal unity from time to time, but their differences were not overcome. They prayed for one another and corresponded.

''Yesterday,'' wrote Whitefield to Wesley about a year after their reconciliation, "I had your kind letter. ...In answer to the first part of it I say, 'Let old things pass away, and all things become new.' I can certainly say 'Amen' to the latter part of it. 'Let the king live for ever, and controversy die.' It has died with me long ago. . .

. God be praised for giving you such a mind... .I subscribe myself, reverend and very dear sir, your most affectionate, though younger brother, in the Gospel of our glorious Emmanuel."

Chapter Seventeen The Opening of the North In the second week of May 1742, Wesley and Whitefield went twice together to the archbishop of Canterbury and to the bishop of London and stood their ground. On the following Monday, Wesley had planned to start early for Bristol, preaching at various places. Some trivial circumstance delayed him, and he was still at the Foundery when a letter came from the Countess of Huntingdon, who was down in Leicestershire at the family seat,

Donnington Park.

Selina Huntingdon, then aged nearly thirty-five, had become a strong supporter of both evangelists and was in frequent correspondence with Wesley; he sent her the manuscript of the journal he had prepared for publication, and she thought that he ought to leave out the passage about Beau Nash.

She now wrote that a young relation, Fanny Cowper, ("my little saint'), was dying of consumption and had expressed a desire to see John or Charles before she died:

"I beg you will set out as soon as may be after receiving this, as every day she has lived this past fortnight seems a fresh miracle, wrought for some purpose not yet known." Selina had ordered a horse for one of her servants, John Taylor, to accompany John Wesley ("he is a sweet and humble spirit .

. honest of heart, but weak in faith'') and apparently had arranged for Lord Huntingdon's stable to mount Wesley too.

Wesley had been thinking of Yorkshire for later that summer and was willing to bring it forward. Instead of westward down the Bath Road, he rode north up Watling

Street, the Old Roman Road, and turned off at the thirtyeighth milestone. After refreshment at Newport Pagnell, he and John Taylor overtook another rider whose sober

THE OPENING OF THE NORTH Il 153

clothes suggested a 'serious man," probably a Presbyterian Dissenter. Wesley put his book back into the saddle bag. He always seized an opportunity on the road or in an inn or at a forge when his horse cast a shoe, to speak about Christ. Once, for two days, he yielded to the advice of friends to relax and found himself treated as "a civil, good-natured gentleman," but his conscience smote him and thenceforth he "took up his cross," as he put it.

The "serious man" near Newport Pagnell was eager to promote Predestination. Wesley did not contradict. The man demanded his views, but "I told him over and over,

'We had better keep to practical things, lest we should be angry at one another.' And so we did for two miles, till he caught me unawares, and dragged me into the dispute before I knew where I was. He then grew warmer and warmer, told me I was rotten at heart, and supposed

I was one of John Wesley's followers. I told him, 'No, I am John Wesley himself.' "

The man shot forward like (Wesley used a Latin tag from Virgil) '"one who unawares has trodden upon a snake.'" But Lord Huntingdon's horse had its uses—"being the better mounted of the two, I kept close to his side, and endeavored to show him his heart, till we came into the street of Northampton."

Reaching Donnington Park, Wesley found Countess Selina's little saint just alive. "As soon as we came in her spirit greatly revived. For three days we rejoiced in the grace of God, whereby she was filled with a hope full of immortality; with meekness, gentleness, patience, and humble love, knowing in whom she had believed." Wesley never shunned a deathbed. As he once said, "Our people die well." The drugged departures of a much later generation were unknown; the dying were often alert until the last breath, and Wesley loved to see a man, woman, or child conscious of Christ's presence at the sickbed, strengthening eternal hope, driving away gloom and fear.

Countess Selina had another matter on her mind. She urged upon Wesley the needs of the coal miners of Newcastle upon Tyne in the far north of England. Like the Kingswood miners before Whitefield, they were illiterate, rough, and godless. '""They have churches," the countess

154 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

said, 'but they never go to them! And ministers, but they seldom or never hear them! Perhaps they may hear you.

And what if you save (under God) one soul?"

Wesley and Taylor therefore rode out for the north early on a May morning and came the next evening to Birstall in Yorkshire, which had been the original object of the journey he had planned for the summer.

At Birstall lived a young stonemason, John Nelson, whom Welsey had last met in London as they both walked back from a service in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Nelson, a skilled ornamental craftsman, already married with a growing family, had come to London to work.

He had heard Whitefield preach in Moorfields: 'I loved the man so that if any offered to disturb him I was ready to fight for him; but I did not understand him."" Nelson studied the Bible and prayed without more than a little hope of mercy. One June day he joined the early crowd at Moorfields when Whitefield was across the river and John Wesley took his place. As Nelson records: ''O that was a blessed morning for my soul! As soon as he got upon the stand he stroked back his hair and turned his face toward where I stood, and I thought he fixed his eyes on me. His countenance struck such an awful dread upon me before I heard him speak that it made my heart beat like the pendulum of a clock; and when he did speak, I thought his whole discourse was aimed at me."

When Wesley finished, Nelson said to himself, "This man can tell the secrets of my heart. He hath not left me there, for he hath shown me the remedy, even the blood of Jesus."

After a while Nelson returned to Yorkshire on his own initiative as an evangelist. Unordained, uncommissioned, supporting himself by his skill as a mason, he would go out after work, with hammer and trowel struck into his apron, and give out his text.

Wesley could now see for himself why the revival spread so fast across England as men converted in London or Bristol took the message home. As he preached from the top of Birstall Hill, examined converts, and listened to Nelson's stories, he realized that he had not labored in vain: "Many of the greatest profligates in all the country were now changed." Swearers praised God,

THE OPENING OF THE NORTH lil 155

drunkards were sober. 'The whole town wore a new face. Such a change did God work by the artless testimony of one plain man! And from thence his words sounded forth to Leeds, Wakefield, Halifax, and all the West Riding of Yorkshire."

Tearing himself from Birstall after one day, Wesley rode onward to the north with Taylor at his side. As they passed through Knaresborough, they spoke to a man and gave him a printed sermon. They rode forward, but on their return journey some days later they were stopped in the street and told that this one conversation had led to several conversions and that ''the sermon we gave him had traveled from one end of the town to the other."

They reached Newcastle upon Tyne at last—the great coal port which sent the "sea coal" to London. The walls of Newcastle still enclosed the town, with the Tyne on one side and the open country on the other.

Wesley was dismayed by the uncouthness of the Tynesiders: half of them appeared to be drunk; even the children swore.

About 7 o'clock on the morning of Sunday, May 30, 1742, he walked with John Taylor down Sandgate, then the poorest part of the town, and stood at the pump.

They began to sing ''All people that on earth do dwell' to the "Old Hundredth," a tune known to any Englishman who had ever ventured into a church. 'Three or four people came out to see what was the matter." Wesley called out the text from Isaiah 53:5: ""He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." The crowd grew until the street and every side alley was packed; people stood on the town walls or hung out of windows of houses.

"Observing the people, when I had done, to stand gaping and staring upon me, with the most profound astonishment, I told them, "If you desire to know who I am, my name is John Wesley. At 5 in the evening, with God's help, I design to preach here again.' "'

"At 5, the hill on which I designed to preach was covered, from the top to the bottom. I never saw so large a number of people together, either at Moorfields, or at Kennington Common. I knew it was not possible for the

156 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

one half to hear, although my voice was then strong and clear; and I stood so as to have all in view, as they were ranged on the side of the hill.

"After preaching, the poor people were ready to tread me under foot, out of pure love and kindness. It was some time before I could possibly get out of the press. I then went back another way than I came; but several were got to our inn before me; by whom I was vehemently importuned to stay with them, at least a few days; or, however, one day more."

"This thing made a huge noise," recalled a young wagoner, Christopher Hopper. "The populace entertained various conjectures about him: but few, if any, could tell the motive on which he came, or the end he had in view.

He made a short blaze, soon disappeared, and left us ina great consternation."

Wesley could not stay because he had promised to be back in Birstall, where John Nelson had summoned hearers from all the West Riding for Tuesday night. But he determined to make Newcastle another Bristol or Foundery, and the following winter returned to acquire land for an orphanage, a school, and a room where the Methodist society would meet. "He visited and preached in the neighborhood," adds Hopper. 'His name was well known in town and country. All mouths were filled with Wesley and his followers; some for and many against them." Hopper later joined Wesley as one of his itinerant preachers, like several from the town. Newcastle became the third of Wesley's home bases.

Wesley decided to return from Newcastle and Yorkshire by Epworth, where on the Sunday morning at service time he offered his help to the curate-in-charge, John

Romley, who as a local boy had been given his chance in life by old Samuel Wesley. Rowley refused to allow Samuel's son to preach or to read the prayers to the small congregation. In the afternoon the church was packed because of a rumor that John Wesley would preach; in-

THE OPENING OF THE NORTH Il 157

stead, the crowd and Wesley himself had to listen to the curate damning "enthusiasts."

Wesley whispered to John Taylor. Taylor slipped out after the sermon, and stood in the churchyard as the people left. He shouted: '""Mr Wesley, not being permitted to preach in the church, designs to preach here at six o'clock."

Mr. Wesley found "such a congregation as I believe Epworth never saw before." He stood upon his father's high tomb outside the east end and preached.

He had intended to resume his journey but could not resist the opportunity to work again in his homeland, preaching in the hamlets and villages, visiting the sick, reaping where his father had sown without seeing a harvest. Each evening in the fine June weather Wesley returned to Epworth churchyard and used his father's tomb as pulpit. The curate did not interfere.

On a Tuesday evening, perhaps unnoticed by Wesley, his sister's widower, John Whitelamb, now rector of Wroot, stood at the back of the crowd. He sent a sad letter a few days later: "Fain would I have spoken to you, but that I am quite at a loss how to address or behave.

Your way of thinking is so extraordinary that your presence creates an awe, as if you were an inhabitant of another world."" Whitelamb, who had become almost a Deist, expressed doctrinal dissent but true affection and added: "I am quite forgot! None of the family ever honors me with a line! .

. Dear sir, is it in my power to serve or oblige you any way? Glad I should be that you would make use of me. God open all our eyes, and lead us into truth, whatever it be."

Thus invited, Wesley preached in Wroot Church on the next Sunday morning and afternoon, "but the church could not contain the people, many of whom came from far." That evening he preached for the last time from his father's tomb.

The Epworth visit was apt; he returned to London in time to describe it to his mother, now in peace of soul after her years of struggle, and happy to see the revival of religion for which her husband had yearned.

She was failing rapidly. On the last day of that July 1742, Wesley wrote to Charles in Bristol: "Yesterday

158 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

about 3 in the afternoon, as soon as intercession was ended, I went up to my mother. I found her pulse almost gone, and her fingers dead, so that it was easy to see her spirit was on the wing for eternity. After using the commendatory prayer, I sat down on her bedside, and with three or four of our sisters sung a requiem to her parting soul. She continued in just the same way as my father was, struggling and gasping for life, though (as I could judge by several signs) perfectly sensible, till near 4 o'clock. I was then going to drink a dish of tea, being faint and weary, when one called me again to the bedside. It was just 4 o'clock. She opened her eyes wide and fixed them upward for a moment. Then the lids dropped, and the soul was set at liberty, without one struggle or groan or sigh."

Chapter Eighteen "All Round England"

For the next few years John Wesley's life had a triangu- | lar base: London, Bristol, and Newcastle. He stayed fart long periods at each in succession while ranging widely in his travels between them, not without incident.

One winter morning Wesley and an assistant were riding across the Wiltshire downs on their way to Bristol:

"About 10 o'clock we were met by a loaded waggon, ina deep, hollow way. There was a narrow path between the road and the bank: I stepped into this, and John

Trembath followed me. When the waggon came near, my horse began to rear, and to attempt climbing up the bank. This frightened the horse which was close behind, and made him prance and throw his head to and fro, till the bit of the bridle catched hold of the cape of my great coat, and pulled me backward off my horse. I fell as exact on the path, between the waggon and the bank, as if one had taken me in his arms and laid me down there. Both our horses stood stock still, one just behind me, the other before; so, by the blessing of God, I rose unhurt, mounted again, and rode on."

At each base Wesley had far more to do than preaching. At Bristol and Newcastle he had to oversee the orhesto eed which included many foundlings picked out of the gutters or left on the doorstep. At Bristol he had full control of Kingswood school, where the boys were educated along the lines laid down by his mother for the Wesley children, thus submitting them to a discipline and course of studies which stretched the severities of eighteenth-century schooling to their limits.

He was also much engaged in relief for the poor. He was generous, passing on the income from his books, and he encouraged generosity in others. He aimed not

160 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

only to relieve distress but also to help the poor help themselves. Thus, in a severe winter in London he organized weaving by women who had no means of support.

Recognizing that gin could ruin them, converts were turning to tea. But Wesley discovered that many of the poor were spending more than they could afford on tea.

All tea came expensively from China and carried a heavy excise duty. And the poor liked their tea strong. He urged them to give it up. Much as he loved it, he set them an example. John too had liked his tea strong, though with sugar and cream, and suffered extraordinary withdrawal symptoms; so did Charles, who complained also that in some parts of England "tea was my beer."

Instead both Wesleys began to drink sage ''tea'' or nettle "tea,"' or orangeand lemon-peel "tea" as an example for the poor to follow.

Wesley set up free clinics. He was one of the first in England to use electricity for medical purposes; he acquired a machine (still in existence) which gave electric shocks and became popular with users of the clinics. To be "electrified" twice a day was, in Wesley's eyes, a cure for many disorders.

He wrote a book titled Primitive Physick, or an Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, remarking in the preface that whoever owned a copy had a "physician always in his house, and one that attends without fee or reward.'"' Some of the cures were distinctly curious: 'For an Ague, make six middling pills of cobwebs. Take one a little before the cold fit; For Dry or Convulsive Asthma: Dry and powder a toad; For Hoarseness: Rub the soles of the feet before the fire, with garlick and lard, well beaten together, over night. The hoarseness will be gone next day." Wesley would add the word Tried to all cures he had used himself. The medical profession was skeptical, but the book was popular for many years.

Wesley never allowed charity or education to become , ends in themselves. He held firmly to his belief that a

"ALL ROUND ENGLAND" Ill 161

man or woman or a child must be remade in Christ; thus' the biblical teaching and preaching came first. But the movement was spreading too widely for Wesley or Charles to conduct it without help. In London, Wesley had allowed Cennick and Joseph Humphreys to lead prayer meetings. Both had education and some training as preachers and had progressed naturally to sermons. a Tom Maxfield, the former Kingswood coal miner, had not been trained. Some years earlier, while Susanna Wesley was still living, Maxfield had begun to preach in London during Wesley's absence without his permission and had proved himself such an able expounder that Lady

Huntingdon herself urged him on. When Wesley heard, he hurried back, annoyed, intending to discipline

Maxfield. But Susanna had warned her son: 'Take care what you do with respect to that young man, for he is as surely called of God to preach as you are. Examine what have been the fruits of his preaching; and hear him yourself."

Wesley accepted her advice. Maxfield and two other young men asked to be allowed to help Wesley as itinerant preachers wherever he should direct. Others joined them. Wesley worried lest lay preachers might antagonize the bishops yet further, until he discovered that nearly 200 years earlier Queen Elizabeth had appointed twelve itinerant preachers and that the office still existed.

The Queen's preachers were ordained men, a fact he glossed over, for most of his preachers, or "helpers" as he called them at first, were humble in origin and indifferent in education. He organized their movements round the circuits which developed as Methodist societies became established; each society was to be visited regularly.

"Be diligent," he would tell the preachers. '"Never be unemployed. Never be triflingly employed. Never while away time, nor spend more time at any place than is strictly necessary.

. You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work. And go always, not only to those who want you, but to those who want you most."

( Wesley puzzled how to ensure that all NICH VORTS Es Sut could be kept to the high morality and unceasing spiries

Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

'tual progress which are among the marks of Christ's true disciples. Finally, on February 15, 1742 he began to find

'his answer.

Leaders of the United Society at Bristol were discussing the debt which still burdened the New Room. A sea captain named Foy, from one of Bristol's chief mercantile families, suggested in a letter that every member should give the quite generous sum of one penny a week until the debt was paid.'

Somebody objected that many could not afford the penny.

"Then put eleven of the poorest with me," said Foy.

"If they can give anything, well: I will call on them weekly. If they can give nothing, I will give for them as well as for myself." Wesley heard Foy urge all those present to call on eleven Methodist neighbors weekly: "Receive what they can give, and make up what is wanting."

, The idea caught on. A group of twelve was named a "class" (not in the educational sense but the classical, as \ e in ""middle class'), and the man or woman who collected ey the contributions was called a "'leader.'' After a while, eX several leaders mentioned that some in their class were

not living as Christians should. Wesley saw at once that var the class leader could become much more than a subaN eae collector; he or she could oversee faith and mor- &! als. The class became the unit of Methodist cohesion, not only in Bristol but everywhere.

Five years later a sympathetic curate reported to a hostile bishop: ''A class is between 12 and 20 persons of any age or sex that live near each other, who meet together to sing and pray with their leader once or twice a week. The leader of the class examines each person with respect to the state of their soul, gives some short admonition and makes a report to the preacher of the society,'" who could expel them if they were unrepentant. The society in the curate's neighborhood numbered some 250 members, though three times as many might attend the twiceweekly evening meetings. On Fridays they fasted and met for intercession.

"When," continued the curate, "they have made some considerable advancement, and have, as they express it,

. received justifying Faith, they are united into Bands. A

"ALL ROUND ENGLAND" III 163

Band is 5 or 6 such persons of the same age and sex,| which when they meet together are more unreserved, and declare, as they say, the inmost secrets of their) hearts.

"The preachers are frequently removed, and I'm told Mr.-Wesley goes all round England once or twice a year."

Mr. Wesley kept a sharp eye on their discipline. While rejoicing at happy and glorious ex-drunkards, ex-lechers, ex-swearers, and ex-atheists, he was not surprised if others left a society or were expelled. When he arrived at Newcastle in March 1743, he noted that the large numbers who had flocked into the society in the rapturous early days had been whittled down.

Seventy-six had withdrawn, among them:

Fourteen (chiefly Dissenters) said they left it because otherwise their ministers would not give them the sacrament; Nine, because their husbands or wives were not willing they should stay in it.

Twelve, because their parents were not willing.

Five, because their master or mistress would not let them come.

Seven, because their acquaintance persuaded them.

Five, because people said such bad things of the society.

Nine, because they would not be laughed at.

Three, because they would not lose the poor's allowance.

Three, because they could not spare the time to come.

Two, because it was too far off.

One, because she was afraid of falling into fits.

One, because people were so rude in the street.

Two, because Thomas Naisbit was in the society. 2 «a The number of those who were expelled was sixty-four:

Two for cursing and swearing.

Two for habitual Sabbath-breaking.

164 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Seventeen for drunkenness.

Two for retailing spiritous liquors.

Three for quarreling and brawling.

One for beating his wife.

Three for habitual, willful lying.

Four for railing and evilspeaking.

One for idleness and laziness.

Nine-and-twenty for lightness and carelessness.

None had been expelled for his opinions. Wesley gloried in the absence of any doctrinal subscription, yet a strong and definite Christian theology was the bedrock of the movement, to be taught all the time by sermon, by exposition of Scripture—and by hymns.

Both the Wesleys regarded their hymns as an "exercise in practical divinity." Men and women of little education could learn Christian truth when they stood "to sing

[their] dear Redeemer's praise." Charles was writing hymns full of doctrine, and John wrote several which were ascribed to his brother; they were published anonymously.

The Wesleys set the hymns to simple tunes which do not obscure the words or deflect the mind and heart.

When John came upon a group of Methodists having a high time singing hymns as if they were choruses from a Handel oratorio, he stopped them. In the early days the tunes were plain, often adapted from stately German chorales and sung fast. Many stirring tunes came later, often from the north of England, to be sung to great hymns, such as "And Can It Be," "Love Divine All Loves

Excelling,"" and "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.'"

The hymns would change English worship, yet for most of Wesley's lifetime they were seldom heard in parish churches. Men and women in the thousands sang them in the market squares and on the hillsides and in the Methodist preaching houses. The revival spread by "song.

It was also spreading by print. John Wesley's published sermons became the guide to his theology. He brought before the public the great Reformation doctrines. He also put forward a doctrine which would be much misunderstood.

"ALL ROUND ENGLAND" Ill 165

From the earliest days of his pilgrimage, Wesley had sought to obey Christ's injunction: 'Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect'" (Matthew

5:48). In Oxford and Georgia he had sought perfect holiness by fasting, prayer, self-examination, and sacraments; he had drawn ideas from Early Fathers and medieval mystics. After Aldersgate Street, he knew he was justified by trust in Christ alone, but the assurance of Christ's presence had strengthened, all the more, the desire to be holy in thought, word, and deed—not now to save himself from damnation but for the glory of God.

Wesley spoke frequently of holiness or perfection, using the words almost interchangeably.

In 1741 he came across a rare and rambling book of seventeenth-century theology by Robert Gell, a former fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, and archbishop's chaplain. Gell taught that God's grace could triumph in a human being while he yet lived; he need not wait for heaven. Love for God and love for neighbor would displace all desire to sin. Wesley became certain that this change could be effected instantaneously by the Spirit of Christ. Certainly the God of love never intended to limit the attainment of holiness to select saints, as traditional church teaching would have it. Every sinner, however humble, however recent his or her conversion, could be

"changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place,"" as Charles wrote in his famous hymn 'Love

Divine." But when Charles wrote "pure and sinless may we be," John altered the word to spotless. In speech and print he always emphasized that "a man may be filled with pure love and still be liable to error."

He wrote to one of his helpers who had broken away, "T like your doctrine of Perfection, or pure love; love excluding sin; your insisting that it is merely by faith; that consequently it is instantaneous (though preceded and followed by a gradual work), and that it may be now, at this. instant. But I dislike your supposing a man may be as perfect as an angel; that he can be absolutely perfect; that he can be infallible, or above being tempted; or, that the moment he is pure in heart, he cannot fall from it."

The Calvinists indeed taught that whoever is predestined to salvation cannot fail but will persevere to the end

166 |il "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

,even if frequently defeated in the struggle against sin.

Wesley believed that any who were living a life of joyful holiness might fall away at any moment, even their last.

As the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer put it:

"Suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee." Often Wesley would say of some who had shown sweetness under persecution or similar signs of grace: 'And shall these fail at the last?" He believed that God could keep them and that those who are perfect may grow in grace, ''not only while they are in the body, but in all eternity."

Wesley's doctrine of Christian Perfection ("sinless perfection is a phrase I never use') would provoke much debate in the next centuries, but he had recovered a strand of Christian experience in victorious living which would influence churches all over the world. He wrote:

"To abandon all, to strip one's self of all, in order to seek and to follow Jesus Christ naked to Bethlehem, where he was born; naked, to the hall where he was scourged, and naked to Calvary, where he died on the cross, is so great a mercy, that neither the thing, nor the knowledge of it, is given to any, but through faith in the Son of God."

In 1743 Wesley acquired a consecrated building. West Street Chapel near Covent Garden had been erected by newly exiled Huguenots and consecrated by a bishop about 1700, twenty years after the street had been laid out on the mad Earl of Newport's estate. The Huguenots had moved elsewhere and sold it to the Church of St.

Clement Danes, which had let the building for secular use to finance a charity for poor widows. "By a strange chain of providences'" Wesley secured the lease. He now had a preaching house in the West End like the Foundery in the city, with the important difference that the West

Street Chapel was an episcopally consecrated building.

At 10 a.m. on Trinity Sunday, May 29, 1743, with every seat filled, he said the Lord's Prayer and began the liturgy: "Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all

"ALL ROUND ENGLAND" |Il 167

desires known and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name, through Christ our Lord."

The resounding "Amen" in this first Communion was a hint of the strength of Methodism.

He preached on John 3:1-15: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God...

. Ye must be born again'—an appropriate text, for Wesley always held that Holy Communion was a service to convert sinners as well as to confirm saints. He then 'administered the Lord's Supper to some hundreds of communicants."

He wrote, "I was a little afraid that my strength would not suffice, when a service of five hours (for it lasted from 10 to 3) was added to my usual employment. But God looked to that: so I must think; and they that call it enthusiasm may."

He rode across London to find 'an immense congregation" of the poor and unchurched waiting in an open space in Whitechapel, the Great Gardens, where he had been hit by a stone as he preached nine months before.

He took the same text as in the morning: '"Ye must be born again." Then he met the local class leaders and afterward the bands, and claimed that "at 10 at night I was less weary than at 6 in the morning."

West Street Chapel attracted so many that on the next Sunday the service continued until 4 p.m., and Wesley

"found it needful, for the time to come, to divide the communicants into three parts, so that we might not have above six hundred at once."

A year later he passed another milestone when he summoned helpers from many parts of the country to meet at the Foundery for five days in June 1744. The Wesleys and four parish clergymen were present, with all the lay helpers or itinerants. Lady Huntingdon invited them for a public service in her mansion, where Wesley preached on the text: 'What hath God wrought."

They discussed all the many matters of discipline, doctrine, and policy which had emerged since 1738. Using a question and answer method, Wesley secured genuine debate, but he was now the undoubted leader whose will dominated the proceedings.

168 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

The conferences were henceforth held annually, but ' Charles felt that his brother nearly always got his way.

As he complained in shorthand two years later, "I find it is utterly in vain to write to you upon anything whereon we are not already agreed. Either you set aside the whole by the short answer that I am in an ill humor, or you take no notice at all of my reasons, but plead conscience

....I have so little success in my remonstrances that I have many times resolved never to contradict your judgment as to any thing or person."

Some six weeks later Wesley preached again before the University of Oxford—for the last time.

In 1741 his turn to preach had fallen during the Long Vacation. He had wanted to discharge his soul by trenchantly condemning Oxford's lapses in doctrine and practice, and therefore wrote an English version of a Latin exercise, which he had prepared two years earlier when intending to proceed to the degree of Bachelor of Divinity (he never did so, having been called away from Oxford to his brother Samuel's deathbed.) Basing the sermon on Isaiah 1:21—''How is the faithful city become an harlot!'—he had written vigorously against the hypocrisy found in a supposedly Christian university. ("How hath she departed from her Lord! How hath she denied him.')

He used satire to make some of his points. He then read the English version to the Countess of Huntingdon.

She persuaded him that the sermon would enrage without convincing or converting. He laid it aside and never preached or published it but kept both English and Latin manuscripts. He preached instead on 'The Almost

Christian," which made his point without attacking Oxford.

Three years later he was listed to preach on St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1744—again in the Long Vacation, probably by design of the university authorities, who wished to save undergraduates from the dangers of Enthusiasm, for which Wesley was now famous. Many,

"ALL ROUND ENGLAND" Ill 169

however, had returned for the races. One undergraduate who hurried to hear him "as a matter of great curiosity'" was Benjamin Kennicott of Wadham, afterward a distinguished Hebrew scholar.

When Wesley entered the university Church of St.

Mary's at 10 o'clock on the Friday morning to preach on "Scriptural Christianity," he had already been two days in Oxford preaching among the poor and in inns and private houses. Kennicott recorded: 'There were present the vice-chancellor, the proctors, most of the heads of houses, a vast number of gownsmen, and a multitude of private people, with many of his followers, both brethren and sisters, who, with general faces and plain attire, came from around to attend their master and teacher.

"When he mounted the pulpit, I fixed my eyes on him and his behavior. He is neither tall nor fat; for the latter would ill become a Methodist. His black hair quite smooth, and parted very exactly, added to a peculiar composure in his countenance, showed him to be an uncommon man. His prayer was soft, short, and conformable to the rules of the university. His text, Acts 4:31—

'And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.' And now he began to exalt his voice. He spoke the text very slowly and with an agreeable emphasis."

Wesley showed first that all might be filled with the Holy Ghost and then briefly traced the course of Christianity from its first reception, its progress from one age to another, and (as Kennicott understood him to mean)

"its final completion in the universal conversion of the world to the Christian faith."

"Under these three heads,"" continued Kennicott, ""he expressed himself like a very good scholar, but a rigid zealot; and then he came to what he called his plain, practical conclusion.

"Here was what he had been preparing for all along; and he fired his address with so much zeal and unbounded satire as quite spoiled what otherwise might have been turned to great advantage; for as I liked some, so I disliked other parts of his discourse extremely. Having, under his third head, displayed the happiness of the world under it—complete final reformation—'Now,' says he, 'where is this Christianity to be found? Is this a Chris-

170 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

tian nation? Is this a Christian city?'—asserting the contrary to both. I liked some of his freedom; such as calling the generality of young gownsmen "a generation of triflers,"" and many other just invectives. But considering how many shining lights are here that are the glory of the Christian cause, his sacred censure was much too flaming and strong, and his charity much too weak in not making large allowances."

Kennicott's definition of a ''shining light' was different from Wesley's, but he was gripped by the climax of the sermon: 'After having summed up the measure of our iniquities, he concluded with a lifted up eye in this most solemn form, 'It is time for thee, Lord, to lay to thine hand'—words full of such presumption and seeming imprecation, that they gave an universal shock."

Oxford's reaction was hostile. Wesley, Charles, and two Methodist friends were shunned as they walked away. Though the dean of Christ Church remarked generously, "John Wesley will always be thought a man of sound sense, though an enthusiast,'"' the pro-vice-chancellor, Dr. John Mather, sent the beadle round to demand the script with a view to public rebuke. Wesley was pleased that many heads of houses and professors would, as he supposed, study a sermon they might otherwise quickly forget. He sealed up the notes so that the beadle should not lose a page. Dr. Mather had intended to summon 'Mr. Wesly [sic] before proper persons" and was disappointed when the beadle had "found him preparing to go out of town." Dr. Mather kept the notes ''in my own custody."

Four days later a young Old Carthusian and fellow of All Souls, later to be famous as the eminent jurist Sir

William Blackstone, wrote to a friend: ""On much deliberation it has been thought proper to punish him by a mortifying neglect."

( Wesley was never allowed the university pulpit again.

Whenever his turn came round, another was paid to preach in his place.

Chapter Nineteen "Crucify Him!"

King George II liked to walk in the gardens at Kew, which lay between his favorite residence, Richmond

Lodge, and Kew Palace, home of the Prince of Wales.

Among the respectable neighbors to whom he gave keys was a prosperous merchant who had been an Oxford

Methodist but had become a Quaker. The King enjoyed his conversation when they met on the lawns or the flower walks and politely ignored the breaches of protocol caused by the man's loyalty to the Society of Friends, such as not removing his hat in the royal presence and addressing the King by his name, not as 'Your Majesty" and then "Sir."

One day the King, now a widower in his forties, asked the Quaker whether he had known the Wesleys at Oxford, adding "They make a great noise in the nation."

"I know them well, King George," the Quaker replied.

"And thee may be assured that thee has not two better men in thy dominions, nor men that love thee better, than John and Charles Wesley."" The Quaker described their principles and conduct, which pleased the King, for he had wondered why their preaching provoked riots.

Shortly afterward the King declared to the Duke of Newcastle, secretary of state for the Southern Department: ''No man in my dominions shall be persecuted on the account of religion while I sit on my throne."

The duke thereupon gave orders to Sir John Ganson, chairman of the Middlesex magistrates, and Sir John came in his coach to the Foundery. He told Wesley that if riotous mobs molested his meetings again, he should apply to him for redress.

In London the mobs were stirred up by outraged ea cans and pimps, who found customers deserting them

172 || "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

ie prayer meetings, and by thieves, pickpockets and 'louts who had passed word that the law would not protect Methodists. Once a mob tried to pull the roof off the Foundery. On another day when Wesley was preaching outside in Charles Square north of the city, a rabble drove an ox at the attentive crowd, but the animal ran left and right and "at length broke through the midst of them clear away, leaving us calmly rejoicing and praising

God."

After Wesley applied to Sir John, the disturbances slackened in London. In the provinces, however, the roy_al commands did not run so surely. Wesley was struck by /a brick on the shoulder; a year later, a stone hit him

between the eyes. (The first Methodist martyr, William Seward, a close associate of Whitefield, had been killed by a stone.) In Wiltshire, Wesley was preaching from a table on a village green ''when a rabble came furiously upon us, bringing a bull which they had been baiting."

The beast ran wildly on either side. Wesley stopped preaching and led the people, surrounded by uproar, in hymns and prayer for nearly an hour. "The poor wretches at length seized upon the bull, now weak and tired, after having been so long torn and beaten, both by dogs and men; and, by main strength, partly dragged and partly thrust him in among the people.

"When they had forced their way to the little table on which I stood, they strove several times to throw it down, by thrusting the helpless beast against it. I once or twice put aside his head with my hand, that the blood might not drop upon my clothes; intending to go on as soon as the hurry should be over. But, the table falling down, some of our friends caught me and carried me right away on their shoulders; while the rabble wreaked their vengeance on the table. We went a little way off, where I finished my discourse without any noise or interruption."

In Staffordshire, in 1743, Wesley nearly lost his life.

During November 1742 Charles had preached with effect among the coal miners near Wednesbury and its neighboring towns of Darlaston and Walsall, an area which mined the hottest burning coal in England, much

"CRUCIFY HIM!" {il 173 favored for smithy forges up and down the land. A Methodist society numbering about a hundred had grown up by the time John Wesley came for the first time in January 1743. The vicar of Wednesbury, Edward

Egginton, who had been incumbent for nearly a quarter of a century but was partial to the bottle, received him kindly and told him to come often. Wesley preached in the town hall on the Saturday and heard the vicar preach

"a plain useful sermon" in the magnificent parish church on the Sunday. Then the whole congregation joined the crowd in the nearby great hollow, famous for cockfighting and bullbaiting, where Wesley preached on Ephesians 2:3—''By grace are ye saved through faith." The society grew to nearly four hundred.

In the early spring of 1743, however, one of Wesley's itinerant preachers provoked Parson Egginton. Next, Moravians from Yorkshire arrived. They caused disputes in the society and urged members to leave the church. Wesley frequently needed to repair damage done in Yorkshire and the Midlands by followers of his former German friends, and, because Moravian influence had spread in England at about the same time as Methodism, the two movements were often regarded as one. The support of the vicar of Wednesbury turned into hatred.

When Wesley next came, he had to sit through a very different discourse. "I think I have never heard so wicked a sermon, and delivered with such bitterness of voice and manner, as that which Mr. E. preached in the afternoon."

Wesley tried to prepare his friends for persecution, for he had learned that Egginton, his curate at Darlaston, and the vicar of Walsall were all determined to destroy the society. They spread word among roughs and bruisers in their parishes that cockfighting, bullbaiting, and prizefights were in danger; the local magistrates were persuaded to turn a blind eye.

In May, Charles came again and was knocked about by a violent crowd. That summer, Methodists had windows broken and houses, shops, and workshops shamelessly looted. They were beaten and splattered with mud.

"Some, even pregnant women, were treated in a manner that cannot be mentioned," so Wesley, in his old age,

lll "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

told young Henry Moore. Wesley came back briefly on his way to Newcastle and sought legal advice for his flock but was reluctant to prosecute, especially as the local bench blamed the Methodists.

Peace seemed to have returned to Wednesbury when Wesley rode in from Birmingham on October 20, 1743. At midday he mounted a horse block on the open space in the center of the town and preached "'to a far larger congregation than was expected, on, 'Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever.' I believe everyone present felt the power of God: and no creature offered to molest us, either going or coming; but the Lord fought for us, and we held our peace."

During the afternoon Wesley was writing in the house of Francis Ward, the leader of the society, who had nearly lost an eye in the earlier violence.

A number of the Methodists were in the house, their normal meeting place, waiting for Wesley to expound and pray with them. Suddenly they heard the horn which summoned the roughs. Soon an agitated Methodist cried out that a mob surrounded the house. Wesley calmly announced that they would pray. They knelt round him as he and then others prayed extempore. The howls and threats outside died down until within half an hour, when someone looked out the door, "not a man was left."

Wesley suggested he had better leave as the mob was after him rather than them, but they begged him to stay.

He foresaw the result.

About five the mob was back in greater force—it came from Darlaston, where the mines were, rather than from the quieter market town of Wednesbury itself. Wesley could hear the cry, "Bring out the minister! We'll have the minister!" He told a frightened Methodist to go to the front door and bring in the ringleader "by the hand."

Those in the room were astonished by what happened next. The ringleader entered, his face contorted with rage. Wesley smiled and spoke to him quietly. "After a few sentences interchanged between us, the lion was become a lamb."' Wesley told him to fetch one or two more and he brought a man and a woman, both in a rage, "but in two minutes they were as calm as he."

Wesley then went to the door, stood on a chair, and

"CRUCIFY HIM!" Ill 175 the crowd quietened. He asked what they wanted. Perhaps because word had been passed that any itinerant preacher should be captured and brought before a magistrate, they said they wanted him to come to the justice.

Wesley agreed "with all my heart." He spoke a few words about the love of God, and the mob cheered. The woman ringleader cried out, "The gentleman is an honest gentleman, and we will spill our blood in his defense!"

They wanted to go at once, so Wesley set off at their head. Most of the Methodists had fled out the back door while the mob was screaming at the front, but three men and one woman, Joan Parks, kept close as an escort.

William Sitch held his arm throughout. As darkness fell, a heavy downpour began, and they were all wet before they reached Bentley Hall, between Wednesbury and Darlaston, where Lane, a justice of the peace, was already in bed, or so they were told. His son asked for their complaint. Somebody replied in broad Staffordshire, ''Why, an't please you, they sing psalms all day; nay, and make folks rise at 5 in the morning. And what would your worship advise us to do?'

"To go home," said young Lane, 'and be quiet."

They then hurried Wesley to the magistrate who lived outside Walsall, but when they reached his house at 7:00, he too was diplomatically in bed. The now friendly mob, nonplussed, settled to take Wesley back to Wednesbury; some fifty acted as escort, and the rest slunk off home to Darlaston in the opposite direction.

Hardly had Wesley and his escort covered a hundred yards when a great mob roared up out of Walsall. Wesley found himself caught in the midst of gang warfare between traditional enemies. ''The Darlaston mob made what defense they could; but they were weary, as well as outnumbered: so that in short time, many being knocked down, the rest ran away, and left me in their hands."

The Darlaston collier woman who had sworn to defend him charged the Walsall mob "and knocked down three or four men, one after another. But many assaulting her at once, she was soon overpowered, and had probably been killed in a few minutes (three men keeping her down and beating her with all their might), had not a

176 \ll "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

a? man called to one of them, 'Hold, Tom, hold Tom stopped beating the woman; he had recognized the voice of the champion prizefighter of Walsall, '"Honest Munchin,'" whose real name was George Clifton. At Munchin's command Tom let the woman go, and she stumbled off home.

The screaming mob pulled Wesley, Joan Parks, and the faithful Edward Sitch, who never let go, toward Walsall down the steep and wet cobbled streets. One slip and Wesley would have gone down, and they would have pummeled him to death, but he kept his feet, with his heart at peace. Several blows with bludgeons were deflected—he knew not how except that his small size made him a difficult target in a melee. And one man who 'came rushing through the press, and raising his arm to strike, on a sudden let it drop, and only stroked my head, saying, 'What soft hair he has!' "

As they hustled him along, Wesley saw a large house with an open door. He stopped and tried to enter, but a man dragged him back by his long hair and would have brought him down had not Sitch bitten the bully's arm.

The mob bore them on down the street until Wesley saw another open door at a chandler's shop. The chandler was standing in the door. He refused to let him enter, saying they would pull the shop down round his ears, but unknown to Wesley the man was the newly appointed mayor of Walsall, William Haselwood. The mob, assuming that Wesley's stop was deliberate, calmed a little.

Wesley shouted: "Will you hear me?"

"No, no! Knock his brains out! Kill him!'

"What evil have I done? Which of you have I wronged?"

He began to speak of the love of God and they lisen He spoke for a quarter of an hour, when his voice ailed.

The determined mob, led by Honest Munchin, the prizefighter, roared again: "Bring him away! Strip him!''

"You needn't do that: I will give you my clothes."

"Crucify him!''—Wesley was sure he heard the words.

His voice then recovered, and he began to pray aloud as if oblivious of anyone but Christ. Suddenly the prize-

"CRUCIFY HIM!" Ill 177 fighter turned to him. "Sir, I will spend my life for you: follow me, and not one soul shall touch a hair of your head." Two or three others said likewise and closed up on him while the timorous mayor found his voice and a neighboring butcher also cried, 'Shame! shame! Let him gol"

Out of respect to their own ringleader, Honest Munchin, the mob parted, and the escort took him down the slippery street toward the flooded brook at the bottom of the town, but before they could cross the footbridge at the mill dam, the mob began to bay for his blood again. "Throw him in!" cried some. The threat did not bother Wesley—he could swim.

A man hit him on the mouth and nose. The blood gushed, but Wesley felt no pain and all at once realized why the martyrs had died so calmly in the flames.

The new escort fought back, and one young man had his arm broken. Joan Parks was thrown into the water, but Munchin got Wesley and Sitch across the bridge and into the meadows where they were soon lost to their pursuers in the darkness. So at last they came back to Ward's house, where the Methodists had regathered to pray for Wesley's safety, and now rejoiced.

The next day, an apologetic, humble message came from the curate of Darlaston, who had heard of Wesley's courage and now "wished all his parish were Methodists... When Wesley rode out toward Nottingham, bruised but happy, "everyone I met expressed such cordial affection that I could scarce believe what I saw and heard.'' At Nottingham, Charles was waiting. ""My brother came," he wrote, "delivered out of the mouth of the lion. He looked like a soldier of Christ. His clothes were torn to tatters."

Charles went immediately to Wednesbury (as they had planned), and the young man with the broken arm and the prizefighter, Honest Munchin, were received into the society as probationary members. ''Munchin," wrote

Charles, 'has been constantly under the Word since he rescued my brother. I asked him what he thought of him.

" 'Think of him!' said he: 'That he is a man of God.

And God was on his side, when so many of us could not kill one man.' " Munchin Clifton became a pillar of the

178 \Il "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Methodists of Wednesbury and Walsall—whose persecutions were not ended for some years—until his death, aged eighty-five, forty-six years later.

Chapter Twenty Cornwall Shortly before the Wednesbury and Walsall riot, Wesley had made the first of no less than thirty-three visits to Cornwall, a land where his influence would locally be more decisive than in almost any other part of the kingdom except perhaps Yorkshire.

Cornwall, once the thriving steppingstone of traffic between France and Ireland and rich in tin and gold, had declined since the Reformation—which had swept away immemorial shrines—and the defeat of the Royalists in the Civil War when Cornishmen had passionately supported Charles I. Cornwall had numerous parish churches, but because many were on the site of Celtic shrines, far from villages, contemporaries claimed that Cornishmen were often married and buried without benefit of clergy.

The diocesan, the bishop of Exeter, lived far away; even the archdeacon's home was out of the county.

There were many large estates and some well-endowed clerical livings but a gulf between rich and poor. The tin miners, farm laborers, and fishermen were rough and illiterate, famous as smugglers and wreckers and for the violence and cruelty of their pastimes. The King's peace scarcely reached the remoter parts; murders were frequent and unpunished.

Two clergymen in the north of Cornwall, George Thomson of St. Gennys, above Crackington Haven, and the elderly John Bennet of North Tamerton, had become evangelicals even before Whitefield, but their influence had been limited to their parishes. Too many of the clergy were lazy and drunken and cared little for parishioners, provided they paid their tithes.

The Wesleys sent in two. itinerant preachers; then

180 Ili "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Charles came during the summer of 1743 and worked out of St. Ives, the fishing port on the north coast, where the parson opposed him, but the mayor, "an honest Presbyterian,'"' quelled a riot against him.

At the end of that August, John Wesley rode to Cornwall after preaching to a great crowd at Exeter on the site of Rougemount Castle. This first visit to Cornwall began unpropitiously: he and his companion were overtaken by dusk on Bodmin Moor. They lost the path, only finding their way after dark by the sound of Bodmin's curfew bell, rung every night to guide lost travelers. Two of his itinerant preachers, John Nelson and John Downes, had gone ahead, sharing a horse because Downes' mount had dropped dead.

Wesley reached St. Ives on August 30. Charles had found a small religious society. He had left a Methodist society which had taken root, meeting in the house of a young fish curer, John Nance, where John Wesley, Nelson, and Downes apparently had to sleep three to one bed, a common practice of the time, both among families and travelers.

Wesley began to preach in the neighborhood but met little response except 'an earnest, stupid attention," possibly because his accent mystified the Cornish, though it was nothing to the broad Yorkshire of Nelson and Downes. The Cornish "all appeared quite pleased and unconcerned. ... At Trewilhen Downs he observed for the first time 'a little impression on two or three of the listeners; the rest, as usual showing huge approbriation and absolute unconcern.'"' By September 6, Wesley wrote,

"T still could not find a way into the hearts of the hearers, although they were earnest to hear what they understood not."

On Sunday a change appeared. Preaching to a large congregation in the medieval amphitheater outside St.

Just (after a somewhat awed sightseeing visit to the farthest rocks of Lands End), he felt that the truth had

their hearts. Next evening in the society at St.

Ives, "the dread of God fell upon us while I was speaking, so that I could hardly utter a word." Wesley began to pray aloud for Cornwall, and the people joined fervently in spirit. He continued praying, unable to stifle his

CORNWALL Ill 181 longing for a movement of God, until he lost all sense of time.

Next day, having a ''a great desire to go and publish the love of God our Saviour in the Isles of Scilly," he put to sea from St. Ives in a small fishing boat. When his landlubber Yorkshire companions were frightened, he led them in a rousing hymn as the boat tossed in the waves. Apart from the night on the Scillies, they slept at St. Ives. Downes fell ill of a fever. Wesley and Nelson therefore slept on the stone floor night after night. "He had my greatcoat for his pillow," records

Nelson, "and I had Burkitt's Notes on the New Testament for mine.

. One morning, about 3 o'clock, Mr. Wesley, turned over, and, finding me awake, clapped me on the side saying, 'Brother Nelson, let us be of good cheer: I have one whole side yet!" (The skin on his other had been rubbed bare by the hard stone.) They both got hungry as they preached on the commons, riding from village to village. One afternoon they preached on Hilary Downs. ''As we returned, Mr. Wesley stopped his horse to pick the blackberries, saying,

'Brother Nelson, we ought to be thankful that there are plenty of blackberries; for this is the best county I ever saw for getting a stomach, but the worst that I ever saw for getting food. Do the people think we can live by preaching?' '" Nelson replied that one woman had given him a good meal of barley bread and honey.

Later Wesley, riding alone, stopped at a cottage where a woman was removing honeycomb from her hive. He asked for a glass of water. Alice Daniel invited him in and gave him barley bread and honey, and he seized the occasion to speak about 'the judgments of the Lord .

. sweeter than honey and the honeycomb." Alice fetched some neighbors to hear a parson who talked as she had never heard a parson talk before. Both Alice and her husband, John Daniel, a godless miner and smallholder, became devoted Christians and even added two rooms to their cottage so that Wesley or other itinerant preachers might lodge there.

As in Staffordshire, Wesley saw conversions and met violence. The mob of St. Ives broke into Nance's house as the Methodists met; some of Wesley's hearers were terri-

Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

fiea and others, new converts, reverted to fisticuffs. Wesley stopped expounding and went into the melee, receiving a blow on the head before he could lead the riot

leader by the hand to the desk, where Wesley exercised the extraordinary power of his eye and his words to quiet the most unruly. The next evening an alderman sat with the society to deter those who had threatened a "general assault."

—— The following day Wesley preached to an enormous crowd, locally reckoned at 10,000, near the most famous amphitheater in Cornwall, the Gwennap Pit near

Redruth. He was to leave for Devon in the morning.

When darkness fell he was still preaching, ''and there was on all sides the deepest attention; none speaking, stirring or scarce looking aside. Surely here, though in a temple not made with hands, was God worshiped 'in the beauty of holiness.' "

Very early the next morning in St. Ives, he was woken by the sound of singing. A large company of tinners, afraid they might be too late to say good-bye, were serenading him a farewell, "singing and praising God." Wesley recorded that he then ''preached once more on 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.'

They all devoured the Word."

While Wesley was away, nearly losing his life at Walsall, Methodism spread far and wide in Cornwall, and opposition too: 'All this summer," he wrote next year,

"our brethren in the west had as hot service as those in the north of England: the war against the Methodists, so called, being everywhere carried on with far more vigor than that against the Spaniards."

The very fact that England was at war with Spain, France, and Prussia (the War of the Austrian Succession) helped to explain the opposition in Cornwall. The magistrates and clergy, fearful of a Jacobite rising, believed that the Wesleys were Jesuits in disguise or French agents.

One Cornishman had positively identified John Downes

CORNWALL Ili 183 as the Young Pretender, Prince Charles Edward, whom he had seen in France. Another rumor affirmed that the preacher calling himself Mr. Wesley must be an imposter because "Mr. Wesley is dead" (Brother Samuel had died in the West Country).

John Wesley had come again in the spring of 1744 for a fortnight. On April 11, he had preached at Gwennap Pit itself. Formed by the falling in of derelict workings, the amphitheater had exceptional acoustics and was "by far the finest I know in the Kingdom. It is a round, green hollow, gently shelving down, about fifty feet deep; but I suppose it is two hundred across one way, and near three hundred the other.'

stood on the wall in the calm still evening, with the setting sun behind me, and almost an innumerable multitude before, behind, and on either hand. Many likewise sat on the little hills, at some distance from the bulk of the congregation. But they could all hear distinctly."

On Wesley's third visit, in June 1745, a magistrate who was both a leading parish clergyman and a high government official, Dr. Borlase of Morvah, issued a warrant to press him "'into the service of His Majesty."

The British Army was fighting on the continent and needed recruits. The Navy could only press seamen.

Magistrates could press any able-bodied man into the Army, but no gentleman in good standing would be touched, and clergymen were exempt, as Borlase knew.

Unfriendly magistrates in several counties found this an excellent way to silence a Methodist; John Nelson had already been forcibly enlisted in the Midlands. Lady

Huntingdon and Charles secured Nelson's release, but most of those who were taken had to serve. Wesley received stirring letters from disciples who carried their gospel and the hymns into the violence and licentiousness of army life. After the battle of Fontenoy, he learned of Methodist courage and of desperately wounded men who died praising God.

On June 20, at Redruth in Cornwall, Wesley learned that Tom Maxfield had been seized while preaching several miles away at Crowan. Wesley and Thomson, the rector of St. Gennys, rode to his rescue but heard on the way that he had been removed. As Wesley recorded with

184 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

a touch of humor: "The valiant constables who guarded him, having received timely notice that a body of five hundred Methodists were coming to take him away by force, with great precipitation carried him two miles farther, to the house of one Henry Tomkins. Here we found him, nothing terrified by his adversaries." He was to appear before the magistrates at Marazion the next day.

Borlase tricked Wesley to prevent him from entering a plea for Maxfield, who was thrown into Penzance Dungeon, then handed to the Army by Borlase himself to serve for several years as a soldier.

During the week after Maxfield's arrest, Wesley had finished preaching at St. Just when a constable seized a middle-aged, married miner (with seven children) who once had been a byword for swearing and the bottle.

Wesley asked "a little gentleman at St. Just'' what was the objection to this Edward Greenfield. "Why," he replied, "the man is well enough in other things; but his impudence the gentlemen cannot bear. Why, sir, he says he knows his sins are forgiven!"

"And for this cause,'" commented Wesley, "he is adjudged to banishment or death on the battlefields of Europe or America."

The next day as Wesley concluded his evening open-air sermon one of the local gentry walked up, and the crowd respectfully parted to let him by. "Sir," he said, "I have a warrant from Dr. Borlase, and you must go with me."

They arranged a time for the next morning, but the man seemed unwilling to keep the appointment, and then rode with Wesley as slowly as he could. When he found that Dr. Borlase was not at home, he refused to detain

Wesley further.

That afternoon Wesley took his assistant, Shepherd, also named in the warrant, to Gwennap. They had expected to expound in a cottage, but so many neighbors wished to hear Wesley that he spoke from the doorway.

As always when preaching, he wore cassock, gown, and bands. Hardly had he announced his text when the bailiff of the local squire, Beauchamp of Pengreep, rode his horse violently into the throng. Several listeners were hustled away by the bailiff's men. Beauchamp himself, even angrier, rode up with a posse.

CORNWALL Ill 185 "Most of the people," recorded Wesley, "stood still as they were before, and began singing an hymn. Upon this

Mr. B. lost his patience, and cried out with all his might, "Seize him, seize him, I say, seize the preacher for His

Majesty's service.' But no one stirring, he rode up and struck several of his attendants.

. Perceiving still that they would not move, he leaped off his horse, swore he would do it himself, and caught hold of my cassock, crying, 'I take you to serve His Majesty.' A servant taking his horse, he took me by the arm, and we walked arm in arm for about three quarters of a mile. He entertained me all the time, with the 'wickedness of the fellows belonging to the society.'

"When he was taking breath, I said, 'Sir, be they what they will, I apprehend it will not justify you in seizing me in this manner, and violently carrying me away, as you said, to serve His Majesty.' He replied, 'I seize you? And violently carry you away? No, Sir, no. Nothing like it. I asked you to go with me to my house, and you said you was willing; and if so, you are welcome; and if not, you are welcome to go where you please.' "

Beauchamp, probably a secret Jacobite and no friend to Borlase, would have been aware that a clergyman should not have been named in the warrant. He put Wesley ona horse, mounted his own, and rode back with him through the rabble of retainers to the cottage.

The worst trial came the next day. Unknown to the Cornishmen, Prince Charles Edward was embarking from France. Rumors of Jacobite rebellion and French invasion grew louder. Wesley went to Falmouth. During the afternoon he entered the house of a sick woman who lived with her daughter, Kitty. A big rabble arrived howling, "Bring out the Canorum!''—the local term for Methodist, derived from a Cornish word connected with singing.

"No answer being given, they quickly forced open the outer door, and filled the passage. Only a wainscot-partition was between us, which was not likely to stand long.

I immediately took down a large looking glass which hung against it, supposing the whole side would fall in at once. When they began their work with abundance of bitter imprecations, poor Kitty was utterly astonished,

186 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH

and cried out, 'O Sir, what must we do?' I said, 'We must pray.' Indeed at that time, to all appearance, our lives were not worth an hour's purchase. She asked, 'But, Sir, is it not better for you to hide yourself? To get into the closet?' I answered, 'No. It is best for me to stand just where I am.'

"Among those without were the crews of some privateers which were lately come into harbor. Some of these, being angry at the slowness of the rest, thrust them away, and, coming up all together, set their shoulders to the inner door, and cried out, 'Avast, lads, avast!' Away went all the hinges at once, and the door fell back into the room.

"I stepped forward at once into the midst of them, and said, 'Here I am. Which of you has anything to say to me? To which of you have I done any wrong? To you? Or you? Or you?' I continued speaking till I came, bareheaded as I was (for I purposely left my hat that they might all see my face), into the middle of the street, and then raising my voice, said, 'Neighbors, countrymen! Do you desire to hear me speak?' They cried vehemently,

'Yes, yes. He shall speak. He shall. Nobody shall hinder him.' But having nothing to stand on, and no advantage of ground, I could be heard by few only. However, I spoke without intermission, and, as far as the sound reached, the people were still."

One or two ringleaders swore that no one should touch Wesley. A clergyman, hearing the uproar, rebuked the mob, and two or three prominent citizens came up to escort Wesley, still speaking to the mob as they shoved and pushed about him, to the house of his Falmouth hostess, which backed on the harbor. They advised him to leave by water and sent his horse ahead.

The rabble of sailors and town roughs had been roused by word that Wesley had come to spy for the French and the Pretender. ''A few of the fiercest ran along the shore, to receive me at my landing. I walked up the steep narrow passage from the sea, at the top of which the foremost man stood. I looked him in the face, and said, 'I wish you a good night.' He spake not, nor moved hand or foot till I was on horseback. Then he said, 'I wish you was in hell,' and turned back to his companions."

CORNWALL Ill 187 As Wesley rode to the next confrontation, he reflected that even at Walsall the hand of God had not been so plainly shown. "There I had many companions who were willing to die with me: here, not a friend, but one simple girl."

When Prince Charles Edward and his Highlanders took Edinburgh, then won the Battle of Prestonpans on September 20, 1745, Wesley was at Newcastle. His house stood outside the walls, and he wrote excitedly to Charles: 'I have only just time to inform you that since the account is confirmed by an express to the mayor that General Cope is fled and his forces defeated (all that did not run away), the consternation of the poor people is redoubled. The townsmen are put under arms, the walls planted with cannon; and those who live without the gates are removing their goods with all speed. We stand our ground as yet, glory be to God, to the no small astonishment of our neighbors. Brethren, pray for us, that, if need be, we may 'True in the fiery trial prove,/And pay him back his dying love."

The Pretender was expected to march his terrifying Highlanders down the East Coast to take Newcastle. The defending Hanoverian commander sent a 'surly man" to the orphanage who rudely made Wesley come to the door and ordered him to pull down his "battlements."

Wesley suspected a plot to harm the Methodists and complained to the general, adding that he was willing to pull the whole house down if it would help Newcastle withstand a seige.

He was in no doubt where his loyalty lay. The previous year he had drafted a loyal and humble address to King

George II from "the societies in England and Wales, in derision called Methodists," but Charles had persuaded him not to send it because "it would constitute us a sect.

At least it would seem to allow that we are a body distinct from the National Church, whereas we are only a sound part of that Church "

188 || "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Rumors of the Highlanders' advance fanned the panic at Newcastle. Wesley inspired them by word and example. He tried to stem the 'open, flagrant wickedness, the drunkenness, and profaneness which so abound." He asked the mayor to complain to the general about "the continual cursing and swearing, and the wanton blasphemy of the soldiers.

. a torture to a sober ear." The Pretender was reported to be advancing. Churches were packed by frightened worshipers "and we cried mightily to God to send His Majesty King George help from his holy place, and to spare a sinful land yet a little longer."

At the request of the vicar of St. Nicholas, Wesley preached: "the congregation was so moved that I began again and again and knew not how to conclude."

The Pretender still did not invade. Wesley rode to Sheffield, and Epworth to strengthen the societies, then returned to Newcastle, finding himself somewhat a hero for his inspiring leadership. He preached as near as he could to the army camp, and on November 4, left for the South, passing riders who shouted that the Pretender had crossed the border.

Prince Charles avoided Newcastle. He advanced down the west side of England, and when the prince reached

Derby on December 4, putting King and people in a panic, Wesley was writing quietly in a village north of London. He came to the Foundery and the West Street Chapel for the National Fast Day. 'Such a solemnity and seriousness everywhere appeared as had not lately been seen in England." He organized a mass distribution of his tract, '""An Earnest Exhortation to Serious Repentance'' at every church door in London and to 'the house of every householder who was not at church."

Five months after the Jacobite rebellion had ended on Culloden Moor, Wesley returned to Cornwall (in September 1746). He was never again personally assaulted in the county. Persecution of Methodists continued sporadically from clergy and magistrates, but, as Charles had written

CORNWALL Ill 189 dramatically a few weeks previously: 'For one preacher they cut off, twenty spring up. Neither persuasion nor threatening, flattery nor violence, dungeons, or sufferings of various kinds, can conquer them."

The ordinary people were less inclined to riot. At Brea, a village near St. Ives, John Wesley found that ''vehement opposers... opposed no more."" He went on to preach at Sithney. 'Before I had done the night came on; but the moon shone bright upon us. I intended, after preaching, to meet the society; but it was hardly practicable, the poor people so eagerly crowding in upon us. So I met them all together, and exhorted them not to leave their first love."

The next day, Sunday, September 14, 1746, he waited until 8 o'clock in the evening 'for the sake of those who came from afar." Many from Helston were there, including most of those who in earlier years had raised riots against him. ''But the fear of God was upon them; they all stood uncovered, and calmly attended from the beginning to the end.

"About 1, I began preaching near Porkellis to a much larger congregation; and, about half an hour after 4, at Gwennap, to an immense multitude of people on 'To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.' I was at first afraid my voice would not reach them all; but without cause, for it was so strengthened that I believe thousands more might have heard every word."

At Redruth, the town nearest Gwennap, almost the entire population except the gentry were now Methodists. In February 1747 a new bishop, George Lavington, was enthroned at Exeter. He had not yet emerged as a hater of Methodism when two magistrates in the neighborhood of St. Austell in southwest Cornwall, Birkhead and Tremayne sent him an unintentional tribute to Wesley's strong influence in the four years since his first visit:

"A set of people," they wrote, "who stile themselves Methodists have infus'd their enthusiastick notions into the minds of vast numbers of the meaner sort of people in the Western part of this County, and they are very strenuously endeavoring to propagate them all over it: several have assembled frequently within this fortnight in the Parish of Saint Ewe in which we live; and the preach-

190 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

er they are so very fond of, is no better than a mean illiterate Tinner, and what is more surprizing, but a boy of nineteen years old." The justices were particularly disgusted that many of the preachers, "for the most part ignorant men," had 'been notoriously wicked, but now under pretence of being both reformed and inspired, they, and even women of the same stamp are adored preachers." When threatened with the Conventicle Act, the Methodists retorted that they did not differ from the Established Church and therefore were not guilty of any crime, but they spoke strongly against the wickedness of clergy. The justices asked the bishop how to deal with the matter.

The bishop's reply is not on record, but three years later Wesley would sum up the situation at St. Ewe with a neat comment: "There was much struggling here at first; but the two gentlemen who occasioned it are now removed—one to London and the other to eternity."

The struggle was already won in many parts when Wesley returned in the summer of 1747, shortly before his first preaching tour in Ireland. He walked to the parish church of St. Ives without an insult. "How strange ly,"" he wrote, '"has one year changed the scene in Cornwall! This is now a peaceable, nay honorable station.

They give us good words almost in every place." John Wesley was already becoming a folk hero in Cornwall:

"He was only a little man, but when he spoke the houses shook."

Methodists were building meeting places wherever the parish church stood a long way off, though they would always attend the church on Sundays. In these or in cottages, barns, or the engine houses of mines, they would go once or twice a week very early before work or late in the evening to sing and pray and hear a preacher. They could be at the mercy of self-styled "exhorters,'"" whom

Wesley on his visits would sternly examine. Several ''exhorters" were hypocrites, others ignorant or swayed by heresy, and Wesley had to be rough. He was plagued by a few who taught that a man or woman, once saved, could do any wickedness because they would still go to heaven.

Inevitably, some Methodists lost their first fervor,

CORNWALL Ill 191 turned coward under persecution, or were "choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life." Most, however, were noticeable for the change in their outlook and habits. As Thomas Vivian, curate of Redruth, wrote to the new bishop of Exeter in August 1747: "They are to all appearance persons of great sanctity of life, avoiding strictly, not only gross sins but every approach to evil.

They never frequent any sports, revels, diversions, etc. and sigh and grieve to see others do so; calling them the Devil's Snares whereby he entraps unwary souls. Besides that which is spent in labor and sleep they pass their time usually in walking together, talking on Religious Subjects, reading, singing hymns, and praying.

"They frequently affront people by reproving them for singing idle songs, talking of worldly matters in going or coming from church, being angry, irregularly merry etc.

If they see any person drunk, swearing, or the like, they reprove him, and are apt to tell him he is in the way to Damnation. They call each other Brother and Sister, seem! to be linkt together in the strictest friendship, and make it an invariable rule to tell each other if they think or suspect anything to be amiss.

"In their devotions they sometimes make use of the collects of the Church, but usually extempore prayer

.... They are very constant attendants at church and the Sacrament, and when there, seem very attentive and ' much affected." Vivian continued to describe Methodists in great detail, assuring his bishop that whatever their mistakes ''there is something very commendable about them."

The undistinguished Bishop George Lavington might have tolerated Methodists in Devon or Cornwall had he not been enraged in 1748 by a forgery of his handwriting which was circulated and then printed with a supposed extract from the bishop's first charge to his clergy. It purported to show him as not only actively sympathetic but preaching Methodist doctrine himself. Lavington scribbled on his own copy, "All above absolutely false. G.Ex," and accused Wesley and Whitefield of being the authors or sponsors of the forgery, but he produced no evidence; the intervention of Lady Huntingdon made him grudgingly retract.

192 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

He turned to attacking them in two anonymous pamphlets on "The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists

Compared" in which he jumbled extracts from the published journals of Wesley to falsify his teaching and practice.

Wesley easily won the pamphlet war, but one of Lavington's stories he thought "so silly and improbable" that it needed no refutation until Wesley's friends insisted. Lavington had seized on a report from the chancellor of his diocese and the archdeacon of Barnstaple that Wesley had "attempted to debauch" a maidservant in the Plume of Feathers inn at Mitchell near Truro. When, on his next visit, Wesley confronted the publican and his wife, they changed their evidence. The maidservant indignantly denied that Wesley had made improper advances, and she threatened to sue her employers. Wesley had no difficulty in proving his innocence.

According to legend in Cornwall, however, he had an artless habit wherever he stayed of giving a good-night kiss to any ladies who were present.

He was unaware that some years earlier, James Hutton, when smarting from Wesley's withdrawal from the Fetter Lane Society, had written in the course of a long letter to Count Zinzendorf: "J.W. and C.W., both of them, are dangerous snares to many young women; several are in love with them. I wish they were married to some good sisters, but I would not give them one of my sisters if I had many."

By 1748 Charles was engaged to be married. That year John Wesley believed that he too had found a bride.

Chapter Twenty-one The Higher Love In August 1748 Wesley rode into Newcastle reading the tenth Iliad of Homer and put up at his orphan house, and during his stay, he fell sick. The mistress of the orphan house, widow Murray, moved quietly in and out of his room, catering to his needs, and the more he observed her, the more he realized that she would make an excellent wife.

The most recent conference of his preachers had recommended marriage as a suitable state for all the itinerants. John Wesley had begun to look for a wife, rather halfheartedly.

He had come to appreciate Grace Murray since the day, years before, when she had first listened on Kennington Common, then only one of several thousands of unknown faces before him. Born in Newcastle, daughter of a respectable craftsman, low in the social scale, she had gone to London and had briefly entered domestic service, being treated more as a child of the house than as a servant. Then she had married Alexander Murray, son of a small Scots laird who had been out in the Fifteen Rebellion for which he was banished from Scotland and his estate forfeited to the Crown. His son, reduced to penury, went to sea as a common seaman.

Grace had been much impressed by Whitefield's preaching on Blackheath in May 1739 soon after she had lost her baby daughter. She heard Wesley many times that summer and was converted in her own house while another young woman was reading aloud from the fifth chapter of Romans: 'And in a moment all things became new. I seemed to have new eyes and a new understanding. I saw all I read in a new light. My burden dropped off. My soul was at peace. My tears were all gone."

194 || "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

After her husband was drowned at sea, she returned to Newcastle and later became one of Wesley's class leaders and then mistress of the new orphan house. She had traveled with Wesley around the northern societies and proved excellent at questioning and counseling the women. She had a deep if sometimes troubled faith and a sweet nature, but her brisk efficiency tended to attract the jealousy of the sisters who worked with her.

Grace was an excellent nurse. One of her former patients had been a Methodist lay preacher of her own age from Derbyshire, John Bennet. During a long illness and convalescence at Newcastle, he had fallen in love with Grace but had not declared his love before returning to Derbyshire.

During his four-day illness, Wesley watched Grace Murray with growing interest: "I esteemed and loved her more and more. And when I was little recovered I told her, sliding into it I know not how, 'If ever I marry, I think you will be the person' '—the very words he had used to Sophia Hockey in Georgia twelve years before.

As he prepared to resume his itinerant preaching, Wesley spoke more directly. Grace looked utterly amazed.

"This is too great a blessing for me," she said. ''I can't tell how to believe it. This is all I could have wished for under Heaven, if I had dared to wish for it."

Wesley now regarded her as engaged to marry him.

The night before he was due to leave Newcastle, he said:

"I am convinced God has called you to be my fellow laborer in the Gospel. I will take you with me to Ireland in the spring. Now we must part for a time. But, if we meet again, I trust we shall part no more."

Grace begged that they should not part so soon. Wesley therefore allowed her to saddle her horse and ride with himself and William Mackford, a middle-aged helper, into Yorkshire. They traveled south, Wesley reading

Dr. Hodge's Account of the Plague in London. At Halifax market cross he stilled the roaring of 'an immense number of people'' by the vigor of his preaching, but before he had finished a gentleman bribed some roughs to pelt him with stones. One cut him badly on the face. The crowd began to roar again until Wesley could not make himself heard. Stanching the blood from his wound, he

THE HIGHER LOVE Ill 195

led the way to a meadow outside the town, followed by a large part of his audience, who listened quietly and sang the hymns powerfully.

Wesley and his small party rode on across Yorkshire.

Grace was "'unspeakably useful both to me and the Societies."" She showed no fear when a mob from Colne, incited by a clergyman, invaded the open-air service at Roughlee under the forested lower slopes of Pendle and beat Wesley to the ground. Roughs covered his close friend Parson Grimshaw of Haworth with muck and mud, dragged Mackford by the hair, and threw some local Methodists into the river. The local constable "sat well pleased close to the place, not attempting in the least to hinder them."

Wesley, Grace, and Mackford came into Derbyshire.

John Bennet joined them. He had not expected Grace, and soon he burned for her. He knew nothing of Wesley's interest since Wesley, for the sake of his authority among the Methodists, gave no sign.

They reached Bennet's home at Chinley on the edge of the Peak District and stayed the night after Wesley had preached. All rode together next day to Astbury near

Congleton in Cheshire. Wesley preached again while a mob howled outside the house.

Wesley was now certain that he wanted to marry Grace, but he was needed in London and had to ride posthaste. On Friday morning, September 2, 1748, he entrusted Grace to the care of John Bennet, in all innocence, "and went on my way rejoicing."

Bennet took Grace and Mackford back to Chinley to rest before their long ride back to Newcastle. In his own home the next day, John Bennet asked Grace Murray to | marry him.

Grace still could not believe that Wesley had meant marriage: "It seemed too strange to be true." And she was not sure; perhaps she loved her earlier patient who was now asking for her hand. She gave no answer to Bennet.

That night, immediately on getting into bed, Bennet was puzzled by a waking dream or mental vision (for he was sure he had not yet fallen asleep) in which he saw

Grace in deep distress and no less a person than Mr.

196 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Wesley coming to her tenderly and saying, "I love thee as well as I did on the day when I took thee first."" But "she put him away from her with her hand."

Next morning Bennet asked Grace directly, "Is there not a contract between you and Mr. Wesley?"

"There is not," she replied.

Strictly, though not morally, she was right, for Wesley had not formally proposed, and she seems to have been confused by a growing love for Bennet and by fear of betraying Wesley's feelings to one of his helpers.

Bennet did not write to Wesley for clarification, although as a preacher he was obliged by their rules to request his permission to marry. Instead, Bennet re- | newed his suit. Two days later Grace accepted him.

Wesley, meanwhile, completed his business in London, which included some preaching at Lady Huntingdon's house in Chelsea, and went into Cornwall. Somewhere in the West Country he received letters and was

"utterly amazed'': Bennet asked his consent; Grace assured him that she believed it was the will of God. Wesley, assuming they were already married, stifled his feelings and "wrote a mild answer to both." He had told no one, not even Charles, of his intention to marry Grace.

He put the matter sadly out of his mind—until a reply came from Grace. She wrote "'in so affectionate a manner" that he thought her engagement to Bennet must have been broken off.

Wesley worked in London that winter while Grace remained at Newcastle and Bennet in Derbyshire. Grace was in a ferment of indecision. Whenever she had a letter from Wesley, as he learned from her afterwards, she resolved 'to live and die with me and wrote to me just what she felt.'"" If a letter came from Derbyshire, her affection for Bennet revived, and she replied to him tenderly. When, in February 1749, she received her traveling instructions from Wesley for the promised visit to Ireland in April, she begged Bennet to meet her at Sheffield, or she could not answer for the consequences. Bennet was prevented at the last moment by a death in the family.

Grace waited in vain for him at Sheffield, then rode to Bristol to meet Wesley.

She told him her story, and Wesley convinced her that

THE HIGHER LOVE Iii 197

the engagement to him had precedence of any to Bennet. \ She wished she could talk it over with some woman of wisdom, but felt that any disclosure would harm Wesley.

Charles had arrived in Bristol on his way to his wedding in Wales. The three of them, with William Tucker, set out on April 3 and were caught by a storm in the Severn estuary, so that Wesley missed a preaching engagement at Newport and was "wet and weary" when he preached near Caerphilly.

As they traveled the valleys and across the mountains, he kept silent about Grace; Charles remained in ignorance that the widow who rode with them, helping with the sisters wherever they examined the societies, was his brother's intended wife. Charles regarded her as little more than a servant. At Garth near Builth Wells, John | married Charles to Sarah, the twenty-two-year-old third | daughter of Marmaduke Gwynne, a gentleman of ancient

lineage; Sally would bring Charles lifelong happiness and | many children.

The others rode on to Holyhead and crossed to Dublin for Wesley's tour of Ireland, his third. During the spring and summer months which followed, Grace accompanied

Wesley as he rode through the southern counties strengthening the Methodists. She was at hand when he had a severe cold with swelling in the cheek, for which he successfully applied boiled nettles and warm treacle.

She heard him preach in Protestant churches—many rectors were sympathetic—and in market houses and open fields. At Birr on the road to Limerick, the congregation was so sleepy and unconcerned by his gentle sermon that the next day he "spoke very plain and rough." The effect was dramatic, and Wesley reflected "that love will not always prevail; but there is a time for the terrors of the Lord.' At Athlone he found a society ripe for revival: "I think more found peace with God in these four days than in sixteen months before."

In all this, Wesley was delighted with Grace. "I saw the work of God prosper in her hands. She lightened my burden more than can be expressed. She gave spiritual counsel to the women in the smaller societies and the believers in every place. She settled all the women bands; visited the sick; prayed with the mourners; more and

198 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

more of whom received remission of sins during her conversation or prayer.

''Meantime she was to me both a servant and friend, as well as a fellow-laborer in the Gospel. She provided everything I wanted. She told me with all faithfulness and freedom, if she thought anything amiss in my behavior."

Wesley was charmed by Grace's skill at rebuking him; she combined plainness of speech with deep respect, tenderness, and 'exquisite modesty."

She had no letters from Bennet. Wesley had one letter in which Bennet reported on local Methodist affairs, then added that Wesley had misunderstood him about Grace; they would not have married before they could discuss the matter with him in person. Bennet warned that Grace was spiritually weak; he was a trifle rude about her qualities, and this helped to convince Wesley that the Bennet episode was over. Grace was his own, and the more they were together, ''the more I loved her."

Before leaving Dublin they made a verbal contract private to themselves but valid in law as it then stood. He stated with solemn formality: 'I do take thee as my wife," and she stated: "I do take thee as my husband."

Until Hardwicke's Act five years later, one party to such a contract per verba de praesenti could be compelled by the other to go through a church marriage before witnesses, which would thus be registered as binding. On the other hand, a church marriage to a third party would erase the contract de praesenti—one of the confusions in the law of marriage which Hardwicke's Act (1753) would resolve by laying down that henceforth no marriage was valid unless performed after banns or by license.

Wesley landed at Bristol with Grace on July 24 believ- | ing that she was to all intents married to him. But accord_ing to the spirit of the rules which he had laid down, he could not complete the contract publicly in church until he had informed all his helpers and the societies, ob_tained his brother's consent, and made sure that John

Bennet as another suitor was satisfied. When Grace begged Wesley to hurry on the marriage, he refused.

At Bristol she happened to hear unkind gossip that Wesley had once shown familiarity to a Methodist sister named Molly Francis. In a "sudden vehement fit of jeal-

THE HIGHER LOVE Ill 199

ousy,'' Grace wrote and dispatched a love letter to Bennet. The next day she repented of her action and went to Wesley "in agony of mind." But the letter could not be recalled.

On the evening of August 30, Wesley and Grace rode into Epworth. Here, in Wesley's native town, John

Bennet was waiting, having ridden from Derbyshire, hot with renewed love for Grace.

Grace, unknown to Wesley, had again been thrown into confusion. While the Wesley brothers had been conferring with "that loving, mild, judicious Christian Dr.

Doddridge," the Dissenter, whose famous book The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul had been published three years earlier, Grace had been talking with Tom

Maxfield's wellborn wife (he had married above him).

Grace hinted that Wesley would marry her. Elizabeth Maxfield scorned the very idea; they would both be miserable, and she was unworthy.

Bennet was now determined. When they met at Epworth, Wesley began to stake his prior claim to Grace, but Bennet cut him short. She had sent on to him, he said, all the letters which Wesley had written her (which apparently was a lie). Wesley left the room under a firm impression that Grace loved Bennet and that they

"should marry without delay." He wrote her a note to end their own relationship, at which Grace came running to him "in an agony of tears'' saying this would kill her, and adding tender expressions until Wesley was at a loss.

Then Bennet walked in. "He claimed her as his right,""

Wesley wrote. "I was stunned and knew not what to say, still thinking, 'She loves him best.' "" Wesley thought that if one of them did not withdraw she would die: 'So I again determined to give her up."

Wesley and Grace set off for Newcastle together, on what must have been a painfully silent ride, for Wesley was in "an anguish of spirit from a piercing conviction of the irreparable loss I had sustained." On the road Grace

200 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

fell ill and took to her bed at the inn. He visited her as a pastor, only to have her declare her love for him again, yet saying that Bennet would go mad if she refused; she waved a letter. The next day Bennet arrived at the inn with a friend, and they pleaded at her bedside until she promised her hand, yet she disclosed this the next morning to Wesley, who was "'more perplexed than ever." He explained, ""As I now knew she loved me, and as she was contracted to me before, I knew not whether I ought to let her go."

They resumed their journey, each unresolved, until they were approaching Newcastle when Wesley insisted that she choose. Then he heard her declare "again and again, 'I am determined by conscience, as well as inclination to live and die with you.' "

Wesley now decided that Bennet was using them ill.

On September 7 he wrote him a long and stiff letter, going over the whole story and ending: "O that you would take Scripture and reason for your rule, instead of blind and impetuous passion! I can say no more, only this—you may tear her away by violence; but my consent

I cannot, dare not give. Nor, I fear, can God give you his blessing."

He handed the letter to another preacher, 'who promised to deliver it with his own hand. But it was not delivered at all." Welsey, however, sent a copy to Charles, which eventually reached him in Bristol. Amazed and horrified that Jack should want to marry a servant,

Charles saddled his horse, said a hurried good-bye to his wife of five months, and rode posthaste to stop it.

Welsey took Grace on his next pastoral and preaching visit to Berwick-on-Tweed, and their love deepened. Back at Newcastle, with Grace showing great affection, he tried to discover why she was unpopular with the other women. Charles was now riding furiously north. Wesley took Grace on his next tour. They rode west through wild moors toward the Lake District with young Charles

Perronet, a son of Vincent Perronet, the vicar of Shoreham, near Sevenoaks in Kent, who was one of Wesley's most valued older advisers.

Before they attempted the roughest country, they left Grace with a Methodist farming family, the Broadwoods,

THE HIGHER LOVE Ili 201

at Hindley Hill in Allendale. At her request Wesley and Grace sdlemnly renewed their contract to marry, with Christopher Hopper, the young preacher from Newcastle who lived nearby, as witness. Wesley rode on through the glorious scenery without one uneasy thought and reached the coaling port of Whitehaven, where revival had been spreading fast. He was now certain that he would be married to Grace as soon as Charles had acknowledged his letter.

In Whitehaven on Sunday he received an alarming intimation that God might have other plans for him.

Wesley had preached twice at outlying coalfields to large crowds, then hurried to attend the parish church.

The first lesson happened to be from the Prophet Ezekiel.

Suddenly he heard words that 'came as a sword to my heart, 'Son of Man, behold I take from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke!' Immediately a shivering ran through me, and in a few minutes I was in a fever. But when I came home, seeing a vast congregation in the Market

Place, I could not send them empty away. And while I was speaking to them, God remembered me and strengthened me both in soul and body." Almost the entire town seemed to be there, listening quietly. When a gang of sailors tried to disrupt the service by striking up sea chanties, the very newly devout colliers roughed them up and broke their fiddles.

Charles had reached Leeds and learned wrongly that Grace had been engaged already when Jack proposed; moreover, Bennet was one of Charles' close friends.

Charles reached Newcastle and swallowed gossip against Grace. He scarcely noticed that scriptural holiness and Christian perfection were perhaps in short supply among the Methodist women, and "'he flew on" (as Wesley put it) across the moors and mountains, desperate to reach Jack in time to stop him from stealing another man's bride and wrecking the entire movement by the scandal. At Whitehaven he dismounted in a sweat, his horse in a lather, and was surprised to find Jack without |

Grace. Charles was now in such a state that he would not listen to Jack's side of the story but cried that all the preachers would desert and the societies break up if Jack . married such a woman.

202 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

Jack withdrew, took paper and pen, and calmly went through the whole matter, setting out his thoughts in form of a letter. Convinced that Grace was legally and morally his wife, subject only to the ecclesiastical ceremony, and that such a marriage would benefit the Methodist movement, Jack handed Charles the letter, directing that he show it to old Vincent Perronet in Kent. They would all abide by his arbitration.

Charles scarcely looked at the letter but argued hotly.

Still convinced that Grace was stolen from Bennet, he waited until Jack had left on a pastoral call, then galloped back across the mountains, Jack having artlessly revealed where Grace was staying.

That afternoon Wesley set off by himself. He was suffering from diarrhea, his horse was "'all in a sweat,'"' but the scenery and his thoughts of God and Grace made it

"a solemn and delightful ride." Both man and beast grew stronger every hour.

The next day Wesley left Keswick before dawn. Late in the afternoon he rode down into Allendale, expecting to see Grace in a few more minutes at Hindley Hill. The wife of farmer James Broadwood, Hannah, had been watching for him. She met him and said, " 'Mr. Charles left us two hours since, and carried Sister Murray behind him.' I said, 'The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away! Blessed be the name of the Lord!' Soon James

Broadwood came in. He looked at me and burst into tears. I said, 'I must go on to Newcastle.' James said,

'No, I will go, and with God's leave bring her back.' In a quarter of an hour, he took horse, and I calmly committed the cause to God!'

Wesley had reached a decisive crisis in his life.

James Broadwood had no authority over Charles, whose removal of Grace implied that he was determined to prevent the marriage. If John Wesley changed his mind and went to Newcastle, he could still win her, but he dared not influence the course of events except by prayer. With sore heart he carried out a preaching engagement at Hindley Hill, spent a day in fasting and prayer, then rode back to Whitehaven in the teeth of a violent wind. 'If 1 had more regard for her I loved, than for the work of God, I should now have gone on straight

THE HIGHER LOVE Iii 203

to Newcastle, and not back to Whitehaven. I knew this was giving up all: but I knew God called."

At Whitehaven, as he went about his ministry, Wesley was "in great heaviness, my heart was sinking in me like a stone. Only, so long as I was preaching I felt ease.'" He was comforted by hearing the lessons at church and in taking the Sacrament. He was deeply depressed by a dream in which he saw Grace led out to be hanged, yet he would not lift a finger to force the will of God.

His assistant reminded him that he was engaged to preach at Leeds, and a letter came from George Whitefield urging him and Charles to meet him there.

On the evening of Wednesday, October 9, 1749, Wesley reached Leeds: "Here I found, not my brother, but Mr. Whitefield. I lay down by him on the bed. He told! me my brother would not come till JB and GM were married. I was troubled. He perceived it. He wept and' prayed over me. But I could not shed a tear. He said all that was in his power to comfort me: but it was in vain.

He told me it was his judgment .

. she was my wife and that he had said so to JB: That he would fain have persuaded them to wait, and not to marry till they had seen me: But that my brother's impetuosity prevailed and bore down all before it.

"T felt no murmuring thought, but deep distress. I accepted the just punishment of my manifold unfaithfulness and unfruitfulness and therefore could not complain. But I felt the loss both to me and the people, which I did not expect could ever be repaired. I tried to sleep: but I tried in vain; for sleep was fled from my eyes. I was in a burning fever and more and more thoughts still crowding into my mind, I perceived, if this continued long, it would affect my senses. But God took that matter into his hand; giving me a sudden, sound and quiet sleep; eee Whitefield, anxious to soften the blow, did not reveal that he had been a witness when Grace and Bennet were married the day before by special license in Newcastle.

Wesley eventually pieced together what had happened at Hindley Hill while he was riding into Allendale.

Charles, he learned, had burst in on Grace, shouting,

204 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

"You have broken my heart," and fell at her feet in a dead faint. Recovered, he persuaded her that she would ruin the Methodist movement by marrying his brother.

He showed her a letter he had written on the road which made her believe that John Wesley had jilted her, yet when Grace rode away pillion she thought Charles was taking her to John. At Newcastle, Charles and others had falsely convinced her that she could never have John

Wesley and that he had behaved dishonorably: '""Good God," one had cried, "what will the world say? He is tired of her, and so thrusts his whore into a corner. Sister

Murray, will you consent to this!"

Only then had Grace agreed reluctantly to immediate marriage with Bennet.

When Wesley woke from distressed sleep at Leeds the next morning, a Methodist from Newcastle gave the _news that they were married.

, One hour later, Charles arrived. Jack, though not angry, refused to meet him. Whitefield persuaded them to come together, but Charles, still in a fury at the supposed scandal he had averted, flung at his brother, '"You villain!

I renounce all intercourse with you, but what I would have with an heathen man and a publican!"' Jack stayed calm while Whitefield and Nelson burst into tears and cried and prayed and entreated until the brothers silently embraced.

Bennet came. In silence the two suitors kissed each other and wept. Bennet left. Then Charles at last listened

'quietly to Jack. Suddenly, it dawned on Charles that he had totally misunderstood the facts, had not sifted accusations and gossip, had wounded his brother irrevocably and unjustly. '""He seemed utterly amazed," noted Jack.

"He clearly saw I was not what he had thought, and now blamed her only."

The bride and bridegroom joined them for an emotional though almost silent confrontation. Bennet asked forgiveness for hard words. Later Grace came alone, in

THE HIGHER LOVE Iii 205

tears, to assure Wesley that she had never blamed him.

Wesley rode sadly back to Newcastle alone, composing a long prayer in verse which offered his "deep unutter'd grief" to God and vowed to obey Him. At Newcastle when he learned more of what had happened, he strove | to prevent the conflict from damaging the society and to love Bennet and Grace as brother and sister.

He found especially hard the slander that he was to blame, and when Bennet wrote three weeks later objecting to criticisms, Wesley could not refrain from plain words: 'Once for all I must speak,'"" he wrote Bennet on November 3, 1749, 'for my heart is full. Although, alas! what avails it now? I loved you as my own soul. I left with you my dearest friend, one who was necessary to me as a right hand, as dear as a right eye. One whom I looked upon then (and not on slight grounds) as contracted to myself. But suppose I say only, one I loved above all on earth, and fully designed for my wife. To! this woman you proposed marriage, without either my knowledge or consent.

"Was this well done? God warned you the same night that I had took her first (but I could not take her unless she took me too). You wrote me word you would take no} farther step without my consent. Nevertheless, not only without my consent, but with a thousand circumstances of aggravation, you tore her from me whether I would or no—when all I desired was to refer the whole to impartial men! And all the blame lies upon me! And you have acted with a clear conscience to this day!

"T think not. I think you have done me the deepest wrong which I can receive on this side of the grave. But I spare you. 'Tis but for a little time, and I shall be where the weary are at rest.' "'

Grace bore Bennet six sons before he died of jaundice ten years later, having erected his own Calvinist meeting house after leaving Wesley's societies. Grace, as a widow, rejoined them, saw Wesley occasionally, and lived to be over ninety.

Charles was never again so close to John. The breac slowly healed, affection returned, and their joint ministry absorbed them; yet their trust in each other could no longer be absolute.

206 Ill "IN MY HEART AND IN MY MOUTH"

John Wesley, by the renunciation at Hindley Hill when he refused to hurry after Grace, had set his course for the rest of his life. He would marry, though not for happiness. His sole aim would be to preach and teach and build up. His years would unfold as variations on a single theme.

abo Pe ZT =

Chapter Twenty-two Back from the Dead "May I request one thing of you, sir? Do not speak evil of Jesus Christ. You may sometime stand in need of him.

And if you should (I can say from a very little experience), you will find him the best friend in heaven or earth."

Thus Wesley wrote on October 23, 1749 after a long discussion over dinner in Calveley Hall with Richard

Davenport, a Cheshire squire and a Deist who would later be a patron of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Only two weeks earlier on his sad ride from Leeds after losing ©

Grace Murray, Wesley had experienced afresh that Jesus Christ was indeed his 'best Friend." He would spend the rest of his life promoting his Friend's interest in all ways and at all times.

In 1750 he traveled widely in Ireland. He wrote to a friend in London: "I have had so hurrying a time for two or three months as I scarce ever had before—such a mixture of storms and clear sunshine, of huge applause and huge opposition." He found the Irish true to a tag he had heard: "Impetuous in their love and in their hate."

Catholic peasants in the countryside would gather in groups by the crossroads as he rode by and listen if they understood English. The Anglo-Irish in the towns were often ready to listen in large numbers, and although he found many Protestants who hated Christianity, Methodist societies sprang up. As he had written on a previous visit to Limerick: "A few years ago, if we heard of one notorious sinner truly converted to God, it was a matter of solemn joy to all that loved or feared him; and now that multitudes of every kind and degree are daily turned from the power of darkness to God, we pass it over as a common thing! O God give us thankful hearts!"

210 Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

Yet cutthroats would murder (or miss) his preachers as they rode along peaceful roads, and in Cork and elsewhere Protestant magistrates would allow violent rioting and then accuse Methodists of breaching the peace. Wesley went in danger of his life at Cork because the mayor refused to quell a mob.

Wesley loved Ireland, north and south. When Londoners complained of his long visits (forty-two in all) and the number of preachers he sent, he prophesied rightly that Ireland would repay England by the strong Christians who would emerge from the movement. One was Thomas Walsh, a young Limerick man, once a Roman Catholic.

He became an effective evangelist in Irish and English and developed a grasp of the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, which amazed even Wesley; yet he remained intense and gloomy and complained that Wesley's cheerfulness was a snare: '"Among three or four persons who tempt me to levity, you, sir, are one, by your witty proverbs."" Walsh died at the age of twenty-nine.

One of the letters which Wesley wrote from Dublin that summer of 1750 went to Threadneedle Street in London, addressed to a forty-year-old widow, Mary Vazeille, whose husband, a London merchant of reasonable prosperity, had died three years before, leaving her well-off, with grown children. Like her late husband, she was of Huguenot descent and had become a friend of Ned

Perronet, another of the vicar of Shoreham's sons; many years later he would write the famous hymn "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name." The Perronets were Swiss in origin and moved naturally among the Huguenots.

Charles Wesley had met Molly Vazeille at Perronet's and found her ''a woman of a Sorrowful spirit." Charles and Sally befriended her. In May 1750 she stayed with them in Shropshire, where Sally's parents now lived; and then with Sally's brother-in-law, they rode back to London, making a tourist visit to Blenheim Palace on the way. The Wesleys stayed with her in London for a

BACK FROM THE DEAD Iii 211

week's sightseeing. By that time Charles had put a low valuation on Molly, and she had taken a dislike to Sally.

Wesley's letter to Mrs. Vazeille from Dublin was pastoral, like hundreds which he wrote to women and men alike.

Back in London that autumn he began to think of Molly Vazeille as a possible wife but kept his thoughts from Charles. She was not a member of the society, and Wesley would be free of the jealousies which had hung round

Grace Murray. Molly was past the age of childbearing so that he would not waste time being a parent; Grace had agreed that any offspring of their intended marriage should be brought up at Kingswood School, and they would never have known the happy childhood of their cousins, the large family of Charles and Sally. Molly's financial independence would save Wesley from having to support her and thus restrict his giving to the poor.

Molly Vazeille impressed him. He praised her for "your indefatigable industry, your exact frugality, your uncommon neatness and cleanness both in your person, your clothes and all things round you." As so often with women, he could see no deeper.

By January 1751 Wesley had settled the question subject to the approval of Vincent Perronet, who was to have arbitrated over Bennet's claim on Grace. Perronet gave his consent on February 2. Then, honoring the letter but not the spirit of his earlier pledge that neither he nor Charles would marry without the agreement of the other,

Wesley announced his intention to Charles, who was "thunderstruck ... and retired to mourn with my faithful Sally."" On Saturday, February 9, John Wesley and |

Molly Vazeille signed a marriage settlement before four | trustees as witnesses, whereby he would not touch her fortune, and she would not be responsible for his debts; without such a settlement her entire property would have become his absolutely.

He had not intended an immediate wedding but rather to leave on a preaching tour to the north on the Monday.

Early on Sunday morning, however, walking to preach south of the river, he slipped on the ice on London

Bridge and sprained his foot. Instead of a tour to the north, he spent a week's convalescence at the home of

212 |ll "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

Mrs. Vazeille. If this was a providential opportunity to think twice about joining her in holy matrimony, he failed to take it: he spent much of the time writing a Hebrew grammar and Lessons for Children. Still unable to walk or stand, he announced his intended marriage at the Foundery service from a kneeling position, rather defensively. Charles said it 'made us all hide our faces."

On February 18 or 19 (the precise date and the church are uncertain) the marriage took place. Charles complained that he was "one of the last that heard of his unhappy marriage."

Two weeks later, still lame, Wesley rode off with Ned Perronet for a conference of the itinerant preachers in Bristol. He was disappointed that Molly, whose spelling and handwriting left much to be desired, did not write for at least "four whole days."" He, however, taking pen and paper, conversed a little: "My body is stronger and stronger—and so is my love to you. God grant it may never go beyond his will! O that we may continue to love one another as Christ has loved us."

Both tried for a little, but Wesley had no intention of \ changing his routine or shedding responsibility. Molly resented his absences and began to show a violent temper; Wesley tried every method to soften it in vain. For a time she valiantly went with him on his travels, worked among the poor, and even shared a riot. Discomforts soon depressed her; her heart was not in his mission nor her mind on his level. Wesley expected wifely obedience and true sympathy. Instead, she resented his openhanded generosity, was jealous of his women correspondents

(he had innocently encouraged her to open letters in his absence), and took a violent dislike to Sally and Charles;

Charles would ironically refer to her when writing to Sally as 'my best friend." By 1753 Ned Perronet called her

"absolutely intractable."

Whatever Wesley's faults toward his wife, she soon bicBainé a handicap and a trial. He needed all his spiritual resources to walk toward Christian perfection while Molly was around.

BACK FROM THE DEAD lil 213 By his marriage Wesley ceased to be a fellow of Lincoln

College. He had been cut off from the university in all but name since the sermon which had so displeased the vice-chancellor. He had cared nothing for the stipend, and as for the license to preach in any parish of the realm, which the Oxford fellowship gave him, he had long ceased to care whether he had ecclesiastical permission; he looked upon all the world as his parish.

Marriage did not improve his health. He continued to ride round the societies and to preach outdoors wherever he went and to write his letters and books, but the rigors of the road affected his chest. At the end of October 1753, he fell ill with fever in London. He cured himself by doses of chinchona bark (quinine), although it disagreed with his constitution; but within ten days he had a relapse and became so weak that George Whitefield was deeply distressed when he visited him.

The eminent physician, John Fothergill, a Quaker about forty who was already famous for his medical skill and his botanical garden, diagnosed "galloping consumption" (advanced tuberculosis). Fothergill offered little hope. He ordered Wesley to leave London: "If anything does thee good, it must be the country air, with rest, asses' milk, and riding daily."

Wesley was too weak to ride. A generous banker, Ebenezer Blackwell, came round to the Foundery in his coach and took John and Molly down to his palatial country residence, The Limes at Lewisham, five miles southwest of London, where Mrs. Blackwell could nurse him;

Wesley never forgot Molly's devoted care either.

Blackwell was one of Wesley's closest friends. They were frank with each other's spiritual needs. Wesley had warned the prosperous banker against 'being ashamed, not of sin, but of holiness.'' Blackwell had warned the great evangelist against 'popularity, a thirst of power and applause; against envy, producing a seeming contempt for the conveniences or grandeur of this life; against an affected humility," and showing off by selfdenial. (Wesley replied: 'I am not conscious to myself that is my case. However, the warning is always friendly.") Wesley loved The Limes, where he wrote several of his books.

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He now expected to die there. On the evening of his arrival he drafted an inscription for his tombstone, to "prevent vile panegyric"':

Here lieth The body of JOHN WESLEY, A brand plucked out of the burning, Who died of Consumption in the fifty-first year of his age, And leaving, after his debts are paid, ten pounds behind him; Praying, God be merciful to me, an unprofitable servant.

Charles hurried down to Lewisham and wept when he saw his brother. Jack expressed a dying wish that Charles and Molly should be reconciled: "My brother," wrote

Charles to Sally, ""entreated me yesterday, and his wife, to forget all that is past, on both sides. I sincerely told him

I would for his, as well as Christ's sake. My sister said the same."

Charles rode back and summoned the Foundery congregation to urgent prayer.

A message went to Whitefield, now in Bristol, who on December 3 wrote a griefstricken letter to Wesley on his "approaching dissolution.

I pity myself and the Church," he wrote, '"but not you—a radiant throne awaits you, and ere long you will enter into your Master's joy. ..

. But I, poor I, that have been waiting for my dissolution these nineteen years, must be left behind to grovel here below!"

If prayers could detain the heavenly chariots, continued Whitefield, Wesley "shall not leave us yet. But if the decree is gone forth that you must now fall asleep in Jesus, may he kiss your soul away, and give you to die in the embraces of triumphant love! If in the land of the living, I hope to pay my respects to you next week. If not, rev and very dear sir, F-a-r-e-w-e-l-l." After a Latin tag, he ended: "My heart is too big, tears trickle down too fast, and you, I fear, too weak for me to enlarge.

Underneath you may there be Christ's everlasting arms. I commend you to his never-failing mercy, and am, rev and very dear sir, your most affectionate, sympathizing,

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and afflicted younger brother in the Gospel of our common Lord, G.W."

By the time this letter reached Lewisham, Wesley was in the saddle again for short rides; Charles ascribed the recovery to the prayers at the Foundery. By January 5,

1754 Wesley was convalescing at Clifton Hot Wells near Bristol. He wrote to the Blackwells to thank his "best friends ... who have been the greatest instruments, in God's hands, of my recovery thus far." He drank the waters at Clifton and worked hard on a new book, Notes on the New Testament, since the doctor would not allow him to preach. By spring he was ready for the next crisis in Methodism.

Chapter Twenty-three "To Invite, To Convince, To Offer Christ"

Wesley's main aim was "'to promote, as far as I am able, vital practical religion; and by the grace of God to beget, preserve and increase the life of God in the souls of men." For this purpose he aimed also (as an anonymous obituarist would put it neatly at the end of Wesley's life) 'to revive the obsolete doctrines and extinguished Spirit of the Church of England."

These two aims were sometimes in conflict and produced tension between the Wesley brothers. John Wesley ee to put first the claims of evangelism; Charles, the Church. Both Wesleys saw the societies as essentially within the Church, but Methodists who were rebuffed from Holy Communion by unsympathetic clergy became impatient; they wanted to take the Lord's Supper in their own consecrated chapels, although this would effectively separate them from the Church.

Too many parish clergy were idle, ignorant, or opposed to the Gospel; therefore, Wesley was forced to appoint itinerant lay preachers. Bishops refused to recognize them, but Wesley regarded his preachers as a lay order within the church rather like the Church Army captains of the far future. Although he allowed them to take out licenses from local magistrates for protection, he now held that this did not imply separation. Most of the preachers were drawn from the "lower orders" of British society. Many were deeply sincere, if ill educated, but a few wanted to rise in the social scale by acquiring the status of ministers of religion. Since no bishop would ordain them, they would have liked to become Dissenting ministers if only Wesley would take the Methodist movement out of the Church.

Charles Wesley grumbled to Lady Huntingdon that

"TO INVITE, TO CONVINCE, TO OFFER CHRIST" II! 217

"the preachers will destroy the work of God. What has well nigh ruined many of them is their being taken from their trades.

. The tinner, barber, thatcher, forgot himself, and set up for a gentleman, and looked out for a Se having lost the only way of maintaining himself."

Charles wanted all preachers to support themselves by their trades and no longer receive stipends administered by his brother. He did not dare reveal one of his reasons , to Jack: "It will break his power, their not depending on | him for bread, and reduce his authority within due bounds, as well as guard against that rashness and credulity of his, which has kept me in continual awe and | bondage for many years."

Wesley saw this letter and retorted: "In what respect do you want to 'break my power' and 'to reduce my authority within due bounds?' I am quite ready to part with the whole or any part of it. It is no pleasure to me, nor ever was."

By the summer of 1754, when he had recovered fen his illness, Wesley found himself assailed from both) sides; the sons of Vincent Perronet were threatening to_ withdraw from the movement if he did not separate from | the church; Charles was threatening to withdraw if he | did. The Perronets tried to force the issue by administering the Sacrament to some lay preachers.

The following year Wesley wrote a lengthy paper, "Ought We to Separate from the Church of England?'

He read it to the conference of preachers in May 1755 at Leeds, and they debated for much of three days. Charles had already prepared a long letter in verse to his brother begging him not to separate. Before the conference ended, Charles hurried away, relieved that no immediate break was likely but fearful lest it come later because his brother had settled the question on expediency rather than principle. Charles therefore published his verse

"Epistle to the Reverend Mr. John Wesley."

Charles underestimated his brother's attachment to the Church, but another danger arose—that Methodist clergy might be thrown out. On June 23, 1755 Wesley sent a hurried note to Charles in Bristol that the bishop of London (Sherlock had succeeded on Gibson's death) had

218 Ili "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

"excommunicated" a Methodist clergyman. With a Latin tag which Charles paraphrased to Lady Huntingdon as "my turn next," Wesley wrote: 'It is probable the point will now be speedily determined concerning the church.

For if we must either dissent or be silent, Actum est" (it is all over).

The danger passed; no bishop dared to proceed against Wesley himself. The tension within the movement, however, remained strong. Charles Wesley gained the support of two clergymen whom his brother respected: Samuel Walker of Truro in Cornwall and William Grimshaw of Haworth in Yorkshire, one of Wesley's closest advisers and strongest supporters. When in 1760 three of the lay preachers administered the Sacrament in the Methodists' chapel at Norwich, Charles wrote to Grimshaw that "things are come to a crisis. We must now resolve either to separate from the Church or to continue in it for the rest of our lives."

Wesley was away in Ireland; he had published his twelve reasons against separation and showed little concern at aberrations. Grimshaw, however, was adamant that he must rebuke the Norwich preachers and threatened to "disown all connection with the Methodists."

When Charles read Grimshaw's letter aloud at the Foundery service, the people ''cried out that they would live and die in the Church."

Wesley duly rebuked the Norwich men. At the next conference he made plain that when he appointed preachers, he did not ordain them; the 'people called

Methodists" stayed with the Church of England. But Wesley was to find in his later years that the question

"Shall we separate?' had not been answered finally— because the message and the method were for all the world.

In June 1763 Wesley reached his sixtieth birthday. He looked younger: his hair was still dark, and he was now more physically fit than he had been for years, with re-

"TO INVITE, TO CONVINCE, TO OFFER CHRIST" Iii 219

newed vigor and unwearied determination "to reform the nation, and in particular the Church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land."

His life had fallen into a routine which he called 'as fixed as the sun." He spent the winters in London and Bristol overseeing the societies, schools, and orphanages: while in the summer "I am almost perpetually in motion." He rode throughout England in a regular rotation, sometimes accompanied by Molly. He visited Scotland twenty-two times and made his many journeys to Ireland.

Wesley was reviving the long discarded pattern of the preaching friars of the medieval church when he spoke from market crosses and on commons and hillsides, often with a lad to play an oboe for the hymns. In all his preaching he aimed "to invite; to convince; to offer

Christ." His sermons included frequent anecdotes and much Scripture and were informed by the vast range of his reading of books by Christian and classical authors; yet he wore his learning so lightly that the simplest hearer could understand. His reading on the long rides enabled him to expand his knowledge continually, for he | had an insatiable curiosity not only for intellectual knowledge but about the history, geography, and customs of the places he passed, which he would include in his printed Journal published at regular intervals.

He took a servant as valet and groom, always choosing a man from the societies. For some years he had Michael

Fenwick from Newcastle, whom Wesley called 'an original.'"" Fenwick was vain (and not always truthful) and once complained that every helper was mentioned in the Journal except himself. Wesley then played a little joke. In the next Journal he included an entry: "Mon. 25. I left

Epworth with great satisfaction, and about 1 o'clock preached at Clayworth. I think none was unmoved but Michael Fenwick, who fell fast asleep under an adjoining haystack."

Fenwick later got into trouble; Wesley dismissed and expelled him, "a poor wicked man."" He was reinstated later and lived to old age in much sanctity, very generous to the poor and perhaps dining out on his memories.

Wherever Wesley went he would examine the bands

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and the classes, keeping Methodists to the mark. The societies ensured that the preaching and evangelizing would have lasting effect on a district. 'My brother Wesley acted wisely,'" wrote Whitefield to a friend who was one of Wesley's local preachers. "The souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in class and thus

the fruits of his labors. This I neglected, and my people are a rope of sand." Whitefield had no inclination or time ''to weave a web," and if many of his converts joined Wesleyan classes when cold-shouldered by parish clergy, he rejoiced: "Let the name of Whitefield die, so that the cause of Jesus Christ may live."" Wesley had an equal distaste for the name Wesleyan which was beginning to be heard but, as Whitefield commented to him, ''You, I suppose, are for settling societies everywhere."

He liked especially to settle them among the poor, giving hope and dignity and purpose to the "outcasts of men" about whom Charles and he had sung on the night of his conversion. "I love the poor," he wrote in 1757.

"In many of them I find pure, genuine grace, unmixed with paint, folly and affectation,'"' a sideswipe at the Hanoverian aristocracy. 'I bear the rich," he wrote when he was sixty-one, ''and love the poor; therefore I spend almost all my time with them."' He was never happier than when he visited the cellars and garrets of "the choicest part of London society. I mean the poor."" Often he saw the power of the Gospel replace sloth, extravagance, and the bottle with enterprise, thrift, and sobriety; Methodists were able to leave cellar or garret.

As the Industrial Revolution began to erect factories and mills on the edges of once sleepy towns, and the country people migrated to the hurriedly built terraces which soon became slums, the societies spread fast, in Yorkshire especially. Here and in London a local society would often number more than its parish church could contain, even if the parson were welcoming rather than hostile. Methodist meeting houses or chapels went up more quickly than new churches in the expanding towns, but the meetings were not to be at the time of church services, which the members were urged to attend, especially on Sacrament Sundays. In the few parishes where

"TO INVITE, TO CONVINCE, TO OFFER CHRIST" |i 221

the vicar or rector was evangelical, the Communion hymns of Charles Wesley, verse after verse, would be sung while the communicants moved forward to take the bread and wine.

A distinctive Methodist character was indeed beginning to reform the nation—a new spirit of enterprise and, self-help, a seriousness which sharpened skills. 'Be active, be diligent," Wesley would urge. 'Avoid all laziness, sloth, indolence. Fly from every degree, every appearance of it; else you will never be more than half a Christian.

"Be cleanly. In this let the Methodists take pattern by the Quakers. Avoid all nastiness, dirt, slovenliness, both in your person, clothes, house, and all about you." And he added with a touch of humor, "Do not stink above ground. This is a bad fruit of laziness; use all diligence to be-clean.)'>+ "Whatever clothes you have, let them be whole; no rents, no tatters, no rags. These are a scandal to either man or woman, being another fruit of vile laziness. Mend your clothes, or I shall never expect you to mend your lives. Let none ever see a ragged Methodist."

The converted trifler or drunk became a hard worker.

This brought a new prosperity and with it a stronger sense of charity toward the afflicted and those who could not help themselves, since all was to be done for the glory of God and the good of mankind.

Wesley could visit most of the societies only occasionally, but he wrote scores of letters in his own hand, squeezing his sessions of writing into a crowded day.

"He wrote as he spoke," recalled one correspondent who knew him well. 'He literally talks upon paper."

"TI have you before my eyes," Wesley said to another, and except when he was composing a careful reply or an instruction, his pen flew across the paper: he could be terse, but the affection and warmth which the recipient remembered would spring out of the neat lines of rather square handwriting which gave no sign of their swift composition.

Wesley kept in touch also by the Journal and the other books and pamphlets which continued to pour from his pen. These had an influence far beyond the membership

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of his societies, for his own reading was so wide that he could introduce subjects which interested all classes. He realized early the dangers arising from the intellectual

'movement becoming known as The Enlightenment, which taught that reason answered all human questions—that faith and revelation must give way to reason and stay on the margins of thought and experience—and that man is born good, needing growth but not 'redemption.

Against The Enlightenment movement, Wesley brought before the public his own books and his abridgement or summaries of Christian classics of all ages: the Christian Library. Wesley read books so fast that he occasionally missed their point. Sometimes he abridged or summarized rather shamelessly to support his own views: in one instance he reprinted an almost unknown book by Richard Baxter, the famous Puritan divine, without revealing that Baxter had later repudiated much of it.

Another rather naughty abridgement was to cause Wesley much trouble.

Whatever the weaknesses of the Christian Library, Wesley's books, his sermons, letters, and personal example were forging a new synthesis between faith, holy living, and Christian knowledge, giving new life to theology and practice in Britain and beyond the seas.

Chapter Twenty-four The Chimney Sweeper In 1761 a fresh wave of revival swept across England, strengthening the evangelical movement.

It also brought some fanaticism which in 1762 gave Wesley "more care and trouble in six months than in several years preceding." Tom Maxfield was infected.

Maxfield, the ex-collier converted through Whitefield who had become Wesley's helper until forcibly enlisted into the Army, had surprisingly received Holy Orders after his discharge. A friendly Irish bishop ordained him at Bath ''to help that good man, Mr. John Wesley, that he may not work himself to death."

Maxfield fell under the spell of an ex-corporal of the Life Guards named George Bell, who boasted that he was now sinless and that the world would end on February

28, 1763. Many nervous persons spent that night in the fields. Bell was arrested for causing a public disturbance; he lost his faith and took to radical politics. Maxfield broke from Wesley, led 200 of the society to form his own independent chapel, and became a violent opponent.

Wesley reacted mildly. As his physician and early biographer Thomas Whitehead commented, Wesley's quick temper had been "in a great measure" corrected by the influence of religion and his "habit of close thinking." If strangers persecuted or abused him, he bore it without anger or outward emotion; and when colleagues abused his confidence, his loyal friends found that he was "not easy to convince that any one intentionally deceived him." He forgave injuries. Wesley even preached for Maxfield and visited him on his deathbed. The Gentlemen's Magazine, a secular journal, marveled that Wesley

"has been known to receive into his confidence even those who have basely injured him; they have not only

—— al PvE

224 Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

i . subsisted on his bounty, but shared in his affection."

Much more serious than Maxfield's schism was the renewed controversy with the Calvinists.

The Calvinists dubbed Wesley an "Arminian," a label derived from the Latin name of early seventeenth-century Dutch theologian Arminius, and adopted by Archbishop Laud and many of the high Anglican divines of the reigns of Charles I and Charles II. As popularly understood, the Arminians regarded a believer's good works and growth in holiness as decisive to his salvation; this was not Wesley's position after 1738, but he accepted the label and gave an evangelical twist to the old title. However, he had no wish to form a party. He tried hard to preserve unity and could not understand why Calvinists attacked him for views which he held starkly and without compromise.

In his desire for unity he inclined to refashion his opponents' thoughts and to demolish their arguments by selective quotation. And one of his opponents remarked of Wesley's editing of books in his Christian library:

"Why should poor John Bunyan be disembowled to make him look like Mr. Wesley?" Another, the gentle

James Hervey, former Oxford Methodist and now a mild Calvinist, complained that "Mr. Wesley is so unfair in his quotations and so magisterial in his manner that I find it no small difficulty to _ preserve the decency of the gentleman and the meekness of the Christian in my intended answer." Hervey wrote eleven stiff letters to Wesley which he left unposted and unpublished at his early death in 1758.

These were printed in a garbled version without authority. Hervey's brother then corrected and reissued them in 1765. Wesley replied by preaching and pfinting

"For the Benefit of the Poor," a sermon on the theme "The Lord Our Righteousness." He stood his ground on the matters in dispute but pleaded against bigotry: ''What shall we wrangle about? .

. Let us strengthen each others' hands in God."

"How dreadful,'"' he insisted, ''and how innumerable are the contests which have arisen about religion! And not only among the children of the world... but even among the children of God, those who had experienced

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER Ill 225

'the Kingdom of God within them,' who had tasted of 'righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.',

How many of these in all ages, instead of joining) together against the common enemy, have turned their) weapons against each other, and so not only wasted their. precious time but hurt one another's spirits, weakened each other's hands, and so hindered the great work of their common Master!''

For a few years more it seemed that unity would be stronger than dispute. Wesley had written round to some fifty clergymen proposing a union not of opinions, expressions, or organization but a union of the heart, each agreeing never to speak unkindly or to hinder the work of the others. Only three replied, but several more agreed without feeling the need of a reply.

Many were temporarily more united in the evangelical Gospel than divided by theology: Berridge, the jovial bachelor who was rector of Everton in Cambridgeshire;

Venn, the young son of Wesley's and Whitefield's opponent of 1739; Fletcher of Madeley, an austere Swiss who was Wesley's closest younger confidant and a much loved Shropshire vicar; the Countess of Huntingdon;

Howell Harris, and others. Whitefield himself was closer to the Wesleys than at any time since the early days.

When he returned again from America, "Mr. Whitefield called on me," recorded Wesley on January 31, 1766. ""He breathes nothing but peace and love. Bigotry cannot stand before him, but hides its head wherever he comes."

That summer Lady Huntingdon begged Wesley to hurback from Bristol for conference with Charles and Whitefield. "Our firm union" seemed to be the result.

Wesley recorded on August 17, 1766: ''My brother and I conferred with him every day; and... we resolved, by the grace of God, to go on, hand in hand, through honor and dishonor."

Wesley was convinced that each evangelical leader could complement the others. Brother Charles had been somewhat aloof. He had ceased itinerating and had settled to pastoral oversight of the main Methodist societies, first in Bristol and then in London, where he lived comfortably in the western suburb of Marylebone with his

226 Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

devoted wife and children, two of whom were showing musical genius. Wesley urged his brother to put his shoulder to the wheel again. In a letter from Whitehaven in Cumberland a few weeks before the conference with Whitefield, John wrote humbly, even exclaiming in their private shorthand, 'I do not love God. I never did... . I am only an honest heathen. ...And yet to be so employed of God and so hedged in that I can neither get forward nor backward!"

He urged Charles to continue preaching 'full redemption, receivable by faith alone! consequently to be looked for now.'' Charles had a special gift for bringing hearers to decision: "In connexion I beat you; but in strong, pointed sentences you beat me. Go on, in your own way what God has peculiarly called you to. Press the instantaneous blessing: then I shall have more time for my peculiar calling, enforcing the gradual work."

A Swedish professor, Johan Liden of Uppsala, recorded in his private journal his impressions of Wesley, newly returned from Ireland, as he preached to 4,000 or more in the Methodist chapel at Spitalfields east of the city of London on the text "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he.hath visited and redeemed his people."

"The sermon," noted the professor on October 15, 1769, "'was short but eminently evangelical. He has not great oratorical gift, no outward appearance, but he speaks clear and pleasant. After the Holy Communion, which in all English churches is held with closed doors at the end of the preaching service, when none but the Communicants usually are present, and which here was celebrated very orderly and pathetic, I went forward to shake hands with Mr. Wesley, who already knew my name, and was received by him in his usual amiable and friendly way.

"He is a small, thin old man, with his own long and strait hair, and looks as the worst country curate in Sweden, but has learning as a Bishop and zeal for the glory of

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER III 227

God which 1s quite extraordinary. His talk is very agreeable, and his mild face and pious manner secure him the love of all rightminded men. He is the personification of piety, and he seems to me as a living representation of the loving Apostle John. The old man Wesley is already sixty-six years, but very lively and exceedingly industrious. I also spoke with his younger brother, Mr. Charles

Wesley, also a Methodist minister and a pious man, but neither in learning or activity can he be compared with the older brother."

In the afternoon the professor heard Wesley again at the Foundery, where the crush was almost unbearable as the chapel was smaller. After the service Wesley invited him, he wrote, 'to attend their so-called Private Society, when only Methodists were present, furnished with tickets. First a psalm was sung, and then Mr. Wesley to their: edification spoke about practical Christianity, and en-. couraged them to diligent prayer and celebrating the Lord's Supper as the best means to grow in grace, exhort- | ed them to peace, unity, and love as the distinct character

of a Christian. Afterwards some finance matters were attended to, and the whole was ended with prayer and | song about 8 P.M.

"The song of the Methodists is the most beautiful I ever heard. Their fine psalms have exceedingly beautiful melodies composed by great masters. They sing in a proper way, with devotion, serene mind and charm. It added not a little to the harmonious charm of the song that some lines were sung by only the women, and afterwards the whole congregation joined in the chorus."

That same year of 1769 a twenty-nine-year-old Devonshire vicar named Augustus Toplady, an able Calvinist theologian, translated a sixteenth-century German's exposition of Predestination in its severest form. In 1770

Wesley abridged Toplady's translation in such a way that the argument was reduced to absurdity. In Toplady's eyes, Wesley compounded his crime by adding a mock

228 |Il "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

final word by "the young translator: 'The sum of all is this: One in twenty (suppose) of mankind are elected; nineteen are reprobated. The elect shall be saved, do what they will; the reprobate shall be damned, do what they can, witness my hand, A dig iy | This witty naughtiness enraged Toplady. Toplady was popular with his Devonshire parishioners and was to write, some five years later, one of the finest hymns in the English language, 'Rock of Ages." But when he

'turned to controversy, his devout sentiments were replaced by bile and fury, perhaps partly explained by the ill health which shortened his life.' He damned Wesley in thirty pages of theological odium: ''Pernicious doctrines .

. all the sophistry of a Jesuit and the dictatorial authority of a pope...a lurking, sly assassin... low serpentine cunning .

. dirty subterfuges which sink a divine into the level of an oyster woman." Toplady ended:

"IT would no more enter in a formal controversy with such a scribbler, than I would contend, for the wall, with a chimney sweeper."

Wesley declined to read further than the title page of the "exquisite coxcomb." 'Mr. Augustus Toplady I know well, but I do not fight with chimney sweepers" (who in the 1770s were small boys sent naked up the chimneys, scattering soot on the roof and in the room, and emerging black all over). "He is too dirty a writer for me to meddle with; I should only foul my fingers.'' Charles said he never heard from John an unkind word about Toplady.

Toplady's attack had fouled the air when Wesley's next conference of preachers met in London in August 1770.

Wesley had been much concerned by the spread of the heresy of antinomianism whose adherents taught that those who are saved may behave immorally because they can never lose their salvation. Wesley's brother-in-law

Westley Hall was one of the worst: he had left Patty for a mistress and then advocated polygamy.

Wesley considered that Methodists had 'leaned too much towards Calvinism," which could degenerate into antinomianism. The conference drew up an antidote which appeared in the minutes so loosely worded that even Wesley had to admit afterward that they appeared

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER lll 229 to suggest that a man could be saved by good works, especially if he had never heard the name of Christ.

Lady Huntingdon read the minutes and wept. She decided that Wesley had abandoned 'Free Justification" in favor of heresy, teaching that good works were the ground of salvation in Christ, not its consequence. Lady

Huntingdon had founded a college at Trevecca, Howell Harris' birthplace in Wales, to train Methodist clergy and preachers, whether Calvinist or Arminian. Two of Wesley's nearest disciples, Fletcher and Benson, were president and headmaster. She now ordered that students and staff should 'fully and absolutely disavow and renounce the doctrine contained in Mr. Wesley's minutes, or be expelled. Fletcher and Benson resigned; Fletcher then wrote a "vindication" of the minutes, which heated the controversy higher.

The two sides had broken apart again, yet friendships and cooperation were often stronger than mutual suspicions, and on Sunday, November 18, 1770, this was shown plainly. The news of Whitefield's death and burial in New England at the age of fifty-six had reached London. Whitefield had frequently expressed the desire that Wesley should preach his funeral sermon. Wesley retired to The Limes at Lewisham to write it.

On Sunday afternoon he was summoned ninety min- . utes early to Whitefield's huge chapel on Tottenham

Court Road to find that "an immense multitude was gathered together from all corners of the town." The chapel was full two and a half hours before the advertised time and hundreds stood outside and made such a noise that "I was at first afraid that a great part of the congregation would not be able to hear; but it pleased God to strengthen my voice that even those at the door heard distinctly." All in attendance were in black; many were weeping. Wesley preached a notable and affectionate tribute. a at He ended with an impassioned prayer: "Let the fire of thy love fall on every heart! And because we love thee, let us love one another with a 'love stronger than death.'

Take away from us all 'anger, and wrath, and bitterness; all clamor, and evil speaking.' Let thy spirit so rest upon us that from this hour we may be 'kind to each other,

230 Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

tender hearted; forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us!' "

And then they sang the hymn that Charles had written for the occasion:

Servant of God, well done!

Thy glorious warfare's past.

"Of the two greatest and most useful ministers I ever knew," wrote John Fletcher the next year, 'one is no more. The other, after amazing labors, flies still, with unwearied diligence, through the three kingdoms, calling sinners to repentance Though oppressed with the weight of near seventy years, and the cares of near thirty thousand souls, he shames still, by his unabated zeal and immense labors, all the young ministers in England, perhaps in Christendom. He has generally blown the Gospel trumpet, and rode twenty miles, before most of the pro_ fessors who despise his labors, have left their downy

pillows. As he begins the day, the week, the year, so he \ concludes them, still intent upon extensive services for \the glory of the Redeemer, and the good of souls."

Controversy continued. Without it, the evangelical movement would have been stronger still. The followers of Whitefield were more to be found in vicarages and rectories—though few enough compared with those cler_ gy who despised or hated Methodists—while Wesley's

/ lay followers were beginning to feel closer to their MethOdist preaching houses than to the parish churches, how- \ ever much Wesley might urge them to support both.

Pamphlets flew back and forth. Wesley never descended to personalities or theological abuse. He brushed aside the chimney-sweeper style of several Calvinist authors.

As Dr. Whitehead, recalling conversation with Wesley, could write of these chimney sweepers, "Their railing was much more violent than their reasons were cogent.

Mr. Wesley kept his temper, and wrote like a Christian, a gentleman and a scholar."

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER Il 231

Much of the argument was needless or based on misconception, as young Charles Simeon of Cambridge noted a few years later when he met the elderly Wesley.

"Sir," ventured Simeon, "I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have been sometimes called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your permission I will ask you a few questions, not from impertinent curiosity, but for real instruction.

. Pray Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God if God had not first put it into your heart?'

"Yes, I do indeed," replied Wesley.

"And do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything you can do; and look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Christ?"

"Yes, solely through Christ."

"But, Sir, supposing you were first saved by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own works?"

"No; I must be saved by Christ from first to last."

"Allowing then that you were first turned by the grace of God, are you not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own power?"

"No."

"What then, are you to be upheld every hour and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother's arms?"

"Yes, altogether."

"And is all your hope in the grace and mercy of God to preserve you unto his heavenly kingdom?"

"Yes, I have no hope but in him."

"Then, Sir, with your leave, I will put up my dagger | again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my | justification by faith, my final perseverance; it is, in sub-— stance, all that I hold, and as I hold it: and therefore, if © you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to — be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree."

Chapter Twenty-five The Cry of the Poor and the Slaves On November 27, 1771 Wesley took the stagecoach from London to Norwich, arriving in the evening. He met the society early next morning and learned that many members were "in the utmost want (such a general decay of trade having hardly been known in the memory of man)." In the evening he had a larger congregation than usual. He believed that the widespread hunger was turning many to think about God: when bread was plentiful, they 'never considered whether they had souls or not.""

He therefore preached emphatically on Christ's words:

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added to you" (Matthew 6:33). Faith came first; provision would follow. Wesley's words could be accepted by hungry people because they knew he was doing all that lay in his power to help by action and word.

Recent harvests had been disastrous, inflating the price of corn. That very week King George III, in his Speech from the Throne, had deplored the "distresses of the poor," and the government was bringing in a measure to allow foreign corn to enter British ports without being charged duty. Wesley knew that more fundamental change was required.

He had seen "with my own eyes," in every corner of the land, "'thousands starving because out of work; who could afford only "'a little coarse food every other day."

He knew a woman who had picked up "stinking sprats from a dunghill'"' to feed her children; another who gathered bones left by dogs in the streets, ''making broth of them, to prolong a wretched life." Yet the rich were

"abounding with all the necessaries, the conveniences, the superfluities of life!'

THE CRY OF THE POOR AND THE SLAVES |i 233

Wesley wrote powerfully to the press about the wide gulf between rich and poor, as he had often done before.

He suggested that bread would be cheaper if great quantities of corn were not used in distilling strong drink; meat would not be so scarce and dear if the nobility and gentry would stop the 'amazing waste" allowed in their kitchens and eat less enormous meals. Wesley poured out his suggestions, some of which had been proposed by others.

Visiting the sick in London, he was surprised that they were few; he could "hardly remember so healthy a winter. So wisely does God order all things that the poor may not utterly be destroyed by hunger and sickness together." But he and his congregation at the Foundery were "greatly embarrassed by the necessities of the poor." On New Year's Eve 1771 he led strong prayers for their relief; he urged Methodists to relieve and to evangelize the poor systematically, and encouraged a young man, George Mackie, to organize a body of volunteers, thus founding a charity which continued long into the next century as 'the Christian Community."

Wesley urged men and women to "gain all you can' by rightful means and hard work without harming others, to "save all you can" by avoiding extravagance and needless expense. 'Having first gained all you can, and secondly saved all you can, then give all you can." To save did not mean to hoard. In Wesley's view, 'You may as well throw your money into the sea as bury it in the earth... or in the Bank of England. Not to use, is effectually to throw it away."" The money should provide

"things needful for yourself and your household," and what is left over should be given away to help the poor and to extend the kingdom of God.

Most of Wesley's own income from his books went to relieve distress or support the spread of the Methodist movement. When Parliament imposed a tax on gold and silver plate and he received a pompous demand to send a prompt return of the plate that a clergyman of his eminence was sure to possess, he took some pleasure in a brisk reply: 'Sir: I have two silver teaspoons at London and two at Bristol. This is all the plate which I have at present, and I shall not buy any more while so many

234 Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

around me want bread. I am, sir, your most humble servant, John Wesley."'

Wesley was certain that the nation must change its ways if the country were not to fall under the judgement of God. On the eve of the American war, he wrote a long letter to the Earl of Dartmouth, who had become a strong evangelical Christian through Lady Huntingdon and was secretary of state for the colonies: ''When I consider (to say nothing of ten thousand other vices shocking to human nature) the astonishing luxury of the rich and the profaneness of rich and poor, I doubt whether general dissoluteness of manners does not demand a general visitation. Perhaps the decree is already gone forth from the Governor of the world."

Wesley feared that England was on the verge of revolution. In this same letter written June 14, 1775, he told

Dartmouth: ''As I travel four or five thousand miles a year, I have an opportunity of conversing freely with more persons of every denomination than anyone else in the three kingdoms. I cannot therefore but know the general disposition of the people, English, Scots, and Irish; and I know an huge majority of them are exasperated almost to madness."

Against the background of "a general decay of trade" and an "uncommon dearness of provisions," inflammatory papers spread ''with the utmost diligence in every corner of the land." The people were "ripe for open rebellion. And I assure your Lordship they want nothing but a leader."

No rebellion came, either during the years of the American war or following the French Revolution, and Wesley was afterward hailed by historians as a prime factor in saving Britain. Other scholars contested this, pointing out that Britain's Parliamentary system, even with a restricted vote, made revolution unnecessary,

"screaming out for liberty while they have it in their hands," as Wesley said in 1775. Yet there were times when agitators might have set all Britain in a flame, had not multitudes already found a better hope than political anarchy. The nineteenth-century leaders of "working men,'' as they were called, were largely influenced by Wesleyan chapels and, therefore, abhorred violence.

THE CRY OF THE POOR AND THE SLAVES || 235

Wesley and the early evangelicals had also begun the slow process of bringing the rich and powerful to a more just and compassionate approach to the problems of poverty. The change in the national conscience of Britain between the mid-eighteenth century and the Victorian

Age at all social levels owed much to Wesley.

What is more, he raised his voice against the greatest evil, almost universally condoned, of the age: 'that exeme sum of all villainies, commonly called the slave | trade."

When he had ridden through parts of South Carolina during his time in America and had seen the slaves working in the fields, Wesley was shocked by their conditions and punishments but did not suppose slavery wrong or the slave trade a crime against humanity.

In 1758 while preaching at Liverpool, he dined with a thirty-three-year-old ex-slave trader who had been converted in a storm at sea some years earlier. John Newton, future author of ''How Sweet the Name of Jesus

Sounds," had continued as captain of a slave ship while a Christian, though he hated the work; afterward he said that his tender conscience would have stopped him had he realized that he was engaged in crime rather than in a lawful but unpleasant occupation. An illness forced him ashore. When Wesley met him, he was a tide surveyor and an active disciple of Whitefield rather than of Wesley.

On later visits Newton told of his difficulty in finding a bishop to ordain him (several had refused him, to Wesley's disgust, on the feeble excuse that he did not hold a degree from Oxford or Cambridge). If they discussed the slave trade, Wesley makes no mention of it in his Journal.

In 1764 Newton's autobiography (published anonymously in early editions, as strange as it may seem'), which Wesley read twice, did not attack the slave trade.

Newton was beginning to have moral scruples, but Whitefield had persuaded the Georgia trustees to allow

236 Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

the use of slaves, hitherto banned, although he castigated planters who mistreated them.

On Wednesday, February 12, 1772, Wesley traveled from Dorking to London. On the way down he had read

Sterne's Sentimental Journey. ('For oddity, uncouthness and unlikeness to all the world beside, I suppose the writer is without a rival.'") On the way back he read a very different book, newly published: Some Historical Account of Guinea... with an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, its Nature and Lamentable Effects by Anthony Benezet, an American Quaker of French birth.

The subject was much to the fore because the benevolent Granville Sharp had just brought a suit before the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's Bench to stop the export back to Barbados of a runaway slave who had been recaptured in London. Lord Mansfield's famous judgment that a slave setting foot in England became free would not be given until June.

Wesley was horrified by Benezet's revelations of slavery in the British Colonies in America and the Carribbean. "I read of nothing like it in the heathen world, whether ancient or modern; and it infinitely exceeds, in every instance of barbarity, whatever Christian slaves suffer in Mahometan countries."

In 1774, recalling his own memories but following his frequent custom of abridging other men's labors, Wesley drew on Benezet to write Thoughts on Slavery. Wesley was thus the first voice of importance to be raised in England though Granville Sharp's successful action had been widely reported. Wesley condemned both the slave trade and slavery itself: '"And this equally concerns every gentleman that has an estate in our American plantations; yea, all slave-holders, of whatever rank and degree; seeing men-buyers are exactly on a level with men-stealers.''

His call was uncompromising: ''Give liberty to whom liberty is due, that is, to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature. Let none serve you but by his own act and deed, by his own voluntary action. Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion! Be gentle toward all men; and see that you invariably do with every one as you would he should do unto you."

John Newton read the pamphlet in his Buckingham-

THE CRY OF THE POOR AND THE SLAVES III 237

shire vicarage at Olney. Wesley's words opened Newton's eyes to the crime in which he had been engaged before and after his conversion. He grew determined toi right the wrong if a way should open; eleven years later

Newton was one of the chief influences on the young Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, who as a boy had known and admired him and had turned to him at the crisis of his own conversion. The long campaign for abolition belongs to Wilberforce's story,' but in its early stages Wesley advised and encouraged all who were concerned. As he would write at the age of eightyfour, in a shaky handwriting, to Granville Sharp: "Ever since I heard of it first, I felt a perfect detestation of the horrid Slave Trade."

At the time that he wrote his pamphlet against the slave trade, Wesley's thoughts went much to America, not only because of the sufferings of slaves.

He deplored the dispute between the colonies and the Crown. He warned Prime Minister Lord North and Lord

Dartmouth, the secretary of state, that the colonists would not be easily defeated if they rebelled and implored the cabinet to find a compromise which would hold the colonists to their allegiance. At first, he had sympathized with the colonists, but as they moved nearer to revolution, he contested their case and urged restraint and loyalty. He wrote '""A Calm Address to Our

American Colonies," which was mostly an unacknowledged paraphrase of Dr. Samuel Johnson's "Taxation No Tyranny," thus given a much wider circulation.*

Both the plagiarism and the change of view infuriated young Toplady, who lampooned Wesley in "An Old Fox

Tarr'd and Feather'd"': '"Whereunto shall I liken Mr. John Wesley? and with what shall I compare him? I will liken him unto a low and puny TADPOLE in Divinity, which proudly seeks to dis-embowel an high and mighty WHALE in politics."'

Wesley left Fletcher to answer Toplady. His own con-

238 Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

cern lay with horror of rebellion, the sufferings of the wounded, and the divisions between Christians. On November 12, 1775, now aged seventy-two, he preached at St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green, a sermon which was later known by the title 'Our National Sins and Miseries." In the congregation sat the representative of a provincial newspaper, the Chester Chronicle.

Wesley, wrote the journalist, 'pathetically described the dire horrors of war, the noise of cannon, cities and villages involved with pillars of fire and smoke, garments rolled in blood, the cries of wounded and dying soldiers; the distresses of the widows and the sighs and tears of helpless orphans.

"High and low, young and old, seemed affected with Mr. Wesley's discourse; for scarce a dry eye was seen in that large assembly.

"After the sermon a good collection was made at the church doors for the support of the widows and children of those soldiers who were slain on the plains of America."

Chapter Twenty-six "To the Ends of the Earth"

On a winter's day in the time of great scarcity, Jahn Wesley was taking a short break at the vicarage of Shoreham in Kent with his valued adviser and friend,

Vincent Perronet, who had just passed his seventy-ninth, birthday. The scenes of want and misery which Wesley had witnessed and the controversies which were ana him concern may have temporarily depressed him. At the end of a letter to Charles on immediate matters, he suddenly questioned the whole worth of his ministry.

"I often cry out, Vitae me redde prior! [''Give me back my former life," a quotation from Horace] Let me be again an Oxford Methodist! I am often in doubt whether it would not be best for me to resume all my Oxford rules, great and small. I did then walk closely with God and redeem the time. But what have I been doing these thirty years?"

Yet these moments of depression were rare. His tall, young assistant, Samuel Bradburn, who traveled with him thousands of miles and afterward became one of the most fluent of Methodist preachers, said that he ''never saw him low-spirited in my life, nor could he endure o| be with a melancholy person." The first time that Bradburn met Wesley he "was greatly struck with his cheerfulness and affability. From seeing him only in the pulpit, and considering his exalted station in the Church of Christ, I supposed he was very reserved and austere; but how agreeably was I disappointed when, with a pleasant smile, he took me by the hand and said, 'Beware of the fear of man, and be sure you speak flat and plain in preaching.' It is not easy to express the good effect this advice had on my mind at that time "

If Wesley had grounds for depression, one at least was

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the gradual breakup of his unfortunate marriage to Molly.

She stole or burned his papers, and constantly criticized him in conversation with others, including Toplady and other opponents. In 1771 she left without warning and went to live in Newcastle; within three years she came back to Wesley, but John Hampson of Manchester

(father of Wesley's first biographer) once entered a room _ unannounced to find Molly dragging her husband across

\the floor by his hair.

Wesley tried to humor her and took her on his travels but never understood her troubled spirit. He assumed that her lies about his actions and character were an attempt to vindicate her own. He believed her to be a woman of true faith but poor judgment. Sometimes he wondered whether she had married him for his money derived from his books only to find that his fortune was not for his own use.

She left him finally and set up home with her son. In 1777 the Wesleys met accidentally. Molly said she was willing to return. He agreed, provided that she restored his papers and took no more.

On reflection he wrote to withdraw his offer because it 'would seem an admission that he had been guilty of all her accusations. 'For instance, you have said over and over that I have lived in adultery these twenty years," he told her. She had lied to others that he lay with Sarah

Ryan, the housekeeper at Bristol, and that Sally, Charles' happy and devotedly faithful wife, was his mistress. He challenged Molly: 'Do you believe this, or do you not? If you do, how can you think of living with such a monster?"

She may have made another approach, for in 1778 he wrote an uncompromising letter. "You have laid innumerable stumbling blocks in the way, both of the wise and the unwise. You have served the cause, and increased the number of rebels, deists, atheists; and weakened the hands of those that love and fear God.

"If you were to live a thousand years twice told, you could not undo the mischief which you have done. And until you have done all you can towards it, I bid you

Farewell!'

"TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH" Iii 241

They never met again. When she died in 1781, Wesley was not told of her death for several days nor the place and hour of her funeral. She left him a mourning ring.

The revival had now reached across Britain to an extraordinary extent. The bishops remained aloof, still shackled by the accepted opinions of past years, but the people responded.

The "select societies" of Methodists were small compared with the numbers of those who were influenced.

Thus, in the fast growing town of Manchester the society numbered some sixty persons, but when Wesley formally opened the new chapel on Oldham Street and began the service the next day, Sunday, April 1, 1781, 'our country friends flocked in from all sides. At the Communion was such a sight I am persuaded was never seen at Manchester before: eleven or twelve hundred communicants at once, and all of them fearing God."

Some months later on August 5, 1781 "at the old church in Leeds we had eighteen clergymen and about eleven hundred communicants." Again and again in the 1780s he reported over one thousand at Holy Communion, and when at Birstall 'I administered the Sacrament to fifteen or sixteen hundred communicants"; his discrepancy of a hundred more or less was of no account as Wesley marveled at the eagerness of the people.

He was, however, becoming concerned lest the Methodist movement should fade away at his death. Despite growing pressure, he did not want to found a sect; Methodists might be Anglicans in England and Presbyterians in Scotland or Dissenters. ''The Methodists alone," he wrote, "do not insist on your holding this or that opinion; but they think and let think. Neither do they impose any particular mode of worship. Here is our glorying; and a glorying peculiar to us; what society shares it with us?" He wanted the distinctive system to continue.

When approaching seventy, Wesley wrote to John Fletcher of Madeley, then forty-four: ''What an amazing

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work has God wrought in these kingdoms in less than forty years! And it not only increases throughout England, Scotland and Ireland; nay, it has spread into New

York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and Carolina.

But the wise men of the world say, 'When Mr. Wesley drops, then all this is at an end! And so it surely will unless, before God calls him hence, one is found to stand in his place.' "

He listed the qualities needed and then wrote: "Thou art the man! ...Come out in the name of God! Come to the help of the Lord against the mighty! Come while I am alive and capable of labor. .

. Come and strengthen the hands, comfort the heart, and share the labor of—Your affectionate friend and brother."

Fletcher did not feel he should leave his parish, though he was ready to help Charles should John die first. The preachers wanted Fletcher, and before long it was accepted that he was Wesley's designated successor in the event of his death. But as the years passed, Fletcher's health grew worse, forcing him to spend much time in his native Switzerland. He died prior to Wesley.

Another and a younger clergyman stood at Wesley's side.

Thomas Coke was a little Welshman with a boyish but handsome face and a pleasing smile. He was energetic and able: while serving as a young curate in Somerset, he was made a Doctor of Civil Laws of Oxford and had already been bailiff or mayor of his native Brecon.

He became a Methodist and was dismissed by his vicar in 1777 at the age of thirty. By the next year he was firmly installed as Wesley's assistant. Being an ordained clergy: man, he could officiate at the new chapel on City Road, which had been built (as a church rather than a preaching house) to replace the crumbling Foundery nearby.

The "little Doctor" was soon closely involved with Wesley in problems which would fundamentally influence the future.

"TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH" III 243

When Wesley should die, the ownership and control of the numerous preaching houses and chapels might be disputed. And the annual conference, founded originally to advise him as he decided where to place his preachers, might degenerate into arguments between factions once his overriding personal authority had gone. Moreover, no one knew whether the conference was the master or the servant of Methodists.

While Wesley lived, the issue was scarcely relevant, but in counsel's opinion (obtained by Coke in 1783) the law would not recognize the Methodist Conference in its present state: "consequently there was no central point which might preserve the Connexion from splitting into a thousand pieces after the death of Mr. Wesley."

Wesley was physically fit. As he wrote on his next birthday: 'I am as strong at eighty-one as I was at twenty-one; but abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the head-ache, tooth-ache, and other bodily disorders which attended me in my youth. We can only say, 'The Lord reigneth!' While we live, let us live to him!' " But he could not live forever.

In February 1784 he therefore signed a declaratory deed poll, enrolled in chancery, which invested 100 named preachers as the legal members of 'The Conference of the People called Methodists," with authority to carry out its specified business. Coke had wanted all the preachers to be members; Wesley decided to limit the number to what became known as the Legal Hundred.

Several who were not selected were offended, and a few 'severed their links, while Charles Wesley saw with grief that a long step had been taken toward the eventual emergence of a new denomination, whatever his brother's strong personal love for the Church of England.

That same year of 1784 an international problem caused Wesley to take Methodists an even longer step toward the separation (after his death) which he had never intended.

In 1769 Wesley and the conference set apart two lay preachers for the American colonies; their departure involved nothing new, for they were to behave like the itinerant preachers in Britain and not to administer the Sacraments. Two years later a young itinerant from the

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Midlands, Francis isburts volunteered to join them and sailed for Philadelphia.

His gifts and tireless dedication eventually made him the head of the American Method- .ists as general assistant, but he was a layman. Methodism spread rapidly, especially in remote parts without Anglican clergy or Presbyterian ministers. When the colonies declared independence, Asbury prevented the Methodists from breaking their connection with the conference at home.

By 1784, with the United States now a sovereign nation in equal treaty relations with its former mother country, the religious situation was grievous: scores of clergy who had kept their loyalty to King George had migrated to Canada or the West Indies or Britain. The laity wanted the Sacraments and an ordained ministry of teaching and evangelism. Whatever patriot clergy might do to elect their own bishops (having previously been legally in the diocese of London), Wesley became concerned for the spiritual welfare of Americans—those "few sheep in the wilderness,"" as he somewhat tactlessly called them.

He had slowly formed a plan for an independent Methodist church in America shaped like the Church of England: episcopal, not congregational, in government, though he would not call its leaders "bishops." The liturgy should be Anglican with minor variations. Coke en- \thusiastically supported this daring scheme.

Wesley had been persuaded by a treatise written by Lord King, Lord Chancellor in the reign of George I, that priests or presbyters belonged to the same order in the church as bishops and that therefore a presbyter might ordain in exceptional circumstances. Wesley had not exercised this power. When Charles suspected that his brother contemplated ordaining for America, he consulted Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, who had known him at Westminster and Christ Church. Lord Mansfield rejected the view of Lord King (who had been born a Presbyterian) and told Charles that 'ordination is separation''—if his brother, a presbyter, ordained someone, he would effectively separate himself from the Church of England.

Wesley disagreed. He sketched his plan for the new church, prepared its liturgy, and ordained two elders for America by the laying on of hands. In September 1784

"TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH" |li 245

after the annual conference at Bristol, he laid hands on Thomas Coke and gave him a certificate as general superintendent of the Methodists in America.

Charles was horrified. "I can scarcely yet believe it, that in his eighty-second year my brother, my old intimate friend and companion, should have assumed the epsicopal character, ordained elders, consecrated a bishop, and sent him to ordain the lay preachers in America! 1) was then in Bristol, at his elbow; yet he never gave me | the least hint of his intention. How was he surprised into so rash an action? He certainly persuaded himself that it was right."

Coke sailed for America and ordained Asbury. Both/ eventually assumed the title of bishop to Wesley's dismay. In 1788 he wrote to "my dear Franky" Asbury: "I study to be little; you study to be great. I creep; you strut along...

. Do not seek to be something. Let me be nothing, and 'Christ be all in all.'

"How can you, how dare you, suffer yourselves 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!"

Wesley continued to believe that Methodism should be simply a society of Christians, each loyal to his own church or denomination, meeting together "to fear God and work righteousness."

But he rejoiced in the great spread of the work in America and the West Indies under Coke and Asbury and rejoiced that "the little Doctor" shared his own vision: that if Christians lived holy lives, the heathen would be unable to resist the message of Christ.

"The God of love,' declared Wesley prophetically, "will then prepare his messengers and make a way into the polar regions, into the deepest recesses of America, and into the interior parts of Africa; yea, into the heart of China and Japan, with the countries adjoining to them.

And 'their sound' will then 'go forth into all lands, and their voice to the ends of the earth.' "

Chapter Twenty-seven The Best-Loved Man in England In March 1788 Charles Wesley's health gave cause for anxiety. John, traveling westward, urged him to hire a carriage and "go out for at least an hour a day. I would not blame you if it were two or three. Never mind expense; I can make that up. You shall not die to save charges."

As the news worsened, a stream of advice flowed into Charles' Marylebone home, with avuncular letters to the unruly musical nephews and to Sally, the niece who was almost like a daughter to Wesley. He also ordered Sammy Bradburn, in charge at the new chapel, to summon

Dr. Whitehead and to make Charles exercise at home on a "wooden horse" if he would not go out, and "I earnestly advise him to be electrified; not shocked, but only filled with electric fire.""

Right to the end he urged that Charles could be raised up by prayer, but Charles died on March 29. Owing to a misdirected letter, the sad news reached John in the dans too late for him to travel to London for the funeral.

Three weeks later Wesley was leading the service in the Methodist preaching house at Bolton in Lancashire, which had a well-taught choir of nearly a hundred boys and girls 'selected from our Sunday schools." Wesley had been touched by their singing of the first hymn. The second was listed as ''Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown," Charles Wesley's great hymn on wrestling Jacob; Isaac Watts had said that hymn was "worth all the verses he himself had written,'" which included ''When I Survey the Wondrous Cross."

As Wesley, according to custom, "lined out" the first verse of Wrestling Jacob, he reached the words:

THE BEST-LOVED MAN IN ENGLAND |I| 247

My company before is gone, And I am left alone with thee.

His voice faltered. He burst into tears, sat down in the pulpit, and covered his face with his hands. The congregation wept with him, and instead of song the building was rent by cries. Then he recovered himself and preached and prayed, conducting a service which none would forget.

Wesley himself passed his eighty-fifth birthday in June 1788 with a vigor, except for "some difficulty in reading a small print by candlelight," which was widely remarked upon in an age when the biblical "three score years and ten''" was the normal span "His step was firm," recalled John Hampson, 'and his appearance, till within a few years of his death, vigorous and muscular. His face, for an old man, was one of the finest we have seen. A clear smooth forehead, an aquiline nose, an eye the brightest and most piercing that can be conceived, and a freshness of complexion, scarcely ever to be found at his years, and impressive of the most perfect health, conspired to render him a venerable and interesting figure."

Wesley ascribed his good health and serenity to early rising (helped by an alarm clock which "went off with a thundering noise') and to early prayer followed by the usual preaching at 5 A.M. He loved regular exercise even in old age; he had a level temperament, and ''though I m always in haste,'"" he wrote when still in his seventies,

"I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit." He was also much alone, traveling in his chaise, and thus had time for reading, reflection, and more prayer. By his mid-eighties his friends sometimes felt that he preached and wrote too much, but he would not slacken.

He never fussed, for he believed that Providence ruled

248 Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

every event. Now that Wesley's authority was unquestioned and since his great age and fame commanded instant respect, he shed the reserve which he had imposed on himself to help maintain his leadership; the new generation could enjoy the warmhearted Wesley whereas most of his own contemporaries had only glimpsed the warmth displayed in his concern for his preachers' welfare or in little touches such as his habit of using nicknames or diminutives.

His face and manner had a "cheerfulness mingled with gravity," continued Hampson, 'a sprightliness which was the natural result of an unusual flow of spirits, and was yet accompanied with every mark of the most serene tranquility....In dress, he was a pattern of neatness and simplicity. A narrow, plaited stock, a coat with a small upright collar; no buckles at his knees, no silk or velvet in any part of his apparel; and a head as white as snow gave an idea of something primitive and apostolic:

While an air of neatness and cleanliness defused over his whole person .

. his manner, in private life, was the reverse of cynical or forbidding. It was sprightly and pleasant, to the last degree; and presented a beautiful contrast to the austere deportment of many of his preachers and people, who seemed to have ranked laughter among the mortal sins. It was impossible to be long in his company without partaking his hilarity."

This cheerfulness particularly impressed Alexander Knox of Londonderry, the future theological writer who, at the age of thirty-two in 1789, accompanied Wesley in Ireland. "So fine an old man I never saw!" wrote Knox.

"The happiness of his mind beamed forth in his countenance: Every look shewed how fully he enjoyed 'the gay remembrance of a life well spent.'

"Wherever he went he diffused a portion of his own felicity. Easy and affable in his demanour, he accommodated himself to every sort of company; and shewed how happily the most finished courtesy may be blended with the most perfect peity. In his conversation we might be at a loss whether to admire most his fine classical taste, his extensive knowledge of men and things, or his overflowing goodness of heart. While the grave and serious were charmed with his wisdom, his sportive sallies of innocent

THE BEST-LOVED MAN IN ENGLAND

Ill 249 mirth delighted even the young and thoughtless; and both saw in his uninterrupted cheerfulness, the excellency of true religion.

. In him even old age appeared delightful, like an evening without a cloud."

He loved telling stories, grave or amusing, from ua vast store of memories. His sermons were full of anecdotes which never appeared in print, and when he was in council, if the discussion was not going his way he had a slightly exasperating habit of deflecting it by anecdotes until his counselors conceded his point.

His stories were long remembered. "He was invariably an instructive and edifying guest" is the tradition at Redruth, and while he was always aware of his position and responsibility as a minister of Christ, 'the smartness of his conversation and the raciness of his anecdotes would sometimes set the table 'on a roar.' "

The West Country was proof of the change which had been wrought by Methodism. On his way down on one visit in old age, he had attended a service in Exeter Cathedral and was "'much pleased" by the reverent congregation and fine music. The bishop of Exeter, John Ross, invited him to dinner at the palace where Bishop

Lavington had written his violent pamphlets. Wesley enjoyed the furniture ('not costly nor showy") and the meal ('plain and good but not delicate') and the "genuine, unaffected courtesy of the bishop who will be a blessing to his whole diocese.'"' As they parted the bishop said, "Mr. Wesley, I hope I may sit at your feet in the kingdom of heaven."

On Wesley's last visit to Cornwall in August 1789, he came again to Falmouth, recalling: 'The last time I was here, about forty years ago, I was taken prisoner by an immense mob, gaping and roaring like lions: but how is the tide turned! High and low now lined the street from one end of the town to the other, out of stark love and kindness, gaping and staring as if the King were going by. In the evening I preached on the smooth top of the hill, at a small distance from the sea, to the largest congregation I have ever seen in Cornwall, except in or near

Redruth. ... God moved wonderfully on the hearts of the people, who all seemed to know the day of their visitation."

250 Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

He preached again in Gwennap Pit: "I suppose for the last time; for my voice cannot now command the still increasing multitude. It was supposed they were now more than five-and-twenty thousand. I think it scarce possible that all should hear." At Port Isaac the whole town seemed to be present. "How changed since the time" when the man who had invited him dared not ask him to stay lest the mob pull down the house. As Wesley left the county on Friday, August 28, 1789, he commented, "So there is a fair prospect in Cornwall, from Launceston to Lands End."

He continued his travels, preaching in chapels, parish churches, and in the open air and examining the Methodists classes. ""He would call the name of each of the members,'"" recalled one who was then young, "and they would leave their seat and come before him, and then he would ask them some plain, searching questions and after their answers give them some excellent advice, right to the point, and remarkable for brevity as well as adaptation. ..

. Notwithstanding his great age he was very vigorous, for the moment he had finished his prayer he was off his knees and on his feet."

On Good Friday 1790 he dedicated his last chapel, a large building at Oldham in Lancashire. 'The new house would in no wise contain the congregation but I preached to as many as it would contain." In the congregation was a small boy, John Standering, who recalled the scene in his old age: "'Mr. Wesley was of small stature, aged and wrinkled and feebled in body, and yet his voice was strong. He wore a three-cornered cocked hat, gown and bands. There was an immense concourse of people. After the sermon, Mr. Wesley requested all the children to sit around the altar, and he passed around, laid his hands upon their heads, and offered a prayer for each child."

He was now beginning to fail. He preached in the open air for the last time on October 6, 1790 beneath an ash tree in the churchyard of Rye in Kent. The next week he

THE BEST-LOVED MAN IN ENGLAND Il 251

preached in a great round meetinghouse at Colchester, one of his favorite towns. In the congregation sat Henry

Crabb Robinson, then aged fifteen and afterward wellknown as a diarist and literary man. Robinson recalled how Wesley "stood in the wide pulpit, and on each side of him stood a minister, and the two held him up, having their hands under his armpits. His feeble voice was barely audible; but his reverend countenance, especially his long white locks, formed a picture never to be forgotten.

There was a vast crowd of lovers and admirers. It was for the most part a pantomime, but the pantomime went to the heart."

At 7 a.m. on Wednesday, February 23, 1791, John Wesley, now aged eighty-seven years and nearly nine months, set out in his two-horse chaise from the housebeside the New Chapel on City Road with James Rogers, his faithful assistant sitting beside him and Richard Summers driving.

A rich London merchant named Belson, whom he hardly knew, had lost his young wife and begged Wesley to come down to give spiritual guidance. Wesley had been ill for a few days but recovered and intended to leave in a week for Bristol and Gloucester and later to the north.

As the chaise crossed Westminister Bridge and took the Worthing road through Tooting and over Epsom downs,

James Rogers read to Wesley a new book, the graphic autobiography of an African who had been kidnapped, transported, sold into slavery in Barbados, and then been educated and sent by his master to England, where he was baptized and joined the Royal Navy.

After sixteen miles they reached Kingston House in the country village of Leatherhead at the foot of North

Downs. Wesley spent an hour and a half giving private comfort. Belson had meanwhile sent his servants to call in the villagers, who were sent up to the "spacious dining room, set round with fine mahogany chairs and cov-

Ill "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

ered with a fine carpet. The plain country people," Rogers noted, ''who had come plodding through the mire, seemed rather out of their element; however they all appeared to hear with deep attention'"' when Wesley

'preached from Isaiah 55:6, "Seek ye the Lord while he _ may be found."

This turned out to be Wesley's last sermon. Rogers reflected on the curious fact that despite a vast acquaintance, none of Wesley's friends heard it except himself and Summers, "all the rest being entire strangers."

Wesley spent Wednesday afternoon and night at Mickleham vicarage; he wrote in his shorthand diary for the last time. On the way home next day, they stopped at a little village a few miles south of the Thames to stay with Wesley's dear friend and executor, George Wolff, another prosperous merchant, and his wife—''the lovely family at Balham."

On Thursday Wesley rose at his usual early hour and had Rogers read to him more of the African slave's autobiography. This so stirred him that he dictated a letter to young Wilberforce, in the thick of his Parliamentary fight to abolish the slave trade, to encourage 'your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. ... O be not weary in well doing! Go on, in the name.of God and in the power of his might, till even

American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.""

Wesley had considerable difficulty in holding the pen to sign his name. Rogers was not, however, alarmed until breakfast when Wesley seemed ill. Rogers and Summers took him home at once with Mrs. Wolff, arriving at City Road about 11 a.m. Eilizabeth Ritchie, the woman from the North Country who was now looking after him, was alarmed as she watched him step down from the chaise.

He asked to be left alone for half an hour, and then they brought him mulled wine. He threw it up and they put him to bed.

At first they thought he might recover, but soon John Wesley, who had helped so many to overcome fear of death, lay happily awaiting his departure. He said fare-

THE BEST-LOVED MAN IN ENGLAND Ill 253

well to each of his "'family'' and focused calmly on Christ. 'He is all, he is all," he murmured, and, "We have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Christ."

By March 1 he was sinking, yet that morning he surprised them by starting to sing a hymn. After one verse he lay back exhausted. A little later he asked for pen and ink, but his fingers would not respond.

"Let me write for you, sir," said Elizabeth Ritchie.

"Tell me what you would say."

"Nothing—but that God is with us." y If, as he lay there, Wesley's mind ranged back across

/ his long life, he could reflect that thousands upon thou- , sands had heard from his lips or his pen about Christ,

and many had responded. All over the country and over- | seas his Methodist societies were strengthening Chris- | tians in their daily lives. On an even wider scale, he had helped humble believers toward holiness, and he had set in motion a profound change in the moral attitudes of England, although this would not be obvious for another half century.

He may have known, in his heart, that once he died the frigid attitude of the bishops, the ambitions of some of his followers, and the consequence of his own actions

'hg lead Methodists to the separation he deplored. ethodism itself would then suffer splits and gradually come together again with hope of full reunion at last with the church it had left.

But the movement which he and Charles had begun under God was greater than any one church. It would touch every nation upon earth.

That afternoon of Tuesday, March 1, 1791, he decided to get up. While they were preparing his clothes, ''he broke out," said Elizabeth, "in a manner which considering his extreme weakness astonished us all, in these blessed words: 'I'll praise my Maker while I've breath.' "

John Wesley sang two verses of Isaac Watt's metrical psalm.

They sat him in a chair, but soon he had to lie down again. He was able at first to speak a little and to pray and to give fervent '""Amens" to the prayers of those who knelt at the bedside. Dr. Whitehead; Rogers and his wife

254 \ll "THE WORLD MY PARISH"

and child; Elizabeth Ritchie; and no less than six others, including the two Sally Wesleys, Charles' widow and daughter, crowded into the little room. Once Wesley cried out in a remarkably strong voice, '"The best of all is,

God is with us!"

During the night he often tried to repeat Watt's psalm but could only get out,"T' raise—I'll praise—." By Wednesday morning,\March 2, 1791, the end was plainly near, "and the last word he was heard to articulate," recorded Elizabeth, ''was, 'Farewell!' "

He died about 10 o'clock "without a struggle or a groan." As family and friends knelt round the bed, their loss was swallowed up by "'the ineffable sweetness that filled our hearts as our beloved Pastor, Father and Friend entered his Master's joy."

They laid him in state in the City Road Chapel in an open coffin, a trace.of a smile on his face. Ten thousand people (by contemporary estimate) filed by. The funeral was set for Wednesday, March 9. According to a letter written three days later by Ann ("Nancy") Bolton, one of the intimate correspondents and friends in Wesley's old age, who had hurried from Witney on news of his death, his executors became worried lest a tumult of mourners should press toward the vault behind the chapel at the moment of burial. 'It was agreed very late that night," wrote Nancy, "that he should be interred early next morning, on account of the alarming number thronging in. A most solemn season it was; about 20 couples (or less perhaps) of preachers, executors, etc., with Mrs.

Moore, Mrs. Bradford, Miss Ritchie and myself attended the grave. ..

. 1 afterwards took a very serious breakfast at Mr. Jones'.

"At 10 we went to the Chapel in procession amidst such a crowd I never was witness to, though great peace and quietness by their being warded off by a vast number of constables. A most blessed sermon Doctor Whitehead preached from 2nd Samuel, 3rd chapter, 'Know ye not

THE BEST-LOVED MAN IN ENGLAND Ill 255

an a prince and a great man is fallen in Israel this ay?' uw Memorial services were held in countless cities and villages throughout Great Britain and Ireland, and the presses poured out sermons and articles. In the flood of print perhaps a secular journal, which had often scorned or criticized, put John Wesley in the clearest perspective.

"Where much good is done," wrote The Gentleman's Magazine in a long obituary, 'we should not mark every little excess. The great point in which his name and mission will be honored is this: he directed his labors towards those who had no instructor; to the highways and hedges; to the miners in Cornwall and the colliers in Kingswood. ..

. By the humane and active endeavors of him and his brother Charles, a sense of decency, morals, and religion was introduced into the lowest classes of mankind; the ignorant were instructed; the wretched re- | lieved; and the abandoned reclaimed...

"Though his taste was classic, and his manners elegant, he sacrificed that society in which he was particularly calculated to shine; gave up those preferments which his abilities must have obtained, and devoted a long life in practicing and enforcing the plainest duties.

Instead of being 'an ornament to literature,' he was a blessing to his fellow creatures; instead of 'the genius of the age,' he was the servant of God!''

Notes PART I

WALKING TO GLORY

CHAPTER ONE: Plucked from the Burning 1. The name was often spelled 'Westley' and plainly was pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable.

The family had originated from Westleigh, a hamlet in east Devon near Wellington, which lies just in Somerset.

The ancestors of the Great Duke of Wellington, who was born Arthur Wesley, sprang from the same hamlet, but no blood connection has been proved, despite the nineteenth-century legends.

CHAPTER THREE: The Red Notebook 1. Nehemiah Curnock, in the first volume of his Standard

Edition of Wesley's Journals (1909), wrongly supposed "Varanese" to be Betty Kirkham, not her elder sister Sally. Other writers followed Curnock, but the discovery of a manuscript diary kept by Benjamin Ingham, which contained a key to the Wesley cipher, enabled Dr. Richard P.

Heitzenrater to decipher Wesley's extant manuscript Oxford Diaries for his unpublished thesis "The Oxford

Methodists" in 1972. All books published previously are inaccurate.

2. It was Dean Stanhope of Canterbury's paraphrase of a Kempis which, twenty-three years later, awakened the young slave trader John Newton, to become the famous hymn writer, preacher, and abolitionist. See the present writer's Amazing Grace: John Newton's Story.

CHAPTER FIVE: Our Little Society 1. The old packhorse trails in the Lake District and on Exmoor give some idea of early eighteenth-century roads.

NOTES lI! 257

2. The dots in the letter represent six words clipped from the original manuscript, now in the Public Library, Melbourne, Australia. See The Works of John Wesley, volume

25 (edited by Frank Baker, 1980), p. 346.

CHAPTER SEVEN: Oxford Deserted 1. I have told his story in George Whitefield (1972). In this book on Wesley I can only touch upon Whitefield's early life.

2. Queen Caroline was fifty-two in 1735, had been seriously ill the previous year, and would die two years later;

Wesley may have embroidered the story.

PART II In My Heart and in My Mouth CHAPTER TEN: Strangely Warmed 1. The identification of the exact location and the friend who took him have been disputed, but the best evidence suggests Nettleton Court and Hutton.

2. It is possible that the hymn he wrote was the better known "'And Can It Be that I Should Gain,"' but scholars consider that this was written a little later.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Outcasts of Men 1. The precise location has never been determined.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Signs and Wonders 1. In his cipher diary written that day (June 14, 1739),

Wesley put it at 15,000. In his published Journal (1740) he reduced this to "12 or 14,000." He had no way of accurately counting and almost certainly exaggerated. Later he would reckon that five persons could stand in a square yard. He estimated the size of the area and multiplied accordingly.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: "A Horrid Thing, a Very Horrid Thing"

258 Ill NOTES 1. A royal chaplain and well-known writer who published in the summer of 1739 "A Caution against Religious Delusion.

A Sermon on the New Birth: Occasioned by the Pretensions of the Methodists."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Whitefield Reconciled 1. The date of the letter given in Whitefield's Works I, p.

331, is October 10, but this must be a misreading of the manuscript, now lost.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: 'All Round England"'

1. The manuscript of this letter of August 28, 1744 lies appropriately in the archives of their old school at Charterhouse, Godalming.

2. Actually "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing" is the first line of the seventh verse of Charles Wesley's eighteen-verse hymn titled 'For the Anniversary Day of One's Conversion."" Modern hymn books generally print only verses seven to twelve.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: "Crucify Him!'

1. Wesley saw George II only once at close quarters, in December 1755, when invited by a peer to attend the opening of Parliament. He wrote with some wry amusement:'"I was in the robe-chamber adjoining to the House of Lords when the King put on his robes. His brow was much furrowed with age, and quite clouded with care.

And is this all the world can give even to a king? A blanket of ermine round his shoulders, so heavy and cumbersome he can scarce move under it! A huge heap of borrowed hair, with a few plates of gold and glittering stones upon his head! Alas, what a bauble is human greatness! And even this will not endure."

CHAPTER TWENTY: Cornwall 1. In the nineteenth century, Gwennap Pit was restored, on a smaller scale, as a memorial to Wesley and the early

Cornish Methodists.

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