John Wesley

Front matter

Edited by A. M. M. Stbdman, M.A.

Under the above title Messrs. Methuen are publishing a series of short biographies, free from party bias, of the most prominent leaders of religious life and thought in this and the last century.

M. H. Button.

Contents

CHAP.

I. EARLY YEARS

II. CHARTERHOUSE AND CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD

Chapter I. Early Years

John Wesley * was born on June 17th (0. S.), 1703, at Epworth Rectory, his father, Samuel Wesley, being rector of the parish from 1696 to 1735. He was of gentle birth on both sides. The Wesleys were an ancient family settled in the west of England from the time of the Conquest. The Annesleys, his mother's family, were an equally ancient and aristocratic stock. The fact that Wesley was a gentleman born and bred was no slight help to the influence he afterwards acquired. The native delicacy of such a man gives him a certain tact in dealing with the poor, which is rarely acquired by those who are not to the manner bora. He had no temptation to flatter the great, and was not intoxicated by being brought into contact with them. But John Wesley owed much more to his parents than the good blood in his veins. Both Samuel and Susanna

1 He was christened John Benjamin, but the second name was always dropped both by himself and all the family.

2 . JOHX WESLEY.

Wesley were people of real piety and considerable abilities, which had been improved by culture ; both felt keenly their responsibility in bringing up their numerous offspring in the fear and love of God ; both had thought out the great problem of religion for themselves, for both had been reared in the ranks of Nonconformity, and both had come over at an early age to the Church of England, from a deliberate conviction that it was the more excellent way. To the mother chiefly was consigned the task of the early training both of sons and daughters ; and that regard for discipline, those methodical and orderly habits, that sense of the value of time and of the duty of cultivating his talents to the utmost, above all, that intense realization of an overruling Providence and of the supreme importance of religion, which marked the whole career of John Wesley, may be clearly traced back to his mother's training at Epworth Rectory. Of all her children, she felt it her duty to bestow the greatest pains upon John, who had been providentially preserved to her when he was all but burnt to death in the fne which consumed the Rectory in 1709. "I do intend," she writes in her private meditations under the heading of " Son John," "to be more particularly careful of the soul of this child, that Thou hast so mercifully provided for, than ever I have been, that I may do my endeavour to instil into his mind the principles of Thy true religion and virtue. Lord give me grace to do it sincerely and prudently, and bless my attempts with good success ! " Upon John himself his deliverance from the fire made a deep impression; though he was only six years old at the time he remembered all the circumstances perfectly well' and many years afterwards (1750), when he happened to'

EARLY YEARS. 3

be holding a watch-night service on the anniversary of his rescue, " it came into my mind," he says, " that this was the very day and hour (11 p.m., Feb. 9) in which, forty years ago, I was taken out of the flames. I stopped, and gave a short account of that wonderful providence." Three years later (1753), when he thought he was dying, " to prevent vile panegyric " he wrote his own epitaph, in which he described himself as " a Brand plucked out of the burning."

As he was thoughtful beyond his years, it is quite possible that other events which occurred at Epworth during his childhood may really have helped to shape his future career. It has been suggested, for instance, that the serious weekly conversations which Mrs. Wesley used to hold with each of her children individually may have been present to his mind when he established the class-meeting. That he remembered and valued them is certain, for when he was a Fellow of Lincoln, he wrote to his mother begging her to give him that time which she had formerly given him on a Thursday. Again, it has been conjectured that the gatherings at the rectory on Sunday afternoons, at which Mj;s. Wesley, in the absence of her husband on Convocation business in London, attracted and affected the rude people of Epworth in a way that the rector had never been able to do from the pulpit, impressed upon John the desirableness of supplementing the regular work of the Church by the formation of Societies. He certainly did intimate very often in after-life that the disheartening results of his good father's efforts in his parish led him to think lightly of the parochial system. But these were probably the inferences of later years; at any rate they cannot be directly traced back to his childhood. What we can say for a certainty is, that he most thoroughly appreciated the excellent training, moral, spiritual, and intellectual, which he received at Epworth Rectory, all his life long. When he was quite an old man (1771), he wrote with rapture about an admirable household he had become acquainted with in Ireland, and added, " Their ten children are in such order as I have not seen for many years ; indeed, never since I left my father's house." It is also clear that he attributed the benefits of his early training chiefly to his mother. For though he never spoke but with the greatest reverence and love of his father, it is to Mrs. Wesley that he most frequently and most warmly alludes. One of the reasons why he resolved that he would never marry (it is a pity that he did not keep his resolution), was because he despaired of finding any woman equal to his own mother ; and he more than once expressed a wish that he might not survive her. So highly did he value her method of bringing up her family, that he persuaded her with some difficulty to write a full account of it to him in 1732. From this account we learn how "the children were put into a regular method of living, in such things as they were capable of, from their birth ;" how "when turned a year old (and some before), they were taught to fear the rod and cry softly," how she insisted " upon conquering their will betimes, because this is the only strong and rational foundation of a religious education, without which both precept and example will be ineffectual," and many other details which are too long to quote.

Mrs. Wesley's reluctance to write this account arose from a reason which seven years' residence at

EARLY YEARS. 5

Epworth Rectory enables the present writer heartily to endorse. " It cannot," she says, " be of any service to any one to know how I, that have lived such a retired life for so many years, used to employ my time and care in bringing up my children. No one can, without renouncing the world in the most literal sense, observe my method ; and there are few, if any, that would entirely devote twenty years of the prime of life in hopes to save the souls of their children, which they think may be saved without so much ado ; for that was my principal intention, however unskilfully managed." Now the geographical position of Epworth shows to some extent its isolation ; but its ecclesiastical position is still more isolated. It is cut off from its own proper diocese by the rapid river Trent, which it is sometimes difficult and even dangerous to cross. The rector of Epworth would be naturally drawn to the Lincoln side (on one side his parish touched Yorkshire), being a prominent man in the diocese, and the representative of its clergy in Convocation ; but his family would be quite cut off from Lincolnshire — (though we are Lincolnshire people, we talk about "going into Lincolnshire," as though we were no part of it, to the present day). There would be few neighbours with whom the Wesleys could associate on terms of equality ; they would therefore be left very much to their own resources. But, as all the family — father, mother, and all the brothers and sisters — were above the average in point of abilities and attainments, this would be no detriment to John Wesley's intellectual culture, while at the same time it would lay the foundation of that simplicity, guilelessness, and unworldliness which were his strongly-marked characteristics all through life. His early home training also combined the double advantage of giving him the culture and refinement of a thorough gentleman, and also a hardiness and power to endure poverty. For from circumstances into which it is not necessary to enter, the Wesleys were always poor, sometimes even to the verge of destitution.

John Wesley had not been reared in the lap of luxury, and his habit of roughing it in his childhood stood him in good stead in his hard after-life. All the little traits of him at Epworth indicate that the boy was father of the man. He was so far beyond his years that his father, who would be a strict censor in such a matter, admitted him to the Holy Communion when he was only ejght years of age^ He had the small-pox shortly after "(April 1712). "Jack," writes his mother, "has borne his disease bravely, like a man, and indeed like a Christian, without any complaint, though he seemed angry at the small-pox when they were sore, as we guessed by his looking sourly at them, for he never said anything." " I believe," he writes himself, " till I was about ten years old I had not sinned away that washing of the Holy Ghost which was given me in baptism." One pictures John Wesley at Epworth as a grave, sedate child, always wanting to know the reason of everything, one of a group of remarkable children, of whom his sister Martha was most like him both in appearance and character, each of them with a strong individuality and a very high spirit, but all well kept in hand by their admirable mother, all precise and rather formal, after the fashion of the day, in their language and habits. Mrs. Wesley complains that after the fire of 1709, when the children had 'to be

EARLY YEARS. 7

billeted out among the neighbours, the arrangements became disorganized; but she soon put tbem into order again when they settled down in their new house, which is now standing.

Before leaving John Wesley's first home, mention must be made of the famous Epworth ghost, although he did not commence his antics until John had left Epworth for Charterhouse. " Old Jeffery " is to some extent answerable for a marked feature of Wesley's character — his love of the marvellous, and his intense belief in the reality of apparitions and of witchcraft. The noises which disturbed the Wesley household in the winter of 1715-16 have never been satisfactorily explained ; the Wesleys themselves undoubtedly attributed them to supernatural causes, and both Mr. and Mrs. Wesley's comments upon what happened show how thoroughly both believed in the active interference of spiritual agents in the affairs of this life. What some have thought a weakness in John Wesley he clearly inherited from his parents, who fostered it both by precept and example.

Chapter II. Charterhouse And Christ Church, Oxford

Ox January 28, 1713-14, John Wesley was admitted on the foundation of Charterhouse, on the nomination of the Duke of Buckingham, who had already shown himself a kind friend to the Wesleys. At this famous school he remained for more than six years, during the whole of which time Dr. Thomas Walker was the head-master, and Mr. Andrew Tooke "usher," or second master.1 His quietness, regularity, and industry made him a favourite with his teachers, and the scholarship which he showed in after-life indicates plainly that his school-days were not wasted. He kept up his health by following his father's sensible advice, to run round the Charterhouse garden three times every morning; and the tyranny of the elder boys, who used to appropriate the meat apportioned to the younger, and thus forced him in the earlier part of his school-life to live chiefly on dry bread, unwittingly contributed to prepare him for the hard, ascetic life which he afterwards led. " From ten to fourteen," he says, "I had little but bread to eat, and not great

1 Mr. Tooke was the author of a once well-known book The Pantheon. >

CHARTERHOUSE AND CHRIST CHURCH. 9

plenty of that. I believe this was so far from hurting me, that it laid the foundation of lasting health." The story of his propensity to associate with, and domineer over, boys younger than himself, and of his answer to Mr. Tooke, who remonstrated with him for so doing, " Better rule in hell than serve in heaven," rests upon slender foundations, and may well have arisen from a prevalent but in my opinion a mistaken view of his character. Nor is it quite clear how far he lost the religious impressions which he carried with him from Epworth. Tbe removal from home, and such a home as Epworth Rectory, to a public school, as public schools then were, could hardly fail to be perilous ; and from John Wesley's own vehement condemnation of the public school system in his sermon on the education of children, written many years later, we may fairly presume that his own experience of Charterhouse did not commend that system to him. He describes his own state both as a school-boy and an undergraduate as that of one who was living without any real sense of religion, and who habitually indulged in outward though not flagrant sin ; but he never ceased to read his Bible daily, and to say his prayers morning and evening. And surely it was greatly to Wesley's ultimate advantage that he had been a public-school boy. For, after all, it is not a healthy training to bring up a boy, as it were, under a glass case ; and in spite of their many evils, — and in the eighteenth century these evils were very many, — public schools afford a mental and moral discipline which cannot be found elswhere ; in a rough way they brace the tone of the character, impart a sort of undefinable readiness to give and take, and encourage a larger way of looking at things than any other system does.

Moreover, the knowledge which they convey, if narrow in its rant^e, is thoroughly sound of its kind; for, aft it all, public-school masters arc, and always have been, the picked men of England. Exceptis excipiendis, y<>u can tell at a glance one who has had a public-school and university education from one who has not. We have only to compare the two Wesleys in these respects with some other leaders of the Evangelical revival to find a striking illustration of what is meant. During the last four years of John's stay at Charterhouse both his brothers were at Westminster — Samuel as usher, ( 'harles as a young scholar. Their father had good ruas'in to boast that he had given his three sons the best education that En-land could afford. Charterhouse had not quite the splendid reputation of Westminster, which school, under the regime of Dr. Busby, continued by his successor, Dr. Freind, had attained to an eminence which no school ever had reached in England. But Charterhouse too had grand traditions of its own; when John Wesley was there, only a few years had passed away since Joseph Addison and Richard Steele were being nurtured in its cloisters; a little later two other eminent men, whose names were afterwards to be strangely linked with Wesleys own, Archbishop Potter and Bishop Benson,

ZLfT1^ there; and many other g^t names

h nil?" f the I011 °f its worthies. John Wesley

Je was in0aTeiV, T* & W for the 1***. ** when roU7itmevLe?yd0;ea 6 fe^ 'fa °f "*** really seems to hTve befn a S of ^ f^' wh° whole family, kept a wJSx'o^^^t" W^T mmster, invited him to his house, ^t^tf

CHARTERHOUSE AND CHRIST CHURCH. 11

him home. " My brother Jack," he writes to his father in 1719, "I can faithfully assure you, gives you no manner of discouragement from breeding your third son [Charles] a scholar;" and in the same year, "Jack is with me, and a brave boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can." How many boys of sixteen in these examination-ridden days are learning Hebrew as fast as they can ?

On July 13, 1720, John Wesley entered as a commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, bringing with him from Charterhouse a school exhibition of £40 a year. We must multiply by four to find the true value of this aid. £160 a year should have been nearly enough to maintain an economical undergraduate ; but at this period John Wesley seems to have been rather too like his father, who never was a good manager of money. There is really no reason for supposing that he was at all extravagant at Christ Church ; bat his correspondence shows that he was constantly in monetary difficulties. It is hardly necessary to dwell upon the reputation of " The House," which in the days before Wesley had completed the education of the majority of the foremost men in England. It had the pick of Westminster, and Dr. Fell crowned the edifice which Dr. Busby had begun to raise. Its repute was not, perhaps, quite so high when Wesley was an undergraduate, but still it was a grand society to belong to. We have an interesting description of John Wesley at this period by a contemporary, Mr. Badcock, according to whom he was "the very sensible and acute collegian, baffling every man by the subtleties -of logic, and laughing at them for being so easily routed ; a young fellow of the finest classical taste, of the most liberal and manly sentiments ; " " gay and sprightly, with a turn for wit and humour." This is very different from the grave child at Epworth of fifteen years before, and it quite bears out what Wesley says about his own state at school and college. Only we must beware of laying too much stress upon what he regards as a deterioration ; the reaction from the severe restraint at Epworth was inevitable ; he was passing through a crisis which all except a very few have to encounter. There is absolutely no proof of any grave moral delinquency; he was simply the lively, careless young man, but certainly not the mere idler, for his well-stored mind forbids any such notion, and still less, the profligate. I le dabbled in poetry ; he was troubled, for almost the only time in his life, about his health, and adopted the severe regimen recommended by the famous Dr. Cheyne. His tutors were, first a Mr. Wigan, and then a Mr. Sherman, but they do not seem to have made much impression upon him. There is little more to be said about his life at Christ Church, except that it is surely not fair to blame the authorities because they failed to touch, as those at Charterhouse had failed to touch, Wesley's higher nature, and because neither enabled him to keep up, under new and far more trying circumstances, the high standard which had been set before him at Epworth. If the tree is to be

™ -^ ltS fmits' his days at Charterhouse and Christ Church could not have been idly spent, for he earned away with him an amount of mental culture which would compare favourably with that of some of the best specimens of these days of incessant examination. Mental culture, however, is one thing, spiritual growth another. There are abundant traces of the former none of the latter, between his leaving Epworth and

CHARTERHOUSE AND CHRIST CHURCH. 13

his last year at Christ Church. Then, when he was twenty-two years of age, a great change came over him. The question now arose as to whether he was to enter the sacred ministry or not. No thoughtful man, who had been trained as John Wesley had been trained at Epworth, could possibly contemplate so momentous a step without serious consideration.

It was early in 1725 that the thought of taking Holy Orders occurred to him. He wrote home on the subject ; his father counselled delay, fearing lest his motive might be, " as Eli's sons, to eat a piece of bread;" but his mother judged his character better, and saw that the change was real. " I was much pleased," she says, " with your letter to your father about taking orders, and liked the proposal well; but it is an unhappiness almost peculiar to our family, that your father and I seldom think alike. I approve the disposition of your mind, and think the sooner you are a deacon the better. . . . God Almighty direct and bless you ! " Mr. Wesley, however, soon yielded to the stronger mind of his wife, and wrote, advising his son to seek Holy Orders without delay. John Wesley's own conduct cannot be so well described as in his own words : —

" When I was about twenty-two my father pressed me to enter into Holy Orders. At the same time, the providence of God directing me to Kempis' Christian Pattern, I began to see that true religion was seated in the heart, and that God's law extended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was, however, angry at Kempis for being too strict, though 1 read him only in Dean Stanhope's translation. Meeting likewise with a religious friend, which I never had till now, I began to alter the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a new life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement; I communicated every week ; I watched against all sin, whether in word or deed. I began to aim at, and to pray for, inward holiness ; so that now, doing so much and living so good a life, I doubted not that I was a good Christian."

The last sentence is of course ironical ; but is it not right in this case to defend John Wesley against John Wesley ? While thoroughly believing in the reality and importance of a later change, can any one deny that from this time forward to the very close of his long life, John Wesley led a most holy, devoted life, aiming only at the glory of God, the welfare of his own soul, and the benefit of his fellow-creatures ? and if that is not to be a good Christian, what is ? His mother gave him, as usual, excellent advice about the Be Imitationc, and also advised him to read another devotional work, now little known, but well worth reading, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, by Scougal, a clergyman of the Scotch Episcopal Church, which John Wesley loved. Most interesting letters also passed between mother and son, and father and son, about such subjects as the minatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed, the thorny question of Predestination, and other difficult points. The upshot was, that John Wesley was ordained deacon by Dr. Potter, Bishop of Oxford, in the September Ember week, 1725.

Chapter III. Lincoln College, Oxford

On March 17, 1726, John Wesley was elected Fellow of Lincoln College, on the Lincolnshire foundation. He owed his success chiefly to the interest made by his father and others with Dr. Morley, rector of the college, to whom he always acknowledged a deep debt of gratitude ; but he certainly might have been elected on his merits, if such had been the custom of those days. There was, however, an examination of some kind ; for his father writes to him in the preceding summer — " Study hard, lest your opponents beat you." These opponents or their friends tried to make capital out of his serious behaviour, but in vain. His election threw a gleam of light upon the somewhat gloomy life of his worthy father, who addressed him exultingly on March 21st, as "Dear Mr. Fellow-elect of Lincoln" (the expression " Fellow-elect " refers to the fact that at first a man is only elected probationary Fellow) ; and on April 1st wrote — " What will be my own fate before the summer be over, God only knows — sed passi graciora. Wherever I am, my Jack is Fellow of Lincoln."

John Wesley's connection with Lincoln College lasted for more than a quarter of a century. " Sometime Fellow of Lincoln College " is the designation by which he describes himself in the title-page of all his works. He frequently refers to the college with pleasure and gratitude, and he was deeply and permanently influenced in more respects than one by his connection with it.

" Lincoln " is only the popular name, its proper designation being " Collegium Beatse Virginis Marise et Omnium Sanctorum Lincolniense." The last epithet was added because it was founded by a Bishop of Lincoln, Kichard Fleming, in 1427, and its resources greatly augmented by another Bishop of Lincoln, Thomas Rotheram, who was afterwards Archbishop of York and Lord High Chancellor of England.1 It differed from other colleges, inasmuch as it was to be exclusively a college of theologians, " a college of divines," says John Wesley himself, " (so our statutes express it,) founded to overturn all heresies, and defend the Catholic Faith," which, being interpreted, means that it was founded for the express purpose of putting down the Lollards, whose increasing influence alarmed Bishop Fleming It was the duty of the individual members of the college to preach against Lollardism throughout the huge diocese of Lincoln.

Lincoln, though a small and comparatively poor college, has always held its own among its statelier and richer sisters in the University. In the seventeenth century it had numbered among its Fellows men who had been distinguished both by learning and by piety of a pronounced Anglican type. One of°the very best of the Bishops of Lincoln, Robert Sanderson, had

been Fellow of Lincoln for thirteen years (1606

1619), and his college lectures as " Reader of Lo°ic in

1 The Bishop of Lincoln for the time being was always to hP ex officio visitor. J the House " had been the standard work on Logic at Oxford until they were superseded by the far inferior manual of Dean Aldrieh. Though more than a hundred years had elapsed between the resignation of Robert Sanderson and the election of John Wesley, the fragrance of so great a name may still have lingered about the college.

Passing from the earlier to the later part of the seventeenth century, we find the Rector of Lincoln College, Dr. Marshall, amongthe foremost of the Churchmen who helped to revive Church principles after the Restoration. Then, a little later, that staunch Churchman and most able and learned man, George Hickes, was among the Fellows of Lincoln College ; and his friend, John Kettlewell, saintliest as well as soundest of English Churchmen. The good Bishop also who ordained John Wesley, Dr. Potter, had been a Fellow of Lincoln College ; and the Lincolnshire Fellowship to which John Wesley was elected had been vacated by John (afterwards Sir John) Thorold, scion of a very ancient and aristocratic family, and known in the family as " the good Sir John," J a very pious man. And

1 The following information has been kindly supplied to the present writer by Dr. Trollope, Bishop of Nottingham, who is great-grandson to this Sir John Thorold, on his grandmother's side, as Dr. Thorold, Bishop of Rochester, is on his father's side.

"Sir John Thorold of Marston and Sy ston, eighth baronet, entered Lincoln at the age of eighteen, and resigned his Fellowship there, May 3rd, 1725. He was afterwards a friend of Wesley, and is thus described in a letter to the Honourable Grace Granville, daughter of Lord Lansdown, dated November 1st, 1738, and sent from Windsor to Miss Ann Granville, Mrs. Delany's sister.

" According to your desire, I have inquired after our new ' Star of Righteousness.' He does deserve in every particular the character you give him. His name is Thorold ; he has at present a very plentiful fortune, £3000 (that is, per annum), will have £10,000 after his father's death. He has a wife and five children, preaches C among those who were actual Fellows with John Wesley, ' but very much his senior, was Richard Hutchins, who became an Oxford Methodist, and was afterwards known as " the Methodist Rector." Hence there would be, to say the least, a tradition of learning and piety about the college when Wesley was elected. Wesley's own incidental remarks fully bear out this theory. Speaking in 1756 of the chapel service at Trinity College, Dublin, he says—" I never saw so much decency at any chapel in Oxford; no, not even at Lincoln College ; " and writing to his brother Samuel soon after his election, he says—" As far as I have ever observed, I never knew a college besides ours whereof the members were so perfectly satisfied with one another ; and so inoffensive to the other part of the University. All I have yet seen of the Fellows are both well-natured and well-bred ; men admirably disposed as well to preserve peace and good neighbourhood among themselves, as to promote it wherever else they have any acquaintance."