CHAPTER XIX
WESLEY’S CHURCHMAN5HIP
WESLEY’S Churchmanship has been much debated. At Oxford
and in Georgia he was undoubtedly a stiff High Churchman. What
he afterwards described as the “vehement prejudice of my
education “ had sunk deep into his mind. No one was more
scrupulously exact in his obedience to all the rubrics and customs
of the Church of England. Both his father and his mother were
converts to that Church from the ranks of the Nonconformists,
and his elder brother Samuel was a strong Churchman. With such
home influence and a long residence at Oxford, we are not surprised
to find that both John and Charles Wesley brought trouble on themselves
by their conduct in Georgia. Charles insisted on trifle immersion
as the only proper form of infant baptism. Parents were not quite
willing to have their children thus plunged three times into the
water. John Wesley pursued the same method. The second magistrate
of Savannah had his child baptised by another clergyman because
he would not allow Wesley to treat it in this fashion.
Dr. Rigg says,t “The resemblance
of his practices to those of modern high Anglicans is, in most
points, exceedingly striking. He had early and also forenoon
service every day; he divided the morning service, taking the
Litany as a separate service; he inculcated fasting and confession
and weekly communion; he refused the Lord’s Supper to
all who had not been baptised by a minister episcopally ordained;
he insisted on baptism by immersion; he rebaptised the children
of Dissenters; and he refused to bury all who had not received
episcopal baptism. One thing only was wanting to make the parallel
with our moderns complete: there is no evidence that he believed
in the ‘conversion of the elements’ by consecration,
or in their doctrine of the Real Presence.”
In 1749 Wesley received a letter
from John Martin Boizius, which he inserted in his journal.
Bolzius assures him that “the sincere love to his worthy
person and faithful performance of his holy office which he
had felt in Georgia was not abated, but increased.” Wesley
adds, “What a truly Christian piety and simplicity breathe
in these lines! And yet this very man, when I was at Savannah,
did I refuse to admit to the Lord’s Table, because he
was not baptised; that is, not baptised by a minister who had
been episcopally ordained. Can any one carry High Church zeal
higher than this? And how well have I been since beaten with
my own staff!"
Wesley’s voyage home from
Georgia in 1738 was a time of great heart-searching. “I,
who went to America to convert others,” he wrote, “was
never myself converted to God.” Peter Bohler, whom he
met in London, led him into the way of faith. The great change
which he then experienced in his temper and views almost justifies
Miss Wedgwood’s words, “Wesley’s homeward
Voyage in 1738 marks the conclusion of his High Church period.”
This was certainly the beginning of a “new dispensation.”
The course of events still further modi. fled Wesley’s
position. He and his friends found themselves shut out of the
pulpits of the Church just when they were fully prepared to
preach the Gospel. In his sermon preached on laying the foundation
of City Road Chapel, Wesley states, that on his return from
America he was in haste to retire to Oxford and bury himself
in his beloved obscurity, but he was detained in London week
after week by the trustees of the colony of Georgia. Meanwhile
he was urged to preach in various churches, where “vast
multitudes flocked” to hear him. After a time he was shut
out of church after church. The reason given was usually, “Because
you preach such doctrines.” Wesley had therefore to choose
between silence and irregularity. Hence arose the first field-preaching.
Wesley could scarce reconcile himself to this strange method
when he stood in Whitefield’s congregation at Bristol,
“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.” His feeling about lay-preaching
and his hurried journey to London to stop Thomas Maxfleld’s
sermons have been already referred to.
At the end of December,
1745, to his brother-in-law, Mr. Hall, who was urging the Wesleys
to leave the Church of England, he wrote as follows: “We
believe it would not be right for us to administer either Baptism
or the Lord’s Supper unless we had a commission so to
do from those bishops whom we apprehend to be in a succession
from the Apostles.” He holds that field-preaching is contrary
to no law, and though he is not clear about the legality of
lay-preaching, he maintains that, even if illegal, it is an
exempt case in which he cannot obey with a good conscience.
One point has special interest. Wesley expresses his belief
that the threefold order of ministers—bishops, priests,
and deacons—is not only authorised by its Apostolical
institution, but also by the written Word.
"Yet," he adds, "we are
willing to hear and weigh whatever reasons induce you to believe
to the contrary."*
Mr. Hall may have referred him
to a book on the subject. At any rate, he writes three weeks
later, “I set out for Bristol On the road I read over
Lord King’s ‘Account of the Primitive Church.’
In spite of the vehement prejudice of my education, I was ready
to believe that this was a fair and impartial draft; but if
so, it would follow that bishops and presbyters are (essentially)
of one order, and that originally every Christian congregation
was a Church independent of all others!” t Lord King,
the writer who thus influenced Wesley, died in 1734, having
been Lord Chancellor for eighteen years. From the position then
taken Wesley never withdrew.
In the year 1755 there was a crisis
in Methodism. Some of the “preachers” were accustomed
to absent themselves from the services of the Church, and went
so far as to administer the Lord’s Supper to those who
held that close relationship with the Church of England could
not be maintained or who felt unable to go to the Lord’s
Table at church with comfort or profit. The two sons of Mr.
Perronet, Vicar of Shoreham (whom Charles Wesley used to call
the Archbishop of Methodism), Joseph Cownley, a preacher of
remarkable ability, and Thomas Walsh were at the head of this
movement. The Wesleys spent some time together at Birstal before
the Leeds Conference of 1755 reading a book on Dissent written
by a Dissenter. Thus prepared, they went to its session. After
three days’ careful discussion, all fully agreed “that
whether it was lawful or not to separate, it was no ways expedient.”
• Charles Wesley, full of painful forebodings, rode off
to London the morning after the debate, and before the end of
the month printed a poetical “epistle” to his brother
on the subject which was uppermost in his mind and heart. He
read it two nights in succession to large congregations in London.
Wesley did not share his brother’s
forebodings. He was perfectly satisfied with the concessions
made by his preachers, and found wherever he went that the Societies
were far more firmly and rationally attached to the Church than
ever they were before. In 1758 he published his twelve “Reasons
against a Separation from the Church of England.” The
conciliatory spirit which breathes in this pamphlet shows how
careful he was to interfere with no man’s liberty. “It
would be well,” he says, “for every Methodist preacher,
who has no scruple concerning it, to attend the service of the
Church as often as he conveniently can.” Charles Wesley
added a postscript, in which he expressed his approval, and
declared his intention to live and die in communion with the
Church of England. Two years later three preachers stationed
in Norwich began to administer the Sacraments in that city.
This step was taken entirely on their own responsibility. Charles
Wesley was greatly excited. He sent a letter to his brother
beginning with the ominous words, “We are come to the
Rubicon.” He also wrote to various preachers entreating
them to discountenance and oppose the conduct of their brethren
at Norwich. John Wesley went quietly on his way, and this cloud
soon passed.
The ordinations for America in
1784 roused all Charles Wesley’s fears. Lord Mansfield
told him that ordination was separation. Charles at first felt
that the life-long partnership between himself and his brother
was dissolved, and wrote several earnest letters of expostulation
to Wesley. In his brother’s reply occurs the famous sentence,
“I firmly believe I am a Scriptural ejpiskopo~,
as much as any man in England or in Europe; for the uninterrupted
succession I know to be a fable, which no man ever did or can
prove.” Four years before he had expressed his conviction
that he had as much right to ordain as to administer the Sacrament.
Holding such views, Wesley took the step which his brother deplored,
and ordained Dr. Coke as Superintendent of American Methodism.
When Coke reached the States, he was instructed to ordain Asbury
as his Co-Superintendent. We have seen that other ordinations
to the ordinary work of the ministry in America, Scotland, and
even in England * followed. In 1789 he requested his assistant,
William Myles, an unordained preacher, to assist him in giving
the cup to the communicants at Dublin. Such facts effectually
disprove the statement that Wesley was a High Churchman, in
the modem sense of that term, to the end of his life. Within
seven years after his evangelical conversion the prejudices
of his education had been thoroughly shaken, and in many respects
entirely removed.
The step Wesley took in 1784 was the natural outgrowth of
the conviction reached on reading Lord Chancellor King’s
book in 1746. He had carefully abstained for nearly forty years
from taking action, but the destitute condition of his American
Societies at length drove him to make provision for the administration
of the Sacraments. It is desirable to add that in a letter written
to Lord North on behalf of the American colonists, Wesley describes
himself as “a High Churchman, and the son of a High Churchman,”
but this refers to his political attitude as a clergyman, not
to his doctrinal position.
Another question has great interest.
Did Wesley intend his Societies to separate from the Church?
He must have been strangely wanting in sagacity if he did not
discern the drift of Methodist thought and feeling. The Wesleys
had done all they could to bind their Societies to the Church.
Their members at Bristol were at first constant communicants
at St. James’s Church, near the preaching-place in the
Horse Fair. That was “our parish church” in Bristol.
In London St. Luke’s was the parish church for the Foundery
Methodists. Even so late as December, 1789, eleven years after
the opening of City Road Chapel, Wesley gives it this name.
The connexion had been little more than a name, however, for
many years. Wesley was at a very early date compelled to administer
the Lord’s Supper to his own people in London and Bristol.
On Sunday, April 12th, 1741, after the “bands” of
Kingswood had been denied the Sacrament at Temple Church, Bristol,
Charles Wesley, who had himself been repelled, with many others,
administered the Lord’s Supper in Kingswood Schoolroom.
“Had we wanted an house,” he says, “I would
justify doing it in the midst of the wood.” When Wesley
opened his West Street Chapel on May 29th, 1743, the Lord’s
Supper was regularly administered there every week to the London
Methodists. In October, 1770, after Charles Wesley left Bristol,
and there was some fear of an interruption of the arrangements
which had been in force for many years, the brothers, at the
request of their friends, arranged to administer the Lord’s
Supper at Bristol every other Sunday.
Bristol and London were, however,
favoured Societies. The country Methodists fared badly. Sometimes
they were repelled from the Lord’s Table; not seldom they
were compelled to receive the Sacrament from a minister who
either persecuted them or lived a life utterly unworthy of his
profession. Wesley did his utmost to keep his members to the
parish churches. He took care to attend himself, and earnestly
exhorted the Societies to be regular in their attendance. But
he found many difficulties. When he examined one Society in
Cornwall, he discovered that out of ninety-eight persons all
but three or four had forsaken the Lord’s Table. “I
told them my thoughts very plain; they seemed convinced, and
promised no more to give place to the devil.” t
Wesley’s journals show what
pains he took to promote good feeling between the clergy and
the Methodists. He visited the clergy to clear up any misunderstandings,
and rejoiced over every manifestation of friendliness on their
part. Sometimes he refers to the devout and practical preaching
he heard when he went to church with his people. In later years
he was often asked to take the pulpit himself. After one such
service in Wales he writes, “The bigots of all sides seemed
ashamed before God, and, I trust, will not soon forget this
day.” Some of the sermons he heard at church grieved him
deeply. A preacher at Birmingham in the Old Church, on July
14th, 1782, spoke with great vehemence against these “harebrained
itinerant enthusiasts.” “But,” adds Wesley,
“he totally missed the mark, having not the least conception
of the persons whom he undertook to describe.” In one
church he heard part of Bishop Lavington’s “Papists
and Methodists Compared” read for a sermon, but that did
not lessen his own congregation in the afternoon.
During the last years of Wesley’s
life, the clergy generally learned to regard him as a friend.
In January, 1783, after referring to two sermons preached in
London, at St. Thomas’s and St Swithin’s, he says,
“The tide is now turned; so that I have more invitations
to preach in churches than I can accept of.” In December,
1789, he makes the same remark. His ordinations led some of
his people to suppose that he was about to separate from the
Church. Finding a report of this kind spread abroad in Bristol,
in September, 1785, he openly declared on the Sunday evening
that he had no more thought of separating from the Church than
he had forty years ago.
Wesley’s Deed of Declaration,
his ordinations, and the licensing of his chapels and preachers
under the provisions of the Toleration Act show, however, that
he was more careful for the continuance of the work than for
any formal connection with the Church of England. He did not
allow that he separated from the Church, and told the Deptford
Society in January, 1787, that if they had their service in
church hours, they should see his face no more. Next year, however,
general liberty was given to hold services at such times wherever
people did not object, except only on the Sacrament Sunday.
Wesley took all possible care that Methodism should not perish
with his death. The principles which eventually led to separation
were extending and taking deeper root. The connection with the
Church was gradually becoming slighter, and the united Societies
were gaining step by step a complete organisation of their
own. Wesley’s death removed the last barrier to complete
independence. It was surely better, in the interests of religion,
that Methodism should have the Sacraments duly administered
by her own preachers than that the unsatisfactory arrangement
existing at the close of Wesley’s life should be maintained
in order to avoid separation.
Wesley found many true helpers
in the Church of England. The Rev. William Grimshaw, curate
of Haworth, in Yorkshire, deserves the first place in the list
of his clerical coadjutors. He became one of Wesley’s
assistants in 1745. Grimshaw took charge of two large Methodist
circuits. In addition to his own parish duties, he met classes,
conducted lovefeasts, and preached with awakening power, sometimes
as many as thirty sermons a week. Wesley’s itinerants
always found his house their home. Sometimes he would give up
his own bed and sleep in the barn because his Methodist friends
had filled all his rooms. Grimshaw died in 1762, after sixteen
years of unceasing devotion.
Wesley told Dr. Byrom in 1761 that
he divided his assistants into regulars, half-regulars, and
irregulars. Midan and Romaine, he said, belonged to the second
class. At that time Wesley was surrounded by a band of active
workers among the clergy. In March, 1757, John Fletcher had
sought holy orders, at Wesley’s suggestion. After his
ordination he became Vicar of Madeley, but to the end of his
life he was the most valuable of all Wesley’s helpers
in the Church of England. He relieved him of the burden of the
Calvinistic controversy in 1771 by his “Checks to Antinornianism,”
travelled with him to encourage the Societies, and kindled anew
the fire of devotion as often as he appeared among the preachers
at their annual Conference. Wesley hoped that Fletcher would
have in some measure filled his place after his death. But all
such hopes were frustrated by the death of the Vicar of Madeley
in 1785. Fletcher owed his con— version to Methodism.
The service which he rendered to its Societies and preachers
was invaluable. Wesley wrote his friend’s life. “Within
fourscore years,” he says, “I have known many excellent
men, holy in heart and life, but one equal to him I have not
known, one so uniformly and deeply devoted to God. So unblamable
a man in every respect I have not found either in Europe or
America, nor do I expect to find another such on this side eternity.”
*
The year after Fletcher’s
ordination the Rev. John Berridge, Vicar of Everton, invited
Wesley to visit him. He soon became an earnest ally. His church
was crowded with people who came ten, twenty, or thirty miles
to hear the awakened clergyman, and he laboured as an itinerant
evangelist with great success. Sometimes he travelled a hundred
miles, and preached ten or twelve sermons a week. Scenes like
those which broke out under Wesley’s preaching at Bristol
and Newcastle became frequent under his ministry. Scores fell
on the ground, and were carried to the Vicarage. Romaine, then
lecturer at St. Dunstan’s in-the-West, was also a firm
friend, and suffered much in consequence. He often had to address
the crowds at St. Dunstan’s Church with a lighted taper
in his hand, because the churchwardens refused to light the
building for the Methodist clergyman. Martin Madan, a witty
young lawyer, went to hear Wesley that he might afterwards mimic
him among his friends. When he returned to the coffee-house,
they asked him if he had “taken off the old Methodist.”
“No, gentlemen,” was the reply, “but he has
taken me off.” He became a popular evangelical clergyman,
and travelled with Romaine, Wesley, Lady Huntingdon, and Henry
Venn, then curate of Clapham, who afterwards became Vicar of
Huddersfield, and laboured with great success in the surrounding
district. Berridge and Madan took the Calvinistic side in the
controversy of 1771. Berridge did himself little credit by
his grotesque writing. Madan did not publish anything on that
controversy, but revised Rowland Hill’s writings and supported
the Calvinistic party.
Vincent Perronet, the Vicar of
Shoreham, who died in 1785, at the ripe age of ninety-two, was
for thirty-nine years the intimate friend and adviser of the
Wesleys. Two of his Sons became Methodist preachers. Their father
retained his parish, but made it a model Methodist circuit.
The Wesleys and their itinerants often visited Shoreham, where
they were greatly cheered by his unwavering faith and constant
kindness. The great awakening spread rapidly among the clergy.
When Romaine began to preach evangelical truth, he could only
reckon up six or seven clergymen of evangelical views, but before
his death lfl 1795 there were more than five hundred.*
The most notable figure in Wesley’s
staff of clerical helpers in the last years of his life was
Dr. Coke. Expelled from his curacy because of his zeal and fervour,
Coke boldly cast in his lot with Methodism in 1777. Wesley often
said that Coke was a second Thomas Walsh to him.t The people
flocked from all parts to hear the man whom persecution had
driven into the Methodist ranks. He relieved Wesley of many
burdens in his old age, and devoted himself with unwearying
zeal to the care of the Societies. Coke is best known as the
Missionary Bishop of Methodism. He made many voyages across
the Atlantic, and died in May, 1814, on his way to Ceylon with
a band of missionaries.
