by,
Wesley D. Tracy

Any ecclesiastical entity which can wear the badge "Wesleyan" without mendacity must be both faithful to its evangelical Christian heritage and in redemptive touch with the great human problems which bedevil human society. It is oxymoronic to speak of a Wesleyanism which gathers in conventicles to engage only in "vertical" worship, or atomizes into solitary units of "private piety that clings to Jesus and ignores the human agonies of our world."¹ It is also true that one has voiced an equally erroneous non-sequitur when he or she describes a Wesleyanism with only bacon and beans and blankets to offer a spiritually starving world. Nor is it enough to note that real Wesleyanism is interested in both theology and praxis, faith and works, piety and service, devotion and justice; personal religion and social responsibility. Curiosity and perhaps something more serious call us to explore the ways in which such factors relate to each other in dynamic Wesleyan theology.

The hypothesis to be explored in this essay is this: social and economic conditions claimed a primary role in the shaping of Wesley's theology. This is to say that Wesley's theological syntheses and innovations (free grace, Christian perfection, assurance, etc.) were shaped by social needs and necessities as much as they were by scripture, historical theology, or Wesley's tutors such as Law, Taylor, Scougal, Macarius, a'Kempis, de Renty, Lopez, etc.

While almost every Wesleyan scholar is prudent enough to say that Wesley was to a certain extent a "theologian of experience" or a "product of his times," these statements are usually made as an aside on the way to making a "more important" point. The social researchers like Bernard Semmel, for example, coach us to linger longer over the social evidence when looking for the sources of Wesley's theological formulations.

In exploring the thesis, I employ both logical and pathetic proofs. I use the term pathetic, not in the vernacular sense to mean pitiable, but in the sense of pathos in Aristotelian rhetoric. Pathos is the second element of inventio in Aristotle's quadrilateral: inventio, elecutio, dispositio, and pronuntiatio. In classical rhetorical theory, pathos is a legitimate element in persuasion when used in balance with its brothers, logos and ethos. Of course, when used manipulatively or alone it becomes mere sophistry, which Aristotle despised and which I hope to avoid.

I believe that pathetic circumstances powerfully influenced the formulation of Wesley's theology. His thought was put together in the midst of life situations fraught with pathos. Imagine weeping with a man and woman whose house had just been burned down because they held "Methodist" meetings there. Imagine watching five men strangle to death on the gallows in punishment for stealing $1.50. Imagine watching a starving family pounce like beasts on a loaf of bread, devouring it instantly. Imagine watching graveyard workers throwing a wagon load of corpses - starvation victims - into the cemetery's "poor hole." Imagine all this, and try to imagine John Wesley withdrawing from these heart-chilling realities to write an academic, analytical, theoretical chapter on theological anthropology without such scenes influencing his thought. Mere logical analysis cannot, I believe, adequately account for the affective, pathetic influences at work in the formulation of Wesley's theology. I cannot do this either. My concern for the pathetic proofs render the first two sections of the discourse descriptive rather than analytical.

To explore the hypothesis fully would require encyclopedic treatment which the limitations of time and space - to say nothing of the limitations of the author's capacity - do not permit. Therefore, the scholar's favorite device of narrowing the topic to something he or she has been studying recently has hereby invoked. The primary boundaries of this essay are formed by my recent research in 18th-century English newspapers. More particularly, in the newspapers that Wesley himself read I shall look for evidence that economic conditions and judicial oppression exerted seminal influence on his theological innovations.

I. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND POLICIES IN WESLEY'S ENGLAND

When the storm that was the Industrial Revolution howled through the winter of England's soul in the 18th century, it blew humanity into the cities like maple leaves before a November wind. And it left them, like leaves, piled in random heaps. Housing conditions were outrageous. Ten persons per unfurnished room was common. Horse manure polluted the unpaved streets. It was sometimes piled 14 feet high on both sides of the street in London. Diseases like typhoid, smallpox, dysentery, and cholera ravaged almost unchecked. Starvation was a daily reality which stalked the poorest. In the larger cities, the graveyard operators maintained "poor holes" - large common graves left open until the daily flow of corpses of nameless nobodies finally filled them.

Violent crimes were common. Gambling and gin-drinking became the national pastimes. Every sixth building in London was an alehouse. Sports included boxing, bullbaiting, cockfighting, and hangings. For the children there were the streets or the sweatshops. Schools? Only one child in every 25 attended any school of any kind.

Were these conditions real, or were they mere Methodist panegyric to set up the story of their hero, John Wesley, who walked into this setting and lifted the whole nation culturally, economically, and spiritually?

I studied the 18th-century newspapers, particularly those published between 1738 and 1791, looking for accounts of the times not seen through Methodist or Wesleyan eyes. I discovered that most Wesleyan sources had understated rather than overstated the awful social conditions and fierce judicial oppression in which John Wesley's theology and practice were developed.

For the most part, the newspapers were produced by the well-to-do, for the well-to-do, and in behalf of the well-to-do. Yet the newspapers stand as an incredible self-indictment of the mercantile and noble classes. Their crimes of brutal oppression are there for all history to see. True, the judicial oppression is given casual page-three priority, but there it stands.

Page one of nearly every newspaper was given to international affairs (mostly wars) and to the travels, marriages, and "doings" of royalty.

Page two had more about the activity of the nobility as well as reports from Parliament. Thus, half of the typical four-page paper had to do with the rompings of the high-born and the gentry.

Page three contained other "news." London news was always given priority, even if the paper was published in Cambridge or Norwich. Typical news items included financial reports of the East India company, grain market prices, bankruptcies, marriages, clergy appointments, theatre reviews, deaths - and always the horse racing and lottery results.

Also squeezed in on page three were almost casual reports of crimes, sentences, and executions.

Page four carried personals, poetry, and assorted advertisements of medicines and books. The personals and the ads found in these papers are intriguing, but since they have little value for the theses of this essay, I reluctantly put them aside. However, I cannot resist including a few book ads promoted under This Day Published. In July 1742, this book appeared:

A Brief History of the Principles of Methodists wherein the Rise and Progress, together with the Causes of the Several Variations, Divisions and Present Inconsistencies of this Sect are attempted to be traced out and accounted for by Joseph Tucker, M.A., vicar of All-Saints.²

Another author, William Dowars, wrote this "bestseller":

Calvinism supported by the Word of God: Or Some of the Sentiments of a True Calvinist laid down, consistent with the infallible creatures of Truth; and humbly presented for the perusal of Mr. John Wesley, his Hearers, and other Arminians. Price: one shilling.³

But let us return to the central concern of this paper. Consider this series of newspaper clippings which cite the desperate poverty the masses. Fielding describes the situation in these words:

The poor are a very great burden and ever a nuisance… there are whole families in want of every necessity of life, oppressed with hunger, cold, nakedness and filth and disease. They starve and freeze and rot among themselves… steal and beg and rob among their betters.⁴

In 1740, the London Daily Post observed "such swarms of miserable objects as now fill our streets are shocking to behold… Several have perished in the Street for Want."⁵ The same year another periodical declared: "Several perished with Cold in the streets and Fields in and around the city (London)… T'would be endless to mention all the Calamities."⁶ A Norwich paper reported, "We have a great mortality amongst the poor people who die in great numbers of Fluxes and Fevers. One poor man buried eight of his family in a few days. This mortality is owing to the Badness of the Diet which the poor have been obliged to feed on."⁷ The same month in Edenburg, a whole family starved: "Last week a man, his wife, and two children were all found dead in their beds."⁸ One woman gave birth to a child only to "perish with cold after she had been delivered."⁹ "A poor woman big with child was found ... in Spital Fields Market in a starving condition, and carried to the Roundhouse, where she died an hour later."¹⁰ "A poor Haymaker dropp'd down dead by St. Anne's Church, Soho; supposed to have died for Want."¹¹

In Stamfordham, a poor woman took to the streets with her three children, looking for food. Before she could find a charitable hand, two of her children died of starvation in the streets. The third child "had its arms froze. Mother and child were found the next morning nearly dead."¹²

From Colne came a report that lack of food and fuel had produced much sickness and death. "The situation of the poor is rendered pitiable… by sickness. There is hardly a house where there is not one sick or one dead." ¹³

The Norwich Gazette reported, "On Saturday last a poor woman and her child about four years old were taken out of the Tower-Ditch drowned. It is said… that she was in great Want, and that she flung the child in first and herself afterwards."¹⁴

Corroborating reports of such conditions are found in Wesley's Journal. Of the people at Bethnal Green he wrote, "I have not found any such distress, no, not in the prison of Newgate. One poor man was just creeping out of his sick bed to his ragged wife and three little children, who were more than half naked and the very picture of famine; when one came bringing in a loaf of bread, they all ran, seized upon it, and tore it to pieces in an instant."¹⁵

I found the following letter from John Wesley in Lloyds' Evening Post, the London Chronicle, and the Leeds Mercury:

Why are thousands of people starving? . . . I've seen it with my own eyes in every corner of the land. I have known those who could only afford to eat a little coarse food every other day. I have known one picking up stinking sprats from a dunghill and carrying them home for herself and her children. I have known another gathering the bones which the dogs have left in the streets and making broth of them to prolong a wretched life. Why are so many thousand people in London, in Bristol, in Norwich, in every county from one end of England to the other, utterly destitute of employment?¹⁶

Could such conditions affect what Wesley would write and preach about predestination, free grace, or theological anthropology?

Several economic policies contributed to the state of affairs described above. I will identify and describe four such policies.

1. Policies of Employment and Unemployment

Perhaps we should say that the lack of an unemployment policy contributed to the starving conditions. England was an industrializing nation that had no experience or knowledge of how to deal with unemployment - nor did the upper class have any will to solve the problem. Yet, it was a desperate problem for the poor. A news item declared that "the misery… is almost incredible. The people are wholly out of Employ and in want of the Common necessities of Life."¹⁷ "The deplorable case of the poor weavers at present cannot be enough lamented," said the Norwich Gazette. "Not less than 10,000 are ... now starving for want of business."¹⁸

"The great price of corn," wrote one correspondent from Wellington, "has almost starved the Colliers and Common People, who have actually ate nothing but Grains and Salt for many days."¹⁹

Those who did find work suffered the most degrading working conditions. Hours were long - up to fifteen hours per day - and pay was very low. Coal mining and textiles were the primary industries. The situation of the miners was desperate. Long hours in the bowels of the earth where dampness reigned made "rheumatism universal and consumption common. Deaths from accidents were an almost daily occurrence."²⁰ Children worked in the mines as "pumpers." For twelve hours per day and more, they stood in ankle-deep water, pumping water out of the mines. The mining industry had something for the whole family - "women were employed as beasts of burden and, with chains around their waists, crawled on hands and knees through narrow passages, drawing after them the coal carriages."²¹

Children as young as six or seven carried 50-pound "coal creels" up the stairs from the bottom of the mines which "in aggregate equaled an ascent fourteen times a day to the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral."²² The lack of concern for the miners is painted boldly in this news item in the Newcastle Journal, March 21, 1767: "The catastrophe from foul air [in the mines] becomes more common than ever; yet as we have been requested to take no particular notice of these things, which, in fact could have little good tendency, we drop the farther mentioning of it."

Again and again, leading citizens declared in the newspapers that England's economic problems could be solved if more four- and five-year olds could be put to work in the factories. It was easy enough for parents of hungry children to turn them over to the textile mill operator who would feed them milk or water gruel twice a day, give them some clothes, a place to sleep, and work them twelve to fourteen hours, six days per week.

No one was too young to work. Children as young as two years old were turned over to the chimney sweep gangs. Each day they would send their diminutive charges out in the streets crying, "Sweep, Sweep," trying to get householders to hire them to climb down their chimney and sweep out the soot. Many children were killed and maimed in tragic falls. By age six or seven, if not killed or disabled, they were too large to squeeze down sooty chimneys any longer and could then look for work in the factories or "hustle" the back streets, joining the other poor children who were "without shoes and stockings, half-naked or in tattered rags, cursing and swearing, rolling in the dirt and kennels [i.e., open drains or sewers], pilfering on the wharves."²³

Teenage poet William Blake, a contemporary of Wesley, confessed the nation's guilt in three poems about the plight of the chimney sweeps. One gives the image of a clergy person listening to the plaintive cry of a young "sweep" with sympathy yet, at the same time, noticing that the church's chimney is getting blacker and blacker. Another Blake poem is a graveyard song about chimney sweeps who were killed on the job. The third from his collection, "Songs of Experience," is called "The Chimney Sweeper." Notice the deft subtlety in the lines. For example, the sweeper cries, "Weep, Weep" rather than "Sweep, Sweep." Here Blake tells us that the subject is a very young child who, typical of toddlers, has not yet learned to pronounce words which begin with two consonant sounds. Before they can talk plainly they are out on the cold streets, tools of misguided parents, harsh employers, and cruel times.

A little black thing among the snow,

Crying, "'weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!

"Where are thy father and mother? say?"

"They are both gone up to the church to pray."

"Because I was happy upon the heath,

And smil'd among the winter's snow

They clothed me in the clothes of death

And taught me to sing the notes of woe."

"And because I'm happy and dance and sing,

They think they have done me no injury,

And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,

Who make up a heaven of our misery. "²⁴

2. Exportation of Grain

English farmers could get more for their grain in France than in the local markets. Therefore, most of the crops were exported. Even when the poor had money to buy, there was often no bread, grain, flour, butter, or cheese to buy. This led to some 150 hunger riots during Wesley's ministry. The "mob" would stop outgoing barges, or take over the "grain factor's" warehouse. Sometimes the crowd would set its own price for the goods. Those who refused the offered price usually parted with their wares for nothing.

Reports of hunger riots often appeared on page three of Lloyd's Evening Post, The Ipswich Journal, The London Chronicle, Daily Advertiser, The Norwich Gazette, The Public Advertiser, London Chronicle, and The Cambridge Journal and Weekly Flying Post. A mob of six thousand at Manchester "overcame the civil powers, broke into the storehouses and destroyed or carried off grain, flour, and provisions to the value of 5 or £6000."²⁵ A few months later, a large mob rose in Liverpool and "obliged the farmers to sell their wheat at Prescot Market at 6s. 6d. per bushel, and other grain in Proportion."²⁶ On June 15, 1757, a crowd, mostly women, broke open the storehouse of a farmer who had refused 9s. 6d. per bushel and carried off all the wheat. The next day they struck again for 27 sacks of flour.²⁷ At Coventry, the hordes of the hungry "began by plundering the warehouses of cheese and selling the same at low prices." The journalist added, "many poor children had cheese for their suppers that had not tasted a bit for months past."²⁸

To quell the hunger riots, the government passed the Riot Act which forbade more than twelve persons to assemble for any sort of protest. But when one's children are starving, a Justice of the Peace reading the Riot Act is a small obstacle as the Norwich Gazette reported. "A mob arose at Blyth occasioned by the scarcity of corn… they broke into several granaries and ran off Justice White when he read the Proclamation [Riot Act] to them."²⁹

On the eve of his execution, one of the hunger rioters at Rossendale and Rochdale was asked why he would do such a thing. His answer, according to the London Chronicle, was, "We did not desire to hear our children weep for bread and [have] none to give them."³⁰

3. The Enclosure Acts

Just about every acre of England belonged, technically at least, to some duke, earl, or squire. Historically, however, the common people had access to the "common" lands. During the previous century, common farming had been practiced. That is, on the open lands a peasant could raise a garden, keep a cow, pigs, chickens, etc. He could hunt small game and fish. Further, he could gather free firewood in the forests. But thousands of enclosure acts put the poor off their ancestral lands, leaving them homeless and penniless. Between 1650 and 1850 Parliament passed 4,000 enclosure acts. During Wesley's life, some 2,500 tracts of once common land were enclosed and taken from the people. This rhyme comes down to us from that era:

The Law doth Punish Man or Woman

That steals the goose from off the Common

But lets the greater Villain loose,

That steals the common from off the Goose.³¹

The newspapers announced most of the new enclosures. Some periodicals insightfully protested against them. A scribe calling himself "The Old Fashioned Farmer," wrote in the London Chronicle and the London Evening Post several articles which included these remarks. "Every session of Parliament multiplies laws for the destruction of our nurseries of corn and cattle by… new enclosures."³² These, the writer declared, "starve one part of the nation, while the other wallows in plenty." He challenged the nation's leaders, "Let it not be said that you were such negligent wretches as to suffer one half of the people to be starved to death for the sake of enriching the few… by enclosing."³³

The common people used less literary methods of protests. Left with no place to farm, hunt, fish, or even gather firewood, they often tore down enclosure fences or diverted a stream (that had been "enclosed") so they could get water. Of course, such crimes were punishable by death, and many citizens were executed for breaking fences or gathering illegal firewood. Robert Wearmouth has done excellent research in the newspapers and official state papers on this matter in his book, Methodism and the Common People of the Eighteenth Century. I refer the reader to this excellent source rather than expanding the present discussion.

I do want to share one of the most poignant newspaper stories I read about the enclosure acts. The Ipswich Journal carried the story of Ann Hoon, a simple woman who was seen breaking down a fence in order to gather firewood. The people told her she was bound to be caught and deported. That meant separation from her beloved only child, a fourteen-month-old daughter. She couldn't bear such a separation so she devised a plan. She would murder her daughter. She tried to drown her in a tub, but lost her nerve. Several hours later, she gathered her resolve and threw the child in the river - it drowned. Ann then rushed to the town officials and told what she had done. She requested immediate hanging so she could join her baby in heaven. She was declared "not guilty" by the judge.³⁴

4. The Game Laws

Part of the starvation conspiracy was the long series of Game Laws. They all brought more restrictions on the poor, making all game and fish the property of the squire or duke or gentleman who owned the land. One fishing law was simply summarized as preventing the "destruction of pond or stew fish" by anyone except the landowner.³⁵ One of the new game laws of 1771 was spelled out in great detail in the London Chronicle. Apparently there was a loophole in previous legislation which Parliament moved quickly to plug. Rooks and squirrels had somehow not been specified in previous legislation. The new law declared that only landowners of four acres or more, or certain salaried employees, could be in possession of a rook or squirrel. If a "poor man" were caught with a rook or a squirrel without a "ticket" of permission from the landowner, he had to pay a £5 fine (more than he could earn in a year) and deliver the game to the landowner if "he lives within twelve miles." If he lived farther away the constable was to deliver the dead rook or squirrel to the landowner.³⁶

And these laws were enforced. In 1750, some hungry people were digging wild rabbits out of their dens to keep from starving. The army was set upon these criminals and 28 persons were imprisoned for rabbit stealing or suspicion of same. An aloof writer of the Gentleman's Magazine described the incident as: "Great disturbances in Leicestershire… by humor… among the populace of destroying rabbits."³⁷

The words of a journalist from Leeds summarizes the result of the economic policies treated above. "The poor are without relief… without fuel, without food, and without the lawful means of procuring them."³⁸

An insightful correspondent from Bury St. Edmunds reported, "Our jail is full of poor unhappy wretches for being concerned in the late riots, and their families are starving for bread, for the poor were never in so unhappy a situation in this country as they are at this time, and every method is made use of to keep them in distress."³⁹

II. JUDICIAL OPPRESSION: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

In 1741, the Grand Jury of the King's Bench was asked to consider the swarms of hungry people who choked the streets of London. After describing them as a "dreadful nuisance," so "burthensome and disgraceful," they recommended enforcing the laws more vigorously "that we may not be thus troubled with the Poor."⁴⁰

And enforce the laws they did. No fewer than 250 offenses were punishable by death. Fierce enforcement of laws that would make "an eye for an eye" look like a liberal mercy movement made the conspiracy of poverty and pain complete. The poor masses were shoved toward "crime" by ruthless economic policies and punished far beyond justice for their offenses. Old Bailey and Tyburn Tree in London are famous for the endless procession of nameless nobodies who were mass-murdered by a judicial machine built to devour the poor. In the London Magazine a poetic journalist called Old Bailey a place

Where poor offenders must submit to fate

That rich ones may enjoy the world in state.⁴¹

But all around England, though on a smaller scale, many courts carried out a bloody pageant of death and oppression. During every event and at each Christmas season, traveling "justices" held court throughout the land. More populous regions also had summer or fall assizes. The "sessions" of the Assizes were a sort of social season for the middle and upper classes. They would, of course, attend the court sessions and, since "everyone" would be in town, various banquets, balls, and business meetings were held. The "sessions" were opened by a sermon by the ranking local clergyman. John Wesley's sermon, "The Great Assize," was delivered in just such a setting. During the "sessions" the "justices" dished out their brand of distorted justice. Is it justice when the same judge on the same day gave the same sentence of hanging to a man who murdered his wife and to a teenager who stole a handkerchief?

The most popular sentences were death, deportation (for seven years, fourteen years, or life), public branding or "burning in the hand," and public whipping.

Any crime against property was severely punished. Crimes against persons, as long as they were poor against poor, were strangely enough sometimes taken lightly. When Joseph Hall raped a child, his death sentence was reprieved.⁴² When Charles was convicted of "shooting Elizabeth Hicks in the head that she died instantly," he was "burned in the hand" and released.⁴³ On the other hand, when Peter McCloud "burglarously" entered the house of J. Hankey, Esquire, and stole "a brass window screw," he was sentenced to death.⁴⁴ When Charles Shuter, age fourteen, was "concerned with his mother in robbing a gentleman of 62," he was sentenced to death.⁴⁵ When John Gerrard picked from the pocket of Alexander Murray, Esquire, "one Cambrick handkerchief," he, too, was sentenced to death."⁴⁶

Another sort of double standard is illustrated by two counterfeiting cases. When an "eminent," though discreetly nameless, Woolstapler and Shopkeeper passes counterfeit money, he was given six months in jail. The newspaper added that it was hoped that this case would deter "the inferior sort of people from this pernicious… practice."⁴⁷ When Isabelia Condon, a poor woman, did the same, she was promptly tied to a post, "strangled and burned to death."⁴⁸

In my study of the newspapers, I charted the record of crime and punishment for some 800 cases.⁴⁹ These are just the ones for which I could find the stories of the crime, arrest, and sentencing and the name of the offender. Some stories did not include the offender’s name. Others gave only partial information. The 800 charted in my notes, therefore, represent only a small sample of the victims of England’s judicial oppression machine. England executed up to 500 of her citizens every year throughout Wesley’s century. Let me cite only a few cases of those who were sentenced to death.

Henry Staples, William Sanders, and William Miller were typical of those executed for their crimes. Staples, along with two companions (W. Jones and J. Turner), ganged up on J. Pollard and robbed him of his silver watch. All three of the "Staples Gang" were executed.⁵⁰ William Sanders and his wife, Hannah, were hanged for stealing clothes, including 57 pairs of stockings. Their accomplice in the crime was one William Miller, who was also executed.⁵¹

Thomas Battledore, George Harris, and Thomas Tab were among the five men who took from T. Francis "some glass drops, a knife and some money." All five were executed.⁵² James Mallone, Terrence MacCave, and two others committed a robbery of a hat and two shillings. All four men were hung.⁵³ Thomas Morgan, fourteen, and James Smith, twelve, were sentenced to death for stealing "a piece of silk handkerchief."⁵⁴ Jane Whiting, fourteen, and Mary Wade, eleven, were sentenced to death for assaulting Mary Philips and stealing her cap, tippet, and frock while she was in the privy.⁵⁵ Robert Russell and John Nash, both fifteen, were sentenced to die for stealing "16 handkerchiefs."⁵⁶ H. Webb died for helping in a robbery which netted "a hat and one shilling."⁵⁷ Several persons, like Stephen Cratchley, were executed as "ringleaders" in hunger riots. Cratchley "carried" and "blew a horn to collect the mob."⁵⁸ Many were execute for stealing sheep or horses, or committing robberies of a shilling or two.

The system of judicial murder could see no difference between the offenses cited in the previous paragraphs and the offenses of people like Eleanor Croker who murdered her two bastard infant boys by stuffing them in "the necessary house," ⁵⁹ Mr. MacDonald, who beat his eight-year-old apprentice to death, or Francis Moulter who, according to the Worcester Weekly Journal, October 19, 1744, "committed a rape upon the body of Ann Bishop giving her the foul disease." Murder and picking a pocket of a handkerchief frequently drew the same penalty from the same judge on the same day.

Executions were taken matter of factly - judicial murder was "a given" it seems. Sometimes it might be regrettable, but it was "necessary." A sympathetic scribe wrote of a mass execution in 1785:

A shocking spectacle was exhibited before the debtors doors of Newgate where 20 miserable wretches were in one moment plunged into eternity. It is truly lamentable that the safety, peace, and good order of society, should render the sacrifice of lives… to the offended… laws…indispensably necessary.⁶⁰

Others of the press were even less sympathetic. A London newspaperman wrote the story of the execution of five "desperadoes." Edmund Harris had burgled clothes, J. Lucas had helped in a robbery of "15 guineas and up," Francis Curtis had robbed a man of a "silver watch, 9s. 6d.," J. Coleman was hung for a robbery (51/2 guineas), for which two others later confessed. James Riley also died; he had shot a man, crippling him for life. The writer concluded, "It is high Treason against nature to shed a Tear for such Villains when passing the place of execution."⁶¹

Cases like that of John Woods struck my interest. Mr. Woods had forged a bill of sale. The Oracle and Country Intelligencer, a Bristol paper, gave this short report.

John Woods, the forger, was executed. His death sentence was reprieved for three weeks for his appeal. After hearing the appeal, the Lord Justices wrote that Mr. Woods was "deemed an object not fit for mercy."⁶²

Rev. Davies was appointed to minister to the condemned criminal, John Wood. He ran afoul of Methodists trying to do the same thing. Here is part of his letter to the Oracle and Country Intelligencer, published May 14, 1743:

I found in the room with John Woods, under sentence of Death, several of Mr. Wesley's crew of Methodists, brought thither by Felix Farley, unknown to the Keeper, to disturb the meditations of the unhappy prisoner and to invade the office of this Divine. One of these ranting Enthusiasts, whose name is Williams, because he was interrupted in a loud canting Strain of absurdity and nonsense, which he calls Prayer, and which in truth is a mere burlesque upon all Christian devotion, raved in a most abusive manner against the Rev. Mr. Davies, saying that the soul of the prisoner would be required of him, and that he would be damned for him, and then went on pronouncing everlasting damnation against this Gentleman, clenching his fist, stamping at, and threatening him in such a manner that Mr. Davies was obliged to call the constable… to remove them. At their Departure the modest Mr. Farley was pleased to declare in the Chapel that the Devil knew as much of Religion as Mr. Davies, adding that he (Mr. Farley) would be damn'd if the Devil did not. Quere, whether this is not a diabolical Declaration, or whether such insults as these on Regular clergyman of the Established Church, by such Quacks in Divinity as Williams, be consistent with the true Character of Christianity, however it be with its counterfeit, Methodism?

The same paper, reporting Wood's execution on June 11, said that he behaved with "great decency at the place of execution… and… died very penitent."⁶³ This is a typical report because the papers went to great pains to show that the victims confessed their guilt, sin, and the justice of their sentence. Perhaps such confessions salved the official conscience.

Is it any wonder that one had to pledge to do prison ministry to join the Methodist society at Bristol? Is it any wonder that prison reform was a high Methodist priority? Is it any wonder that Methodism produced such heroes of prison ministry as Charles Wesley, Sarah Peters, and Silas Told, the unpaid chaplain for 30 years at Newgate Prison, London? The Methodists got one of their own appointed as Warden at Newgate Prison, Bristol. They reformed the prison life and invited "officialdom" throughout England to use it as a model.

There is not time or space to explore why Methodists evangelized the prisoners, and provided medicine and food for the prisoners, while doing so little in the way of challenging the judicial murder machine that was the English justice system.

Still, Methodists produced many testimonies of conversion among those condemned to die. On one day when eight offenders were hung at once, Silas Told reported that, because of the faithful work of Methodists, they all "appeared like giants refreshed with new wine."⁶⁴

When Hogarth painted his famous series on London life during the 18th century, he created one painting of a hanging. Lolling in a luxurious carriage and swigging wine jovially, was the official Anglican chaplain. Standing with the condemned prisoner was a tall gaunt figure with a Bible in hand. That figure was honest Silas Told. The picture shows who, in the artist's judgment, really cared for the nameless nobodies who fell victim to the judicial oppression of the government.

III. THE FORMULATION OF WESLEY'S THEOLOGY

Wesley's "ministry" response to these economic and social conditions is widely known. We have heard much about the various kinds of schools the Methodists started, we know much of their societies, classes, and bands, which held these folks together. We have read of food and clothing distribution in London and Bristol, of the orphanage in Newcastle, the widows' home in London. We know of the sick visitors' corporation in London, and of prison ministry and reform. We have heard less of the first free medical clinic in England opened by Wesley in 1748, and of his unemployment plan, the Ladies Lying-in Hospital (which gave prenatal and postnatal care, as well as religious instruction and vocational training to destitute and unwed mothers), the Stranger's Friend Society, the Christian Community (a ministry to those in the London workhouses) and Wesley's loan fund for Methodists who wanted to start their own businesses.

John Wesley called himself "God's steward for the poor." He expressed his appeal in an oft repeated slogan: "Join hands with God to help a poor man live."⁶⁵

Wesley's hours and days and years were consumed by his mission to the poor. "I bear with the rich, and love the poor," he said. His praxis was built around the needs of the poor, whether it was food, medicine, or a class or band to guide them. This much is obvious, but what of the development of his theology? In what ways and to what degree did the needs of the poor inform his theological synthesis?

Watch Wesley as he withdraws from the London streets teeming with starving, desperate people.

Watch him as he leaves Newgate Prison, as he watches a starving family pounce on a single loaf of bread and devour it in an instant. Watch him as he reads a letter that tells him that yet another Methodist lay preacher and his wife and children had "taken to bed." (When starvation was eminent and there was no hope of finding food, the people "took to bed," thus keeping each other warm and preserving lives for a few more hours.) Watch "God's steward for the poor" as he withdraws from such scenes for theological reflection. Could he dismiss such agonies in order to engage in the solemn abstractions of merely academic theology?

Consider this also. If one were to create a theology tailor-made for the needs of the people whom we have met in the preceding page, it would, first of all, have to be a theology that banished the then popular doctrine of predestination.

1. Predestination

That foundational Protestant doctrine of predestination had served well in a previous era, but now it was being abused. Once a liberating doctrine, it had, in these changing times, become a doctrine that imprisoned the poor. Leaders like Edmund Burke made public statements that told the poor that God had ordered their estate. "The poor," he declared, "must respect the property of which they cannot partake... they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice."⁶⁶ Clergymen like Joseph Priestly declared that Methodist ministries which aimed at bettering the estate of the poor would indeed "defeat the purpose of Divine Providence."⁶⁷ With such self-serving council, and since God had willed the estate of the poor, it was easy for the wealthy to yield to "God's own example" and leave the brutalized masses to freeze and rot and starve, or die in a gaseous mine.

Consider that it was not until 1963 that this song was dropped from the Anglican hymnal:

The rich man in his palace

The poor man in his gate

God made them high and lowly

And ordered their estate.

Even though particular election had come down "Sinai-like" from Geneva and Germany, had been affirmed in 1559 at Paris, etched in stone in 1618 at Dort, and ratified by the Assembly of Scottish and English Divines, Wesley knew it must be challenged. He could never lift his brutalized masses as long as Predestination stood on their throats in private beliefs and public proclamations.

Wesley did not see the awful conditions of the poor as willed by God. Rather he saw their plight as a contradiction of God's salvific will! "I never did believe it [predestination]," Wesley declared in a 1772 letter, "nor the doctrines connected with it, no not for an hour. In this I have been consistent… I never varied an hair's breadth."⁶⁸ Wesley believed the "horrible decree" was an outrage to the character of God. It makes God "more false, more cruel, and more unjust than the devil… God hath taken thy [Satan's] work out of thy hands… God is the destroyer of souls."⁶⁹ Particular election, Wesley insisted, "makes the whole Christian revelation a useless addendum." Further, thereby Jesus is made "a hypocrite, a deceiver… a man void of common sincerity."⁷⁰

Thus, in spite of fierce opposition (even from men like George Whitefield), he did what he had to do for his people, he poisoned predestination.

If one were to compose a theology tailor-made for the needs of the people in Wesley's England, one would have to devise a doctrine of free grace.

2. Free Grace

Only from the ashes of particular predestination and limited atonement can the doctrine of free grace, phoenix-like, rise up. In Wesley's blend of the best in Augustine with the best in Pelagius, the best of Luther and Calvin with the best of James Harmens, we find a doctrine that preserves the holiness and love of God, Christ's atoning work, salvation by grace alone, and yet provides an arena that makes human beings responsible participants. It was a doctrine that Wesley's poor needed.

Wesley would not tolerate anyone who told his bedraggled hearers that Jesus died only for the elect. "Here I fix my foot," he declared. "On this I join issue with every assertor of it."⁷¹ Adam Clarke echoed his mentor when he declared, "Show me… the vilest wretch in... London, and I say, that he has the same claim upon God's mercy as the apostles had."⁷² This was Wesley's theme - though we cannot do one good deed on our own, God has given His preventing grace to all of us, enabling us to choose God and good. Did Wesley believe this because predestination is a logical and theological absurdity? Or, did he espouse free grace because he knew that his legion of the poor could never be lifted without believing that God loved them all, and sent His Son to die for them all?

If one were to create a theology tailor-made for the people of Wesley's England, he or she also would have to come up with a radical doctrine of assurance.

3. Assurance

The people on their upward exodus from poverty, powerlessness, ignorance, and sin could never make the journey before them unless they knew deep inside that God was with them. For his people Wesley needed a doctrine of assurance as:

an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses to my spirit, that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ has loved me, and given himself for me; and that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.⁷³

Wesley's pilgrims needed a doctrine that would bring each one to the point where he or she "could no more doubt the reality of his sonship, than he can doubt the shining of the sun."⁷⁴ Though Bishop Warburton accused him of being an example of "zeal run mad," and Bishop Butler declared his doctrine of assurance "a horrid thing, a very horrid thing,"⁷⁵ Wesley preached and taught a radical doctrine of assurance. The Wesleyan doctrine of assurance was much more than a feeling that you would escape hell and grasp heaven. It was the assurance that in this earthly struggle God is with you, God loves you, God is on your side.

Pastor Steve Rodeheaver describes Wesley's doctrine of assurance and declares that it is just what his parishioners in a San Diego slum need today.

In a world that was completely against you, it meant that God was for you. In a world that deemed you worthless, it meant that God reckoned you worthy of His very presence. In a world that offered no love, but only exploitation, it meant that God cared profoundly and offered His Son. In a world where children died unnoticed, it meant that God took notice, and made you His own child. The witness of the Spirit didn't just provide assurance that you would survive judgment; it assured that God was present in you in the midst of a world that seemed God-forsaken… The Spirit's witness gave you confidence that no matter how deadly the world became, it could not destroy your relationship with the life giver.⁷⁶

If one were to create a tailor-made theology for the people of Wesley's England, he or she would have to come up with a soteriology which included the perfectibility of humankind.

4. Perfectibility of Humankind

The most powerful elements in British society, among them the rigid class system and entrenched Calvinism, conspired against a doctrine of Christian perfection. But the "new man" of Wesley's dreams required perfectibility. The "new people" needed a lofty and noble ideal. So much the better if Wesley could find it in Scripture, in Macarius, the Mystics, and the Anglican creed. The prayer for perfect love in the Collect for the Purity which stood at the opening of the Communion Service was readily recruited and put to work.

No theological concept did more to fuel the Methodist revolution in its broad-based aspects. Cultural refinement, educational enterprises, compassionate ministries, evangelism, economic advancement were all energized by the concept of the perfectibility of human beings and human society. Wesley called Christian perfection "the medicine of life, the never failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of men."⁷⁷

The pursuit of Christian perfection was the stated aim of the classes and bands, the arenas where perfectibility was tested on an individual basis. The declared mission of Methodism shows the broad-based aim of perfection -"to reform the nation, particularly the church, and to spread scriptural holiness over these lands."

Was ever a doctrine put to such a rigid test? Wesley took it to the dregs of society, to the very "precincts of embittered darkness," the prisons, the factories, the mines, the workhouses. Wearmouth calls it a "most courageous crusade, this pilgrimage of grace, among the common people who were treated as industrial slaves, left to starve and suffer in dirty cellars and damp dwelling places, and, when infirmity came and old age... dispatched to miserable workhouses as though but dumb driven cattle."⁷⁸ The result is history.

Let the Gentleman's Magazine, a periodical that regularly blasted Wesley, speak. The editors presumed that Wesley was enriching himself by exploiting his followers, but when he died "leaving nothing," they printed this report.

It is impossible to deny him the merit of having done infinite good to the lower classes of people… By the humane endeavors of him and his brother, Charles, a sense of decency in morals and religion was introduced in the lowest classes of mankind, the ignorant were instructed, and the wretched relieved and the abandoned reclaimed… He must be considered as one of the most extraordinary characters this or any other age has ever produced.⁷⁹

Without his doctrine of the perfectibility of man, of Christian perfection, Wesley would have had little to say to the poor and oppressed.

If one were to create a theology tailor-made for the people of Wesley’s England, it would have to include an egalitarian anthropology.

5. Egalitarian Anthropology

The "ignorant and ignored" lower classes found in Wesley's system new dignity and new self respect. Rich and poor, educated and unlearned sat together as peers in Methodist classes and bands. This was new for the poor. They had no privileges, owned no property, did not have the right to vote. They held no memberships in clubs, and no one cared for their opinion. Yet, in Methodism, they counted.

Political prudence, it is said, caused Wesley to desire to push "spiritual equality" and not "social equality." Then what was Wesley about when he told the poor workers that the mill operators and foremen were not superior to them? There could, he said, "be no excuse for despising them [the workers] though they be poor, mean, weak, or aged. The poorest and the weakest have the same place and authority which the richest and strongest have."⁸⁰ The "leveling" tendencies in Methodist egalitarianism could not be denied. The Duchess of Birmingham certainly did not miss them. She said of the Wesleyans,

Their doctrines are most repulsive and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards their superiors in perpetually endeavoring to level all ranks… It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth.⁸¹

Yes, Wesley's egalitarian anthropology was a perfect fit for the times. It was a necessary arrow in Wesley's theological quiver.

If one were to create a theology tailor-made for the people of Wesley's England, it would have to include a meaningful doctrine of good works.

6. Good Works

The goals of the revival required some sort of system that made "acts of piety and acts of mercy" important. Wesley tried to bring this about by creating a doctrine that stood midway between "salvation by works" and the "broken reeds" of particular election that made works utterly meaningless. Wesley never permitted works to be regarded as salvifically meritorious, yet they were in some secondary way necessary.

Wesley declared that a true Christian "cannot but be zealous of good works. He feels in his soul a burning, restless desire of spending and being spent for them [others]."⁸² "Nor do we acknowledge him to have one grain of faith," Wesley declared, "who is not willing to spend and be spent in doing all good ... to all men."⁸³

Such statements drew from Jose Miguez Bonino this applause: "Here works are not a concession that God allows us in spite of their present imperfection and their eschatological futility -- they are needed. . . by God himself -- they are the raw material for the new heaven and the new earth."⁸⁴ In Wesley, Bonino sees ""an anthropology worthy of human beings."⁸⁵

If one were to create a theology tailor-made for the people of Wesley's England, it would need to have doctrines which legitimate upward mobility.

7. Sacralize Work, Sanctify Money, and Baptize Upward Mobility

Let us go forth, 'tis God commands;

Let us make haste away;

Offer to Christ our hearts and hands,

We work for Christ to-day.⁸⁶

With this song sung at the 5:00 a.m. service, many a Methodist started his or her work day. Work became a lived out sacramental offering for many.

Wesley had carefully coached them well with these words: '"Be active, be diligent; avoid all laziness, sloth, indolence. Fly from every degree, every appearance of it: else you will never be more than half a Christian."⁸⁷

The Methodists were industrious, honest, and reliable to a proverb. They soon rose to levels of middle management. They became the foremen, the supervisors, the leaders in the workplace. This upward mobility was in harmony with Wesley's idea that every Methodist was to be good, do good, and make good. Bernard Semmel points out that Wesley's economic ideas were in harmony with the entrepreneurial mood of England. And since his objective was to lift the poor, he had, according to Semmel, the most noble vested interest in the new free enterprise system.⁸⁸

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was read and believed by John Wesley. Therefore, upward mobility (long overdue in class-stratified England) was desirable and acceptable. These economic ideas, applied to money, produced the famous Wesley sermon on money which had these three points:

Earn All You Can, Save All You Can, Give All You Can.

Money, Wesley declared, "is unspeakably precious if we are wise and faithful stewards of it."⁸⁹ Wesley recognized that money was safe only for the sanctified. He repeatedly warned his people against getting too attached to their money. "Treasuring gold or silver for its own sake," Wesley said, "is as grossly unreasonable as the treasuring of spiders."⁹⁰

To hoard money instead of using it to relieve the poor Wesley compared to buying poison for oneself. Those who fail as good stewards

are not only robbing God, . . . embezzling. . . their Lord's goods, and . . . corrupting their own souls, but also robbing the poor, the hungry, the naked; wronging the widow and fatherless; and making themselves accountable for all the want, affliction and distress which they may but do not remove.⁹¹

If one were to create a theology tailor-made for the people of Wesley's England, it would also need a powerful doctrine of civil obedience.

8. Civil Obedience

That is, while embracing a hundred religiously liberal causes, one must appear to be politically conservative. The aims of the movement must be attained without a bloody revolution. The goals of the French revolution, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, must be achieved without civil disobedience. War would be the worst possible scenario. Wesley wanted nothing to do with reform movements which were "in every county, city, and village… turning quiet men into wild bulls, bears, and tigers."⁹² Wesley observed that, "The consequences of these commotions will be exactly the same as . . . in the last century. First, the land will become a field of blood, many thousands of poor Englishmen will sheathe their swords in each others bowels, for the diversion of their good neighbors."⁹³ Here we see Wesley once again adopting conservative politics and elevating the New Testament doctrine of government as instituted by God in order to save his people, the poor, from destruction.

If one were to create a theology tailor-made for the people of Wesley's England, it would need to be a nurturing pastoral theology.

9. Nurturing Pastoral Theology

How could the faithful survive without a highly structured system of Christian nurture -- like Wesley's societies, classes, and bands?

Our challenge, then, is to be faithful to the heritage and relevant to the times. To be Wesleyans, we must practice Wesley's way of doing theology. It seems to me that Wesley's theological method was to first survey the needs of the times, the needs of the people. Second comes the exercise of surveying all the resources of the Christian faith. Third is the step of fashioning any new synthesis from those resources that the times and the needs require. Fourth comes the bringing together of resources and needs. This is what Wesley did, I believe. He saw the desperate needs of the poor (90% of the population), examined the resources of the Christian faith, noticing that the only notes being heard were the five notes of Calvinism. He said, so to speak, "Wait, there are 83 other keys to be played. Let's try some of these combinations."

One is led to ask how Wesley's theology, tailor-made for the human needs of the times, would be different if he had had no Anglican creed, or Christian tradition, or even the Bible. How would Wesley's theology have been different if he had never listened to William Law, never read Jeremy Taylor, Thomas a'Kempis, Henry Scougal, or Macarius?

Of course, such mental gymnastics are neither possible nor practical. Of course, the Bible, Christian tradition, and Wesley's tutors helped shape his thought. I am not ready to declare that Wesley's theology would have been the same without these factors, and I am even less ready to say that any such theology would be adequate. But I am ready to say that no one item in the Wesleyan quadrilateral outweighed the needs of the people as a factor in the formulation of Wesley's theology -- not even the Bible. On the day of Judgment we shall face these questions, Wesley says:

Wast thou . . . a general benefactor to mankind? feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the sick, assisting the stranger, relieving the afflicted . . .?

Wast thou eyes to the blind, feet to the lame? a father to the fatherless, and a husband to the widow? and didst thou labor to improve all outward works of mercy as means of saving souls from death?⁹⁴

One way of being Wesleyan today is to survey human needs and bring to bear on them any resources of the Christian faith that can help, even if this requires new syntheses, new emphases, and rediscovery of neglected truth. This we must do even if what we come up with does not come very close to matching the way Bresee believed it, or the way Roberts preached it, or the way Asbury expressed it. This we must do to be Wesleyan -- even if it means muting or refuting some of Wesley's own teachings. Perhaps we could start by refuting Wesley's dedication to upward mobility. It and the system it represented rescued the poor then and created a needed middle class. But now it has become an instrument of oppression in many places. And, surely, Methodist leader and author Maxie Dunnam is correct when he says that in America today the religion of sinners is upward mobility.

Mr. Wesley, our spiritual and ecclesiastical ancestor, was not a systematic theologian, he was a "theologian of the road" as presented in this description by an unknown author:

Those of the balcony work out their theology at a distance from ordinary, everyday life, observing its movement and its actors like people in Spain who sit on their upstairs balconies in the evenings and watch life go by on the streets below. The theology which they produce is often of fine quality in terms of standards of academic scholarship, but it is remote from ordinary life, authoritarian, and cold. In contrast . . . the theologians of the road are those who share fully in the hustle and bustle of the streets, who give themselves to the dust, the sweat, and tediousness of travel, and who work out their answers as they walk along in company with others, sharing the burdens.

¹ Albert Outler, Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit (Nashville: Tidings, 1975), p. 46.

² The Oracle or British Weekly Miscellany, July 24, 1742.

³ The Bristol Oracle and Country Advertiser, Feb. 15, 1740.

⁴ Quoted without reference by J. B. Whiteley, Wesley's England, p.28.

⁵ London Daily Post and General Advertiser, Feb. 15, 1740.

⁶ Gentleman’s Magazine, Jan. 1740.

⁷ Norwich Gazette, Jan. 24-31, 1741.

⁸ Ibid., Jan. 10-17, 1741.

⁹ London Daily Post and General Advertiser, Jan. 8, 1740.

¹⁰ The Cambridge Journal and Weekly Flying Post, Jan. 5, 1754.

¹¹ Ibid., June 5, 1746.

¹² Westminster Journal, Feb. 9,1745, cited by Robert F. Wearmouth, Methodism and the Common People of the Eighteenth Century (London: Epworth Press, 1945).

¹³ Leeds Intelligencer, Feb.15, 1780.

¹⁴ March 7-14, 1751.

¹⁵ Journal, Jan.15, 1777.

¹⁶ Lloyd's Evening Post, Dec.21, 1772; London Chronicle, Dec.17-19, 1772; Leeds Mercury, Dec.29, 1772.

¹⁷ London Daily Post, May 14, 1742.

¹⁸ Norwich Gazette, Jan. 24-31, 1741, quoting the Evening Post.

¹⁹ Public Advertiser, Nov.18, 1756.

²⁰ D. D. Thompson, John Wesley As a Social Reformer (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1898), p.94.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ibid.

²³ A. H. Body, John Wesley and Education (London: Epworth Press, 1936), p.40.

²⁴ From Poems of William Blake, Amelia H. Munson, ed. (New York: Thomas Y Crowell Co., 1964), p.56.

²⁵ Gentleman's Magazine, July 1757.

²⁶ Ibid., Dec. 1757.

²⁷ Ibid., July 1757.

²⁸ Lloyd's Evening Post, Sept. 29-Oct. 1; Oct. 1-3, 1766. Cited by Wearmouth, op. cit.

²⁹ January 24-31, 1741.]

³⁰ London Chronicle, Sept.11, 1762. Cited by Wearmouth, op. cit.

³¹ Whiteley, op. cit., p.125.

³² London Chronicle, June 25-27, 1771.

³³ London Evening Post, Apr. 7, 1772.

³⁴ Mar. 26, 1796.

³⁵ The Oracle and Bristol Weekly Miscellany, May 3, 1742.

³⁶ London Chronicle, Oct.12, 1771.

³⁷ Gentleman’s Magazine, Dec. 1750.

³⁸ Leeds Intelligencer, 1791. Cited by Wearmouth, op. cit., without date of original.

³⁹ Gazetteer and New Daily Advertise,; Apr.30, 1772. Cited by Wearmouth, op. cit., p.65.

⁴⁰ Gentleman's Magazine, July 1741.

⁴¹ London Magazine, March, 1751.

⁴² Worcester Weekly Journal, Apr. 8, 1741.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Feb. 7, 1772. Cited by Wear-mouth, op. cit.

⁴⁵ Norwich Gazette, Jan.17, 1741.

⁴⁶ Ibid., Dec.10, 1743.

⁴⁷ Cambridge Journal, Aug.17, 1751.

⁴⁸ Leeds Intelligencer, Nov. 2, 1779.

⁴⁹ These cases include 720 from my research and 80 from the work of Robert Wearmouth.

⁵⁰ The London Packet, or New Lloyd's Evening Post, Apr.20, 1787.

⁵¹ Norwich Gazette, July 22, 1749.

⁵² Gentleman's Magazine, Feb. 1785.

⁵³ London Magazine, Oct. 1754.

⁵⁴ Woodfall's Register, Dec.10, 1789. Cited by Wearmouth, op. cit.

⁵⁵ Morning Chronicle, Aug.21, 1788.

⁵⁶ Worcester Weekly Journal, Mar.26, 1741.

⁵⁷ Norwich Mercury, July 7, 1750. Cited by Wearmouth, op. cit.

⁵⁸ London Chronicle, Jan. 6 and 13, 1767.

⁵⁹ Norwich Mercury, Sept. 17, 1743.

⁶⁰ Gentleman’s Magazine, Feb. 1785.

⁶¹ Public Advertiser, Mar. 14, 1782.

⁶² June 11, 1743.

⁶³ Oracle and Country Intelligencer, June 11, 1843.

⁶⁴ Arminian Magazine,1788, pp. 67-68. Cited by Wearmouth, op. Cit., p. 198.

⁶⁵ John Wesley, Journal, July 17, 1748 in The Works of John Wesley (Javkson ed.; reprint; 14 vols.; Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1978). See also Works, VIII.267.

⁶⁶ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in Franc, p. 351. Quoted by Wellman J. Warner, The Wesleyan Movement in the Industrial Revolution (second edition.; New York: Russell and Russell, 1967) p. 116.

⁶⁷ Bernard Semmel, The Methodist Revolution (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1973), p. 184.]

⁶⁸ John Wesley, "Some Remarks on Mr. Hill’s Review. . ., " Works (ed. Cit.), X.375.

⁶⁹ John Wesley, Sermon: "Free Grace," Works (ed. cit.), VII.382-384.

⁷⁰ John Wesley, Sermon: "Free Grace," Works (ed. cit.), VII.381.

⁷¹ John Wesley, Sermon: "Free Grace," Works (ed. Cit.), VII.375.

⁷² Adam Clarke, Sermon: "The Necessity of Christ’s Atonement," Sermons (London: Wm. Tegg, 1868), IV.158.

⁷³ John Wesley, Sermon: "The Witness of the Spirit," Works (ed. Cit.), V.115.

⁷⁴ John Wesley, Sermon: "The Witness of the Spirit," Works (ed. Cit.), V.117.

⁷⁵ Cited by William R. Cannon, The Theology of John Wesley (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1946), p. 216.

⁷⁶ Steve Rodeheaver, "Empowering Assurance," unpublished essay, 1988.

⁷⁷ Wearmouth, op. cit., p. 217.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ Gentleman's Magazine, 61 (1791) 282-284.

⁸⁰ John Wesley, Journal, June 1782, Works (ed. cit.), IV.228.

⁸¹ Cited by Semmel, op. cit., p. 113.]

⁸² Cited by Theodore Runyon, ed., Sanctification and Liberation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), p. 34.

⁸³ John Wesley, "The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies," Works (ed. cit.), VIII:271. Paraphrase mine.]

⁸⁴ Jose Miguez Bonino, "Wesley Doctrine of Sanctification from a Liberationist Perspective," in Runyon, ed., op. cit., p.63.

⁸⁵ Ibid., p.61.

⁸⁶ Quoted by David Michael Henderson, "John Wesley’s Instructional Groups" (Unpublished PH.D. diss., Indiana University, 1980), p. 124.

⁸⁷ Cf. Rupert Davies and Gordon Rupp, eds., A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain (3 vols.; London: Epworth Press, 1965), I:310.

⁸⁸ Semmel, op. cit., p. 72.

⁸⁹ John Wesley, Sermon: "The Use of Money," Works (ed. cit.) VI.126. Paraphrase mine.

⁹⁰ Cf. Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of Rev. John Wesley M.A., Founder of the Methodists (3 vols.; London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1890) III.159.

⁹¹ John Wesley, Sermon: "Sermon on the Mount VIII," Works (ed. cit.) V.375.

⁹² John Wesley, "Thoughts Upon Liberty," Works (ed. cit.), XI.43.

⁹³ John Wesley, "Free Thoughts on the Present State of Public Affairs," Works (ed. cit.), XI.28.

⁹⁴ John Wesley, Sermon: "The Good Steward," Works (ed. cit.), VI.146.

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