BX 8495 .W5 L5 1905 
 Little, Arthur W. 1856-1910. 
 The times and the teaching 
 of John Wesley 
 
Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2014 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/timesteachingofjOOIitt 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TEACHING 
 OF JOHN WESLEY. 
 
JOHN WESLEY 
 
THE TIMES AND THE 
 
 TEACHING OF 
 
 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 ARTHUR W. LITTLE, D.D., L.H.D., 
 
 Rector of St. Mark's, Evanston. III., 
 Author of "Reasons for Being a Churchman." 
 
 "John Wesley stands on high in holy jame, 
 And sacred memories cluster 'round his name. " 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO., 
 
 MILWAUKEE, WIS. 
 1905 
 
Copyright, 1897 and 1905 
 By Arthur W. Little. 
 
TO THE 
 
 RT. REV. FATHER IN GOD 
 EDWARD FAWCETT 
 
 BISHOP OF QOTNCY 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED BY ONE WHO HAS 
 WATCHED HIS CONSCIENTIOUS AND 
 HONORABLE RETURN 
 
 FROM WESLEYANISN TO WESLEY 
 
CONTEXTS. 
 
 Preface ix. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Church and the Age 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Student and the Missionary 16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Life Work 26 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Doctrinal Position 32 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Allegiance to the Church 42 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The So-called Ordinations 47 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Peaceful End in the Communion of the 
 
 Catholic Church 60 
 
 Index 65 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 There are two John Wesleys — just as there are 
 two Saint Peters — the Wesley of history and the 
 Wesley of popular tradition. It is my purpose to 
 supplement and thus to correct this imperfect pop- 
 ular impression by calling attention to certain 
 suppressed or forgotten facts in the character, the 
 faith, the work of that great and holy man.* 
 
 I shall first give a picture of the sad religious 
 state of England under the Georges. Next, I shall 
 sketch briefly the life of the Founder of Methodism 
 — a life noble, consecrated, abounding in self-sacri- 
 
 • This has been done before. See, e.g., Wesley in Com- 
 pany with High Churchmen, by H. W. Holden ; The Church- 
 man's Life of Wesley, by R. Denny Urlln ; Wesley and Mod- 
 ern Methodism, by Canon Hockin ; John Wesley, by J. H. 
 Overton ; The Church and Wesleyanism, by P. G. Medd ; 
 John Wesley's Churchmanship and Who Are Wesley's Heirs f 
 by Dean Luckock ; John Wesley Being Dead, Yet Speaketh, 
 by Joseph Hammond ; A Methodist in Search of the Church, 
 by S. T. M'Masters, etc., etc. The earlier Methodist biog- 
 raphers of Wesley, such as Whitehead, Coke, and Moore, 
 and measurably Tyerman In our day, did not Ignore the 
 facts which It is the purpose of this little book to set forth. 
 
X. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 fice and beneficent activity. This I shall do in 
 order to make a background on which to show the 
 teaching of Wesley, the basic principles of his 
 belief, the object of his "Societies," and his living 
 and dying injunctions to his followers. 
 
 I do not claim that Wesley was always consist- 
 ent. As a priest of the Church be sometimes did 
 things which had an unchurcbly look and a non- 
 conformist tendency, of which he seemed wholly un- 
 conscious. Tbese things, however, concerned minor 
 matters of discipline, jurisdiction, tenure of prop- 
 erty, and methods of work in a dark and lawless 
 age; or else they were mistakes of judgment under 
 the bewildering pressure of unprecedented condi- 
 tions and of evils which cried to heaven. 
 
 The great central sweep of his life-current was 
 intelligently, sincerely, loyally Anglo-Catholic. This, 
 I venture to think, will be found to be not only 
 asserted, but proved, in this little book. 
 
 It is necessary to bear in mind that Wesley's aim 
 •, was avowedly to supplement, not to supplant, the 
 Cburch. In all his utterances Wesley assumes 
 that his followers attend the parish church every 
 Sunday and receive the ministrations of tbe parish 
 priest. As the Cburch was at that time deficient 
 in zeal, evangelistic spirit, Christian brotherhood, 
 and subjective religion, Wesley gave his chief efforts 
 to such things in order to remedy a temporary 
 defect and to provoke the whole body of the clergy 
 to do the same. 
 
 But these things, so conspicuous in Methodism, 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 should, as Wesley designed, rest on the bed-rock of 
 sound Churchmanship. Alone and without the sac- 
 ramental grace, the authority, the steady order and 
 control of the Church, they do not constitute a 
 rounded, well balanced, stable system. The best, 
 the most successful period of Methodism was while 
 it was an integral portion of the Church, the Meth- 
 odist "Connection." Had it remained so, the cause 
 of Christ would have been advanced beyond our 
 fondest hopes. 
 
 That for which Wesley most longed and prayed 
 and wrought, viz., the awakening of the Church to 
 the work of saving souls, is now an accomplished 
 fact. Wesley in the dark century dreamed of such 
 a revival, and began it. The Oxford Movement 
 has made it a reality. The dominant spirit of the 
 Anglo-Catholic Communion to-day is Wesleyan in 
 the truest sense of that word. The Church is now 
 in practice, and not only in theory, a Church after 
 Wesley's own heart, and that to a degree which no 
 other religious body has attained. 
 
 That which Wesley most dreaded and deprecated 
 and denounced is also an accomplished fact, viz., 
 the separation of the bulk of his followers from the 
 Church he loved, carrying with them a part, but 
 only a part, of his faith and of his love. 
 
 As rector, for many years, of the parish which, 
 I apprehend, contains the strongest stronghold of 
 Methodism in the world, and is the seat of the 
 Northwestern University, I have seen much of all 
 that is best in the Methodist religion. I have many 
 
xii. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 dear friends in that communion. I have never 
 spoken a harsh or uncharitable word of one of them 
 (or of anyone who loves the Lord Jesus Christ in 
 sincerity and truth). I differ from them only 
 wherein they, as Methodists, differ from their 
 Founder, and wherein I, as a Churchman, agree 
 with him. 
 
 I offer this little book to Churchmen and to 
 Methodists alike. I am not concerned that any 
 others should see it. It is a "family letter." I 
 wish that every Churchman and every Methodist 
 would read it, and that, too, in the kindly spirit 
 in which, God knows, it is meant. 
 
 To my brother Churchmen I offer it in memory 
 of one of our own greatest heroes, "a prince and a 
 mighty man in Israel." This I do with the hope of 
 leading them to a higher appreciation of John Wes- 
 ley and a better understanding of the status of our 
 Methodist cousins — for near of kin we account them 
 still. 
 
 To my Methodist cousins I offer this little book 
 with the honest hope and the earnest prayer that it 
 may lead them to a juster estimate of their Founder 
 and a more faithful following of his teaching and 
 of his example. 
 
 If some of them, as they read his forgotten 
 words, should feel like Josiah, when Shaphan the 
 scribe brought him the long lost Book of the Law 
 (II. Chron. xxxiv. 18-21), it would not be strange. 
 And if so be that, by the mercy of God, here and 
 there one or another should be led to look toward the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xiii. 
 
 old Mother Church and to come home, I, as an 
 honest Churchman, would thank God. There is a 
 light in the Church's window and a loving welcome 
 within. "Antiquam exquirite matrem." But even 
 though this may not happen in a single case, I shall 
 still thank God, if my honest effort will only give 
 my Methodist friends a little more of kindly regard 
 for the old Catholic and Apostolic Church which 
 Wesley loved, and which is far more lovable now 
 than it was in his day. 
 
 If, after manfully facing the same premises, we 
 Churchmen and Methodists draw different con- 
 clusions, then let us regretfully go our several ways, 
 though without agreement, yet not without love. I 
 judge no man, but it was Wesley himself who said: 
 "I do and must blame every one of them for sep- 
 arating. Afterwards I leave them to God." 
 
 I would only add that I wish all Methodists 
 might have the kindly feeling toward the old Mother 
 Church, which I find that many of them still cher- 
 ish in their heart of hearts, and which "certain also 
 of their own poets" have so well expressed, as for 
 example in the following lines: * 
 
 The Church of England, venerable name, 
 
 How rich thy legacy of holy fame I 
 
 Scarce had the Lord ascended from the earth 
 
 When Apostolic zeal gave thee thy birth. 
 
 The trunk that bore John Wesley as Its shoot 
 
 Had plainly not yet withered to the root. 
 
 Her children from this ancient mother sprung 
 
 Will not upbraid her with a heedless tongue. 
 
JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 From her we have our richest heritage, 
 
 Our history has with hers a common page. 
 
 Reformed, not revolutionized, thou hast 
 
 Ne'er broken with the great historic past; 
 
 Freed from the yoke, purged from the papal stain, 
 
 Thy ancient monuments and forms remain. 
 
 Thine are those mighty shrines of prayer and praise 
 
 Which bow the soul and then to heaven upraise. 
 
 Thy noble ritual is sure defense 
 
 'Gainst weak caprice or crude Irreverence ; 
 
 Thine Is the glorious anthem and the choir 
 
 Of seraph voices that in song aspire ; 
 
 Thine are the sacred liturgies more sweet 
 
 As generations the same prayers repeat, 
 
 More deeply hallowed as from sire to son 
 
 The holy Immemorial words pass on, 
 
 With ever richer fragrance round them shed 
 
 By filial reverence for the sainted dead, 
 
 Binding the earlier and the later days 
 
 In one continual chain of prayer and praise. 
 
 Go on, great Church, still make thy faith to shine, 
 
 And with thy might help on the work divine: 
 
 Still, fervor with propriety unite, ■ 
 
 And pour on truth thy learning's steady light; 
 
 Still onward press to nobler, holier deed, 
 
 In all of good be God thy help and speed. t 
 
 t "Methodism," pp. 15-16, 23-4-5. 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 
 
 CHE eighteenth century is the polar night of 
 Anglican history. From the unification 
 and final establishment of the Church under St. 
 Theodore, before England was a nation, until 
 the present day, there has been no one century 
 during which the outlook for Catholic truth 
 and Christian living was so hopeless, as the hun- 
 dred years which followed the death of Queen 
 Anne. Our Church had sunk very low in the 
 thirteenth century; but the two great orders of 
 preaching friars — mendicant Methodists of that 
 age — quickened and purified her. They in 
 turn fell from their first excellence and became 
 a curse, as do all extraordinary agencies super- 
 added to the regular and permanent system of 
 
2 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 the Church, when they have accomplished their 
 temporary mission. 
 
 The English Church, however, got rid of 
 the degenerate followers of St. Francis and St. 
 Dominic; in due time freed herself from the 
 long usurpation of the Roman Pontiffs; sur- 
 vived the fever and delirium of the Reforma- 
 tion, and came out of it all the same old Cath- 
 olic and Apostolic Church. Like a fair woman 
 after a siege of typhoid, she found herself thin, 
 pale, shorn of her golden locks, impoverished 
 with doctors' bills, but the same "elect lady," 
 only purer in blood and brighter in mind. 
 
 Next, we see the Church surviving the hor- 
 rors of the Puritan rebellion. In the Restora- 
 tion settlement of 1662, purified by fire, she re- 
 asserted her Catholicity and claimed her doc- 
 trinal, devotional, and organic continuity more 
 strenuously than before. Charles II. contin- 
 ued, in the main, the ecclesiastical policy of his 
 martyred father. Bad as he was, he neverthe- 
 less gathered about him a noble bench of Bish- 
 ops, the "Caroline divines," of whom, with their 
 presbyters, it used to be said, clerus Anglicanus, 
 stupor mundi! — the Anglican clergy, the won- 
 der of the world ! 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 3 
 
 The accession, in 1688, of William of 
 Orange, a Protestant and a foreigner, rendered 
 necessary by the perversion and the tyranny of 
 James II., was a dreadful blow to the Catholic 
 cause in Great Britain. On political grounds 
 William deprived of their sees and livings six 
 of the best Bishops in England, with four hun- 
 dred priests, and all the Bishops and priests of 
 Scotland, establishing the Calvinistic heresy 
 in the northern kingdom, and attempting 
 (though in vain) to incorporate all forms of 
 Protestant Christianity into the Catholic 
 Church of England. 
 
 The sees were soon filled, for the most part, 
 with latitudinarian Bishops, mere tools of the 
 Dutch king. But, by the mercy of God, the 
 priesthood stood firm. Neither William nor 
 his complacent prelates could frighten or coax 
 the Lower House of Convocation to surrender 
 their Catholic birthright, or even to allow the 
 word "Protestant" to be indirectly associated 
 with the Anglican Church. 
 
 The eighteenth century came in with a 
 gleam of light. Queen Anne was a true friend 
 to the Church. Convocation was allowed to 
 resume its sittings. Great efforts were made to 
 
4 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 conserve the Faith, elevate morals, and encour- 
 age learning; to repair and build churches, to 
 relieve the grinding poverty of the lower clergy, 
 and even to propagate religion in distant lands. 
 
 When the Queen died, in 1714, the Church 
 of England was stronger in the affection of the 
 masses than ever before for a thousand years. 
 It was, however, the glory of sunset. The 
 night — that polar night — was at hand. 
 
 Many who know only the awakened Church 
 of to-day, will hardly credit me if I draw a 
 picture of the Church under the Georges. A 
 majority of the Bishops were Whig politicians 
 promoted for political services. Most of them 
 were gentlemen of scholarly tastes and respect- 
 able morals, living comfortably in their palaces 
 or in London, courtiers, Erastians, Low Church- 
 men. Some of them never visited their Dio- 
 ceses. Confirmation was sadly neglected; dis- 
 cipline, there was little ; energy and enthusiasm, 
 none at all. 
 
 The voice of the Church was hushed. Con- 
 vocation was not allowed to sit from 1717 until 
 1851. The parish clergy became lazy and poor, 
 and largely forfeited the respect which the sa- 
 cred office should always command. The par- 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 5 
 
 ish priest was, indeed, "betwixt the devil and 
 the deep sea." If, in his preaching and his 
 work, he showed zeal and enthusiasm, he was 
 suspected of being a Puritan. If he showed 
 reverence and decency in worship, he was ac- 
 cused of being a "Papist and a Jacobite." 
 
 Those were the days of the so-called "fox- 
 hunting parson." The well-to-do incumbents 
 lived like squires or farmers, doing but little 
 priestly work. The poor curates can hardly be 
 said to have lived at alh^they starved along. 
 
 The civil government was carried on by 
 bribery and corruption. The morals of the 
 nobility and upper classes were frightfully de- 
 praved. The lower orders were sunk in pauper- 
 ism, drunkenness, and brutality. 
 
 Heresy reared its hydra-heads. Infidelity 
 stalked hideous through the realm. Unitarian- 
 ism, Deism, Atheism, came in like a flood. To- 
 land, Shaftesbury, Collins, Tindal, Morgan, 
 Chub, Bolingbroke, Hume, these were chief 
 exponents of tbe anti-Cbristian philosophy. It 
 was a down-grade unbelief. "No dogmatic 
 Christianity; no historic Christianity; no 
 Christianity at all." 
 
 The Church, however, was not dead, but 
 
0 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 sleeping. Her corporate voice was silenced; 
 but individual champions arose, like Achilles 
 when he girded on the armor his mother brought 
 him, and all intellectual assaults against re- 
 vealed religion were fairly met and grandly 
 overcome. Sherlock, Conybeare, Berkeley, War- 
 burton, were, in their special controversies, not 
 unworthy successors of the Caroline divines. 
 Horsley and the great Waterland expelled the 
 demon of Unitarianism which was creeping in 
 the back door of the Church. Bishop Butler's 
 "Analogy," on which he spent the labor of 
 twenty years, laid Deism in the dust. It was 
 the greatest controversial book ever written. 
 It will never die. 
 
 While the Church's great leaders were indi- 
 vidually defending the outposts of revealed re- 
 ligion, the citadel was sadly neglected. Church 
 principles were ignored. Intellectual contests 
 were of small interest to the masses who were 
 perishing for the simple preaching of the Gos- 
 pel, the grace of the Sacraments, and the priv- 
 ilege and inspiration of Catholic worship. 
 Burke has testified that not more than one out 
 of a hundred of the population could read. To 
 such people, of what use were political 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 
 
 7 
 
 harangues, dull homilies on morality, and phil- 
 osophical disquisitions on the "reasonableness" 
 of Christianity? Blackstone once said that 
 whenever he heard a noted preacher in London, 
 he could never discern whether he were a fol- 
 lower of Confucius, Mohammed, or Christ. 
 
 In such an age as this it is not to be won- 
 dered that the Church, though she kept her an- 
 cient liturgy and law, word for word, yet lost 
 many of the proprieties of worship, her old 
 Catholic customs and traditions, the ritual and 
 the decorum of the House of God. The Holy 
 Eucharist was celebrated in most parish 
 churches but once a month or once a quarter, 
 and in some only once a year. It lost its place 
 as the Church's great corporate act of worship 
 and of sacrifice. Many people would no longer 
 stay to the end of the Communion Service. In 
 spite of the canon law which requires all to 
 tarry for the blessing, they would make an os- 
 tentatious withdrawal in the midst of the ser- 
 vice, a retrocession which the late Bishop Coxe 
 used to call, "The Dead March of the Soul," 
 and which has not yet ceased. 1 
 
 1 It is safe to say that even now many of the baptized 
 members of the Church of England have never even wit- 
 
8 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 The law of the Church of England reenacted 
 in the Prayer. Book of 1662 — and still un- 
 changed — required that the ancient eucharistic 
 vestments, lights, incense, crosses, and other 
 accessories of worship and symbols of truth, 
 should "be retained and be in use." 2 But in a 
 majority of the churches not merely most of 
 these things, but the very memory of them, had 
 passed away. The great Bishop Butler was ac- 
 cused of Bomanism because he had cross and 
 candles on the altar of his private chapel. 
 Kneeling in prayer, orientating in the Creed* 
 and Gloria Patri, reverencing the altar on en- 
 tering and leaving the church, 4 even bowing at 
 the mention of the holy name of Jesus, 6 all these 
 universal and beneficent customs, the natural 
 
 nessed a single celebration of the Holy Eucharist, nor heard 
 the "Comfortable Words," nor joined in the Sacrifice, nor 
 sung the Gloria in Excelsis, although two post-Reformation 
 canons forbid any one to withdraw. See a valuable tract 
 by the Rev. John Going, entitled "Attendance at Holy Com- 
 munion the Way to Communion." 
 
 2 See Wirgman's The English Reformation and the Book 
 of Common Prayer, pp. 45-49. 
 
 * See CJiurchman's Life of Wesley, p. 67. 
 
 * Canon vii. of 1603-4. 
 
 5 Canon xviii. 1603-4. See Mine's Presbyterian Clergy- 
 man Looking for the Church, pp. 236-237 ; also Reasons for 
 Being a Churchman (Ed. of 1905), pp. 264-5 and note. 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 9 
 
 expression of faith, of piety, and of love, fell 
 largely into disuse. 
 
 The writer is not now pleading for the res- 
 toration of these things. Most of them have 
 already been restored ; and the rest of them will 
 blossom again, as soon as the remaining weeds 
 of Puritanism and of worldliness shall have 
 been eradicated from the Anglican heart. But 
 whatever be our individual opinions as to the 
 utility and the desirability of some of these 
 things, we must at least remember that they all 
 were, and are, a part of the ecclesiastical her- 
 itage of the Church of England ; that they have 
 never been legally abolished, but only dropped 
 — so far as they have been dropped — and that 
 not in an age of faith and piety, but in the 
 darkest days of our religious history, in an age 
 of coldness, of indifference, and of shockingly 
 bad taste, in an age of abounding heresy and 
 immorality, when the love of many had waxed 
 cold. 
 
 Of Catholic ritual, properly so-called, but 
 little remained, and that chiefly in the Cathe- 
 drals and the collegiate churches. For exam- 
 ple, the ancient ceremonial use of incense — 
 which had never been abolished by law — lin- 
 
10 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 gered in some of the Cathedrals until well into 
 the dark century, when it was dropped at Ely, 
 the last Cathedral which had retained it, be- 
 cause, forsooth, a certain Cathedral dignitary, 
 who had the Italian habit of taking snuff dur- 
 ing divine service, discovered that the combina- 
 tion of incense and tobacco was distasteful, and 
 so gave up, not the snuff, but the incense ! 
 
 One cause of the darkness of this dark age 
 was the fact that, in the face of the increase 
 and change of centers of population, almost no 
 new church accommodation was provided. In- 
 deed, the introduction of the ghastly eighteenth 
 century pews — like sheep pens or loose boxes — 
 wasted about twenty-five per cent, of the seating 
 capacity of the churches. Along with this 
 came the unchurchly custom — against which 
 the Wesleys used to protest — of renting pews, 
 so that in many cases the poor were practically 
 excluded from their Father's house. 
 
 As to music, of course vested choirs and 
 choral services were retained in Cathedrals and 
 in some other churches. But in general the mu- 
 sic of the Church was artistically and eccle- 
 siastically hideous. The Psalter, which was 
 written to be sung, and which used to be so 
 
THE CHUECH AND THE AGE. 11 
 
 gloriously chanted, was commonly read.' The 
 service was for the most part a dull dialogue 
 between the parson and the clerk. The people 
 sat through it in spite of the rubrics, exchanged 
 looks and nods, or whispered and dozed. And 
 in place of the office hymns — what shall I say ? 
 — they used Rouse's or some similar version of 
 the Psalms! 7 
 
 The Christian Year was not lived up to. 
 The daily offices were largely in abeyance. The 
 Friday abstinence was laughed at. The Saints' 
 Days were not generally observed. Even the 
 awful and precious solemnities of Holy Week 
 were often forgotten. Archbishop Cornwallis 
 was greeted with cries of "jSTo popery," because 
 he and Bishop Porteus of London had advocated 
 a better observance of Good Friday, which had 
 become almost obsolete. 
 
 6 Even yet our congregations are strangely slow in de- 
 manding of their clergy the right to sing the songs of "the 
 Sweet Singer of Israel." 
 
 7 "Sternhold and Hopkins," "Tate and Brady," and 
 other doggerel translations of the stately parallelisms of 
 David were also used. The version by the Cromwellian 
 Rouse possessed some merit for his day, but we cannot fail 
 to relish the satire of Dean Swift's parodical apostrophe : 
 
 "King David never would acquit 
 A criminal like thee, 
 Against his Psalms who could commit 
 Such wicked poetrle." 
 
12 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 It may be asked what was the condition of 
 the dissenting bodies in England all this time. 
 I answer that, bad as the Church was, they were 
 infinitely worse, as the Wesleys testify again 
 and again. Dissenters were few, anyway. 
 Churchmen had dropped so nearly to their level 
 of worship and of faith, that, as a sagacious 
 writer has observed, "there was not much to 
 dissent from." The few English Koman Cath- 
 olics were the most respectable of the Separat- 
 ists, but they were bitterly persecuted and kept 
 down. The English (but not the Scottish) 
 Presbyterians, 8 with hardly any exceptions, ab- 
 jured Christianity and became Socinians; and 
 even the Independents and the Anabaptists had 
 less spiritual life and activity than the state- 
 ridden and semi-protestantized "Establish- 
 ment."' 
 
 Erom such a picture of eighteenth century 
 religion, we turn away with horror and with 
 shame. 
 
 A polar night, however, has its moon and 
 stars and aurora borealisj nor is its darkness 
 
 • See Mine's Presbyterian Clergyman, etc., p. 148 (Ed. 
 of 1871). 
 
 • See in this connection Wesley's 55th Sermon, § 12. 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 13 
 
 perpetual, for springtide, in slowly ascending 
 circles, will bring back tbe sun. Tbe picture 
 I have drawn is in general outline ; close exam- 
 ination will sbow light and hope. 
 
 The Church, even then, bound and gagged 
 and prostrate beneath the heel of the State, was 
 still "the Church of the living God, the pillar 
 and ground of the truth." Her ministry was 
 lawful; her sacraments (though often slovenly 
 administered) were valid ; her Prayer Book and 
 canon law, intact. In theory she was all she had 
 been in the days of Bede or Anselm, Wolsey or 
 Bancroft, Laud or Sancroft, all that she is to- 
 day. In many a household, as in the land of 
 Goshen, there was light. At the universities, 
 patristic learning, while not in vogue, was by 
 no means extinct, and among the non- jurors 
 was predominant. In some parishes the priest 
 was a model of all a parish priest should be. 
 Goldsmith's country parson, in "The Deserted 
 Village," was no isolated example. 10 For some 
 
 10 "At church with meek and unaffected grace, 
 His looks adorned the venerable place ; 
 Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, 
 And fools who came to scoff, remained to pray. 
 Even children followed with endearing wile, 
 And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile." 
 Etc., etc. 
 
u 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 years a number of religious guilds or sodalities, 
 founded soon after the Restoration, kept alive, 
 in a quiet way, Catholic Faith, Catholic devo- 
 tion, and holy living." There were still tender 
 and burdened souls who availed themselves of 
 spiritual direction and "the benefit of Absolu- 
 tion," and not a few who communicated rev- 
 erently before partaking of common food. In 
 some parishes early Communions, the proper ob- 
 servance of all Feasts and Fasts, and daily ser- 
 vices were maintained; and in many, alms- 
 giving and works of mercy for the bodies and 
 
 11 "The corruption of manners which had been general 
 since the Restoration, was combatted by societies for the 
 Reformation of Manners, which in the last years of the 
 seventeenth century acquired extraordinary dimensions. 
 They began in certain private societies, which arose in the 
 reign of James II. (A. D. 1685-9), chiefly under the au- 
 spices of Beveridge and Bishop Horneck. These societies 
 were at first purely devotional, and they appear to have 
 been almost identical in character with those of the early 
 Methodists. 
 
 "They held prayer meetings, weekly communions, and 
 Bible readings ; they sustained charities, and distributed 
 religious books, and they cultivated a warmer, and more 
 ascetic type of devotion than was common in the Church. 
 Societies of this description sprung up in almost every con- 
 siderable city in England, and even in some of those in 
 Ireland." — Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, II., 
 594-5. 
 
 Many of these societiea were still in existence In 1738, 
 and "received Wesley with open arms." They seem to have 
 formed a nucleus for his "United Societies." (See Church- 
 man's Life of Wesley, Ap. ill.) 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 
 
 15 
 
 the souls of men. The Church was still the 
 Church, and as such, capable of recovery and 
 rejuvenation. 
 
 Even in the Erastian episcopate there were 
 some bright and shining lights — learned, pious, 
 Catholic-minded men : Wake, Potter, Gibson, 
 Waterland, Butler, Conybeare, Berkeley, 
 Lowth, and sainted Wilson, Apostle of the Isle 
 of Man. But the average of religion and 
 Churchmanship in the century — "the withered, 
 unbelieving, second-hand eighteenth century," 
 as Carlyle calls it — was as I have described it. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE STUDENT AND THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 TT was in such general darkness, coldness, 
 sloth, Protestant Erastianism, degradation, 
 and neglect that John Wesley arose, an Anglo- 
 Catholic zealot, a root out of a dry ground. 
 
 His life practically coincided with the cen- 
 tury, 1703 to 1791. He came of gentle blood 
 on both sides. He called himself "a High 
 Churchman and the son of a High Churchman." 
 His father was a learned and pious priest, of 
 the "high and dry" Ecclesiastical-Tory type; 
 his mother, a true gentlwoman and a saint of 
 the Church Militant. He appears to have been 
 confirmed, and certainly made his first Com- 
 munion when eight years old. Educated at 
 the Charterhouse School in London, he won a 
 
THE STUDENT AND THE MISSIONARY. 17 
 
 scholarship at Christ Church, Oxford, being al- 
 ready, at seventeen years of age, a fine Greek, 
 Latin, and Hebrew scholar. 
 
 At Oxford he read hard, and lived a chaste 
 and frugal life. He took deacon's orders at the 
 hands of Bishop Potter in 1725. The follow- 
 ing year he received a fellowship in "the Col- 
 lege of the Blessed Virgin Mary and All 
 Saints," commonly called Lincoln College — an 
 institution exclusively of divines, founded "to 
 overturn all heresies and defend the Catholic 
 Faith." 
 
 Here he was at once made "Greek Lecturer" 
 and "Moderator of the Classes." He never 
 knew what it was to have a vacation. His read- 
 ing was prodigious. Mondays and Tuesdays he 
 devoted to Greek and Latin; Wednesdays, to 
 logic and ethics; Thursdays, to Hebrew and 
 Arabic; Fridays, to metaphysics and natural 
 philosophy; Saturdays, to oratory and poetry; 
 Sundays, to divinity. He always rose at four 
 o'clock, and worked about eighteen hours a day 
 for the rest of his life. 
 
 His university career was interrupted for 
 two years, which he spent as curate to his father 
 in two rural parishes. He was ordered priest 
 
18 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 in 1728, and returning to Oxford resumed his 
 old work, from 1729 to 1735, making thirteen 
 years of Oxford residence and unremitting 
 study. 
 
 At the time of his eventful return to the 
 university he was a learned High Churchman, 
 with unusual love and appreciation of the early 
 Church, but still rather of the "high and dry" 
 Anglican type. He now outgrew the "dry," 
 and became an unqualified High Churchman; 
 what we call (and correctly, for it is a right use 
 of the word) a Catholic; 2 or, as one has said, 
 "a Puseyite, a hundred years before Dr. 
 Pusey." 
 
 The writings of Mr. William Law, a non- 
 juring Catholic-minded clergyman, awakened in 
 John Wesley and in his younger brother, 
 Charles, a passion for holiness — for the re- 
 ligious life — which lifts them to the plane 
 of saintship. He now becomes the head of a 
 little coterie of young men, like-minded, whom 
 his brother Charles had gathered about him 
 and organized into a club. They read to- 
 
 " Throughout this book I use the word Church as Wes- 
 ley used it. For the meaning of Catholic, see Mason's Faith 
 of the Oospel, chap. vill. ; also Reasons for Being a Church- 
 man, p. 195 (Ed. of 1905). 
 
THE STUDENT AND THE MISSIONARY. 19 
 
 gether (chiefly the Greek Testament) every 
 night. They are staunch Churchmen. They 
 fast every Friday, as the Prayer Book enjoins, 
 and even every Wednesday, as did many of 
 the early Christians. They observe Lent. 
 They communicate every Sunday and holy day, 
 though crowds of their fellow students jeer 
 at them, as they make their way to the altar 
 of St. Mary's, or Christ Church, the only two 
 altars in Oxford at which there was at that time 
 a weekly Eucharist. They are nick-named 
 "Methodists," on account of their strict observ- 
 ance of the methods of the Church as prescribed 
 in the statutes of the college. They visit the 
 schools, the sick, the poor, the prisoners. They 
 keep themselves unspotted from the world. 
 They devote to charity their entire incomes 
 above the barest living expenses — and our 
 zealot continues to do so all of his life, giving 
 to charity a quarter of a million of dollars of 
 his hard earnings, and dying poor. They are 
 rigorously orthodox. They are practically 
 identical with the leaders of the greater Oxford 
 Movement of seventy years ago. 
 
 Of our zealot, in particular, it may be in- 
 controvertibly affirmed that his Christianity 
 
20 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 was scriptural, dogmatic, historical, sacerdotal, 
 sacramental, missionary, and practical, and that 
 he never changed it to the day of his death." 
 
 He hears now a Macedonian cry from the 
 motley colonists and savage red men of far off 
 Georgia. To leave Oxford for any spot on 
 earth must always he a sacrifice. To leave 
 Oxford for the wilderness of America in 1735, 
 to labor among savage pagans and — must I say 
 it? — savage Christians, was nothing less than 
 self-immolation. But he is eager for it; while 
 his Christian-Spartan mother exclaims: "Had 
 I twenty sons, I should rejoice that they were 
 all so employed, though I should never see them 
 more I" 
 
 After a perilous voyage, our zealot begins 
 his work as the active parish priest of Savannah. 
 Beside two daily services, immense pastoral 
 duty, and teaching both by day and by night, 
 his ordinary Sunday work was as follows (and 
 at all or most of the services there appear to 
 have been sermons or instructions) : 
 
 18 He was seventy-two years old when he wrote to Lord 
 Stanhope, "I am a High Churchman and the son of a High 
 Churchman." In 1789 he declared : "I hold all the doc- 
 trines of the Church of England. I love her liturgy. I ap- 
 prove her plan of discipline. I have been true to my pro- 
 fession from 1730 to this day." — Sermon on Heb. v. 4, 
 Works, Vol. VII., pp. 277-280. 
 
THE STUDENT AND THE MISSIONARY. 21 
 
 From 5 to 6:30, Matins and Litany; at 9, 
 service in Italian; from 10:30 to 12:30, the 
 Holy Eucharist as the Church's chief office of 
 sacrifice and praise; at 2, catechising of child- 
 ren; at 3 Evensong; and in the evening, a lec- 
 ture or Bible class. On Saturdays also he 
 conducted services in French and in German in 
 neighboring settlements. He even learns Span- 
 ish, so as to do something for the poor Spanish 
 Jews of the colony. He seems, like Bishop 
 Patteson, to have the Pentecostal gift of 
 tongues. 
 
 Every detail of this work, worship, teaching, 
 and discipline — including the hearing of con- 
 fessions — he carried out on the strict lines of 
 the Prayer Book. But like many a priest, 
 both in England and in America since his day, 
 he found "old Adam too strong for young Me- 
 lanchthon." This conglomerate of eighteenth 
 century Anglicans, with German, French, and 
 Italian Protestants, did not appreciate, and did 
 not wish, the Catholic religion of the Book of 
 Common Prayer. And so they made the place 
 impossible for him. It is true, he did not use 
 the gentleness and the tact, in dealing with 
 weak and erring souls, which every zealot for 
 
22 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 Christ has to learn by hitter experience. Cer- 
 tainly the Anglo-Catholics of to-day have 
 learned it; and now have the ear of all people 
 because they have won their hearts and com- 
 manded their respect. 
 
 Our fiery young devotee made enemies, did 
 some rash things, and became involved in a law- 
 suit, lie was disappointed, too, in his work 
 among the Indians. At this time also he had 
 the bitter trial of a disappointment in a pure 
 and honest love. And so with a sad heart he 
 returned to England, for awhile — and naturally 
 — a crushed and melancholy man. 
 
 Wesley himself underestimated the perma- 
 nent value of his work in Georgia. It was, 
 however, far from being a failure. His suc- 
 cessor, Mr. Whitefield, declared: "The good 
 Mr. John Wesley has done in America is inex- 
 pressible. 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." 
 
 In this trying period, Wesley had the mis- 
 fortune to fall under the influence of those 
 morbid, ascetic, but lovable pietists, the Mo- 
 ravians. It is crnel injustice to such a man to 
 
THE STUDENT AND THE MISSIONARY. 23 
 
 place much stress on hasty and frantic words 
 uttered at such a time. He wrote in his jour- 
 nal: "I went to America to convert the In- 
 dians ; but oh ! who shall convert me ?" But he 
 himself, when years after, his eye fell on the 
 sentence quoted above, wrote on the margin: 
 "I am not so sure of this." He had also writ- 
 ten : "I am a child of wrath, an heir of hell." 
 But in his old age he added a note, "I believe 
 not." That entry in the journal, says he, "was 
 wrote in the anguish of my heart, to which I 
 gave vent between God and my own soul." 
 Let us cover it with the mantle of love and 
 pity. If this man were not a true Christian 
 in Oxford and in Georgia, "God help the 'true 
 Christians' of to-day !" In the calm retrospect 
 of his sixty-ninth year he writes: "Vitce me 
 redde priori" — Give me back to my former life 
 — "Let me be again an Oxford Methodist. I did 
 then walk closely with God, and redeem the 
 time." 
 
 The same will apply to all this good man's 
 talk about his never having been a Christian, 
 when for awhile the Moravians had instilled 
 into his broken heart the heresy that no one 
 could be a Christian until he had experienced 
 
24 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 instantaneous conversion, and felt a "full assur- 
 ance" of salvation. He thought he received 
 this soon after ; and for a time, while under the 
 illusion, he and his brother, Charles, preached 
 the necessity of it to the people. But in his 
 mature age he left on record: "I marvel that 
 they did not stone us!" and he expresses the 
 hope that his followers "know better now." 14 
 
 Some smoke from this Moravian furnace 
 dimmed for a time his spiritual vision ; and left 
 henceforth, as it were, the smell of fire about 
 his garments. But it did not destroy his alle- 
 giance to the Church. 
 
 And here it must be remarked that Wesley 
 honestly thought — as indeed many other good 
 Churchmen have thought until quite recently 
 — that the Moravian sect, possessing as it does 
 much of truth and piety and grace, was really 
 a portion of the Catholic Church with the Apos- 
 tolic episcopate and valid sacraments. Other- 
 wise, he would have had nothing whatever to 
 do with it. A visit to their headquarters in 
 Germany and a long interview with their chief, 
 Count Zinzendorf — that mixture of piety, fa- 
 
 " Letter to Melville, Southey's Life of Wesley, I., 251 
 (Ed. of 1846). 
 
THE STUDENT AND THE MISSIONARY. 25 
 
 naticism, and pride — soon opened his eyes. 
 Though retaining kindly feelings toward the 
 Moravians, he broke from their snares. The 
 clouds rolled away. Nor was the Father's 
 face ever again hidden from him. He lived 
 in grace and in peace, in conscious communion 
 with God, and in love and burning zeal for 
 souls. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LIFE WOKK. 
 
 771 ESLEY now entered on a career of work 
 such as no other mortal man ever accom- 
 plished, a career which can be appreciated only 
 by understanding the sloth, the formalism, the 
 Protestant Erastianism, amid which he blazed 
 forth like a comet athwart the midnight sky. 
 From 1739, when he was thirty-six years of age, 
 until 1791, in his eighty-eighth year, he trav- 
 elled, mostly on horseback, by bad roads and no 
 roads, two hundred and twenty-five thousand 
 miles, an average of four thousand and five hun- 
 dred miles a year, preaching (in addition to con- 
 ference addresses) more than forty thousand 
 sermons, an average, say, of one thousand a 
 year, an average of three or four every day, the 
 
LIFE WORK. 
 
 27 
 
 first always at five o'clock in the morning; 
 preaching in churches and houses, but chiefly in 
 the open air, sometimes to audiences of twenty 
 thousand at once. Nor was this all. His powers 
 of organization and of leadership were like a 
 Loyola's or a Napoleon's. He founded hundreds 
 of societies, and governed them with more than 
 Napoleonic vigor and mastery of detail. He 
 established and managed schools and hospitals. 
 He wrote infinite letters. He maintained his 
 old studies. He kept abreast of the literature, 
 the science, the politics, the controversies, the 
 philanthropies of the age. He edited papers 
 and magazines. He wrote and compiled more 
 than two hundred volumes. 
 
 He conceived and created within the Church 
 a vast body of lay preachers, or "lay helpers," 
 as he commonly called them, something like our 
 lay readers, but more like our preaching friars 
 of the thirteenth century. His work was 
 chiefly among the poor, the outcast, the 
 neglected — as he says, "the lost sheep of the 
 Church of England." Though a gentleman, 
 born and bred, and at home in the most intel- 
 lectual society of the age, with such men as Dr. 
 Johnson and Bishop Lowth, his heart was with 
 
28 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 the lowly. The worldliness, the sensuality, the 
 materialism of the rich he could not abide. 
 "Cultivated pagans," says he, "commonly called 
 Christians" ! His preaching was such as Eng- 
 land had never heard before. Crowds hung 
 breathless on his simple, practical, earnest, and 
 awful words. Throughout the length and 
 breadth of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the 
 adjacent isles, he raised the fallen, enlightened 
 the ignorant, strengthened the faithful, roused 
 the indifferent, and brought back thousands and 
 tens of thousands to the Mother Church. 
 Truly it may be said of him: "He behaved 
 himself uprightly in the conversion of the 
 people, and took away the abominations of 
 iniquity."" In some parishes a majority of 
 the worshippers were men and women whom 
 Wesley had reclaimed from unbelief and 
 viciousness of life. 
 
 His followers he gathered into classes and 
 conferences, a vast guild or brotherhood within 
 the Church — something like our great Brother- 
 hood of St. Andrew. They met together for 
 prayer, Bible study, exhortation, and the singing 
 of hymns, to supplement the work of the Church, 
 
 » Ecclus. xllr. 2. 
 
LIFE WORK. 
 
 29 
 
 but only at such hours as would not clash with 
 the hours of the regular Church services. Wes- 
 ley compiled the first vernacular hymn book of 
 the English Church. He believed that muaic 
 is the handmaid of Eeligion. He loved the 
 music of the Communion service. After his 
 visit to Exeter in 1782, he wrote in his journal : 
 "I was much pleased with the decent behavior 
 of the whole congregation at the Cathedral, and 
 also with the solemn music at the Post-Com- 
 munion — one of the finest compositions I ever 
 heard." 
 
 Schism or separation from the Church he 
 regarded not only as unnecessary and inexpe- 
 dient, but as a folly and a sin. Dissenters he 
 allowed to attend his ministrations, with a view 
 to reclaiming them ; but every feature of dissent 
 he conscientiously detested and abhorred, mak- 
 ing it a habit of his life — from which he rarely 
 ever departed — not to set foot inside their con- 
 venticles. Even dissenting Baptism, "lay Bap- 
 tism," as he called it, he (mistakenly, I think, 
 but emphatically) refused to allow. 
 
 That such zeal in the midst of sloth, such 
 Catholicity in the midst of a fossilized Protest- 
 antism, such trumpet blasts in the catacombs 
 
30 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 of the dead, should stir up the dry bones and 
 rouse opposition, is not strange. The wonder 
 is that the hostility was not greater. It must 
 be remembered, too, that our zealot began this 
 great work under the suspicion of Moravian 
 heresy which merited anathema. Then the ex- 
 cesses and bad taste of many of his followers 
 — though Wesley himself was never guilty of 
 sensationalism, bad taste, or any vulgarity — 
 caused natural suspicion. The novelty of his 
 methods, such as the employment of lay helpers, 
 and preaching in the open air, with his disre- 
 gard of parish bounds (for which, however, he 
 claimed a technical justification), 18 led many to 
 fear that the movement was really sectarian; 
 while, on the other hand, his bold proclamation 
 of the Catholic doctrine and practice of the 
 Prayer Book, produced a widespread suspicion 
 of Romanism, so that this loyal Anglo-Catholic 
 
 10 His alleged canonical excuse was as follows : "Being 
 ordained a priest, by the commission I then received, I am a 
 priest of the Church Universal ; and being ordained as fel- 
 low of a college, I was not limited to any particular cure, 
 but have an indeterminate commission to preach the Word 
 of God in any part of the Church of England. I conceive 
 not, therefore, that in preaching here by this commission I 
 break any human law." — Wesley's conversation with Bishop 
 Butler. 
 
LIFE WORK. 
 
 31 
 
 was constantly greeted with the silly cry of 
 "No popery !" 
 
 At the start, therefore, most of the parish 
 clergy, very naturally, refused to invite this 
 zealot and his brother Charles to preach in the 
 parish churches. Yet, be it well understood, 
 no formal ecclesiastical censure ivas ever visited 
 upon them. Most of the Bishops treated them 
 with courtesy and consideration, some with 
 friendship and confidence. The worst opposi- 
 tion the Wesleys encountered was, first, from 
 low mobs; and, second, from Calvinists. As 
 their loyalty to the Church became apparent, 
 they were in demand as preachers in the parish 
 churches all over the land. And they them- 
 selves would have died rather than leave the 
 Church. Certain it is that, in spite of their 
 giving offense and some reasonable grounds of 
 suspicion, they were treated an hundred times 
 better than Keble, Pusey, Neale, Littledale, 
 Lowder, ATackonochie, Tooth, Enraght, Bell- 
 Coxe, Dolling, the Bishop of Brechin, the Bish- 
 op of Lincoln, and many another true Wesleyan 
 of our day. 
 
CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 DOCTEINAL POSITION. 
 
 TPEOPOSE now to show the status of this 
 Anglican zealot on certain fundamental 
 principles of the Church, and his loyalty to the 
 Church. 
 
 As to the three Creeds and the Articles, as 
 to the Bible and Prayer Book, with all that they 
 contain, he believed them all, he stood for them 
 all, he fought for them all. He was even far 
 above the average Anglican priest of to-day 
 in what — for want of a better word — we may 
 call Churchmanship. 
 
 He always believed and taught the Catholic 
 doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. He never 
 denied it; he never doubted it; though un- 
 fortunately he used the word regeneration in a 
 
DOCTRINAL POSITION. 33 
 
 secondary and figurative sense also, as equiv- 
 alent to conversion. This was a mistake, a 
 far-reaching blunder. But the blunder on his 
 part was philological rather than theological. 
 
 In his "Treatise on Baptism," published in 
 1756, and republished by himself verbatim, in 
 1773, he says: 
 
 "By Baptism, we who were by nature children of 
 wrath, are hereby made the children of God. And this 
 regeneration which our Church in so many places 
 ascribes to Baptism is more than barely being admitted 
 into the Church, although commonly connected there- 
 with. Being grafted into the Body of Christ, we are 
 made the children of God by adoption and grace. This 
 is grounded on the plain words of our Lord, 'Except a 
 man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter 
 the kingdom of God.' By water, then — as a means — 
 we are regenerated, or born again. ... In the 
 ordinary way there is no other means (than Baptism) 
 of entering into the Church or into heaven." 
 
 As to the Sacrament of Confirmation, Wes- 
 ley believed that through the laying on of the 
 Bishop's hands, with prayer, the Holy Ghost 
 is given to the baptized. He was urged by 
 Fletcher of Madeley, under certain contingen- 
 cies to administer Confirmation himself. But 
 this he refused to do. He emphasized the prac- 
 tice of Confirmation in the early Church. He 
 says: "Immediately after Baptism, they were 
 
34 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 presented to the Bishop to be confirmed by 
 prayer and the imposition of hands."" 
 
 17 See Wesley's own ed. of his works (1791), IX. 16. 
 For tbe following note I am indebted to The Church Times: 
 "There is never a word of John Wesley's to imply that 
 'he did not believe in Confirmation, nor allow his followers 
 to be confirmed,' or 'take any steps to prevent his followers 
 from receiving Confirmation in their parish church.' On 
 the contrary, it is certain that at the period when Wesley 
 received Valton and Hanby into tbe number of his preach- 
 ers, he was himself strongly convinced that the baptized 
 received the gift of the Holy Ghost 'when, after Baptism, 
 they were presented to the Bishop to be confirmed, by 
 prayer and Imposition of Hands.' Indeed, Wesley went 
 further than this. One of his arguments in confutation of a 
 'current opinion that Christians are not now to receive 
 tbe Holy Ghost,' and that it is mere 'enthusiasm' for those 
 who are already Christians to expect such a gift, is drawn 
 from the Church's 'Order of Confirmation, or Laying on of 
 Hands upon those that are Baptized.' John Wesley argued : 
 'From these passages it may sufficiently appear for what 
 purposes every Christian, according to the doctrine of the 
 Church of England, does now receive ihe Holy Ghost . . . 
 It is to give them, what none can deny to be essential to 
 all Christians, in all ages, those holy fruits of the Spirit 
 which whoever hath not is none of His.' The Holy Spirit 
 Is 'the Promise of the Father,' not simply to convert In- 
 fidels or heathens into Christians, but to Christians them- 
 selves, to confirm, strengthen, edify, and sanctify them in 
 that Christianity which they already have. Mr. Holden, In 
 his John Wesley in Company with High Churchmen, most 
 aptly cites Wesley's deliberate and somewhat defiant lan- 
 guage in his 'Hymn of Petition and Thanksgiving for the 
 Promise of the Father' : 
 
 " 'The Grace, but not the Spirit of grace, 
 
 Their learned fools vouchsafe to allow: 
 He might be given in Ancient days, 
 
 But God, they teach, Is needless now. 
 " 'But God, we know, is given in deed, 
 
 And still doth in His People dwell.' 
 "John Wesley was here contending, as Mr. Holden says, 
 
DOCTRINAL POSITION. 
 
 35 
 
 Again, in Wesley's "Notes on the New 
 Testament" — one of the legal standards of 
 Wesleyan doctrine — we have the following 
 words, which are conclusive as to their author 
 having held the Catholic doctrine on Confirma- 
 tion: 
 
 Hebrews vi. I, "And when they believed, they were 
 to be baptized in the baptism of Christ. The next thing 
 was to lay hands upon them that they might receive 
 the Holy Ghost." 
 
 As to the Holy Eucharist (which is after 
 all the real test of Churchmanship), Wesley 
 believed it to be a sacrifice offered to God as a 
 perpetual memorial of the one great Sacrifice 
 on Calvary; that only a priest, episcopally or- 
 
 'agalnst the argument entertained even by (some) Bishops 
 — the ministers of this Apostolic Ordinance — that not the 
 Holy Ghost, but a grace of the Blessed Spirit, was what was 
 given.' In the whole of this argument Wesley kept close 
 to what he had learned from the best and holiest of all 
 his human teachers, William Law, the real father of all that 
 was wholesome and permanent, as of all that was Catholic 
 In the Methodist movement. Wesley was undoubtedly an 
 opportunist ; and was often led to inconsistent action, as 
 his friend Walker of Truro said, by confusing 'expediency' 
 with 'principle.' But had he been the man imaginatively 
 pictured by Dr. Rigg, he would have administered Confirma- 
 tion himself as a presbyter, after the pattern of the 'Re- 
 formed Churches,' which he certainly did not, nor empower 
 even his 'superintendent,' Coke, to do in America, so far 
 as we are aware." 
 
36 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 dained, can consecrate the Blessed Sacrament; 
 that for others to do so would be "a sin" ; that 
 the Lord's Table is properly (as the English 
 canons affirm) an altar. 18 He believed in the 
 Real Presence and in Eucharistic adoration. 
 He maintained Sunday and all holy day Com- 
 munions, and daily Eucharists during the oc- 
 taves of the high festivals. He was far in ad- 
 vance of his age in insisting on the "mixed chal- 
 ice" and the use of the credence or prothesis. 
 He and his brother believed the daily celebra- 
 tion of the Holy Eucharist to be the Church's 
 ideal, as the following stanza of one of their 
 hymns shows : 
 
 "0 would'st Thou to Thy Church return, 
 For which the faithful remnant sighs, 
 For which the drooping nations mourn; 
 Restore the daily Sacrifice." 
 
 The following extracts from his Eucharis- 
 tic devotions and instructions speak for them- 
 selves : 
 
 "I come to Thee with hope and reverence, and 
 believe that Thou art present in this Sacrament. 
 
 "I enjoy Thee in this Sacrament truly present, 
 though hidden under another representation." 
 
 "Canon VII., 1603-4. 
 
 18 Wesley's "Companion for the Altar." 
 
DOCTRINAL POSITION. 
 
 37 
 
 "We freely own that Christ is to be adored in the 
 Lord's Supper; but that the elements are to be adored 
 
 we deny." 20 
 
 That both John and Charles Wesley held the 
 highest sacramental doctrine is evident from 
 their hymns, which they continued to publish 
 as long as they lived, and for the teaching of 
 which each held himself to be individually re- 
 sponsible. It would be diffictilt to state the 
 Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist more clearly 
 than it is stated in these hymns. Notice, for 
 instance, the following extracts: 
 
 "Now on the sacred table laid, 
 Thy Flesh becomes our Food, 
 Thy Life is to our souls conveyed 
 In Sacramental Blood. 
 
 "Yet may we celebrate below, 
 And daily thus Thy offering show, 
 
 Exposed before Thy Father's eyes; 
 In this tremendous Mystery 
 Present Thee bleeding on the tree, 
 
 Our everlasting Sacrifice. 
 
 "Thou dost even now Thy banquet crown, 
 To every faithful soul appear, 
 And show Thy Real Presence here." 
 
 A thoughtful and accurate writer has ob- 
 served : 
 
 "As to any supposed change in Wesley's principles 
 respecting the sacraments, over and over again did he 
 declare that he had never varied at all from the doctrine 
 
 20 Note that these words, written in 1749, were re- 
 affirmed and reprinted by Wesley himself in 1773, v., 788. 
 
38 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 of the Church of England. Three years before his 
 death he published a sermon on 'The Duty of Constant 
 Communion,' 'written above five-and-fifty years before 
 for the use of his pupils in Oxford,' in which the Holy 
 Eucharist is termed a 'sacrifice,' and the Lord's Table 
 an 'altar'; 'thanking God that he had not yet seen 
 cause to alter his sentiments in any point which is 
 there delivered,' and that 'in the course of fifty years 
 he and his brother were not conscious of varying from 
 the Church in any point of doctrine.' " 
 
 With respect to the grace and authority of 
 Holy Orders, Wesley wrote in 1745 : 
 
 "We believe it would not be right for us to admin- 
 ister either Baptism or the Lord's Supper, unless we 
 had a commission so to do from those Bishops whom we 
 apprehend to be in a succession [the italics are Wesley's] 
 from the Apostles. . . . We believe there is and 
 always was in every Christian Church (whether depend- 
 ent on the Bishop of Rome or not) an outward priest- 
 hood, ordained by Jesus Christ, and an outward sacrifice 
 offered there by men, authorized to act as ambassadors 
 of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. We 
 believe that the threefold order of ministers is not only 
 authorized by its apostolical institution, but also by 
 the written Word." 
 
 In 1748 he wrote: 
 
 "I believe that Bishops are empowered to do this 
 [i.e., to convey the ministerial authority] and have been 
 so from the apostolic age." 
 
 He thoroughly approved the constitution 
 
 of the Church. His belief in the priesthood 
 
 or "sacerdotal office," as he called it, was clear 
 
 and sound. He thoroughly believed in the 
 
 episcopate. He spoke reverently of his own 
 
 diocesan as "the High Priest of God," and of 
 
DOCTRINAL POSITION. 
 
 39 
 
 an ancient Bishop as Summus Sacerdos. Yet 
 here it must be noted that on this point John 
 Wesley was not always consistent. At times 
 the confusion of titles" in the Apostolic Church 
 confused him. And at times he entertained 
 puerile doubts as to whether "in case of neces- 
 sity," the Apostolic Succession might not be 
 handed down through presbyters, on which sup- 
 position he made the one fatal blunder of his 
 life" 
 
 He believed also in auricular confession as 
 a help to sin-burdened souls." 
 
 " The writer begs to refer to his Reasons for Being a 
 Churchman, chapter IX., "Primitive Episcopacy and Its 
 Official Titles." 
 
 22 Wesley was not always consistent on the subject of 
 Apostolic Succession. Again and again he asserted it, and 
 yet more than once he spoke of "the uninterrupted succes- 
 sion" as "a fable." He probably referred not to the fact 
 of the transmission of Holy Orders, but to the authenticity 
 of the extant lists of Bishops back to the Apostolic age. 
 (See Churchman's Life of Wesley, p. 72, and Hammond's 
 John Wesley, p. 88 et seq.) He regarded Courayer's De- 
 fence of Anglican Orders as unanswerable. When he some- 
 times spoke of himself as a "Scriptural Bishop," he said : 
 "I spoke on Lord King's supposition, that Bishops and 
 Priests are essentially one order." Lord King's book, how- 
 ever, was written when the author was only twenty-two years 
 of age, and a Presbyterian. It was easily refuted by a 
 Churchman, whereupon Lord King repudiated it and with- 
 drew it, and conformed to the Church. (See Churchman's 
 Life of Wesley, Appendix viil.) 
 
 "Wesley's Works (Ed. 1829), V. 792. 
 
40 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 He loved every detail of Church worship, 
 and approved of every sacrament, ordinance, 
 rite, and ceremony of the Church. The Christ- 
 ian Year was his delight. He loved its round 
 of festival and fast. He used to teach that a 
 man can no more go to heaven without fasting 
 than without praying. Very precious to him 
 was the dear feast of All Saints. The com- 
 munion of saints was to him a reality. He 
 believed in prayers for the faithful departed, 
 and devoutly taught and used them. 21 He al- 
 
 24 The following are extracts from his Manual of Daily 
 Prayer, first published in 1735, and deliberately republished 
 by its author, with the ne varietur of the Preface, in 
 1771-3 : 
 
 Sunday morning. — "Grant that they and those that are 
 already dead in the Lord may at length enjoy Thee." 
 
 Monday morning. — "O grant that we, with those that 
 are already dead in Thy faith and fear, may together par- 
 take of a joyful resurrection." 
 
 Monday evening. — "Bring them and us, with those that 
 already rest from their labours, into the joy of our Lord." 
 
 Tuesday morning. — "Grant that we all, together with 
 those that now sleep in Thee, may awake to life everlasting." 
 
 Tuesday evening, also Wednesday morning, Thursday 
 evening, and Saturday morning. — "Grant that we and all 
 the members of Thy Holy Church may find mercy in the 
 dreadful day of judgment." 
 
 Thursday morning. — "That we, together with all those 
 who are gone before us in Thy faith and fear, may find a 
 merciful acceptance at the last day." 
 
 Friday morning. — "Bring us, with all those that have 
 pleased Thee from the beginning of the world, into the 
 glories of Thy Son's Kingdom." 
 
 Friday evening. — "By Thy infinite mercies vouchsafe to 
 
DOCTRINAL POSITION. 
 
 41 
 
 ways spoke of his loved ones who had died in 
 the Lord as being in Paradise. 
 
 Next to the oracles of God, he bowed his 
 will to the authority of Holy Church. As he 
 believed, so he taught, through evil report and 
 through good report, declaring in his old age, 
 two years before his death, "I have uniformly 
 gone on for fifty years, never varying from the 
 doctrine of the Church at all." 
 
 bring us, with those that are dead in Thee, to rejoice to- 
 gether before Thee." 
 
 Saturday evening. — "O Lord, Thou God of spirits and 
 of all flesh, be mindful of Thy faithful from Abel the just 
 even unto this day ; and for Thy Son's sake give to them 
 and us in Thy due time a happy resurrection and a glorious 
 rest at Thy right hand for evermore." 
 
 It is thus evident that John Wesley, at the mature age 
 of 68, when carefully revising his writings, desired that 
 those who used his manual of daily prayer should make 
 daily intercession for the departed. These intercessions 
 are retained in the editions of Wesley's works published 
 after his death, in 1809 and 1818, but are suppressed in 
 Jackson's edition of 1829. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ALLEGIANCE TO THE CHURCH. 
 
 €XTRACTS from Wesley's voluminous writ- 
 ings have often been printed in tracts, pam- 
 phlets, and catenae, showing what sort of 
 Churchman he was. I give here, from among 
 many, some of the more important of his senti- 
 ments and exhortations, arranged in chronolog- 
 ical order from 1744 to 1791, proving thus that 
 he never abandoned the orthodox position so 
 long as he lived : M 
 
 26 These quotations are from the Oxford edition of 
 Wesley's works, of 1829, containing the last corrections 
 of the author, made In his old age. I give the dates and 
 references, all of which I have carefully verified. Nearly 
 all of them, with others, will be found in that excellent 
 catena entitled "Pastoral Advice of the Rev. John Wesley, 
 M.A., Edited by the Rev. James S. Pollock, M.A.," to which 
 I acknowledge my Indebtedness, and to which I refer the 
 reader. 
 
ALLEGIANCE TO THE CHURCH. 43 
 
 At the first meeting of all our preachers in confer- 
 ence, in June, 1744, I exhorted them to keep to the 
 Church." (1744.)" 
 
 "I dare not renounce communion with the Church 
 of England. As a minister, I teach her doctrines; I 
 use her offices; I conform to her rubrics; I suffer re- 
 proach for my attachment to her." (1746.)" 
 
 "After dinner, one of our brethren asked if I was 
 ready to go to a meeting. I told him, / never go to a 
 meeting. He seemed as much astonished as the old Scot 
 at Newcastle, who left us because we were mere Church 
 of England men." (1756.)" 
 
 "My brother and I closed the conference, by a sol- 
 emn declaration of our purpose never to separate from 
 the Church, and all our brethren cheerfully concurred 
 therein." (1756.)" 
 
 In 1758 he wrote a little book, entitled 
 "Reasons against a Separation from the Church 
 of England against all Dissenters." 
 
 "Whosoever separates from the Church, will sep- 
 arate from the Methodists." (1760.)'° 
 
 He was asked : "Can you constantly charge 
 your people to attend the worship of our Church 
 and not Dissenters' meetings?" He replied: 
 "I can ; this is consistent with all I have writ- 
 ten, and all I have done for many years." 
 (1760.)" 
 
 "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, to go 
 to an Independent meeting. I advise all over whom I 
 
 "Vol. XIII., p. 236. 
 "VIII., 444. 
 "II., 381. 
 
 "XIII., 305. 
 "II., 260. 
 "XIII., 352-3. 
 
44 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 have any influence to keep steadily to the Church." 
 (1769.)" 
 
 While in Scotland, in 1772, he writes: 
 
 "I attended the Church of England service in the 
 morning, and that of the Kirk [the Presbyterian] in 
 the afternoon. Truly no man, having drunk old wine, 
 straightway desireth new! How dull and dry did the 
 latter appear to me, who had been accustomed to the 
 former ! " 33 
 
 He had no liking for Presbyterianism. The 
 Scottish reformers he described as "fierce, sour, 
 and bitter of spirit." When he saw the massive 
 ruins of the Abbey of Arbroath (which Sir 
 Walter Scott has immortalized in The An- 
 tiquary), which the reformers had burned, he 
 exclaimed: "God deliver us from reforming 
 mobs !" 
 
 "I began preaching without delay, and warned 
 them of the madness which was spreading among them; 
 namely, leaving the Church. Most of them will, I be- 
 lieve, take my advice; I hope all that are of our So- 
 ciety." ( 1773.) 31 
 
 "The Methodists at Oxford were all one body, and, 
 as it were, one soul ; zealous for the religion of the 
 Bible, and of the primitive Church, and in consequence, 
 of the Church of England, as they believed it to come 
 nearer the scriptural and primitive form than any other 
 national Church upon earth. We do not, we will not, 
 form any separate sect; but from principle remain, 
 what we always have been, true members of the Church 
 of England." (1777.) 35 
 
 82 III., 337. 
 
 8 3 II., 463. 
 
 "III., 496. 
 "VII., 429. 
 
ALLEGIANCE TO THE CHURCH. 46 
 
 "Let this be well observed. I fear when the Meth- 
 odists leave the Church, God will leave them." ( 1777. ) 38 
 
 — a warning which he often repeated. 
 
 "I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in 
 ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a 
 solid, scriptural, rational piety, than the Common 
 Prayer of the Church of England." (1784.)" 
 
 "Finding a report had spread abroad [in Bristol] 
 that I was just going to leave the Church, to satisfy 
 those that were grieved concerning it, I openly declared 
 in the evening that I had now no more thought of sep- 
 arating from the Church than I had forty years ago." 
 (1785.)" 
 
 "We fixed both our morning and evening service, 
 all over England, at such hours as not to interfere with 
 the Church." (1786.) 30 
 
 "I told them [the Methodists at Deptford, that 
 'den of lions' who, in Wesley's opinion, 'had neither 
 sense nor even good manners'] if you are resolved, you 
 may have your service in church hours, but remember, 
 from that time you will see my face no more. This 
 struck deep, and from that hour I have heard no more 
 of separating from the Church." (1787.)" 
 
 "Unless I see more reason for it than I ever yet saw, 
 I will not leave the Church of England, as by law estab- 
 lished, while the breath of God is in my nostrils." 
 (1789.)" 
 
 In the same year he preached a memorahle 
 sermon to his 'lay-helpers," in which he says: 
 
 "Did we ever appoint you to administer sacraments, 
 to exercise the priestly office? Such a design never 
 entered into our mind, it was the farthest from our 
 thoughts. And if any preacher had taken such a step, 
 we should have looked upon it as a palpable breach of 
 this rule, and consequently a recantation of our con- 
 nection. I wish all of you who are vulgarly called 
 
 "VIII., 319. 
 "XIV., 317. 
 "IV., 320. 
 
 "IV., 353. 
 10 IV., 375. 
 " XIII., 238. 
 
40 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 Methodists would seriously consider what has been 
 said; and particularly you whom God hath commis- 
 sioned to call sinners to repentance. It does by no 
 means follow from hence, that ye are commissioned to 
 baptize or to administer the Lord's Supper. Ye never 
 dreamed of this for ten or twenty years after ye 
 began to preach. Ye did not then, like Korah, Dathan, 
 and Abiram, 'seek the priesthood also.' Ye knew, 'No 
 man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called 
 of God, as was Aaron.' Oh, contain yourselves within 
 your own bounds! Be content with preaching the 
 Gospel ! Ye yourselves were at first called in the Church 
 of England; and, though ye have, and will have, a thou- 
 sand temptations to leave it, and set up for yourselves, 
 regard them not. Be Church of England men still. 
 
 I dare not separate from the Church. I believe it 
 would be a sin so to do." (1789.) 42 
 
 42 VII., 277-280. I add here a copy of an autograph 
 letter of Wesley, which has just come to light. The original 
 Is in possession of Mr. E. B. Braithwaite, Ealing, W., 
 England : 
 
 "Dublin, July 7, 1789. 
 
 "My Dear Brother. — I am not as a reed shaken in the 
 wind. My yea is yea, and my nay is nay. 
 
 "I have been firm to the Church from my youth up ; 
 and so I shall be, till my spirit returns to God. 
 
 "If Thomas Hornby is otherwise minded, I am sorry 
 for it. 
 
 "I am your affectionate brother, 
 
 "J. Weslby. 
 
 "To Mr. Hall, Junr., 
 
 at Baisford, near Nottingham." 
 
CHAP TEE VI. 
 
 THE SO-CALLED ORDINATIONS. 
 
 E come now to the saddest, most inconsist- 
 ent, most culpable, most fatal blunder in 
 the life of this zealous and godly man — his so- 
 called "ordinations." 
 
 As commonly reported, the story is that 
 this priest consecrated another priest, Dr. Coke, 
 as bishop, and ordained two laymen as priests, 
 for America, and soon after some more for 
 America and some for Scotland. 
 
 The history is miserable enough, God knows, 
 but not quite so bad as commonly reported. 
 
 As to Dr. Coke's case, it must be remem- 
 bered that Coke was a priest of the Church, in 
 the same order as Wesley himself, and could as 
 well have consecrated Wesley a bishop, as Wes- 
 
4S 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 ley have made Coke a bishop. Wesley never 
 intended to' make Coke a bishop. He repu- 
 diated the very idea of such a thing, and bit- 
 terly repented the whole transaction, to which, 
 in his old age, he was "overpersuaded" by the 
 crying necessities of America and the impor- 
 tunities of an ambitious, vacillating priest, Dr. 
 Coke, whose allegiance to the Church sat lightly 
 on him. It was of him that Wesley's great 
 friend, Alexander Knox, wrote: "That Dr. 
 Coke urged Mr. Wesley to this procedure I 
 know with certainty from the Doctor himself ; 
 and full acquaintance with this well meaning 
 but very inconsiderate man makes me feel that 
 Mr. Wesley could scarcely have had a more 
 unfortunate adviser."" 
 
 The Churchmen in America were broken 
 and scattered by the Revolution. They, in- 
 cluding Wesley's followers, who were still in 
 the Church, were as sheep having no shepherd. 
 To get bishops for America seemed utterly im- 
 possible. Even Dr. White, who afterwards be- 
 came the loyal and High Church Bishop of 
 
 43 Letter to Southey (Ap. to last ed. of Southey's Life 
 of Wesley). See also Etheridge's Life of Coke, p. 544 
 (Ed. 18C0). 
 
THE SO-CALLED ORDINATIONS. 49 
 
 Pennsylvania, lost heart and actually proposed 
 the appointment of superintending presbyters 
 who should perform episcopal functions includ- 
 ing ordination, as a temporary expedient, until 
 the "episcopal succession" could be obtained. 
 
 At this juncture, Dr. Coke, an able, hard 
 working priest-associate of Wesley, knowing 
 Wesley's weakness as to the possibility of 
 priests ordaining in cases of necessity, per- 
 suaded him that here was such a case. 
 
 The old man at length yielded, and per- 
 formed what appears to have been the sacrilege 
 of a mock and schismatic ordination. His 
 brother Charles so considered it. At the same 
 time Wesley so guarded his action as to prevent 
 its being an ordination, even had he been a 
 Bishop and thus capable of conferring Holy 
 Orders. The act was deficient in matter, form, 
 intention, canonicity, and every attribute of 
 lawfulness and validity. It was, in fact, an 
 inane and desperate fiasco, and, as Charles Wes- 
 ley said, "realized the Nag's Head ordina- 
 tion."" And truly so, if meant to be an or- 
 dination. 
 
 " See his memorable letter to Dr. Chandler. It is 
 printed in full in A Meth. in Search of the Ch., pp. 201-205. 
 For a brief account of the "Nag's Head Fable," see Reasons 
 for Being a Churchman, p. 169 (Ed. 1905). 
 
50 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 But will the logical reader observe the 
 dilemma involved in Wesley's act regarded as 
 the ordination of CoJce to the episcopate? A 
 Presbyter, A., ordains another Presbyter, B., to 
 the episcopate. Now a Bishop is either iden- 
 tical with a Presbyter, or superior. There is no 
 other supposition. (I.) identical, A. is capa- 
 ble of conferring the episcopate, but B. cannot 
 receive it. (II.) // superior, B. is capable of 
 receiving the episcopate, but A. cannot confer 
 it. Or more fully : 
 
 Presbyter A. affects to ordain Presbyter B. 
 a Bishop. (I.) If on the supposition that a 
 Presbyter is really a Bishop, then the act is a 
 farce, for on that supposition B. was already a 
 Bishop, and remains precisely what he was be- 
 fore. (II.) If on the supposition that a Bishop 
 is of a distinct and higher order, then the act is 
 equally a farce, for A., being on that supposi- 
 tion only a Presbyter and not a Bishop, cannot 
 impart what he himself does not possess. In 
 either case, therefore, B. remains only what he 
 was before, and both A. and B. have committed 
 sacrilege. 
 
 Regarded as an "ordination," Wesley's act 
 was illogical, unintelligible, fruitless, sacrilegi- 
 
THE SO-CALLED ORDINATIONS. 
 
 51 
 
 ous. But regarded as the appointment of a 
 "Superintendent" of Societies, a Legatus a 
 latere, a sort of Provincial Superior of a Re- 
 ligious Order, the act is intelligible; and is rep- 
 rehensible only in so far as it may seem to have 
 imitated — however slightly — the outward form 
 of an awful and sacramental act. 
 
 The writer has often appointed a beloved 
 curate — his co-equal Presbyter — to be the 
 "Superintendent" of a Sunday School. Mr. 
 Wesley's appointment of Dr. Coke amounted, in 
 reality, to nothing more than this — only the 
 "School" was larger, and Dr. Coke took liber- 
 ties with his appointment, going, as he himself 
 acknowledges in his letter to Bishop White, fur- 
 ther than Wesley had designed ; yes, very much 
 further — quam longissime. What were the 
 actual facts? 
 
 Secretly, before daybreak, in his private 
 bed-room, without consulting his wiser brother, 
 who was in the same city (Bristol), the old man 
 of eighty-two years laid his priestly hands on 
 the equally priestly head of Dr. Coke, and "set 
 him apart as a superintendent." He carefully 
 avoided the word ordain and the word Bishop. 
 
52 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 He appointed him or set him apart as superin- 
 tendent. Superintendent of what or of whom ? 
 "Of many people," says he, "in the southern 
 provinces of North America, who desire to con- 
 tinue under my care, and still adhere to the 
 doctrine and discipline of the Church of Eng- 
 land." 
 
 In the case of the two laymen whom he is 
 said to have ordained priests that same day, he 
 himself says he had "appointed them to act as 
 elders," whatever that may mean. This was, 
 in my opinion, a more grievous error than the 
 "appointment of a Superintendent." Wesley 
 attempts to excuse himself for acting upon 
 his absurd hypothesis as to the powers of 
 presbyters, by the plea of necessity, on ac- 
 count of the failure of all efforts to get help 
 for America from the English Bishops, and by 
 imagining himself — doubtless in all sincerity 
 — "to be providentially called, at this time, to 
 set apart some persons for the work of the min- 
 istry in America." He probably meant it to 
 be a temporary makeshift," and he protests 
 
 *» In his letter to "Dr. Coke, Mr. Asbury, and our 
 Brethren in North America," he says : "At present I cannot 
 see any better method than that I have taken." 
 
THE SO-CALLED ORDINATIONS. 53 
 
 again and again that it does not and shall not 
 involve him in any separation from the Church 
 of England. 
 
 The day following he appointed three more 
 for America, and soon after several for Scot- 
 land (which was still less excusable, and a 
 more aggravated offense, as there were Bishops 
 having canonical jurisdiction in Scotland). 
 But he would never allow these appointees to 
 act as ministers, or to wear the surplice, or to be 
 addressed as reverend, when they set foot south 
 of the Tweed, i.e., within the jurisdiction of 
 the Church of England, to which he was even 
 now, inconsistently, loyal. Indeed, in his des- 
 peration, he fell back on a sort of Erastianism, 
 against which he had uniformly protested, and 
 declared: "Whatever is done in America or 
 Scotland is no separation from the Church of 
 England." ( !)" 
 
 When his wiser brother, Charles, from 
 
 "The charge that Wesley "ordained any for work in 
 England proper, has never been proved, and is undoubtedly 
 false. See The Churchman's Life of Wesley, by R. Denny 
 Urlin, pp. 183-4 ; also Overton's John Wesley, p. 206. The 
 total number of "ordinees," according to Mr. Urlin, was 
 "about nine." None of them on returning to England were 
 accorded any rank or prerogative above the ordinary "lay 
 preachers," and none of them took part in "ordinations." 
 
54 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 whom he had concealed his strange act, heard of 
 all this, it broke his heart and aroused his right- 
 eous indignation. Most pathetic are his letters, 
 most keen is his sarcasm. 
 His satire is well known : 
 
 "How easy now are bishops made, 
 By man's or woman's whim; 
 Wesley his hands on Coke hath laid, 
 But who laid hands on him?" 
 
 And that other line: 
 " 'Twas age that made the breach, not he." 
 
 Our rash old zealot's heart is also touched. 
 He at first tries to defend his amazing conduct 
 and to apologize for it; but he certainly regrets 
 it. He writes to his brother : "If you had kept 
 close to me, I might have done better." He 
 admits that he was "overpersuaded." 
 
 Dr. Coke himself knows that his appoint- 
 ment is no ordination. On four different occa- 
 sions, after he had gone into schism, he offers 
 to conform again to the Church, if only he can 
 be ordained a real Bishop." 
 
 47 In this connection one should read A Meth. in Search 
 of the Ch., Chap. XI., and especially pp. 144-5. He applied 
 to Bp. White, Bp. Seabury, Lord Liverpool, and Mr. Wilber- 
 force. Hammond's John Wesley should be read with care, 
 especially pp. 92-6 ; also p. 49. 
 
 I am indebted to the Rev. R. B. Waterman for the 
 following note : 
 
 "No one condemns the claims of Methodist 'bishops' 
 
THE SO-CALLED ORDINATIONS. 55 
 
 Meanwhile, Dr. Coke goes to America, 
 where, in conjunction with a Priest of the 
 
 so unsparingly as the Methodist Dr. Tyerman in his Life 
 and Times of Rev. Jno. Wesley; and I would commend that 
 work to the clergy for its fairness and fulness In giving 
 extracts from Wesley's writings. Tyerman attributes the 
 Methodist episcopate to the 'ambition' of Dr. Coke. He 
 gives a very full account of Wesley's ordination of Coke, 
 and his subsequent letter to Asbury. Here are one or two 
 extracts from Tyerman's work, pp. 433-438 : 
 
 " 'We have no fault to find with the American Method- 
 ists being called the Methodist Episcopal Church, . . . 
 but it was a name which Wesley never used ; and to cen- 
 sure him for ordaining bishops is to censure him for what 
 he never did. He ordained a superintendent ; but he never 
 thought to call him a Bishop.' 
 
 "Again : 
 
 " 'With the highest respect for Dr. Coke, and for his 
 general excellencies, it is no detraction to assert that he 
 was dangerously ambitious, and that the height of his am- 
 bition was a desire to be a Bishop. Some years after this, 
 Coke, unknown to Wesley and Asbury, addressed a confi- 
 dential letter to Dr. White, Bishop of the Protestant Episco- 
 pal Church in Pennsylvania, which, if it meant anything, 
 meant that Coke would like the Methodists of America to be 
 be reunited to the English Church, on condition that he 
 himself was ordained to be their Bishop. In 1794 he se- 
 cretly summoned a meeting at Lichfield of the most In- 
 fluential of the English preachers, and passed a resolution 
 that the Conference should appoint an order of bishops to 
 ordain deacons and elders, he himself, of course, expecting 
 to be a member of the prelatical brotherhood. And, again, 
 It Is a well-known fact that within twelve months of his 
 lamented death, he wrote to the Earl of Liverpool, stating 
 that he was willing to return most fully into the bosom of 
 the Established Church, on condition that his royal High- 
 ness, the Prince Regent, and the government, would appoint 
 him their bishop In India.' 
 
 "Tyerman concludes : These are unpleasant facts, 
 which we would rather have consigned to oblivion, had 
 
56 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 Church, and a Lutheran preacher, he lays his 
 hands three times on the head of a pious, un- 
 scholarly layman, Mr. Asbury, appointing him 
 successively deacon, elder, superintendent. 
 Then he and Asbury call themselves "bishops," 
 and break with the Church ; and Asbury is said 
 to have destroyed a large invoice of Prayer 
 Books which Wesley had sent to America." 
 
 Our zealot has started an avalanche which 
 he cannot control. In vain he writes to Mr. 
 Asbury, including Dr. Coke also in his scathing 
 rebuke : 
 
 "How can you, how dare you, suffer yourself to be 
 called a bishop? I shudder, I start at the very thought! 
 Men may call me a knave, a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel, 
 and I am content; but they shall never by my consent 
 call me a bishop. For my sake, for God's sake, for 
 Christ's sake, put a full stop to this. Let Presbyterians 
 do what they please, but let the Methodists know their 
 calling better."" 
 
 they not been necessary to vindicate Wesley from the huge 
 inconsistency of ordaining a co-equal presbyter to be a 
 Bishop. Wesley meant the ceremony to be a mere formality 
 likely to recommend his delegate to the favor of the Meth- 
 odists in America: Coke in his ambition wished, and in- 
 tended it to be considered as, an ordination to a bishopric' " 
 
 48 See A Meth. in Search of the Ch., p. 104 et seq. A 
 few copies escaped, and one is preserved in the library of 
 the General Theological SemiDary, in New York. 
 
 " Wesley's Notes, VII., 187. The supposition that 
 Wesley had bribed a Greek Bishop, Erasmus of Crete, to 
 consecrate him secretly, is absurd. Greek Bishops cannot 
 consecrate without two co-consecrators. Wesley denied the 
 insinuation. 
 
THE SO-CALLED ORDINATIONS. 
 
 57 
 
 Hampson, Wesley's earliest biographer, 
 writes: "Sometime before his death Mr. Wes- 
 ley repented of the steps he had taken" (in the 
 so-called ordinations) ; and the Rev. James 
 Creighton, a priest in Anglican Orders, one of 
 Wesley's most trusted clergymen, employed by 
 him to celebrate the sacraments in London, and 
 who was induced to unite with him in the "or- 
 dinations," has testified that Wesley repented 
 with tears that he had ordained any of his lay- 
 preachers, and that he expressed his sorrow for 
 it at the conference of 1789, and occasionally 
 afterwards until his death in 1791. In the last 
 six weeks of his life Wesley exclaimed: "The 
 preachers are now too powerful for me !" 
 
 We cannot forbid him to tread the via 
 pamitentice. 
 
 Oh, had he been content to wait but three 
 short months, his followers in America would 
 then have had, in the person of Samuel Sea- 
 bury, a true successor of the Apostles, a Bishop 
 after Wesley's own heart, and one, too, who 
 would gladly (as he told Charles Wesley) have 
 ordained all the lay-preachers in America who 
 were fit to receive Holy Orders. 
 
 Thus the American Methodists drifted away 
 
58 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 from the Church, to our great loss — as we freely 
 admit — and to their own great loss, as many of 
 my Methodist friends have acknowledged to 
 me. 
 
 In England the Methodists remained true 
 to the Catholic Church until after Wesley's 
 death. Then the most of them, step by step, 
 trampled his life-long teachings under their 
 feet, and, ceasing to be Churchmen, ceased to be 
 true Wesleyans. 
 
 I cannot go into the history of the unfor- 
 tunate schism. Suffice it to say, it was the 
 greatest blow the Holy Church throughout all 
 the world has received during the last three 
 hundred years, and was in defiance of the con- 
 victions, the hopes, the plans, the warnings, and 
 the commands of the founder of Methodism. 6 ' 
 
 50 The separation of the English Methodists from the 
 Church was gradual, being marked by three stages : 
 
 I. Soon after Wesley's death it was proposed, in the 
 Conference of 1702, that the lay-preachers should be allowed 
 to administer the sacraments. It was decided to leave the 
 decision to God. by casting lots. The lot was against the 
 proposed sacrilege. At a subsequent Conference, 1795, 
 a vote was taken, and by a bare majority it was decided to 
 allow the lay-preachers to administer the Sacraments. This 
 they proceeded to do (though a majority of Methodist 
 families, for a generation and more, continued to resort to 
 the Church for sacramental ministrations). No laying-on- 
 of-hands, no form of ordination was used. This custom 
 continued for forty-one years. 
 
THE SO-CALLED ORDINATIONS. 59 
 
 "No voice from Heaven hath clearly said, 
 'Let us depart'; then fear to roam." (Keble.) 
 
 H. In 1836, the Conference decreed that thereafter 
 all their ministers should be "ordained" by the laying on of 
 hands. Thereupon three lay-preachers who had never re- 
 ceived, directly or indirectly, any form of ordination what- 
 ever, viz., Messrs. Bunting, Reece, and Newton, laid their 
 hands on the new candidates. This is the origin of the 
 Methodist ministry in England. It has no connection with 
 Wesley. He would have scorned it. It lies under his 
 anathema. 
 
 III. I quote the words of an accurate writer in the 
 Church Times: 
 
 "Down to the Nottingham Conference of 1891, the 
 Wesleyans had never 'assumed the name of a Church' ; 
 up to that date, all neophytes had been admitted by ticket 
 into the 'Wesleyan Methodist Society.' But it was then 
 decreed that when the existing stock of tickets had been used 
 up (for the Conference had a frugal mind), the new ones 
 should bear the stamp of 'Wesleyan Methodist Church,' and 
 measures were taken to advertise the public of the trans- 
 formation — in hundreds of instances, for example, the words, 
 'Wesleyan Chapel' were painted out, and the words 'Wes- 
 leyan Church' painted in, on the notice boards of the Meth- 
 odist sanctuaries." They seem to have forgotten Wesley's 
 own words, "Warn them [the Methodists] against calling 
 our Society 'a Church,' or 'the Church.'" (Wesley's Works, 
 Vol. vi., 358, Ed. of 1810.) 
 
 As late as 1784, when Wesley sent Coke to America, he 
 still forbade his American followers to hold services at 
 Church hours in any place where there was a church. (See 
 Churchman's Life of Wesley, p. 171.) 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PEACEFUL END IN THE COMMUNION OF 
 THE CATHOLIC CHUECH. 
 
 OUR aged priest, after his sad and repented 
 blunder, lived on some five years; still 
 prayed, still preached, still loved. And his love 
 for the dear old Church grew stronger and 
 stronger as the light of the New Jerusalem 
 streamed in upon his ripening soul. The only 
 cloud on his horizon was the dread lest, after his 
 decease, some of his followers — he feared per- 
 haps "a third" of them — should leave the 
 Church. Dear, credulous heart! He little 
 knew ; he little knew ! But he left it on record 
 that if they left the Church, they left him, and 
 God would leave them. When his friend, Alex- 
 ander Knox, asked him how he would wish his 
 
THE PEACEFUL END. 
 
 Gl 
 
 friends to act in case the Methodists should 
 withdraw from the Church, his answer was: 
 
 "I WOULD HAVE THEM ADHERE TO THE CHURCH 
 
 and leave the Methodists." Fifteen months 
 before his death, he said : 
 
 "I never had any design of separating from 
 
 the Church. I have no such design now 
 
 I declare once more that I live and die a mem- 
 ber of the Church of England; and that none 
 
 WHO REGARD MY JUDGMENT OR ADVICE WILL 
 
 ever separate from it." — (December 11, 
 1789). 51 
 
 The calm and the peace of Paradise were 
 now upon him. He kneels on Jordan's brink 
 awaiting the Master's call. His last words are, 
 "Bless the Church and King, and grant us truth 
 and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord." — 
 "Farewell." 
 
 The active brain, the tireless body, the lov- 
 ing heart of the Anglican zealot are at rest for- 
 evermore. 
 
 He was taken away from the evil to come. 
 He did not live to see his lay-preachers usurp- 
 ing the priesthood, and mutilating their found- 
 
 "Vol. XIII., 241. 
 
62 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 er's tomb." He did not live to see inexcusable 
 apostacy sweeping not "the third part," but 
 nearly the whole, of his followers from the 
 Catholic Church he loved, into the schism he 
 abhorred. He did not live to see his one mis- 
 taken and repented act of outrage upon the poor 
 American Church, bereaving her of millions of 
 her children — nourished at her breast, but now 
 lifting up their heel against their Holy Mother. 
 He did not live to see his own works garbled," 
 expurgated, suppressed, mistranslated, misap- 
 plied, and himself, Josiah that he was, unjustly 
 placed in the gallery of popular history as a son 
 of Nebat who made Israel to sin. He did not 
 live to see his lifelong pleading for unity with- 
 in the Kingdom of God, answered by the great 
 defection from that Kingdom, and that defec- 
 tion itself rent by centrifugal disintegration 
 
 52 Strictly speaking, I refer here to the memorial tab- 
 let which was placed in the City Road chapel, with the 
 inscription : "The Patron and Friend of the Lay Preachers." 
 After the lay-preachers had affected to usurp the priesthood, 
 the original tablet was replaced with another, bearing the 
 Inscription : "The Chief Promoter and Patron of the Plan 
 of Itinerant Preaching." 
 
 63 For nearly a century past the Methodists have pub- 
 lished only garbled or expurgated editions of Wesley's 
 works. To know what Wesley taught, one must resort to 
 the old editions. Even Jackson's Ed. of 1829 omits some 
 of his valuable teaching. 
 
THE PEACEFUL END. 63 
 
 into a score and a half of sects, a swarm of 
 meteors dancing, in their oblique, eccentric, in- 
 dividual orbits, through the kosmos of God !" 
 
 Sleep, noble zealot of the Catholic Cburch ! 
 Dream, if thou canst, that thy children are still 
 in the dear old Homestead. Or, if angel-mes- 
 sage have made known to thee the catastrophe, 
 yet of this be assured : thy labor was not all in 
 vain. Thou didst rouse from her slumber the 
 Bride of Christ in the realm of England. Her 
 waking was slow. But oh, that thou couldst see 
 her now! — awake beyond thine utmost vision, 
 alive above thy fondest hope ! 
 
 And those wandering children, mayhap, 
 God, in His own time and way, will "fetch 
 them home," that the followers of John Wesley, 
 restored to the Church of John Wesley, may be 
 Wesleyans once more. 
 
 "There are now from 25 to 30 Methodist denomina- 
 tions, of which 17 are in the U. S. A. 
 
64 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 OREMUS. 
 
 OGOD, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our 
 only Saviour, the Prince of Peace; Give us grace 
 seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in 
 by our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and 
 prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly 
 union and concord: that as there is but one Body and 
 one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one Lord, one 
 Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so 
 we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in 
 one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, 
 and may with one mind and one mouth glorify Thee: 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aaron, 46. 
 Absolution, 14. 
 Adoration, Eucharistic, 36, 
 37. 
 
 All Saints, 40. 
 Altar, 19, 36, 38. 
 America, 20, 23, 47, 48, 52, 
 
 53, 56. 
 Anne, Queen, 1, 3. 
 Anabaptists, 12. 
 Analogy, Butler's, 6. 
 Andrew, St., Brotherhood 
 
 of. 28. 
 
 Anglo-Catholic, x, si, 16, 
 
 22, 30. 
 Anselm, St., 13. 
 Apostolic Succession, 38, 
 
 39, and n. 
 Arbroath, Abbey of, 44. 
 Asbury, 52 n., 55 n., 56. 
 Atheism, 5. 
 
 Bancroft, Bp., 13. 
 
 Baptism, 32, 33, 35. 
 
 Bede, 13. 
 
 Bell-Coxe, 31. 
 
 Bishop, etc., 2, 3, 4, 15, 31, 
 
 38, 39, 48, 52, 53, 57. 
 Blackstone, 7. 
 Braithwaitb, 46. 
 Brechin, Bp. of, 31. 
 Bristol, 45, 51. 
 Bunting, 59 n. 
 
 I!i:i:khley, Bp., 15. 
 Butler, Bp., 6, 8, 15, 
 
 Carltle, 15. 
 Caroline Divines, 2, 6. 
 Cathedral, 9, 10, 29. 
 Catholicity, 2, 29. 
 Chandler, Dr., 49 n. 
 Charles II., 2. 
 Christian Year, 11, 40. 
 Church, the American, 48, 
 62 ; 
 
 Anglican, English, etc., xi, 
 xiii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 13, 14, 
 38, 41. 43, 44, 45, 46, 
 55, 61, G2, 63. 
 "Church Times," 34n., 50n. 
 Churchman, xli, xiii, 19, 24, 
 
 42, 48, 58. 
 CnuRciiMANSHir, xi, 32; 
 
 Test of, 35. 
 City Road Chapel. 62 n. 
 Coke. Dr., 35 n., 47, 48. 49, 
 
 50, 51, 54. 55 n., 56. 
 Communion (see Eucharist). 
 
 Early, 14. 
 Conference, 28, 58 n. ; 
 Of me, 59 n. ; 
 Nottingham, 1891, 59 n. 
 Confession, Auricular, 21, 
 29. 
 
 Confirmation, 4, 33, 34 n., 
 
 35 and n. 
 Confucius, 7. 
 
JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 Connection, Methodist, xi, 
 45. 
 
 Continuity, 2. ■ 
 Convocation, 3, 4. 
 Cobnwallis, Archbp., 11. 
 Courayer, 39 n. 
 Credence, 36. 
 Creed, 8, 32. 
 
 Cose, Bp., 6. 
 
 D. 
 
 Deism, 5, 6. 
 Deptford, 45. 
 Dilemma, 50. 
 Dissent, 12, 29, 43. 
 Dolling, 31. 
 Dominic, St., 2. 
 
 E. 
 
 Eighteenth Century, 1, 3, 
 
 10, 15. 
 Ely, 10. 
 Enraght, 31. 
 Erasmus, Greek Bp., 56 n. 
 Erastian, 4, 15, 10, 26, 53. 
 Eucharist, The Holy, 6, 19, 
 21, 35 to 38 ; 
 A Sacrifice, 35 ; 
 Only a Priest can Conse- 
 crate the, 36 ; 
 Daily, the ideal, 36 ; 
 Presence of Christ in the, 
 36, 37. 
 Exeter, 29. 
 
 F. 
 
 Faithful Departed, Pray- 
 ers for the, 40 and n. 
 Fasts and Feasts, 14, 40. 
 Fletcher of Madeley, 33. 
 Francis, St., 2. 
 Friars, 1, 27. 
 
 G. 
 
 Georges, Church under the, 
 4 et seq. 
 
 Georgia, 20 to 23. 
 
 Goldsmith, 13. 
 
 Greek Bishop (see Eras- 
 mus). 
 
 ITampson, 57. 
 Heresy', 5, 9 ; 
 
 Calvinistic, 3 ; 
 
 Moravian, 23, 
 
 "High Priest of God," 38 
 Horshley, Bp., 6. 
 
 Incense, 8, 9. 
 Independents, 12, 43. 
 Infidelity, 5. 
 
 J. 
 
 James II., 3. 
 
 Jesus, Reverence at Name 
 
 of, 8. 
 Johnson, Dr., 27. 
 Josiah, xli, 62. 
 
 K. 
 
 Keble, 31, 57. 
 King, Lord, 39 n. 
 Kirk, the, 44. 
 Korah, 46. 
 Knox, Alex., 48, 60. 
 
 L. 
 
 Laud, Archbp., 13. 
 Law, Rev. Wm., 18, 35 n. 
 Lay Helpers, 27 ; 
 
 Sermon to, 45. 
 Lay Preachers, 27, 35 n., 
 
 57, 61, 62. 
 Leckey, 14 n. 
 Legatus a latere, 51. 
 Lent, 19. 
 Lights, 8. 
 
 Lincoln, Bp. of, 31 ; 
 
 College, 17. 
 Litany, 21. 
 Littledale, Dr., 31. 
 Lowth, Bp., 15, 27. 
 M. 
 
 Macedonian Cry, 20 
 Mackonochib, 31. 
 Matins, 21. 
 
 Methodist, xi, xii, xiii l 
 43, 45, 46, 56, 61, 62 n. • 
 
 American, 58 ; 
 
 English, 58 ; 
 
 Separation of, 58 n ■ 
 
 Denominations, 63 n.' ; 
 
 "M. E. Church," 55 n. ; 
 
 Origin of Name, 19 ; 
 
 Oxford, 19, 23, 44. 
 
 Services not at Church 
 hours, 29, 45, 59 n. 
 Mixed Chalice, 36. 
 Mobs, Reforming, 44. 
 Mohammed, 6. 
 Moravian, 23, 24, 25, 30 
 Music, 10, 29. 
 
N. 
 
 Nag's Head, 49. 
 Neal, Dr., 31. 
 Necessity, Cases of, 39. 
 Newton, 59 n. 
 NONJUBOB8, 13, 18. 
 
 O. 
 
 Orders, Holy, 38, 49. 
 Oxford, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23; 
 
 Methodists, 19, 23, 44; 
 
 Movement, xi, 19. 
 P. 
 
 Pakadise, 41, 61. 
 Patristic Learning, 13. 
 Peter, St., ix. 
 Pollock, Rev. J. S., 42 n. 
 Pews, 10. 
 
 PORTEUS, Bp., 11. 
 
 Potter, Bp., 15, 17. 
 Prayer Book, 8, 13, 21, 30, 
 45. 
 
 Presbyterian, 12, 44, 56. 
 Priest, etc., 3, 30 n., 38, 46, 
 61. 
 
 Protestant, etc., 3, 12, 16, 
 
 21, 26, 29. 
 Provincial Superior, 51. 
 Psalms, 10, 11 ; 
 
 Versions of, 11 n. 
 Pusey, Dr., 18, 31. 
 
 R. 
 
 Real Presence, The, 36, 37. 
 Rebellion, The Puritan, 2. 
 Reece, 59 n. 
 Reformation, The, 2. 
 Regeneration, Baptismal, 
 
 32, 33. 
 Figurative, 33. 
 Restoration, The, 2. 
 Revolution, The American, 
 
 48. 
 
 Ritual, Catholic, 7, 8, 9. 
 Roman Catholics, 12. 
 
 Sacerdotal Office, 38. 
 Sacraments, 6, 13, 32 to 40. 
 Sancroft, Archbp., 13. 
 Savannah, 20. 
 Scotland, 3, 44, 47, 53. 
 Scott, 43 ; 
 
 Sir Walter, 44. 
 Seabury, Bp., 57. 
 
 07 
 
 Schism, 29, 54, 58, 62. 
 Separation, xi, xiii, 43, 45, 
 61 ; 
 
 From Ch., a sin, 46. 
 Societies, Religious, 14 and 
 
 Socinians, 12. 
 Superintendent, 51, 52, 
 55 n. 
 
 Summus Sacerdos, 39. 
 Surplice, 53. 
 
 T. 
 
 Theodore, St., 1. 
 Tobacco, 10. 
 Tooth, 31. 
 Tyerman, ix, 55 n. 
 Typhoid, 2. 
 Unitarianism, 5. 
 Unity, 62 ; 
 
 Prayer for, 64. 
 University, 13 ; 
 
 Northwestern, xi. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vestments, 8. 
 
 W. 
 
 Waterland, Bp., 6, 15. 
 Waterman, Rev. R. B., 54 n. 
 Wesley, Rev. Charles, 18, 
 
 24, 31, 49, 53, 54, 57. 
 Wesleys, The, 10, 12, 31. 
 Wesley, Rev. John, 
 
 Aim to Supplement, x ; 
 
 Not always consistent, x; 
 
 An Anglo-Catholic Zealot, 
 16; 
 
 High Churchman, 16, 18, 
 20 n. ; 
 
 His Father, 16, 18; 
 
 His Mother, 16, 20; 
 
 Early Education, 16 ; 
 
 At Oxford, 17 ; 
 
 Ordered Deacon, 17 ; 
 
 Priest, 17, 18; 
 
 A Catholic, 18; 
 
 His Christianity, 19, 20 ; 
 
 Goes to Georgia, 20 ; 
 
 Disappointment, 22; 
 
 Work not a failure, 22; 
 
 Moravian influence, 22 
 et scg. ; 
 
 Breaks from Moravian In- 
 fluence, 24 ; 
 
68 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 Life-work, 26 seg. ; 
 Preaching, 26 to 28 ; 
 Founds Societies, 27, 28 ; 
 Loves Music, 29 ; 
 Novel Methods, 30 ; 
 Disregard of Parish 
 
 Bounds, 30 and n. ; 
 Persecution, 31 ; 
 No Formal Censure, 31 ; 
 Doctrinal Position, 32 
 et seq. : 
 
 On Baptism, 32, 33 ; 
 
 Confirmation, 33, 34 ; 
 
 Holv Eucharist, 35 to 
 38 ; 
 
 Never changed, 37, 38, 
 41 ; 
 
 Holy Orders, 38, 39 ; 
 Confession, 39 ; 
 Love of Ch. Customs, 
 40; 
 
 Prayers for the Dead, 
 40 and n. ; 
 His Allegiance to the Ch., 
 
 Shown by his writings, 
 
 42 et seq. ; 
 Appointment of Coke, and 
 
 "ordinations," 47 to 58 ; 
 Repents, 57 ; 
 
 Increasing Love for the 
 Ch., 60 ; 
 
 Only Cloud, 60 ; 
 
 Last Words, 61 ; 
 
 Works garbled, 62 and n. 
 White, Bp., 48, 49, 51, 55 n. 
 Whitefield, 22. 
 William of Orange, 3. 
 Wilson, Bp., 15. 
 Wolsey, 13. 
 
 Z. 
 
 ZlNZENDORF, 24. 
 
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