JOHN WESLEY'S CONCEPT OF THE MINISTERIAL OFFICE

by
Kenneth Collins

In a time when the basic role of ministers is being reconsidered within Methodism in light of the increasing demand for both private and public witness, for both personal spiritual integrity and political and social relevance, it is salutary to explore and to re-appropriate John Wesley's thinking in this important area. Although several significant and well-written articles have already appeared which range from Wesley's changing concept of ministry to his views on ordination,¹ no one work has taken as its chief point of departure Wesley's estimation of the ministerial office itself in terms of its requirements and tasks. Nor have previous works adequately considered the ecclesiastical environment of primitive Methodism as a possible source which shaped or at least informed Wesley's judgments in this area. This present work, therefore, will seek to address this deficiency, and will argue that Wesley's concept of the various offices of ministry must be seen not only in terms of his exegesis of Scripture-however important this may be-but also in terms of the larger context of British Methodism and its relation to the ever present Anglican mother church. indeed, expressive of this latter relationship is the fundamental structural distinction that Wesley drew between ordinary ministry on the one hand and extraordinary ministry on the other. This distinction is, therefore, a very suitable place to be in.

I. The Extraordinary Ministry

At the first Methodist Conference, held in 1744, John Wesley and those assembled defined the Church of England as "the congregation of English believers, in which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments duly administered."² This understanding of the church and its ministry, which was based upon Article XIX of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England, was maintained by Wesley throughout his lengthy career as an evangelist and reformer. In 1785, for example, after he had already produced the Deed of Declaration and had seen fit to ordain suitable workers for ministry in America, Wesley reaffirmed this Anglican article in his sermon, "Of the Church."³

Now, embedded in the nineteenth article was a standard ecclesiology found in other religious traditions as well as Anglicanism,⁴ and an understanding of the ministerial role which included the two major offices of prophet and priest. To be sure, Wesley's estimation of the major offices of ministry grew in part out of his consideration of the essential nature of the church. As prophets, earnest and sincere ministers were to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation, and as priests they were to administer the holy sacraments, which Wesley sometimes called "the sacred mysteries." What particularly disturbed him, however, was the perception that "modern laziness [had] jumbled together the two distinct offices of preaching and administering the sacraments,"⁵ in such a way that both became the prerogatives of an ordained clergy. In opposition to such a view, Wesley denied that the connection between the ministry of the Word and the ministry of the Sacraments was indissoluble. Instead he declared, lay people could exercise a prophetic office in the church through preaching.

This increased role for lay people within the life of the church was, at first, resisted by Wesley himself. Early in the revival, Thomas Mayfield, a lay person, had taken it upon himself to preach to a congregation during Wesley's absence. Upon his return, Wesley chaffed, and complained to his mother about such boldness and irregularity. But Susanna, interestingly enough, replied: "take care what you do with respect to that young man, for he is surely called of God to preach, as you are. Examine what have been the fruits of his preaching: and hear him also yourself."⁶ Wesley heeded his mother's advice, examined Mayfield's preaching and its fruits, and reached the same conclusion. At the conference held in 1744 at the Foundry, Wesley began to draw a distinction between the "extraordinary" and "ordinary" ministries. The former ministry embraced lay preaching while the latter referred to ordained clergy who exercised not only a preaching role but an exclusive sacerdotal role as well. Reflecting back upon this conference in 1789 in his sermon "Prophets and Priests" (The Ministerial Office), Wesley wrote:

In 1744, all the Methodist Preachers had their first Conference. But none of them dreamed, that the being called to preach gave them any right to administer sacraments. And when that question was proposed, "In what light are we to consider ourselves?" it was answered, "As extraordinary messengers, raised up to provoke the ordinary ones to jealousy."⁷

A. Assistants and Helpers

Convinced that preacher-evangelist was a different order of ministry from pastor-priest, and that the former could be filled by competent lay people, Wesley began to employ "assistants" who were directly responsible to him. Basically, this order of ministry was comprised of those preachers who were appointed to administer the societies and to serve the other preachers within the circuits. Lay people could qualify for this largely administrative role by evidencing a close walk with God, by understanding and loving discipline, and "By loving the Church of England, and resolving not to separate from it."⁸ In 1747, a differentiation was made between those assistants who traveled and those who served only in one place, and thus arose the distinction between traveling and local preachers which is a part of Methodism even today. Those preachers, on the other hand, who were under the care of an assistant in the circuit were known initially as helpers. According to the conference minutes, it was their office to carry forward clearly stated tasks

In the absence of a Minister, to feed and guide the flock; in particular, (1.) To preach morning and evening. (2.) To meet the society and the Bands weekly. (3.) To meet the Leaders weekly.⁹

In order to foster the discipline necessary for ministry, Wesley gave the helpers a number of rules which covered such matters as punctuality, evil speaking, and personal comportment, especially in relation to women. And in Rule Eleven, Wesley, ever mindful of his evangelical commission, instructed his helpers concerning their principal task: "You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work. And go always, not only to those that want you, but to those that want you most."¹⁰ As such, these helpers were extraordinary messengers whose special assignment it was to goad the ordinary ministers into action. But if they were unsuccessful here, then their task was at least to supply the "lack of service toward those who [were] perishing for want of knowledge. "¹¹ Eventually, the term "helper" was abandoned by the conference, and both the preacher within the circuit and the circuit's administrative head were referred to as assistants.

B. Opposition to Lay Ministry

It was not long after Wesley began to employ his assistants that a hue and cry arose among the Anglican clergy concerning this irregular practice. Two chief objections emerged. The first concerned the unordained status of these ministers, and the second entailed their supposed ignorance. With respect to the former charge, Wesley thought that he had strong Scriptural support for the distinction between an extraordinary prophetic role which could be filled by lay people, and an ordinary priestly one which was reserved for the ordained. So he comments upon Ephesians 4:11, for example:

A prophet testifies of things to come: an evangelist of things past: and that chiefly by preaching the Gospel before or after any of the apostles. All these were extraordinary officers: the ordinary were, some pastors-watching over their several flocksand some teachers-whether of the same, or a lower order-to assist them as might require.¹²

Moreover, when John Toppin, the curate of Allendale in Northumberland, took umbrage concerning lay preaching and questioned in 1752 "whether any orthodox members of Christ's church ever took upon them the public of fice of preaching without episcopal ordination, and in what century,"¹³ Wesley referred him to the Bible and replied: "Yes, very many, after the persecution of Stephen in the very first century, as you may read in the eighth chapter of the Acts."¹⁴

Beyond Scripture, Wesley appealed to the tradition of the Church of England to support his position: "Likewise in our own Church, persons may be authorized to preach, yea, may be Doctors of Divinity who are not ordained at all...."¹⁵ 

However, such practices had largely fallen into disuse in the Hanoverian Church. Indeed, those clerics who were eager to oppose Methodist lay preaching could just as easily as Wesley find support for their position in Anglican tradition. They cited Article XXIII of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion:

It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord's vineyard.¹⁶

Wesley, was fully aware of the provisions and exclusions of this article of course, and revealed his judgment of it in a letter to James Clark in 1756: "I believe several who are not episcopally ordained are nevertheless called of God to preach the gospel. Yet I have no exception to the Twenty-third Article, though I judge there are exempt cases."¹⁷

The last ground on which Wesley supported the extraordinary ministry of lay preaching was that of experience. In a pungent letter to Nicholas Norton in 1756, the leader of the Methodist revival revealed that he tolerated lay preaching because of the "absolute necessity for it,"¹⁸ and noted that were it not for this instrument of ministry, "thousands of souls would perish everlastingly."¹⁹ In other words, Wesley, as an energetic evangelist, simply refused to stand by and watch the spiritual harvest of England rot on the ground for want of laborers. Taking the offensive, and in a pragmatic mood, he urged his detractors to consider the goal of ecclesiastical order at all. "Is it not to bring souls from the power of Satan to God?"²⁰ he queried. "Order then," he continued, "is so far valuable as it answers these ends; and if it answers them not, it is nothing worth."²¹

Now in the Methodist revival, Wesley employed as his preachers people who previously had been stone masons, iron smiths, carpenters and the like. This, of course, opened him to the second charge of utilizing ignorant and unlettered preachers to accomplish a task more suited to the educated and genteel. Without deprecating the importance of sound learning, Wesley argued in his Farther Appeal that nowhere is it written in the Scriptures that God cannot or will not make use of people who lack great learning. Though without several of the natural gifts enjoyed by the ordained clergy, the Methodist preachers, Wesley maintained, were supplied by God with grace sufficient to the task to which they were called. "God gave wisdom from above to these unlearned and ignorant men,"²² Wesley wrote, "so that the work of the Lord prospered in their hand, and sinners were daily converted to God."²³ And if there were still any doubts about the appropriateness of using such unlettered people for the tasks of ministry, Wesley urged the Anglican clergy to consider the fruit borne by his preachers: "Will you condemn such a Preacher because he has not learning, or has not had an University education? What then? He saves those sinners from their sins whom the man of learning and education cannot save."24

II. The Ordinary Ministry

The Church of England recognized a threefold ministry of deacons, priests and bishops. Wesley chose to refer to the three as deacons, elders, and superintendents, reflecting his functional and Biblical orientation.²⁵ Concerning the initial stage of ordination, that of deacon, the Book of Common Prayer listed a number of responsibilities:

It appertaineth to the office of a Deacon, to assist the elder in Divine Service, and especially when he ministereth the holy Communion, to help him in the distribution thereof, and to read and expound the holy Scriptures; to instruct the youth, and in the absence of the elder to baptize. And furthermore, it is his office, to search for the sick, poor, and impotent, that they may be visited and relieved.²⁶

From the passage just cited, it is obvious that deacons had a considerable role to play in the Anglican Church as they administered baptism, assisted the priest in the Lord's Supper, preached, taught, and undertook works of charity and mercy. It is interesting to note, however, that although Wesley included this selection in his Sunday Service, he was not in agreement with his Church concerning the number of duties which necessarily pertained to the office of deacons. With Wesley, the office was greatly circumscribed, and was essentially limited to service, works of charity, and the like-a view, no doubt, which was based upon the Biblical portrait of deacons. In a commentary on Acts 6:2 he stated his position:

In the first Church, the primary business of apostles, evangelists, and bishops, was to preach the word of God; the secondary, to take a kind of paternal care for the food, especially of the poor, the strangers, and the widows. Afterward, the deacons of both sexes were constituted for this latter business. And whatever time they had to spare from this, they employed in works of spiritual mercy. But their proper office was, to take care of the poor. And when some of them afterward preached the Gospel, they did this not by virtue of their deaconship, but of another commission, that of evangelists, which they probably received, not before, but after they were appointed deacons.27

Once again, Wesley's reluctance to associate the task of preaching too strongly with the office of deacon is probably best understood in terms of his distinctions between prophets and priests, and between extraordinary and ordinary ministries. Wesley realized that the Book of Common Prayer's judgment concerning the office of deacon could readily be used to criticize his employment of lay preachers. On such a basis, it could be argued that preaching is an ordained ministry which pertains at the very least to deacons and of course to elders. Wesley, therefore, with some Scriptural support, chose to view the diaconal office largely, if not solely, in terms of service, disassociating from it the other responsibilities enumerated in the Anglican description. Now when this reduced role is effected in a context in which lay persons are already performing much of the diaconal service-in Methodism, as "stewards"-it becomes apparent that the particular office of ordained deacons, as distinguished from both lay people and elders, had for all practical purposes dropped out of early British Methodism. Such a conclusion is further substantiated by Wesley's tendency to ordain persons to eldership very shortly after their ordination to the diaconate, an activity which reveals "the little importance attached by [him] to the order of 'deacon' in the ordained ministry."28

B. Elders

Wesley upheld the notion of an outward priesthood ordained by Christ, and understood this office largely in terms of an ambassadorial as opposed to a mediatorial role, and this explains, in part, his preference for the title of "elder" over "priest." In other words, although Wesley taught that priests are the chief stewards of the mysteries of God,²⁹ he did not believe that they are the mediators of the divine/human relationship, for all believers share a common priesthood in Jesus Christ who alone is the true mediator. Instead priests are to be considered as ambassadors, as representatives of God's righteous kingdom, which they announce through both preaching and sacrament. Ordination, therefore, is a divine institution, established by Christ, but it is neither a sacrament, as Rome had argued, nor does it convey any special grace.

In another sense, Wesley defined ordination to elder's orders, quite simply, as an outward and human call to serve the church through preaching and sacrament which in the best of circumstances is preceded by a divine inward call. But if either of the two calls was lacking, Wesley preferred that it be the outward, and not the inward call. Indeed, whenever the choice was between nature or grace, Wesley always chose the latter. He wrote: " I rejoice that I am called to preach the gospel both by God and man. Yet I acknowledge I had rather have the divine without the human than the human without the divine call."³⁰ And in 1755, in a letter to Samuel Walker, Wesley bemoaned the fact that many in the ministry of the Anglican Church had received a human call, but no divine call, for "God has not sent [them] to minister."³¹

1. Qualifications for Ministry

Beyond a call to ministry, Wesley recommended a number of qualities for elders in order that they might be fully equipped for the tasks of their service. These qualities fell, basically, into three major groups: those of grace, those of nature, and those acquired. But Wesley left little doubt as to which set of qualities he considered most important in profitable ministry, espe­cially when he wrote to Samuel Furly in 1756, "Grace and supernatural gifts are ninety-nine parts in a hundred. Acquired learning may then have its place."³² Continuing in this line in his Notes on I Corinthians 3:8 he remarked:

Ministers are still barely instruments in God's hand and depend as entirely as ever on his blessing, to give the increase to their labors. Without this they are nothing; with it, their part is so small, that they hardly deserve to be mentioned.³³

Nevertheless, Wesley spent a good deal of ink on the natural and acquired endowments in his piece, "An Address to the Clergy." Concerning natural gifts, Wesley asserted that a minister should have a good understanding, sound judgment, a capacity for reasoning, liveliness and readiness of thought, and a good memory.³⁴ Acquired endowments, on the other hand, should include a knowledge of all of the following: the office itself, the Scriptures, Greek and Hebrew, profane history, the sciences, the Church Fathers, and the world. Moreover, this knowledge should be supplemented by prudence, common sense, and good breeding.³⁵

No doubt, Wesley's ' 'Address" was known outside Methodist circles, and several of his opponents soon claimed to discern a discrepancy between the lofty standards expressed in this work and the reality of a movement galvanized to a great degree by lay ministry. Wesley responded to this criti­cism by drawing a distinction between expediency and necessity in a letter to Robert Marsden dated 31 August 1756:

A careless reader of the Address may possibly think, I "make it necessary for a minister to have much learning," and thence imagine I act inconsistently, seeing many of our preachers have no learning at all. But the answer is easy. I do not make any learn­ing necessary even for a minister but the knowledge of the Scrip­tures; although many branches of learning are highly expedient for him.³⁶

This issue surfaced again as Wesley defended the Methodist ministerial order to Dr. Rutherforth in 1768, and to Dr. Lowth in 1780. Wesley's corre­spondence to these two ministers is noteworthy for it reveals something of his teleological orientation to ministry in general-that he had at all times the ends or purposes of such ministry in view. To Dr. Lowth, for example, the Bishop of London who took great delight in being extremely demand­ing of ministerial candidates, Wesley maintained that he in no way despised learning, but asked "What is this, particularly in a Christian minister, com­pared to piety?"³⁷ And elsewhere Wesley wrote, "An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge."³⁸ Wesley's evangelical thrust is apparent in these replies for, according to him, a faith unfeigned, the love of God and neigh­bor, and a burning zeal³⁹ are those ingredients both necessary and sufficient for a fruitful ministry. On the other hand, knowledge of the ancient tongues or of the arts and sciences, while expedient, is neither necessary nor suffi­cient for the promotion of God's Kingdom. This last point is borne out in Wesley's rather caustic remark to Dr. Lowth that although the bishop had sent ministers to America who knew something of Greek and Latin, they knew "no more of saving souls than of catching whales."⁴⁰

Throughout his lengthy career Wesley had seen an ordained, educated clergy operating under the auspices of the Church of England, some of whom were spiritually dead, while still others were outright wicked.⁴¹ They neither preached the doctrines contained in the Anglican Articles, nor did they prac­tice holiness, and yet they had all the formal trappings of ministry.

To make certain that this kind of minister did not emerge within the Methodist movement Wesley exercised discipline. In a "Letter to the Evan­gelical Clergy" in 1764, he specified a number of essential doctrines such as original sin, justification by faith, and holiness of heart and life to which all clergy who were associated with him should assent. Clearly, this was not an attempt on the part of Wesley to stifle theological discussion or to sup­press various opinions and interpretations, for the same irenic spirit that characterized his sermon "The Catholic Spirit" was present in this letter as well. But, on the other hand, Wesley simply did not wish to see the Meth­odist movement fall into a latitudinarianism that would dilute the heart of the gospel and with it Methodism's very reason for being: that is, "To preach Scriptural Holiness across the land." And upon reflecting upon the identity of the Gospel Minister Wesley wrote:

Who then is such? Who is a Gospel Minister, in the full, scrip­tural sense of the word? He, and he alone, of whatever denomi­nation, that does declare the whole counsel of God; that does preach the whole gospel, even justification and sanctification, preparatory to glory. . . those only are, in the full sense, Gospel Ministers who proclaim the "great salvation"; that is, salvation from all (both inward and outward) sin, into "all the mind that was in Christ Jesus; . . ."⁴²

2.  The Ministerial Task

At the first Methodist conference, Wesley declared that the major pur­pose for convening was "To consider how we should proceed to save our own souls and those that heard us."⁴³ And in the deliberations of this same con­ference it was asked, "What is the office of a Christian Minister?" To which it was replied, "[It is] to watch over souls, as he that must give an account."⁴⁴ Without doubt, Wesley never departed from this evangelical conception of the ministerial task, nor was he embarrassed by the language of "saving souls." In fact, such language can be found in almost any period of his min­istry. In a letter to his brother, Charles, in 1772, for example, John reflected back upon the time when they both had taken priest's orders and noted that their principal task of ministry, then as now, was "to save souls."⁴⁵

But just what did it mean to save souls, according to Wesley? It was not a work of the by and by, concerned only with the afterlife, nor was it an impractical affair. Instead, it was the arduous and present work of res­cuing people from the death of sin, and reclaiming them for life with God. Moreover, Wesley expressed this most important task both positively and negatively. Positively, to save a soul was to lead it to the gospel through which the love of God and neighbor could be reestablished in the heart through faith. Negatively, it entailed the breaking of the yoke of sin, free­dom from its power and its guilt, and from all that stifled the ability to love.⁴⁶ Indeed, Wesley knew full well both that the greatest of all bondages was bondage to sin and that the greatest of all liberties was the freedom to walk in the love of God blameless. To this task, and to this task preeminently, he committed his ministers as evidenced in his Farther Appeal:

To "seek and save that which is lost;" to bring souls from Satan to God; to instruct the ignorant; to reclaim the wicked; to convince the gainsayer; to direct their feet in the way of peace, and then keep them therein; to follow them step by step, lest they turn out of the way, and advise them in their doubts and temp­tations; to lift up them that fall; to refresh them that are faint; and to comfort the weak-hearted; to administer various helps, as the variety of occasions require, according to their several necessities: These are parts of our office. . . . ⁴⁷

So emphatic was Wesley on this score that he boldly asserted elsewhere that true evangelical ministers were those who saved souls from death,⁴⁸ and that if they failed to do so, then, whatever else they might be, they were no min­isters of Christ.⁴⁹ In light of this, it comes as no surprise to learn that Wes­ley did not look favorably upon the practice of preaching politics from the pulpit, unless of course it entailed a refutation of those ministers who had spoken evil of the King.⁵⁰ The main and constant duty of a Christian minis­ter, once again, was not to engage in political discussions which breed vari­ous parties all of whom claim to be in the right, but to "preach Jesus Christ, and him crucified."⁵¹

Interestingly enough, Wesley's ministerial style and the value he placed upon the several tasks of ministry is perhaps best depicted in his sermon, "On Visiting the Sick." As to the general method of treating the ill, Wesley advised that one should begin with their outward condition and determine whether they have the necessities of life, such as sufficient food, raiment, and fuel, and after this, to inquire whether they have ample nursing care and sound medical advice. Once inquiries have been made concerning their bodies, then, Wesley wrote, "You may inquire concerning their souls."⁵² The little labors of love shown to the body, Wesley argued, have paved the way "for things of greater importance"⁵³-in other words, for an examination of spiritual matters. Attending to the physical and temporal needs of the ill or the poor, therefore, has chronological priority over spiritual concerns, but not valuational priority. A mistake often made in ministry which Wesley clearly avoided is to conclude that ministry which is first in time by neces­sity is also first in rank.

3.  Two Books That Made a Difference

It should be apparent by now that Wesley's concept of the role of elders was broad and extensive, especially when compared to that of deacons. Elders not only could preach, teach, and counsel, but they could also administer the sacraments. But the office of elder grew even larger, at least in the mind of Wesley, after he had read two significant books on church polity. The first book, written by Lord Peter King, had the rather lengthy title, An Enquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity, and Worship of the Primitive Church, and was produced in 1691. In this work, which Wesley read in 1746, King championed the idea that in the early church the office of elders and bishops was of the same order, though different in degree. This meant, of course, that elders had the same right to ordain as bishops did, an observation that did not elude Wesley. Thus he wrote his letter to "Our Brethren in America" in 1784: "Lord King's Account of the Primitive Church convinced me many years ago that bishops and presbyters are the same order, and consequently have the same right to ordain."⁵⁴

The second book that altered a few of Wesley's ideas concerning ministerial order and polity was the Irenicon, written in 1659 by Edward Stillingfleet, the Bishop of Worchester. Having in mind a reconciliation of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians of his day, Stillingfleet touched upon some of the very same themes as King, most notably the notion that in the early church bishops and presbyters were essentially the same. But he then went on to deny that Christ had prescribed and sanctioned any particular form of church polity, and Stillingfleet thereby repudiated the notion that the episcopal form of church government had been divinely sanctioned. Wes­ley read the work in 1755, and not long thereafter he wrote to James Clark the following:

As to my own judgment, I still believe "the Episcopal form of Church government to be both scriptural and apostolic": I mean, well agreeing with the practice and writings of the Apos­tles. But that it is prescribed in Scripture I do not believe. This opinion (which I once heartily espoused) I have been heartily ashamed of ever since I read Dr. Stillingfleet's Irenicon. I think he has unanswerably proved that neither Christ or His Apostles prescribed any particular form of Church government, and that the plea for the divine right of Episcopacy was never heard of in the primitive Church.⁵⁵

Both King's and Stillingfleet's works are especially relevant because they display the general direction John Wesley was moving in considering what precisely were the prerogatives of an ordained elder. By 1755, Wesley had come to realize that there is practically no ministry in the church that can be denied an elder on Biblical grounds. Yet Wesley was reluctant to act upon his new understanding because he knew that such views were not widely accepted in the Anglican Church.

C. Bishops: Wesley as Scriptural Episcopos

In time, though, Wesley had little choice but to act. In 1780, he had entreated Dr. Lowth, the Bishop of London, to ordain suitable people for ministry in America, but the bishop refused. Wesley then proceeded cau­tiously, ever mindful of what would cause an irreparable breach with the Church,⁵⁶ but at this point his scruples were at an end. He conceived him­self at full liberty to appoint and send laborers into the harvest.⁵⁷ Mr. Whatcoat and Mr. Vasey were thus ordained⁵⁸ for ministry in America on September 1, 1784, and of this event Wesley wrote:

Judging this to be a case of real necessity, I took a step which, for peace and quietness, I had refrained from taking for many years; I exercised that power which I am fully persuaded the great Shepherd and Bishop of the church has given me.⁵⁹

But the ordinations did not stop there. The flood gate was broken and the tide was about to rush in. The very next year, in 1785, Wesley saw fit to ordain John Pawson, Thomas Hanby, and Joseph Taylor for ministry in Scotland.⁶⁰ And in 1786, he ordained Wiffiam Warrener for Antiqua and Wil­liam Hanimet for Newfoundland.⁶¹ Wesley justified these further ordinations in the following words:

Whatever is done, either in America or Scotland, is no sepa­ration from the Church of England. I have no thought of this: I have many objections against it. It is a totally different case.⁶²

Finally in 1788, after the death of his brother Charles, John crossed the Rubicon and ordained Alexander Mather for ministry in England itself.⁶³ But even here Wesley refused to consider this action a violation of the ecclesiastical norms of the Church of England, for about a year after this event, in December, 1789, he asserted:

I never had any design of separating from the Church: I have no such design now. I do not believe the Methodists in general design it, when I am no more seen. I do, and will do, all that is in my power to prevent such an event. . . . I declare once more, that I live and die a member of the Church of England; and that none who regard my judgment or advice will ever separate from it.⁶⁴

Not surprisingly, after these ordinations, several of Wesley's opponents claimed that he was being grossly inconsistent, for, on the one hand, he proclaimed faithfulness to the Anglican Church, but, on the other hand, he felt at liberty to violate her sense of ecclesiastical order whenever it suited his purposes. Clearly, neither the Articles of Religion nor the Book of Com­mon Prayer could be used to support or legitimize the ordination of Mather. However, Wesley's response to such charges revealed the three major prin­ciples which informed his ecclesiastical procedures for over fifty years. First of all, and most importantly, he would do nothing without scriptural war­rant. Second, he refused to separate from the Church of England, despite encouragement from various sectors to do so. And third, he felt at great lib­erty to utilize what some deemed "unorthodox" methods in ministry when­ever necessity required.⁶⁵ Wesley might have been unconventional, but he was certainly not inconsistent.

Moreover, in a letter to his brother Charles in 1785, after the American ordinations had taken place, John Wesley argued forcefully that he was a "scriptural episcopos," as much as any person in England or in Europe.⁶⁶ In other words, Wesley believed that as an elder in the Church of England faced with the needs of a thriving ministry, he had an obligation-indeed a right-to appoint workers for the harvest. This right, in Wesley's eyes, arose not only out of a consideration of the New Testament's view of the prerogatives of an elder, which King and Stillingfleet had helped him to see more clearly, but also out of his strong sense of duty to further the king­dom of God. Notice once again that it is the normative guidance of Scrip­ture plus the requirements of ministry which give the office its particular contour. As noted earlier, this combination of Scripture and experience led to a reduced role for deacons, but here in this present context it results in an increased role for elders. The difference is important.

If the Anglican church would neither recognize this bishop in their midst, nor his lay ministers, time and circumstance did. To a certain extent, the revival itself dictated the role that Wesley and his preachers had to play. Without doubt, he functioned as a bishop, and exercised many of the roles that bishops play, but received little credit or support from his Church. His authority, therefore, was achieved, not ascribed; earned, though not conferred.

III. Conclusion

In light of the preceding, it is evident that there are two competing con­ceptions of ministry and the ministerial office here. One is Biblical, func­tional and attentive to fruit, while the other is authoritarian, traditional and attentive to credentials. In the former, the mission itself defines the office to a certain degree, but in the latter, tradition and the hierarchy determine and legitimize the office. Wesley's administrative and ministerial genius, therefore, lies in the fact that he held both models in tension, that of a tradi­tional conception as espoused by the Church of England, and that of a func­tional, Biblically based, and teleologically oriented, conception as utilized by the Methodists.

When Wesley realized that he had failed to arouse sufficient support within his own Church, he undertook the task of developing a ministerial infrastructure that could sustain the awakening that was sweeping across the British Isles. His conception of the ministerial office, therefore, was very much task-oriented, and, some might even argue, pragmatic. And it was pre­cisely this "newfangled structure" with its lay preaching, diminished role for ordained deacons, vastly increased role for elders, and scriptural bishops that caused much of the opposition to Methodism.

Nevertheless, this is not to suggest that Wesley was a ministerial utilitar­ian, indifferent to various means in his concern over the ends or goals of ministry. To argue so is to distort his basic theological posture. Whether Wesley considered the role of lay assistants, deacons or elders, he always took great care to determine, first of all, how the Bible considered these offices, and then-and only then-did he feel at liberty to transgress church tradition, if necessary. In the Wesleyan quadrilateral, as Alan Coppedge has so aptly noted,⁶⁷ the components of Scripture, reason, tradition and experi­ence are not equally weighted; the first takes precedence. It is, therefore, not a matter of ministerial expediency at all, although it might initially appear so. In fact, Wesley's polity seemed to be so new precisely because it was so old, reflective of primitive Christianity. Methodism was not the real inno­vator here, but rather the Church of England.

Caught in the middle between ecclesiastical etiquette and the burden to preach the gospel as widely as possible, Wesley performed a balancing act for many years. But when finally forced to decide-and Wesley was after all very reluctant to do this-he preferred to save souls, even by what seemed to others to be very unorthodox means, over obedience to what he had come to believe was an all too human ecclesiastical order. "Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God,"⁶⁸ he thun­dered in his later years, "and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen, such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth."⁶⁹

NOTES

¹Cf. William R. Cannon, "The Meaning of Ministry in Methodism," Meth­odist History VoL VIII No. I. (October 1969): 3-19; E. Herbert Nygren, "John Wesley's Changing Concept of the Ministry, "Religion in Life Vol. XXXI No. 2 (Spring 1962): 264-74; and Linda M. Durbin, "The Nature of Ordina­tion in Wesley's View of the Ministry," Methodist History Vol. IX No. 3 (April 1971): 3-21.

²Thomas Jackson, ed., The Works of John Wesley, 14 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1978), 8:280. Hereinafter, Jackson, Works,, 8:280 etc.

³Frank Baker, editor in chief, The Works of John Wesley, 39 vols. (Nash­ville: Abingdon Press, 1984), 1:51. Hereinafter, Baker, Works, 1:51 etc.

⁴John T. McNeill, ed., Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: The Westminister Press), 2:1023.

⁵John Telford, ed., The Letters of John Wesley, A.M. 8 vols. (London: The Epworth Press, 1931), 7:372. Hereinafater, Telford, Letters, 7:372 etc.

⁶Thomas Coke and Henry Moore, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M (London: G. Paramore, 1792), p. 220.

⁷Jackson, Works, 7:277.

      ⁸lbid., 8: 319.

⁹lbid., p. 309.

¹⁰lbid., p. 310.

¹¹Ibid., p. 309.

¹²John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (Salem, Ohio: Schmul Publishers), p. 496. Hereinafter, Wesley, Notes, p. 496 etc.

¹³Baker, Works, 26:495.

¹⁴Ibid.

¹⁵Jackson, Works, 7:276.

¹⁶Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michi­gan: Baker Book House, 1983), 3:501.

¹⁷Telford, Letters, 3:200.

¹⁸Ibid., 3:186

¹⁹Ibid.

²⁰Baker, Works, 26:206.

²¹Ibid.

²²Jackson, Works, 8:220.

²³Ibid

²⁴Ibid., p. 498.

²⁵John Wesley, ed., John Wesley's Sunday Service for the Methodists in North America (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1984), p. 5

²⁶Ibid., p. 282-83.

²⁷Wesley, Notes, p. 290.

²⁸A. B. Lawson, John Wesley and the Christian Ministry (London: SPCK, 1963), p. 98.

²⁹Telford, Letters, 2:55.

³⁰Ibid., 3:195.

³¹Ibid., 3:145

³²Ibid., p. 175.

³³Wesley, Notes, p. 413.

³⁴Jackson, Works, 10:482.

³⁵Ibid., p. 482-85.

³⁶Telford, Letters, 3:184. (emphasis mine)

³⁷Ibid., 7:31.

³⁸Ibid., 5:110.

³⁹Ibid., 5:363.

⁴⁰Ibid., 7:31.

⁴¹Ibid., 4:303.

⁴²Jackson, Works, 10:456.

⁴³Jackson, Works, 13:248.

⁴⁴Ibid., 8:309.

⁴⁵Telford, Letters, 5:316.

⁴⁶See "The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God" in Baker, Works,1:431ff.

⁴⁷Jackson, Works, 8:177-78.

⁴⁸Telford, Letters, 2:149.

⁴⁹Ibid.

⁵⁰Jackson, Works, 11:155.

⁵¹Ibid.

⁵²Baker, Works, 3:391.

⁵³Ibid.

⁵⁴Telford, Letters, 7:238.

⁵⁵Ibid., 3:182.

⁵⁶Ibid., 7:238.

⁵⁷Ibid.

⁵⁸Nehemiah Curnock, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M, 8 vols. (London: The Epworth Press, 1938), 7:15. Note that the Journal uses the word "appointed," but the Diary uses ordained."

⁵⁹Jackson, Works, 13:256.

⁶⁰Curnock, Journal, p. 101.

⁶¹Lawson, Ministry, p. 158.

⁶²Jackson, Works, 13:257.

⁶³Curnock, Journal, 7:423.

⁶⁴Jackson, Works, 13:273-74.

⁶⁵Ibid., 7:279.

⁶⁶Telford, Letters, 7:284.

⁶⁷Alan Coppedge, "John Wesley and the Issue of Authority in Theolog­ical Pluralism," The Wesleyan Theological Journal Vol.19, Num. 2 (Fall 1984) pp. 62.76.

⁶⁸Telford, Letters, 6:272.

⁶⁹Ibid.