Volume 1 Events

LETTERS FROM OXFORD

NOVEMBER 3, 1721, TO SEPTEMBER 30, 1735

PRINCIPLE EVENTS

These Oxford letters may be regarded as the introduction to Wesley’s Journal. They cover the formative years of his life, show out of what material the greatest evangelist was made, and confirm the judgment of Mr. Gerard, Chaplain to the Bishop of Oxford, who predicted that Wesley ‘would one day be a standard bearer of the Cross, either in his own country or beyond the seas.’

The first letter links Wesley to his old school, and brings out his scrupulous sense of personal honor. Those to his mother are a noble tribute to her gifts of mind and heart. Amid all the lights of the University she was still one of his most trusted counselors. The letters give many glimpses of life at Epworth Rectory. The Rector’s harshness to Hetty and his resentment of John’s more lenient spirit come out in the letter of December 6, 1726.

The correspondence with Mrs. Pendarves (hitherto given to the world in fragments) is now published complete. Dr. Rigg thought Wesley was in love with her, and so did Lecky; but whether that was so or not, we see the young don admitted to the intimated friendship of one of the finest ladies of the time, who felt the warmest esteem and regard for him, and never lost it. The Morgan correspondence takes us to the very heart of Oxford Methodism, and brings out Wesley’s zeal as a tutor; while in a later letter we see his care for one of his friends, about whose state he consults William Law.

The correspondence with his father and his brother Samuel as to the living at Epworth strikes a painful note. It was hard for John to refuse the request which they urged; but who can doubt there was a Providence in his refusal His final consent was happily in vain. The last letter, that or the Oxford Churchman who is bounded by rule and order, forms a fiting close to the first stage of Wesley’s life.

Some notable sayings occur in the letters, which give promise to the high courage and broad vision of the future leader of the Evangelic Revival.

THE GEORGIA LETTERS

OCTOBER 10, 1735, TO NOVEMBER 26, 1737

PRINCIPAL EVENTS

The mission to Georgia was a crucial event in Wesley's life. He undertook it in 'the hope of saving his own soul,' as well as to do good to the settlers. He hoped eventually to find his way open for work among the Indian tribes. Letters and Journal now throw light upon each other. Wesley enjoyed in an extraordinary degree the confidence of such men as Dr. Burton and Mr. Vernon, whose letters to him overflow with goodwill. He was living in an atmosphere of slander, and his letter to the Trustees on March 4, 1737, shows how this preyed on his mind. Dr. Burton had told him, 'You come to a people, some ignorant and most disposed to licentiousness,' and he and the Trustees sent Wesley letters full of confidence and regard. Wesley's care for the highest good of his parishioners stands out in his letter to Charles on March 22, 1736. The letters in this section are of special interest. He tells his brother at Tiverton his views about some of the classical authors read in great schools, and refers to the peril he had run from the writings of the Mystics. His letter to his friends at Oxford won Whitefield for America. His business ability is manifest in his communications to the Georgia Trustees; whilst his loyalty to Oglethorpe comes out in the cheering message he sends him when the founder of the colony was troubled by events in Parliament. Old friends like James Hutton and Miss Granville are net forgotten. All the correspondence bears witness to the purity of Wesley' s heart and mind and his devotion to his work. The letters to Thomas Causton and Mrs. Williamson show how the storm of opposition drove him back to England sadder yet infinitely wiser, and ready to welcome the light and peace to which as yet he was a stranger. He had put his stiff High Churchmanship to the test, and it had failed him utterly.

THE GEORGIA MISSION

Further information about the Georgia Mission may be found in the Earl of Egmont's Diary, published by the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 192o. On Tuesday, October 14, 1735, he says: ' I went to Gravesend to meet Mr. Oglethorpe there and assist in mustering the people that go with him to Georgia.' On board the Simmonds go Mr. Oglethorpe, Mr. Johnson, [Mr. Johnson is referred to in Journal, i. 250d. His brother had been on board the Simmonds, and complained that he was inconvenienced by the public prayers in the great cabin. Fortunately he left the ship at Cowes (ibid. i. 114, 124). The father had been Governor of South Carolina.] son of the late Governor of Carolina, and the two Wesleys, brothers, both clergymen. 'A third clergyman was to have gone, but has failed us and we knew nothing of it till a few days ago. His name is Hall; he was ordained for the very purpose to go a few weeks ago, in order to succeed Mr. Quineey.’ Having after his ordination married, his wife and her relatives persuaded him not to go. He had laid out 100 on clothes and furniture for the house in Savannah. On October 20, 1736, Samuel Quincey appeared before the Georgia Trustees, when Mr. Vernon told him that his abandoning the colony to go to New York 'for six months together and leaving a wheelwright to read public prayers, comfort the dying, and bury the dead, was a behavior that the Trustees could not excuse.' Quincey said this was clue to sickness. On March 15, 1737, Mrs. Stanley, 'the public midwife of Savannah, to whom we allow a crown for every woman whom she lays,' gave the Trustees ' an extraordinary account of the people's industry and attendance on divine worship, greatly commending Mr. John Wesley, our minister at Savannah, who goes from house to house exhorting the inhabitants to virtue and religion.' On February 8, 1738, Wesley attended the Board, and on the 22nd explained why he had come to England. ‘Mr. Vernon took him home to dinner, and in company of Mr. Hales examined him most particularly as to Causton's bad behavior as a magistrate, which they took down in writing in order to be discussed of at the Board.’

The Earl sent Wesley, on April 5, 1736, ‘a collection of tracts relating to Carolina interleaved, with the desire that he would remark upon what he found curious therein and return it me in two years.’

On January 22, 1737, he says: ‘I passed the evening at home, and received a letter from Mr. John Wesley, our minister at Savannah, acknowledging the receipt of my collection of tracts concerning Carolina, and acquainting me that the people of Savannah are too numerous for his care, that he could wish they were better Christians, though for their number he finds more willing and desirous to be good than in any other town he knows of.’

The mission to Georgia had many painful experiences, but it played an important part in the training of Wesley. He had to face prejudice and opposition in its last stage which was humbling and disheartening, and he must have learned something of his own weakness in the case of Miss Hopkey; but he was never more zealous for the good of others, never more ready to sacrifice himself for their highest interest. He came into contact with men and women whose faith and courage made him conscious of his own spiritual need and prepared the way for his emancipation from doubt and fear. George Whitefield, who was on the ground within five months, wrote in his Journal: ‘The good Mr. John Wesley has done in America, under God, is inexpressible. His name is very precious among the people, and he has laid such a foundation that I hope neither men nor devils will ever be able to shake. Oh that I may follow him, as he has Christ!’ See also P. 365.

THE RETURN FROM GEORGIA

Some further details from the Earl of Egmont’s Diary, referred to on pp. 229-30, may here be added. Mr. Quincey attended a meeting of the Georgia Trustees on July 20, 1736, ‘and made application that we would give him an attestation of his good behavior while he served in Georgia, that we would make him a consideration for his expenses and loss of three months' time after the arrival of Mr. John Wesley to succeed him before his return to England, and that we would let him know what charges had been laid against him and by whom in Georgia that he might wipe off the aspersions.’

On February 17, 1737, the Earl had a conversation with Dr. Bear-croft, of the S.P.G., who said that they had received a letter from Mr. Oglethorpe, from which it appeared that John Wesley ‘renounced any salary, as thinking Ministers ought to preach the Gospel without hire, and had desired the 50 to be paid him on the foot of his distributing the same in charity, which the Society could not do.’

On April 26 the Earl writes: ‘Mr. John Wesley, our Minister at Savannah, left with us his license for performing ecclesiastical Service at Savannah, which we took for a resignation, and therefore resolved to revoke his commission. In truth the Board did it with great pleasure, he appearing to us to be a very odd mixture of a man, an enthusiast, and at the same time a hypocrite, wholly distasteful to the greater part of the inhabitants, and an incendiary of the people against the magistrates.’ That judgment has to be read in the light of a later entry, where John Doble, who had been over five years schoolmaster at Highgate in Georgia, and returned in March 1740, reported ‘that people of Savannah are a wretched crew, most of them, and Mr. Whitefield told them in his farewell sermon they were the scum of the earth, and God had only sent them to prepare the way for a better sort of men.’

In Mr. Quincey’s time there were on some Sundays not ten persons in Church and three at the Communion where Wesley had forty every Sunday.

THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REVIVAL

MARCH 7, 1738, TO NOVEMBER 14, 1741

PRINCIPAL EVENTS

No letters in the whole series of Wesley’s correspondence are more significant than these. They begin with the year of his evangelical conversion and his visit to the Motarian Settlement at Herrnhut. They show how zealously he worked among the Religious Societies in London, at Oxford, and Bristol; they describe his first triumphs as a field-preacher in England. Here the letters are extraordinarily full. They were written to James Hutton, to be read in the little Society which met in Fetter Lane, and help us to realize how the news of the Great Awakening stirred the hearts of Wesley's friends in London. We see how the Wesleys became estranged from the Moravians, and how Calvinism made a breach between them and George Whitefield. Another pilot was dropped by the outspoken letters to William Law. The letters to Samuel Wesley are quite as outspoken, and show how the younger brother was feeling his feet as a theologian. These years have unique importance in the history of the Great Revival.

Edited by Michael Mattei 2000 Wesley Center for Applied Theology. All rights reserved. No for-profit use of this text is permitted without the express, written consent of the Wesley Center for Applied Theology of Northwest Nazarene College, Nampa, Idaho 83686 USA. Contact the webmaster for permission.