Chapter IV
MISSION TO GEORGIA. 1735‒””””1737.
[Sidenote: 1735 Age 32]
WESLEY’S father died on the 25th of April, 1735.
Immediately after that event, the chief of the Oxford Methodists were widely scattered: Gambold was a clergyman at Stanton-Harcourt; Ingham became a curate in Essex; Whitefield, though not ordained, went on an evangelistic tour to Gloucester, Bristol, and other places;[138] Broughton was chaplain at the Tower; and the two Wesleys repaired to the metropolis, where they were the guests of James Hutton, or rather of James Hutton’s father, in Westminster.
Mr. Hutton was now in the twentieth year of his age. At Oxford he had met with the Wesley brothers, and had invited them to visit him. His father was an ordained clergyman of the Church of England; but, not being able to take the oaths at the accession of George I., he had resigned his Church preferments, and now kept a boarding school in a house next door to that of Wesley’s brother Samuel. Here, on Sunday evenings, the venerable man held meetings, at which he read, and prayed, and sung with penitents; and here Wesley preached a sermon on “One thing is needful,” which was the means of converting both James Hutton and his sister.[139]
Just at this juncture, Dr. John Burton, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was evincing great interest in the colonisation of Georgia. Three years before, he had preached and published a sermon, with an appendix on the state of the Georgian settlement. He now met with Wesley in London, and introduced him to Oglethorpe, who strongly urged the high church Methodist to undertake a mission to the infant colony. Wesley took counsel with his brother Samuel; asked the advice of William Law; and went to Manchester to consult his friends Clayton and Byrom. Thence he proceeded to Epworth, and laid the proposal before his widowed mother, who replied: “Had I twenty sons, I should rejoice if they were all so employed.”
On September 8 Dr. Burton wrote to him pressing him to consent to go. The doctor told him that “plausible and popular doctors of divinity were not the men wanted for Georgia; for the ease, luxury, and levity in which they were accustomed to indulge disqualified them for such a work.” He and the Georgian trustees wished for men who were “inured to contempt of the ornaments and conveniences of life, to bodily austerities, and to serious thoughts;” and such he considered Wesley.
Ten days after the date of this letter Wesley accepted the proposal, and Burton expressed his pleasure, and added, “You have too much steadiness of mind to be disturbed by the light scoffs of the idle and profane.”[140] In another long letter (hitherto unpublished), dated Eton College, September 28, 1735, Dr. Burton, after reminding Wesley that he will have a fine opportunity for usefulness during the voyage to Georgia, proceeds to recommend him, on his arrival, to visit from house to house, and preach everywhere. He tells him that “some of the colonists are ignorant, and most of them are disposed to licentiousness.” He adds: “You will find abundant room for the exercise of patience and prudence, as well as piety. One end for which we were associated was the conversion of negro slaves. As yet, nothing has been attempted in this way; but a door is opened. The Purisburghers have purchased slaves; they act under our influence; and Mr. Oglethorpe will think it advisable to begin there. You see the harvest truly is great. With regard to your behaviour and manner of address, you will keep in mind the pattern of St. Paul, who became ‘all things to all men that he might gain some.’ In every case, distinguish between what is essential and what is merely circumstantial to Christianity; between what is indispensable and what is variable; between what is of Divine and what is of human authority. I mention this, because men are apt to deceive themselves in such cases; and we see the traditions and ordinances of men frequently insisted on with more vigour than the commandments of God to which they are subordinate.”
This was good advice, and, in Wesley’s case, not unneeded. Sixteen days after the date of Dr. Burton’s letter, Wesley embarked, taking with him five hundred and fifty copies of a treatise on the Lord’s Supper, besides other books,—“the gift of several Christian friends for the use of the settlers in Georgia.”[141]
James Edward Oglethorpe was the third son of Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe, of Godalming, Surrey. At a suitable age he entered the army, and became secretary and aide-de-camp to Prince Eugene. In 1722 he succeeded to his father’s estate, and obtained a seat in parliament, which he retained nearly thirty years. From the first, he showed himself to be a steady and faithful friend of humanity. These were days of harsh government. The gallows was the penalty for petty thefts; and each year, at least four thousand unhappy men in Great Britain were immured in prison for the misfortune of being poor. A small debt was quite enough to expose a struggling man to a perpetuity of imprisonment; and an indiscreet bargain doomed many a well-meaning, miserable dupe to lifelong confinement. Oglethorpe obtained a parliamentary committee, to inquire into the state of prisons; the result of which was that a large number of debtors were released from confinement, and restored to light and to liberty. Being released, it was a serious question what to do with them.
It so happened that, though the whole of the eastern seaboard of America seemed to be already parcelled out among companies and colonists, there was still remaining a comparatively small strip of country, intervening between South Carolina and Florida, and situated between the river Alatamaha on the south and the river Savannah on the north, and having a sea-coast stretching a distance of sixty or seventy miles. This strip of land was a wilderness over which England held only a nominal jurisdiction; but it occurred to Oglethorpe and his friends to plant in this sunny clime those children of misfortune whom they had released from prison, but who were still without food and shelter. Accordingly, on the 9th of June, 1732, a charter was obtained from George II., erecting this thin slice of America into the province of Georgia, and appointing Oglethorpe and twenty other gentlemen (of whom Dr. Burton was one) trustees to hold the same for a period of one and twenty years, “in trust for the poor.” The benevolence of England was aroused. The trustees set an example of princely liberality by their private subscriptions; the Bank of England presented a donation of £10,000; an equal amount was voted by the House of Commons; and the total sum raised, with but little effort, and almost without solicitation, was £36,000. Within five months after the signing of the charter, the first company of emigrants, one hundred and twenty in number, set sail, with Oglethorpe as their commander, and the Rev. Henry Herbert, a clergyman of the Established Church, as their minister. At the commencement of the month of February, 1733, the colonists reached the high bluff on which Savannah is now erected, and encamped near the edge of the river. The streets of the intended town were laid out with the greatest regularity; and the houses were to be constructed on one model,—each a frame of sawn timber, measuring sixteen feet by twenty-four, its sides to be enclosed with unplaned boards, and its floor to be of rough deals, and its roof of shingle. Each freeholder was allotted fifty acres of ground, five of which were near Savannah, and the remaining forty-five farther off. Thus began the commonwealth of Georgia. The humane reformer of prison life was already the father of a state. A large number of Indians met him to make an alliance with his colony; the meeting was friendly; to each chief he gave a laced coat, a hat, and a shirt; and to their attendants gunpowder, bullets, linen, tobacco, pipes, tape, and eight kegs of rum, to carry home as presents to their respective towns. In a letter, dated June 9, 1733, Oglethorpe states that a door was opened for the conversion of the Indians; and nothing seemed to be wanting but a minister who understood their language: in action and expression, they were masters of eloquence, and many of their speeches were equal to those which scholars most admire in the Greek and Roman writings.[142]
The next company of emigrants belonged to a different class. About a year before the charter for the Georgian colony was granted, a remarkable revival of religion took place at Saltzburg, in Germany. By merely reading the Bible, above twenty thousand people were led to renounce Popery and to embrace the Reformed religion. The popish priests complained to the Archbishop of Saltzburg that these Protestant converts assembled in various places, and sang hymns and offered prayers. The archbishop published an edict prohibiting such assemblies, upon pain of fines, corporal punishments, and even death itself. The new converts, however, still assembled as before; and now his serene highness the archbishop let loose his partisans, and commenced a murderous persecution, which drove thousands of innocent, unoffending, godly people into exile. Numbers were dragged to prison; some were led about with ropes round their necks; others had their hands so tightly tied with cords behind their backs that the blood spurted from their finger ends. The archbishop’s soldiers struck some of them in the face with their fists, calling them “heretic dogs and hell-hounds.” One poor fellow was fined seventy florins for singing a Protestant psalm of praise. Protestant preachers were called “murderers, buffle-heads, and children of the devil;” and the Protestant doctrine was stigmatised as “faith for swine and stinking goats.” Every one who embraced Luther’s doctrines “would be roasted in hell;” and the moment any one read his books the reader “became an offering to the devil.”[143]
What was the result? The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts heard of these poor persecuted Protestants, and proposed to them to emigrate to Georgia. Thousands of them had fled from Saltzburg; and others were still in prison there, fed with bread and water, and employing themselves in praying and singing psalms. Large numbers were taken into service by Protestants at Augsburg and other places; and one section of the fugitives embraced the proposal just mentioned, and on October 31, 1733, set out for Georgia. After a discourse, prayer, and benedictions, and well supplied with Bibles, hymns, catechisms, and books of devotion, they began their pilgrimage, one wagon conveying all the chattels that they had, and two others their feebler companions and their little ones. We need not stop to tell the charities that cheered them on their journey,—how they entered Frankfort, two by two, in solemn procession, singing sacred songs,—and how they were joined at Rotterdam by the preachers Bolzius and Gronau, both disciplined in piety at the Orphan House of Professor Francke. Six days brought them to Dover, where several of the Georgian trustees met them and provided for their wants; and on January 8, 1734, they set sail, singing the “Te Deum” and praising God with both lips and hearts.
The Saltzburghers arrived in Georgia in the month of March, met with Oglethorpe, and chose a settlement twenty-one miles from Savannah, where there were “rivers, little hills, clear brooks, cool springs, a fertile soil, and plenty of grass.” At Charlestown, where they first landed, they ascertained that in the province of Carolina there were thirty thousand negroes, all of them slaves, working six days in the week for their owners without pay, and allowed to work on the Sundays for themselves. Near Savannah, they found a beautiful garden of ten acres, already planted with thriving orange-trees, olives, mulberries, figs, peaches, cabbages, peas, and pulse. The spot which they had chosen as their settlement, and to which they gave the name of Ebenezer, was surrounded by vast forests of cedars, walnuts, cypresses, and oaks, with wild vines running to the top of the highest trees. As to game, there were eagles, turkeys, roebucks, goats, deer, wild cows, horses, hares, partridges, and buffaloes without number. The Saltzburghers built tents made of the bark of trees, constructed roads and bridges, set up religious services, were furnished with domestic utensils and with cattle, and were soon a prosperous community.
In April Oglethorpe returned to England, bringing with him Tomo-chichi and other Indians, to invigorate the confidence of England in the destiny of Georgia. Parliament continued its benefactions, the king expressed interest in a province which bore his name, and the youngest child of England’s colonial enterprise won universal favour.
The next company of emigrants were a number of Scotch Highlanders, who founded New Inverness, in Darien; the next a number of Moravians, of whom more anon; and the next after that, the company with whom Wesley sailed. Wesley’s predecessor in Georgia was the Rev. Samuel Quincy,[144] a native of Massachusetts, but educated in England. Mr. Quincy wishing to return to England, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent Wesley as his successor, at a salary of £50 a year.[145] The chief object in founding the colony was to grow flax and hemp, to breed silkworms, and to raise raw silk.[146] The common seal of the corporation had on one side a group of silkworms at their toils, with the motto, Non sibi, sed aliis; and on the other, two figures reposing on urns, emblematic of the boundary rivers; and between them the genius of “Georgia Augusta,” with the cap of liberty on her head, a spear in one hand, and the horn of plenty in the other. It must be added that in this young community ardent spirits were prohibited, and the introduction of slavery forbidden.
The Transatlantic colonies existing in 1735 were nothing more than a mere fringe skirting the eastern coast of that vast continent. The Spaniards were in Florida; the English in Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New England; and the French in Canada. This was all. Excepting these few feeble colonial settlements, the whole of the immense American continent—which, measuring from New York to California, and from Lake Superior to New Orleans, extends in one direction 3300 miles and in the other 1300 miles—was one vast, rich, but uncultivated wilderness, the home of myriads of birds and beasts, and sparsely inhabited by savage Indians. Bancroft enumerates above forty Indian tribes, or nations, embracing about 180,000 souls, whose wigwams and hunting grounds were all situated on the eastern side of the Mississippi. The men were warriors, and the women labourers. Their education was acquired solely in the school of nature, and their chief almanac was the flight of birds, announcing the progress of the seasons. They kept no herds, and were never shepherds, but depended for their food on the chase, the fisheries, and a little farming. Their scanty clothing was made of skins, and their feet protected by soft mocassins. Their principal ornaments were strings of shells, the fairest feathers of the turkey, the skin of the rattlesnake, and an enemy’s scalp. Their skins were oft tattooed; and, when making visits, they painted themselves gloriously, delighting especially in vermilion. They worshipped an unseen power pervading everything, which they called the Great Spirit, and had their sorcerers, medicine men, and prophets. Faith in the spirit world, as revealed by dreams, was universal; and festivals in honour of the dead were frequent.
What became of these Indians? and where are their descendants? To answer these questions would be to pass through scenes of horror without a parallel, and to write a history of blood.
Such was America in 1735. What is it now, and what is likely to be its future? Who could have imagined that, in one hundred and thirty years, this huge wilderness would be transformed into one of the greatest nations upon earth; and that the Methodism, begun at Savannah, would pervade the continent, and, ecclesiastically considered, become the mightiest power existing? But we must now return to Wesley and his Georgian mission.
In a letter, dated October 10, 1735, Wesley gives his reasons for going to Georgia. He writes:—
“My chief motive is the hope of saving my own soul. I hope to learn the true sense of the gospel of Christ by preaching it to the heathen. They have no comments to construe away the text; no vain philosophy to corrupt it; no luxurious, sensual, covetous, ambitious expounders to soften its unpleasing truths. They have no party, no interest to serve, and are therefore fit to receive the gospel in its simplicity. They are as little children, humble, willing to learn, and eager to do, the will of God.
“A right faith will, I trust, by the mercy of God, open the way for a right practice; especially when most of those temptations are removed which here so easily beset me. It will be no small thing to be able, without fear of giving offence, to live on water and the fruits of the earth. An Indian hut affords no food for curiosity, no gratification of the desire of grand, or new, or pretty things. The pomp and show of the world have no place in the wilds of America.
“Further: I hope from the moment I leave the English shore, under the acknowledged character of a teacher sent from God, there shall be no word heard from my lips but what properly flows from that character; and the same faithfulness I hope to show in dispensing my Master’s goods, if it please Him to send me to those who, like His first followers, have all things common. What a guard is here against that root of evil, the love of money, and all the vile attractions that spring from it!
“I then hope to know what it is to love my neighbour as myself, and to feel the powers of that second motive to visit the heathens, even the desire to impart to them what I have received,—a saving knowledge of the gospel of Christ. I have been a grievous sinner from my youth up, and am yet laden with foolish and hurtful desires; but I am assured, if I be once converted myself, God will then employ me both to strengthen my brethren, and to preach His name to the gentiles.
“I cannot hope to attain the same degree of holiness here, which I may there. I shall lose nothing I desire to keep. I shall still have food to eat, and raiment to put on; and, if any man have a desire of other things, let him know that the greatest blessing that can possibly befall him is, to be cut off from all occasions of gratifying those desires which, unless speedily rooted out, will drown his soul in everlasting perdition.”[147]
Exception may fairly be taken to some of the sentiments contained in this letter. The Indians were not the docile children that Wesley imagined; nor is it true that life in heathendom is more favourable to the attainment of holiness than life in Christendom: but we neither have space nor wish to criticise Wesley’s views, our chief object being to represent him as he represents himself.
Wesley went on board the Simmonds, off Gravesend, on October 14, 1735; and, the day following, he wrote a characteristic letter, (probably his last before leaving the English waters,) to his brother Samuel, who was now head master of the school at Tiverton. After telling him that, two days before, he had presented to the queen his father’s “Dissertations on the Book of Job,” and had received “many good words and smiles,” he continues:—
“Elegance of style is not to be weighed against purity of heart; therefore, whatever has any tendency to impair that purity is not to be tolerated, much less recommended, for the sake of that elegance. But of this sort are most of the classics usually read in great schools: many of them tending to inflame the lusts of the flesh, and more to feed the lust of the eye and the pride of life. I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, who would have us holy as He is holy, that you banish all such poison from your school; and that you introduce, in their place, such Christian authors as will work together with you in building up your flock in the knowledge and love of God. For assure yourself, dear brother, you are even now called to the converting of heathens as well as I. So many souls are committed to your charge by God, to be prepared for a happy eternity. You are to instruct them, not only in the beggarly elements of Greek and Latin; but much more, in the gospel. You are to labour with all your might to convince them, that Christianity is not a negation, or an external thing, but a new heart, a mind conformed to that of Christ, ‘faith working by love,’”[148]
Two days after writing the above, Wesley, in order to converse with his German fellow-passengers, began to study that language; and three days later, believing that self-denial might be helpful to his piety, he wholly left off the use of flesh and wine, and confined himself to a vegetable diet, chiefly rice and biscuit. This he continued during the whole of his residence in Georgia; but on his return to England, for the sake of some who thought he made it a point of conscience, he resumed his former mode of living, and practised it to the end of life, except during a two years’ interim, when he again became vegetarian and teetotaler, because Dr. Cheyne assured him that this was the only way to “be free from fevers.”[149]
Wesley is on board—who are the chief of his fellow voyagers? His brother Charles, Benjamin Ingham, James Edward Oglethorpe, Charles Delamotte, and David Nitschmann. Two others had intended going, namely, Westley Hall and Matthew Salmon; and both had been recently ordained with reference to the Georgian mission. At the last moment, however, Salmon’s friends pounced upon him, and sent him, almost forcibly, to his parental home in Cheshire; while Hall, who had actually hired a coach to carry him and his wife (Wesley’s sister) to Gravesend, where the ship was lying, received, as he was about to start, the intelligence that his family were not only opposed to his embarking, but had procured him a Church benefice. This so changed his missionary views and feelings, that he instantly countermanded the order for the coach, put aside all his luggage and preparations for the mission, and, hastening to General Oglethorpe, told him he had resolved not to go.[150]
Of Charles Wesley nothing need be said; his fame is everywhere. Benjamin Ingham was a young Yorkshireman, twenty-three years of age, and, for the last three months, had been preaching in the villages surrounding the metropolis with singular success. “Fast, and pray,” wrote Wesley at the beginning of September: “fast and pray; and then send me word whether you dare go with me to the Indians.” Ingham at first thought there were heathens enough at home; but, a fortnight after, he acceded to Wesley’s proposal; and, with as pure and devoted a heart as ever throbbed in missionary’s bosom, away he went to convert the Indians in America.
Oglethorpe has been already mentioned. Suffice it to add, that though chivalrous in the highest degree, and the very soul of benevolence and honour,—though brave and loyal, and full of enthusiastic feeling,—he was irascible and sometimes rash, talkative, tinged with vanity, and somewhat boastful. Like many other public men, he became the victim of unmerited censure and injudicious praise. The last thirty years of his life were chiefly spent in the society of literary and learned men. He died in 1785; and Hannah More, in a letter dated a year before his death, spoke of him thus: “He is much above ninety years old, and the finest figure you ever saw. He perfectly realises all my ideas of Nestor. His literature is great, his knowledge of the world extensive, and his faculties as bright as ever. He is quite a preux chevalier, heroic, romantic, and full of the old gallantry.”
Charles Delamotte was a young man of twenty-one, the son of a Middlesex magistrate; and was so attached to Wesley, that when he heard he was about to embark for Georgia he determined to go with him, and to act as his servant. His father, naturally enough, strongly objected, and offered to settle him in a handsome business; but the youth was obstinate, and after obtaining a partial consent from his parents and family, set sail with Wesley, lived with him, served under him as a son in the gospel, did much good, and endured great hardships for the sake of Christ. On his return to England, he became a Moravian, settled at Barrow-upon-Humber, where he spent a long life of piety and peace, and died in 1796.[151]
David Nitschmann was born in Moravia, and was now in the sixtieth year of his age. In 1720 a remarkable revival of religion took place in the town where David lived; but, by the intervention of the Jesuits, the meetings of the new converts were prohibited, and many who attended them were imprisoned in stables, cellars, and other offensive places. A police officer entered Nitschmann’s house, where one hundred and fifty of these godly people were assembled, and seized all the books within his reach. The congregation at once struck up a stanza of one of Luther’s hymns:—
“If the whole world with devils swarmed, That threatened us to swallow, We will not fear, for we are armed, And victory will follow.”
Twenty persons, including David, all heads of respectable families, were arrested and sent to gaol. For three days David was deprived of food, and was so cruelly ironed that the blood spurted from his nose and mouth, and oozed from his very pores. After some time, he escaped from his horrid dungeon, and fled for safety to his Moravian friends at Herrnhut. David was now a Moravian bishop, and, accompanied by about thirty Moravians, was on his way to visit the congregations of the Brethren in Georgia.
Such were the chief of Wesley’s fellow voyagers. As already stated, they embarked at Gravesend on October 14, 1735; but it was not until December 10 that they fairly started.[152] First of all, they encountered a storm in the Downs; then, on arriving at Cowes, they had to await the man-of-war that was to be their convoy.
The rules which Wesley and his friends observed during their long voyage were as follows:—From four in the morning till five, they employed in private prayer. From five to seven, they read the Bible together, carefully comparing what they read with the writings of the earliest ages. At seven, they breakfasted. At eight, they had public prayers and expounded the lesson. From nine to twelve, Wesley usually learned German, Delamotte studied Greek and navigation, Charles Wesley wrote sermons, and Ingham gave instruction to the twelve children on board. At twelve, they met together for mutual prayer, and to report progress. About one, they dined; and from the time of dinner till four in the afternoon, they read or spoke to certain of the passengers of whom they had respectively taken charge. At four, they had evening prayers, and either expounded the lesson, or catechized and instructed the children in the presence of the congregation. From five to six was again spent in private prayer. From six to seven they read, each in his own cabin, to three different detachments of the English passengers, of whom about eighty were on board. At seven, Wesley joined the Moravians in their public service; while Ingham read, between the decks, to as many as desired to hear. At eight, the four faithful friends met in private to exhort and instruct each other; and, between nine and ten, they went to bed without mats and blankets, where neither the roaring of the sea nor the rocking of the ship could rob them of refreshing rest.[153]
While detained at Cowes, Wesley, after careful instruction, baptized four unbaptized Quakers.[154] Charles Wesley, being known to the minister of the town, preached several times in the parish church to large congregations; and, in the house of a poor woman, read to the crowds which flocked to hear him. In other respects also their detention was productive of good; for a gentleman who scoffed at religion left the ship; the second mate, who was an insolent and ill natured fellow, was expelled; and a young man was received on board, who, for his piety, had been turned adrift by his rich parents, and had been praying incessantly that he might be directed to a place where he could have the advantage of public prayers and the holy sacrament.
On November 3, while walking in the Isle of Wight, the four friends agreed upon the following resolutions, which they solemnly subscribed:—
“IN the name of God, Amen! We, whose names are underwritten, being fully convinced that it is impossible, either to promote the work of God among the heathen, without an entire union among ourselves, or that such a union should subsist, unless each one will give up his single judgment to that of the majority, do agree, by the help of God:—first, that none of us will undertake anything of importance without first proposing it to the other three;—secondly, that whenever our judgments differ, any one shall give up his single judgment or inclination to the others;—thirdly, that in case of an equality, after begging God’s direction, the matter shall be decided by lot.
JOHN WESLEY, CHARLES WESLEY, BENJAMIN INGHAM, CHARLES DELAMOTTE.”[155]
Of the Moravians on board, Ingham, in a long letter to his mother, wrote as follows:—“They are a good, devout, peaceable, and heavenly-minded people; and almost the only time you know they are in the ship is when they are harmoniously singing the praises of the great Creator, which they constantly do twice a day. Their example was very edifying. They are more like the primitive Christians than any church now existing, for they retain both the faith, practice, and discipline delivered by the apostles. They have regularly ordained bishops, priests, and deacons. Baptisms, confirmation, and the eucharist are duly administered. Discipline is strictly exercised, without respect of persons. They all submit themselves to their pastors in everything. They live together in perfect love and peace, having for the present all things common. They are more ready to serve their neighbours than themselves. In business they are diligent, in all their dealings strictly just; and in everything they behave themselves with meekness, sweetness, and humility.”
From the same letter we learn that, on October 18, Wesley and Ingham began to read the Old Testament together; and, at the rate of between nine and ten chapters daily, finished it before they arrived at Georgia. On the day following, Wesley commenced preaching without notes; and during the passage, in a series of sermons, he went through the whole of our Saviour’s sermon on the mount, and, every sabbath, had a weekly sacrament.
The voyage, from Cowes to the Savannah river, was made in fifty-seven days. Oglethorpe seems to have acted with great kindness. On one occasion, when some of the officers and gentlemen on board took liberties with Wesley and his friends, Oglethorpe indignantly exclaimed, “What mean you, sirs? Do you take these gentlemen for tithe-pig parsons? They are gentlemen of learning and respectability. They are my friends, and whoever offers an affront to them insults me.”[156] This was quite enough, and, ever after, the poor Methodists were treated with respect. Oglethorpe was irritable, but noble-hearted and generous. Wesley, hearing an unusual noise in the general’s cabin, entered to inquire the cause; on which the angry soldier cried: “Excuse me, Mr. Wesley; I have met with a provocation too great to bear. This villain, Grimaldi, an Italian servant, has drunk nearly the whole of my Cyprus wine, the only wine that agrees with me, and several dozens of which I had provided for myself. But I am determined to be revenged. The rascal shall be tied hand and foot, and be carried to the man-of-war; for I never forgive.” “Then,” said Wesley with great calmness, “then I hope, sir, you never sin.” Oglethorpe was confounded, his vengeance was gone, he put his hand into his pocket, pulled out a bunch of keys, and threw them at Grimaldi, saying, “There, villain! take my keys, and behave better for the future.”[157]
The voyage to Georgia was not without danger. On the 17th of January, the sea broke over the ship, and, shaking it from stem to stern, brought down the mainyard upon the decks, and dashed through the cabin windows. Six days after, an immense wave vaulted over Wesley’s head, and drenched him to the skin. Two days later, the winds roared, and the ship rocked to and fro with the utmost violence. The sea sparkled and smoked as if on fire, and the air literally blazed with lightning. The mainsail was torn to tatters, and the companion swept away.[158] Just at the time this occurred, the Moravians were engaged in their evening service, and were singing a psalm of praise. As usual, Wesley was with them. The English passengers began screaming; but the Germans calmly continued singing. Wesley was struck with this, and asked one of them, after the service was concluded, “Were you not afraid?” He answered, “I thank God, no.” Wesley asked again, “But were not your women and children afraid?” “No,” replied the Moravian, “our women and children are not afraid to die.” From the Moravians Wesley went among the terror-struck English, and pointed out the difference between him that feareth God and him that feareth Him not; and then concludes his account of the storm by saying, “This was the most glorious day which I had ever seen.” Eleven days after, on February 5, 1736, they safely cast anchor in the Savannah river, and were welcomed by the firing of cannon, and by all the freeholders, constables, and tithingmen, presenting arms; while Oglethorpe’s first act was to give orders to provide materials to build a church.[159]
Savannah was now a town of about forty houses,[160] standing on a flat bluff, rising forty or fifty feet above the crescent river flowing at its base. On the eastern side of the town was a swamp, on the west a wood, and on the south a forest of pines, fourteen miles in length. The principal buildings were a courthouse, which served also for a church, a log-built prison, a storehouse, a public mill for grinding corn, and a residence for the trustees’ steward. All the houses were of the same size. There were still standing the four beautiful pines, under which Oglethorpe encamped when he landed with the first settlers, and which for nearly a twelvemonth he used as a sleeping place. At the distance of about half a mile was a small Indian town, in which large numbers of the Creek nation were occasionally accustomed to assemble. The climate was exceedingly salubrious, the land rich, and the water good.[161] Every male emigrant was allowed a watch coat, a musket, a bayonet, a hatchet, a hammer, a hand saw, a shovel, a hoe, a gimlet, a knife, an iron pot, a pair of pothooks, and a frying-pan: also for his maintenance, during the first year, 312 lbs. of beef or pork, 104 of rice, 104 of Indian corn or peas, 104 of meal, one pint of strong beer per day, 52 quarts of molasses, 16 lbs. of cheese, 12 of butter, eight oz. of spice, 12 lbs. of sugar, four gallons of vinegar, 24 lbs. of salt, 12 quarts of lamp oil, one lb. of cotton thread, and 12 lbs of soap. Proportionate allowances were made to women and children.[162] Such facts will help the reader to imagine the kind of home and society which Wesley had in Georgia.
The only other towns in Georgia, even when Wesley came back to England, were Frederica, in St. Simon’s Island, one hundred miles south of Savannah; Darien, the settlement of the Scotch Highlanders, at a distance of about eighty miles; New Ebenezer, consisting of sixty huts, nineteen miles; Highgate and Hampstead, with fourteen families, four or five miles southwest, and Thunderbolt, with three families, six miles southeast. Such were the English settlements in Georgia. All the rest of that large territory was woods, swamps, and prairies, the home of savage Indians, and of savage beasts. The Georgian Indians had no literature, no religion, and no civil government. Every one did what was right in his own eyes; and, if his neighbour felt aggrieved, he would warily do his best to shoot him, scalp him, or cut off his ears. All of them, except perhaps the Choctaws, were gluttons, drunkards, thieves, and liars; implacable, unmerciful, murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, murderers of their own children. Husbands, strictly speaking, the women had none, for the men left their so called wives at pleasure; and the wives, in return for such desertion, would cut the throats of all the children they had had by their faithless swains. The Choctaws possessed a large extent of land, eight or nine hundred miles west of Savannah, had many well inhabited towns, and six thousand warriors. The Chicasaws, dwelling among meadows, springs, and rivers, six or seven hundred miles in the interior, had ten towns, and about nine hundred fighting men,—all of them eating, drinking, and smoking almost day and night, extremely indolent except in war, and torturing and burning their prisoners with the most fiendish cruelty. The Cherokees lived in a mountainous, fruitful, and pleasant country, three or four hundred miles from Savannah, had fifty-two towns, and above three thousand men of war. The Uchees had only one small town, near two hundred miles distant from the Savannah settlement, and were hated by most and despised by all the other Indian tribes, for their cowardice and superlative diligence in thieving. The Creeks were located at a distance of about four hundred miles, had a well watered country, and fifteen hundred fighting men, and, of all the Indians, were the most infected with the insatiate love of drink, as well as other European vices. In such a country John Wesley lived, from February 5, 1736, to December 2, 1737.
One of the first to meet Wesley on the shores of Georgia was the well known Moravian elder, August Gottlieb Spangenberg. Wesley asked his advice how to act in his new sphere of labour. Spangenberg replied, “My brother, I must first ask you one or two questions. Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit, that you are a child of God?” Wesley was surprised at such questions. They were new to him. He was at a loss how to answer. Spangenberg continued, “Do you know Jesus Christ?” This was easier, and Wesley answered, “I know He is the Saviour of the world.” “True,” said Spangenberg; “but do you know He has saved you?” Wesley was again perplexed, but answered, “I hope He has died to save me.” Spangenberg only added, “Do you know yourself?” Wesley replied, “I do.” An odd conversation, leaving Spangenberg in doubt respecting the real conversion of the Oxford priest, and leading Wesley to think of doctrines which took him more than the next two years to understand.
Nine days after his arrival, Wesley and his friends were visited by Tomo-Chichi (whom Oglethorpe had brought to England some time before) and half-a-dozen other Indians. Informed of their arrival, the young clergymen met them in their gowns and cassocks. The chief bid them welcome, said he would assemble the great men of his nation, and expressed a wish that they would teach his children; while his wife gave them a jar of milk, as emblematic of her wish that they might feed the Indians with milk, for they were but children, and a jar of honey, with the hope that the missionaries would be sweet to them.[163]
Ingham and Charles Wesley went off with Oglethorpe to lay out the town of Frederica; and Wesley and Delamotte, having no house of their own to live in, lodged, during the first month, with Spangenberg, Nitschmann, and other Moravian friends. Thus, from morning to night, were they mixed up with these godly people, and had ample opportunity to observe their spirit and behaviour. Wesley writes: “They were always employed, always cheerful themselves, and in good humour with one another; they had put away all anger, and strife, and wrath, and bitterness, and clamour, and evil speaking; they walked worthy of the vocation wherewith they were called, and adorned the gospel of our Lord in all things.” Wesley was present at the election and ordination of Anton Seifart[164] as a bishop for Georgia, the simplicity and solemnity of the service making him almost forget the seventeen hundred years between, and imagine himself in one of those assemblies where form and state were not, but Paul the tentmaker or Peter the fisherman presided, with the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Who can estimate the influence of such intercourse in moulding the subsequent character and life of this inquiring missionary?
Mr. Quincy, Wesley’s predecessor, having now removed to Carolina, Wesley took possession of the wood-built rectory, and, on March 7th, commenced his ministry at Savannah by preaching a sermon from 1 Corinthians xiii. 3, in which he introduced two death-bed scenes,—that of his father at Epworth, and another which he had witnessed at Savannah, and which was “a spectacle worthy to be seen of God and angels and men.”[165] He officiated at nine in the morning, at twelve, and again in the afternoon;[166] and announced his design to administer the sacrament on every Sunday and on every holiday.
A few days subsequent to this, writing to his mother, he remarked:—“We are likely to stay here some months. The place is pleasant beyond imagination, and exceeding healthful. I have not had a moment’s illness of any kind since I set my foot upon the continent; nor do I know any more than one of my seven hundred parishioners who is sick at this time. Many of them indeed are, I believe, very angry already; for a gentleman, no longer ago than last night (March 17), made a ball; but the public prayers happening to begin about the same time, the church was full, and the ballroom so empty that the entertainment could not go forward. I should be heartily glad if any poor and religious men or women of Epworth or Wroote would come over to me. General Oglethorpe would give them land enough, and provisions gratis, till they could live on the produce of it.”[167]
Wesley, in this letter, evidently considers the whole of the Georgian settlements as his parish; for, so far from Savannah having at this time a population of seven hundred souls, there was scarcely that number in the whole of the settlements put together. Georgia was his parish; for, Mr. Quincy being gone, he was the only minister of the Church of England inducted into ministerial work in the Georgian territory. Charles Wesley was Oglethorpe’s secretary; and though Benjamin Ingham had gone with a few colonists to where Frederica was to stand, Frederica itself as yet did not exist. Besides, Ingham’s visit was intended to be but temporary, his mind being fully fixed upon a mission to the Indians. Indeed, this was Wesley’s purpose also. Their only object in quitting England was, not to preach to the colonists, but to the Indians; and the reason why Wesley had begun to preach to the English at Savannah was because Mr. Quincy, the minister of the English, had left the colony, and they were now as sheep without a shepherd; and also because, through the French on the one hand and the Spaniards on the other, the Indians were at present in great confusion, and had become so excited by French and Spanish plots and treachery that it was not only dangerous to go among them, but, as Tomo-Chichi told Wesley and his friends at the interview already mentioned, they seemed determined not to hear “the great word” which the white man had to teach.[168] In these two facts we find the reason, and the only reason, why Wesley’s object in going to Georgia was not fulfilled; and why, instead of preaching to the Indians in the woods, he spent his time in preaching to the English at Savannah.
The commencement of Wesley’s ministry was auspicious. A fortnight after preaching his first sermon, he wrote to his brother Charles as follows: “I have hitherto no opposition at all; all is smooth, and fair, and promising. Many seem to be awakened; all are full of respect and commendation. We cannot see any cloud gathering. But this calm cannot last: storms must come hither, too; and let them come, when we are ready to meet them.”[169]
Wesley had lived so long in the tempest of opposition that it is no wonder he felt it strange to find himself in the midst of an unbroken calm, surrounded by nothing but “respect and commendation.” This was a new experience, but it was soon ended.
Charles Wesley and Ingham were already in hot water at Frederica, and the latter hurried off to Savannah for advice. It was only three weeks since Wesley had there commenced his ministry; yet he had already established daily morning and evening public prayers, and a weekly communion; he had also formed a society, which met on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday nights, to read and pray and sing psalms together; and Delamotte had begun to teach a few orphan children.[170] This was a vigorous beginning, but now Wesley and Delamotte had to hasten to Frederica, leaving Ingham to supply their place in the best way he could.
Charles had been baptizing children by trine immersion, and endeavouring to reconcile scolding women. Some of these termagants had prejudiced Oglethorpe against him, and the poor secretary was now treated with coldness, and even charged with mutiny. A woman, whose husband had been put into confinement, blamed him for being the cause of it, and threatened to be revenged upon him, by “exposing his d——d hypocrisy and his prayers four times a day by beat of drum.”[171] While all the others were provided with boards to sleep upon, he was left to sleep upon the ground. His few well-wishers became afraid to speak to him, and even his washerwoman refused in future to wash his linen.
Wesley and Delamotte left Savannah on April 4, and returned on April 20; having spent ten days on the voyage, and six in settling the miserable squabbles that had sprung up among the palmetto huts of Frederica.
On the day of his arrival, Wesley wrote to Oglethorpe as follows:—
“SAVANNAH, April 20, 1736.
“SAVANNAH never was so dear to me as now. I found so little either of the form or power of godliness at Frederica, that I am sincerely glad I am removed from it. There is none of those who did run well whom I pity more than Mrs. Hawkins.[172] Her treating me in such a manner would indeed have little affected me, had my own interests only been concerned. I have been used to be betrayed, scorned, and insulted, by those I had most laboured to serve. But when I reflect on her condition, my heart bleeds for her.”
Wesley then refers to the accusation against his brother, to the effect that, by the frequency of his public prayers, he prevented the men attending to their proper work, and interrupted the progress of the town and colony. He shows the absurdity of this, by stating that, both at Frederica and Savannah, not more than seven minutes were spent in reading the public morning and evening prayers. Fourteen minutes daily, in two public services, could hardly be considered an unreasonable taxation of the people’s time. Wesley writes: “These cannot be termed long prayers: no Christian assembly ever used shorter.” And then he naively informs Oglethorpe that these short prayers had no repetitions in them! We should think not![173]
Within a month after his return to Savannah, Wesley began to carry out his high church principles. He refused to baptize a child of Mr. Parker’s, second bailiff of the town, because the parents objected to its being dipped. On Sundays, he divided the public prayers, according to the original appointment of the Church; reading the morning service at five; the communion office and a sermon at eleven; and the evening service at three. He also commenced visiting his parishioners in order, from house to house, setting apart for this purpose three hours every day.
He had no sooner begun, however, than his brother, wearied with his life at Frederica, and full of abhorrence at the false-heartedness of the people,[174] unexpectedly presented himself at Savannah. Places were exchanged, and John and Delamotte instantly started off to the forsaken flock. They arrived at Frederica on May 22nd, and remained until June 23rd. During this brief visit, Wesley read the commendatory prayer over Mrs. Germain, at the point of death; made Mr. Lassel’s will; arranged a small society-meeting, like that which had been organised at Savannah; and reproved an officer of a man-of-war for swearing. One of his congregation said to him: “I like nothing you do; all your sermons are satires upon particular persons. Besides, we are Protestants: but as for you, we cannot tell what religion you are of. We never heard of such a religion before; we know not what to make of it. And then your private behaviour: all the quarrels that have been here since your arrival have been because of you; and there is neither man nor woman in the town who minds a word you say.” The next day Wesley returned to Savannah.
He was no sooner back than a large party of Indians came, including several chiefs and an interpreter, with whom he had several interviews. He now hoped that a door was opened for the fulfilment of his intention to be a missionary among the heathen; but when he informed Oglethorpe of his purpose, the general objected, on the ground that there was great danger of his being taken or killed by the French, and that it was inexpedient to leave Savannah without a minister. Wesley answered that, though the trustees of Georgia had appointed him to the office of minister of Savannah, this was done without his solicitation, desire, or knowledge; and that he should not continue longer than until his way was opened to go among the Indians. And so the matter ended.
On the 26th of July, after spending a little more than five months in Georgia, his brother Charles embarked for England. At the same time, Wesley went again to ill-natured Frederica, where he spent the next twelve weeks. Here he read, with Delamotte, Bishop Beveridge’s “Pandectæ Canonum Conciliorum,” and became more convinced than ever that both particular and general councils may err. He set up a small library; and as several Germans, through not understanding the English tongue, were unable to join in the public service, he agreed to meet them every day at noon, in his own house, where, in their own language, he expounded to them a chapter of the New Testament, and prayed with them. Finding, however, that his prospects of doing good at Frederica became less and less, he returned to Savannah on the 31st of October, where he continued until the beginning of 1737.
Meanwhile, Wesley’s friends in England did not forget him. The following was from his old acquaintance, Mr. Morgan, and is now for the first time given to the public.
“OXON, November 27, 1735.
“DEAR SIR,— ... Be pleased to let Mr. Ingham know that I intend going to Yorkshire, if not hindered by my father. God has made Mr. Dickison the instrument of awakening his landlord and landlady. I read to them at Mr. Fox’s an hour every other day, in the Bishop of Man’s Catechism. Mr. Fox and his wife, especially the former, are most zealous Christians; and are earnestly bent on going to Georgia. So is Mr. Dickison, who is ‘an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile.’ I do not doubt but we shall be able to send you a colony of thorough good Christians. I have undertaken the care of Bocardo. I go there three days in the week, and Mr. Broughton a fourth. I read every Sunday night to a cheerful number of Christians at Mr. Fox’s. I could say a great deal respecting our meetings, etc.; but I am obliged to steal even this time from the holy Scriptures, in which I find more and more comfort every day. Indeed, the Lord’s kingdom increaseth apace. My love to your brother, and Mr. Ingham, and Mr. Delamotte; and best respects to Mr. Oglethorpe. I should be very glad if you could spare me some of your prayers, or anything else which may be of service to me.
“I am, your brother in Christ Jesus, “RICHARD MORGAN.
“To the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, in Georgia.”
Another unpublished letter lies before us, written by Sir John Thorold, and breathing a most Christian spirit. Omitting what is purely sentimental, we give the following extracts:—
“LONDON, ST. JAMES’S PALACE, May 24, 1736.
“DEAR SIR,—I am unwilling to lose the opportunity of writing to you, by Capt. Thompson, and inquiring after the welfare of yourself, your brother, Mr. Ingham, Mr. Delamotte, and the whole colony of Georgia. I have read the journal of your voyage to that new settlement, and can, with pleasure, discern the footsteps of Divine Providence towards you.... Our dear friend Mr. Broughton is curate at the Tower, and has undertaken to preach to the poor prisoners in Ludgate every Tuesday in the afternoon. Mr. Whitefield and Mr. Hervey propose to enter into holy orders this next ordination. May they become burning and shining lights in the Church! Sir John Phillips has been, for several weeks, hindered from attending the societies, by reason of sickness and infirmities. He piously allows Mr. Whitefield £20 per annum. Several of Mr. Broughton’s late parishioners at Cowley forget not the assembling of themselves together. Your friends at Oxford continue to exhort and edify one another. Tell me what progress you make in spiritualizing your flock; and what probability there is of the Lord opening the door of faith to the Indians.... May the God of love keep you all knit together in the bond of charity, and may you at last receive a beautiful crown at the Lord’s hand, and enter amongst angels and archangels, to sing everlasting songs of praise to the Lord Almighty. I desire your prayers for me and mine.
“J. THOROLD.”
The next was from James Hutton:—
“September 3, 1736.
“DEAR SIR,—I am this day twenty-one years old. Mr. Whitefield has taken orders, and is in town to supply Mr. Broughton’s places at the Tower and Ludgate prison. Mr. Broughton reads prayers every night to a religious society that meet in Wapping chapel. Mr. Morgan is obliged by his father’s orders to study physic at Leyden, where the name of Wesley stinks as well as at Oxford. I had the happiness of seeing your good mother, who came to town, in her way from Gainsborough, to Mr. Hall first, and thence very soon to Tiverton. Mr. Law visited her at Gainsborough, and again at London. Your mother desired her blessing to you, and would have wrote, but had no time. She prayed for you and blessed you. If all matters relating to receiving your fellowship are not exact, write fresh ones, and send over. Take care to inquire carefully and strictly concerning the mission of the Moravian bishop. I will make what inquiries I can. A great deal depends upon the validity of ordinations.”[175]
At the same time, Hervey at Oxford wrote:—“I am still a most weak corrupt creature. But, blessed be the unmerited mercy of God, and thanks be to your never-to-be-forgotten example, that I am what I am! You have been both a father and a friend to me. I heartily thank you, as for all other favours, so especially for teaching me Hebrew.”[176]
William Chapman, a student of Pembroke College, wrote as follows:—“Your kind concern and repeated endeavours for my spiritual good, while at Oxford, will not suffer me to think that you have utterly lost all remembrance of me. I sit every evening with Mr. Hervey, that great champion of the Lord of hosts, and read five times a week to a religious society in St. Ebbs’ parish. God and the angels be with you!”[177]
Wesley, before leaving England, had begun to read the mystics, and on November 23, 1736, addressed a long letter to his brother Samuel, showing that, though he had been in danger of embracing their bewildering heresies, he had now abandoned them. He writes:—
“I think the rock on which I had the nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the writings of the mystics: under which term I comprehend all, and only those, who slight any of the means of grace. I have drawn up a short scheme of their doctrines, and beg your thoughts upon it, as soon as you can conveniently. Give me them as particularly, fully, and strongly as your time will permit. They may be of consequence, not only to all this province, but to nations of Christians yet unborn.
“‘All means are not necessary for all men: therefore each person must use such means, and such only, as he finds necessary for him. When the end is attained the means cease.’
“‘Men utterly divested of free will, of self-love, and self-activity, are entered into the passive state, and enjoy such a contemplation as is not only above faith, but above sight—such as is entirely free from images, thoughts, and discourse, and never interrupted by sins of infirmity, or voluntary distractions. They have absolutely renounced their reason and understanding; else they could not be guided by a Divine light. They seek no clear or particular knowledge of anything, but only an obscure, general knowledge, which is far better.’
“‘Having thus attained the end, the means must cease. Hope is swallowed up in love. Sight, or something more than sight, takes the place of faith. All particular virtues they possess in the essence, and therefore need not the distinct exercise of them. They work likewise all good works essentially, not accidentally, and use all outward means, only as they are moved thereto.’
“‘Public prayer, or any forms, they need not; for they pray without ceasing. Sensible devotion in any prayer they despise; it being a great hindrance to perfection. The Scripture they need not read; for it is only His letter, with whom they converse face to face. Neither do they need the Lord’s supper; for they never cease to remember Christ in the most acceptable manner.’”
Such was the mystified balderdash which Wesley had been in danger of adopting. He concludes his letter thus:—
“May God deliver you and yours from all error, and all unholiness! My prayers will never, I trust, be wanting for you. I am, dear brother, my sister’s and your
“Most affectionate brother, “JOHN WESLEY.”[178]
At the end of the year 1736, Wesley and Delamotte set out, on foot, to Cowpen, missed their way, walked through a cypress swamp, with the water breast high, and slept on the ground in their wet clothes, which during the night were frozen, and in the morning were white as snow. They then started for Frederica, fell short of provisions, used bear’s flesh, and proved it to be wholesome. Arriving on January 5, 1737, they found the people, as they expected, cold and heartless. Wesley’s life was repeatedly threatened; and, after spending twenty more days in this unhappy place, he departed from Frederica for ever. In his passage to Savannah he read a volume containing the works of Nicholas Machiavel, and formed the deliberate opinion, “that if all the other doctrines of devils, which have been committed to writing, were collected together in one volume, it would fall short of this; and that should a prince form himself by this book, so calmly recommending hypocrisy, treachery, lying, robbery, oppression, adultery, whoredom, and murder of all kinds, Domitian or Nero would be an angel of light compared to that man.”
Wesley had now been fifty-two weeks in America, twenty-four of which he had spent at Savannah, and the rest at Frederica and at other places between the two. He remained forty-six weeks longer. How was he occupied? And what were his troubles?
Delamotte was teaching between thirty and forty children at Savannah to read, write, and cast accounts, and Wesley catechized them every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Every sabbath he had three public services, at five in the morning, twelve at mid-day, and three in the afternoon; and then at night as many of his parishioners as desired it met at his house, with whom he spent an hour in prayer, singing, and mutual exhortation. A similar meeting was held in the same place every Wednesday night, and selecter ones on all the other evenings of the week.
There being no immediate prospect of commencing a mission among the heathen, Wesley, Delamotte, and Ingham consulted together, and agreed that the last mentioned should return to England; and accordingly, after spending exactly fifty-five weeks in Georgia, he embarked for home, having literally done next to nothing either for the colonists or the Indians, with the exception of composing, in Dr. Byrom’s shorthand, a catalogue of half the words in the Indian language,[179] in a house built for him near the Indian town, a few miles from Savannah. The chief object of sending Ingham to England was to obtain more help for the colonists. In a letter dated February 16, 1737, and addressed to a friend in Lincoln College, Oxford, Wesley writes:—
“There is great need that God should put it into the hearts of some, to come over to us, and labour with us in His harvest. But I should not desire any to come unless on the same views and conditions with us; without any temporal wages, other than food and raiment, the plain conveniences of life. For one or more, in whom was this mind, there would be full employment in the province: either in assisting Mr. Delamotte or me, while we were present here; or in supplying our places when abroad; or in visiting the poor people in the smaller settlements as well as at Frederica, all of whom are as sheep without a shepherd.
“By these labours of love might any that desired it be trained up for the harder task of preaching the gospel to the heathen. The difficulties he must then encounter God only knows; probably martyrdom would conclude them. But those we have hitherto met with have been small. Persecution, you know, is the portion of every follower of Christ, wherever his lot is cast; but it has hitherto extended no farther than words with regard to us, unless in one or two inconsiderable instances. Still, every man that would come hither ought to be willing and ready to embrace the severer kinds of it.”[180]
Meanwhile, Oglethorpe’s troubles had begun. From a letter which Wesley wrote to him, on February 24, 1737, we learn that Sir Robert Walpole had turned against the general, and parliament had resolved to make a strict scrutiny into Georgian affairs. The trustees had charged Oglethorpe with misapplying moneys, and with abusing his entrusted power. Wesley adds: “Perhaps in some things you have shown you are but a man: perhaps I myself may have a little to complain of: but oh what a train of benefits have I received to lay in the balance against it! I bless God that ever you was born. I acknowledge His exceeding mercy in casting me into your hands. I own your generous kindness all the time we were at sea. I am indebted to you for a thousand favours here. Though all men should revile you, yet will not I.”[181]
Sinister rumours were circulated in reference to Wesley, as well as Oglethorpe. Hence the following hitherto unpublished letter, endorsed by Wesley thus:—“The Trustees’ Letter, June 17, 1737, fully acquitting me:”—
“Trustees of Georgia to the Rev. J. Wesley.
“GEORGIA OFFICE, June 15, 1737.
“SIR,—The Rev. Mr. Burton has this day laid before the trustees a letter from you to them, dated Savannah, March 4, 1737, wherein you express a concern that they should receive an accusation of your embezzling any part of their goods, and likewise a desire to know the name of your accuser.
“The trustees have ordered me to assure you, that they are very much surprised at any apprehensions you have of such accusation being brought before them. No complaint of any kind has been laid before them relating to you. They have never as a board, nor has any of them privately, heard of one; nor have they the least suspicion of any ground for one. They would not (if they had received any) form a judgment of you without acquainting you with the accusation, and the name of the accuser. At the same time, they believe you will think it reasonable to let them know who has informed you that any such accusation has been brought before them, and that, for the future, you will not believe nor listen to any private informations or insinuations, that must make you uneasy, and may lead you to distrust the justice of the trustees, and the regard they have for you.
“The trustees are very sensible of the great importance of the work you have engaged in; and they hope God will prosper the undertaking, and support you in it; for they have much at heart, not only the success of the colony in general, but the progress of piety among the people, as well as the conversion of the Indians. They are very glad to find that Mr. Causton has seconded your endeavours to suppress vice and immorality, and that a reformation gains ground, as you observe it does. The trustees will take into consideration your application in favour of Robert Haws, and have a regard to it.
“I am, sir, your most obedient servant, “BENJAMIN MARTIN, Secretary.”
The following letter, also now first published, refers to the same subject, besides containing other information which we hope will be found not devoid of interest. It was addressed to “The Rev. Mr. John Wesley, at Savannah, in Georgia:”—
“OSSET, October 19, 1737.
“DEAR BROTHER,—By your silence one would suspect that you were offended at my last letter. Am I your enemy because I tell you the truth? But perhaps I was too severe. Forgive me then. However, I am sure that, by soaring too high in your own imaginations, you have had a great downfall in your spiritual progress. Be lowly, therefore, in your own eyes. Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up. I do assure you it is out of pure love, and with concern, that I write. I earnestly wish your soul’s welfare. O pray for mine also. The Lord preserve you!
“Could you, think you, live upon the income of your fellowship? If you can, do. The trustees are indeed very willing to support you, and they take it ill that anybody should say you have been too expensive. But the Bishop of London (as I have heard), and some others, have been offended at your expenses. And not indeed altogether without reason, because you declared at your leaving England that you should want scarcely anything. I just give you these hints. Pray for direction, and then act as you judge best.
“Charles is so reserved: I know little about him: he neither writes to me, nor comes to see me: what he intends is best known to himself. Mr. Hutton’s family go on exceedingly well. Your friend Mr. Morgan (I hear) either has, or is about publishing a book, to prove that every one baptized with water is regenerate. All friends at Oxford go on well. Mr. Kinchin, Mr. Hutchins, Mr. Washington, Bell, Turney, Hervey, Watson, are all zealous. Mr. Atkinson labours under severe trials in Westmoreland; but is steady, and sincere, and an excellent Christian. Dick Smith is weak, but not utterly gone. Mr. Robson, and Grieves, are but indifferent: the latter is married to a widow, and teaching school at Northampton. Mr. Thompson, of Queen’s, has declared his resolution of following Christ.
“Remember me to Mr. Wallis, Mark Hind, and the Davison family, Mrs. Gilbert Mears, Mr. Campbell, Mr. and Mrs. Burnside, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson.
“Yours in Christ, “BENJAMIN INGHAM.”
Wesley’s ideas of religion, at this period, may be gathered from the following extracts from a letter, dated “Savannah, March 28, 1737,” and addressed to “William Wogan, Esq., in Spring Gardens, London.”[182]
“I entirely agree with you, that religion is love, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; that, as it is the happiest, so it is the cheerfulest thing in the world; that it is utterly inconsistent with moroseness, sourness, severity, and indeed with whatever is not according to the softness, sweetness, and gentleness of Christ Jesus. I believe it is equally contrary to all preciseness, stiffness, affectation, and unnecessary singularity. I allow, too, that prudence, as well as zeal, is of the utmost importance in the Christian life. But I do not yet see any possible case wherein trifling conversation can be an instance of it. In the following scriptures I take all such to be flatly forbidden: Matt. xii. 36; Eph. v. 4, and iv. 29; Col. iv. 6.
“That I shall be laughed at for this, I know; so was my Master. I am not for a stern, austere manner of conversing. No: let all the cheerfulness of faith be there, all the joyfulness of hope, all the amiable sweetness—the winning easiness of love. If we must have art, ‘Hic mihi erunt artes.’”
Again, in another letter, written to Mrs. Chapman a day later, he says:—
“You seem to apprehend that I believe religion to be inconsistent with cheerfulness, and with a social friendly temper. So far from it, that I am convinced, as true religion cannot be without cheerfulness, so steady cheerfulness cannot be without true religion. I am equally convinced that religion has nothing sour, austere, unsociable, unfriendly in it; but on the contrary, implies the most winning sweetness, the most amiable softness and gentleness. Are you for having as much cheerfulness as you can? So am I. Do you endeavour to keep alive your taste for all the truly innocent pleasures of life? So do I. Do you refuse no pleasure but what is a hindrance to some greater good, or has a tendency to some evil? It is my very rule. In particular, I pursue this rule in eating, which I seldom do without much pleasure. I know it is the will of God, that I should enjoy every pleasure that leads to my taking pleasure in Him, and in such a measure as most leads to it. We are to do nothing but what, directly or indirectly, leads to our holiness; and to do every such thing with this design, and in such a measure as may most promote it.
“I am not mad, my dear friend, for asserting these to be the words of truth and soberness; neither are any of those, either in England or here, who have hitherto attempted to follow me. I am and must be an example to my flock; not indeed in my prudential rules, but, in some measure, in my spirit and life and conversation. Yet all of them are, in your sense of the word, unlearned, and most of them of low understanding; and still not one of them has been, as yet, in any case of conscience which was not solved. As to the nice distinctions you speak of, it is you, my friend, who are lost in them. We have no need of nice distinctions; for I exhort all, and dispute with none. I feed my brethren in Christ, as He giveth me power, with the pure, unmixed milk of the word; and those who are as little children receive it, not as the word of man, but as the word of God.”[183]
These are important letters, as tending to refute the commonly received opinion, that, at this period of his history, Wesley was morose, sour, gloomy, and in fact thought that cheerfulness was inconsistent with religion. His views and some of his practices might seem to many to be peculiar; but he was a cheerful and happy man, even amid the vigils, fastings, and solitudes of Georgia. Some of his views were novel, but they were not incompatible with happiness. He writes: “When I first landed at Savannah, a gentlewoman said, ‘I assure you, sir, you will see as well dressed a congregation on Sunday as most you have seen in London.’ I did so; and soon after I took occasion to expound those scriptures which relate to dress; and all the time that I afterward ministered at Savannah, I saw neither gold in the church, nor costly apparel, but the congregation in general was almost constantly clothed in plain clean linen or woollen.”[184] This wears an aspect of anchorite severity, but still Wesley and his plain-robed followers were happy.
In April, 1737, Wesley began to learn the Spanish language, in order to converse with his Jewish parishioners. Easter being in the same month, he “had every day in this great and holy week a sermon and the holy communion.” Finding that a clergyman in Carolina had been marrying some of his (Wesley’s) parishioners, without either banns or licence, he set out for Charlestown to put a stop to such proceedings. Mr. Garden, the Bishop of London’s commissary, assured him he would take care no such irregularity should be committed for the future. At Garden’s request, Wesley preached a sermon on, “whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world”; which led a man of education and character to object—“Why if this be Christianity, a Christian must have more courage than Alexander the Great.”
Returning to Savannah, in the month of May, Wesley found one of his congregation, who had been exemplarily religious, turned a deist; and expressed the opinion that bad a religion as Popery is, no religion is worse; and that a baptized infidel is twofold worse than even a bigoted papist. This was only one of Wesley’s trials. A wicked woman, whom he had offended, decoyed him into her house, threw him down, and, with her scissors, cut off from one side of his head the whole of those long locks of auburn hair, which he had been accustomed to keep in the most perfect order. After this, he preached at Savannah with his hair long on one side and short on the other, those sitting on the side which had been cut observing, “What a cropped head of hair the young parson has.”[185]
At Whitsuntide, four of his scholars, after being instructed daily for several weeks, were admitted to the Lord’s table, and many of the other children evinced a remarkable seriousness in their behaviour and conversation. This was doubtless a cause of great joy both to Wesley and his friend Delamotte, each of whom taught a school, and, like all schoolmasters, met with discouragements. A part of the boys in Delamotte’s school wore stockings and shoes, and the others not. The former ridiculed the latter. Delamotte tried to put a stop to this uncourteous banter, but told Wesley he had failed. Wesley replied, “I think I can cure it. If you will take charge of my school next week I will take charge of yours, and will try.” The exchange was made, and on Monday morning Wesley went into school barefoot. The children seemed surprised, but without any reference to past jeerings Wesley kept them at their work. Before the week was ended, the shoeless ones began to gather courage; and some of the others, seeing their minister and master come without shoes and stockings, began to copy his example, and thus the evil was effectually cured.”[186]
In the early summer of 1737, Whitefield wrote to Wesley, telling him of his success in England. A young country lad had brought him a peck of apples seven miles upon his back, as a token of gratitude for the benefit he had derived from Whitefield’s ministry, and had such a sense of the Divine presence that he walked, for the most part, with his hat off his head. God was also moving on the hearts of some young ladies. Whitefield continues:—
“The devil, I find, has a particular spite against weekly communion; but I am in hope we shall have the sacrament administered every Sunday at the cathedral. It would have been mentioned to the bishop ere now, but Oxford friends advised to defer it till next summer.
“But now I have mentioned the bishop: alas! how should I tremble to tell you how I have been continually disturbed with thoughts, that I, a worm taken from a common public-house, should, ere I die, be one myself. Your earnest prayers, surely, will not be wanting for me, that I may not split on that most dangerous of all rocks—worldly ambition. Parsonages, I believe, are providing for me; but I trust Satan will never catch me by pluralities, or induce me to take upon me anything inconsistent with the duty of a disciple of Jesus Christ. I hope our friends all continue steadfast and zealous at Oxford. My love to the young merchant, whose example I hope we shall all be enabled to follow, if God requires our assistance in Georgia. O may you go on and prosper, and, in the strength of God, make the devil’s kingdom shake about his ears! I received benefit by your father’s ‘Advice to a Young Clergyman.’”[187]
Whitefield’s dream about being made a bishop is amusing; and yet Providence and grace made him greater than a bishop.
Wesley still felt intensely anxious respecting the heathen. In July he met a Frenchman, who had lived several months among the Chicasaws, and wrote to Dr. Humphreys as follows:—[188]
“Concerning the conversion of the heathen, where is the seed sown, the sanguis martyrum? Do we hear of any who have sealed the faith with their blood in all this vast continent? Or do we read of any church flourishing in any age or nation without this seed first sown there? Give me leave, sir, to speak my thoughts freely. When God shall put it into the hearts of some of His servants, whom He hath already delivered from earthly hopes and fears, to join hand in hand in this labour of love; when out of these He shall have chosen one or more, to magnify Him in the sight of the heathen by dying, not with a stoical or Indian indifference, but blessing and praying for their murderers, and praising God in the midst of flame with joy unspeakable and full of glory, then the rest, waxing bold by their sufferings, shall go forth in the name of the Lord God, and by the power of His might cast down every high thing that exalteth itself against the faith of Christ. Then shall ye see Satan, the grand ruler of this New World, as lightning fall from heaven!”
Oh for missionaries like these! Wesley’s notions are right. Men going merely because others send them, or men going merely to obtain a livelihood, are not the men to convert the inhabitants of lands like Africa, India, Japan, and China. To make an impression there, men must be animated with the martyrs’ spirit. Church history, including the history of missions, affords abundant proof of this. Mere duty-doing ministers are bad enough in England, but they are vastly worse when among the heathen. Money spent upon them there is worse than wasted; for their cold perfunctory labours produce, upon the whole, a bad effect instead of good. The greatest boon the church could now receive from the hands of God would be a multiplication of ministers and missionaries like those which Wesley was sighing for in Georgia.
From Wesley’s private manuscript journal, we learn that in July, by going from house to house, he took a census of his parishioners, and computed that there were in Savannah 518 inhabitants, of whom 149 were under sixteen years of age. Frederica was without a minister, though three hundred acres of land had been granted by the trustees for a church establishment in that unhappy town.[189] Other places with scanty populations were equally destitute. New Ebenezer had the Moravians; and Darien had Mr. M’Leod, a serious, resolute, and pious Presbyterian: but this seems to have been all the ministerial agency existing in Georgia. Hence the following letter, addressed by Wesley to his friends at Oxford:—
“SAVANNAH, September 8, 1737.
“... Long since, I begun to visit my parishioners in order, from house to house; but I could not go on two days longer. The sick were increasing so fast as to require all the time I had to spare—from one to five in the afternoon. Nor is even that enough to see them all, as I would do, daily. In Frederica and all the smaller settlements here are above five hundred sheep almost without a shepherd. What a single man can do is neither seen nor felt. Where are ye who are very zealous for the Lord of hosts? Who will rise up with me against the wicked? Whose spirit is moved within him to prepare himself for publishing glad tidings to those on whom the Sun of Righteousness never yet arose? Do you ask what you shall have? Why, all you desire: food to eat, raiment to put on, a place where to lay your head, and a crown of life that fadeth not away! Do you seek means of building up yourselves in the knowledge and love of God? I know of no place under heaven where there are more than in this place. Does your heart burn within you to turn many others to righteousness? Behold, the whole land, thousands of thousands are before you! I will resign to any of you all or any part of my charge. Choose what seemeth good in your own eyes. There are within these walls children of all ages and dispositions. Who will bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, till they are meet to be preachers of righteousness? Here are adults from the farthest parts of Europe, and Asia, and the inmost kingdoms of Africa; add to these the known and unknown nations of this vast continent, and you will indeed have a great multitude which no man can number.”[190]
While Wesley was thus longing for help, events were transpiring, by which he himself within three months was driven out of Georgia, and obliged to return to England. This was the closing scene in Wesley’s missionary life, and though a painful one it must not be shirked. All the facts in the writer’s possession shall be given, and the reader shall have materials to form his own opinion. The chief actors in the scene, besides Wesley himself, were Sophia Christiana Hopkey, Thomas Causton, and William Williamson.
Causton was one of the first company of emigrants, and landed in Georgia with Oglethorpe, in February, 1733. He was a man of no substance, and his character was not as good as it might have been. In fact, he left England in disgrace, having practised a fraud upon the public revenue. He was naturally proud, covetous, cunning, and deceitful. By his clever rascality he wriggled himself into Oglethorpe’s favour, and, on the arrival of the few emigrant gaol-birds in the Savannah river, was appointed a sort of dictator of the infant settlement, and had charge of the stores which the trustees sent over for the use of the colonists. We have already seen that, even when Wesley left for England at the end of the year 1737, the inhabitants of Savannah were not more than 518 in number, of whom only 369 were adult males and females. This was no large kingdom; but Thomas Causton was a large man, because he was at the head of it. Indeed, the molehill empire seems to have magnified itself to the utmost extent possible, by the introduction of law, the establishment of courts, the appointment of officers, the election of juries, and the adoption of everything else within its power which was likely to make it a pompous minikin miniature of the great system of government at home. Causton was “chief magistrate,” and of course a “chief” had subordinates under him. There was a recorder, also a bailiff. There were constables, and tithingmen, and other great functionaries, all armed with solemn authority to rule, govern, and keep in order, first themselves, and then about five hundred men, women, and children, including John Wesley the Oxford priest, and Charles Delamotte the merchant master of almost a ragged school.
“The ocean is in tempest tossed, To waft a feather and to drown a fly.”
Of all the great powers, however, in this log-built village of five hundred souls, Thomas Causton, in his own estimation, and in fact, was greatest. The other Tom Thumb magistrates were ciphers in his august presence. Sometimes, indeed, he would ask their opinion in public on the state matters of the great city of Savannah; but it was principally to have the pleasure of uttering an opinion of his own, directly opposite to theirs. Juries he threatened without the least compunction, and especially when their verdicts disagreed with his inclinations. As his power increased, so did his pride, haughtiness, and cruelty. The court in which this fraudulent refugee—we beg his pardon, this “chief magistrate”—expounded law and dispensed justice, was guarded by eight freeholders, with an officer to direct their movements, all armed with guns and bayonets. Seated, in such high dignity, and so far above his fellows, upon the judicial bench, it was beneath his office to sit uncovered; and hence he almost invariably wore his hat, even when administering an oath. Should any foolish wight be bold enough to oppose, in the least degree, his arbitrary proceedings, the “chief magistrate” at once threatened the impudent recusant with the stocks, the whipping-post, and a lodging in the log-house prison. Even his fellow officials were treated with scant respect. In December, 1734, the trustees sent a Mr. Gordon from England, to act as magistrate; but Causton, not liking a compeer, refused him provisions from the store, and he was obliged to leave. Indeed, Causton, who had sufficient cleverness to induce Oglethorpe, despite his roguery in England, to make him magistrate in Savannah, seems to have used the same worldly cunning in allowing none to be his subordinates except those whom he could, with the utmost ease, twist to his own purposes. Mr. Bailiff Parker, mentioned in Wesley’s journal, had nothing to support himself and his large family, except what he earned by his daily labour as a sawyer. He was a man of no education, and was an absolute slave to liquor. Another bailiff was a man of the name of Daru, nearly seventy years old, and crazed in both body and mind; and another was R. Gilbert, who could neither read nor write. Causton’s despotic career was of short duration. The same grand jury which found, under Causton’s guidance, ten bills against Wesley, immediately proceeded to examine the official doings of their own illustrious “chief magistrate;” and found charges against him, to the effect that he had grossly abused his power as keeper of the public stores, and that he had hindered people settling on the lands that the trustees had allotted them. These and other charges, dated September 1, 1737, were sent to England; and the result was—Causton, in October, 1738, was turned out of all his offices, and the store was sold to pay the trustees’ debts; Causton’s certified accounts were refused by the trustees as incorrect; William Williamson was made recorder, and Henry Parker (the drunken uneducated sawyer above mentioned) was made first magistrate; and, finally, Causton, the great man who prosecuted Wesley, and drove him from Georgia, settled down at Oxstead, three miles from Savannah; and there, we hope, he lived a more honest life than he had done in England.[191]
Sophia Christiana Hopkey was the niece of Thomas Causton’s wife. William Williamson, who became her husband, was a young adventurer, who arrived in Georgia a short time after Wesley did.[192] And now, with these explanations, let us look at the miserable business, which, in a life of Wesley, cannot be omitted.
Wesley landed in Georgia on February 5, 1736, and seems at once to have become acquainted with Miss Hopkey. Oglethorpe, Charles Wesley, Ingham, and fifty other settlers set out immediately for Frederica. The young lady went with them; and, on March 22, Wesley wrote to his brother concerning her as follows: “I conjure you, spare no time, no address or pains, to learn the true cause of the former distress of my friend. I much doubt you are in the right. God forbid that she should again, in like manner, miss the mark. Watch over her; keep her as much as possible. Write to me, how I ought to write to her.”[193]
Miss Hopkey was a young lady of good sense, and elegant in person and manners. She was introduced to Wesley as a sincere inquirer after salvation, and soon took every possible opportunity of being in his company, and requested him to assist her in studying French. Oglethorpe also did his best to help on a courtship. Meanwhile, Wesley was seized with fever, which confined him for nearly a week; and the young lady (who would hardly allow Delamotte to do anything for his friend) attended him night and day. She even consulted Oglethorpe what kind of female dress Wesley liked the best, and therefore came always dressed in white, neatly and simply elegant. Young Delamotte began to be suspicious, and asked Wesley if he meant to marry Miss Hopkey. Delamotte’s question puzzled Wesley, but, perceiving that Delamotte was prejudiced against the lady, he waived an answer. The next step taken was to consult David Nitschmann, the Moravian bishop. Nitschmann’s answer was: “Marriage is not unlawful; but whether it is now expedient for you, and whether this lady is a proper wife for you, ought to be maturely weighed.” Wesley’s perplexity was increased, and he now resolved to submit the matter to the elders of the Moravian church. When he entered the house where they were met together, he found Delamotte in the midst of them. On naming his business, Nitschmann said: “We have considered your case; will you abide by our decision?” After some hesitation, Wesley replied, “I will.” “Then,” said Nitschmann, “we advise you to proceed no further in the matter!” Wesley answered, “The will of the Lord be done!” “From this time,” says Henry Moore, “he avoided everything that tended to continue the intimacy with Miss Hopkey, and behaved with the greatest caution towards her.”[194]
The whole of this is painfully ludicrous. Mr. Moore, in a manuscript letter before us, says that he had the account from Wesley’s own lips, and that he is not aware that it was ever given to any one except himself. He adds that Dr. Coke knew nothing of it, and that Wesley refrained from publishing the whole of the affair in his printed journal, chiefly through tenderness to General Oglethorpe. It might be so; but we greatly doubt the correctness of Moore’s assertion, that, from the time Wesley consulted the Moravian elders, he “avoided everything that tended to continue the intimacy.” Wesley was in love, and, like all lovers, he did, not wicked, but foolish things. Let us look at some other facts.
At this period, the summer of 1736, Wesley’s method of preaching, and his manner of life, excited great attention in the small settlement of Savannah; and there were not a few who charged him with making the people idle by summoning them so frequently to public prayers. His more than ordinary friendship with Miss Hopkey was also a subject of common conversation.[195] He was looked upon as a Roman Catholic—(1) Because he rigidly excluded all Dissenters from the holy communion, until they first gave up their faith and principles, and, like Richard Turner and his sons, submitted to be rebaptized by him; (2) Because Roman Catholics were received by him as saints; (3) Because he endeavoured to establish and enforce confession, penance, and mortification; mixed wine with water at the sacrament; and appointed deaconesses in accordance with what he called the Apostolic Constitutions.[196] He was, in point of fact, a Puseyite, a hundred years before Dr. Pusey flourished.
Miss Hopkey was put under his ghostly care. She was one of his early morning congregation, and constantly went to his lodgings, in order to be further instructed.[197] He fell in love with her; and there can be little doubt that he made proposals to marry her, and, if his own inclinations had been carried out, the marriage would have been completed.[198] The following extracts are taken from his unpublished journal.
1736. October 16.—Frederica. “Poor Miss Sophy was scarce the shadow of what she was when I left her. I endeavoured to convince her of it, but in vain. And to put it effectually out of my power to do so, she was resolved to return to England immediately. I tried to divert her from her fatal resolution of going to England, and, after several fruitless attempts, I at length prevailed. Nor was it long before she more than recovered the ground she had lost.”
“October 25.—I took boat for Savannah with Miss Sophy.”
“In the beginning of December, I advised Miss Sophy to sup earlier, and not immediately before she went to bed. She did so, and on this little circumstance what an inconceivable train of consequences depend. Not only—
‘All the colour of my remaining life’
for her; but perhaps all my happiness too, in time and in eternity.”
“February 5, 1737.—One of the most remarkable dispensations of Providence towards me began to show itself this day. For many days after, I could not at all judge which way the scale would turn; nor was it fully determined till March 4th, on which day God commanded me to pull out my right eye; and, by His grace, I determined to do so: but, being slack in the execution, on Saturday, March 12th, God being very merciful to me, my friend performed what I could not.”
What is the meaning of this? Two other extracts from the same journal will show.
“March 7.—I walked with Mr. Causton to his country lot, and plainly felt that, had God given me such a retirement with the companion I desired, I should have forgot the work for which I was born, and have set up my rest in this world.”
“March 8.—Miss Sophy engaged herself to Mr. Williamson, a person not remarkable for handsomeness, neither for greatness, neither for wit, or knowledge, or sense, and least of all for religion; and on Saturday, March 12th” [four days after!] “they were married at Purrysburg,—this being the day which completed the year from my first speaking to her. What Thou doest, O God, I know not now, but I shall know hereafter.”
Such is Wesley’s own statement. The disappointment was a most painful blow. Forty-nine years after, he wrote, in reference to this event, “I remember when I read these words in the church at Savannah, ‘Son of man, behold, I take from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke,’ I was pierced through as with a sword, and could not utter a word more. But our comfort is, He that made the heart can heal the heart.”[199] He also wrote to his brother Samuel at the time, who replied, “I am sorry you are disappointed in the match, because you are very unlikely to find another.”[200]
With this evidence before us, it is difficult to give credence to Henry Moore’s assertion, “that Wesley never allowed himself to determine on a marriage with Miss Hopkey.”[201] But in addition to all this, there is the testimony of the young lady herself, contained in her affidavit, given to the Savannah court, and which Wesley inserts in the private journal already mentioned. In that document she avers that she was committed to the care of Mr. John Wesley, the missionary, by her relatives; that he proposed marriage to her; and that he further proposed that, as she might not like his present wandering way of life, he would settle in Savannah. She adds that, about three days before she married Williamson, she was visited by Wesley, who urged her to tell him whether she had not been overpersuaded or forced to agree to marry Williamson by her friends, and whether such a marriage might not still be prevented. He also added that, if there was anything in his way of life (by which she understood him to mean fastings and other mortifications), which she disliked, he would make all these things easy to her, in case she would consent to marry him.
Such is the substance of Sophy’s statement. How is it possible, in the face of all this, to believe Henry Moore’s statement, that there was no intimacy between Wesley and Miss Hopkey, from the time that he consulted the Moravian elders?
We grudge the space that has been devoted to this subject; but perhaps the following reasons will be accepted by the reader, as an apology for the tax upon his patience.
1. The matter, though trivial in itself, has been made important by the conflicting statements of the biographers. Mr. Moore says Wesley never came to the determination to marry her. Dr. Whitehead says he did intend to marry her. Southey agrees with Whitehead; Mr. Watson presumes that Mr. Moore is a better authority than Dr. Whitehead; Mr. Jackson seems to think the same. We have given all the facts within our reach, and leave the reader to form his own opinion.
2. Though the courtship of young people is an ordinary, commonplace sort of thing, inconceivably great events were dependent upon the result of this. John Wesley was thirty-three years old, and was perfectly justified in seeking to obtain a wife; neither is there anything to be found fault with in his intercourse with Miss Hopkey, unless it was his silly simplicity in asking the opinion, if not consent, of the Moravians. The young lady, also, was beautiful, and accomplished, and, to all human appearance, pious. Her uncle was a respectable rascal; but that was no fault of hers. We know nothing to her prejudice before she became a wife, except that it might have been more decorously prudent if she had allowed Delamotte to nurse Wesley in his fever instead of doing it, day and night, herself; and that there was certainly an impetuous haste, not to be commended, in her marrying Mr. Williamson only four days after he first proposed to her. Excepting this, the friendship, courtship, or whatever else the reader likes to call it, between Wesley and his “poor Sophy” seems to have been sincere, pure, honourable, and, in the opinion of Oglethorpe, who was not ill qualified to judge, desirable. But, supposing the courtship had ended in marriage, is it likely that we should ever have heard of Wesley at Bristol, Kingswood, Kennington Common, and Moorfields? Is it likely that there would ever have been any “United Societies of the People called Methodists”? Should we have ever heard of either the Methodism of the past or present? Perhaps an equally great work might have been witnessed; but the great Head of the church must have wrought it by other agencies and means; for had John Wesley married Sophia Christiana Hopkey, the probability is that, instead of returning to England and beginning the greatest religious revival of modern times, he would have settled in Georgia, and, like another Xavier, have spent a most spiritual and devoted life in converting Indian and other kinds of heathen. The results of such a life might have been glorious. Who can tell what might have been its influence upon the civilisation and perpetuation of the nobly formed aboriginal inhabitants of the vast American continent? Would America, in the decline of the nineteenth century, have been inhabited by European strangers, or by educated, civilised, hardworking, prosperous descendants of the wild Indians of the woods? These are useless questions, because questions none of us can answer; but the mere suggestion of such points will serve to show that Wesley’s courtship in Georgia was pregnant with infinite momentousness. “The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad: clouds and darkness are round about Him; righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne” (Ps. xcvii. 1, 2).
3. Then a third reason, for dwelling at so great a length on Wesley’s courtship, is, that the courtship was very improperly mixed up with the subsequent troubles which led to his almost forceful departure from the Georgian colony. But this brings us to the remainder of Wesley’s Georgian history, which shall now be given as succinctly as possible.
We have already seen that Wesley was an extreme ritualist. He himself, nearly a dozen years subsequent to his flight from Georgia, gives us a specimen of his high church bigotry and intolerance. Having inserted in his journal a beautiful letter written to him by John Martin Bolzius, he, under the date of September, 1749, remarks: “What a truly Christian piety and simplicity breathe in these lines! And yet this very man, when I was at Savannah, did I refuse to admit to the Lord’s table, because he was not baptized; that is, not baptized by a minister who had been episcopally ordained. Can any one carry high church zeal higher than this? How well have I been since beaten with mine own staff!”[202]
Wesley still paid pastoral attentions to Mrs. Williamson as one of his parishioners. Her not too accomplished husband took umbrage at this, and, eight days after her marriage, forbade her attending his place of worship, or ever to speak to him again.[203] Notwithstanding this interdict, however, we find her on the 3rd of July at a sacramental service, at the conclusion of which Wesley mentioned certain things which he thought reprovable in her behaviour. This made her extremely angry, and, three days later, Causton, accompanied by the bailiff and the recorder, came to demand an explanation. Wesley gave his visitors to understand that, in the execution of his office, and acting without respect of persons, he might find it necessary to repel one of Causton’s family from the holy communion. He further told the “chief magistrate” what the people of Savannah were saying against his magisterial proceedings.[204] All this made the coming storm more threatening.
Some weeks elapsed; and then, on August 7, five months after her marriage, Wesley refused to allow Mrs. Williamson to join in the Lord’s supper. The next day, Mr. Recorder issued a warrant for the apprehension of “John Wesley, clerk,” and commanding the constables and tithingmen to bring him before one of the bailiffs of Savannah, to answer the complaint of William Williamson for defaming his wife, and refusing to administer to her the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, in a public congregation, without cause; “by which the said William Williamson was damaged one thousand pounds sterling.”
Wesley was arrested and brought before Mr. Bailiff Parker and Mr. Recorder Christie. His answer to the charge was, “that the giving or refusing the Lord’s supper being a matter purely ecclesiastical, he could not acknowledge their power to interrogate him concerning it.” The bailiff told him he must appear at the next Savannah court; and Williamson demanded bail for his appearance, but the officials ruled that Wesley’s word was in itself sufficient.
Two days later, Causton called on Wesley, and demanded that he should send to Mrs. Williamson, in writing, “the reasons for repelling her before the whole congregation.” Wesley complied, and wrote as follows:—
“To Mrs. Sophia Williamson.
“At Mr. Causton’s request, I write once more. The rules whereby I proceed are these:—
“‘So many as intend to be partakers of the holy communion shall signify their names to the curate, at least some time the day before.’ This you did not do.
“‘And if any of these have done any wrong to his neighbours, by word or deed, so that the congregation be thereby offended, the curate shall advertise him, that in anywise he presume not to come to the Lord’s table until he hath openly declared himself to have truly repented.’
“If you offer yourself at the Lord’s table on Sunday, I will advertise you (as I have done more than once) wherein you have done wrong. And when you have openly declared yourself to have truly repented, I will administer to you the mysteries of God.
“August 11, 1737.
“JOHN WESLEY.”
On receiving this, Causton began to read, to as many of the people as he could collect together, extracts from the letters which Wesley had written to himself or to his niece, from the beginning of their acquaintance, adding comments of his own, to Wesley’s disadvantage. Others of Causton’s family were assiduous in their endeavours to convince their neighbours that Wesley had repelled Mrs. Williamson from the communion because she had refused to marry him. In the midst of all this Wesley writes: “I sat still at home, and, I thank God, easy, having committed my cause to Him, and remembering His word, ‘Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him.”[205]
Meanwhile, Causton desired Mr. Burnside, the trustees’ secretary, to sign a certificate to the effect that Mrs. Williamson had been for ten months past as constant a communicant as any other, and that she had been of unblamable behaviour. Mr. Burnside said he could not sign it with a safe conscience, knowing it to be false. Upon which Causton severely reproached him, and discharged him from his employment. However, a number of names were procured to the certificate, though, Wesley adds, the first part of it was shamefully untrue, for Mrs. Williamson had omitted communicating nine times in three months; in other words, had only communicated once a month instead of once a week.[206]
The Savannah court was to sit on August 22, a fortnight after Wesley’s arrest; and Causton employed his utmost power, and art, and application, in prejudicing the persons who were to form the grand jury. His table was free to the whole of them. Whatever they desired from the public stores was delivered to them. Old misunderstandings were forgotten, and nothing was too much to be done or promised for men who, a week before, were unable, from such a source, to procure even a crust of bread.
Six days previous to the opening of the court, Wesley, at the request of several of his communicants, read a short statement of the case, after the evening prayers, in the open congregation.[207]
At length the great day of trial, in this Lilliputian kingdom, came. The grand jury consisted of forty-four of the illustrious inhabitants, about a fifth part of the adult male population of Savannah. One was a Frenchman, ignorant of the English language; one a papist; one a professed infidel; three were Baptists; sixteen or seventeen others were Dissenters; and of the rest, several had personal quarrels against Wesley, and had openly vowed revenge.
Causton gave a long and earnest charge to the jury, “to beware of spiritual tyranny, and to oppose the new, illegal authority which was usurped over their consciences.” Mrs. Williamson’s affidavit was read, the substance of which has been already given, with the exception that, after her marriage, Wesley took every opportunity to force upon her his private discourse, and terrified her by telling her that her soul would be in danger, if she did not spend her time, and converse with him, in the same manner, as she did before her marriage.[208]
Causton then delivered to the grand jury a paper, entitled “A List of Grievances,” pretending to show that the Rev. John Wesley “deviates from the principles and regulations of the Established Church in many particulars inconsistent with the happiness and prosperity of this colony,” as:—
“1. By inverting the order and method of the liturgy.
“2. By altering such passages as he thinks proper in the version of the psalms, publicly authorised to be sung in the church.
“3. By introducing into the church, and service at the altar, compositions of psalms and hymns not inspected or authorised by any proper judicature.
“4. By introducing novelties, such as dipping infants, etc., in the sacrament of baptism, and refusing to baptize the children of such as will not submit to his innovations.
“5. By restricting the benefits of the Lord’s supper to a small number of persons, and refusing it to all others who will not conform to a grievous set of penances, confessions, mortifications, and constant attendance at early and late hours of prayer, very inconsistent with the labours and employment of this colony.
“6. By administering the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to boys ignorant and unqualified; and that notwithstanding of their parents and nearest friends remonstrating against it, and accusing them of disobedience and other crimes.
“7. By refusing to administer the holy sacrament to well disposed and well living persons, unless they should submit to confessions and penances for crimes, which they utterly refuse, and whereof no evidence is offered.
“8. By venting sundry uncharitable expressions of all who differ from him; and not pronouncing the benediction in church, until all the hearers, except his own communicants, are withdrawn.
“9. By teaching wives and servants that they ought absolutely to follow the course of mortifications, fastings, and diets, and two sets of prayers prescribed by him; without any regard to the interests of their private families, or the commands of their respective husbands and masters.
“10. By refusing the Office of the Dead to such as did not communicate with him, or by leaving out such parts of the service as he thought proper.
“11. By searching into and meddling with the affairs of private families, by means of servants and spies employed by him for the purpose, whereby the peace both of public and private life is much endangered.
“12. By calling himself ‘ordinary,’ and thereby claiming a jurisdiction which is not due to him, and whereby we should be precluded from access to redress by any superior jurisdiction.”[209]
How did the grand jury deal with these charges?
First of all, Mrs. Williamson was called, but acknowledged, in the course of her examination, that she had no objection to Wesley’s behaviour previous to her marriage. After her, Mr. and Mrs. Causton were examined; the former confessing that, if Wesley had asked his consent to marry his niece, he would not have refused it.[210] Ten other witnesses were put into the box, and several of Wesley’s letters to Mrs. Williamson were read.[211]
Some days were spent in sifting the business; and then, on September 1, a majority of the jurymen agreed to the following indictments:—
1. That, after the 12th of March last, the said John Wesley did several times privately force his conversation to Sophia Christiana Williamson, contrary to the express desire and command of her husband; and did likewise write and privately convey papers to her, thereby occasioning much uneasiness between her and her husband.
2. That, on the 7th of August last, he refused the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to Sophia Christiana Williamson, without any apparent reason, much to the disquiet of her mind, and to the great disgrace and hurt of her character.
3. That he hath not, since his arrival in Savannah, emitted any public declaration of his adherence to the principles and regulations of the Church of England.
4. That, for many months past, he has divided on the Lord’s day the order of morning prayer, appointed to be used in the Church of England, by only reading the said morning prayer and the litany at five or six o’clock, and wholly omitting the same between the hours of nine and eleven o’clock, the customary time of public morning prayer.
5. That, about the month of April, 1736, he refused to baptize, otherwise than by dipping, the child of Henry Parker, unless the said Henry Parker and his wife would certify that the child was weak and not able to bear dipping; and added to his refusal, that, unless the said parents would consent to have it dipped, it might die a heathen.
6. That, notwithstanding he administered the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to William Gough, about the month of March, 1736, he did, within a month after, refuse the sacrament to the said William Gough, saying that he had heard that William Gough was a Dissenter.
7. That in June, 1736, he refused reading the Office of the Dead over the body of Nathaniel Polhill, only because Nathaniel Polhill was not of his opinion; by means of which refusal the said Nathaniel Polhill was interred without the appointed Office for the Burial of the Dead.
8. That, on or about the 10th of August, 1737, he, in the presence of Thomas Causton, presumptuously called himself “Ordinary of Savannah,” assuming thereby an authority which did not belong to him.
9. That in Whitsun-week last he refused William Aglionby to stand godfather to the child of Henry Marley, giving no other reason than that the said William Aglionby had not been at the communion table with him.
10. That, about the month of July last, he baptized the child of Thomas Jones, having only one godfather and godmother, notwithstanding that Jacob Matthews did offer to stand godfather.[212]
Such were the findings of the majority of the grand jury. The minority of twelve, including three constables and six tithingmen, drew up and signed a document, and transmitted it “to the honourable the trustees for Georgia,” to the following effect:—
1. That they were thoroughly persuaded that the charges against Mr. Wesley were an artifice of Mr. Causton’s, designed rather to blacken the character of Mr. Wesley than to free the colony from religious tyranny, as he had alleged.
2. That it did not appear that Mr. Wesley had either spoken in private or written to Mrs. Williamson since the day of her marriage, except one letter, which he wrote on the 5th of July, at the request of her uncle, as a pastor, to exhort and reprove her.
3. That, though he did refuse the sacrament to Mrs. Williamson on the 7th of August last, he did not assume to himself any authority contrary to law, for every person intending to communicate was bound to signify his name to the curate, at least some time the day before; which Mrs. Williamson did not do; although Mr. Wesley had often, in full congregation, declared he did insist on a compliance with that rubric, and had before repelled divers persons for non-compliance therewith.
4. That, though he had not in Savannah emitted any public declaration of his adherence to the principles and regulations of the Church of England, he had done this, in a stronger manner than by a formal declaration, by explaining and defending the three creeds, the thirty-nine articles, the whole Book of Common Prayer, and the homilies; besides a formal declaration is not required, but from those who have received institution and induction.
5. That though he had divided, on the Lord’s day, the order of morning prayer, this was not contrary to any law in being.
6. That his refusal to baptize Henry Parker’s child, otherwise than by dipping, was justified by the rubric.
7. That, though he had refused the sacrament to William Gough, the said William Gough (one of the twelve jurors who signed the document sent to the trustees) publicly declared that the refusal was no grievance to him, because Mr. Wesley had given him reasons with which he was satisfied.
8. That, in reference to the alleged refusal to read the burial service over the body of Nathaniel Polhill, they had good reason to believe that Mr. Wesley was at Frederica, or on his return thence, when Polhill was interred; besides Polhill was an anabaptist, and desired, in his lifetime, that he might not be buried with the office of the Church of England.
9. That they were in doubt about the indictment concerning Wesley calling himself “Ordinary of Savannah,” not well knowing the meaning of the word.
10. That, though Mr. Wesley refused to allow William Aglionby to stand godfather to the child of Henry Marley, and Jacob Matthews to stand godfather to the child of Thomas Jones, he was sufficiently justified by the canons of the Church, because neither Aglionby nor Matthews had certified Mr. Wesley that they had ever received the holy communion.
Such were the findings of his foes and of his friends: the only difference, as to fact, between the majority of thirty-two and the minority of twelve, is that which relates to Mrs. Williamson and Nathaniel Polhill. The minority declare that it is not true that Mr. Wesley did several times privately force his conversation to Sophia Williamson after her marriage; and that they have good reason to believe that it is not true that he refused to read the burial service over Nathaniel Polhill, because, at the time of the burial, he was absent from Savannah. All the other alleged facts are admitted, but are also justified. How did Wesley meet the indictments?
On September 2, the day after they were presented and were read to the people, he appeared in court, and spoke to this effect:—“As to nine of the ten indictments against me, I know this court can take no cognisance of them, they being matters of an ecclesiastical nature. But that concerning my speaking and writing to Mrs. Williamson is of a secular nature; and this, therefore, I desire may be tried here where the facts complained of were committed.”[213]
In this Wesley was unquestionably right. His conduct as a priest of the Church of England might be, as it doubtless was, arrogant, foolish, offensive, intolerant; but the petty magisterial court at Savannah had no more right to try him for his high church practices than an Old Bailey judge and jury have to try the half-fledged papistical rectors, curates, and incumbents, who are playing such fantastic tricks in the Protestant churches of old England at the present day. They had a right to try him on the matter mentioned by himself, inasmuch as it was alleged that Mrs. Williamson had been injured in her character, and, on that account, her husband demanded damages to the extent of £1000.
Wesley was prepared to answer this indictment, and moved for an immediate hearing; but the court evaded his request, and postponed the hearing to its next sitting. From September 1, when the indictments were first presented, to the end of November, when Wesley made known his intention to return to England, he seems to have attended not fewer than seven different sittings of the court, asking to be tried on the charge affecting the character of Mrs. Williamson; but all to no purpose. The fact is, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, after having stabbed him, were about to set sail to England,[214] and their contemplated absence was made a pretext for not proceeding with the trial. There can be little doubt that the whole affair was as the twelve jurors believed, a device of Thomas Causton, to gratify his spite, and, by annoyances, to drive Wesley from the colony.
Six days after the majority of the grand jury presented their indictments, Mr. Dixon, chaplain to a company of soldiers at Frederica, called on Wesley, and informed him that the magistrates of Savannah had given him authority to perform ecclesiastical offices in the town; and that he should begin to do so the day following, by reading prayers, preaching, and administering the Lord’s supper. Accordingly, on September 8, the bell was rung, and Mr. Dixon read prayers and preached, in Wesley’s church, to Mr. Causton, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, and about half-a-score other persons. He announced that he had intended to administer the holy communion, but some of his communicants were indisposed. He would, however, read prayers and preach every Thursday, and would administer baptism to as many children as might be brought for that purpose. This was ipso facto a setting aside of Wesley; or, at all events, it was an arbitrary appointment of another clergyman to fill his place.
On the Sunday following, September 11, Wesley preached from, “It must needs be that offences come;” and then proceeded to read a paper which he had read before, on the day he began his ministry at Savannah, and in which he had apprised his congregation:—1. That he must admonish every one of them, not only in public, but from house to house. 2. That he could admit none to the holy communion without previous notice. 3. That he should divide the morning service in compliance with the first design of the Church. 4. That he should obey the rubric by dipping in baptism all children who were well able to endure it. 5. That he should admit none who were not communicants to be sureties in baptism. 6. That though, in general, he had all the authority which was entrusted to any one within the province, yet he was only a servant of the Church of England,—not a judge, and therefore obliged to keep the regulations of that Church in all things.[215]
On succeeding Sundays, he read to the congregations the homilies, and then began reading Dr. Rogers’s eight sermons, as an antidote against the poison of infidelity. Up to the present, he had no intention of leaving the colony. Indeed, as lately as the 7th of June last, he had written to his sister Keziah, and had made her an offer to come and live with him at Savannah;[216] but, as soon as it was known that Williamson and his wife were about to start for England, Delamotte urged that Wesley ought to go as well, in order to prevent, or remove, the misrepresentations which they were likely to make. This was on September 9;[217] and, a month later, Wesley took counsel with his friends on the same subject. They were unanimously of opinion “that he ought to go, but not yet;” and accordingly he abandoned his purpose for the present.
Meanwhile, he commenced three kinds of services which he had not before attempted. He offered to read prayers, and to expound the Scriptures, in French, every Saturday afternoon, to the French families settled at Highgate, five miles from Savannah, which offer was thankfully accepted. The French at Savannah heard of this, and requested he would do the same for them, with which request he willingly complied. He also began to read prayers and expound in German, once a week, to the German villagers of Hampstead.
His Sunday labour, during the few weeks that he yet remained in Savannah, was as follows:—1. English prayers from five o’clock to half-past six. 2. Italian prayers at nine. 3. A sermon and the holy communion, for the English, from half-past ten to about half-past twelve. 4. The service for the French at one, including prayers, psalms, and Scripture exposition. 5. The catechizing of the children at two. 6. The third English service at three. 7. After this, a meeting in his own house for reading, prayer, and praise. 8. At six, the Moravian service began, which he was glad to attend, not to teach, but learn.
Thus things proceeded until November 22, when Causton sent for Wesley and showed him an affidavit, sworn on September 15, to the effect that he had called Causton a liar and a villain; but, with characteristic duplicity, said he had not sent this affidavit to the trustees,—a statement, which, in fact, was both true and false, for although he had not sent this affidavit he had sent a copy of it. Causton bitterly added, that the last court held in Savannah had reprimanded him as “an enemy to and a hinderer of the public peace.” “Both,” says an eye-witness, “displayed warmth of temper; but Causton was most vehement. They parted with mutual civilities.”[218]
This caused Wesley to again consult his friends about the propriety of his leaving the colony. He saw that at present there was no possibility of instructing the Indians; neither had he as yet found or heard of any Indians who had the least desire of being instructed. Thus the great reason of his leaving England was not realised. Then, as to Savannah, he had never engaged himself, either by word or letter, to stay there a day longer than he should judge convenient. And, further, he now saw a probability of doing more service to the unhappy colonists by going to England, than he could do by remaining in Georgia; for there he could, without fear or favour, report to the trustees the state in which the colony was placed. All his friends agreed with him; and accordingly, next morning, he called on Causton, and told him he “designed to set out for England immediately, and placarded an advertisement in the great square” of the unbuilt town to the same effect.
Savannah was in great excitement. Causton had his partisans, and so had Wesley his. Scandal was plentiful. Wesley’s congregations dwindled, and were now extremely thin. Mr. Stephens, the secretary of the trustees at Savannah, relates[219] that, in November, he heard Wesley preach on “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar or not?” from which he discoursed largely on the duties of magistrates, and on the obedience which was due to them; setting forth how far it was consistent with Christian liberty for people to insist upon their rights, when they found themselves oppressed by inferior magistrates exercising a discretionary authority which exceeded their commission. Stephens adds, that the congregation was very poor, and that he found that the magistrates and many of the principal inhabitants had of late wholly absented themselves from church.
On November 20, Wesley preached from the text, “Jesus wept.” Stephens writes: “He showed himself a good casuist; but his metaphysical discourse would have been better adapted to a learned audience than such a poor thin congregation as his, who stood in need of plain doctrine.”
On November 27, he preached from Acts xx. 26, 27. Stephens, who was present, says: “He enforced the practice of all Christian duties most pathetically, which he was well qualified to do. Some people imagined, from the choice of the text, that he meant it as a sort of farewell sermon; but it did not appear so from any particular expressions employed.”
No sooner was it known that Wesley meant to embark for England, than Williamson issued an advertisement that he had brought an action against him for £1000 damages; and that if any one assisted his escape from the colony, he would prosecute such accomplice with the utmost rigour of the law.[220] The magistrates also sent for Wesley, and told him he must not leave the province till he had answered the indictments against him. Wesley replied that he had already attended seven sessions of the court to answer them, and had not been permitted. They then requested him to sign a kind of bond, engaging him, under a penalty of £50, to appear at their court when he should be required; and added that Mr. Williamson also demanded that he should give bail to answer his action. Wesley replied that he would give neither any bond, nor any bail at all; and so he left them. In the afternoon of the same day they published an order requiring all the officers and sentinels to prevent his leaving the province, and forbidding any person to assist him in doing so.
He was now a prisoner at large, and the same evening, after public prayers, he set out in a boat for Purrysburg, distant about twenty miles, and thus left Savannah and Georgia for ever.[221]
Arriving at Purrysburg early in the morning of December 3, Wesley and the four men who had assisted in his escape, and had rowed him to Purrysburg, set out on foot to Port Royal. Tramping their way through trackless forests, they came to a large swamp, around which they wandered for three weary hours. Then they had to force their way through an almost impassable thicket. They had now been trudging from an hour before sunrise in the morning till nearly sunset at night, and had not tasted food, except a gingerbread cake, which Wesley happened to have in his pocket. They were faint and weary, and no wonder. Thrusting a stick into the ground, and finding its end moist, two of them set to work digging with their hands, and, at about three feet depth, obtained water. They thanked God, drank, and were refreshed. The month was December, and the night cold; but there was no complaining; and, having commended themselves to God, they lay down on the ground, close together, and Wesley, at least, slept till near six in the morning.
The next day was Sunday; but the bewildered fugitives started again, and after three more days of weary wandering reached Port Royal. Delamotte joined them on Thursday, December 8, when, taking a boat, they all set sail for Charlestown. This was no comfortable steamer, but a small watercraft, without covering, and impelled by oars. Four days were spent in making the passage, the winds were contrary, and their provisions short; but, cold and hungry, they arrived in safety on Tuesday, December 13.[222]
Wesley and Delamotte, with the exception of a few brief days, had not been parted for the last six-and-twenty months: but on December 22 the former set sail for England; the latter, for a season, was left behind. One of Wesley’s fellow passengers was a young gentleman, who had been one of his parishioners at Savannah; and another was Eleanor Hayes, who became one of the first Methodists in London, and of whom an interesting notice may be found in the Methodist Magazine for 1867. It was impossible for Wesley to live an idle life. During the voyage, he began instructing two negro lads and the cabin-boy in the principles of the Christian religion. On Sundays, at least, he had morning and evening prayers. He finished his abridgment of De Renty’s Life; and he read and explained to a poor Frenchman a chapter in the New Testament every morning. When in mid-ocean they encountered a terrific storm, which gave Wesley an opportunity of speaking faithfully to all on board about their eternal interests. On February 1 they landed at Deal, the day after George Whitefield had set sail for the very settlement which Wesley had been obliged to leave.
During the passage Wesley had ample time for self-examination, and wrote as follows:—
“By the most infallible of proofs, inward feeling, I am convinced—
“1. Of unbelief; having no such faith in Christ as will prevent my heart being troubled.
“2. Of pride, throughout my life past; inasmuch as I thought I had what I find I have not.
“3. Of gross irrecollection; inasmuch as in a storm I cry to God every moment, in a calm not.
“4. Of levity and luxuriancy of spirit; appearing by my speaking words not tending to edify, but most by my manner of speaking of my enemies.”
He adds:—
“I went to America to convert the Indians; but oh, who shall convert me? I have a fair summer religion. I can talk well; but let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. I think, verily, if the gospel be true, I am safe: for I not only have given, and do give, all my goods to feed the poor; and not only give my body to be burned, drowned, or whatever God shall appoint for me; but I follow after charity, if haply I may attain it. I now believe the gospel is true. I show my faith by my works,—by staking my all upon it. I would do so again and again, a thousand times, if the choice were still to make. Whoever sees me sees I would be a Christian. But in a storm, I think, ‘What if the gospel be not true? Then thou art of all men most foolish. For what hast thou given thy goods, thy ease, thy friends, thy reputation, thy country, thy life? For what art thou wandering over the face of the earth—a dream! a cunningly devised fable?’ Oh, who will deliver me from this fear of death? A wise man advised me some time since, ‘Be still and go on.’ Perhaps this is best, to look upon it as my cross.”
After landing in England, he penned another remarkable paper, which has often been cited without a quotation of the notes he appended in after years.[223] He asserts that when he went to America, to convert the Indians, he was not himself converted; but in the appended note he adds, “I am not sure of this.” Neither are we. By his conscientious severity in comparing himself with the standard of a perfect Christian, as contained in the New Testament, and by his imperfect and mystified views of the scriptural plan of salvation, he might deprive himself of the filial confidence and joy belonging to a child of God; but we dare not affirm that he was a child of wrath because he was without the joy. On the same principle, thousands of us would be children one day, but not the next. Wesley’s assertion was too strong; in after life he felt it so; and those who quote it ought, in all fairness, to add what he himself appended.
In another part of the same document he says of himself: “Alienated as I am from the life of God, I am a child of wrath, an heir of hell.” But the note he attached to this, in subsequent years, is, “I believe not”; and if not a child of wrath, then in his opinion, and after mature reflection, he had a right to think himself a child of grace and an heir of heaven.
Another of his notes is: “I had even then the faith of a servant, though not that of a son;” and that the reader may know what interpretation to put upon such words, we give the following extract from one of Wesley’s own sermons:—
“But what is the faith which is properly saving? It is such a Divine conviction of God, and the things of God, as, even in its infant state, enables every one that possesses it to fear God and work righteousness. And whosoever, in every nation, believes thus far, is accepted of Him. He actually is, at that very moment, in a state of acceptance. But he is at present only a servant of God, not properly a son. Meanwhile let it be well observed that the wrath of God no longer abideth on him. Nearly fifty years ago, when the preachers, commonly called Methodists, began to preach that grand scriptural doctrine, salvation by faith, they were not sufficiently apprised of the difference between a servant and a child of God. In consequence of this, they were apt to make sad the hearts of those whom God had not made sad. For they frequently asked those who feared God, ‘Do you know that your sins are forgiven?’ And upon their answering ‘No,’ immediately replied, ‘Then you are a child of the devil.’ No; that does not follow. It might have been said (and it is all that can be said with propriety), ‘Hitherto you are only a servant, you are not a child of God. You have already great reason to praise God that He has called you to His honourable service. Fear not, continue crying unto Him, and you shall see greater things than these!’ And, indeed, unless the servants of God halt by the way, they will receive the adoption of sons. They will receive the faith of the children of God, by His revealing His only begotten Son in their hearts. Thus, the faith of a child is, properly and directly, a Divine conviction, whereby every child of God is enabled to testify, ‘The life that I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.’ And whosoever hath this, the Spirit of God witnesseth with his spirit, that he is a child of God. This then it is, that properly constitutes the difference between a servant of God and a child of God.”[224]
Let those who have been accustomed to cite Wesley’s hasty and incautious condemnation of himself, on his return from Georgia, read it again in the light of his own appended notes, and in the light of this extract from a sermon written by himself nearly fifty years afterwards; and they will then have a more correct idea of Wesley’s religious state at Oxford and in America, and will also be better fitted to understand what is meant by what is called his conversion on the 24th of May, 1738. This matter, however, must be resumed in its proper place.
Wesley, in Georgia, was accepted of God through Christ; but, to cite his own words at the conclusion of his own condemnatory document, he wanted “a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of Christ, his sins were forgiven.” “I want,” says he, “that faith which none can have without knowing that he hath it.”
Wesley, according to his own explanation, had long been in a saved state (though he knew it not); but he was far from being perfect, either in spirit or behaviour. No man could be more sincere or earnest; but it is hoped that few ministers of equal learning, wisdom, and sanctity make greater blunders than were made by him at Savannah. There can be little doubt that he had ecclesiastical authority for most, if not all, his priestly practices; and so have the half papistical priests and ritualists of the present day. But as England now is right in resisting the introduction of rites and ceremonies, fasts and feasts, confessions and penances, absolutions and interdicts, savouring more of the man of sin than of the word of God,—so Savannah then was right in resisting similar innovations attempted to be introduced by the extremely high church priest, fresh from the society of the Oxford Methodists. If we are right in denouncing ritualism now, Savannah was right in denouncing ritualism then. If the thing is offensive and obnoxious here, it was equally offensive and obnoxious there; and if no other end had been answered by Wesley’s mission to America than knocking out of him his high church nonsense, the good effected would have been an ample compensation for two dangerous voyages of six thousand miles, and for all the discomforts of living two-and-twenty months, in a log-built hut, among almost homeless emigrants, who had taken with them to the swamps and woods of Georgia more covetousness than courtesy, more rudeness than rank, more quarrelsomeness than quietude, and more conceit than common sense.
Wesley has been blamed for repelling Mrs. Williamson from the communion; and if he had nothing more to allege against her than the offence that, since her marriage, she had come to sacrament once a month only, instead of once a week, he deserves to be blamed. It was a rash proceeding, utterly unwarranted; and both she and her husband did right in resisting it. So far we agree with Wesley’s censors; but we cannot agree with them in saying that the great, if not only, reason of his repelling her was revenge arising out of her refusal to marry him. There is not a particle of evidence in proof of that. Five months had elapsed since her marriage; and, again and again, during that interval, he had administered to her the holy communion. The repulse was, on his part, a strictly conscientious, not a revengeful act; but though conscientious, it was, to say the least, mistaken, and deserves censure instead of praise. Mr. Moore says that, about three months after Mrs. Williamson’s marriage, Wesley saw things in her conduct which induced him to bless God for his deliverance in not marrying her, and that these things were noted in his private journal never printed. We have not the slightest wish to defend the lady where she deserves censure: but fairness compels us to say that we have seen the private journal; but neither in it, nor elsewhere, have we met with anything charged against her more serious than what has been already mentioned in the present far too lengthy chapter. Dissimulation is the strongest word Wesley has used concerning her; and this is used in reference to something which happened three months after she was married, and of which no explanation is given.[225] Miss Hopkey, like Wesley himself, was not so good as she might have been; but that is not a sufficient reason why Wesley’s biographers should insinuate, if not assert, that she was worse than she really was.
Wesley’s mission to America seemed a failure! But was it so? When Whitefield arrived, he wrote: “The good Mr. John Wesley has done in America is inexpressible. His name is very precious among the people; and he has laid a foundation that I hope neither men nor devils will ever be able to shake. Oh that I may follow him as he has followed Christ.”[226]
Wesley himself observes:—
“Many reasons I have to bless God for my having been carried to America, contrary to all my preceding resolutions. Hereby, I trust, He hath in some measure ‘humbled me and proved me, and shown me what was in my heart.’ Hereby, I have been taught to ‘beware of men.’ Hereby, God has given me to know many of His servants, particularly those of the church of Herrnhuth. Hereby, my passage is open to the writings of holy men, in the German, Spanish, and Italian tongues. All in Georgia have heard the word of God, and some have believed and begun to run well. A few steps have been taken towards publishing the glad tidings both to the African and American heathens. Many children have learned how they ought to serve God, and to be useful to their neighbour. And those whom it most concerns have an opportunity of knowing the state of their infant colony, and laying a firmer foundation of peace and happiness to many generations.”[227]
These are no mean results to be realised in about two years,—self-knowledge, caution, acquaintance with the church that was to help him to clearer views of the plan of salvation, the acquisition of three European languages, the unprecedented fact of preaching Christ to all the widely scattered inhabitants of an English colony, steps taken to evangelise negroes and Indians, many children religiously educated, and the way prepared for promoting the prosperity of Georgia to the end of time!
Chapter V
WESLEY IN TRANSITION. 1738.
[Sidenote: 1738 Age 35]
Whitefield left England the day before Wesley reached it. He landed in Georgia on the 7th of May, 1738, and remained sixteen weeks; and then set out again for his own country, where he arrived on November 30. A flying visit, but not a fruitless one. Having been ordained by Bishop Benson in June, 1736, he began his unparalleled preaching career with a sermon in the church of St. Mary de Crypt, Gloucester, where he had been baptized, and where he first received the sacrament of the Lord’s supper. Some of his congregation mocked, but most were powerfully impressed. The bishop was informed that the sermon had driven fifteen persons mad; the worthy prelate hoped the madness would be abiding. Whitefield was a stripling of twenty-one; but wherever he went crowds flocked to hear him. At Bristol, the whole city seemed alarmed; Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, and sectarians of all kinds, ran after him; and churches were as full on week days as they had used to be on Sundays. Wesley wrote to his Oxford friends, asking help for Georgia. Whitefield was preaching as often as four times a day, and had become so famous that Raikes, of Gloucester, and others, thought it an enrichment of their newspapers to insert accounts of his doings; but his friend Wesley needed help, and that was quite enough to make him treat as trifles the praises of the multitudes who ran after him. Just at the time when Wesley was compelled to leave Georgia, Whitefield repaired to London to embark for it. During his brief detention, in less than three months, he preached in London above a hundred sermons, and collected above a thousand pounds for charity schools and for the poor. When he set sail, he read prayers and preached twice every day; and such was his influence on board, that the very soldiers stood out before him to say their catechism like little children.
The day after his arrival at Savannah, Causton and the magistrates sent word that they would wait upon him; but he chose rather to wait upon them, and was treated with as much deference as Wesley had been treated with disrespect. He began to visit from house to house, catechized, read prayers morning and evening, and expounded the two second lessons every day. He found Tomo-Chichi, the Indian chief, on a blanket, thin and meagre, and evidently dying. At Hampstead and Highgate he followed Wesley’s example, and read prayers once a week, though the population of the former village consisted of only three men, one woman, and seven children. He also visited Thunderbolt, a village of three families consisting of sixteen persons, and preached to them. He likewise opened a girls’ school at Savannah. He paid a few days’ visit to Frederica, where there was now a population of about one hundred and twenty; and read prayers and preached, under a large tree, to more than could have been expected. He also visited the Saltzburghers at Ebenezer, and found two such pious ministers as he had not often seen.
Four months having been thus spent, he set out for England, the Savannah people bidding adieu to him with tearful eyes, and begging that he would soon return. He landed in Ireland in November, where mayors and bishops vied with each other in inviting him to their mansions and palaces, and where he also took the opportunity of visiting the cabins of Irish peasants, in one of which, twenty feet long and twelve broad, there were a man, his wife and three children, two pigs feeding, two dogs, and several geese, a great fire, and the master of the family threshing corn.
On reaching London, he found that those who had been awakened by his preaching a year ago had “grown strong men in Christ, by the ministrations of his dear friends and fellow labourers, John and Charles Wesley.” The old doctrine of justification by faith only had been much revived; societies had been instituted at Fetter Lane and other places; and Whitefield ended the eventful year of 1738 by preaching and expounding, during the last week of it, not fewer than seven-and-twenty times.[228]
Let us now turn to Wesley. He landed at Deal early in the morning of February 1; and at once resumed his work in England, by reading prayers and preaching at the inn. After breakfast, he set out for London, and, reaching Faversham at night, he again read prayers and expounded the second lesson to a few who were called Christians, but who were more savage in their behaviour than the wildest Indians he had ever met. His next halting place was Blendon, where the family of his friend Charles Delamotte gave him a hearty welcome. On the evening of February 3, he arrived in London; and, without delay, visited Oglethorpe, and waited upon the Georgian trustees; gave to them a written account why he had left the colony; and returned to them the instrument whereby they had appointed him minister of Savannah.
Wesley was too earnest to take a holiday. Time with him was too important for any part of it to be spent in idleness. Reaching London on Friday, he resumed preaching on Sunday; and, for the next fifty-three years, never ceased, and never lagged, in this important work, except when serious sickness occasionally laid upon him a brief embargo.
And, certainly, if England ever needed earnest, enthusiastic labourers, it was now. During this very year of 1738, not fewer than fifty-two criminals were hanged at Tyburn; and within the last two years about 12,000 persons had been convicted, within the Bills of Mortality, of smuggling gin, or of selling it without the £50 per annum licence. Sunday traffic had become such a nuisance in London and its suburbs, that even the court of aldermen interfered, and commanded the marshals, and all constables, beadles, and other public officers, to use their best endeavours to suppress it. They were also to apprehend all shoeblacks cleaning shoes in the public streets; and to take notice of all vintners, ale and coffee house keepers, barbers, and others, who exercised their ordinary trades on Sundays. A committee of the House of Lords “to examine into the causes of the present notorious immorality and profaneness,” stated, in their report, that they had sufficient grounds to believe that a number of loose and disorderly persons had of late formed themselves into a club, under the name of Blasters, and were using means to induce the youth of the kingdom to join them. The members of this impious club professed themselves to be votaries of the devil, offered prayers to him, and drank his health. They also had been heard to utter “the most daring and execrable blasphemies against the sacred name and majesty of God; and to use such obscene, blasphemous, and before unheard of expressions as the Lords’ committee think they cannot even mention, and therefore they pass them over in silence.” The same committee further reported, that “of late years there had appeared a greater neglect of religion and of all things sacred—a greater neglect of Divine worship, both public and private, and of the due observance of the sabbath, than had ever before been known in England. There was a want of reverence to the laws and to magistrates, and of a due subordination in the several ranks and degrees of the community. There was an abuse of liberty, a great neglect in education, and a want of care in training children, and in keeping servants in good order; while idleness, luxury, gambling, and an excessive use of spirituous and intoxicating liquors had grown into an alarming magnitude.” The report concludes by recommending that the bishops be desired, at their visitations, to particularly charge the clergy to exhort the people to a more frequent and constant attendance at Divine services; and that visitors of the universities and of schools require the fellows and masters carefully to instruct the youth committed to their care, in the principles of religion and morality; to which recommendation the House of Lords agreed.
One month, in 1738, was spent by Wesley in his homeward voyage from America. Three others were spent in Germany. During the remaining eight he preached in various parts of England, at least, eighty times. One of his sermons was delivered in the cabin of a ship, two were preached in workhouses, eleven in Oxford castle, one in Oxford Bocardo, one in Lincoln College chapel, one in Manchester, one at Windsor, one at Stanton-Harcourt, two in Newgate prison, and the remainder principally in twenty-six different churches in the metropolis. His sermon at St. John the Evangelist’s “offended many of the best in the parish.” His first discourse at St. Lawrence’s was “an open defiance of that mystery of iniquity which the world calls ‘prudence,’” and gave great offence. A sermon at Oxford castle was chiefly addressed to a man condemned to die, and who, on the same day, found the forgiveness of his sins, and shortly after went to the gallows “enjoying perfect peace.” At one of his sermons in Newgate prison, nine persons were present who had recently received sentence of death—two for murdering their wives, one for filing guineas, two for burglary, and four for robberies. These wretched creatures, and two others previously condemned, were all executed at Tyburn, on November 8;[229] and, at their earnest desire, Wesley and his brother, on the day of execution, went to Newgate “to do the last good office” to them. Charles preached; the malefactors wept; and some of them, at least, were filled with “the peace of God which passeth all understanding.” Wesley writes: “It was the most glorious instance I ever saw of faith triumphing over sin and death.”
The great event in Wesley’s history, during the year 1738, was his conversion. Something has been said already on this momentous subject; but other facts and explanations must now be given. Let us try to answer the questions following:—
1. What was the religious state, and what were the religious views, of Wesley previous to his conversion? 2. What were the doctrines he was taught by Peter Bohler? 3. When was he converted? and how?
1. Wesley’s religious state and views previous to his conversion.
He was almost a Christian.[230] He most rigorously abstained from everything which the gospel of Christ prohibits, and cheerfully practised everything which it enjoins. He avoided every form of profanity, and every word or look that, directly or indirectly, tended to uncleanness. He equally avoided detraction, backbiting, talebearing, evil speaking, and idle words. He was no railer, brawler, or scoffer at the faults or infirmities of others, but continually endeavoured to live peaceably with all men. He laboured and suffered for the benefit of many. He reproved the wicked, instructed the ignorant, confirmed the wavering, quickened the good, and comforted the afflicted. He used all the means of grace, and at all opportunities: he attended public service every day; he communicated every week; he constantly used family prayer; he had set times daily for private devotions. All this was done from a sincere and hearty desire to serve God and to do His will. In all his conversation and in all his actions—in all he did and in all he left undone, his only motive was a design to please and honour God. He declares that he went thus far for many years, and yet that all this time he was only almost a Christian.[231]
He held no principles but what he believed to be revealed in the word of God; and, in the interpretation of that word he always judged the most literal sense to be the best, unless when the literal sense of one scripture contradicted some other. He firmly believed in a change wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit, and called a person thus changed “regenerated, born again, and a new creature.” In all other cases, he endeavoured to express spiritual things in spiritual words, though he was not ignorant that such words and their hidden meaning were treated by the unconverted as jargon and cant.[232]
He had many remarkable answers to prayer, especially when he was in trouble; and he had many sensible comforts—short anticipations of the life of faith. He had a Divine conviction of God and of the things of God; and firmly believed in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world.[233] He was, at least, a servant of God, and was accepted of Him;[234] and yet all this while he was beating the air, and was seeking to establish his own righteousness, instead of submitting to the righteousness of Christ which is by faith. He delighted in the law of God, after the inner man; and yet he was carnal, sold under sin. Every day he was constrained to cry out, “What I do I allow not: for what I would I do not; but what I hate that I do. To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not.” He was fighting with sin continually, but not always conquering. Before, he had willingly served sin; now it was unwillingly; but still he served it. He fell, and rose, and fell again. Sometimes he was overcome, and in heaviness; sometimes he overcame, and was in joy. Once he had foretastes of the terrors of the law; but now he had foretastes of the comforts of the gospel. For above ten years there was in him this struggle between nature and grace; and yet he was still only striving with, not freed from, sin; neither had he the witness of the Spirit with his spirit that he was a child of God; nor indeed could he, for he “sought it not by faith, but, as it were, by the works of the law.”[235]
Such is Wesley’s description of himself; and this, when added to what has been previously said concerning his religious career at Oxford, will be a sufficient answer to the first of the three questions proposed.
2. The second is, what were the doctrines which Wesley was taught by Peter Bohler?
In the storm which Wesley encountered in his voyage from Georgia, he found himself in fear of death; and was convinced that the cause of it was unbelief; and that the gaining a true living faith was the “one thing needful” for him.
Peter Bohler told him that true faith in Christ was inseparably attended by—(1) dominion over sin; and (2) constant peace, arising from a sense of forgiveness. Wesley was amazed, and regarded this as a new gospel; for if this was so, it was clear that he was without true faith in Christ, because he was without its inseparable fruits. He was not willing to be convinced of this. He disputed with all his strength, and laboured to prove that there might be faith without the two fruits mentioned, and especially the second. Bohler referred him to the Bible and to experience. Wesley consulted the Bible, and when he had set aside the glosses of men he was bound to acknowledge that Bohler was correct. Still he hesitated to believe that any “experience” could be adduced in favour of Bohler’s doctrine. The next day Bohler brought to him three persons, all of whom testified of their own personal experience that a true living faith in Christ is inseparable from a sense of pardon for all past, and freedom from all present, sins. They also added, with one mouth, that this faith is the gift, the free gift of God; and that He will surely give it to every one who earnestly and perseveringly prays for it.
At subsequent interviews with Bohler, another doctrine was forced on Wesley, namely, that this saving faith in Christ is given in a moment; and that in an instant a man is turned from sin and misery to righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost. Wesley kicked against this also; and Bohler again referred him to the Scriptures and to experience. Wesley searched the Scriptures; and, to his utter astonishment, he found there were scarcely any instances of other than instantaneous conversions. Still he had one retreat left, and told Bohler that, though “God wrought thus in the first ages of Christianity, times now were changed.” To meet this objection, Bohler, the day after, turned to his experience test, and brought to Wesley several living witnesses, who testified that God had given them, in a moment, such a faith in Christ as translated them out of darkness into light, out of sin and fear into holiness and happiness. Wesley writes: “Here ended my disputing. I could now only cry out, ‘Lord, help Thou my unbelief.’ I was now thoroughly convinced; and, by the grace of God, I resolved to seek this faith unto the end—(1) By absolutely renouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my own works of righteousness; on which I had really grounded my hope of salvation, though I knew it not, from my youth up. (2) By adding to the constant use of all the other means of grace continual prayer for this very thing—justifying, saving faith, a full reliance on the blood of Christ shed for me; a trust in Him as my Christ, as my sole justification, sanctification, and redemption.”[236]
These then were the great doctrines which Peter Bohler brought to the hearing of John Wesley. They were new to him; but finding them to be scriptural, and also corroborated by living experience, he at once believed them. He went to the Delamotte family at Blendon, and there spake clearly and fully concerning them. Mr. Broughton and his brother Charles were present. The former objected, and the latter became so much offended, that in anger he left the room, telling his brother that his newfangled doctrines were mischievous.[237] Wesley also wrote to his brother Samuel on the same subject, on the 4th of April, declaring that he had seen, so far as it could be seen, very many persons changed, in a moment, from the spirit of horror, fear, and despair, to the spirit of hope, joy, and peace; and from sinful desires, till then reigning over them, to a pure desire of doing the will of God.[238]
We proceed to the third question,—
3. When and how was Wesley converted? His first interview with Bohler was on February 7, 1738; and, from that time till the 4th of May, when Bohler left London for Carolina, he embraced every opportunity of conversing with him. They went in company to Oxford, and to Mr. Gambold, at Stanton-Harcourt. The man of erudition, and of almost anchorite piety, sat at the feet of this godly German like a little child, and was content to be thought a fool that he might be wise. “My brother, my brother,” said Bohler, “that philosophy of yours must be purged away;” and purged away it was. Wesley thought that, being without faith, he ought to leave off preaching. But Bohler replied: “By no means. Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach it;” and, on the 6th of March, he began to preach accordingly. Meanwhile several of his friends, as his brother Charles, Mr. Gambold, and Mr. Stonehouse, vicar of Islington, had embraced the doctrine of salvation by faith only; and two, Whitefield, and Mr. Hutchins, of Pembroke College, had experienced it.[239] Charles Wesley also, on Whit-Sunday, May 21, was made a partaker of the same great blessing. At the time, he was ill of pleurisy, and his brother and some other friends came to him, and sang a hymn of praise to the Holy Ghost; and, after they were gone, he was enabled to exercise that faith in Christ of the want of which he had been recently convinced, and was filled with love and peace. Wesley himself was still a mourner. His heart was heavy. He felt that there was no good in him; and that all his works, his righteousness, and his prayers, so far from having merit, needed an atonement for themselves. His mouth was stopped. He knew that he deserved nothing but wrath; and yet he heard a voice, saying, “Believe, and thou shalt be saved;” “he that believeth is passed from death unto life.” Three more days of anguish were thus passed; and then, on May 24, at five in the morning, he opened his Testament on these words: “There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature.” On leaving home, he opened on the text, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” In the afternoon, he went to St. Paul’s Cathedral, where the anthem was full of comfort. At night, he went to a society-meeting in Aldersgate Street, where a person read Luther’s preface to the epistle to the Romans, in which Luther teaches what faith is, and also that faith alone justifies. Possessed of it, the heart is “cheered, elevated, excited, and transported with sweet affections towards God.” Receiving the Holy Ghost, through faith, the man “is renewed and made spiritual,” and he is impelled to fulfil the law “by the vital energy in himself.” While this preface was being read, Wesley experienced an amazing change. He writes: “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death; and I then testified openly to all there, what I now first felt in my heart.” Towards ten o’clock, a troop of friends took him to his brother; they sang a hymn with joy; and then parted with a prayer.[240]
To add to this would be folly. The questions proposed have been answered from Wesley’s own writings. For ten years he had believed in Christ, but never believed as he did now. He had been intensely pious; but now he possessed power over himself and sin which he had not possessed before. He had practised religion; but now he experienced its bliss. According to his own sermon, written nearly half a century subsequent to this, he was, as a servant of God, accepted, and was safe; but now he knew it, and was happy as well as safe. There was sunshine in his soul, which lit up his face, and which turned the severe ascetic, for a season at least, into a joyful saint.
Having given, as briefly and as clearly as we can, an account of the way in which Wesley, after ten years of earnest prayer, rigorous fasting, and self-sacrificing piety, was brought into the blissful enjoyment of a conscious salvation, this may be a fitting place to notice the man, by whose instrumentality he was taught the nature and fruits of saving faith.
Peter Bohler was born at Frankfort, on the last day of the year 1712. He was educated in the university of Jena, where he also studied theology. When sixteen years of age, he joined the Moravians; and when twenty-five, he was ordained for the work of the ministry by Count Zinzendorf, this being the first time that the count exercised his episcopal functions. Immediately after his ordination, Bohler set out for London, on his way to Carolina; and here it was that Wesley first met him. Wesley introduced him to James Hutton, and procured him lodgings. Charles Wesley began to teach him English; and a tailor, of the name of Viney, interpreted his Latin addresses in the Moravian meetings. Questions were asked him, and he simply answered them from the Holy Scriptures. His exposition of saving faith was new, even to the London Moravians; and, “to their astonishment, they saw, for the first time, that he who believeth in Jesus hath everlasting life; and it was with indescribable joy that they embraced the doctrine of justification through faith in Christ, and of freedom by it from the dominion and guilt of sin.”[241] Marvellous blessings attended Bohler’s interpreted discourses; and a work was begun, says Wesley, “such as will never come to an end, till heaven and earth pass away.”
“I travelled,” writes Bohler to Zinzendorf, “with the two brothers, John and Charles Wesley, from London to Oxford. The elder, John, is a good-natured man: he knew he did not properly believe on the Saviour, and was willing to be taught. His brother, with whom you often conversed a year ago, is at present very much distressed in his mind, but does not know how he shall begin to be acquainted with the Saviour. Our mode of believing in the Saviour is so easy to Englishmen, that they cannot reconcile themselves to it; if it were a little more artful, they would much sooner find their way into it. Of faith in Jesus they have no other idea than the generality of people have. They justify themselves; and, therefore, they always take it for granted, that they believe already, and try to prove their faith by their works, and thus so plague and torment themselves that they are at heart very miserable.”[242]
These are weighty words on the simplicity of saving faith, and well deserve pondering by both the ministers and members of the church at the present day.
Wesley had found peace with God; but, for the encouragement of new converts, let it be remembered that his joy in the Holy Ghost was not unbroken. The same night, he “was much buffeted with temptations, which returned again and again.” The day after, “the enemy injected a fear” that the change was not great enough, and therefore that his faith was not real. On May 26, his “soul continued in peace, but yet in heaviness because of manifold temptations.” On the 27th, there was a want of joy, which led him to resolve to spend the time of every morning, until he went to church, in unceasing prayer. On the 31st, he “grieved the Spirit of God, not only by not watching unto prayer, but likewise by speaking with sharpness, instead of tender love, of one who was not sound in the faith. Immediately God hid His face, and he was troubled and in heaviness till the next morning.” But, in the midst of all, he kept waiting upon God continually, read the New Testament, conquered temptations, and gained increasing power to trust and to rejoice in God his Saviour. He had to fight; but he was not, as formerly, subdued.
He went to Oxford; but the whole of his old Methodist friends were now dispersed. Here he preached his celebrated sermon in St. Mary’s, before the university, on the text, “By grace are ye saved, through faith;” a sermon which, in November following, was published by James Hutton, pp. 25, price threepence. In this discourse, he showed that the faith through which we are saved is not barely the faith of a heathen, who believes that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; nor, secondly, is it the faith of a devil, who, in addition to the faith of a heathen, believes that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, the Saviour of the world; nor, thirdly, is it barely the faith which the apostles had while Christ was yet upon earth, although they so believed in Christ as to leave all and follow Him, had power to work miracles, and were sent to preach; but, fourthly, “it is a full reliance on the blood of Christ,—a trust in the merits of His life, death, and resurrection,—a recumbency upon Him as our atonement and our life, as given for us and living in us; and, in consequence hereof, a closing with Him and cleaving to Him, as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, or, in one word, our salvation.”
The salvation obtained by such a faith is described as being a salvation—(1) From the guilt of all past sin; (2) From servile fear; (3) From the power of sin. The man having it is pardoned; he has the witness of the Spirit that he is a child of God; he is born again; and he lives without sin.
Wesley further answers objections to this doctrine, and shows that to preach salvation by faith only is not to preach against holiness and good works; neither does it lead men into pride, nor drive them to despair. He maintains that never was the preaching of this doctrine more seasonable than now, and that nothing else can effectually prevent the increase of the popish delusion. It was this which drove Popery out of the kingdom, and it is this alone that can keep it out.
This remarkable sermon was preached eighteen days after Wesley’s conversion—not on June 18, as is stated in Wesley’s collected works, but on June 11. Well would it be if, at the present day, the same great doctrine were as plainly preached as Wesley preached it. For want of it, the church is gliding into a sort of religious scepticism; and this, above all things else, would prove a check to the spread of the popish errors and practices, which are too successfully setting at defiance all the wisdom and power of man to prevent their triumph.
In the same year Wesley published another sermon, “On God’s Free Grace,”[243] in which he gave equal prominence to another great Bible truth, namely, that “the grace or love of God, whence cometh our salvation, is free in all, and free for all.” And then, in defence of himself as a good Churchman, he issued a small 12mo pamphlet of sixteen pages, entitled “The Doctrine of Salvation, Faith, and Good Works: extracted from the Homilies of the Church of England.” Here he shows that the doctrine of that Church is, that the sinner is justified by faith only; and yet this faith does not exclude repentance, hope, love, and fear of God; but shuts them out from the office of justifying. “So that, although they be all present together in him that is justified, yet they justify not altogether.” “Neither does faith shut out good works, necessary to be done afterwards; but we are not to do them with the intent of being justified by doing them.” He further shows that “justification is the office of God only,—a blessing which we receive of Him by His free mercy, through the only merits of His beloved Son.” He adds: “the right and true Christian faith is not only to believe that holy Scripture and the articles of our faith are true, but also to have a sure trust and confidence to be saved from everlasting damnation by Christ; whereof doth follow a loving heart to obey His commandments.” He maintains further that, without this true saving faith, the works we do cannot be good and acceptable in the sight of God. “Faith giveth life to the soul, and they are as much dead to God who want faith, as they are to the world whose bodies want souls. Without faith all we do is but dead before God, be it ever so glorious before man.”
Such then were the great doctrines which Wesley grasped, and began to preach in 1738. It was the preaching of these doctrines that gave birth to the greatest revival of religion chronicled in the history of the church of Christ. From such doctrines Wesley never wavered; and God forbid that they should ever be abandoned, or even partially neglected, by any of Wesley’s successors. They are not Moravian whims, or the fancies of fanatics. They are a great deal more than even Bible truths of subordinate importance. They are essentially and vitally connected with man’s salvation both here and hereafter, and no church has ever prospered except in proportion as its ministers have prominently and faithfully taught and enforced them in their congregations.
It may reasonably be asked how was it that Wesley—the son of a most able divine of the Church of England, and himself a man of extensive learning, and a devoted student of Christian truth—how was it, that he lived so long without a knowledge of one of the greatest, and yet most clearly taught doctrines of the holy Bible, the doctrine of the sinner’s salvation by faith alone? Wesley himself tells us: from early life he had been warned against the papistical error of laying too much stress on outward works. After this, he read certain Lutheran and Calvinist authors, whose confused and indigested expositions magnified faith to such an amazing size that it quite hid all the rest of the commandments. In this labyrinth he was bewildered. He wished, on the one hand, to avoid the popish doctrine of salvation by works; but, in doing this, he was beset, on the other hand, with an uncouth hypothesis concerning salvation by faith, which he found it impossible to reconcile either with Scripture or common sense. From these well meaning but wrong headed writers, he turned to authors like Beveridge, Nelson, and Jeremy Taylor, by whom his difficulties were, to some extent, relieved; but even these he found interpreting Scripture in different ways, and he was nearly as much confused as ever. After this, he was taught that he ought to interpret the Bible by the general teachings of the ancient church. Adopting this rule, he, for a season, made antiquity a co-ordinate rather than subordinate rule with Scripture, and, by extending his antiquity principle too far, his confusion of mind became greater instead of less. He then became acquainted with the Mystics, whose “noble descriptions of union with God, and internal religion, made everything else appear mean and flat;” yet here again, on reflection, he found that he was wrong. Mysticism was nothing like the religion which Christ and His apostles lived and taught.[244] Thus was this sincere and earnest inquirer after truth led to and fro in a wilderness of perplexing entanglements, until Peter Bohler took him by the hand, and led him as a contrite sinner to the cross of Christ.
Ten days before his conversion, Wesley wrote a somewhat petulant letter to William Law, telling him that he did so in obedience to what he considered the call of God. He informs him that, for two years, he had been preaching after the model of his “Serious Call,” and “Christian Perfection,” and that the result had been to convince the people that the law of God was holy, but that, when they attempted to fulfil it, they found themselves without power. Wesley declares that he himself was in this state, and might have groaned in it till he died if he had not been directed to Peter Bohler. He then proceeds:—
“Now, sir, suffer me to ask, how will you answer it to our common Lord, that you never gave me this advice? Did you never read the Acts of the Apostles, or the answer of Paul to him who said, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Or are you wiser than he? Why did I scarce ever hear you name the name of Christ? Never so as to ground anything upon faith in His blood? Who is this who is laying another foundation? If you say you advised other things as preparatory to this, what is this but laying a foundation below the foundation? If you say you advised them because you knew that I had faith already, verily you knew nothing of me. I know that I had not faith, unless the faith of a devil, the faith of Judas: that speculative, notional, airy shadow, which lives in the head not in the heart. But what is this to the living, justifying faith in the blood of Jesus? the faith that cleanseth from sin, that gives us to have free access to the Father; to rejoice in hope of the glory of God; to have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which dwelleth in us, and the Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirits that we are the children of God?
“I beseech you, sir, by the mercies of God, to consider deeply and impartially whether the true reason of your never pressing this upon me was not this—that you had it not yourself? Whether that man of God [Bohler] was not in the right, who gave this account of a late interview he had with you? ‘I began speaking to him of faith in Christ: he was silent. Then he began to speak of mystical matters. I spake to him of faith in Christ again: he was silent. Then he began to speak of mystical matters again. I saw his state at once.’”
Wesley then adds that Bohler thought the state of Law to be a dangerous one; and intimates that Bohler’s opinion was of great consequence, because he had the Spirit of God; and finally, he concludes his not too courteous epistle with: “Once more, sir, let me beg you to consider whether your extreme roughness, and morose and sour behaviour, at least on many occasions, can possibly be the fruit of a living faith in Christ?”[245]
This was an uncalled for, rough, morose attack upon a man of the greatest ability, of distinguished though mistaken piety, whose works Wesley had read with the highest admiration, whose advice Wesley had sought, and who was nearly old enough to be Wesley’s father. Law replied to it in a letter dated May 19, 1738. After some withering sarcasm, in reference to Wesley having written his letter in obedience to the call of God, Law proceeds to say:—
“You have had a great many conversations with me, and you never were with me for half an hour without my being large upon that very doctrine, which you make me totally silent and ignorant of. The second time I saw you I put into your hands the little book of the German theology, and said all that I could in recommendation of the doctrine contained in it. If that book does not plainly lead you to Jesus Christ, I am content to know as little of Christianity as you are pleased to believe; or if you are for stripping yourself naked of your own works, or righteousness, further than that book directs, I had rather you were taught that doctrine by any one else than by me. Above a year ago, I published a book against the ‘Plain Account of the Sacrament,’ etc. You may perhaps be too much prejudiced against me to read it; but, as you have made yourself a judge of the state of my heart, and of my knowledge in Christ, you ought to have seen that book to help you to make a right judgment of my sentiments. What I have there written I judge to be well timed after my former discourses. I have been governed through all that I have written and done by these two common, fundamental, unchangeable maxims of our Lord: ‘Without Me ye can do nothing:’ ‘If any man will come after Me or be My disciple, let him take up his cross and follow Me.’ If you are for separating the doctrine of the cross from faith in Christ, or following Him, you have numbers and names enough on your side, but not me.”
Law continues: “Let me advise you not to be too hasty in believing that because you have changed your language you have changed your faith. The head can as easily amuse itself with a living and justifying faith in the blood of Jesus as with any other notion; and the heart which you suppose to be a place of security, as being the seat of self-love, is more deceitful than the head.”
A lengthened correspondence followed, which Mr. Law concluded thus:—“Who made me your teacher? or can make me answerable for any defects in your knowledge? You sought my acquaintance; you came to me as you pleased, and on what occasion you pleased, and to say to me what you pleased. If it was my business to put this question to you, and if you have a right to charge me with guilt for the neglect of it, may you not much more reasonably accuse them who have authoritatively charge over you? Did the Church in which you are educated put this question to you? Did the bishop who ordained you either deacon or priest do this for you? Did the bishop who sent you a missionary to Georgia require this of you? Pray, sir, be at peace with me.”[246]
This was a miserable squabble, into which Wesley foolishly rushed, and out of which he came not victorious, but vanquished. It was an unfortunate commencement of a new Christian life, and led to an estrangement between two great and good men, which ought never to have existed. No doubt, the theology of William Law was defective; but to charge him with the guilt of Wesley’s want of faith, and to accuse him of extremely rough, morose, and sour behaviour, was a deplorable outrage against good manners.
But this was not the only unpleasantness which now sprang up. The Moravian movement and the new conversions began to attract great attention and to create some alarm. As might naturally be expected, amid so much excitement, there was a mixture of extravagance. The sister of Mr. Bray dreamed that at night she heard a knock at her door, and on opening it saw a person dressed in white. She asked him who he was, and he answered, “I am Jesus Christ.” She awoke in a fright, but a day or two after was filled with faith, and was commanded by an unseen power to go to Charles Wesley, who was ill, and assure him from Christ of his recovery of soul and body. In a prayer-meeting a Mr. Verding declared that he had just seen, as it were, a whole army rushing by him and bearing the broken body of Christ; a sight which was overpowering, and cast him into a cold sweat. A young man, as he entered St. Dunstan’s church to receive the sacrament, was met by Christ carrying His cross in His hands: and a woman dreamed that a ball of fire fell upon her, and fired her soul. Samuel Wesley, of Tiverton, to whom these things were related, justly deemed them “downright madness;” and, in his anger, went so far as to wish that those “canting fellows,” as he called the Moravians, “who talked of indwellings, experiences, getting into Christ,” etc., had been somewhere else.[247]
The chief cause of anxiety, however, arose from Mrs. Hutton’s description of her two lodgers. She relates that, when the two Wesleys returned from Georgia, she received and treated them with the utmost love and tenderness; but John was now “turned a wild enthusiast.” While her husband was reading to a number of people in his study a sermon of Bishop Blackall’s, John Wesley stood up and told the company that, five days ago, he was not a Christian. Mr. Hutton was thunderstruck, and said, “Have a care, Mr. Wesley, how you despise the benefits received by the two sacraments;” but Wesley repeated his declaration, upon which Mrs. Hutton answered, “If you have not been a Christian ever since I knew you, you have been a great hypocrite, for you made us all believe that you were one.” To this Wesley replied that, “When we renounce everything but faith and get into Christ, then, and not till then, have we any reason to believe that we are Christians.”
Mrs. Hutton, in writing an account of all this to Samuel Wesley, adds that her two children had so high an opinion of Wesley’s sanctity and judgment that they were in great danger of being drawn into his “wild notions;” that Wesley had “abridged the life of one Halyburton, a Presbyterian teacher in Scotland,” and that her son had designed to print it, but she and her husband had forbidden him to promote such “rank fanaticism;” and that all his converts were “directed to get an assurance of their sins being pardoned,” and to expect this in “an instant.” She acknowledges that the two Wesleys “are men of great parts and learning;” but they were now under a “strange delusion;” and she entreats their brother Samuel to stop this “wildfire,” if he can.
Samuel Wesley’s reply is dated, “Tiverton, June 17, 1738.” He writes:—
“I am sufficiently sensible of yours and Mr. Hutton’s kindness to my brothers, and shall always acknowledge it. Falling into enthusiasm is being lost with a witness; and, if you are troubled for two of your children, you may be sure I am so for two whom I may, in some sense, call mine. What Jack means by his not being a Christian till last month, I understand not. Had he never been in covenant with God? Then, as Mr. Hutton observed, baptism was nothing. Had he totally apostatized from it? I dare say not; and yet he must either be unbaptized, or an apostate, to make his words true.
“If renouncing everything but faith means rejecting all merit of our own good works, what Protestant does not do that? Even Bellarmine on his death-bed is said to have renounced all merits but those of Christ. But if this renouncing regards good works in any other sense, as being unnecessary, it is wretchedly wicked.
“I hope your son does not think it as plainly revealed that he shall print an enthusiastic book, as it is, that he should obey his father and his mother. God deliver us from visions that shall make the law of God vain! I pleased myself with the expectation of seeing Jack; but now I am afraid of it. I know not where to direct to him, or where he is. I will write to Charles as soon as I can. In the meantime I heartily pray God to stop the progress of this lunacy.”[248]
Samuel asked his brother what he meant by being made a Christian. John replied:—
“By a Christian, I mean one who so believes in Christ as that sin hath no more dominion over him; and, in this obvious sense of the word, I was not a Christian till the 24th of May last past. Till then sin had dominion over me, although I fought with it continually; but, from that time to this, it hath not. Such is the free grace of God in Christ. If you ask me, by what means I am made free? I answer, by faith in Christ; by such a sort or degree of faith as I had not till that day. Some measure of this faith, which bringeth salvation or victory over sin, and which implies peace and trust in God through Christ, I now enjoy by His free mercy; though in very deed it is in me but as a grain of mustard seed. For the ‘πληροφορια πιστεως,—the seal of the Spirit, the love of God shed abroad in my heart, and producing joy in the Holy Ghost, joy which no man taketh away, joy unspeakable and full of glory,’—this witness of the Spirit I have not; but I wait patiently for it. I know many who have already received it; and, having seen and spoken with a cloud of witnesses abroad,[249] as well as in my own country, I cannot doubt but that believers who wait and pray for it will find these scriptures fulfilled in themselves. My hope is, that they will be fulfilled in me. I build on Christ, the Rock of Ages.”[250]
The reader will observe here a strange confession, which has seldom, if ever, been noticed. The letter, from which the above is taken, was written October 23, 1738, five months after Wesley’s conversion; and yet he here distinctly states that, as yet, he was not possessed of the witness of the Spirit; but was waiting for it. This is contrary to the commonly received notion, and yet it is in perfect accordance with a remarkable entry in his journal, under the date of October 14. He there most carefully examines his religious state by comparing it with the text, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” In many respects, he judged himself a new creature; but, in others, he feared that he was not. Earthly desires often arose within him, though he was enabled to put them under his feet through Christ strengthening him. To some extent, he possessed longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, and temperance; but he had to complain of his want of love, peace, and joy. He writes:—
“I cannot find in myself the love of God, or of Christ. Hence my deadness and wanderings in public prayer: hence it is that, even in the holy communion, I have frequently no more than a cold attention. Again, I have not that joy in the Holy Ghost; no settled, lasting joy. Nor have I such a peace as excludes the possibility either of fear or doubt. When holy men have told me I had no faith, I have often doubted whether I had or no. And these doubts have made me very uneasy, till I was relieved by prayer and the holy Scriptures. Yet, upon the whole, although I have not yet that joy in the Holy Ghost, nor the full assurance of faith,—much less am I, in the full sense of the words, ‘in Christ a new creature,’—I nevertheless trust that I have a measure of faith, and am ‘accepted in the Beloved;’ I trust ‘the handwriting that was against me is blotted out,’ and that I am ‘reconciled to God’ through His Son.”
There is another entry, similar to this, under the date of December 16; and again, on January 4, 1739, he uses even stronger language:—
“My friends affirm I am mad, because I said I was not a Christian a year ago. I affirm, I am not a Christian now. Indeed, what I might have been I know not, had I been faithful to the grace then given, when, expecting nothing less, I received such a sense of the forgiveness of my sins as till then I never knew. But that I am not a Christian at this day, I as assuredly know, as that Jesus is the Christ. For a Christian is one who has the fruits of the Spirit of Christ, which (to mention no more) are love, peace, joy. But these I have not. I have not any love of God. I do not love either the Father or the Son. Do you ask, how do I know whether I love God, I answer by another question, ‘How do you know whether you love me?’ Why, as you know whether you are hot or cold. You feel this moment that you do or do not love me. And I feel this moment I do not love God; which therefore I know, because I feel it. And I know it also by St. John’s plain rule, ‘If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’ For I love the world. I desire the things of the world, some or other of them; and have done all my life. I have always placed some part of my happiness in some or other of the things that are seen, particularly in meat and drink, and in the company of those I loved. For many years, I have been, yea, and still am, hankering after a happiness, in loving and being loved by one or another. And in these I have, from time to time, taken more pleasure than in God.
“Again, joy in the Holy Ghost I have not. I have now and then some starts of joy in God; but it is not that joy. For it is not abiding. Neither is it greater than I have had on some worldly occasions. So that I can in nowise be said to ‘rejoice evermore;’ much less to ‘rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.’
“Yet again: I have not ‘the peace of God;’ that peace, peculiarly so called. The peace I have may be accounted for on natural principles. I have health, strength, friends, a competent fortune, and a composed, cheerful temper. Who would not have a sort of peace in such circumstances? But I have none which can, with any propriety, be called ‘a peace which passeth all understanding.’
“From hence I conclude, though I have given, and do give, all my goods to feed the poor, I am not a Christian. Though I have endured hardship, though I have in all things denied myself and taken up my cross, I am not a Christian. My works are nothing; my sufferings are nothing; I have not the fruits of the Spirit of Christ. Though I have constantly used all the means of grace for twenty years, I am not a Christian.”
This is extremely puzzling; but we are bound to give it as we find it. It may be said that Wesley merely says, that “one who had had the form of godliness many years wrote these reflections;” but, comparing them with the two entries under the dates of October 14 and December 16, 1738, and with his letter to his brother Samuel, dated October 30, it would be folly to contend that he was not relating his own experience. The reader must form his own opinion, and grapple with the difficulties, thus presented, as he best can. Wesley acknowledges, in the above extract, that, some months before, he “received such a sense of the forgiveness of his sins as till then he never knew;” and yet here we find him full of doubt, and writing the bitterest things against himself.
Let us pursue his correspondence with his brother Samuel a little farther. Wesley held the doctrine of the Spirit’s witness; though he asserts he did not yet experience it. Samuel, in a letter dated November 15, 1738, asks his brother “whether he will own or disown, in terms, the necessity of a sensible information from God of pardon?”[251] This was not a fair putting of the question. Wesley had defined the πληροφορια πιστεως, or witness of the Spirit, as “the love of God shed abroad in the heart, producing joy which no man taketh away; joy unspeakable and full of glory:” but his brother here changes the term witness, and what it meant, to the term “sensible information,” that is, information received through the senses, thus connecting with the witness visions and voices, and other Moravian follies at that time rampant.
A fortnight later Wesley replied to this:—
“I believe every Christian, who has not yet received it, should pray for the witness of God’s Spirit that he is a child of God. This witness, I believe, is necessary for my salvation. How far invincible ignorance may excuse others I know not. But this, you say, is delusive and dangerous, because it encourages and abets idle visions and dreams. It may do this accidentally, but not essentially; but this is no objection against it; for, in the same way, weak minds may pervert to an idle use every truth in the oracles of God. Such visions, indeed, as you mention are given up; but does it follow that visions and dreams in general are bad branches of a bad root? God forbid. This would prove more than you desire.”[252]
In answer, Samuel, on December 13, declares that his brother misinterprets the witness of the Spirit, and refers him to a sermon of Bishop Bull’s in proof. John replies, that Bishop Bull’s sermon is full of gross perversions of Scripture; and adds: “I find more persons, day by day, who experience a clear evidence of their being in a state of salvation; but I never said this continues equally clear in all, as long as they continue in a state of salvation.”[253]
Samuel’s answer is dated Tiverton, March 26, 1739, in which he argues that the witness of the Spirit is not necessary to salvation; and refers, in proof of this, to the case of baptized infants, and to persons of a gloomy constitution.[254]
Nine days afterwards, Wesley re-asserted that he had seen many persons changed in a moment from the spirit of horror, fear, and despair, to the spirit of hope, joy, and peace; and from sinful desires, till then reigning over them, to a pure desire of doing the will of God. He also knew that this great change, in several persons, had been wrought either in sleep, or during a strong representation, to the eye of their minds, of Christ, either on the cross, or in glory. He also argues, that his brother’s reference to infants and persons of a gloomy constitution fails to sustain his point; because no kind of assurance is essential to the salvation of infants; and persons of a gloomy constitution, so far from being doomed to die without the assurance, have, to his own certain knowledge, even when almost mad, been brought in a moment into a state of firm, lasting peace and joy.[255]
Other letters might be quoted; but enough has been said to show the views which Wesley now held concerning the witness of the Spirit. He believed the witness was necessary to his own salvation; and, yet, he declares he has it not. He asserts that he has known instances in which it has been granted in dreams; but he does not insist that dreams are an essential medium. The whole affair is puzzling. On May 24, 1738, he “received such a sense of the forgiveness of sins as till then he never knew;” and yet, months afterwards, he declares, in the most explicit terms, that he was now living without the enjoyment of the Spirit’s witness. How is this discrepancy to be explained? Had he lost the sense of forgiveness which he received on May 24? Or was he attaching to the witness of the Spirit a signification too high? If he had not the witness at the beginning of 1739, when did he obtain it afterwards? All these questions will naturally occur to the thoughtful reader; but they are more easily asked than answered.
The simple truth seems to be, that while Wesley heard much among the Moravians that was scriptural, he also heard much that was otherwise; and paid more attention to their experiences, both in England and in Germany, than was desirable, or for his good. His high opinion of the people’s piety made it easy to believe even many of their foolish statements. He got into a labyrinth, and could hardly tell where he was. Months before, he had believed on Christ to the saving of his soul; and yet now he bitterly exclaims that he is not a Christian. He was, for a season, bewildered with the brightness of great truths bursting for the first time on his vision, and with the distracting glare of religious testimonies—new, but yet earnest and sincere—of great importance, and yet mixed with much that was fanatical and foolish. Out of such a maze this earnest man had to find his way as he best could. We know his subsequent career, and we know the doctrines that he taught. The mists of early education, and the vapours of Moravian imagination, were soon scattered by the bright sunshine which was shed upon him; and in the midst of which, to the end of his career, he was wont to live, and to testify, “The testimony of the Spirit is 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 hath loved me, and given Himself for me; and that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.”[256]
Wesley had been brought into strange communion with Moravians in his voyage to Georgia. At Savannah he had met with Spangenberg. On his return to London he found Bohler, and was induced to become a member of the first Moravian society, founded at Fetter Lane. The rules of that society are before us, entitled, “Orders of a Religious Society meeting in Fetter Lane; in obedience to the command of God by St. James, and by the advice of Peter Boehler, May 1, 1738.” These rules provide for a meeting of the members once a week, to confess their faults one to another, and to pray for one another that they may be healed. A month later, it was agreed that the persons thus meeting in society should be divided into bands, of not fewer than five or more than ten; and that some one in each band should be desired to interrogate the rest, and should be called the leader. Each band was to meet twice a week; every person was to come punctually at the hour appointed; every meeting was to begin and end with singing and prayer; and all the bands were to have a conference every Wednesday night. Any person absenting himself from his band-meeting, without some extraordinary reason, was to be first privately admonished, and if he were absent a second time, to be reproved before the whole society. Any member, desiring or designing to take a journey, was first to have, if possible, the approbation of the bands; and all who were in clubs were requested to withdraw their names from such associations. Any one desiring to be admitted was to be asked his reasons for this, and whether he would be entirely open, using no kind of reserve, least of all in the case of love or courtship. Every fourth Saturday was to be observed as a day of general intercession, from twelve to two, from three to five, and from six to eight o’clock; and, on one Sunday in every month, a general lovefeast was to be held from seven till ten at night. In order to a continual intercession, every member was to choose some hour, either of the day or night, to spend in prayer, chiefly for his brethren; and, in order to a continual fast, three of the members were to fast every day, Sundays and holidays excepted, and spend as much of the day as possible in retirement from business and in prayer. Each person was to pay to the leader of his band, at least once a month, what he could afford towards the general expenses; and any person not conforming to the rules of the society, after being thrice admonished, was to be expelled.
Naturally enough, Wesley wished to know something more of the singular people with whom he had been brought in contact; and accordingly, three weeks after his conversion, he started for their chief settlement at Herrnhuth, in Germany. One of his companions was his friend Ingham, and another was John Toltschig,[257] one of the first fugitives who fled to Herrnhuth from the fierce persecution in Moravia in 1724.
At Rotterdam, Dr. Koker, a physician, treated them with kindness; but at Gondart several of the inns refused to entertain them, and it “was with difficulty they at last found one which did them the favour to take their money for their meat and drink, and the use of two or three bad beds.”
On June 16, they arrived at Ysselstein, the home of Baron Watteville, who had been a fellow student of Count Zinzendorf, and one of the young gentlemen, at the academy in Halle, who about the year 1717 had formed an association called “The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed,” the object of which was to promote the conversion of Jews and heathen.
At the time of Wesley’s visit Watteville was at the head of “a few German brethren and sisters, and about eight” English Moravians, who were living in three or four small houses, till one should be built large enough to contain them all. Wesley and his friends spent a day with them “in hearing the wonderful work which God was beginning to work over all the earth,” and in making prayer to Him, “and giving thanks for the mightiness of His kingdom.”
Proceeding to Amsterdam, Wesley and his companions were received with great courtesy by Mr. Decknatel, a minister of the Mennonists, and Dr. Barkhausen, a Muscovite physician. Here they spent four days, and attended several society meetings, where “the expounding was in high Dutch.”
On Sunday, June 26, they reached Cologne, “the ugliest, dirtiest city” Wesley had ever seen. The cathedral he describes as “mere heaps upon heaps; a huge, misshapen thing, without either symmetry or neatness belonging to it.” Some will doubtless differ from Wesley’s judgment concerning this magnificent though unfinished pile, so venerated for its sanctity, derived from the monkish stories of the reliques of the eleven thousand virgins and of the three eastern kings. Coming out of it, one of Wesley’s companions scrupled to take off his hat as a popish procession passed, when a papist cried, “Knock down the Lutheran dog,” a mandate which would probably have been put into execution if the offender had not made a timely escape from the zealot’s fury.
Embarking on the majestic Rhine, four days and nights were spent in reaching Mayence, the boat in which Wesley travelled being drawn by horses. This, however, gave him ample time to admire the almost unequalled beauties of one of the finest rivers in the world. Arriving faint and weary at Frankfort, they were refused admittance, because they had no passports. It so happened, however, that Peter Bohler’s father was resident in the city; and, by his interposition, they procured an entrance, and were treated in the most friendly manner.
On Tuesday, July 4, they came to Marienborn, (about thirty-five miles from Frankfort,) in the neighbourhood of which Zinzendorf, two years before, had taken up his residence in an old, ruinous castle called Ronneburg, and where he had established schools for poor children, whom he fed and clothed at his own expense. Here also he had formed a missionary congregation, consisting of forty students from Jena, most of whom became ministers either in Europe or in missions to the heathen.[258] The Moravian family altogether consisted of about ninety persons, all living in a large house rented by Zinzendorf. Here Wesley spent a fortnight, conversing with the brethren in Latin or English, listening to the sermons of the count, and attending conferences and intercession meetings. Writing to his brother Samuel, he says: “God has given me at length the desire of my heart. I am with a church whose conversation is in heaven; in whom is the mind that was in Christ, and who so walks as He walked. As they have all one Lord and one faith, so they are all partakers of one Spirit—the spirit of meekness and love, which uniformly and continually animates all their conversation. I believe, in a week, Mr. Ingham and I shall set out for Herrnhuth, about three hundred and fifty miles hence. Oh pray for us, that God would sanctify to us all those precious opportunities.”[259] It is an odd fact, however, that while Ingham was allowed to partake of the holy communion, Wesley was not, because “the congregation saw him to be homo perturbatus, and that his head had gained an ascendancy over his heart”; and also because “they were desirous not to interfere with his plan of effecting good as a clergyman of the English Church.”[260] Peculiar reasons—but we give them as we find them. Hampson, in his life of Wesley, relates that Zinzendorf, who regarded him as a pupil, ordered him one day to dig in the garden; and after Wesley had been there for some time working in his shirt, and when he was in a high state of perspiration, the lordly count commanded him to enter a carriage that was waiting, to pay a visit to a neighbouring noble. Wesley naturally wished to wash his hands and to put on his coat; but his preceptor forbade him, saying, “You must be simple, my brother!” This was a full answer to all remonstrance, and Wesley was simple enough to obey the mandate of a man who, while professing great humility, sometimes allowed the pretensions of his feudal pride to set aside the meekness of his professed piety.
On the 19th of July, Wesley again set out, and on reaching Weimar was brought before the duke, who asked his object in journeying to Herrnhuth. Wesley answered, “To see the place where the Christians live;” upon which the duke looked hard, but permitted him to go. On arriving at Halle, “the King of Prussia’s tall men,” who kept the gates, sent him and his friends backwards and forwards, from one gate to another, for nearly two long hours before they were admitted. Here he inspected, with the greatest interest, the Orphan House of August Herman Francke, in which six hundred and fifty children were wholly resident, and three thousand taught. At Leipsig, the gentlemen of the university treated him with respect and kindness. At Meissen, two things surprised him—the extremely beautiful china ware; and the congregation in the church, where the women wore huge fur caps in the shape of Turkish turbans; the men sat with their hats on their heads at the prayers as well as at the sermon, and the parson was decorated with a habit bedecked with gold and scarlet, and with a vast cross on both his back and breast. At Dresden, Wesley was carried from one official to another, with impertinent solemnity, for above two hours, before he was suffered to settle at his inn; and greatly wondered that common sense and common humanity allowed such a senseless, inhuman usage of strangers.
Wesley arrived at the Moravian settlement at Herrnhuth on August 1, and found it consisting of about a hundred houses built on a rising ground. The principal erection was the orphan house, in the lower part of which was the apothecary’s shop, and in the upper the chapel, capable of containing six or seven hundred people. Here he spent nearly the next fortnight.
The day after his arrival, he attended a lovefeast of the married women; and on every day, at eleven, a Bible conference, at which was read a portion of Scripture in the original. He was also present at a conference for strangers, when several questions concerning justification were resolved. He embraced all opportunities of conversing with the most experienced of the brethren, concerning the great work which God had wrought within them; and with the teachers and elders concerning their church discipline.
On the Sunday, after the evening service, all the unmarried women, according to their usual custom, walked round the town, singing praise, with instruments of music; and then, on a small hill, at a little distance from it, knelt in a circle and joined in prayer; after which they joyously repaired to their respective homes.
Four times Wesley heard Christian David preach, and also received from his own lips his private history. The boyhood of this remarkable man was spent in tending sheep, and his youth and early manhood partly at the carpenter’s bench, and partly in the soldier’s tent. He was a zealous papist, and crawled on his knees before images, performed penances, invoked departed saints, and went the whole round of Romish vagaries. He was twenty years old before he had even seen a Bible; after this, it became nearly the only book he read. The Bible convinced him of the errors of Popery, and he resolved to join the Lutherans. At the age of twenty-seven, he began to preach to his countrymen; numbers were converted by his artless sermons; persecution followed; the converts fled; and Herrnhuth was founded. Christian David continued preaching in Moravia, until his preaching became the topic of conversation in houses, streets, roads, and markets, and the whole country was thrown into a state of great excitement. The people assembled at each other’s houses to sing hymns and to read the Bible. Shepherds chanted the praises of their Redeemer as they kept their flocks; servants at their work talked of nothing but His great salvation; and children on village greens poured out their fervent prayers before Him. Many were imprisoned; others were thrust into cellars and made to stand in water till they were well-nigh frozen; not a few were loaded with irons and obliged to work as convicts; and a whole host were condemned to pay heavy fines. All this arose out of the preaching of the unlettered preacher whom Wesley heard at Herrnhuth,—the Bush Preacher, as he was called by the persecuting priests and jesuits of Moravia,—the man who, five years previous to Wesley’s present visit, conducted the first missionaries to Greenland, and who, though but a poor mechanic, preached to the court of the king of Denmark as he went,—an itinerant evangelist of no mean order, having paid eleven gospel visits to Moravia, three to Greenland, and many others to Denmark, England, and Holland, besides visiting all the Moravian congregations throughout the whole of Germany,—a man who, when he happened to be at home at Herrnhuth, and not engaged in active services for the church, always followed his trade as a carpenter, and secured the respect and love of both young and old,—a man who often made mistakes, but was always ready to confess his errors when pointed out to him,—deeply devoted to the work of Christ, and living in the closest communion with Him,—shunning no toil, and fearing no danger,—reading the Bible continually, and never tiring of its precious truths,—his sermons wanting in polish, but not in power,—for more than thirty years an itinerant, out-door German preacher,—and who in 1751, at the age of sixty, went triumphantly to heaven.[261]
Such was the preaching mechanic whom Wesley, the scholar and the priest, embraced every opportunity of hearing during his Herrnhuth visit,—a fair specimen of scores in England whom Wesley, during the next half-century, employed in the same glorious work. The philosopher may sneer at the sight of one of the most distinguished fellows of Lincoln College sitting in the Herrnhuth chapel and in the carpenter’s cottage, to be taught by a man like this; but let it be remembered that while the Oxford student, in letters, was immeasurably superior to the German mechanic, the German mechanic was as much superior to the Oxford student in the science of saving truth; and besides that, he spoke not only from clear convictions, but from personal experience. Even now many a man, profoundly learned in languages and in philosophy, might receive knowledge more important than any he already has, if he would condescend to imitate Wesley’s example, and stoop to be taught by some poor itinerating preacher, who, though a wayfaring man, and in all other things a fool, is yet “wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
The four sermons which Wesley heard Christian David preach were peculiarly appropriate to his present religious state. It is a notable fact, however, that instead of instructing Wesley to expect the witness of the Spirit immediately, he taught him “that many are children of God and heirs of the promises, long before they are comforted by the abiding witness of the Spirit, melting their souls into all gentleness and meekness; and much more before they are pure in heart from all self-will and sin.” Christian David told Wesley, in private, that he had “the forgiveness of sins, and a measure of the peace of God, for many years before he had that witness of the Spirit which shut out all doubt and fear.” This is not Wesleyan doctrine; but it was the doctrine which Wesley was taught in Germany, and which helped to keep him in that doubting and fearing state in which we have already seen him.
Wesley elicited the religious experience of Michael Linner, the oldest member of the church, which was to the effect that Michael believed to the saving of his soul two years before he received the full assurance of faith; though he admitted that the more usual method is for the Holy Spirit “to give, in one and the same moment, the forgiveness of sins, and a full assurance of that forgiveness.” David Nitschmann, one of the four public teachers of the Herrnhuth community, told Wesley that, for years after he was delivered from the bondage of sin, he was troubled with doubts and fears. Martin Döber stated: “It is common for persons to receive justification through faith in the blood of Christ before they receive the full assurance of faith, which God many times withholds till He has tried whether they will work together with Him in the use of the first gift.” Augustine Neusser said he could not tell the hour or day when he first received the full assurance that his sins were pardoned; for it was not given at once, but grew within him by degrees. David Schneider’s experience was substantially the same; but it is right to add, that the experience of others was of a brighter kind, and confirmative of the scriptural doctrine that, when sins are forgiven, the Spirit, at the same moment, gives the assurance of it.
Wesley eagerly listened to the recital of these religious experiences at Herrnhuth, and became bewildered; and hence those puzzling declarations concerning his own religious state, even down to the beginning of 1739, which have been already given. The truth is, both Wesley and the Moravians seemed to confound the doctrine of the Spirit’s witness with the doctrine of sanctification. Because they were not, for a season, wholly sanctified, they declare that they had not the witness of the Spirit or the full assurance of faith. The following, for instance, is Arvid Gradin’s description of that witness or assurance: “Repose in the blood of Christ; a firm confidence in God, and persuasion of His favour; serene peace and steadfast tranquillity of mind, with a deliverance from every fleshly desire, and from every outward and inward sin.” This is a beautiful description of what the Methodists mean by entire sanctification; but Wesley, taught by the Herrnhuth Moravians, confounded it, for a time, with what he called “the witness of the Spirit,—full assurance of faith;” the result being the use of language, in reference to himself, quite sufficient to perplex the modern Methodist, who, without paying attention to these Moravian facts, contents himself with merely comparing the lucid language of Wesley’s sermons with the confused and confusing language of those parts of Wesley’s journal to which we are now adverting.
Wesley spent nearly a fortnight among the Herrnhuth Christians. He writes:—“I would gladly have spent my life here. Oh when shall this Christianity cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea?” The population was divided into about ninety bands, each of which met twice at least, but most of them three times, a week, to “confess their faults one to another, and to pray for one another that they might be healed.” The rulers of the church had a conference every week, purely concerning the state of souls; and another every day on the outward matters of the church. Once a week, there was a conference for strangers; at which any one might be present, and propose questions or doubts which he desired to have resolved. The children and young people were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, English, history, and geography. Every morning at eight, the community had singing, Scripture exposition, and commonly short prayer; and the same at eight in the evening, concluding each service with the kiss of peace. On Sundays, service began at six; at nine, they had public worship at Bertholdsdorf; at one, the members of the church were divided into fourteen classes, to each of which was addressed a separate exhortation; at four, there was service again at Bertholdsdorf; and at eight, the usual nightly service; after which the young men went round the town singing songs of praise; and thus the day was ended. On the first Saturday of every month, the Lord’s supper was administered: when, from ten till two, the eldest spoke with each communicant in private, concerning his or her spiritual experience; at two, they dined, and then washed one another’s feet; after which they sung and prayed; about ten at night, they received the communion in silence without any ceremony; and continued without speaking, till midnight, when they parted. The second Saturday was occupied as the solemn prayer-day for the children. The third was a day of general intercession and thanksgiving. And the fourth was the great monthly conference of all the superiors of the church. For the last eleven years, they had kept up a perpetual intercession, which had never ceased day or night, by different companies spending in succession an hour every day in prayer for themselves and for other churches. Marriage was highly reverenced, and no young people were allowed to be affianced without being placed for a time with married persons, who instructed them how to behave in their contemplated new relation. Casting lots was used both in public and private, to decide points of importance, when the reasons on each side appeared to be of equal weight. The time usually spent in sleep was from eleven at night till four in the morning; three hours a day were allowed for meals; leaving sixteen for work and sacred services.
Such was Herrnhuth in 1738, the cradle of the modern Moravian church,—the Jerusalem of the United Brethren. At present it has about a thousand inhabitants, is well built, well paved, and scrupulously clean; having in its centre a large square, in which stands the hall for worship, at the original consecration of which Zinzendorf offered the striking prayer, “May God prevent this house standing longer than it continues to be a dwelling place of love and peace to the praise of the Redeemer!” On one side of the square is what was once the residence of Zinzendorf, now the depôt of Moravian archives; on another, the house of the unmarried brethren; and on a third, the village inn, the property of the community. Connection with the brotherhood, except in special cases conceded by their church authorities, is a condition of residence in the town; and up to 1848, by the laws of Saxony, any one who forsook the faith could be compelled to sell whatever property he had within its boundaries. This is now altered, and the only compulsion that can be exercised is of a moral character. Still, even yet, with the exception of the government officials, and a few privileged individuals, the entire community are members of the Moravian church. Here sprang up that wondrous brotherhood, which, whilst other churches were surrendering the great doctrines of the cross, devoted its life and energies to their world-wide propagation, and, with a faith which to some seemed presumption, and a love which approached to the character of a reverential friendship, went among slumbering peoples and savage races, insisting on the necessity of personal faith in a personal Redeemer, and declaring that life in Christ is the highest life of man.[262]
Wesley left Herrnhuth on August 12, and reached London on Saturday, September 16. He at once resumed his work by preaching thrice the next day, and afterwards expounding in the Minories. On Monday, he rejoiced to meet with the Moravian society at Fetter Lane, which had increased from ten members to thirty-two; and, on Tuesday, he went to the condemned felons in Newgate, and preached to them a free salvation.
A month subsequent to his return, he wrote as follows to his Herrnhuth friends:—
“To the church of God which is in Herrnhuth, John Wesley, an unworthy presbyter of the church of God in England, wisheth all grace and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ. Glory be to God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! for giving me to be an eye-witness of your faith and love and holy conversation in Christ Jesus. We are endeavouring here to be followers of you, as ye are of Christ. Fourteen have been added to us since our return, so that we have now eight bands, all of whom seek for salvation only in the blood of Christ. As yet, we have only two small bands of women; the one of three, the other of five persons. But here are many others, who only wait till we have leisure to instruct them how they may most effectually build up one another in the faith and love of Him who gave Himself for them.
“Though my brother and I are not permitted to preach in most of the churches in London, yet there are others left, wherein we have liberty to speak the truth as it is in Jesus. Likewise, every evening, and on set evenings in the week, at two several places, we publish the word of reconciliation, sometimes to twenty or thirty, sometimes to fifty or sixty, sometimes to three or four hundred persons, met together to hear it. We begin and end all our meetings with singing and prayer; and we know that our Lord heareth prayer, having more than once or twice received our petitions in that very hour.
“Nor hath He left Himself without other witnesses of His grace and truth. Ten ministers I know now in England, who lay the right foundation, ‘the blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin.’ Over and above whom I have found one Anabaptist, and one, if not two, of the teachers among the Presbyterians here, who I hope love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and teach the way of God in truth.”[263]
There are three facts in the above quotation which deserve notice:—1. That Wesley was thoroughly identified with the London Moravians. 2. That there were other clergymen besides himself who were evangelical. 3. That he still retained his high church nonsense, and made a difference between Church of England “ministers,” and Anabaptist and Presbyterian “teachers.” This last was pitiable folly, perhaps not to be wondered at, and yet deserving to be despised.
About the same time, Wesley wrote to Zinzendorf at Marienborn, thanking him and his countess for their kindness, and then adding:—
“I did not return hither at all before the time; for though a great door and effectual had been opened, the adversaries had laid so many stumbling-blocks before it, that the weak were daily turned out of the way. Numberless misunderstandings had arisen, by means of which the way of truth was much blasphemed; and, hence, had sprung anger, clamour, bitterness, evil speaking, envyings, strifes, railings, evil surmises; whereby the enemy had gained such an advantage over the little flock, that ‘of the rest durst no man join himself to them.’ But it has now pleased our blessed Master to remove, in great measure, these rocks of offence. The word of the Lord again runs and is glorified; and this work goes on and prospers. Great multitudes are everywhere awakened, and cry out, ‘What must we do to be saved?’ The love and zeal of our brethren in Holland and Germany, particularly at Herrnhuth, have stirred up many among us, who will not be comforted till they also partake of the great and precious promises. I hope to see them at least once more, were it only to speak freely on a few things which I did not approve, perhaps because I did not understand them.”[264]
The last sentence requires explanation. Notwithstanding his general admiration of the German Moravians, their sun was not without spots, for there were sundry things with which Wesley was not satisfied. What were they? Wesley himself shall answer. The following is an unfinished letter, written to the Moravians at Marienborn and Herrnhuth, a few days only after Wesley’s return from Germany, but which was never sent:—
“MY DEAR BRETHREN,—I cannot but rejoice in your stedfast faith, in your love to our blessed Redeemer, your deadness to the world, your meekness, temperance, chastity, and love of one another. I greatly approve of your conferences and bands; of your methods of instructing children; and, in general, of your great care of the souls committed to your charge.
“But of some other things I stand in doubt, which I will mention in love and meekness.
“Is not the count all in all among you?
“Do you not magnify your own church too much?
“Do you not use guile and dissimulation in many cases?
“Are you not of a close, dark, reserved temper and behaviour?”[265]
These were weighty accusations, and will claim attention hereafter.
Within five weeks after Wesley had returned from Germany, he and his brother Charles waited upon Dr. Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, to answer the complaints he had heard against them, to the effect that they preached an absolute assurance of salvation. Gibson was a man of great natural abilities, a laborious student, and also pious; but he was occasionally betrayed into intolerance, and sometimes evinced more zeal for the rights of the Church than discretion. So great was his ecclesiastical power, that Sir Robert Walpole was accustomed to be reproached with allowing him the authority of a pope: “And a very good pope he is,” replied the premier. The two Wesleys being introduced to him, he said, “If by assurance you mean an inward persuasion, whereby a man is conscious in himself, after examining his life by the law of God, and weighing his own sincerity, that he is in a state of salvation, and acceptable to God, I don’t see how any good Christian can be without such assurance.” The Wesleys meant more by “assurance” than this; but the doctrine, so far as it went, was one which they themselves preached. The next point discussed was the charge that they were Antinomians, because they preached justification by faith only. To this they replied, “Can any one preach otherwise, who agrees to our church and the Scriptures?” A third charge was that they had administered baptism to persons dissatisfied with the lay baptism which they had already received. Wesley answered, with more high church bigotry than scriptural enlightenment, that “if a person dissatisfied with lay baptism,” or, in other words, Dissenters’ baptism, “should desire episcopal, he should think it his duty to administer it.” Wesley next inquired of his lordship if “his reading in a religious society made it a conventicle;” and whether “religious societies are conventicles.” To the latter question the bishop answered, “I think not; but I determine nothing;” and he recommended them to read the acts and laws on the subject for themselves. They then requested that he would not, in future, receive an accusation against them, but at the mouth of two or three witnesses. He said, “No, by no means; and you may have free access to me at all times.” They thanked his lordship, and departed.[266]
This was the first muttering of the storm soon to burst upon them. William Warburton was not yet a bishop, but he was already a vigorous and well known writer, and rector of Brand Broughton, in Lincolnshire. This hot-headed parson was one of the first to fall foul upon the poor Methodists. Writing to Des Maizeaux, in 1738, he says:—
“What think you of our new set of fanatics, called the Methodists? There is one Wesley, who told a friend of mine, that he had lived most deliciously last summer in Georgia, sleeping under trees, and feeding on boiled maize, sauced with the ashes of oak leaves; and that he will return thither, and then will cast off his English dress, and wear a dried skin, like the savages, the better to ingratiate himself with them. It would be well for virtue and religion if this humour would lay hold generally of our overheated bigots, and send them to cool themselves in the Indian marshes.”
In another letter, written in the same year to Dr. Birch, he says:—
“A couple of these Methodists, of whom Wesley was one, travelling into this neighbourhood on foot, took up their lodging with a clergyman of their acquaintance. The master of the house going into their chamber in the morning to salute them, perceived a certain vessel full of blood, and, on asking the occasion, was told it was their method, when the blood grew rebellious, to draw it off by breathing a vein; that they had been heated with travel, and thought it proper to cool themselves.”[267]
Such are specimens of the foul falsehoods which malignant men already circulated concerning Wesley and his companions. But, besides this, the Methodist movement began to be noticed by the pulpit. The Rev. Tipping Silvester, M.A., Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Lecturer of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, preached a sermon on regeneration before the university of Oxford, at St. Mary’s, on February 26, which, without mentioning the names of the Methodist leaders, was evidently meant to be an antidote to one of their distinguished doctrines. The sermon was published, 8vo, twenty-eight pages, and on the title page was “recommended to the religious societies.” The chief point in the sermon is that infants are born again in baptism.
Another sermon, on “The Doctrine of Assurance,” was delivered on August 13, in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, by the Rev. Arthur Bedford, M.A., chaplain to his royal highness Frederick Prince of Wales. This also, with an appendix, was published, 8vo, thirty-nine pages, and had an extensive circulation. It was avowedly intended to refute the doctrine of “those who had of late asserted that they who are not assured of their salvation, by a revelation from the Holy Ghost, are in a state of damnation.” The preacher argues that this assurance “is given to very few, and perhaps only to such whom God calls either to extraordinary services, or to extraordinary sufferings.” He further argues that to profess to have received such an assurance savours of spiritual pride, and cannot but produce bad results.
These were the first sermons published against the doctrines of Methodism, and both of them were extremely temperate when compared with others following.
At the end of the year 1738, Wesley drew up a set of rules for the regulation of the Moravian band societies, some of which were certainly more inquisitive than wise. Eleven questions, to be proposed to candidates for admission, were, upon the whole, unexceptionable; but five others, to be asked of every member at every weekly meeting, savour far too much of the popish confessional to be admired. We give them as an indication of the still unhealthy tone of Wesley’s piety:—
“1. What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?
“2. What temptations have you met with?
“3. How were you delivered?
“4. What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
“5. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?”[268]
No doubt, such questions were put with the best intentions; but the thing looked like a prurient prying into secrets which properly belong alone to a man and his Maker.
The whole of Wesley’s publications, during 1738, have been already noticed, except “A Collection of Psalms and Hymns,” eighty-four pages, 12mo. This small volume was published without the name of either printer or author; but it contains ample internal evidence of its origin. Its publication was contemplated immediately after Wesley’s return from Georgia; and hence the following extract from a letter written by Dr. Byrom to Charles Wesley, on the 3rd of March, 1738.
“As your brother has brought so many hymns translated from the French, you will have a sufficient number, and no occasion to increase them by the small addition of Mademoiselle Bourignon’s two little pieces. I desire you to favour my present weakness, if I judge wrong, and not to publish them.
“I do not at all desire to discourage your publication. But when you tell me you write, not for the critic, but for the Christian, it occurs to my mind that you might as well write for both; or in such a manner that the critic may, by your writing, be moved to turn Christian, rather than the Christian turn critic. I should be wanting, I fear, in speaking freely and friendly upon this matter, if I did not give it as my humble opinion that, before you publish, you might lay before some experienced Christian critics the design which you are upon. But I speak this with all submission. It is very likely that, in these matters, I may want a spur more than you want a bridle.”[269]
The book was probably intended for the use of the Moravian bands and other religious societies’ meetings in London, with which Wesley was more or less connected. It contains seventy psalms and hymns; but it is a remarkable fact that not one of them seems to have been written by Wesley’s brother Charles. One each is contributed by Addison, Dryden, and Lord Roscommon. One is from the Church liturgy, and one anonymous. Three are by Bishop Ken; four by Norris; six by Herbert; thirteen by Tate and Brady; thirty-three by Watts; and six are translations by Wesley himself. The book was never reprinted; but it formed the basis of another hymn-book, published three years after, in which exactly one-half of its psalms and hymns were embodied.[270] It was the first[271] of about forty hymnologies published by the two brothers during the next half-century, and which, as priceless gems, were scattered broadcast among the first Methodists.
With Wesley’s first hymn-book we close the first section of his history.