John Wesley the Methodist
Chapter IV: The Crisis at Oxford
A Freshman of Christ Church.--No Religious Friends.--Letters
from Home--Choosing a Profession.--'l'he First Convert.-- Fellow
of Lincoln.--Curate at Wroote.
JOHN WESLEY came up from the Charterhouse School to Oxford University
in the early summer of 1720, and matriculated at Christ Church
College. With all its fame as the chief English university,
Oxford was not at that time an inspiring or stimulating place.
Its religion had for the most part hardened into the most inflexible
and spiritless forms of High Churchism, and the undergraduate
life was rude, gay, and dissolute. Foppery, conviviality, and
roistering were not altogether restricted to this class, for
the dons were stigmatized as greedy, dissipated, rude, covetous,
and stupid. How far the lad from Epworth went with these gay
companions we do not know. He afterward accused himself of having
been sinful and contented at this period, but the praying mother
and the habit of the home which had made him a praying and Bible-reading
schoolboy still bound him to these religious observances and
probably restrained him from flagrant vice. It was five years,
however, before he awakened to the serious purpose of life.
He was until then content to stand well in his studies, surpassing
all in logical acuteness, and to be a favorite with his fellows.
His contemporary at Christ Church, Badcock, describes him as
"the very sensible and acute collegian, baffling every
man by the subtleties of logic, and laughing at them for being
so easily routed; a young fellow of the finest classical taste,
of the most liberal and manly sentiments;" "gay and
sprightly, with a turn for wit and humor." He wrote sparkling
letters to his friends, and his brother Samuel received some
stanzas after the Latin, composed as a college exercise, on
"Cloe's Favorite Flea." In more sedate mood he sent
verses on the 65th psalm to his father, who was pleased with
them, and urged him not to bury his talent. His letters reveal
a wealth of family affection and warm interest in all the little
details of the home life at Epworth and at Wroote.
In 1724 the family removed to Wroote, the living which his
father at this time held with Epworth. Begging for letters from
his sisters, he says: "I should be glad to hear how things
go on at Wroote, which I now remember with more pleasure than
Epworth; so true it is, at least to me, that the persons, not
the place, make home so pleasant." His sister Emilia was
the eldest of the gifted sisters. "Her love for her mother
was strong as death, and she regarded her brother John with
a passionate fondness. Though so much younger than herself,
she selected him as her most intimate companion, her counselor
in difficulties, to whom 'her heart lay open at all times.'"
Wesley was a most affectionate brother, and his letters show
that he was the opposite of the "semistoical person, destitute
of homely warmth and kindness," which some of his critics
have supposed him to be.
For the first time Wesley became troubled about his health,
and on one occasion, while walking in the country, he stopped
violent bleeding of the nose by the somewhat drastic method
of plunging into the river. He read Cheyne's Book of Health
and Long Life, a plea for exercise and temperance. This book
led Wesley to eat sparingly and drink water, a change which
he considered to be one means of preserving his health. He had
a constant struggle "to make ends meet," although
there is no evidence to show that he was extravagant. "Dear
Jack," wrote his mother, "be not discouraged; do your
duty, keep close to your studies, and hope for better days.
Perhaps, notwithstanding all, we shall pick up a few crumbs
for you before the end of the year. Dear Jacky, I beseech Almighty
God to bless thee." This letter was written just after
he had taken his bachelor's degree, in 1724. Two years later
he secured the Lincoln fellowship, which brought him financial
relief.
When John Wesley was twenty-two years of age, in 1725, he came
to a turning point in his life: he faced the question of his
future work. The prospect of taking holy orders awakened his
most serious thought, but he realized his spiritual unfitness
for the work of the ministry. He had not fallen into flagrant
sin; the aristocratic and expensive vice of some of the young
noblemen at Christ Church was scarcely possible for him, even
had he desired it. The letters of his mother carried always
with them the aroma of her tender love and the purity of the
Epworth life. He never lost his Strong and touching love for
his brothers and sisters. His love of learning, stimulated by
his father's letters, was a safeguard from idleness.
But the divine fire burned low. John Wesley had become simply
the gay collegian, a general favorite in society, a sparkling
wit; maintaining a high repute for scholarship, but, according
to his own account, comparatively indifferent to spiritual things.
He writes: "I had not all this while so much as a notion
of inward holiness; nay, went on habitually, and for the most
part very contentedly, in some one or other known sin, though
with some intermission and short struggles, especially before
and after the Holy Communion, which I was obliged to receive
thrice a year." Late one night he had a conversation with
the porter of his college, which began with pleasantry, but
ended with a point that deeply impressed the merry
student:
"Go home and get another coat," said Wesley.
"This is the only coat I have in the world, and I thank
God for it," replied the porter.
"Go home and get your supper, then," said the young
student.
"I have had nothing to-day but a drink of water, and I
thank God for that," rejoined the other.
"It is late, and you will be locked out, and then what
will you have to thank God for ?"
"I will thank him that I have the dry stones to lie upon."
"John," said Wesley, "you thank God when you
have nothing to wear, nothing to eat, and no bed to lie upon;
what else do you thank him for ?"
"I thank him," responded the good man, "that
he has given me my life and being, a heart to love him, and
a desire to serve him;" and the porter's word and tone
made Wesley feel that there was something in religion which
he had not as yet found. He wrote home in regard to entering
the ministry. His father's reply was written with a trembling
pen: "You see," wrote the old man, "Time has
shaken me by the hand, and Death is but a little way behind
him. My eyes and heart are now almost all I have left, and I
bless God for them." He counseled delay, not liking "a
callow clergyman," and fearing, too, that his motive might
be "as Eli's son's, to eat a piece of bread." But
his mother judged his character better, and marked the change
in her son's tone of thought. The rector came around --as he
generally did--to the opinion of his wife. The latter writes:
"Mr. Wesley differs from me, and would engage you, I believe,
in critical learning, which, though incidentally of use, is
in nowise preferable to the other (practical divinity). I earnestly
pray God to avert that great evil from you of engaging in trifling
studies to the neglect of such as are absolutely necessary.
I dare advise nothing. God Almighty direct and bless you! .
. . Now in good earnest resolve to make religion the business
of your life, for, after all, that is the one thing that, strictly
speaking, is necessary, and all things else are comparatively
little to the purposes of life.' Then his mother's words become
more pointed: "I heartily wish you would now enter upon
a serious examination of yourself, that you may know whether
you have a reasonable hope of salvation by Jesus Christ. If
you have, the satisfaction of knowing it will abundantly reward
your pains; if you have not, you will find a more reasonable
occasion for tears than can be met with in a tragedy."
His father again cautioned him against taking up the ministry
as a mere means of livelihood, adding that "the principal
spring and motive . . . must certainly be the glory of God,
and the service of the Church in the edification of our neighbor.
And woe to him who with any meaner leading view attempts so
sacred a work." The young man was in a mood to heed such
noble words.
At this time, and a year later, Wesley came under the influence
of some remarkable books which he never ceased to hold in high
esteem, though he found deliverance from their ascetic and mystic
tendencies. They were Thomas a Kempis's Imitation of Christ
(in Stanhope's translation, The Christian Pattern); Taylor's
Holy Living and Dying; and later, Law's Serious Call, and Christian
Perfection.
The Christian Pattern profoundly moved the heart of Wesley.
It had been his father's favorite book, his "great and
old companion." Its sentences make us feel while we read
them as though we had lald our hand on the heart, throbbing
with sorrows like our own, which beat so many years ago in the
old mystic's breast.
Wesley writes in his Journal: "The providence of God directing
me to Kempis's Christian Pattern, I began to see that true religion
was seated in the heart, and that God's law extended to all
our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was, however, very
angry at Kempis for being too strict, though I read him only
in Dean Stanhope's translation .... Meeting likewise with a
religious friend, which I never had till now, I began to alter
the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon
a new life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement.
I communicated every week. I watched against all sin, whether
in word or deed. I began to aim at and pray for inward holiness.
So that now, 'doing so much and living so good a life,' I doubted
not but I was a good Christian."
Canon Overton marks the irony of the last sentence, and asks
if it is not right in this case to defend John Wesley against
John Wesley. While thoroughly believing in the reality and importance
of the later change, he thinks it cannot be denied that Wesley
from this time forward led a most devoted life. Rigg believes
he sees here the doctrine of entire Christian consecration and
holiness, which afterward developed into the Methodist doctrine
of Christian perfection. Full of spiritual beauty are Wesley's
own words: "I saw that simplicity of intention and purity
of affection, one design in all we speak and do, and one desire
ruling all our tempers, are indeed the wings of the soul, without
which she can never ascend to God. I sought after this from
that hour."
Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying strengthened the convictions
awakened by a Kempis. "In reading several parts of this
book," says Wesley, "I was exceedingly affected ....I
resolved to dedicate all my life to God--all my thoughts and
words and actions--being thoroughly conscious that there was
no medium, but that every part of my life, not some only, must
either be a sacrifice to God or myself; that is, in effect,
to the devil." Well does Tyerman note that here we have
the turning point in Wesley's history. It was not until thirteen
years after this that he received the consciousness of being
saved through faith in Christ, but from this time his whole
aim was to serve God and his fellow-men.
Another result of reading Taylor was the commencement of the
famous Journals. They now occupy a well-recognized place in
the literature of the eighteenth century, but they were the
outcome of Wesley's spiritual resolve to make a more careful
use of all his time, and to keep an account of its employment.
Although during the next few years Wesley became an ascetic,
with High Church beliefs, strong ritualistic tendencies, and
a mystical bias, he was repelled by a Kempis's extreme doctrine
of self-mortification, and Taylor's morbid teaching as to the
necessity of perpetual sorrowful uncertainty concerning personal
salvation. In a letter to his mother he writes:
If we dwell in Christ and he in us (which he will not do unless
we are regenerate), certainly we must be sensible of it. If
we can never have any certainty of our being in a state of salvation,
good reason it is that every moment should be spent not in joy,
but in fear and trembling, and then undoubtedly we are in this
life, of all men, most miserable. God deliver us from such a
fearful doctrine as this!
Here, in 1725, we have the basis of another of the characteristic
doctrines of the coming Methodism--that of a present salvation
from guilt and fear through the indwelling of Christ. This was
opposed to the Carolan High Churchmanship of Taylor as well
as to Calvinism. But Wesley had yet to learn by experience the
power of evangelical faith which laid the foundation of his
later teaching on conversion and the "witness of the Spirit."
In the same memorable year, 1725, Wesley and his mother rejected
the doctrine of Predestination, which for centuries had terrified
many earnest souls, and narrowed the sympathies and work of
the Christian Church. Wesley asks: "How is this consistent
with either the divine justice or mercy? Is it mercy to ordain
a creature to everlasting misery ? Is it just to punish man
for crimes which he could not but commit ? That God should be
the author of sin and injustice--which must, I think, be the
consequence of maintaining this opinion--is a contradiction
of the clearest idea 'we have of the divine nature and perfections."
To this his mother replies:
The doctrine of Predestination, as maintained by rigid Calvinists,
is very shocking, and ought to be abhorred, because it directly
charges the most high God with being the author of sin. I think
you reason well and justly against it, for it is certainly inconsistent
with the justness and goodness of God to lay any man under either
a physical or moral necessity of committing sin, and then to
punish him for doing it.
Hugh Price Hughes, in the Contemporary Review for March, 1897,
declared:
John Wesley killed Calvinism. No really instructed and responsible
theologian dares to assert now that Christ died only for a portion
of mankind, although the full logical effect of asserting the
redemption of the entire race has not yet been universally realized.
Little did the young Oxonian dream in 1725 that he and his mother
were sowing the seed of the bitterest theological controversy
of his life, over which Methodism would be rent in twain by
an irreparable schism, that would unhappily leave the evangelical
section of the Established Church on the wrong side of the breach,
doomed to the comparative helplessness we witness to-day, although
it would burst his fetters and enable him to exclaim, with prophetic
truth, "The world is my parish."
In the midsummer of this same year, while preparing for ordination,
Wesley won his first convert. He tells his mother: "I stole
out of company at eight in the evening with a young gentleman
with whom I was intimate. As we took a turn in an aisle of St.
Mary's Church, in expectation of a young lady's funeral, with
whom we were both acquainted, I asked him if he really thought
himself my friend; and, if he did, why he would not do me all
the good he could. He began to protest, in which I cut him short
by desiring him to oblige me in an instance which he could not
deny to be in his own power, to let me have the pleasure of
making him a whole Christian, to which I knew he was at least
half persuaded already; that he could not do me a greater kindness,
as both of us would be fully convinced when we came to follow
that young woman." The word went home. Eighteen months
afterward the young man died of consumption, and Wesley preached
his funeral sermon.
Wesley's earnestness soon exposed him to the raillery of the
college wits, and this evoked a characteristic clarion blast
from his father: "Does anyone think the devil is dead,
or asleep, or has no agents left? Surely virtue can bear being
laughed at. The Captain and Master endured something more for
us before he entered into glory, and unless we track his steps,
in vain do we hope to share that glory with him." As leaders
of the militant host of God both the Wesleys owed much of their
moral muscle to their father, and that old soldier's words echo
in many a war song by Charles Wesley.
John Wesley was ordained deacon by John Potter, Bishop of Oxford,
in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, on Sunday, September 19,
1725, and priest on September 22, 1728. His first sermon was
preached at South Leigh, in Oxfordshire, in 1725. Of the fruitlessness
of all this early preaching he wrote long afterward: "Preaching
was defective and fruitless, for ' from 1725 to 1729 I neither
laid the foundation of repentance nor of preaching the Gospel,
taking it for granted that all to whom I preached were believers,
and that many of them needed no repentance. From 1729 to 1734,
laying a deeper foundation of repentance, I saw a little fruit.
But it was only a little--and no wonder; for I did not preach
faith in the blood of the covenant."
There was great rejoicing in the rectory at Wroote on March
17, 1726, when John Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln College.
His father had only £5 to keep his family from March until after
harvest, but he wrote in high spirits: "What will be my
own fate, God knows, before this summer is over-sed passt graviora
[but we have suffered heavier troubles]. Wherever I am, my Jack
is a fellow of Lincoln."
For more than a quarter of a century Wesley was connected with
Lincoln College, and its name appears on the title pages of
all his works. The college was founded in the fifteenth century
by two Bishops of Lincoln, who were bent on extirpating the
Wyclifite heresies and other opinions dangerous to the Church.
Goldwin Smith says: "The two orthodox prelates would have
stood aghast if they could have foreseen that their little college
of true theologians would one day number among its fellows John
Wesley, and that Methodism would be cradled within its walls."
Wesley's Lincoln apartments are the second-floor rooms on the
right, or south, side of the first quadrangle opposite the clock
tower. In these rooms the "Holy Club" met in 1739.
Hundreds of visitors ramble into this quiet quadrangle to-day,
many of them from the colonies and America. They pluck a leaf
from the vine, look into the study of the man whose parish was
the world, visit the chapel, with its windows of rich stained
glass, stand in the pulpit from which Wesley preached, and gaze
upon his portrait by Williams, in the dining hall.
Wesley found the moral tone and discipline of Lincoln superior,
on the whole, to that of other colleges, and the fellows "both
well-natured and well-bred." He was soon appointed Greek
lecturer and moderator of the classes. It became his duty to
lecture weekly in the college hall to all the undergraduates
on the Greek Testament. The Greek text was the basis of the
lecture, but the main object was to teach divinity, not merely
a language. As moderator of the classes he presided over the
disputations, held every day except Sunday. The disputants argued
on one side or the other; the moderator had to listen to the
arguments, and then to decide with whom the victory lay. John
Locke, at Christ Church seventy years before, lamented the "unprofitableness
of these verbal niceties;" but Wesley writes, "I could
not avoid acquiring thereby some degree of expertness in arguing,
and especially in discovering and pointing out well-covered
and plausible fallacies. I have since found abundant reason
to praise God for giving me this honest art."
He became a hard and wide student, and, indeed, continued such
all his life. Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin, logic, ethics, metaphysics,
natural philosophy, oratory, poetry, and divinity entered into
his weekly plan of study.' He obtained the degree of Master
of Arts in 1727, acquiring much reputation in his disputation
for his degree. His financial struggles were over, but he was
rigid in his economy and was able to help his father and his
family to the end of life. He saved about £2 a year by allowing
his hair to grow long, in spite of the protest of his mother,
thus escaping the expense of a wig. In a letter to his brother
Samuel occurs his well-known sentence: "Leisure and I have
taken leave of one another. I propose to be busy as long as
I live, if my health is so long indulged me."
His brother Charles came up from Westminster School to Christ
Church soon after John Wesley's removal to Lincoln. When John
spoke to him about religion he said, "What, would you have
me to be a saint all at once?" and would hear no more.
But the heart of John was set upon saintliness. He courteously
broke off acquaintanceships which hindered him, after fruitless
attempts to bring his companions to his own serious view of
life. He now began the system of early rising, which he continued
to the end of life. He could say, after sixty years, that he
still rose at four o'clock.
His father was now sixty-five years of age, and in feeble health.
To fill the small living of Wroote in addition to that of Epworth,
he needed a curate. A school in Yorkshire had been offered John,
with a good income, and he was attracted by the seclusion it
promised, but his mother saw that God had better work for him
to do, and, again following her advice, he declined it. He went
to Lincolnshire and acted as his father's curate for two and
a quarter years, returning at intervals to Oxford. This was
the only experience he ever had in parochial work.
Wroote was surrounded by fens, and often had to be reached
by boat. During one journey, in 1728, Wesley narrowly escaped
drowning, the fierce current driving the boat against another
craft and filling it with water. The small brick church in which
he preached at Wroote was taken down a century ago and the material
used for paving the streets of Epworth. One incident of this
period is worth preserving, as it bears upon the organized fellowship
of the Methodists. He tells us that he traveled several miles
to converse with a "serious man" who said to him,
"Sir, you wish to serve God and go to heaven. Remember
you cannot serve him alone; you must therefore find companions
or make them; the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion."
He was recalled to Oxford by the rector of his college in 1729,
and found the Methodist movement commenced by his brother Charles.
Wesley was becoming an earnest ascetic ritualist. He held that
water should be mixed with the wine in the daily Holy Communion.
He advised something near akin to confession, as a racy letter
from his sister Emelia shows:
To lay open the state of my soul to you, or any of our clergy,
is what I have no inclination to do at present; and I believe
I never shall. I shall not put my conscience under the direction
of mortal man as frail as myself. To my own Master I stand or
fall. Nay, I scruple not to say that all such desire in you
or any other ecclesiastic seems to me like Church tyranny, and
assuming to yourselves a dominion over your fellow-creatures
which was never designed you by God.
The old Puritan spirit comes out in the letter of this sister,
0who had the Puritan blood in her veins. Her brother was teaching
almost all that a High Anglican of to-day teaches, except that
he does not appear to have held to the "conversion of the
elements" in the Eucharist. A little later, under the influence
of his friend Clayton, he left the guidance of the Bible to
follow that of tradition, or such pretended tradition as the
Apostolical Constitutions. He says of himself that he "made
antiquity a coordinate rule with Scripture."
The strict High Churchman also sought rest for his heart in
mysticism. He first read William Law's Christian Perfection
and Serious Call in 1728 or 1729. These two powerful devotional
treatises did not contain the mystical errors of Law's later
teaching. Although in later years Wesley diverged widely from
Law, he never lost his admiration for the Serious Call. A very
short time before his death he spoke of it as a "treatise
which will hardly ever be excelled, if it be equaled, in the
English tongue, either for beauty of expression or for justice
and depth of thought." He owned that Law's two books sowed
the seed of Methodism.
Later Law went astray into the fields of mysticism. Wesley
visited him at Putney in 1732, and from that period began to
read the German mystics. Their noble descriptions of union with
God and internal religion deeply impressed him, but he never
followed Law into the unfathomable confusions" of Behmen.
He never accepted the theories which deny the necessity of the
means of grace. He appears to have extricated himself from the
meshes of mysticism during his sojourn in Georgia, and writes
to his brother Samuel: "I think the rock on which I had
the nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the writings of
the mystics; under which term I comprehend all and only those
who slight any of the means of grace." He asks his brother
to give him his thoughts upon the scheme of their doctrines
which he has drawn up, and thinks they may be of consequence
"not only to all this province, but to nations of Christians
yet unborn." Thus this Christian knight was delivered from
this "wandering fire;" he never passed "into
the silent life," and we must return with him to Oxford
to practice the counsel of the "serious" countryman
who told him that "the Bible knows nothing of solitary
religion."
Chapter V: The Holy Club
Text scanning, proofreading,
MS Word conversion, and other modifications by Ryan Danker.
© Copyright 1999 by the
Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely
used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on
other web sites, provided this notice is left intact.
Any use of this material for commercial purposes of any
kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission
of the Wesley Center Online at Northwest Nazarene University,
Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the Wesley Center Online for
permission or to report errors. |
