Methodism and the Church of England [microform] : a comparison

Introduction

Among the many misgivings which the writer of these pages entertains with regard to his work, he has at least no feeling that it is unnecessary. It is true that works of every conceivable description load the shelves of the theologian, and the author is perhaps sanguine in thinking he has detected a vacant place. Still, a fair discussion of the points at issue between Churchmen and Wesleyans seems at present to be wanting, and it also seems desirable that one should be available. Why is no such book in existence ?

The answer to this question is not far to seek. Such a discussion can only be attempted by a person who knows pretty intimately the inner life of both parties. He must be familiar by experience, not only with book descriptions and published formulae, but with the actual practice of which these are the outward expression. He must, if a Churchman, not

IV

INTRODUCTION.

only have read the life of Wesley, the “ deedpoll ” and the “ model deed,” the ** Minutes of the Conference,” and so on, but he ought to know the system of thought and feeling actually prevailing in Methodist Societies. In such knowledge as this, nearly all Churchmen are conspicuously deficient. Most of them have never been in a Wesleyan chapel in their lives. The inner life of “class meeting,” “covenant service” and “love feast” is absolutely foreign to them. They are, therefore, in most cases utterly unable to make a fair or correct comparison between two systems, of one of which, at the best, all they know is the outward letter, and the part unknown to them is the inspiring idea, without which an outward formula is a mere skeleton.

Most Wesleyans are in no better position with regard to the Church. They may know something of the Prayer Book and its services, but of the history of the Church, and of her claim founded on that histoiy, they are entirely ignorant. In this case, also, a knowledge of the ideas which inspire and animate Churchmen is absolutely necessary to the man who would frame a critical estimate. No one can compare the ideas of the two parties who has not actually lived within the spheres of their influence, in surroundings where that influence was potent.

t introduction; v

This then is the reason why no one has yet been found to attempt this comparison in a satisfactory manner ; so few persons are qualified for it by actual experience. This qualification at least, if no other, is possessed by the author of these pages, and this is his apology for writing them.

Designedly he has written a little book. Agreeing with the old proverb which declares a big book to be a big evil, he has, in dealing with subjects any one of which might be expanded to fill a folio, laid upon himself a severe rule of conciseness. It was a wise man who wrote “ the words of the wise are as goads,” and who proved in his own writings how very short sentences might prove to be a stimulus to very much reflection. And the author would rather stir up those who read him to think for themselves, than exhaust the subject in a complete but wearisome treatise.

No pretence is made in these pages to the possession of special learning or knowledge. If the author has here and there inserted a reference, it has been to save his readers trouble in finding the source of a quotation, or the authority for a statement. It has not been with the object of assuming knowledge, or of pretending to research.

This work is not written for scholars or learned theologians, it is for plain ordinary Christians; being, vi INTRODUCTION.

in fact, nothing more than a statement of the considerations which made it clear to one ordinary unlearned layman that it was his duty to rejoin the Church of England.

.1

Chapter I. Page

Methodism Modern and Derivative — The Church in the Eighteenth Century — The Wesleyans and the Masses — Wesley unwilling to Secede — Causes of Secession — ^The Church Ancient and National — Reformation — Evangelical Movement — Oxford Movement — Reasons why a Wesleyan should return . . . . i

Chapter V. Page

The Doctrines of Methodism — Mr. Wesley’s Religious History — Doctrines of Conversion and Assurance —

— Unsuited to settled Congregations and to the Young — The Church’s Methods with Children — Wesleyan Ordinations — Class Meetings — Love Feasts 105

Chapter VI

Extempore Prayers and Liturgies — Prominence of Sermons in Methodist Worship — No Creeds — TooHittle Scripture read — Little place for Music — Advantages of a Liturgy — Prayer Book very Scriptural — History of Liturgical Worship — The Christian Year — Wesleyan use of the Prayer Book — Consecration . . .130

Chapter VII

Uniformity of Wesleyan Teaching — Doctrines of the Sects based upon Opinions of Individuals — Breadth and Liberality in the Church — Her Learning — Tradition and Scripture — The Church and the Canon — Christianity and Modern Thought — Conclusion . 158

METHODISM

AND

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Chapter I

Methodism Modern and Derivative— The Church in the Eighteenth Century — The Wesleyans and the Masses — Wesley unwilling to Secede — Causes of Secession — The Church Ancient and National — Reformation — Evangelical Movement — Oxford Movement — Reasons why a Wesleyan should return.

Modern habits of thought turn more and more to the historical method of examining existing facts. It is now a settled rule that really to understand any institution you must know how it came to be. The state of things before its rise — the inspiring thought, the guiding hand to which it owes its origin — these are the matters which must be ascertained in order ■fairly to estimate the contemporary fact as it presents itself for examination.

This method of investigation has of late years

B

T

; i

I been applied as vigorously to religious as to any

; other institutions. The various religious societies

I which make up Christendom are, each in turn, sub-

jected to the strong light of historic criticism — and it will not be out of place in the fore-front of this inquiry

I ^

to consider the early history of Wesleyan Methodism. Suppose, then, that a Wesleyan who has not i hitherto devoted much thought to the subject is

led to examine the history of the community ,to which he belongs. Two facts will at once be very prominent — that such community is modern, and that it is derivative. He need not explore long vistas of j! Church history, and trace his society through the

[ I varying conditions of ages, for Methodism is only

M 150 years old ; nor need he pursue through the dust

I ' of ages the development of the creeds and doctrines

j he professes, for Methodism derived them from the

; Church of England, of which she once formed a

I part. He sees, in a word, that Methodism was an

j offshoot, a secession from an older society, and owes

i its origin and its success to the genius of Wesley,

who may well compare with Luther and with Loyola ij in the gift of organizing religious fervour into settled

|| societies. The most elementary survey of the sub-

i; ject will have informed the inquirer that the founder

of Methodism was not only a clergyman of, but :[ during a long life consistently devoted to, the Mother

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Church of his country. He will also gather that Methodism for a period of nearly sixty years (1738-1796) actually formed an integral part of the Church of England, having no quarrel with her doctrines and receiving the most sacred rites at her altars. And if he have any family records extending back to the days of his own grandparents, he will almost certainly find that hardly two generations ago Methodists still deemed themselves to be members of the Church, and, unlike all other Nonconformists, denied by word and act that they were Dissenters at all. The inquiry could hardly stop here. These striking facts would certainly lead any one who apprehends them to examine further. He will surely ask himself, “ If these things be so, how is it that I find myself outside the Church of England at all To answer this inquiry he will be bound to examine what causes were at work in the Church life of the i 8 th century, which tended to produce the Methodist movement.

The 1 8th century was certainly a period to which no Churchman can look back with very much satisfaction. It was an age characterized by utilitarian ethics, a low level of spiritual life, a languid belief, and but little active philanthropy. The corrupt and debasing methods by which political influence was secured, the shameless disregard of morality, even of

B 2 j decency, in the highest circles, and the prevailing unbelief in literary quarters, revealed too sadly an absence of the “ power of Godliness,” and even of its form.

It was not likely in an age when society was in so many respects at its worst, that the .Church should appear at her best, nor that her influence for good should be most marked. There were indeed many combining causes which both made her influence less powerful, and her work less effectual than it should have been. The Church of England is always the most vigorous, the most holy, and the most effective where the tone of thought, generally styled “ High Church ” is prominent among her members. But in the reigns of the first two Georges this class of thought was, owing to political causes, outside the Church, in the ranks of the Non-Jurors. Learned and saintly men like Ken could not be excluded from Church preferment, without the Church being the loser by it; and even when the Non-Jurors began gradually to return to her fold, they found the school of thought to which they belonged in but little credit with the civil authorities. Premiers like Walpole and Pelham found it to the interest of the new dynasty to confer Church preferment on men of Erastian views and colourless theology, who had no inconvenient enthusiasm for Church principles, and would

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

give no trouble to the Hanoverian Sovereigns. The Non-Jurors were politically unpopular, and the doctrines and practices they taught almost died out for a time.* The Church must have suffered not a little by the almost total disappearance of a party who were thoroughly in earnest, generally learned and pious, and of a tenderness of conscience which was in very great contrast with the prevailing tone, both in religion and politics.

The Church in that age reflected only too faithfully some of the features of the time. A historian of that period has observed that “The Church .... was of all institutions the most intensely and most distinctly English. Occasionally, indeed, great outbursts of political sycophancy, or of sacerdotal extravagance within its borders, have brought it into collision with the broad stream of English thought ; but considered as a whole, and in most periods of its history, it may justly claim to have been eminently national. Its love of compromise, its dislike to pushing principles to extreme consequences, its decorum, its social aspects, its instinctive aversion to abstract speculation, to fanatical action, to vehement, spontaneous, mystical, or ascetic forms of devotion ; its admirable skill in strengthening the orderly and philanthropic

* See Abbey and Overton, “ The Church of England in the 1 8 th Century,” chap. ii.

elements of society, in moderating and regulating character, and blending with the various phases of national life, all reflected with singular fidelity English modes of thought and feeling, the strength and the weakness of the English character.”^ Opinions will vary as to the truth of this portrait, drawn by a not too friendly hand. But if ever it was a true one, it was in the i8th century. External society was pervaded by two strong opinions on religious subjects, viz. a dislike to dogmatic statements, and a preference for natural religion, that is, a theory of morals unconnected with doctrine ; and an even greater dislike to emotion or enthusiasm in religion. The Deist, as the exponent of natural religion was called, struck out of the Christian system all which was miraculous, supernatural, or mysterious, making his reason the only touchstone of his faith. This cold and cheerless substitute for the supernal enthusiasm of the religion of Christ, seems to have been the prevailing form of thought in the intellectual circles of England when Wesley was a young man.f Bishop Butler’s remark is well known : “ It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at last discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if in

* Lecky, “ History of England in the i8th Century,” i. 74.

f See On Deism, Abbey and Overton, chap. iii.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

the present age this were an agreed point among all people of discernment.” * And all the evidence is to the same effect.

The Church met the assaults of the Deists with masterly ability. Apologetic treatises abounded, some of which were of permanent value, and have survived to our day. The works of Butler, Lardner, Warburton, will always remain as monuments which crown These battle-fields, and record the Church’s victory.f But in these apologetic combats the spirit of the assailants insensibly moulded that of the defenders. Arguing with the advocates of natural religion upon their own premises, the Churchmen acquired a good deal of their tone of thought. So much was conceded in the argument, that many elements of religion became obscured, or passed out of sight. The supernatural facts which are the basis of Christianity ceased to operate powerfully on men’s hearts, and prevalent theology became cold, undogmatic, rational. The aim of the preacher, or the writer, was to enforce a system of cool, rational, calculating ethics, to reason men into goodness. To exhort, to awaken, to stir up men, was no longer the aim of Christian teachers. Appeals to the moving stories of Divine redeeming love were out of date. Nothing could show more plainly how Christianity was in danger of losing its distinctive elements, than

* Preface to “Analogy,” 1736. t See Lecky, ii. 544.

the fact that Pope’s “ Essay on Man,” a mere transcript of the Deism of Bolingbroke, could be thought by anybody to be a defence of Revealed religion.*

Christianity being thus treated as a sort of elevated natural religion, its teachers were not likely to look favourably on the emotional element in it. Recollections of the extravagances of the Puritans, coupled with the contemptuous attitude of Freethinkers, caused enthusiasm to be out of fashion. - Religion was to be rather an affair of the reason than of the heart, and apologies and defences of its claims appealed to external evidences or logical principles, rather than to the feelings or the affections.

The sermons of the period, even those of the greatest preachers, such as Tillotson, show the operation of these two principles, the rationalizing spirit and the repugnance to anything emotional, in full measure.

The sermon of this age was almost free from dogma. It says hardly anything of the person or work of Christ, the influence of the Holy Spirit, of Divine love or Divine Grace. The mystical, the supernatural, are out of place in these “ moral essays.” It is the preacher’s object to argue in favour of good morals, for they will produce happiness to the individual and the society in which he * Courthope’s “ Life of Pope,” p. 329.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

dwells. Virtue is inculcated, not by urging the great truths of revealed religion, but by a series of motives and. inducements which are the common stock of all moralists. Pagan as well as Christian. The preacher has no desire to stir up emotions or awaken warm earnest feelings ; he lays before his hearers a logical and correct statement of reasons which he trusts will convince the mind. And the style ! “ Neither

rapture nor vehemence, no wit, no imagination, no original or brilliant idea, no philosophy, nothing but quotations of mere scholarship and enumerations from a hand-book.” * No doubt this style of preaching was suited to the tastes and feelings of Churchmen in that age, or it would not have been so general ; but it was little calculated to inflame the love or strengthen the faith even of the pious, far less to reform the immoral or bring in those who were outside the regular sphere of the Church’s operations.f

And it should not be overlooked that the external decencies of Christian worship were at this period very much overlooked. The churches were often out of repair, dirty, and neglected. The ornaments of the altar were mean and dilapidated. No choir decently vested aided the work of the clergyman by

* Taine, “ History of English Literature,” bk. 3, c. 3, sec. 5.

I SeCf as to these Sermons, Abbey and Overton, chap. iv.

lO leading the devotions of the people. The liturgy was performed as a sort of duologue between the parson and the clerk. None of the hymns, which are now considered an essential part of Christian worship, were available ; the songs of the people were restricted to the metrical version of the Psalms, and there was very little music in the service at all. Communions were very rare, sometimes only three or four in the year. In fact, the comely Ritual, the beauty of holiness, in which the favoured Englishman of our day is everywhere able to worship the Lord, was hardly to be seen outside a Cathedral or Collegiate Church.

But, notwithstanding these various causes of weakness and languor, the Church had still the Bible and the Prayer Book. While these were Jn constant use the great truths and incentives of Christianity could never be forgotten or become inoperative, and there are many facts which make it clear that the Church, even in so dark a period, was to multitudes of her children a true mother, a fountain of spiritual life. It was in this period that the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge was first formed, and that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the first English missionary effort since the Reformation, began its work.* Nor does the Church lose * Lecky, ii. 546.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

II anything by a comparison with the Protestant Dissenting bodies of the' period. The one great dogmatic controversy of that time, the battle with Arianism and Socinianism, hardly shook for a moment the ancient faith of the Church. Of the Dissenting bodies a very large number, became avowedly Unitarian, and have been so ever since,* while, on the other hand, large numbers of Dissenters joined the Church, and there was perhaps never a period when English Nonconformity was so weak in numbers or in influence as just at the time when Methodism was born.

Among the recruits from Dissent to the Church were both the parents of Mr. Wesley, who are, perhaps, not unworthy examples of the way in which even in that age pious and exemplary lives could be lived in a country parsonage. The father, when placed in a parish full of profligate and wicked people, so faithfully admonished them as to excite a spirit of diabolical hatred, so that, after two unsuccessful attempts, they at last burnt his parsonage to the ground over his head. Mrs. Wesley became a Churchwoman after having examined the controversy between Church and Dissent with conscientious diligence. She conducted the religious education of her children with the most solemn earnestness, and

* See chap. iv. post.

found time during her husband’s absence from home to instruct a large body of parishioners in her Sunday afternoon meetings.

There cannot be much doubt that John Wesley’s early piety was not a little owing to the consistent religious lives of his parents, and the loving care they devoted to his religious education. The picture of the Epworth household, if it stood alone, would be enough to show what religious life there was in the Church even in this irreligious age.*

But it does not stand alone. Many similar instances might be found, one of which may be mentioned here, which has been made notable by its having engaged the pen of Wordsworth. In 1735 or 1736 (only a year or two before the founding of Methodism), the Rev. Robert Walker became curate of Seathwaite, a lonely Westmoreland valley, where he ministered for sixty-seven years. Here, on a stipend barely sufficient to supply the merest necessaries of life, tilling his own ground, making his own clothes, bringing up and educating twelve children, he laboured with Apostolic zeal in the duties of his sacred calling. In that secluded vale the church was filled, summer and winter — the Saints’ days were observed, the sick were visited, the poor relieved —

* See Southey’s “ Life of Wesley,” chap. i. ; also Wedgwood’s “Wesley.”

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

there was never a Dissenter in the parish. The pastor was the schoolmaster, and his holy, beautiful life enforced his precepts to old and young. His memory lived long in his native dales, and has been enshrined by the poet in imperishable verse :

“ Him the ‘ Wonderful,’

Our simple shepherds, speaking from the heart.

Deservedly have styled.”

To the Churchman in every age his simple story will be a proof that, even in those evil times, the services of the Church, faithfully performed, failed not to produce the most striking results.*

From these country clergymen, living removed from the follies and vices of the town, and from much of ' its declared unbelief, we turn to a layman living in London, and prominent in literature. One of the most notable sights in the eighteenth century is the Churchmanship of Samuel Johnson. Carlylef was right when he called it a thing to be looked at with reverence. This great man, the most noticeable leader in the literature of the day, was a devout observer of the order prescribed by the Church of England, and found her services adequate to the deepest needs of his soul. It is touching to read in

* See Wordsworth’s “ Notes on the Sonnets to the Duddon,” and “ Excursion,” Book vii. t “ Heroes,” Lect. V.

H his private diary how (to take an example) on Easter Day, 1764, after spending the previous evening in meditation and prayer, he went to church and to Communion : — “ I prayed for resolution and perseverance to amend my life. I received soon ; the communicants were many. At the altar it occurred to me that I ought to form some resolutions. I resolved, in the presence of God, but without a vow, to repel sinful thoughts, to study eight hours daily, and, I think, to go to church every Sunday and read the Scriptures. ... I prayed earnestly for amendment, and repeated my prayer at home.”* Thus it was that Dr. Johnson spent Easter Day. The record of his Easter Days alone would be sufficient answer to those who would say that the Church of England was without grace or power in the eighteenth century.

It is plain from the examples given above, and from many others which the literature of the eighteenth century could supply, that the Church still ministered to the spiritual wants of a large number of those who were accustomed to make use of her services. But the special want of the age was that so large a portion of the people lay outside the sphere of her ministrations. She had forgotten her missionary duty to the heathen both at home and * Boswell’s Life,” ed. Croker, chap. 18

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

abroad — the poor had not the Gospel preached to them. There failed that restless, aggressive spirit, which by loving constraint seeks to compel men to come in. Large bodies of dissolute, degraded men in London, Bristol, and other large towns were left to their sins and their misery. The colliers at Kingswood, the sight of whom so much touched the heart of Whitfield, were only types of masses elsewhere, heathens in a Christian land. For some there was no church available ; others were in parishes where negligent, dissolute, or ignorant parsons cared nothing for their souls. And the Church was not making the efforts she ought to have done to bring in those who should have been her peculiar care.

Probably when Wesley, his brother, and Whitfield laid their hands to the gigantic task of evangelizing these heathen masses, they had no idea that their work would tend to the formation of an external society separate from the Church of their birth. But as their work progressed the logic of events seemed to lead to this culmination. It is now pretty well agreed that the attitude of the bishops and parish clergy towards this strange new movement was not unreasonable. The riots and disturbances, the strange developments of frenzy and fanaticism, the epilepsy and madness, sicknesses and deaths, which were the result of these exciting services, would in i6 any age be distressing to calm and reverent minds. The language and modes of expression -which Wesley had learnt from his Moravian teachers, distorted and exaggerated by ignorant men, struck against two violent prejudices — hatred of the Puritanical cant of Cromwellian days, and fear of the Roman orders, who had used somewhat similar enthusiastic terms. Again the furious quarrels of the new teachers among themselves, Wesley’s attack upon Law, his embittered controversies with the Moravians, with Whitfield, Toplady, Berridge, and others, prevented many good men from perceiving what there was distinctive in his novel presentation of the Gospel. Add the prevalent dislike of emotion and enthusiasm in religion, and the natural jealousy of men who see their authority and credit undermined in their own lawfully appointed spheres of labour, and it will be pretty evident that in the then state of the Church it was almost impossible for her to incorporate the new organization in her existing arrangements. Wesley’s converts were different in kind from every previously formed body of Dissenters. The Independents and Presbyterians, the Brownists and Separatists, under the Stuart kings, were invariably seceders from a Church order they did not approve of. Could they have remodelled that order to their liking they would 4iave remained Churchmen.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Until the close of the Savoy Conference destroyed their hopes of carrying out their wishes they did not definitely declare themselves Nonconformists. But the first Methodists, or at any rate the great majority of them, were as detached from Church influence at the time of their conversion as any heathens or savages. Mr. Wesley always professed, and at times seriously strove, to bring and keep them in union with the Church, against whose doctrine and practice he had no quarrel. To regard them as a body of seceders from the Church whose orders he bore would have been to his mind simply impossible.

But Wesley was a born organizer and ruler. He had perhaps the finest gift for organizing ever possessed by an Englishman ; and a born administrator, especially of the English race, does not frame symmetrical paper constitutions in advance of requirements. He legislates pro re nata^ and devises an arrangement when it is wanted. Such was Mr. Wesley’s method when he built up his societies. At first he had only a number of individual converts, but his practical mind did not allow him to leave the matter there. Meeting-houses were built to preach and hold prayer-meetings in, and to raise funds to pay for the buildings the “class meeting” was devised. Preachers were required to conduct the services in c r the buildings, and so by very necessity the order of “ lay preachers ” was instituted. A conference with his brother and a few clergy and lay preachers led to an annual assembly or parliament, where all the affairs of the new Society were discussed, and suitable legislation was effected. Then came the territorial division into “ circuits,” which would soon undermine any lingering respect a Methodist might feel with regard to the parish in which he lived. And finally the celebrated deed poll which— by its ingenious establishment of the legal hundred,” the Senate of Methodism — gave perpetual succession to the sect, and made it impossible that the chapels built by Methodists for their worship should ever pass to any other use.

Completely organized, severely disciplined, and possessed of property settled upon legal trusts, what lay between Methodism and absolute separation ? And yet this elaborate organization had not been framed with any such object ; and it almost seems to have been by accident that the body of Wesley’s converts grew into a separate sect. Certainly such was not Mr. Wesley’s deliberate plan. His career was full of inconsistencies, and the contrast between his words and his acts is strange and startling. While with masterly skill he built up a system whose only possible issue could be separation, he insisted upon continued union. While he ordained and consecrated as though he was a bishop of bishops — a very Pope — he impressed upon his societies over and over again, to the end of his life, that they must not leave the Church. His last utterance on the subject was that famous one, “ I live and die a member of the Church of England, and none who regard my judgment or advice will ever separate from it.” ^