Defender of the Faith
CHAPTER SIX
Defender of the Faith In the mean time I cannot but observe how signally God hath honoured those two Brethren (the Wesleys) by calling them forth, and enabling them, with great
Power, to preach the Truth of the Gospel as it is in Jesus, and by setting His Seal to their Ministry. And am persuaded you will join with me in Prayer to our
Lord, that He would strengthen and bless them more and more, and protect them from evil Men and evil
Angels; and that they may be stedfast, immoveable, always abounding in the Work of the Lord, forasmuch as they know that their Labour is not in vain in the Lord.
Susanna Wesley ve Bees last five years of Susanna's life, 1738-1742, coincided with the beginnings of the Methodist Revival, and all the turbulent controversy which its advent provoked. The Revival came as a personal crisis for Susanna, not least because her sons were divided in their attitudes towards it, and appealed to the arbitrament of her religious insight and sound common sense. Its emphasis upon religious experience, moreover, probed her personal convictions to their depths, and offered her a chance of entering more fully than ever before into the riches of her ancestral Puritanism.
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Susanna, as will appear, was by no means uncritical of the Revival in its more extravagant tendencies. She was nearly seventy when it began, and viewed it through the wise and experienced eyes of 'an old disciple', as George Whitefield described her when he visited her during this period.
It says much for her, therefore, that though she was now an aged widow, who had found her husband's death in 1735 a hard blow to bear, she did not react towards the new movement with the natural and rooted conservatism of age. Once convinced that the new movement was inspired by the Spirit, she welcomed it positively and creatively, and indeed played a modest but decisive part in its course.
The first way in which the Revival impinged upon Susanna's life was by causing a rift within her family. Their religious experience of 1738 sharply divided John and Charles Wesley from their elder brother Samuel. Six letters written by Susanna have survived from the period 1738 to 1742, all of them concerned with the theology and experience of the Revival. Five were written to Charles, in reply to his passionate advocacy of the new teaching, and one to his brother Samuel, who had written his mother a fierce dissuasive from the Revival and all its works. Susanna's misgivings about some of the claims which John and Charles were making emerge clearly in this correspondence; but so does her basic acceptance of the Revival as the work of God's Spirit.
Susanna, chiefly through her son John, was rapidly brought into touch with the events which shaped the begininngs of the Methodist movement, from May 1738 onwards.
John Wesley's classic description of the experience which was to prove a turning point in his life and work, sees it in terms of his personal realization of God's forgiveness and of the reality of justifying faith: 'I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ
* See George Whitefield's Journals (Banner of Truth Trust 1960), p. 212.
Whitefield visited Susanna at Salisbury on the 13th February, 1739.
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alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.'! So he describes what happened to him at a quarter to nine on the evening of May 24th, 1738.
A fortnight later he rode down to Salisbury to bid farewell to his mother before embarking on a journey to the Moravian settlement at Herrnhut in Germany. Significantly, he read to her on this occasion, 'a paper . .
. containing a short account of what had passed in my own soul till within a few days of that time.' Wesley was no doubt gratified and enheartened at her reaction, for, 'She greatly approved it, and said she heartily blessed God, who had brought me to so just a way of thinking.'? Dr Martin Schmidt, in his fine and searching study of Wesley's theological development, plays down the importance of John's act in laying before his mother this chart of his spiritual odyssey. It is undeniable that he had for many years placed himself under her spiritual direction ; but now, apparently, the leading-strings were severed.
Wesley, in Dr Schmidt's judgement, 'no longer submitted theological questions to her. She only heard about his conversion from the Hutton family in an account which was distorted and tendentious, and it was for this reason that John read his own version of it to her. This pleased her, and she thanked God for her son's experience of salvation, yet it is remarkable that she did not recognize this document when it was sent to her by '"'a relation'', accompanied by an unfavourable judgement about it. Furthermore, she agreed without reservation with this adverse opinion. Therefore the contents and the circumstances did not suggest to her that this was about John, and he himself was extremely surprised about this. This experience is sufficient to show how far she was now removed from him and his problems.'®
1 Wesley, Journal, I, 476.
@ 2 Ibid., II, 219.
3M. Schmidt, John Wesley, A Tetogeal Biography, 1, 271f.
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Wesley's own account of these events in his Journal, to which Dr Schmidt refers without quoting the vital passages, suggests that there has been a serious misreading of the evidence at several points. First, there is no trace of a suggestion in Wesley's account that he read this paper to his mother simply to set the record straight and disabuse her mind of the false impression she had received from a distorted version of the events. That came later. Secondly, the Journal makes plain that the 'relation', (probably Samuel
Wesley, as Dr Schmidt, following Curnock, infers), did not send Susanna the actual paper she had heard John read, but his own highly-coloured paraphrase of it. Finally, John was not "extremely surprised' that his mother did not recognize him in Samuel's account of the paper he had read to her.
He merely reflected philosophically that it is hard to give an unbiased version of one's opponent's views, and admitted that he himself had not even recognized his own account in the distorted form in which Susanna had received it and reported it to him! Since this point is an important one, which bears closely on the whole relationship of mother and son, it will be well to quote the complete extract from the Journal, which Dr Schmidt unfortunately fails to do. Under the date Wednesday, 13th June 1739, Wesley records:
In the morning I came to London; and after receiving the Holy Communion at Islington, I had once more an opportunity of seeing my mother, whom I had not seen since my return from Germany.
I cannot but mention an odd circumstance here. I had read her a paper in June last year, containing a short account of what had passed in my own soul till within a few days of that time.
She greatly approved it, and said she heartily blessed God, who had brought me to so just a way of thinking. While I was in Germany a copy of that paper was sent (without my knowledge) to one of my relations. He sent an account of it to my mother, whom I now found under strange fears concerning me, being convinced 'by an account taken from one of my own papers that I had greatly erred from the faith'. I could not conceive what paper that should be; but, on inquiry, found it was the same I had
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read her myself.—How hard is it to form a true judgement of any person or thing from the account of a prejudiced relator! Yea, though he be ever so honest a man—for he who gave this relation was one of unquestionable veracity. And yet by his sincere account of a writing which lay before his eyes was the truth so totally disguised that my mother knew not the paper she had heard from end to end, not I that I had myself wrote.
If, then, John did not read this paper to his mother to counter the damage done by a biased account of his conversion, why did he read it? Here we must look closely at the nature of the document itself. In Dr Schmidt's narrative, we are told, 'She only heard about his conversion from the Hutton family in an account which was distorted and tendentious, and it was for this reason that John read his own version of it to her.' As we have seen, however, there is no ground for thinking that Susanna was left, initially, to learn of her son's experience by second-hand report. She had it direct from John himself two weeks after the event. What she apparently heard then, moreover, was not simply an account of what happened at Aldersgate Street on 24th May 1738, but something far more important and comprehensive. In John's own words, it was 'a short account of what had passed in my own soul till within a few days of that time'. John had had two weeks in which to reflect on the crisis of Aldersgate
Street, to look back, and to read the whole story of his life in the light of it. The short account he read to his mother was a comprehensive attempt, in small compass, at what
Richard Baxter's editor calls a 'Self-analysis and Lifereview',? in true Puritan fashion. It was natural, surely, for John to read this account to his mother, for she had been the sovereign influence in his early spiritual development, and his constant mentor in his mature religious life.
One's first instinct is to sigh for a sight of this paper, which John presented, in some sense surely, for his mother's
1 Wesley, Journal, II, 219-20. My italics in last seven words of quotation.
2 See The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, ed. J.
M. Lloyd Thomas, chapter X.
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approval and confirmation. In it he would want above all to knit up the ravelled skein of his spiritual development, and integrate it into an ordered and coherent account. But could any account be authentic which failed to commend itself to the keen mind and spiritual perception of the mother who had so largely shaped his spirit? What was the verdict of the one who had been, through all the years, 'more particularly careful of the soul of this child'? This occasion, which Dr Schmidt dismisses rather hrusquely as part of an episode which merely underlines the gulf between mother and son, is on the contrary profoundly significant of the depth of their relationship. The whole sequence of events cries out for attention, but has seldom been given it.+ If only we could lay our hands on Wesley's paper!
It would seem, however, that we have this very document —or something remarkably like it—preserved for us by Wesley himself. It is perhaps not generally realized that the best-known passage in the Journal, the Aldersgate Street narrative, is not an isolated account, though frequently quoted as though it were. It is in fact paragraph 16 of an eighteen-point statement, in which Wesley summarily describes the course of his spiritual development during the thirty-five years of his life. He prefaces this long entry for the 24th May, 1738, with the words: 'What occurred on Wednesday the 24th, I think best to relate at large, after premissing what may make it the better understood. Let him that cannot
* Dr J. E. Rattenbury's The Conversion of the Wesleys (1938), makes no reference to John's reading to his mother this account of his spiritual life up to and including 24th May 1738; nor does Mrs Elsie Harrison in her Son to Susanna,
(1937), the theme of which is the decisive part Susanna played in her son's development. Two works which do place the incident in the context of Susanna's formative influence on John are, S. G. Dimond, The Psychology of the Methodist Revival (1926), p. 56, and M. R. Brailsford, A Tale of Two Brothers
(1954), P. 121. Both, however, limit the scope of John's paper, Dr Dimond by describing it as merely, 'a full account of his evangelical conversion', and Miss
Brailsford by calling it, 'a brief account of the religious experiences through which he had been passing since his return to England.' Wesley's own description, however, gives no warrant for such temporal limitation of the period with which the paper deals.
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receive it ask of the Father of lights that He would give more light to him and me.' His words imply a certain diffidence in presenting this personal document to the reader. A similar, though heightened, diffidence may be inferred from his action in giving an account of himself to his mother. The contents of this excursus in the Journal certainly tally with the description he gave of the 'paper' he read to his mother, namely, 'a short account of what had passed in my own soul till within a few days of that time' (i.e. 8th June 1738).
The first paragraph of Wesley's account is of peculiar interest for an understanding of Susanna's part in his religious training and development. It deals with his early years, until he was about ten and before he was sent away to school. During these years at Epworth, his mother's influence was paramount. Her character, teaching, and devotion helped to shape his soul, and the little private boarding school which she in effect created, provided the milieu for her children's growth in the Christian life. Wesley describes these years as follows:
1. I believe, till I was about ten years old I had not sinned away that 'washing of the Holy Ghost' which was given me in baptism ; having been strictly educated and carefully taught that I could only be saved 'by universal obedience, by keeping all the commandments of God'; in the meaning of which I was diligently instructed. And those instructions, so far as they respected outward duties and sins, I gladly received and often thought of.
But all that was said to me of inward obedience or holiness I neither understood nor remembered. So that I was indeed as ignorant of the true meaning of the law as I was of the gospel of Christ.+ It is essential to note carefully exactly what Wesley says here. The strictness of the religious upbringing of the Wesley children has already been demonstrated from Susanna's own account. Again, the consistent stress in Susanna's theology and devotion upon complete obedience to God's will and 1 Wesley, Journal, I, 465.
165,
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commands, has already been amply demonstrated. The heart of the paragraph lies in Wesley's distinction between 'outward duties and sins', and 'inward obedience or holiness'.
The teaching he received under the first head, he had readily accepted; but that which related to 'inward obedience or holiness' had made no deep or lasting impression on him. So at least it seemed as he looked back from the vantage-point of his present profound experience of the inward working of God's grace. It is essential to note that he does not say that teaching about 'inward obedience or holiness' was not given. His words are: 'But all that was said to me of inward obedience or holiness I neither understood nor remembered.'
It may be that we can detect here, behind Wesley's qualifying 'But', an implied criticism of the bias of his religious education at Susanna's hands. We must allow fully for the circumstances in which he writes,—a quarter of a century after the events, in the full flush of a vivid religious experience; and telescoping ten years of his life into a paragraph. It is notoriously difficult to give an objective account of one's childhood impressions, and Wesley's circumstances hardly made for objectivity. Nevertheless, Susanna's own later misgivings over the expression which John and Charles gave to their experience of 1738, provides added ground for raising the question: had she really stressed, in her teaching of the children, the centrality of personal faith in Christ and of the justifying grace of God? The question is significantly reinforced by paragraph 11 of Wesley's account of his spiritual progress up to May 1738. While at Oxford, he had come to see that obedience to God's law must include inward holiness of heart and mind, and he had made a fierce but unsuccessful effort to conform to the standard. Georgia had taught him that his true need was for a living faith, but he did not yet understand what that involved. His meeting with the Moravian, Peter Bohler, on his return to England in January 1738, opened his eyes—after a struggle. When
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Bohler 'affirmed of true faith in Christ (which is but one) that it had those two fruits inseparably attending it,
'dominion over sin and constant peace from a sense of forgiveness', I was quite amazed, and looked upon it as a new gospel. If this was so, it was clear I had not faith. But I was not willing to be convinced of this. Therefore I disputed with all my might, and laboured to prove that faith might be where these were not: for all the scriptures relating to this
I had been long since taught to construe away: and to call all Presbyterians who spoke otherwise.') 'Long since,' says Wesley.
As long ago as those first ten years at Epworth? we might rejoin.
The question has disturbing implications, which may be spelled out as follows: was the central Reformation doctrine of justification by the free grace of God one which had been relegated to that part of Wesley's parents' Nonconformist past which they preferred to forget? Wesley's own account contains a hint of a negative answer, when he goes on to say that, convinced by Bohler of the need for this kind of faith, he resolved to seek it, first, 'By absolutely renouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my own works or righteousness; on which I had really grounded my hope of salvation, though I knew it not, from my youth up.'? "Though
I knew it not'—here at least is an indication that Susanna had never inculcated any doctrine of justification by works.
Wesley's evidence is supported by various passages in her own writings. Two other possibilities remain open. Had the doctrine of justification by grace and the need for personal faith—both so central to the Puritan tradition—become overlaid or attenuated in Susanna's teaching? It seems unlikely in view of the evidence of her own writings. Alternatively, did the very system of rules which she operated speak louder to her children's hearts and minds than her explicit
1 Wesley, Journal, I, 471. My italics.
2 Ibid., I, 472. The first italics are Wesley's, the second mine.
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teaching on divine love? Did they feel themselves under the Law, even though they were taught that they were under grace? Possibly ; though of the centrality of grace in Susanna's theology there can be no real doubt at all.
Susanna certainly knew the meaning of justification by grace through faith. She knew it, of course, from the Articles and Homilies of the Church of England, where it had received classic expression. She knew it too from the tradition of Puritan piety in which she was bred. Her favourite Puritan author, Baxter, expounds the doctrine in typical fashion:
'The sinner hath already found himself to be a stranger and enemy to God, under the guilt of sin and curse of his law, and knows there is no coming to him in peace till his case be altered ; and, therefore, having before been convinced, also, that only Christ is able and willing to do this, and having heard his mercy in the Gospel freely offered, his next act is, secondly, to accept of Christ for Saviour and Lord.' Ail the personal warmth of Puritan piety is found in Baxter's insistence that this accepting of Christ is one which engages the affections: 'I call it an affectionate accepting, though love seem another act quite distinct from faith, and if you take faith for assent only, so it is; yet I take it as essential to that faith which justifies. To accept Christ without love, is not justifying faith. Nor doth love follow as a fruit, but immediately concur; nor concur as a mere concomitant, but essential to a true accepting."!
It was in this tradition of devotion and theology that Susanna had been reared. Its traces may be found scattered through her own meditations and expositions, where she speaks, typically, of the need for "a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ', and of her longing for a greater 'love for our dear Redeemer.'? It is true that in her exposition of the * Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest, in Practical Works, ed. Orme, XXII,
192-3. For Susanna's quotation of Baxter on faith, in a letter to John Wesley of 1732, see Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family, p. 15.
* See above, p. 151f and Chapter Five, passim.
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Creed (1710), she gives a rather tepid and intellectual definition of faith: 'By faith in Christ is to be understood an assent to whatever is recorded of him in Holy Scripture.'}
Yet in her letters she reveals a much fuller and richer understanding of faith as essentially personal trust in Christ.
Writing to John in 1735, she urges 'the knowledge and faith of Jesus Christ' to be absolutely necessary for salvation, and continues: 'By faith, I do not mean an assent only to the truths of the gospel concerning him, but such an assent as influences our practice; as makes us heartily and thankfully accept him for our God and Saviour upon his own conditions.
No faith below this can be saving.'? Finally, we may quote another letter written before Susanna was confronted with the crisis of the Revival. Writing in 1737, to Mrs Alice Peard of Tiverton, she extols God's 'redeeming love and free grace', and expounds the meaning of justification: 'I verily think one reason why Christians are so often subject to despond is, that they look more to themselves than to their Saviour ; they would establish a righteousness of their own to rest on, without adverting enough to the sacrifice of Christ, by which alone we are justified before God. But I need not say more, considering to whom I am writing; only give me leave to add one more request, which is, that you would commit your soul, in trust, to Jesus Christ, as God incarnate, in a full belief that he is able and willing to save you. Do this constantly, and I am sure he will never suffer you to perish.'®
Against this kind of background, Susanna's acceptance and understanding of John's experience of 1738 are much more readily intelligible. Her approval of the paper he read to her on 8th June 1738, no doubt helped to fire him to preach on Justification by Faith in his University Sermon at Oxford three days later. In a memorable exposition of Ephesians 2:8,
1 Clarke, Wesley eee II, 47.
= ®tbids, LN; 27:
3 Ibid., II, 106.
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Wesley sounded the trumpet-call of the Revival in terms which, though more passionate and explicit than those used by Susanna, were thoroughly in line with her beliefs. As in her writings, faith is 'not barely a speculative, rational thing, a cold lifeless assent, a train of ideas in the head; but also a disposition of the heart'. There is the same centrality given to the atoning work of Christ: 'Christian faith is then, not only an assent to the whole gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance on the blood of Christ; a trust in the merits of his life, death, and resurrection ; a recumbency upon him as our atonement and our life, as given for us, and living in us; and, in consequence hereof, a closing with him, and cleaving to him, as our 'wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption', or, in one word, our salvation'.! Had John's mother been present in the congregation that was scandalized at his discourse that day, she might well have been uncomfortable in hearing him maintain, with scant qualification, that the justified man does not commit sin; but she would hardly have quarrelled with his exposition of saving faith.
Susanna's misgivings were roused, not by the message of justifying faith, but by the claims made in the Revival movement that every Christian should be assured of his forgiveness, and be able to specify the precise moment when he was granted justifying faith. One may diagnose her misgivings as evidence of a lowering of spiritual temperature caused by the transition from Puritanism to the Age of Reason. Alternatively, one may prefer to see here Susanna's fundamental reverence, her reticence in speaking of the ways of God, and her refusal to generalize from the experience of one soul and assert that He must deal similarly with all. We see her grappling with what to her were the doctrinal extravagances of the Revival in three letters she wrote to Charles Wesley in the period 1738-40. Her courteous and measured protests were provoked by that strain of ex1 Wesley, Works, V. 9.
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tremism in Charles's character, which displayed itself not only in the splendid hyperbole of his hymns, but also in some unbalanced statements of the doctrines which he preached. In her first letter, written in reply to Charles and dated 19th October 1738, she rejoices in his new experience of the saving power of Christ: 'Blessed be God, who showed you the necessity you were in of a Saviour to deliver you from the power of sin and Satan (for Christ will be no Saviour to such as see not their need of one), and directed you by faith to lay hold of that stupendous mercy offered us by redeeming love.' She ends, emphatically, with a doxology:
'No, there is none but Christ, none but Christ, who is sufficient for these things. But, blessed be God, he is an all-sufficient Saviour! and blessed be his holy name, that thou hast found him a Saviour to thee, my son! O let us love him much, for we have much forgiven.'! Her final sentence, however, shows that she is puzzled by one aspect of Charles's letter: 'I would gladly know what your notion is of justifying faith, because you speak of it as a thing you have but lately received.'
Susanna was even less satisfied by her son's explanation of his position, and on 6th December 1738, writes with typical forthrightness :
I think you are fallen into an odd way of thinking. You say that till within a few months you had no spiritual life, nor any justifying faith.
Now this is as if a man should affirm he was not alive in his infancy, because, when an infant, he did not know he was alive.
All, then, that I can gather from your letter is, that till a little while ago you were not so well satisfied of your being a Christian as you are now.
Having transposed Charles's no doubt highly dramatic account of his recent experience into these sober and muted tones, Susanna goes on to welcome most cordially the new
1 Clarke, Wesley Family, II, 116, correcting the 1823 edition, which reads, 'for we have much #o be forgiven.' (Italics mine.)
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depth of Christian life into which he has clearly entered:
'I heartily rejoice that you have now attained to a strong and lively hope in God's mercy through Christ. Not that I can think that you were totally without saving faith before: but it is one thing to have faith, and another thing to be sensible we have it. Faith is the fruit of the Spirit, and the gift of God; but to feel or be inwardly sensible that we have true faith, requires a farther operation of God's Holy Spirit.'
Her closing paragraph is an index of her spirituality and common sense. She brings Charles back from preoccupation with his religious feelings, or lack of them, to the overarching sovereignty of God and the certainty of His promises:
"You say you have peace, but not joy in believing : Blessed be God for peace! May this peace rest with you! Joy will follow, perhaps not very closely; but it will follow faith and love. God's promises are sealed to us, but not dated: therefore patiently attend his pleasure; he will give you joy in believing. Amen.'! 'God's promises are sealed to us, but not dated': there, in a word, is the true Puritan's resolute submission to the sovereign will of God.
In this last letter, Susanna assures Charles that they are at one in their understanding of justifying faith, which she defines as 'trusting in Jesus Christ, or the promises made in him'. The main point on which she differs from him is, in her own words, that 'I do not judge it necessary to know the exact time of our conversion'.* By March 1739, however, her doubts about the Revival had been renewed and intensified by a detailed and hostile account of it sent her by her eldest son, Samuel. Samuel was as inflexible a High Churchman as his father had been, and believed the preaching of John and Charles to be subversive both of sound doctrine and good order in the Church. In two letters he communicated his worst fears to his mother. Susanna had no hesitation in 1 Clarke, Wesley Family, II, 116.
? Clarke, Wesley Family, II, 117.
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agreeing with his condemnation of those who sought assurance of salvation by 'pretensions to dreams, visions, &c.', or to 'new revelations'. Such claims were tantamount to rejection of the divinely-appointed means of assurance, namely, the "Holy Scriptures, wherein all may find the rules by which we must live here and be judged hereafter, so plainly laid down, "that he who runs may read"'; and it is by these laws we should examine ourselves, which is a way of God's appointment, and therefore we may hope for his direction and assistance in such examination'. There was sound
Puritan teaching behind this insistence on bringing thevagaries of individual experience to the touchstone of Scripture, and her reference to 'rules' and 'laws' had more to do with a concern for objectivity than with legalism. She then expounds her own doctrine of assurance, which involves an examination of one's heart and life in the light of 'the conditions of the gospel covenant'. It is a delusion to hope for assurance on any other terms: if, upon a serious review of our state, we find that in the tenor of our lives we have or do now sincerely desire and endeavour to perform the conditions of the gospel covenant required on our parts, then we may discern that the Holy Spirit hath laid in our minds a good foundation of a strong reasonable, and lively hope of God's mercy through Christ.
This is the assurance we ought to aim at, which the apostle calls 'the full assurance of hope', which he admonishes us to 'hold fast unto the end'.
This assurance of hope is not the same as the confident assurance of faith, involving peace with God and a conscious experience of forgiveness, which we find in the teaching of the Wesleys and in Puritanism. Assurance, or 'a hope of God's mercy through Christ', is inferred from one's own sincerity of heart and life in seeking to obey God's commands. This process is only Part One of Wesley's doctrine, which he denotes by. the title 'the witness of our own spirit'.
Susanna does not envisage the direct 'witness of God's Spirit',
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applied by His grace to the heart of the believer. Both are requisite in Wesley's understanding of the New Testament, and may occur without any visionary experiences. On the basis of the inaccurate account she had received of her sons' teachings, however, Susanna naturally concludes that "the consequence of encouraging fanciful people in this new way of seeking assurance (as all do that hear them tell their silly stories without rebuke), I think, must be turning them out of God's way into one of their own devising'. She wrote this letter from Devon, but was about to remove to London, where she hoped 'to see Charles; and then I can fully speak my sentiments of their new notions, more than I can do by writing'.
Her doubts and suspicions about the work John and Charles were doing, were unexpectedly assuaged by her meeting with George Whitefield, who paid her a visit before she left Devon, and did much to set her mind at rest.
Whitefield's visit was a short one, interposed during a tour of the South-West in which he was trying to raise money for the Orphan House in Georgia. Susanna describes their meeting, at which she questioned Whitefield closely about her sons' 'way of living', expressed her dislike of their itinerant preaching, and voiced her fears that they were intent on making innovations in the Church: 'You have heard, I suppose,' she wrote to Samuel, that Mr Whitfield is taking a progress through these parts to make a collection for a house in Georgia for Orphans, and such of the natives' children as they will part with to learn our language and religion. He came hither to see me, and we talked about your brothers. I told him I did not like their way of living, wished them in some place of their own, wherein they might regularly preach, &c. He replied, I could not conceive the good they did in London; that the greatest part of our clergy were asleep, and that there never was a greater need of itinerant preachers than now. Upon which a gentleman that came with him said that my son Charles had converted him, and that my sons spent all their time in doing good. I then asked Mr Whitfield
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if my sons were not for making some innovations in the church; which I much feared. He assured me they were so far from it, that they endeavoured all they could to reconcile dissenters to our communion; that my son John had baptized five adult presbyterians in our own way on St Paul's day, and he believed would bring over many to our communion.
Susanna was impressed with Whitefield's sincerity, and somewhat reassured by his report of what John and Charles were doing. She would have liked, however, a longer talk with him, and seems to have found his enthusiasm a trifle naive: "His stay was short, so I could not talk with him so much as I desired. He seems to be a very good man, and one who truly desires the salvation of mankind. God grant that the wisdom of the serpent may be joined to the innocence of the dove!'?
Before Susanna wrote the last three letters in this series, she had experienced a conscious sense of the pardon of her sins, while receiving Holy Communion, in August 1739.2 No doubt this experience made her more receptive towards the theology of the Revival and the preaching of her sons. Other factors reinforced this personal influence. She was now living with John Wesley at the Foundery in Moorfields, the headquarters of the Methodist work in London, and so was in constant touch with Methodist faith and practice at first hand. Her eldest son, Samuel, who had continually warned her of the dangers he thought patent in the movement to which John and Charles had set their hands, died on 6th November 1739. She felt the loss of "Son Wesley', as she called him, very deeply, and confided in a letter to Charles dated 29th November 1739: 'Your brother was exceeding dear to me in this life, and perhaps I have erred in loving him too well. I once thought it impossible to bear his loss, but none know what they can bear till they are tried.'
1 Clarke, Wesley Family, I, 110-1 1. For Whitefield's own account of this meeting, see George Whitefield's Journals (1960), p. 112.
2 See below, p. 197f.
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Physical illness had also taken its toll of her strength: 'I cannot write much, being weak. I have not been downstairs above ten weeks, though better than I was lately.'*
Her last two letters to Charles show that bereavement and illness had had a depressive effect on her. She seems a frail old lady now, much less sure of herself, even more dependent on her sons, and inclined to reproach herself for a lack of real faith. In her middle years, when physical strain had induced a bout of accidie, she could diagnose her condition with unerring insight. Now, an aged widow, with her children for the most part gone from her; she simply has not power to do it. Her letter, written from the Foundery on 27th December 1739, is pathetic in its tone:
Dear Charles, You cannot more desire to see me than I do to see you. Your brother, whom I shall henceforth call Son Wesley, since my dear
Sam is gone home, has just been with me and much revived my spirits. Indeed, I have often found that he never speaks in my hearing without my receiving some spiritual benefit. But ~his visits are seldom and short, for which I never blame him, because
I know he is well employed, and, blessed be God, hath great success in his ministry.
She no longer has any qualms about the work John is doing.
Her sole regret now is that she sees so little of him. In her next sentence, she confesses her extrerne sense of dependence on her two sons: 'But, my dear Charles, still I want either him or you; for, indeed, in the most literal sense,
I am become a little child and want continual succour.'
What of the consolations of her religion? These are real, but she feels, even so, that she has fallen from the spiritual
heights to which she was once accustomed. Once solitude had helped her to grow in grace and in the knowledge of God.
Now she needs the 'comfort and support' of 'religious conversation', and the companionship of like-minded friends.
She can only regard this as a symptom of spiritual decline, * Quoted by Eliza Clarke, Susanna Wesley, p. 200f.
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a pointer to her lack of faith: 'Formerly I rejoiced in the absence of company, and found the less I had of creature comforts the more I had from God. But alas! I am fallen from that spiritual converse I once enjoyed. And why is it so?
Because I want faith. God is an omnipresent unchangeable God, in whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning; the fault is in myself, and I attribute all mistakes in judgement and all errors in practice to want of faith in the blessed
Jesus.' When she goes on to reproach herself for being 'poor and low in faith and love', we must surely take full account of the lowering effects of age and illness and bereavement.
Her letter was interrupted by the coming of visitors, who helped to lift her depression and alter the tone of her letter: 'I have been prevented from finishing my letter. I complained I had none to converse with me on spiritual things, but for these several days I have had the conversation of many good Christians, who have refreshed in some measure my fainting spirits; and though they hindered my writing, yet it was a pleasing and I hope not an unprofitable interruption they gave me.' She finishes on a strong note, with more than a trace of her old fire, as she gives robust expression to her support for the work her sons are doing:
'I hope we shall shortly speak face to face; and I shall then, if God permit, impart my thoughts more fully. But then, alas! when you come, your brother leaves me. Yet that is the will of God, in whose blessed service you are engaged, who has hitherto blessed your labours, and preserved your persons. That he may continue so to prosper your work, and protect you both from evil, and give you strength and courage to preach the true gospel in opposition to the united prayers of evil men and evil angels, is the hearty prayer of, dear Charles, Your loving mother, Susanna Wesley.'?
The last personal letter which has survived from Susanna was written to Charles from the Foundery on 2nd October
1 Printed in Eliza Clarke, Susanna Wesley, pp. 201-2.
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1740.1 Charles had evidently sent her a letter criticizing her theological position, and his words had served only to strengthen her self-condemnation and to deepen her spiritual depression. At the level of piety and personal devotion,
Susanna accepts his strictures almost unreservedly: 'I thank you for your kind letter; I call it so, because I verily believe it was dictated by a sincere desire of my spiritual and eternal good. There is too much truth in many of your accusations: nor do I intend to say one word in my own defence, but rather choose to refer all things to Him that knoweth all things.' No doubt experience had taught her the wisdom of not getting involved in protracted theological controversy with her voluble son. On the other hand, we may question
Charles's pastoral and filial sense of fitness in dealing with his mother in this heavy-handed and unfeeling way, when she was clearly at a low ebb spiritually. The effect of his criticisms in deepening her depression may be seen in her next paragraph: "This I must tell you: you are somewhat mistaken in my case. Alas! it is far worse than you apprehend it to be! I am not one of those who have never been enlightened, or made partaker of the heavenly gift, or of the Holy Ghost, but have many years since been fully awakened, and am deeply sensible of sin, both original and actual.'
Charles has apparently been dealing with her, characteristically, as one who has not yet really seen the light, whereas she herself is conscious of having seen it but sinned against it.
She goes on: 'My case is rather like that of the Church of Ephesus ; I have not been faithful to the talents committed to my trust, and have lost my first love.'
This letter makes clear that the spiritual depression in which she finds herself has been with her for some time. She is tempted to despair, but finds new hope in her experience
_ of the previous year, when at the sacrament she had entered into a deeper realization of forgiveness. 'I do not, and by the ' Printed Eliza Clarke, Susanna Wesley, pp. 204-6.
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grace of God I will not, despair ; for ever since my sad defection, when I was almost without hope, when I had forgotten
God, yet I then found He had not forgotten me. Even then He did by His Spirit apply the merits of the great Atonement to my soul, by telling me that Christ died for me. Shall the God of truth, the Almighty Saviour, tell me that I am interested in His blood and righteousness, and shall I not believe
Him? God forbid! I do, I will believe.' If we ask what was the occasion of her 'sad defection', which left her 'almost without hope', it seems likely that the answer lies in her reaction to her husband's death in 1735. When Samuel's death seemed only a matter of time, in March 1735, Charles wrote to his brother Samuel, 'My mother seems more cast down at the apprehension of his death than I thought she could have been.'? In November of that year, after Samuel had died in the April, Susanna confessed in a letter to John that though she had now 'no taste, no relish left for anything the world calls pleasure, yet I do not long to go home, as in 'reason I ought to do'.? Such references suggest that her pro- ' longed depression may well have been the result of her bereavement.
Yet however much she may have deferred to her son Charles on the level of personal piety, in her theology she still showed something of her old sturdy independence and good sense. Charles, with his volatile temperament, was apt to take the variations in his spiritual fervour much too seriously.
He had apparently been saying that he was not a Christian any longer. Susanna retorts: 'I cannot conceive why you affirm yourself to be no Christian, which is in effect to tell
Christ to His face that you have nothing to thank Him for, since you are not the better for anything He hath yet done or suffered for you. Oh! what great dishonour, what wondrous ingratitude, is this to the ever-blessed Jesus? I think myself
1 See above, p2 Quoted in Elize Clarke, Susanna. Wesley, p. 185.
SUSANNA WESLEY
far from being so good a Christian as you, or as I ought to be; but God forbid that I should renounce the little Christianity
I have; nay, let me rather grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.' Her last word is a pungent if measured criticism of certain tendencies towards a rather extravagant subjectivism which she found in early Methodist piety. Much as she owed to the fellowship of the Methodists at the Foundery, her spiritual maturity would not allow her to think them faultless. Her rebuke to Charles becomes a general one, directed to this reprehensible tendency to look more at one's spiritual state than at God's gracious acts in Christ: 'I find this is a way of talking much used among this people, which has much offended me; and I have often wished they would talk less of themselves and more of God. I often hear loud complaints of sin, &c., but rarely, very rarely, any word of praise and thanksgiving to our dear Lord.'! That was a warning note that clearly needed sounding. It says much for Susanna that she was able to rise above her own state of spiritual weakness and to sound it.
Constructive criticism of the tendency of some Methodists to be obsessed with their own religious experience, was not the only service Susanna rendered to the new movement.
At this same period, her independence of judgement was exercised in a practical way, which was to be decisive for the whole future of Methodism. Her advice to John Wesley in a crisis has earned her the title of patroness of Methodist lay preachers. Thirty years before, when she had held devotional meetings in the rectory at Epworth, she had read a sermon as well as taking prayers, so that John could write of her that 'even she (as well as her father and grandfather, her husband, and her three sons) had been, in her measure and degree, a preacher of righteousness'.? It was her timely
* See also Richard Baxter, whom Susanna so admired, on this same theme, in Baxter, Autobiography, ed. J. M. Lloyd Thomas, p. 113.
2 Wesley, Journal, III, 32.
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remonstrance that checked Wesley's hasty reaction to the unauthorized preaching of his young lay helper, Thomas
Maxfield. John had hurried back to the Foundery from Bristol on hearing of this innovation, and his displeasure is patent in his curt words to his mother on arrival: "Thomas
Maxfield has turned preacher, I find.' Here, as so often before, John was to heed his mother's calm warning: 'John, you know what my sentiments have been. You cannot suspect me of favouring readily anything of this kind. But 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 also yourself.' The words are typical of Susanna, both in their sweet reasonableness and in their bold, prophetic note. John acted on them, heard Maxfield preach, and was persuaded
'It is the Lord!' In so doing he gave his blessing to the order of Methodist lay preachers. Incidentally, the whole episode serves to refute Dr Schmidt's suggestion that after 1738
_ Susanna grew remote from an understanding of her son's problems, and had little or no influence on his work. In fact, the evidence suggests that the old relationship held, and that she maintained an informed and critical interest in all the varied aspects of the Revival, whose course she watched from the Foundery headquarters where she had made her home.
One final piece of evidence may be cited to show that Susanna, though critical of the Revival in some of its aspects, was yet basically committed to it in sympathy and support.
The document in question is a twenty-eight-page pamphlet published as a contribution to the debate on Predestination
1H. Moore, The Life of the Rev. Fohn Wesley A.M., 2 vols. 1824-5, I. 506
Adam Clarke's description of the incident leaves little doubt that the account derives from Wesley himself. Clarke records, 'She said (I have had the account from Mr Wesley himself), ''My son, I charge you before God, beware what you do; for Thomas Maxfield is as much called to preach the gospel as ever you were!" ' (Wesley Family, II, 123.) Oral tradition seems to have heightened the imperative tone of Susanna's werds, but the sense is substantially the same.
SUSANNA WESLEY
which broke out into print after Wesley's sermon on 'Free Grace' in 1740. The publication of this sermon provoked a Calvinist reply from George Whitefield, entitled A Letter to the Reverend Mr John Wesley: In Answer to his Sermon, entituled,
Free-Grace (1741). This Letter in turn drew a spirited defence of Wesley in the form of the sixpenny pamphlet referred to, with the title, Some Remarks on a Letter from the Reverend
Mr Whitefield to the Reverend Mr Wesley, in a Letter from a Gentlewoman to her Friend. This defence was anonymous, but all the evidence, both internal and external, points conclusively to Susanna as the writer of it. Richard Viney, one of Wesley's helpers at Newcastle, came across this pamphlet in cataloguing the library at the Orphan House, and recorded in his diary for 27th May 1744, 'Mr W. told me his Mother wrote it.'1 Style and content, moreover, both point to Susanna's authorship.? She deals very sternly with Whitefield, whose 'Youth and Inexperience renders him somewhat pitiable',? and dismisses his professions of respect for Wesley as mere hypocrisy : 'As to his Compellations to Mr Wesley of Honoured and Dear, &c. I look upon them only as so many cant Words which are of no Signification, tho' possibly he might intend, by the frequent Use of them, to cut his Friend's
Throat with a Feather.'4
Susanna goes on to deal with Whitefield's doctrine, and gives short shrift to Calvinism. She not only defends Wesley's claim that if predestination is true, 'then is all Preaching vain', but goes further: 'Mr Wesley speaks too modestly here,
1 The evidence for Susanna's authorship is set out in an article by Dr Frank Baker in Proceedings of the W.H.S., Vol. XXXV, 68-71, 'Susanna Wesley,
Apologist for Methodism.'
2 Compare, for example, the paragraph from the anonymous pamphlet which stands at the head of this chapter (see above, p. 159), with the section of Susanna's letter (27th December 1739) to Charles Wesley, quoted on p. 177 above. Both extracts commend the work of the Wesley brothers to God's blessing and protection, against the opposition of 'evil men and evil angels'.
8 See above p. 175 for Susanna's implied criticism of Whitefield's naivety at their meeting in 1739.
* Letter from a Gentlewoman to her Friend (1741), p. 3.
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in only saying Preaching is vain .
. he might have safely affirmed preaching the Gospel to be a cruel Ordinance: For if, as Calvin says, God speaketh by his Ministers to Reprobates that they may be deafer; he gives Light to them that they may be the blinder .
. what good Man would not rather choose to be a Hangman than a Minister of the Gospel?'! The bulk of the tract has nothing to do with personalities, but is a powerful theological refutation of Calvinism, in which Susanna sets forth Christ as the Second Adam, embodying God's redemptive purpose, not for some predetermined number of the elect, but for the whole human race. She also defends the Wesleys' teaching on Christian Perfection, as being couched in terms of 'Gospel Holiness' and not 'absolute Perfection'.
The pamphlet shows Susanna as a formidable theologian, a convinced Methodist, and (against her will) a skilled and hard-hitting controversialist. Her reluctance in writing this piece is clear from the distaste for controversy she expresses, and which her life and character both bear out. Her father
' would no doubt have endorsed her view that, 'Young Men, and Novices in Divinity, commonly delight in Controversy ; but sober, experienced Christians, much abhor it; well knowing, that it usually destroys the Vitals of true saving
Religion; and that while men are disputing the Way, the Power of Godliness is lost.' That she overcame this reluctance and entered the lists is surely testimony that this sober, experienced Christian was by now passionately convinced that she had found the power of godliness among the people called Methodists.
1 Letter from a Gentlewoman to her Friend, p. 7.
* Tbid., p. ro.