Part 30 (1/2)

The same motive which led Wesley to dispute with Law actuated him in his separation from the Moravians. In justice to that exemplary body it must be remembered that they were not well represented in London when Wesley split from them. The mischievous notion that it was contrary to the Gospel for a man to search the Scriptures, to pray, to communicate--in fact, to use any ordinances--before he had faith, that it was his duty simply to sit still and wait till this was given him, would, if it had gained ground, have been absolutely fatal to Wesley's efforts. He could not even tacitly countenance those who held such tenets without grievous hindrance to his work.[720] One is thankful to learn that he resisted his besetting temptation, and did not send to the Herrnhut brethren a rude letter which he had written,[721] and thankful also to find that he did full justice to the good qualities of Count Zinzendorf.[722] But as to his separation from the London Moravians, Wesley could not have acted otherwise without seriously damaging the cause which he had at heart. His dispute with Whitefield will come under our notice in connexion with the Calvinistic controversy, which forms a painfully conspicuous feature in the Evangelical movement. It is sufficient in this place to remark that the Antinomianism which, as a plain matter of fact, admitted even by the Calvinists themselves, did result from the perversion of Calvinism, was, if possible, a more fatal hindrance to Wesley's work than the Moravian stillness itself. This was obviously the ground of Wesley's dislike of Calvinism,[723] but it did not separate him from Calvinists; so far as a separation did ensue the fault did not lie with Wesley.[724]

His misunderstanding with some of the Evangelical clergy of his day arose from the same cause as that which led him into other disputes. An overpowering sense of the paramount importance of the great work which he had to do made him set aside everything which he considered to be an obstacle to that work without the slightest hesitation. Now, much as Wesley loved the Church of England, he never appreciated one of her most marked features, the parochial system. Perhaps under any circ.u.mstances such a system would have found little favour in the eyes of one of Wesley's temperament. To a man impatient of immediate results the slowly but surely working influence of a pastor resident in the midst of his flock, preaching to them a silent sermon every day and almost every hour by his example among them, would naturally seem flat, tame and impalpable when compared with the more showy effects resulting from the rousing preaching of the itinerant. Such a life as that of the parish priest would have been to Wesley himself simply unbearable. He was of opinion--surely a most erroneous opinion--that if he were confined to one spot he should preach himself and his whole congregation to sleep in a twelvemonth. He never estimated at its proper value the real, solid work which others were doing in their respective parishes. He bitterly regretted that Fletcher would persist in wasting his sweetness on the desert air of Madeley. He had little faith in the permanency of the good which the apostolic Walker was doing at Truro. Much as he esteemed Venn of Huddersfield, he could not be content to leave the parish in his hands. He expressed himself very strongly to Adam of Winteringham on the futility of his work in his parish. He utterly rejected Walker's advice that he should induce some of his itinerant preachers to be ordained and to settle in country parishes. He thought that this would not only narrow their sphere of usefulness, but also cripple their energies even in that contracted sphere. Mistaken as we may believe him to have been in these opinions, we cannot doubt his thorough sincerity. In the slight collision into which he was necessarily brought with the Evangelical clergy by acting upon these views he was actuated by no vulgar desire to make himself a name by encroaching upon other men's labours, but solely by the conviction that he must do the work of G.o.d in the best way he could, no matter whom he might offend or alienate by so doing. Order and regularity were good things in their way, but better do the work of G.o.d irregularly than let it be half-done or undone in the regular way.[725]

He predicted that even the earnest parochial clergy of his day would prove a mere rope of sand--a prophecy which subsequent events will scarcely endorse.

Not that John Wesley ever desired to upset the parochial system. From first to last he consistently maintained his position that his work was not to supplant but to supplement the ordinary work of the Church. This supplementary agency formed so important a factor in the Evangelical revival, and its arrangement was so characteristic of John Wesley, that a few words on the subject seem necessary. It would fill too much s.p.a.ce to describe in detail the const.i.tution of the first Methodist societies.

It is now purposed to consider them simply in their relation to their founder. The most superficial sketch of the life and character of John Wesley would be imperfect if it did not touch upon this subject; for, after all, it is as the founder, and organiser, and ruler of these societies that John Wesley is best known. There were connected with the Evangelical revival other writers as able, other preachers as effective, other workers as indefatigable, as he was; but there were none who displayed anything like the administrative talent that he did. From first to last Wesley held over this large and ever-increasing agency an absolute supremacy. His word was literally law, and that law extended not only to strictly religious matters, but to the minutest details of daily life. It is most amusing to read his letters to his itinerant preachers, whom he addresses in the most familiar terms. 'Dear Tommy' is told that he is never to sit up later than ten. In general he (Mr.

Wesley) desires him to go to bed about a quarter after nine.[726] 'Dear Sammy' is reminded, 'You are called to obey _me_ as a son in the Gospel.

But who can prove that you are so called to obey any other person?'

Another helper is admonished, 'Scream no more, at the peril of your soul. Speak with all your heart, but with a moderate voice. It is said of our Lord, ”He shall not cry”--literally, scream.' The helpers generally are commanded 'not to affect the gentleman. You have no more to do with this character than with that of a dancing-master.' And again, 'Do not mend our rules, but keep them,' with much more to the same effect. His preachers in Ireland are instructed how they are to avoid falling into the dirty habits of the country and the most minute and delicate rules about personal cleanliness are laid down for them.

The congregations are ruled in almost the same lordly fas.h.i.+on as the preachers. Of a certain congregation at Norwich Wesley writes, 'I told them in plain terms that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society that I knew in the three kingdoms. And G.o.d applied to their hearts, so that many were profited, but I do not find that one was offended.'[727] At one time he had an idea that tea was expensive and unwholesome, and his people are commanded to abstain from the deleterious beverage, and so to 'keep from sickness and pay their debts.' 'Many,' he writes, 'tell me to my face I can persuade this people to anything;' so he tried to persuade them to this. In the same year (1746) he determines to physic them all.

'I thought,' he says, 'of a kind of desperate experiment. I will prepare and give them physic myself.' This indefatigable man provided for their minds as well as for their souls and bodies. He furnished them with a 'Christian library,' writing, abridging, and condensing many books himself, and recommending and editing others; and few, probably, of the early Methodists read anything else.

As to the Conference, Wesley clearly gave its members to understand that his autocracy was to be in no way limited by their action. '_They_ did not,' he writes, 'desire the meeting, but _I_ did, knowing that in the mult.i.tude of counsellors there is safety. But,' he adds significantly, 'I sent for them to advise, not to govern me. Neither did I at any of those times divest myself of any part of that power which the providence of G.o.d cast upon me without any desire or design of mine. What is that power? It is a power of admitting into and excluding from the societies under my care; of choosing and removing stewards, of receiving or not receiving helpers: of appointing them where, when, and how to help me, and of desiring any of them to meet me when I see good.'[728] They never dreamt of disobeying him. So great was the awe which he inspired that when the Deed of Declaration was drawn up in 1784, and Wesley selected, somewhat arbitrarily, one hundred out of one hundred and ninety-two preachers to be members of the Conference, though several murmured and thought it hard that preachers of old standing should be rejected, yet when the time came none durst oppose him. 'Many,' writes one of the malcontents, 'were averse to the deed, but had not the courage to avow their sentiments in Conference. Mr. Wesley made a speech and invited all who were of his mind to stand up. They all rose to a man.'[729]

It certainly was an extraordinary power for one man to possess; but in its exercise there was not the slightest taint of selfishness, nor yet the slightest trace that he loved power for power's sake. His own account of its rise is perfectly sincere, and artless, and, it is honestly believed, perfectly true. 'The power I have,' he writes, 'I never sought; it was the unadvised, unexpected result of the work which G.o.d was pleased to work by me. I therefore suffer it till I can find some one to ease me of my burthen.' He used his power simply to promote his one great object--to make his followers better men and better citizens, happier in this life and thrice happier in the life to come.

If it was a despotism it was a singularly useful and benevolent despotism, a despotism which was founded wholly and solely upon the respect which his personal character commanded. Surely if this man had been, as his ablest biographer represents him,[730] an ambitious man, he would have used his power for some personal end. He would at least have yielded to the evident desire of some of his followers and have founded a separate sect, in which he might have held a place not much inferior to that which Mahomet held among the faithful. But he spoke the truth when he said, 'So far as I know myself, I have no more concern for the reputation of Methodism than for the reputation of Prester John.'[731]

When he heard of accusations being brought against him of 'shackling free-born Englishmen' and of 'doing no less than making himself a Pope,'

he defended his power with an artless simplicity which was very characteristic of the man. 'If,' he said, 'you mean by arbitrary power a power which I exercise singly, without any colleague therein, this is certainly true; but I see no harm in it. Arbitrary in this sense is a very harmless word. I bear this burden merely for your sakes.' It is a defence which one could fancy an Eastern tyrant making for the most rigorous of 'paternal governments.' But Wesley was no tyrant; he had no selfish end in view; it was literally 'for their sakes' that he ruled as he did; and since he was infinitely superior to the ma.s.s of his subjects (one can use no weaker term) in point of education, learning, and good judgment, it was to their advantage that he did so.

At any rate a Churchman may be pardoned for thinking this, for one effect of his unbounded influence was to prevent his followers from separating from the Church. His sentiments on this point were so constantly and so emphatically expressed that the only difficulty consists in selecting the most suitable specimens. Perhaps the best plan will be to quote a few pa.s.sages in chronological order, written at different periods of his life, to show how unalterable his opinions were on this point, however much he might alter them in others. At the very first Conference--in 1744, only six years after his conversion--we find him declaring (for of course the dicta of Conference were simply his own dicta), 'We believe the body of our hearers will even after our death remain in the Church, unless they are thrust out. They will either be thrust out or leaven the Church.' A few years later, 'In visiting cla.s.ses ask everyone, ”Do you go to church as often as you did?” Set the example and immediately alter any plan that interfereth therewith. Are we not unawares, by little and little, tending to a separation from the Church? Oh, remove every tendency thereto with all diligence. Receive the Sacrament at every opportunity. Warn all against niceness in hearing, a great and prevailing evil; against calling our society a Church or the Church; against calling our preachers ministers and our houses meeting-houses: call them plain preaching-houses. Do not license yourself till you are constrained, and then not as a Dissenter, but as a Methodist preacher.' In 1766, 'We will not, we dare not, separate from the Church, for the reasons given several years ago. We are not seceders.... Some may say, ”Our own service is public wors.h.i.+p.” Yes, in a sense, but not such as to supersede the Church service. We never designed it should! If it were designed to be instead of the Church service it would be essentially defective, for it seldom has the four grand parts of public prayer--deprecation, pet.i.tion, intercession, and thanksgiving. Neither is it, even on the Lord's Day, concluded with the Lord's Supper. If the people put ours in the place of the Church service, we _hurt_ them that stay with us and _ruin_ them that leave us.' In 1768, 'We are, in truth, so far from being enemies to the Church that we are rather bigots to it. I dare not, like Mr. Venn, leave the parish church where I am, and go to an Independent meeting. I advise all over whom I have any influence to keep to the Church.' In 1777, in the remarkable sermon which he preached on laying the foundation of the City Road Chapel, after having given a succinct but graphic account of the rise and progress of Methodism, 'we,' he concludes, 'do not, will not, form any separate sect, but from principle remain, what we have always been, true members of the Church of England.'[732] In 1778, 'To speak freely, I myself find more life in the Church prayers than in any formal extempore prayers of Dissenters.' In 1780, 'Having had opportunity of seeing several Churches abroad, and having deeply considered the several sorts of Dissenters at home, I am fully convinced our own Church, with all her blemishes, is nearer the Scriptural plan than any other Church in Europe.' In 1783, 'In every possible way I have advised the Methodists to keep to the Church. They that do this most prosper best in their souls. I have observed it long. If ever the Methodists in general leave the Church, I must leave them.' In 1786, 'Wherever there is any Church service I do not approve of any appointment the same hour, because I love the Church of England, and would a.s.sist, not oppose it, all I can.' In 1788, 'Still, the more I reflect the more I am convinced that the Methodists ought not to leave the Church. I judge that to lose a thousand--yea, ten thousand--of our people would be a less evil than this. ”But many had much comfort in this.” So they would in any _new thing_. I believe Satan himself would give them comfort therein, for he knows what the end must be. Our glory has. .h.i.therto been not to be a separate body. ”_Hoc Ithacus velit_.”' And finally, within two years of his death, in his striking sermon on the ministerial office, 'In G.o.d's name stop!... Ye are a new phenomenon on the earth--a body of people who, being of no sect or party, are friends to all parties, and endeavour to forward all in heart-religion, in the knowledge and love of G.o.d and man. Ye yourselves were at first called in the Church of England; and though ye have and will have a thousand temptations to leave it, and set up for yourselves, regard them not; be Church of England men still; do not cast away the peculiar glory which G.o.d hath put upon you and frustrate the design of Providence, the very end for which G.o.d raised you up.'

But some years before John Wesley uttered these memorable words had he not himself done the very thing which he deprecated? Consciously and intentionally, No! a thousand times no; but virtually and as a matter of fact we must reluctantly answer, Yes. Lord Mansfield's famous dictum, 'Ordination is separation,' is unanswerable. When, in 1784, John Wesley ordained c.o.ke and Ashbury to be 'superintendents,' and Whatcoat and Vasey to be 'elders,' in America, he to all intents and purposes crossed the Rubicon. His brother Charles regarded the act in that light and bitterly regretted it. How a logical mind like John Wesley's could regard it in any other it is difficult to conceive. But that he had in all sincerity persuaded himself that there was no inconsistency in it with his strong Churchmans.h.i.+p there can be no manner of doubt.

The true explanation of John Wesley's conduct in this matter may perhaps be found in the intensely practical character of his mind. His work in America seemed likely to come to a deadlock for want of ordained ministers. Thus we come back to the old motive. Everything must be sacrificed for the sake of his work. Some may think this was doing evil that good might come; but no such notion ever entered into John Wesley's head; his rect.i.tude of purpose, if not the clearness of his judgment, is as conspicuous in this as in the other acts of his life.

It should also be remembered (for it serves to explain this, as well as many other apparent inconsistencies in his career) that Wesley attached very little value to the mere holding of right opinions. Orthodoxy, he thought, const.i.tuted but a very small part, if a part at all, of true religion. 'What,' he asks, 'is faith? Not an opinion nor any number of opinions, be they ever so true. A string of opinions is no more Christian faith than a string of beads is Christian holiness.' Opinions were 'feathers light as air, trifles not worth naming.' Controversy was his abhorrence; he thought 'G.o.d made practical divinity necessary, but the Devil controversial.' When he entered into controversy with Tucker in 1742, 'I now, he wrote, 'tread an untried path with fear and trembling--fear not of my adversary, but of myself.' Just twenty years later he records with evident satisfaction that he has entirely lost his taste for controversy and his readiness in disputing, and this he takes to be a providential discharge from it. 'I am sick,' he writes on another occasion, 'of opinions; I am weary to bear them: my soul loathes this frothy food. Give me solid, substantial religion. Give me an humble, gentle lover of G.o.d and man. Whosoever thus doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven, the same is brother, and sister, and mother.'

He was anxious to promote a union between all the Evangelical clergy, but it must be on the condition that the points of difference between them should not be discussed. He was quite ready to hand over his opponents to Fletcher, or Sellon, or Olivers, or anyone whom he judged strong enough to take them in hand. He prided himself on the fact that Methodism required no agreement on disputed points of doctrine among its members. 'Are you in earnest about your soul?' That was the one question that must be answered in the affirmative. 'Is thine heart right as my heart is with thy heart? If so, then give me thine hand.' Or, as he elsewhere expresses it, 'The sum is, One thing I know: whereas I was blind, now I see--an argument of which a peasant, a woman, a child, may feel all the force.'[733]

This almost supercilious disregard of mere orthodoxy was all very well in Wesley's days, but it would never have done in the earlier part of the century; for it tacitly a.s.sumed that the main truths of Christianity had been firmly established; and the a.s.sumption was justifiable. The work of the apologists had prepared the way for the work of the practical reformer. If the former had not done their work, the latter could not have afforded to think so lightly as he did of sound doctrine.

Feeling thus that opinions were a matter of quite secondary consideration, Wesley had no hesitation about modifying, or even totally abandoning, opinions which he found to be practically injurious.[734] He confessed, as we have seen, that he was quite wrong in his theory of the Divine origin of Episcopacy, and in his estimate of his own state of mind previous to his conversion in 1738. He very materially modified his doctrine of Christian perfection when he found it was liable to practical abuse, and appended notes to an edition of hymns in which that doctrine was too unguardedly stated.[735] He confessed his error on the subject of Christian a.s.surance in a characteristically outspoken fas.h.i.+on. 'When,' he wrote in old age, 'fifty years ago, my brother Charles and I, in the simplicity of our hearts, taught the people that unless they _knew_ their sins were forgiven they were under the wrath and curse of G.o.d, I marvel they did not stone us. The Methodists, I hope, know better now. We preach a.s.surance, as we always did, as a common privilege of the children of G.o.d, but we do not enforce it under pain of d.a.m.nation denounced on all who enjoy it not.' He thought it idle to discuss the question of regeneration in baptism when it was obvious that baptized persons had practically as much need as heathens to be born again.[736] It was quite as much their fondness for controversy as their rigid Calvinism which put him out of love with the Scotch and made him feel that he could do no good among them.[737]

In accounting for Wesley's repugnance to religious controversy it should not be forgotten that in the latter half of his life controversial divinity had sunk to a low ebb, at least among those with whom he would most naturally come into contact. A man of his logical mind, clear common sense, and extensive reading could hardly fail to be disgusted with much that pa.s.sed for religious literature. He shrunk with a horror which is almost amusing from the task of reviewing religious publications in the 'Arminian Magazine.' 'I would not,' he said, 'read all the religious books that are now published for the whole world.' He protested against 'what were vulgarly called Gospel sermons.' 'The term,' he says, 'has now become a mere cant word. I wish none of our Society would use it. It has no determinate meaning. Let but a pert, self-sufficient animal that has neither sense nor grace bawl out something about Christ and His blood, or justification by faith, and his hearers cry out, ”What a fine Gospel sermon!”'[738]

In fact, Wesley in his later years was very much alienated from what was called 'the religious world.' He had received some of his severest wounds in the house of his friends. Not Warburton, nor Lavington, nor Gibson had spoken and written such hard things against him as many of the most decidedly Evangelical clergy. He clung to the poor and unlettered, not, as it has been a.s.serted, because he desired to be a sort of Pope among them, but because he really felt that his work was there less hampered by the disturbing influence of conflicting opinions, which were barren of practical effects upon the life. As usual, he made no secret whatever of his preference. A n.o.bleman accustomed to flattery on all sides must have been rather taken aback on the receipt of this very outspoken rebuff from plain John Wesley: 'To speak the rough truth, I do not desire any intercourse with any persons of quality in England. They can do me no good, and I fear I can do none to them.'[739]

One can fancy the amazement of Lady Huntingdon, who exacted and received no small amount of homage from her proteges, when she received a letter from John Wesley so different from those which were usually addressed to her. 'My Lady, for a considerable time I have had it in my mind to write a few lines to your ladys.h.i.+p, though I cannot learn that your ladys.h.i.+p has ever enquired whether I was living or dead. By the mercy of G.o.d I am still alive and following the work to which He has called me, although without any help, even in the most trying times, from those I might have expected it from. Their voice seemed to be rather, _Down with him! down, even to the ground!_ I mean (for I use no ceremony or circ.u.mlocution) Mr. Madan, Haweis, Berridge, and (I am sorry to say) Whitefield.' Had it been to an earl instead of a countess the letter would probably have been rougher still; but John Wesley was a thorough gentleman in every sense of the word, and could not insult a female--only if the female had been plain Sarah Ryan instead of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, she would have had more chance of being treated with deference; for Wesley positively disliked the rich and n.o.ble. 'In most genteel religious people,' he said, 'there is so strange a mixture that I have seldom much confidence in them. But I love the poor; in many of them I find pure, genuine grace, unmixed with paint, folly, and affectation.' And again, 'Tis well a few of the rich and n.o.ble are called. May G.o.d increase the number. But I should rejoice, were it the will of G.o.d, if it were done by the ministry of others. If I might choose, I would still, as. .h.i.therto, preach the Gospel to the poor.' He had the lowest opinion both of the intellectual and moral character of the higher cla.s.ses. 'Oh! how hard it is,' he once exclaimed, 'to be shallow enough for a polite audience!' And on another occasion he records with some bitterness of a rich congregation to which he had preached at Whitehaven, 'They all behaved with as much decency as if they had been colliers.' 'I have found,' he says again, 'some of the uneducated poor who have exquisite taste and sentiment, and many, very many, of the rich who have scarcely any at all.' He wrote to Fletcher, in what one must call an unprovoked strain of rudeness, on the danger of his conversing with the 'genteel Methodists.' Indeed, the leading members of the Evangelical school--Lady Huntingdon, Sir Richard and Rowland Hill, Venn, Romaine, and others--were, quite apart from their Calvinism, never cordially in harmony with John Wesley. As years went on Wesley must have felt himself more and more a lonely man so far as his equals were concerned, for in point of breeding and culture he was fully the equal of the very best.

It must not be supposed that Wesley did not feel this isolation. There is a sadness about the strain in which he wrote to Benson in 1770.

'Whatever I say, it will be all one. They will find fault because I say it. There is implicit envy at my power (so called) and jealousy therefrom.' Wesley was not demonstrative, but he was a man of strong affections and acute feelings, and he felt his loneliness, and more so than ever after the death of his brother Charles. There is a touching story that a fortnight after the death of the latter Wesley was giving out in chapel his dead brother's magnificent hymn,

Come, O thou traveller unknown,

and when he came to the lines,

My company before is gone, And I am left alone with thee,

the old man (then in his eighty-fourth year) burst into tears and hid his face in his hands.

One feature in Wesley's character must be carefully noted by all who would form a fair estimate of him. If it was a weakness, and one which frequently led him into serious practical mistakes, it was at any rate an amiable weakness--a fault which was very near akin to a virtue. A guileless trustfulness of his fellow-men, who often proved very unworthy of his confidence, and, akin to this, a credulity, a readiness to believe the marvellous, tinged his whole career. 'My brother,' said Charles Wesley, 'was, I think, born for the benefit of knaves.'[740] It is in the light of this quality that we must interpret many important events of his life. His relations with the other s.e.x were notoriously unfortunate; not a breath of scandal was ever uttered against him; and the mere fact that it was not is a convincing proof, if any were needed, of the spotless purity of his life; for it is difficult to conceive conduct more injudicious than his was. The story of his relations.h.i.+p with Sophia Causton, Grace Murray, Sarah Ryan, and last, but not least, the widow Vazeille, his termagant wife, need not here be repeated. In the case of any other man scandal would often have been busy; but Wesley was above suspicion. His conduct was put down to the right cause--viz. a perfect guilelessness and simplicity of nature. The same tone of mind led him to take men as well as women too much at their own estimates. He was quite ready to believe those who said that they had attained the summit of Christian perfection,[741] though, with characteristic humility, he never professed to have attained it himself.

He was far more ready than either his brother Charles or Whitefield to see in the physical symptoms which attended the early movement of Methodism the hand of G.o.d; but, in justice to him, it should be added that he was no less ready than they were to check them when in any case he was convinced of their imposture. The same spirit led him to attribute to the immediate interposition of Providence events which might have been more reasonably attributed to ordinary causes; this laid him open to the merciless attacks of Bishops Lavington and Warburton.