FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 fecdon /SC07 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://archive.org/details/livingwesleyOOrigg 
 
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 OCT 23 1931 
 
 LIVING WESL] 
 
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 By JAMES II. RIGG, D. D., 
 
 PSllTCIPAI. <>F Till". WXSLBVAM TRAI1»IHG COLUGK, "Wkst.minsi i:r. ExCLANDj 
 
 Armor, of "Modebii Anglican Tih>>i.< <;y."' u Th« Rkiatiorh of 
 
 John Weslev and of WbbLXYAH Methodism with the 
 
 Cnri:. ii of England," "Essays kok the Times," etc 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 JOHN F. HURST, D.D. 
 
 ]^ew York : 
 N RLSO X A p HILLIP8 
 
 CINCINNATI: mTCIICOCK A WALDEN. 
 
 1874. 
 
Entered a-, cording to Act of Congress, in the year 1-75. by 
 
 NELSON & PHILLIPS, 
 
 in the ottice of tlie Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 A"/f Y kind friend, Dr. Hurst, has in hi 
 
 is 
 
 ^%6=t Introduction, as yet unread by me, 
 said what he has thought good, as to my- 
 self and this publication. Here I will only 
 say that I am thankful to obtain, for what 
 is set forth in the following pages, the atten- 
 tion of the largest national reading public 
 in the world, and especially of the largest 
 national Methodist community in the world. 
 Twenty years ago, and more, I used to 
 cherish the hope that some day I might 
 write the Life of Wesley and the History of 
 Methodism. The latter aim has been an- 
 ticipated, with great competency, by two 
 writers — by my living friend, Dr. Stevens, 
 in America, whose vigorous and vivid vol- 
 umes require no praise from me, and by my 
 greatly beloved and now deceased friend, 
 Dr. George Smith, in my own country, 
 with whom I was in close correspondence 
 throughout the whole of his work in pre- 
 
4 Preface. 
 
 paring his valuable history. The utmost I 
 could now hope would be to elucidate some 
 points of Methodist history, especially be- 
 tween 1780 and 1800, and from 1848 to the 
 present time. 
 
 After Mr. Tyerman's diligence,. I think 
 there is need for an original and standard 
 life of the Methodist reformer, which should 
 be at once shorter and more satisfactory — 
 clearer, fuller, and more discriminating as 
 to matters of essential importance. I can- 
 not but fear, as I feel life ebbing away, and 
 duties and engagements multiplying around 
 me, that I shall not be permitted to at- 
 tempt the execution of what I had contem- 
 plated so long. But, if my desire should 
 thus go unfulfilled, in the present publica- 
 tion I shall have the satisfaction of know- 
 ing - that I have been enabled to do at least 
 something toward furnishing a true por- 
 traiture of John Wesley in his human af- 
 fections, in his intellectual character, and 
 in his gifts and power as a preacher. 
 
 James H. Rigg. 
 
 Westminster Training College, 
 London, October, 1S74. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 r I "HERE is a kind of greatness which, like the world's 
 ■ J^ finest cathedrals, requires a certain distance for its 
 proper appreciation. The magnitude of St. Peter's can 
 be better comprehended from the farther end of the Piazza, 
 or even from the Pincian Hill, than when standing beneath 
 the four evangelists, in rich mosaic, that look down from the 
 dome. Mommsen, that best of all our historians of Rome, 
 tells us: " Ordinary men see the fruits of their actions ; the 
 seed sown by men of genius germinates slowly. Centuries 
 elapsed before men understood that Alexander had not 
 merely erected an ephemeral kingdom in the East, but had 
 carried Hellenism to Asia ; centuries again elapsed before 
 men understood that Alexander had not merely conquered a 
 ne>v province for the Romans, but had laid the foundation 
 for the romanizing of the regions of the West." * 
 
 If we measure John Wesley by this standard we shall 
 find him not wanting in that peculiar greatness which not 
 only stands the test of time, but needs the flight of years to 
 exhibit it in its real proportions. No personage in the his- 
 tory of the Church was more diversely interpreted during life 
 than the son of the Epworth rector. Latterly, his mission and 
 character have been so thoroughly analyzed, and the points 
 of his life so clearly manifested, that there is now no diversity 
 of opinion concerning either his profound and varied scholar- 
 ship, or his vast mental endowments, or those moral charac- 
 teristics which shone with increasing luster as he advanced 
 into serene and silvery age. It seems that we are in an age 
 which, whatever be its defects, has the power to place the 
 religious leaders of the past in their true light. Calvin, in 
 
 * " History of Rome," vol. iv, p. 34S. N. Y. edition. 1873 
 
6 Introduction. 
 
 the hands of Kampschulte, and Pascal, as described by 
 Dreydorff, are not the men of the sixteenth or seventeenth 
 centuries, but grander and better men. * 
 
 The following work is the last of a series of recent mono- 
 graphs on John Wesley. Without question, it gives informa- 
 tion which cannot be found elsewhere, or, rather, its judgments 
 are founded upon data with which the previous authors had 
 no acquaintance. We do not have here the details of a biog- 
 raphy, but the generalization, well supported, which a mas- 
 ter hand has presented. The author has written much upon 
 Wesley and the great movement which began with him, and 
 it is with a tone of sadness that he tells us of his inability to 
 carry out one of the cherished hopes of his life — to prepare an 
 elaborate life of the founder of Methodism. This, however, 
 is one of the penalties of great plans and accruing years. Sir 
 William Hamilton had twelve unwritten books on hand at 
 the time of his death. The late Athanase Coquerel, Sen., the 
 eloquent preacher of the French Reformed Church, enter- 
 tained for many years the hope of writing a large work, in 
 four volumes, on "Sacred Eloquence," but had to content 
 himself with a little volume, " Observations on Preaching." 
 " The Living W T esley " belongs to this same class of publica- 
 tions, which increasing years, heavy public burdens, and 
 still greater literary undertakings, have necessarily made 
 small. But who will say that, for the public, they have not, 
 in their condensed form, their greatest possible value ? Our 
 times crave rather the results of profound and thorough inves- 
 tigation than the processes by which the results are reached. 
 
 The eminence attained by the author of the following 
 work, makes it fitting that a somewhat detailed account 
 of him should be given. James H. Rigg was born in En- 
 gland on January 16th, 1821. He was educated at Kings- 
 wood School, where, as a student, he excelled all his as- 
 sociates in mathematics. His only equal in the classics was 
 a member of the same class, T. E. Webb, now the brill- 
 iant Professor of Moral Philosophy and Law in Trinity 
 
 * " Johann Calvin, seine Kirehe una* sein Staat in Genl." Bonn, 
 1869. " Pascal, sein Leben und seine Kiimpfe." Leipzig, 1870. 
 
Introduction. 7 
 
 College, Dublin, Practicing - Barrister in the same city, a 
 Fellow of Trinity, and author of the " Intellectualism of 
 Locke." Mr. Rigg entered the Wesleyan ministry in 
 1845, having for two years previously been classical and 
 mathematical assistant at Mr. John Conquest's Academy, 
 Bigglenade, Bedfordshire. In 1846, and for several fol- 
 lowing years, he was a contributor to the " British Review," 
 edited at that time by Dr. John Harris and Dr. Philip Smith, 
 author of " History of the World." In 1828 he began his 
 contributions to "The Watchman," of London. In 1849, 
 the year of the disastrous " agitation " in British Methodism, 
 his services were called into requisition as conference corre- 
 spondent and writer of leading articles on the crisis in that 
 journal. His efforts for several years were more serviceable, 
 perhaps, than those of any other man in defense of original 
 Wesleyan Methodism. In 1850 he published his " Principles 
 of Wesleyan Methodism," which reached a second edition the 
 following year. While pastor in Worcester, in 1850, his health 
 became seriously impaired, and he was compelled to desist even 
 from occasional preaching. In July, however, he resumed his 
 pen as correspondent of " The Watchman." During 1850, 
 and nearly all of 1851, he was compelled to travel for his 
 health. During the winter, which he spent in Cornwall, he 
 wrote a series of papers on " Wesleyan Connection and Con- 
 gregational Independency Contrasted," which were intended 
 as a reply to the attacks of the Congregational press on 
 Methodism. The defense was so successful that no re- 
 joinder was ever made. This work has long been out of 
 print, Dr. Rigg having no desire to call up the old issues by 
 a new edition. 
 
 Notwithstanding his defense of the principles of his Church 
 against selfish and bitter schism within, and aggressors from 
 without, Dr. Rigg has always been a liberal conservative, or, 
 it may be said, a conservative reformer in Methodism. With- 
 out avoiding controversy, he has seldom made assertions 
 which he has been compelled to retract, and he has the sat- 
 isfaction of finding that, so far as the most of his principles 
 are concerned, time has only proved their correctness and 
 
8 Introduction. 
 
 strength. In 1851, out of consideration for his precarious 
 health, he was stationed on the Island of Guernsey. While 
 here he was one of the members — by far the youngest — of a 
 large special commission, appointed to consider the Consti- 
 tution of Methodism. As a member of this commission he 
 took a leading part in supporting the Rev. Dr. John Beech- 
 am, who, being at the time ex-President of the Wesleyan 
 Conference, had prepared a judicious and liberal scheme of 
 reform, and of Rev. John Scott, the President of the Confer- 
 ence, who sustained Dr. Beecham. At the same time Dr. 
 Rigg proposed, and doing so was supported by Rev. William 
 Arthur, some principles of representative liberalism in regard 
 to District Meetings and the Preliminary Committees, which 
 were finally adopted, though after the lapse of ten or twelve 
 years. Dr. Beecham's proposals were adopted by the Con- 
 ference of 1852, after long and earnest discussion, in which 
 Dr. Rigg bore a due part. 
 
 In 1854 Dr. Rigg went to London, and became connected 
 with the " London Quarterly Review," then just starting into 
 existence. His first article was on " Conybeare and Howson's 
 Life and Epistles of St. Paul," one of a long series of papers 
 which have contributed greatly to the strength and just celeb- 
 rity of that Review. He also became a contributor to the 
 " Methodist Quarterly Review," of New York, then under 
 the editorial care of the late Rev. Dr. M'Clintock. His con- 
 tributions to these two Quarterlies have formed the basis of 
 that excellent work, " Modern Anglican Theology," now in 
 an enlarged (second) edition. His " Essays for the Times," 
 a large octavo volume, appeared in London in 1866. His 
 subjects are largely ecclesiastical and social, as may be seen 
 from the following selection : "Vocation and Training of the 
 Clergy," " Defects and Remedies of the Established Church," 
 " Kingsley and Newman," " The Bible and Human Progress," 
 and " Pauperism and Popular Education." Dr. Rigg has 
 more recently published " The Relations of John Wesley and 
 Wesleyan Methodism to the Church of England," now in its 
 second edition. This volume is recognized as the standard 
 publication on the subject. Since then he has made an im- 
 
Introduction. 9 
 
 portant contribution to the Sabbatarian question : " The Sab- 
 bath and the Sabbath Law before and after Christ." His most 
 recent works is " Popular Education in its Social Conditions 
 and Aspects, and Public Elementary School Education, En- 
 glish and Foreign." (London, 1873.) Of his special adaptation 
 to speak as an authority on the now much-discussed subject of 
 education in England, the following words from the Preface to 
 that work furnishes very proper testimony: "A student and 
 teacher through all my youth and my earlier manhood ; after- 
 ward, during more than twenty years of very extensive and 
 various intercourse with the middle and lower classes of the 
 people in most parts of England, and among mining, manu- 
 facturing, and agricultural populations, as well as in large 
 middle-class towns, continually intent upon the study of 
 social and intellectual facts and needs ; now, for five years 
 past, having held the position of principal in one of the 
 largest training colleges in the kingdom, and for nearly three 
 years having been a member of the London School Board, I 
 venture to ask for what is set forth in the following pages the 
 candid attention of those who desire to see England the 
 home of an educated, provident, and self-respecting Chris- 
 tian people." 
 
 I have elsewhere stated the principle underlying Dr. 
 Rigg's views of education, but may properly repeat it here. 
 It is this : The goal at which every Christian nation should 
 aim is a complete national education. This includes, besides 
 the pervasive influence of religion, the influence of home 
 and family ; of street, school, and work-place — be this a 
 shop, or office, or factory, or pit, or simple chamber ; of 
 each person's business, craft, or profession ; of society ; of 
 civil and political duties and ideas ; of the public press, in- 
 cluding books and journals ; of all life's prizes to each man, 
 and, finally, of the various motives, incentives, and oppor- 
 tunities which stir up desire, and suggest or determine 
 action. All these mold the character of individuals, and so 
 determine that of the whole nation. The school is but one 
 factor toward the general result ; but far more important 
 than the school is the influence of home and the family. 
 
io Introduction. 
 
 The survey of the state of popular education on the Con- 
 tinent commends itself to every reader, not merely as a com- 
 prehensive examination of the various systems there in 
 use, but also as the most recent. Spain, Italy, and Belgium, 
 and the Scandinavian countries, are but slightly treated ; 
 while Holland, France, Germany, and Switzerland are exam- 
 ined with most satisfactory minuteness, and their methods 
 compared with those of England. The palm of common- 
 school education is given to Holland, above all other coun- 
 tries on the Continent or in the world, though Dr. Rigg 
 agrees with Cuvier, Cousin, and Matthew Arnold as to the 
 inferior character of Dutch secondary and higher education. 
 One of the chief causes of the high grade of primary educa- 
 tion in Holland, compared with Germany and Switzerland, 
 is the fact that, in these latter countries, the pastors of the 
 Churches have predominant authority as managers or in- 
 spectors of the schools, while in Holland the work of inspec- 
 tion is organized and carried out by a corps of independent 
 laymen. 
 
 In this whole department of the volume there is so much 
 valuable information, that it would be well to bring it 
 before every inquirer into the educational systems of the civ- 
 ilized world. How the various countries have wrought out, 
 each for itself, their own methods of education, and how 
 these have subsequently acted and re-acted upon each other, 
 are points with which our students of social science are but 
 little acquainted. We are too much in the habit of regard- 
 ing education in its isolated and local relations, instead of 
 in its general features. 
 
 That full justice is done our system, and that ample use 
 has been made of our official educational records, which of 
 late have undergone vast improvement, are proved by the 
 favorable attentions which, as we learn from private sources, 
 have been awarded Dr. Rigg by our Educational Bureau 
 at Washington. One of the chief objections to our com- 
 mon-school system urged by him is the want of special 
 training of our teachers for their official functions. " If," he 
 says, " American teachers, as a class, were both apprenticed 
 
Introduction. i i 
 
 to their profession and properly trained by tutors and pro- 
 fessors, nothing is hazarded in saying that they would soon 
 be the most effective teachers in the world." This evil is in 
 rapid process of removal by the normal schools that are 
 taking shape in all our States, if the teachers prepared in 
 them shall continue to follow that calling. 
 
 We hope the author will complete his survey by an exhaust- 
 ive treatise on university education, particularly in its histori- 
 cal bearing. We know no other English or American writer 
 who has made the preparations requisite for such a work. 
 We want all the systems of university education treated just 
 as we here find elementary instruction examined. Indeed, we 
 have had hardly a book on this subject worthy of perusal since 
 Pusey's " Essay on the Best Methods of Teaching in the Uni- 
 versities." With all the discussion on university reform and 
 economy in both this country and Great Britain, there is no 
 department of education where there is more vagueness of 
 thought, in even the circles that we are in the habit of regard- 
 ing well-informed. 
 
 Dr. Rigg is known to the British public as a lecturer and 
 preacher not less than as an author. The paper in his " Es- 
 says for the Times," on " The Bible and Human Progress," 
 was originally delivered as a lecture on the Exeter Hall plat- 
 form. In the first volume of the publications of the " Chris- 
 tian Evidence Society," under the presidency of the Bishop 
 of London, we find a lecture by him on " Pantheism," which 
 is well worthy a place beside Saisset's masterly monograph 
 on the same subject. 
 
 No one can question for a moment that Tyerman's " Life 
 and Times of John Wesley " is the best of all the elaborate 
 works on the great Reformer of the eighteenth century. Its 
 abundance of entirely new material excites our amazement 
 that it has required three quarters of a century for a writer 
 to appear who should be the first to bring it to the general 
 public. And if the author of the present work does take 
 occasional exceptions to statements of Tyerman, he never- 
 theless now and then throws upon the remarkable subject 
 a light with which not even that acute searcher was ac- 
 
12 Introduction. 
 
 quainted ; and when criticism does come, it is always that of 
 the generous friend and loving brother. 
 
 At the session of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, 
 in October, 1873, Dr. Rigg was the representative of the 
 British Wesleyan Church. His paper on "Education," read 
 before that body, was the ripe fruit of his laborious study 
 and long professional life. Of his high estimate of our coun- 
 try and its great mission, and of the value he attaches to the 
 delightful friendships he here formed, the following language, 
 from his recent public correspondence, bears beautiful witness : 
 
 " Of the magnificent and amazing resources of your coun- 
 try, so far surpassing all that a stranger could well conceive 
 by mere reading, there is no need for me to write. The 
 blessing of Joseph, as pronounced by Moses, belongs to 
 your inheritance in boundless measure. Your wealth, of 
 every kind, of land and stream and lakes, of minerals and 
 fruits, surpasses fable, exceeds all imagination. But what 
 most impressed me was the moral import and forces in- 
 volved in your position, and the most solemn responsibility 
 which belong to all those who have the guidance and mold- 
 ing of such a nation as yours — the nation which is endowed 
 with such an inheritance, and to which must appertain such 
 matchless destinies. Your circumstances have educated 
 your people yet more — much more — than even your schools. 
 Your thoroughly awakened and stimulated intelligence has 
 been prepared and eager to welcome the best and most 
 forcible products of cultivated intellect and genius. No 
 Christian ministers have to preach to such a body and bulk 
 of eager, keen, receptive, and fairly informed intelligence as 
 yours. It follows that no ministers need themselves to be 
 men of such powerful and highly cultivated intelligence. 
 Your ministers need, as a class, to be men of higher powers, 
 and of riper, deeper, sounder cultivation, than their brethren 
 of England. The Churches, led by them, are bound to be 
 the salt of the land, redeeming it equally from profane unbe- 
 lief and from moral and political corruption. 
 
 " I was in America six weeks, all but a day or two. I 
 have had the great privilege of seeing the true domestic inte- 
 
Introduction. 13 
 
 rior of some families of the highest and rarest quality for the 
 combination of Christian principle and high culture. 1 have 
 made very many acquaintances, and in every acquaintance 
 have found a friend — in not a few cases have found very dear 
 friends ; while I have been able to grasp the hands and hear 
 the voices of some whom I had but known before by intel- 
 lectual and moral sympathy, and to retouch and deepen 
 some lines of sympathy and friendship with brethren I had 
 met in my own country. 
 
 " My visit to America has been full of the best sort of 
 pleasure. It has left me to return home laden with bright 
 and affectionate recollections. It must be a sunlit spot in 
 my life forever. I knew, too, among other things, from the 
 testimony of all my friends who have trodden your shores, 
 that I should receive, merely as an English brother, more 
 than a courteous — a cordial and generous — welcome. But I 
 never expected to find affectionate and unstinting kindness 
 so prompt, and thoughtful, and unwearied, as I have 
 actually experienced." 
 
 May we not hope that the volume which Dr. Rigg here 
 presents to the Christian public, besides enlarging the num- 
 ber of his personal friends on this side of the Atlantic, will 
 lead to a still more truthful appreciation of that great Re- 
 former in whom all Anglo-Saxon countries have a special in- 
 terest, and who claimed the world for his parish ? 
 
 J. F. HURST. 
 
 Drew Theological Seminary, 
 November 27, 1874. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I. PAOT 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 PART II. 
 
 WESLEY'S CHARACTER AND OPINIONS IN HIS 
 EARLIER LIFE, TO THE PERIOD OF HIS EVAN- 
 GELICAL CONVERSION. 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. His Boyhood and Youth 53 
 
 II. The Collegian at Oxford 61 
 
 III. John Wesley, Miss Kirkham, and Mrs. Pendarves, 
 
 (afterward Mrs. Delany) 82 
 
 IV. Wesley's Theological Views and Religious Char- 
 
 acter at Oxford, 1731-1735 113 
 
 V. Wesley in Georgia — His Affair with Miss Hopkey. 130 
 VI. Wesley's Religious Opinions and Character in 
 
 Georgia 141 
 
 PART III. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY AFTER HIS CONVERSION, AND IN 
 THE MATURITY OF HIS POWERS. 
 
 I. Wesley's Ritualism and Mysticism before his 
 
 Evangelical Conversion 149 
 
 II. Wesley's Evangelical Conversion 170 
 
 III. Wesley the Preacher 206 
 
 IV. Wesley as a Thinker 236 
 
 V. Wesley's Disposition and Character Illustrated 
 
 and Vindicated 250 
 
PART I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 WESLEY'S BIOGRAPHERS AND CRITICS. 
 
PART I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 HERE are some questions as to Wes- 
 ley's character and the nature of his 
 influence still unsettled ; indeed, as I shall 
 show, he is very imperfectly understood as 
 yet. But there can be no question as to 
 the immense spread and depth of the mo- 
 tive influence which he has been the means 
 of originating within the nationalities of 
 England, with all her Colonies, and of the 
 United States, not to speak of the critical 
 and determinative influence which has been 
 exercised by Methodism upon the Protest- 
 ant thought and life of France, and even 
 of Germany. No single man for centu- 
 ries has moved the world as Wesley has 
 moved it ; since Luther, no man. No Prot- 
 estant Church at this day counts so many 
 adherents as the Methodist family of 
 
1 8 The Living Wesley. 
 
 Churches ; no Church has operated so pow- 
 erfully as a ferment of life among all the 
 other Churches. 
 
 If these things are so — and nowadays 
 men will hardly venture to deny the truth, 
 at least in general, of what I have stated — 
 it is no wonder that the present age has 
 waked up to an eager curiosity as to the 
 character of the man, the secret of his 
 power, the meaning of his work, the history 
 of his life. Long ago Dr. Southey perceived 
 the capabilities of his theme ; historian, 
 man of letters, and poet laureate as he was, 
 he treated the character and life of Wesley 
 with a respect and ability worthy alike of 
 the subject and the writer. It was inevi- 
 table that such a philosophic Churchman 
 as Southey, such a semi-rationalistically-or- 
 thodox Anglican, should commit serious er- 
 rors in his attempt to portray and estimate 
 such a character as that of Wesley. It was 
 equally inevitable, with no other sources of 
 information than, in addition to Wesley's 
 Works, the " Arminian Magazine," and the 
 very imperfect lives of Wesley which had 
 
Introductory. 19 
 
 been published by his overworked, hurried 
 and driven, and, as literary men and histori- 
 ans, untrained itinerants, the best life which 
 Southey or any other writer could produce 
 should be defective and incorrect. He had 
 no access whatever to the special sources 
 of information without which no life of such 
 a man could be justly or adequately written, 
 and which it was as yet too soon after the 
 death of Wesley to expect to be given to 
 the world. But, with all its faults, the work 
 produced by Southey was so beautiful in its 
 style, and so skillful in its use of the mate- 
 rials at his disposal, that to this day it has 
 remained — now for half a century — the one 
 biography by which Wesley has been known 
 to the world. Men have not read the Lives 
 written by Whitehead, Coke, and Moore — 
 for many years, indeed, these have been out 
 of print, and it would be an injustice to the 
 name and memory of Wesley to reprint 
 any of them ; but Southey's Life of the 
 Methodist Reformer has been in every im- 
 portant and well-chosen library, whether of 
 a public institution or of a private mansion ; 
 
20 The Living Wesley. 
 
 and its fascination has not failed to secure 
 it successive generations of readers. 
 
 Wesley's life, indeed, as written by the 
 Tory historian, reviewer, biographist, poet 
 laureate and poet, (a poet laureate is not 
 necessarily a poet,) and as written in the 
 best style of one who was a master both 
 of the English language and of the bi- 
 ographer's art — became at once an English 
 classic, and, what is much more, raised the 
 character and memory of Wesley at once, 
 in the circles of men of high and thoughtful 
 culture, to a place of eminence and respect 
 often rising to veneration. Nor was it only 
 to Wesley that Southey did, according to 
 his light, generous justice ; he did justice 
 also to the humble but great and noble 
 men, such as John Nelson and the soldier 
 Haime, who were Wesley's early and chief 
 lay-helpers. He showed these men in their 
 true light, as manliest among men and 
 saintliest among saints ; as men of no less 
 steadfast power than fervid zeal ; as among 
 the heroes of the holy Christian warfare. 
 Thus the total effect of Southey's " Life of 
 
Introductory. 2 1 
 
 Wesley" was to elevate the Methodism of 
 Wesley and his followers to a place of per- 
 manent interest and honor before their coun- 
 trymen, and, we may say, before the world. 
 Southey, indeed, as I have intimated, 
 misapprehended some leading particulars 
 in Wesley's character, and accordingly mis- 
 construed broadly, in certain directions, his 
 motives and his conduct. He conceived 
 ambition to be the leading natural feature 
 of his character, and to have powerfully 
 prompted and controlled him through life 
 — the ambition of the ruler and the states- 
 man ; he resolved, moreover, the wonderful 
 effects of his preaching into the natural 
 results of potent and penetrating oratory, 
 managed with consummate skill by a master 
 alike of speech and of the art of turning 
 circumstances and situations to account. 
 For these fundamental errors he was most 
 ably and severely searched and called to 
 account by the Rev. Richard Watson, in 
 his well-known and very valuable " Observa- 
 tions on Southey's ' Life of Wesley/" and 
 his misconceptions in this respect have also 
 
22 The Living Wesley. 
 
 been effectually disposed of very recently 
 by Miss Wedgwood, in her essay on Wesley, 
 Miss Wedgwood having apparently never 
 read Mr. Watson's " Observations."* Still, 
 with all its errors, and notwithstanding its 
 necessary defects — notwithstanding its evi- 
 dent Anglican prejudices and its persuasive 
 taint of rationalistic sense-dogmatism and 
 spiritual insusceptibility — Southey's work 
 was so interesting, so genial, so candid, 
 so evidently sincere, and even generous, in 
 its spirit, that it ought ever to be regarded 
 by the followers of Wesley as the work, not 
 of an enemy, but of one who meant honestly 
 and kindly, and who has really, on the 
 whole, done the office of a friend. Indeed, 
 Southey himself became convinced that he 
 had wronged Wesley's memory and misun- 
 derstood his character ; and if he had lived 
 to brine out the new edition of his " Life of 
 Wesley" which he had in contemplation, he 
 would have made a correction of his errors^ 
 Whether Mr. Watson's criticism had any 
 
 * " John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the 
 1 8th Century." By Julia Wedgwood. London: Macmillan. 
 
Introductory. 23 
 
 share in bringing about this change I know 
 not. Southey's own account of it, given to 
 the late learned and amiable James Nichols, 
 litterateur and printer, of Hoxton Square, 
 in an autograph letter of which a facsimile \ 
 very interesting to look at, if it were only 
 for the elegance and neatness of the writing, 
 is engraved in Dr. Smith's " History of 
 Methodism,"* states that Mr. Alexander 
 Knox, in " a long and admirable paper," 
 (which is printed at length in the recent 
 editions of Southey's biography,) had " con- 
 vinced him that he was mistaken" on this 
 point. The date of this letter was 17th 
 August, 1835. He was at that time making 
 some preparations for a new edition of the 
 " Life," and he stated that it was " his inten- 
 tion to incorporate in it whatever new infor- 
 mation has been brought forward by subse- 
 quent biographers, and, of course, to correct 
 every error that had been pointed out, or 
 that he himself could discover." More than 
 twelve months later, in December, 1836, be- 
 
 * " Wesley and his Times," vol. i, p. 634. London Edition. 
 Longman & Co. 
 
24 The Living Wesley. 
 
 ing on a visit to Penzance, he in substance 
 repeated to the late Mr. Carne, of that 
 town, the same statement which he had 
 made in writing to Mr. Nichols. Unfortu- 
 nately, the new edition was never prepared 
 by him ; and when, after his death, his son 
 edited a new edition, in which Mr. Knox's 
 observations were printed, as well as some 
 notes by Coleridge, he seems to have been 
 ignorant that his father had been convinced 
 by Mr. Knox, or intended to rectify his 
 error. He leaves it, indeed, distinctly to be 
 inferred that the text, as originally printed, 
 expressed his father's settled judgment on 
 the matter in question. 
 
 Southey's biography was published early 
 in 1820. Before the end of the same year 
 Mr. Watson published his " Observations." 
 It was not, however, until 1825 that the 
 Methodists themselves put forth a new life 
 of their founder, such as might be regarded 
 as a corrective to that of Southey. This was 
 the Rev. H. Moore's " Life," in two volumes, 
 published at the Conference Office. Mr. 
 Moore was one of Wesley's trustees, the 
 
Introductory. 2$ 
 
 other two being Dr. Coke and the physician, 
 Dr. Whitehead. Of these the last had got 
 hold, in the first instance, of Wesley's papers, 
 and had published, very unfairly, by means 
 of these, a separate and an ex-parte life of 
 Wesley, as regarded chiefly from the point 
 of view of an English Churchman, although 
 Whitehead himself was in principle a thor- 
 ough Dissenter. To anticipate this publi- 
 cation, the other two trustees, by the help 
 of Wesley's own publications, and of such 
 papers as they were able to command the 
 use of, published very hastily a joint life of 
 Wesley. Malice, however, had been be- 
 forehand, and Hampson's " Life" (Hampson 
 had formerly been a Methodist preacher, 
 but was then a clergyman of the Church of 
 England) had been published even earlier 
 than that by Coke and Moore. The latter, 
 though it sold largely, was too hurried a 
 composition (to a large extent, indeed, it 
 was a mere compilation) to hold its rank as a 
 biography of Wesley. Moore's " Life," pub- 
 lished in 1825, was more carefully prepared 
 and fuller than either of its Methodist 
 
26 The Living Wesley. 
 
 predecessors, and was intended to serve as 
 an antidote both to Whitehead's and to 
 Southey's " Life." It was far, however, from 
 being really adequate to the claims of Wes- 
 ley's history, notwithstanding its genuine 
 interest and its sterling value. It never for 
 a moment was likely to supersede that of 
 Southey in the general reading world. 
 Watson, at the request of the Conference, 
 undertook to prepare, and published in the 
 year 183 1, a short Life of Wesley for popular 
 use and extensive circulation. But Watson 
 was in failing health, and greatly over- 
 worked. His little volume is valuable for 
 its observations on certain points especially 
 connected with the relations between Wes- 
 ley and the Church of England ; but, re- 
 garded as a consecutive biography, it was 
 altogether too slight, and left far too many 
 blanks in the narrative. It was far from 
 being even a tolerably complete epitome of 
 Wesley's crowded and momentous history. 
 In these respects it is greatly inferior to 
 the French Methodist biography of Wesley, 
 (by Mr. Lelievre,) which is a fresh, original 
 
Introductory. 27 
 
 and admirably reduced and proportioned 
 epitome of the Life of Wesley* 
 
 Since Watson's "Life of Wesley," no En- 
 glish biography of the founder of Method- 
 ism had been published until the Rev. Luke 
 Tyerman recently published his elaborate 
 work, which is now republished by the Har- 
 pers, of New York. The first volume of Dr. 
 Smith's History of .Methodism was, how- 
 ever, virtually a biography of Wesley, for the 
 most part correct and judicious, although 
 slight and incomplete. Though slight, it 
 contributed some new and important infor- 
 mation on the subject. The first volume 
 of Dr. Stevens' able " History of Method- 
 ism" furnished a fuller and more vivid ac- 
 count of the chief figure among the leaders 
 of Methodism. It was not, however, and 
 could not be, a complete biography, nor did 
 it stand apart. It was intermingled with 
 the sketches and episodes of an eloquent 
 and stirring history. The Life of Wesley 
 
 * "John Wesley: his Life and Work." By the Rev. 
 Matthew Lelievre. Translated from the French, by the 
 Rev. A. J. French. Published at the Wesleyan Conference 
 Office, London. 
 
28 The Living Wesley. 
 
 was but the chief among several biograph- 
 ical lines of narrative which were interwoven 
 in that history. 
 
 Southey's " Life " was very likely to suggest 
 the history and character of Wesley as a 
 theme for philosophical students of religious 
 movements and ecclesiastical history. It 
 was not, however, till thirty years after the 
 first publication of his volumes that the 
 first essay on Wesley, in a separate volume, 
 made its appearance. This was by Isaac 
 Taylor, and was entitled " Wesley and Meth- 
 odism." The author of Essays on Enthu- 
 siasm, on Fanaticism, on Spiritual Despot- 
 ism, on Ignatius Loyola, could hardly have 
 refrained from working out a study in his 
 own line of composition on the character 
 and life of Wesley. Taylor's " Wesley and 
 Methodism" is not less faulty than might 
 have been expected from such a writer, but 
 it possesses, at the same time, considerable 
 merits, and some parts of it are written in 
 Taylor's best manner. Dr. Dobbin, some- 
 where near the same time, published a 
 warmly appreciative sketch of Wesley. A 
 
Introductory. 29 
 
 few years earlier, the late Dr. James Ham- 
 ilton, in the " North British Review," had 
 published an article on Wesley, which, al- 
 though brilliantly written, and conceived in 
 a kindly spirit, showed that the writer knew 
 very little of the real character or of the la- 
 bors of the founder of Methodism. After this 
 period nearly twenty years passed away be- 
 fore much was written again respecting Wes- 
 ley. Two or three years ago, however, the 
 gifted author of the " Schonberg-Cotta Fam- 
 ily" series of stories, in her " Diary of Mrs. 
 Kitty Trevelyan," brought the life of early 
 Methodism, according to her conception, viv- 
 idly before a large circle of readers. Mean- 
 while, the public interest in Wesley, and in 
 the history and position of Methodism, was 
 at once shown and stimulated in England by 
 discussions, year after year, in convocation ; 
 by those reports of the proceedings of the 
 annual Wesleyan Conferences which, within 
 the last few years, have become a striking 
 feature in the leading newspapers of the 
 country, both metropolitan and provincial ; 
 by discussions relating to Methodism in cler- 
 
30 The Living Wesley. 
 
 ical meetings ; by correspondence in the 
 religious journals ; by sundry letters and 
 pamphlets relating to the subject, chiefly 
 bearing upon the question of reunion with 
 the Church of England; and by tracts relat- 
 ing to the same matter which are extensively 
 circulated by clergymen of the Church of En- 
 gland. Within the last fourteen or fifteen 
 years two articles on the relations between 
 Wesleyan Methodism and the Church of 
 England have been published in the " Lon- 
 don Quarterly Review," — -the former from 
 the pen of Rev. W. Arthur; the latter, which 
 has been since published in a separate form, 
 from the pen of Dr. Rigg. The public 
 mind in England has thus, within the last 
 few years, become much more widely inter- 
 ested, and somewhat better informed, re- 
 specting Wesley and his work than formerly. 
 Doubtless, also, the publication, (in thirteen 
 volumes,) under the able editorship of Dr. 
 Osborn, of the Richmond Theological In- 
 stitution, of the whole of the Wesley poetry, 
 by which, for the first time, the world has 
 been made aware of the wealth and variety, 
 
Introductory. 3 1 
 
 as well as the intensity and brilliancy, of 
 the poetic power with which the two broth- 
 ers, but especially Charles, were endowed, 
 has contributed to the general feeling of 
 interest with which the career of the Wes- 
 leys is now regarded — of Charles, as the 
 Methodist poet, and otherwise his brothers 
 faithful coadjutor; of John Wesley, as the 
 leading mind, whose character and convic- 
 tions gave law to the whole Wesleyan 
 movement. One further element I must 
 name as contributing largely to the recent 
 growth of interest in Wesley and Method- 
 ism ; it is that which, indeed, has been al- 
 ready in part intimated in my reference to 
 the space recently accorded to the Wesley- 
 an Conference in the public papers — I mean 
 the manifest, and the manifestly growing, 
 power of Methodism. With this element in 
 the case, the extension of the franchise, the 
 spread of anti-State-and-Church principles, 
 the precedent, as many regard it, of the Irish 
 Church disestablishment, distinctly connect 
 themselves. 
 
 It is no wonder, accordingly, if Mrs. Oli- 
 
32 The Living Wesley. 
 
 phant, in her series of papers in " Black- 
 wood's Magazine" for 1870, concerning the 
 England of the Eighteenth Century, found 
 herself brought face to face with John Wesley 
 as "The Reformer" of his age. Her work 
 is clever, frank, and genial, but, as was to be 
 expected, full of misconceptions. Southey 
 would seem to have been her one source 
 and authority, and it is something if she 
 detects some of his fundamental mistakes. 
 
 Since Mrs. Oliphant wrote, Miss Wedg- 
 wood has published her very candid and 
 thoughtful essay on Wesley. It is to be 
 lamented that Miss Wedgwood had not 
 read more on her subject. She, also, seems 
 to have relied chiefly on Southey. In her 
 list of authorities we find Whitehead's 
 " Life of Wesley," and that by Coke and 
 Moore ; but not the more authentic and im- 
 portant biography of 1825, by Moore alone ; 
 nor (very important for Miss Wedgwood's 
 purpose in her study of Wesley) Watson's 
 " Observations," nor Watson's " Life," (by no 
 means unimportant,) nor Dr. Stevens' very 
 able and valuable volume, the first of his 
 
Introductory. 33 
 
 "History of Methodism," nor the exceed- 
 ingly careful and authentic biography of 
 Wesley, which constitutes the first volume 
 of the late Dr. George Smith's "History 
 of Methodism," (Vol. I, "Wesley and his 
 Times,") nor even Isaac Taylor's "Wesley 
 and Methodism," (a book most germane to 
 her purpose.) Neither of the articles in 
 the "London Quarterly" to which I have 
 referred seems to have come in her way. 
 If they had they might at least have 
 cleared up some points of misconception or 
 obscurity, or have served as an index to 
 sources of information. But I have often 
 observed how deficient are mere literary 
 persons in the instinct and art of research 
 into any subject which appertains to the 
 history, the opinions, or the organization of 
 Nonconformists. Southey, indeed, was a 
 distinguished exception to this rule, but it 
 is not easy to find another. 
 
 It is all the more satisfactory and note- 
 worthy, however, on this account, that Miss 
 Wedgwood, from her own independent study, 
 has been enabled to refute the most funda- 
 
34 The Living Wesley. 
 
 mental errors in Southey's representation 
 of Wesley's character. With a quiet grasp 
 of the subject, with easy acuteness and in- 
 sight, she disposes of the charge of ambition 
 as easily as she exposes the inconsistent 
 and untenable naturalism which lies at the 
 basis of Southey's resolution of religious 
 phenomena into their supposed constitu- 
 ents, and of most of his criticism of Wes- 
 ley's "credulity" and "enthusiasm." Her 
 views, indeed, appear to be strongly tinct- 
 ured with Maurician mysticism, and she 
 repeats, in substance, some of the criticisms 
 on the evangelical Arminianism of Wesley 
 which are contained in Coleridge's notes to 
 Southey's biography. But her main lines 
 of thought seem to be admirably laid out ; 
 her grouping of facts to be very skillful ; her 
 general handling of the subject to be simple, 
 massive, and masterly. It is to be regretted, 
 indeed, that what we have is only a study 
 of the man as he was when he first set forth 
 on his evangelical work ; or, at the utmost, 
 of his moral and spiritual qualifications as a 
 reformer, and of the oosition to which he 
 
Introductory. 35 
 
 advanced in the opening campaigns of his 
 life's warfare : consequently the volume 
 gives us the impression of being merely 
 an introduction or a fragment. Wesley 
 the preacher is scarcely sketched at all ; 
 his intellectual characteristics as a think- 
 er or writer are scarcely touched upon ; 
 his evangelical itinerancy is not repre- 
 sented to our view ; his ripe manhood 
 and his old age are passed by ; of the or- 
 ganization and the wide-spread work and 
 influence of his later years next to nothing 
 is said, except only so far as relates to the 
 American ordinations. In short, just as 
 misconceptions have been cleared away, as 
 his position has been distinctly defined, as 
 the nature of his work in general has been 
 explained, and its need and vast importance 
 been established ; just when his disinterest- 
 edness, his magnanimity, his bravery and 
 gentleness in peril and in controversy have 
 been beautifully shown ; just as the general 
 characteristics of his mission, his purpose, his 
 faith, have been set forth, and we are waiting 
 to see what are his actual powers for work 
 
3^ The Living Wesley. 
 
 and service, for preaching and counseling, 
 for molding the faith and the theology of a 
 community, for saturating a nation with his 
 influence, for consolidating and governing 
 a Christian Church or family of Churches, 
 we find that the essay breaks off and all 
 is over. Perhaps Miss Wedgwood acted 
 wisely ; perhaps she knew best her own 
 compass of power ; but we confess to have 
 experienced a feeling of disappointment. 
 
 Miss Wedgwood has admirably delin- 
 eated the circumstances which surround- 
 ed Wesley at the beginning of his work ; 
 and she has effectually refuted Southey's 
 errors as to his character and motives; 
 but the living man himself, as preacher, 
 as ruler, as companion or friend, she has 
 left quite in the shadow. She has done 
 justice to the living Wesley only as a 
 controversialist. Indeed, it is plain that 
 she has, so far as she has conceived his liv- 
 ing and social humanity at all, in part, at 
 least, misconceived it. She can appreciate 
 the character of his writing, so far as she 
 has studied it, and has also fine glimpses of 
 
Introductory. 37 
 
 insight into his public character and his gifts 
 as a ruler ; but of Wesley as a friend and 
 companion she evidently has no sort of just 
 conception ; otherwise she would not have 
 characterized as devoid of all sense of hu- 
 mor one of the pleasantest and brightest of 
 men, of whose remarkable vein of humor, 
 indeed, she must have read some instances 
 in Southey's " Life," and would have found 
 others in Stevens' " History;" neither would 
 she, notwithstanding the apparent inhuman- 
 ness of Wesley's school arrangements at 
 Kingswood, and the reticence as to domes- 
 tic details in his letters, of which his brother 
 Charles pleasantly complained in their col- 
 lege days, have really concluded that Wes- 
 ley was defective in human sympathy, had 
 she mastered the details of his many-sided 
 life and character. Wesley, as will presently 
 be shown, was, perhaps, as susceptible a man 
 in regard to all the charms and attractions 
 of social character and intercourse, espe- 
 cially in the case of women, as can easily be 
 found among the saints of history. 
 
 But the most elaborate work which has 
 
3$ The Living Wesley. 
 
 of late appeared on Wesley is the new 
 " Life," in three volumes, from the pen of 
 the Rev. Luke Tyerman, to which I have 
 referred. This is a work of voluminous 
 dimensions, and one which embodies the 
 results of very great research, the fruit of 
 years of industrious reading and collection. 
 Mr. Tyerman prepared himself for his work 
 by writing his biography of the father of 
 the Wesleys, Samuel Wesley, the rector of 
 Epworth, a volume which has been reviewed 
 in the " London Quarterly Review." He 
 seems also to have collected and studied — 
 or at least to have carefully read, if he was 
 not able to purchase — every book, pamphlet, 
 broadsheet, and periodical, in which there is 
 any reference whatever to Wesley : so that 
 he writes with hitherto unequaled fullness 
 of material and knowledge so far as respects 
 the facts of Wesley's life. Being thus fur- 
 nished and prepared, he has set himself to 
 search out and set forth in order the whole 
 history of Wesley from his cradle to his 
 grave. His boyhood, so far as any thing 
 can be learned about it ; his school and col- 
 
Introductory. 39 
 
 lege life ; his home relations; his early per- 
 sonal friends, including not only university 
 chums but well-beloved ladies ; his religious 
 history, minutely traced in all its stages, 
 especially his changes of opinion and feel- 
 ing as these gradually declared themselves, 
 — until in the end a complete revolution 
 had been consummated, and the academical 
 high-Churchman had become the father of 
 the Methodist revival and transformation ; 
 his preachings and journeyings; his organ- 
 izations, his controversies, the persecutions 
 he endured, the slanders, in full tale and 
 in all their baseless enormity, which were 
 continually invented and circulated against 
 him, however miserable and short-lived 
 such slanders may have been ; his love- 
 affairs and his married life ; his almost 
 innumerable publications ; his conferences 
 and his helpers, ordained and unordained ; 
 his " ordinations " and his relations with 
 the Church of England; his co-operation 
 and his disagreements with the Moravians, 
 with Whitefield, and "the Countess;" his 
 loving concord and co-working, and his no- 
 
40 The Living Wesley. 
 
 less-loving differences and contentions, with 
 his Church-satirizing but Church-idea-lov- 
 ing brother Charles; the peaceful labors 
 and the wide-spread love and honor which 
 marked the protracted years of his wonder- 
 ful old age : all these matters, and a world 
 of things besides, belonging to the infinitely 
 busy and varied life of Wesley, Mr. Tyer- 
 man has made known to the world in these 
 large and closely-printed volumes. The 
 world, by the help of Mr. Tyerman, may 
 now know all about John Wesley; may 
 know much more, indeed, about the mere 
 facts and consecutive history of his life, in 
 its various fields and departments, than 
 was ever known of him in his life-time by 
 his closest friends. The record may be 
 read and pondered in all its breadth, and 
 from beginning to end. We may study 
 the man as he hardly could have studied 
 himself. 
 
 We are bound to admit, moreover, that 
 Mr. Tyerman has shown no indulgence to 
 his hero. Cromwell enjoined on the courtly 
 portrait-painter to be sure to paint in all 
 
Iiitroductoiy. 41 
 
 the warts there were upon his face. Mr. 
 Tyerman appears rather to have been on 
 the look-out for warts, and occasionally, as 
 it seems to us, has magnified a mole into 
 a wart, if he has not sometimes, looking 
 through his microscope with broken light, 
 fancied he saw an unevenness and blemish 
 where in reality there was none. The se- 
 vere and Rhadamanthine judgment which 
 Mr. Tyerman has exercised in regard to 
 the pre-eminent son is the more remark- 
 able because he went to altogether the 
 other extreme in writing the life of the 
 father, as was pointed out in the " London 
 Quarterly Review." On that old soldier's 
 face there were warts not a few, and of no 
 small size. But Mr. Tyerman could hardly 
 see any. To him the rector of Epworth 
 was an altogether noble and comely-seem- 
 ing character, with few and venial infirmi- 
 ties, but no faults of any serious account ; 
 he was not merely, on the whole, a good and 
 able and worthy man, although somewhat 
 rugged in natural disposition and time- 
 serving in professions and policy — to Mr. 
 
42 The Living Wesley. 
 
 Tyerman's eye he was a truly great man, a 
 great and good man ; he was a high poetic 
 genius, a man of a brave and lofty spirit, a 
 great sufferer, a great hero, and a great 
 saint. What Frederick the Great is to 
 Carlyle, Samuel Wesley of Epworth is to 
 Mr. Tyerman ; and, according to his ability, 
 he has effected for Samuel Wesley a trans- 
 formation similar in character to that which 
 the rugged Scotch philosopher has effected 
 for the harsh and distempered Prussian 
 king. And now, having been so indulgent 
 in the case of the father, Mr. Tyerman 
 has set himself to be what we may call 
 sinistrously faithful in the case of the son, 
 pleasant and blessed a man as that son 
 undeniably was. 
 
 Perhaps it is as well that it should be 
 so. At all events, we may perhaps account 
 for the different treatment which the biog- 
 rapher has bestowed on the two characters. 
 The Wesley father had suffered much, had 
 shown much patience and bravery of spirit, 
 and had been undervalued, as Mr. Tyerman 
 thought, and left more in the background 
 
Introductory. 43 
 
 than such a father of such a family — and in 
 particular of such sons — should have been. 
 There was a great deal, too, that was pic- 
 turesque in the history and the situation 
 of the forlorn, persecuted, unbusiness-like, 
 and weather-beaten rector. Here was a 
 temptation to an author — to repair an old 
 injustice, to bring out a striking figure into 
 light, to disinter a hero. As to the son, 
 the case is different. Mr. Tyerman has 
 passed his life among those who almost 
 worship the memory of John Wesley ; many 
 of whom think him absolute perfection, and 
 cherish toward him a blind and unintelli- 
 gent admiration. Probably he himself at 
 one time shared strongly in these feel- 
 ings. Research has shown Mr. Tyerman 
 that the popular conceptions of Wesley are 
 to some extent mistaken. In applying his 
 research, moreover, to point after point in 
 Wesley's life, he has discovered what— as 
 seen through his lens — look like consid- 
 erable faults, although, when the natural 
 eye looks at the whole character, they fade 
 away into almost imperceptible foibles, or 
 
44 The Living Wesley. 
 
 are seen to be, in reality, points of excel- 
 lence. Here, then, are discoveries, which 
 the truth-loving biographer deems it neces- 
 sary to point out ; here are popular errors 
 which it is his stern duty, as an historian, to 
 correct. Chivalry, sustained by fact, as he 
 fancied, prompted Mr. Tyerman to make a 
 hero of the father ; public fidelity seemed to 
 require that he should enlighten, as to cer- 
 tain points, the blind worshipers of the son. 
 Nor must we deny that it was Mr. Tyer- 
 man's duty to be severely true and faithful 
 in his history of John Wesley, and this all 
 
 the more because he is himself a Method- 
 ist. We are bound to repudiate altogether 
 the maxim, as applied to such a case, that 
 he ought, as one of Wesley's followers, to 
 
 " Be to his faults a little blind, 
 Be to his virtues very kind." 
 
 The sanctity of truth — historical truth — is 
 a holier and more venerable thing than 
 even the reputation of John Wesley. Nor 
 should we withhold from the biographer 
 our admiration for the courage and fidelity 
 
Introductory. 45 
 
 with which, according to his own concep- 
 tions of truth, he has done his work. 
 Moreover, as I have intimated, his rugged 
 fidelity has, at least in one way, done good. 
 No one can read this Wesleyan life of 
 Wesley without feeling certain that the 
 whole of Wesley's life, including whatever 
 might have appeared to bear an unfavor- 
 able construction, and including all the 
 scandals which were circulated respecting 
 him by his meanest and most malignant 
 foes, is brought fully out to view, and that, 
 if the biographer has not " set down aught 
 in malice," he has, on the other hand, 
 " extenuated " nothing. Whatever he knew 
 of to tell is told ; whatever might at any 
 time have been suspected, or scandalously 
 alleged, that is told too. The worst possi- 
 ble is indicated as to Wesley. And the 
 result is, a character with as much of good- 
 ness in it and as little alloy of evil as could 
 well have been conceived ; the character 
 of a man absolutely free from meanness, 
 from malice, from any standing anger or 
 resentment ; who, if he now and then went 
 
46 The Living Wesley. 
 
 wrong, did so from the sanguine impru-. 
 dences of a generous and susceptible na- 
 ture, or, in one or two cases in the course of 
 half a century, from the momentary irrita- 
 tion which a thwarted chief might be apt to 
 feel ; but whose whole life was one of unre- 
 mitting self-denial and unresting labor for 
 the good of others. Such a character, so 
 revealed and established, comes out most 
 impressively from Mr. Tyerman's biography. 
 Still, I cannot but add that, in my judg- 
 ment, Mr. Tyerman has overdone his fidel- 
 ity. He seems to have acted the part, 
 almost wherever possible, of advocatus dia- 
 boli — to have chosen, as a rule, the worst 
 construction which, with any thing like 
 probability, could be put upon Wesley's 
 life and character. He never gives the 
 •benefit of the doubt, as it seems to us, to 
 the accused, but always to the accuser. 
 Considering who and what Wesley was, and 
 what his antecedents and independent char- 
 acter must be admitted to have been, this 
 appears not to be judicially fair. Besides 
 this, there is a tone in his dealing with 
 
Introductory. 47 
 
 Wesley which fairly astonishes one at times. 
 Mr. Tyerman does not merely sum up in 
 phrase of precise accuracy just what hap- 
 pened, and leave his readers to draw their 
 conclusions : he censures, he pronounces, 
 he condemns ; and this, too, in a tone of 
 harshness, in some instances, and of lofty 
 decision, as if he were Wesley's superior 
 and judge. I believe that Macaulay — it 
 is perfectly certain that Southey — would 
 never have ventured in so absolute, uncere- 
 monious, dictatorial a style to pronounce 
 censure on John Wesley. They would 
 have felt their own inferiority to him ; 
 that, if he sometimes erred, he was at least 
 a good and great man, a venerable saint, 
 as to whom they could not venture to pro- 
 nounce an unfavorable judgment, even in 
 individual acts of his life, without modesty 
 and self-restraint — without what the Ro- 
 mans would have called verecundia. Mr. 
 Tyerman has not been restrained by any 
 such feelings. At times his mere ipse dixit, 
 without even the formality of any attempt 
 to weigh evidence or investigate the mat- 
 
48 The Living Wesley. 
 
 ter, pronounces, sharp and short, at once the 
 folly or the wrong-doing of Wesley. Surely 
 men should be as tender in their style of 
 handling the character of departed saints 
 and heroes as of living men. But if his 
 brethren were to pronounce judgment on 
 Mr. Tyerman's own sayings and doings, 
 with decision as abrupt and unsparing as 
 he uses in dealing with the father and 
 founder of Methodism, I imagine he would 
 have a very good ground of brotherly com- 
 plaint against them. 
 
 Nor does it ever seem to have occurred 
 to Mr. Tyerman that perhaps Wesley and 
 he regarded certain questions from differ- 
 ent points of view ; that he ought to have 
 tried fully to master Wesley's own way of 
 thinking and regarding the matter in hand ; 
 and that, after all, from some point of view 
 less conventional and more really true than 
 his own, things which seem to his preju- 
 dices to be wrong might turn out to be 
 right. Considering that Wesley was a man 
 of far more thought than most of us — who 
 had seen much more of life than any of us 
 
Introductory, 49 
 
 — it is possible that he might have so much 
 to say for his own way of thinking and act- 
 ing, even when it seems to be directly in 
 opposition to some current notions of to- 
 day, as at least to warrant arrest of judg- 
 ment in the case. Mr. Tyerman appears 
 incapable of entering sympathetically into 
 the mind and idiosyncrasy of Wesley. He 
 is not in sympathy with him ; and yet does 
 not appear to feel that this is the case, or 
 even that such sympathy is necessary in 
 order to enable him to write the life of 
 Wesley. He judges merely and unhesi- 
 tatingly by his own lights and his own 
 instincts. Those instincts, at least in some 
 cases, I am bold to regard as mere conven- 
 tional prejudices, and am prepared to vin- 
 dicate Wesley just where and wherefore his 
 biographer condemns him * 
 
 But, indeed, nothing is more evident 
 than that Mr. Tyerman is deficient in that 
 
 * The contrast in tone between Mr. Tyerman's treatment 
 of Wesley and his manner of judging him, and the manner 
 in which genial outsiders write of him, may be understood 
 by reference to the article on " Wesley and Wesleyanism " 
 in the "British Ouarterly " for October, 1871. 
 4 
 
50 The Living Wesley. 
 
 faculty of dramatic sympathy and insight, 
 without which it is impossible for any man 
 to understand, much less to write, the life 
 of another man, especially of a unique and 
 wonderful man. He misunderstood the 
 father, painting him after his own heart 
 merely, but not as the facts, properly inter- 
 preted in a spirit of insight, really present 
 him to our view : he painted a man he 
 could understand and admire, but it was not 
 the rector. In that case the facts were 
 unconsciously warped to suit the sympa- 
 thetic conception of the biographer ; in the 
 case of the son, he generally sticks to the 
 facts in their mere outside aspect, but often 
 he cannot get behind them — cannot see 
 their real meaning. In neither case have 
 the facts helped him to a true and real con- 
 ception of the life and character which lay 
 behind them. 
 
PART II. 
 
 WESLEY'S CHARACTER AND OPINIONS IX HIS EARLIER 
 
 LIFE, TO THE PERIOD OF HIS EVAN- 
 GELICAL CONVERSION. 
 
PART II 
 
 WESLEY'S CHARACTER AND OPINIONS IN HIS 
 
 EARLIER LIFE, TO THE PERIOD OF HIS 
 
 EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HIS BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 
 
 EY chief object, in this part of my 
 study, will be to exhibit some points 
 of Wesley's history, and some aspects of 
 his character up to the time of his final 
 and full spiritual change, which hitherto 
 seem to have escaped recognition. Merely 
 reminding my readers, therefore, that he 
 was born in 1703, I pass over the circum- 
 stances of his early years. Epworth and 
 its parsonage, with the rugged and granitic 
 father, the episcopal mother, and the brill- 
 iant throng of daughters, I must not at- 
 tempt to describe. I must also pass over 
 the " fire " at the parsonage, and even " old 
 
54 The Living Wesley. 
 
 Jeffrey," that inexplicable visitation; and, 
 only to note two points, must I stay for an 
 instant at the Charterhouse School. Wes- 
 ley, it is well known, was educated there ; 
 and there endured great hardships and 
 even cruel oppressions — small and deli- 
 cately-formed boy as he was — from some 
 of the senior scholars, especially during his 
 service as "fag." It appears that there 
 was a tradition in the school that Wesley 
 was accustomed, when himself a senior, to 
 associate with his juniors. This is likely 
 enough to have been true, considering what 
 the manners and morals of the school were 
 at that time. He might do some good to 
 his juniors, and, at least among them, might 
 avoid evil communications. 
 
 As for the story related by Mr. Tyer- 
 man, that when Mr. Tooke, his master, 
 asked him the reason for his so associat- 
 ing, he answered, 
 
 " Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven," 
 
 I simply regard it as an invention and em- 
 bellishment, added by his school-fellows, 
 
His Boyhood and \ 'outJi. 5 5 
 
 more puerorum. to amplify and round off 
 the tradition and the story. I feel sure, 
 besides, and by the way, that Wesley, if 
 he had quoted Milton at all, would have 
 quoted him accurately. It is said that 
 Wesley was accustomed to " harangue " his 
 juniors, and it is likely enough that he 
 did, more or less, expound and hold forth 
 to them on interesting matters of routine 
 and duty, or possibly on themes of fancy. 
 He was a quick boy, with the gift of a 
 teacher, and not wanting in the fancy of 
 a poet. 
 
 But one remark made by Mr. Tyerman, 
 as to his school-life at the Charterhouse, 
 strikes me as singularly austere. It is the 
 first instance of the austerity with which 
 the biographer has treated Wesley through- 
 out. Wesley, who, it must be remembered, 
 entered the Charterhouse at the aee of 
 ten, is said, with solemn emphasis, there to 
 have " lost the religion which had marked 
 his character from the days of infancy." 
 He is himself quoted to the effect that at 
 school he was "negligent of outward duties, 
 
56 The Living Wesley. 
 
 and continually guilty of outward sins." 
 And on the strength of this confession his 
 biographer says : " Terrible is the danger 
 when a child leaves a pious home for a 
 public school. John Wesley entered the 
 Charterhouse a saint, and left it a sinner." 
 That is to say, he entered it a saint of ten 
 years old, and left it a sinner of seventeen. 
 Now, I emphatically agree that the dan- 
 ger is very great indeed which attends a 
 child leaving a simple, pious home to enter 
 upon a public school. The wickedness of 
 public schools has always been proverbial. 
 But I think the instance of Wesley is by 
 no means a strong one to cite in illustra- 
 tion of the point. I hardly know how 
 adequately to interpret the saying that 
 Wesley at ten was " a saint," or to under- 
 stand the contrast between the saint-child 
 of ten and the sinner-youth of seventeen. 
 But it is well to observe in what sense 
 Wesley was "a sinner" in his teens. He, 
 who himself made the confession of his 
 religious failures, has also taught us how 
 to understand and qualify them. He was 
 
His Boyhood and Youth. 57 
 
 negligent and careless, and he was guilty 
 of what he knew to be outward sins ; but 
 yet such sins, he tells us in the same con- 
 text, were " not scandalous in the eye of 
 the world." He adds, moreover: "How- 
 ever, I still read the Scriptures, and said 
 my prayers morning and evening. And 
 what I now hoped to be saved by was : 
 
 1. Not being so bad as other people ; 
 
 2. Having still a kindness for religion ; 
 and, 3. Reading the Bible, going to church, 
 and saying my prayers." 
 
 Such is the sentence which Wesley, the 
 sternest of judges in such a case, pro- 
 nounced on his own moral and religious 
 state when he was at the Charterhouse 
 — a sentence pronounced, it must be re- 
 membered, at a time when all Wesley's 
 judgments as to such cases were far 
 more severe than they became as revised, 
 after many years' experience, in his later 
 life. It was in 1738 that he so wrote of 
 himself. It is clear that Wesley never lost, 
 even at the Charterhouse, a tender respect 
 for religion, the fear of God, and the form of 
 
58 The Living Wesley. 
 
 Christian propriety. That he was at this 
 time unconverted there can be no doubt ; 
 but when Mr. Tyerman, with such awful 
 emphasis, tells us that, having gone to the 
 Charterhouse a " saint "-child at ten years 
 of age, he left it "a sinner" at seventeen, 
 he uses language which can scarcely fail to 
 convey an altogether exaggerated impres- 
 sion as to the character of his moral and 
 spiritual faults and failings. Nor do I think 
 the unqualified language which he so uses 
 is consistent with the account he had given 
 on a former page of young Wesley's behav- 
 ior at the Charterhouse. 
 
 Isaac Taylor, in his work on " Wesley 
 and Methodism," says, with reference to the 
 privations and oppressions which Wesley 
 endured at school, that " he learned as a 
 boy, to suffer wrongfully with cheerful pa- 
 tience, and to conform himself to cruel 
 despotisms without acquiring either the 
 slave's temper or the despot's." Mr. Ty- 
 erman substantially adopts this language 
 into his text as his own description of 
 how Wesley fared and did at the Char- 
 
His BoyJiood and Youth. 59 
 
 terhouse, (p. 20.) But, for my part, I 
 cannot help thinking that not a little 
 grace must have been still working in 
 the soul of the brave and patient boy, to 
 enable him to behave as he did. Wesley 
 must have carried a heart not only bright 
 and hopeful, but forgiving ; not only elastic 
 and vigorous, but patient and generous ; or 
 he could not have looked back in after 
 days on his six or seven years at the Char- 
 terhouse — as we know that he did look 
 back — not only without bitterness, but with 
 pleasure, and have retained, as Southey 
 says, so great a predilection for the place, 
 that, on his annual visits to London, he 
 made it his custom to walk through the 
 scene of his boyhood. 
 
 One consequence of his school-experience 
 I may note in passing. There can be no 
 doubt that what he saw and experienced of 
 the wild and wicked horse-play of a great 
 school had much to do with the regulations 
 which he made long afterward for Kings- 
 wood School, forbidding all play, and per- 
 mitting only of walks and garden-work by 
 
6d The Living Wesley. 
 
 way of exercise and recreation. It was no 
 slight evidence, let me here subjoin, of at 
 least the powerful restraining influence of 
 religion that Wesley passed through such 
 an ordeal as his six or seven years' resi- 
 dence at Charterhouse without contracting 
 any taint of vice. 
 
TJte Collegian at Oxford. 61 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE COLLEGIAN AT OXFORD. 
 
 Q^_ 
 
 ipgET us linger awhile with Wesley at 
 ^=^ Oxford — which University he entered, 
 
 as scholar of Christ Church College, in 1720 
 — not so much that we may review at any 
 length his course and experience there, as 
 that we may observe what manner of per- 
 son he was — first, as a collegian, companion, 
 and friend ; next, as a theological student 
 and Churchman ; and, in both respects, as 
 a living and moving man, full of power 
 over those who came near him. 
 
 When Wesley went to Oxford at seven- 
 teen he was a gay, sprightly, and virtuous 
 youth, full of good classics, and also with 
 some knowledge of Hebrew, which he had 
 begun to learn under his brother Samuel 
 during the short interval, apparently, be- 
 tween leaving the Charterhouse and gain- 
 ing his scholarship at Christ Church. He 
 
62 The Living Wesley. 
 
 was moral and church-going ; according to 
 his own testimony, he read the Scriptures 
 and religious books, especially commenta- 
 ries ; but he was destitute of any true ap- 
 prehension of spiritual religion : he was, in 
 fact, a devout, yet half-worldly, Pharisee, 
 much such another as the young ruler in 
 the Gospels, only without his possessions. 
 His scholarship yielded him £4.0 a year, 
 which ill sufficed for his needs. His tu- 
 tors were considerate, and, indeed, gen- 
 erous ; his poverty-wrung parents did all 
 they could for him, the father joining to his 
 gifts (poor man) reproofs, now and then, 
 of his son's want of adequate economy. (!) 
 But with all this, and although John's par- 
 simony must really have been extreme, it 
 was very hard for him, during his under- 
 graduate course, and afterward until pupils 
 and a fellowship brought him a compe- 
 tency, to " make ends meet." " Dear Jack," 
 wrote his mother to him after he had been 
 some four years at college and had taken 
 his bachelor's degree, " be not discouraged ; 
 do your duty, keep close to your studies, 
 
The Collegian at Oxford. 6$ 
 
 and hope for better days. Perhaps, not- 
 withstanding all, we shall pick up a few 
 crumbs for you before the end of the year. 
 Dear Jacky, I beseech Almighty God to 
 bless thee." A month later, I find that one 
 of the' college dons, who had lent Wesley 
 money, had " paid himself out of Wesley's 
 exhibition,"* not altogether to the content- 
 ment of Mrs. Wesley. 
 
 In November of 1724 Mrs. Wesley writes 
 a kind letter to her son, in which she urges 
 him to save as much money as possible 
 that he might pay his debts. Early in Jan- 
 uary, 1725, the father writes a brief note, 
 promising £5 toward ^10, which Wesley 
 owed to a friend ; and three weeks later he 
 writes to him again as follows : — 
 
 "Wroote, January 26, 1725. 
 
 " Dear Son, — I am so well pleased with 
 your decent behavior, or, at least, with your 
 letters, that I hope I shall have no occasion 
 to remember any more some things that 
 are past ; and since you have now for some 
 
 * An allowance or bounty made, under certain restrictions, 
 for the assistance of poor scholars. 
 
64 The Living Wesley. 
 
 time bit upon the bridle, I will take care 
 hereafter to put a little honey upon it as 
 oft as I am able ; but then it shall be of my 
 own mere motion, as the last ^5 was, for I 
 will bear no rivals in my kingdom. 
 " Your affectionate father, 
 
 " Samuel Wesley." 
 
 The meaning of this not unpleasing, 
 although monitory, letter is not altogether 
 clear. It would seem, however, that the 
 father had been solicited previously to give 
 some help to his son — perhaps by the 
 mother, possibly through some other chan- 
 nel — and that he had refused, accompany- 
 ing his refusal with some admonitions : 
 further, that the son had taken his father's 
 reproofs somewhat amiss at first, but had 
 latterly expressed himself in his letters 
 in a way which satisfied his father. The 
 father had accordingly relented, as the let- 
 ter shows. Mr. Tyerman's commentary on 
 this and the brief preceding note is alto- 
 gether in an exaggerated tone of austerity. 
 He writes as if such letters "cast shadows 
 
The Collegian at Oxford. 65 
 
 on the character " of young Wesley ; he 
 declares, quite unwarrantably, that, from the 
 age of eleven to twenty-two, Wesley was, 
 ■ by his own confession, an habitual, if not 
 profane and flagrant, sinner," and that he 
 " thoughtlessly contracted debts greater 
 than he had means to pay." We must say 
 that there is no evidence whatever to jus- 
 tify such language as this. Wesley seems 
 always to have kept at a remote distance 
 from any thing like " profane and flagrant 
 sin;" he was "a sinner," as moral and vir- 
 tuous youths are sinners, but only so ; and 
 if he could not make ends meet on ^40 
 a year, there is no evidence whatever 
 that he " thoughtlessly contracted debts." 
 His sister Emilia, writing to him a few 
 months later, said, no doubt most truly : 
 " I know you are a young man encom- 
 passed with difficulties, and have passed 
 through many hardships already, and prob- 
 ably must through many more before you 
 are easy in the world;" she adds, also — ■ 
 poor, half-clad girl ! — a noticeable remark : 
 ' I know not when we have had so good a 
 
66 The Living Wesley. 
 
 year, both at Wroote and at Epworth, as 
 this year ; but, instead of saving any thing 
 to clothe my sister or myself, we are just 
 where we were. . . , One thing I warn you 
 of — let not my giving you this account be 
 any hinderance to your affairs. If you want 
 assistance in any case, my father is as able 
 to give it now as at any time these last 
 ten years ; nor shall we be ever the poorer 
 for it." * 
 
 It is evident that the sister's sympathies 
 were heartily with her brother. There is, 
 in truth, no foundation whatever for the 
 imputation to John Wesley, in his earlier 
 years at Oxford, of improvidence or unthrift. 
 I take it for granted that he never incurred 
 a serious expense, unless sometimes to pur- 
 chase a book which appeared to be needful 
 to his success as a student. That he had 
 any extravagant habits or tendencies what- 
 ever, there is not the least reason to sup- 
 pose. His mother did, indeed, urge him 
 gently to try to save, probably because the 
 Rector would have her put in an admoni- 
 
 * Tyerman, vol. i, p. 33. 
 
The Collegian at Oxford. 6j 
 
 tion to that effect ; but she never approaches 
 the tone of censure in writing to her son. 
 And if she had seemed to incline that way, 
 wanting as she was, for herself and her 
 family, almost the necessaries of life, and 
 not understanding fully a collegian's neces- 
 sities, it would have been for once no 
 great wonder. But there is no such tone 
 in her correspondence. Her loving son 
 had talked of trying to save a little that 
 he might be able to visit his family ; she 
 gently reminds him that the payment of his 
 debts was the first thing to be thought of, 
 but expresses, at the same time, the hope 
 that she may be able to bear his charges 
 home. " I am not without hope," she says 
 in the letter from which I have lately quoted 
 a few words, " of meeting you next summer," 
 (in London.) " If you then be willing to 
 accompany me to Wrote, I shall bear your 
 charges as God shall enable me." 
 
 To this subject of young Wesley's faults 
 and failings Mr. Tyerman gives a whole 
 paragraph — a very emphatic, and not a 
 very short, paragraph. And yet, in the very 
 
68 The Living Wesley. 
 
 next paragraph, and within some half-dozen 
 lines of saying that Wesley " had need to 
 repent in dust and ashes" for his sins — for 
 the sins in particular, and among the rest, 
 of extravagance and thoughtless improvi- 
 dence, by which he had brought addition- 
 al burdens on his poor, embarrassed, and 
 struggling father, Mr. Tyerman goes on to 
 say that "Wesley was far too noble and too 
 high-principled to seek admission into the 
 Christian ministry " merely as a livelihood. 
 Surely, if he were improvident, extravagant, 
 inconsiderate of his father's circumstances, 
 "an habitual, if not profane and flagrant, 
 sinner," " without religious sentiments, and 
 without a religious aim," as Mr. Tyerman 
 tells us he was, it is not by any means 
 incredible that, when he went to college, it 
 might be his intention to enter the Church 
 as a profession, without any high religious 
 motive. I do not, in the least, wish to inti- 
 mate that he did so ; but it is not consist- 
 ent, on the one hand, to place John Wesley 
 so low in respect of religion, if not also of 
 morality, *and, on the other hand, to speak 
 
The Collegian at Oxford. 69 
 
 of him as so noble and so high-principled a 
 young man. 
 
 Leaving this point, however, let us note 
 the indications of young Wesley's character 
 in the earlier years of his college life which 
 are afforded by the family correspondence 
 with which Mr. Tyerman enriches his first 
 chapter, " Wesley at Home, at School, and 
 at College." No one can read this corre- 
 spondence without becoming aware that 
 "Jacky" — the very name, "Jacky," might, 
 indeed, be sufficient to settle that ques- 
 tion — was by no means the semi-stoical 
 person, destitute of homely warmth and 
 kindliness, and of natural interest and con- 
 cern about the little matters of family life, 
 which some of his critics — which even a 
 writer of such discrimination and insight 
 as Miss Wedgwood — would seem to have 
 supposed him to be. If at a later period 
 of his life, when absorbed and oppressed 
 by the care of the religious movement at 
 Oxford, he forgot, on his arrival from a 
 visit home, to tell his brother Charles of 
 the details of the family circumstances, that 
 
70 The Living Wesley. 
 
 must be attributed, not in the least to want 
 of feeling for his parents and sisters, or 
 lack of interest in all that really affected 
 them, but to the weight and pressure at 
 the moment of a most solemn religious 
 undertaking and responsibility. How lov- 
 ingly and generously he cared for his 
 mother and sisters through life — with what 
 depth and intensity, with what force of rea- 
 son and fact, and of barely suppressed 
 indignation, he vindicated himself, on one 
 occasion, from a petulant and unwar- 
 rantable imputation to the contrary — the 
 students of his life will hardly fail to re- 
 member.* In his early days at Oxford he 
 kept up very loving relations and corre- 
 spondence with his sisters. " More than 
 once," as Mr. Tyerman tells us, "when 
 requesting that his sisters would write to 
 him, he playfully remarks that, though he 
 was so poor, he would be able to spare 
 the postage for a letter now and then." 
 And writing to his mother on the 1st of 
 
 * See his letter to his sister Emily, in Clarke's "Wesley 
 Family," p. 519, and in Mr. Tyerman, i, pp. 424, 5. 
 
The Collegian at Oxford. J I 
 
 November, 1724, from Oxford, he says: 
 " I should be exceedingly glad to keep up 
 a correspondence with my sister Emily, if 
 she were willing. I have writ once or twice 
 to my sister Sukey, too, but have not had 
 an answer either from her or my sister 
 Hetty, from whom I have more than once 
 desired the poem of ' The Dog.' I should 
 be glad to hear how things go on at Wroote, 
 which I now remember with more pleasure 
 than Epworth ; so true it is, at least in me, 
 that the persons, not the place, make home 
 so pleasant." A sweeter, purer tone of 
 writing than this we could hardly imagine. 
 It will be observed that the family were 
 now living, not at Epworth, but at Wroote, 
 the living which his father held with Ep- 
 worth, and that this was the reason of the 
 turn in the last sentence. Wroote itself 
 was a most uninviting place, very different 
 from the pleasant and old-fashioned settled- 
 ness of the town of Epworth, with its 
 comfortable houses and goodly gardens. 
 The letter closes by begging his mother's 
 and his father's blessing on their "dutiful 
 
72 The Living Wesley. 
 
 son." It was five months later than the 
 date of this letter that " Emilia Wesley " 
 wrote the letter to her brother from which 
 I have already quoted. 
 
 Poor Emilia, eldest of the gifted sisters ! 
 Mr. Kirk says of her, in his " Mother of the 
 Wesleys:" "Her love for her mother was 
 strong as death ; and she regarded her 
 brother John with a passionate fondness. 
 Though so much younger than herself, she 
 selected him as her ' most intimate com- 
 panion ; her counselor in difficulties/ to 
 whom ' her heart lay open at all times.' " 
 Crossed in love, and, for some reason not 
 fully explained, but perhaps connected with 
 her love affair, irritated against her father, 
 her spirit chafed under the difficulties of 
 her situation ; but she bravely helped both 
 her family and herself during the years of 
 her earlier womanhood. She w T as known 
 in her later years as Mrs. Harper, a widow, 
 and died in the bosom of her brother's 
 Methodism, in her eightieth year. Poor 
 Sukey. too, the second sister, beautiful, 
 vivacious, and accomplished, but whose lot 
 
The Collegian at Oxford. 73 
 
 was far more troublous than that of Emily, 
 though Emily's was so far from an easy life. 
 She was in the flower of her life when her 
 brother referred to her. Some years later, 
 after she had married the wretched profli- 
 gate Ellison, her youngest sister wrote of 
 her : " Poor Sukey ! she is very ill. People 
 think she is going into a consumption. It 
 would be well for her if she was where ' the 
 wicked cease from troubling, and the weary 
 are at rest.' '' And again, poor Hetty ! 
 Her lot was as sad as that of her sister 
 Ellison. The most gifted of all the sisters 
 to whom it was more natural to write in 
 sweet verse than in prose — though her 
 prose, like that of all the sisters, was excel- 
 lent — her sad story has in part been told 
 by Mr. Kirk in the interesting volume to 
 which I have referred. Her husband was 
 every way unsuitable for her — an ignorant, 
 illiterate, and degraded plumber. Meheta- 
 bel (Hetty) Wesley, or Mrs. Wright, after 
 a living martyrdom of some twenty years, 
 died in 1750, leaving not a few beautiful 
 verses behind her. To these and to all his 
 
74 The Living Wesley. 
 
 sisters Wesley never failed to show himself 
 an affectionate brother. How it is that 
 there was no reference to his amiable, but 
 deformed, sister Mary in the letter of 
 Wesley I have quoted, it is not possible 
 to guess. She became Mrs. Whitelamb — 
 Whitelamb havine been first her father's 
 amanuensis, afterward his curate, and finally, 
 when he married, his successor in the small 
 rectory of Wroote — and she died in 1 734, 
 one year after her marriage, at the age of 
 thirty-eight, having had, indeed, a short but 
 not an unhappy life. Keziah, the remain- 
 ing sister of Wesley, was, in 1724, only four- 
 teen years old. 
 
 Mr. Badcock, in the " Westminster Mag- 
 azine," gave a picture of Wesley as he 
 was at Oxford in 173.4, when he was about 
 twenty-one years of age. "He appeared," 
 we are told, " the very sensible and acute 
 collegian ; a young fellow of the finest clas- 
 sical taste, of the most liberal and manly 
 sentiments." He was at this time a gen- 
 eral favorite. But having taken his de- 
 gree, and being in prospect of presently 
 
The Collegian at Oxford. 7$ 
 
 taking orders, a decided change began to 
 come over his feelings. He became much 
 more serious and thoughtful than he had 
 been, and corresponded earnestly both with 
 his father and his mother as to the motives 
 which should govern him in seeking to 
 take orders ; as to the studies which he 
 should pursue; and as to the principles and 
 manner of life which should give character 
 to one intending to enter the holy ministry. 
 Mr. Tyerman gives the most important let- 
 ters, and enables us to trace the formation 
 of Wesley's principles. Thomas k Kempis, 
 Jeremy Taylor, and William Law, as he 
 himself has particularly described, were his 
 chief instructors at the first, and for a con- 
 siderable period. The asceticism of the first, 
 indeed, was always too somber for him. 
 But, on the whole, he was greatly molded 
 by their influence, and became eventually 
 himself an ascetic, with a mystical bias, (due 
 partly to Law,) and also an overpowering 
 ritualistic tendency, but at all times free 
 from somberness of coloring or moroseness 
 of temperament. Against Jeremy Taylor's 
 
76 The Living Wesley. 
 
 gloomy and morbid teachings as to the 
 necessity of perpetual, sorrowful uncer- 
 tainty on the point of the penitent sinners 
 pardon and acceptance, Wesley's cheerful 
 faith and good sense revolted from the 
 first. Writing to his mother in 1725, he 
 says: " If we dwell in Christ, and Christ 
 in us, (which he will not do unless we are 
 regenerate,) certainly we must be sensible 
 of it. If we can never have any certainty 
 of our being in a state of salvation, good 
 reason it is that every moment should be 
 spent, not in joy, but in fear and trembling ; 
 and then, undoubtedly, we are in this life 
 of all men most miserable. God deliver us 
 from such a fearful expectation as this!" 
 There, in 1725, we have already settled 
 within Wesley's mind, notwithstanding his 
 High-Church indoctrination from the writ- 
 ings of Taylor, one of the characteris- 
 tic doctrines of Methodism, namely, that 
 of a conscious present salvation from guilt 
 and fear, through the indwelling of Christ. 
 It is clear, also, that as yet the modern 
 Anglican doctrine of baptismal regenera- 
 
The Collegian at Oxford. J J 
 
 tion had not been distinctly embraced by 
 him. 
 
 It was from the "Christian's Pattern" 
 of Thomas k Kempis, and from Taylor's 
 11 Holy Living and Dying," that he learned 
 the doctrine of entire Christian consecra- 
 tion and holiness which afterward developed 
 into the Methodist doctrine of " Christian 
 Perfection." " I saw," he says in a passage 
 which Mr. Tyerman quotes, "that simplicity 
 of intention and purity of affection — one de- 
 sign in all we speak and do, and one desire 
 ruling all our tempers — are indeed the 
 wings of the soul, without which she can 
 never ascend to God. I sought after this 
 from that hour." This was in 1725, and 
 the lesson was learned from the " Pattern." 
 Again, he says, in reference to the effect of 
 the " Holy Living and Dying:" " Instantly 
 I resolved to dedicate all my life to God — 
 all my thoughts, and words, and actions — 
 being thoroughly convinced there was no 
 medium, but that every part of my life (not 
 some only) must either be a sacrifice to 
 God or myself, that is, the devil." Truly 
 
7% The Living Wesley. 
 
 does Mr. Tyerman say, after quoting these 
 passages, and more than we have cited : 
 " Here, then, we have the turning point in 
 Wesley's history. It was not until thirteen 
 years after this that he received the con- 
 sciousness of being saved through faith in 
 Christ ; but from this time his whole aim 
 was to serve God and his fellow-creatures, 
 and get safe to heaven." — Pp. 36, 37. Let 
 it be noted, accordingly, that 1725 was a 
 great era in Wesley's history. In the 
 same year he and his mother — that re- 
 markable woman was his chief theological 
 tutor — settled between them the question 
 of predestination in the sense in which 
 Wesley always taught it. As to faith, 
 however, Wesley still remained altogether 
 beclouded. Faith, with him, at present 
 seems to have meant little else than right 
 opinion. No wonder, after wandering for 
 so many years in the wilderness because 
 misled by this natural and prevalent error, 
 that in later life he waged war so sharply, 
 so continually, so resolutely, against this 
 error. As yet he had no glimmering of 
 
The Collegian at Oxford. jq 
 
 the truth that a true Christian faith is 
 strictly personal, is " of the operation of 
 the Holy Ghost," is a moral and spiritual 
 affection and act, or habit of acting, of the 
 highest significance and potency, rooting 
 the soul in Christ and God, and includ- 
 ing within itself implicitly the whole fruit 
 of the Spirit of God. 
 
 Wesley was ordained deacon in Septem- 
 ber, 1725, by Bishop Potter, and preached 
 his first sermon at South Leigh, a small 
 village near Witney. In March, 1726, he 
 was elected Fellow of Lincoln College. 
 By this time his increasing strictness had 
 begun to attract attention ; but, as yet, no 
 greater reproach than that of singular and 
 somewhat excessive religiousness attached 
 to him in the minds of any. No one re- 
 garded him as fanatical ; most looked upon 
 him with high respect as one of the most 
 distinguished and conscientious, one of the 
 most accomplished and able, men in the 
 University. From the time of his receiving 
 the Lincoln fellowship, however, he was to 
 enter upon a new stage of his career. He 
 
cO The Living Wesley. 
 
 himself has told us how he took occasion by 
 his change of colleges to give a resolute, 
 though not uncourteous, conge to all his for- 
 mer acquaintances who were not as serious 
 and as earnest as himself. From this time, 
 accordingly, Wesley became a religious dev- 
 otee, although he took no taint of sourness, 
 and by no means lost all his smart pleas- 
 antry of speech. He was at this time, and 
 indeed all his life, as his circumstances 
 permitted, a very hard and very various 
 student. Oriental languages, oratory and 
 poetry, metaphysics, logic and ethics, as 
 well as divinity, entered into his weekly 
 plan of study. Eight months after his elec- 
 tion to the fellowship he was appointed 
 Greek Lecturer in his college, and Mod- 
 erator of the Classes. His skill and read- 
 iness in logic, it is well known, were ex- 
 traordinary. " Leisure and I," he said in a 
 letter to* his brother Samuel, written about 
 this time, "have taken leave of one another. 
 I propose to be busy as long as I live, if 
 my health is so long indulged me." From 
 the time of his receiving his first college- 
 
The Collegicm at Oxford. 81 
 
 allowances as Fellow, Wesley's financial 
 battle was over; and, exercising economy 
 as rigid over his personal expenses after- 
 ward as in his greatest poverty before, 
 Wesley was able to assist his brother 
 Samuel in helping their father, and to be, 
 to the end of his life, a benefactor to his 
 family. He never saved to enrich himself. 
 The summer after his election he took a 
 sort of holiday, for which he had been long- 
 ing, and for which his parents and family 
 had longed not less than he. He spent it 
 at Epworth and Wroote, acting as his 
 father's curate and pursuing his studies. 
 
82 The Living Wesley. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY, MISS KIRKHAM, AND MRS. 
 
 PENDARVES, (AFTERWARD MRS. DELANY.) 
 p-3_ 
 
 jTlN 1727 we catch a glimpse, to us very 
 ($k interesting, of Wesley's relations with 
 others beyond his own family. There re- 
 sided at Stanton, in Gloucestershire, the 
 Rev. Lionel Kirkham. This clergyman 
 had (at least) two daughters and a son. 
 Of the daughters, one, Sarah, had married 
 the Rev. William Capoon, (or Chapone,) 
 and remained, as his wife, at Stanton. She 
 is often referred to in the " Life and Corre- 
 spondence of Mrs. Delany," with whom she 
 was on terms of intimate friendship, as a 
 woman of remarkable talent ; she appears 
 also to have been very fond of theolog- 
 ical discussions. Another (or the other) 
 daughter, Betty, is referred to in a quota- 
 tion I shall immediately give from a family 
 letter. The brother was an intimate col- 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Dela?iy. 83 
 
 lege friend of Wesley's, and became, a 
 few years later, one of the original band 
 of Methodists. Wesley had visited this 
 family, and appears to have been a very 
 welcome guest there. The brother was 
 evidently very anxious that Wesley should 
 become his brother-in-law, and Wesley ap- 
 pears to have been greatly impressed with 
 the merits and charms of Miss Betty. In 
 a letter from young Kirkham to Wesley, 
 dated February, 1727, and which begins, 
 " W4th familiarity I write, dear Jack" — 
 a letter, I must say, so empty, although 
 hearty, and so broadly rustic in tone, as to 
 surprise us from a friend of Wesley's — 
 I find the following passage : 
 
 " Your most deserving, queer character ; 
 your worthy personal accomplishments ; 
 your noble endowments of mind ; your lit- 
 tle and handsome person ; and your oblig- 
 ing and desirable conversation, have been 
 the pleasing subject of our discourse for 
 some pleasant hours. You have been often 
 in the thoughts of M. B., [Miss Betty,] 
 which I have curiously observed, when with 
 
84 The Living Wesley. 
 
 her alone, by inward smiles and sighs, and 
 abrupt expressions concerning you. Shall 
 this suffice ? I caught her, this morning, 
 in a humble and devout posture on her 
 knees. I am called to read a ' Spectator ' 
 to my sister Capoon. I long for the time 
 when you are to supply fathers absence. 
 Keep your counsel, and burn this when 
 perused," etc. 
 
 It is singular that such a letter as this 
 was not burned by Wesley — very curious 
 that it was preserved for a hundred and 
 forty years before it was published in the 
 " Wesleyan Times." It opens the way, 
 however, to a series of letters of the great- 
 est and most curious interest, which reveal 
 Wesley in a light altogether new, which 
 show the workings of his mind, and even 
 his style of writing, as no one could ever 
 have expected to see them, utterly contra- 
 dicting the idea that he was wanting in 
 the softer and warmer emotions of our 
 nature — an idea which has grown up from 
 the singleness with which, for fifty years, 
 he devoted himself to the intense practical 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkhatn — Mrs. Delany. S$ 
 
 work of an apostle. No greater mistake 
 than this could there be ; and if, in his 
 later life, there are appearances which seem 
 to lend a countenance to it, the reason is 
 that, in proportion to his natural suscepti- 
 bility to the warm attraction of intimate 
 and fond affections, was the rigidity of 
 watchful suppression which he imposed 
 upon his temperament when the solemn 
 life-work which Providence had assigned 
 to him demanded his undivided and unin- 
 termitted energies. 
 
 The correspondence to which I refer was 
 not, however, between Wesley and Miss 
 Betty Kirkham — the lady referred to in the 
 extract just given — but between Wesley 
 and an intimate friend of hers, known for 
 three quarters of a century as a woman of 
 high accomplishments and of almost une- 
 qualed charms and attractions, who moved 
 in the best society of the country, and was 
 honored for half a century and more with 
 the intimate friendship and confidence of 
 King George III. and his Queen. I refer 
 to the famous Mrs. Delany, whose history 
 
86 The Living Wesley. 
 
 is so well known from her " Life and Cor- 
 respondence," by Lady Llanover. 
 
 Mary Granville, afterward Mrs. Delany, 
 was left a widow after her first marriage, 
 early in 1725, being then twenty-four years 
 of age. Her first husband's name was 
 Pendarves. Her mother's house was near 
 Gloucester, (not far from Stanton, Glouces- 
 tershire,) where Mr. Kirkham lived, and 
 she had become very intimate with his 
 daughters. One of these, as I have re- 
 marked, is often referred to in the " Life 
 and Correspondence" — the "sister Capoon" 
 of the foregoing extract — mother-in-law, in 
 after years, of Mrs. Chapone, whose " Let- 
 ters " were once so well known. The other 
 is never once referred to, and does not ap- 
 pear to have been known to Lady Llanover, 
 although her ladyship was a grand-niece (I 
 believe) of Mrs. Delany, or, at all events, a 
 descendant of her sister, Anne Granville. 
 And yet this other, as appears from the 
 correspondence to which we have referred, 
 was a most highly-valued friend of Mrs 
 Pendarves, (or Delany,) and a Christian of 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Delany. Sy 
 
 no ordinary character. It seems, indeed, as 
 if all the religious correspondence and the 
 religious life of this fascinating lady had 
 vanished from her " Remains," so com- 
 pletely wanting are the traces of this life, at 
 least in the earlier portion of it. And yet 
 the evidence is before us, that the idol of 
 the Court circle was much occupied, at least 
 for considerable intervals, with religious 
 thought and feeling, and that between her 
 and John Wesley there was carried on a 
 very remarkable correspondence, deeply 
 colored with religion. 
 
 What is more, it is evident that this 
 lady succeeded to the place in Wesley's 
 thoughts which had been occupied by Miss 
 Betty Kirkham. The latter he would have 
 married, if it had been possible ; but some 
 insurmountable obstacle — it may have been 
 a stern parental decree, or it may have been 
 some physical cause — made such a union 
 impossible. Not concealing his deep sor- 
 row at such a barrier to his tenderest and 
 most treasured hopes from her friend and 
 his new correspondent — frankly, indeed, 
 
88 The Living Wesley. 
 
 avowing it throughout — Wesley would have 
 had the dazzling, but most amiable, widow 
 take her place, if she would but have 
 inclined her ear and heart. She was evi- 
 dently not insensible to his merits nor to 
 his admiration. But it was hardly likely at 
 any time that she would have accepted the 
 position of his wife. At all events, after 
 several years of correspondence, a long visit 
 to Ireland, with its new scenes, its fashion- 
 able absorption, its dissipating stimulants, 
 interrupted the correspondence for some 
 time. Then she made an attempt, with 
 deep apologies, to renew it ; but Wesley 
 had escaped from the pleasing snare, and 
 with stately but tender courtesy, in a final 
 letter, bowed his charmer out of his circle. 
 
 It was the fashion, in those times, for 
 friends to have fictitious names by which to 
 address and speak of each other — names 
 often borrowed from some romance of the 
 time. Mrs. Pendarves' name, with many of 
 her friends, was Aspasia ; her sister Anne's 
 was Selina. Miss Betty Kirkham's was Var- 
 anese. John Wesley's, in this correspond- 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Delany. 89 
 
 ence, was Cyrus ; his brother Charles's was 
 Araspes. Lady Llanover prints letters in 
 her volumes which mention Cyrus, but she 
 had no suspicion that Cyrus was Wesley. 
 What a striking mosaic relief would this 
 correspondence have introduced into her 
 first volume if she had only had the oppor- 
 tunity of printing it. 
 
 I have stated that Varanese was the 
 fancy name of Betty Kirkham. As such 
 it will appear in the correspondence, some- 
 times indicated under the initial V., some- 
 times as Var., and again as V nese - 
 
 This correspondence has never been pub- 
 lished in its integrity, but considerable 
 extracts from it will be found in the " Wes- 
 leyan Methodist Magazine" for 1863, at 
 pp. 134-139, and 2 1 1-2 1 7, and Mr. Tyerman 
 has printed some portions of it. By the 
 kindness of my honored friend, the late 
 Rev. Dr. Hoole, I was favored with the op- 
 portunity of consulting the whole, and using 
 it for the purposes of this study. 
 
 What strikes one as most remarkable 
 in this correspondence is, the variation of 
 
90 The Living Wesley. 
 
 character which the warm and tender admi- 
 ration for such a woman as Mrs. Pendarves 
 seems to work in Wesley. He, of course, 
 had seen little of the world. His home 
 was amid the uncultured rusticity of Ep- 
 worth and Wroote. At college his means 
 had not allowed him to mix with society 
 before his fellowship, and after his fellow- 
 ship his seriousness had prevented his min- 
 gling with the fashionable. But at Stanton, 
 at his friend Kirkham's home, he had, no 
 doubt, been introduced to the Granville 
 family. There he had met with Mrs. 
 Pendarves, a brilliant lady of the Court, 
 familiar with all that rank and fashion 
 could furnish forth, yet sweet and modest, 
 intelligent and inquiring; as happy in coun- 
 try life as if she had never known a Court 
 or shone in the assemblies of London ; as 
 if the assembly and the opera were alto- 
 gether strange to her ; and, above all, inter- 
 ested and concerned about matters of relig- 
 ious devotion and duty. It is no wonder if 
 the young collegian, with a mind open to 
 every charm of refinement and goodness, as 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Dclany. 91 
 
 well as to every grace of person, was alto- 
 gether dazzled and subdued by such an appa- 
 rition as that of Mrs. Pendarves in Stanton. 
 Then she was affectionately and admiringly 
 attached to the lady whom, above all others, 
 he had esteemed and admired — to Betty 
 Kirkham. The result was, that the young 
 Oxford fellow, tutor and clergyman, lin- 
 guist and wit, logician and theologian, stu- 
 dent and devotee, sought and obtained 
 permission to become a correspondent of 
 the widow ; in this respect more fortunate 
 than any other gentleman of whom we have 
 any information. But when he undertook 
 to write to her, he seems to have been quite 
 overset by the quality and accomplishments 
 of the person to whom he had undertaken 
 to write. In all other correspondence, be- 
 fore as well as after this period of his life, 
 Wesley is always clear, neat, and parsimo- 
 nious of words ; simple, chaste, and unaf- 
 fected. In this correspondence, on the 
 contrary, he is stilted, sentimental, we had 
 almost said affected, certainly unreal, cer- 
 tainly at times fulsome, when he has to 
 
92 The Living Wesley. 
 
 speak of the lady herself, or makes any 
 attempt to turn a compliment. I almost 
 wonder how the lady, who never forgets 
 herself, and whose style is always natural 
 and proper, was able to bear the style in 
 which he addressed her. It is only when a 
 question of religious casuistry or of theol- 
 ogy, of duty or of devotion, is to be dealt 
 with, that Wesley is himself again ; then, his 
 style is singularly in contrast with what it is 
 in respect to points of personality or of senti- 
 ment. His expressions of regard and admi- 
 ration are as high-flown as if they belonged 
 to a Spanish romance ; his discussions are 
 clear and close. It is hard to understand 
 how the same man could be the writer of all. 
 I have said that the correspondence with 
 Aspasia (Mrs. Pendarves) grew out of the 
 relations between Wesley and Betty Kirk- 
 ham, and that the fancy name of the latter 
 was Varanese. This is shown by a letter 
 to Wesley from his sister Martha, a sen- 
 tence of which is quoted by Mr. Tyerman, 
 and the date of which is five days later 
 than that of the one from Kirkham to Wes- 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Delany. 93 
 
 ley, from which I have quoted. " When I 
 knew," says she, "that you were just re- 
 turned from Worcestershire, where, I sup- 
 pose, you saw your Varanese, I then ceased 
 to wonder at your silence, for the sight of 
 such a woman, ' so known, so loved,' might 
 well make you forget me." Mr. Tyerman, 
 however, for once has fallen short in his 
 research as to this case, for he says, 
 " Nothing more is known of this incipient 
 courtship;" and also, that "Wesley soon 
 became far too much immersed in more 
 serious things to have time to think of 
 w r ooing." The correspondence with Aspa- 
 sia shows that on Wesley's side, at least, 
 there was no withdrawal from his passion 
 for "Varanese;" that, years afterward, the 
 attachment still continued very strong; that 
 it was not his fault if it did not lead to a 
 life-long union ; and that he could and did 
 find time, in the midst of his most engross- 
 ing engagements, for a correspondence with 
 the woman of his choice.* 
 
 * In his "Oxford Methodists," p. 2, Mr. Tyerman has, 
 ir. his notice of Robert Kirkham, tacitly recognized the truth 
 
94 The Living Wesley. 
 
 It appears to have been in the summer 
 of 1730, three years and a half after the 
 date of Robert KirkhanVs letter to Wesley 
 about his sister, while Mrs. Pendarves was 
 spending some months in the country with 
 her mother and sister, that Wesley first 
 made her acquaintance ; no doubt, at Stan- 
 ton, at the Kirkhams. Wesley's first letter 
 to her, accompanying some IMS. which he 
 had promised to send the lady, is dated 
 August 14 of that year, and in this he refers 
 to "his dear Varanese." It appears that 
 some correspondence of hers was necessary 
 in order to explain the MS., " the trifle," 
 which he was sending. In reference to this 
 he says : " While I was transcribing the 
 letters, these last monuments of the crood- 
 ness of my dear V., I could not hinder 
 some sighs which, between grief and shame, 
 would have their way. Not that I was so 
 
 of what is written above. He seems to show that Betsy 
 Kirkham became Mrs. Wilson, and died in the summer of 
 1732. The question with which Mrs. Pendarves, in the let- 
 ter which alludes to her death, and which is dated June 28, 
 1732, closes her reference to her case, shows that Mrs. Wil- 
 son must have been married some years. 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Delany. 95 
 
 much pained at seeing my utmost efforts 
 outdone by another's pen, but I could not, 
 I ought not to, be unmoved when I observe 
 how unworthv I am of that excellent means 
 of improvement, etc. ... I trust so unusual 
 a blessing of Providence has not been 
 utterly useless to me. To this I owe both 
 the capacity and the occasion of feeling 
 that soft emotion with which I glow even 
 at the moment when I consider myself as 
 conversing with a kindred soul of my V." 
 In a later letter (September 14) he says, 
 " My dear Y. informs me you are going 
 yet farther from us, but cannot inform me 
 how soon." On the 12th of October she, 
 writing to him from Gloucester, speaks of 
 "our inimitable dear V.," and longs for her 
 ability to write on high and serious sub- 
 jects. On the 19th of November, apolo- 
 gizing for her infrequent writing, she says, 
 '' I have not had time even to write to V." 
 In a letter dated Innocents' Day following, 
 u Cyrus" thus significantly expresses him- 
 self: "While I am reflecting on this, I can't 
 but often observe with pleasure the great 
 
g6 The Living Wesley. 
 
 resemblance between the emotion I then 
 feel and that with which my heart fre- 
 quently overflowed in the beginning of my 
 intercourse with our dear V. Yet is there 
 a sort of soft melancholy mixed with it, 
 when I perceive that I am making another 
 avenue for grief — that I am laying open an- 
 other part of my soul, at which the arrows 
 of fortune may enter." There follows much 
 more soft meandering around the same 
 subject, and to a similar effect. 
 
 On the nth January following he refers 
 again to the advantage he has enjoyed in 
 " the friendship of our V." Under date April 
 4, following, Aspasia refers to " dear V.," 
 and to being " denied the happiness and ad- 
 vantage of conversing with such a friend." 
 And, a few days later, Cyrus, after refer- 
 ring to " dear V.," adds, most suggestively, 
 " Why it is that I am not allowed a stricter 
 intercourse with such a friend is a question 
 I could never fully answer but by another : 
 why is my intercourse with such a friend 
 as Aspasia or Selina allowed?" Selina, I 
 remark in passing, here as elsewhere in 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Dclany. 97 
 
 the correspondence, is decorously joined in 
 society with Aspasia, as Araspes is with 
 Cyrus.* But this is a very transparent 
 artifice of correspondence. So he desires, 
 in another letter, to " shelter himself under 
 the protection of V. and Aspasia and Se- 
 lina." In the early summer of 1 731, Wesley 
 met V. somewhere on a visit, probably at 
 Stanton, where he may have been over 
 from Oxford "doing duty." He writes in 
 regard to this visit to Aspasia as follows : 
 " You will easily judge whether the remem- 
 brance of Aspasia made that entertainment 
 in particular less agreeable which I enjoyed 
 last week in the almost uninterrupted con- 
 versation of dear V." " On this spot she 
 sat," "along this path she walked," "here 
 she showed that lovely instance of conde- 
 scension," were reflections which, though 
 but extremely obvious, could not be equally 
 
 * For example : " The esteem of Araspes as well as Cyrus 
 must ever attend both Aspasia and Selina." This is a P. S. 
 to a letter from Cyrus. So the lady closes one of her letters 
 thus : " Araspes may justly claim our service and esteem. 
 Selina joins with Aspasia in being to Cyrus a 
 
 " Faithful and Obliged Friend." 
 1 
 
98 The Living Wesley. 
 
 pleasing, and gave a new degree of beauty 
 to the charming arbor, the fields, the 
 meadows, and Horrel (?) itself." In her 
 reply, she says : " I will not say I envied 
 either Va. or Cyrus those moments they 
 passed together ; but happy should 1 have 
 been to have shared them with you. How 
 I please myself with the thought that I was 
 not quite forgot at that interview. Perhaps 
 I was wished for." In one place the pas- 
 sionate religious fervor of Miss Kirkham is 
 shown by some words which Wesley quotes 
 from her. " I do not wonder," he says, "that 
 Aspasia is thus minded, any more than I 
 did at the temper of dear V aese * under the 
 sharpest pain that an embodied spirit can 
 know. You will easily take knowledge of 
 those words, if you have not heard them be- 
 fore : ' When I was in the greatest of my 
 pains, if my strength would have allowed, I 
 would gladly have run out into the streets 
 to warn all I met that they should save 
 themselves from pain sharper than mine/"* 
 
 * From several references in the letters, it would appear 
 that Miss Kirkham (Mrs. Wilson) was by no means an habit- 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Delany. 99 
 
 Mrs. Pendarves was three years older 
 than Wesley, and was, it is evident enough, 
 regarded by her country friends as a sort 
 of superior being. When she allowed the 
 correspondence to begin, she probably had 
 no idea that any warm affections would be 
 stirred in the course of it. Wesley's ear- 
 liest effusions, however, must have excited 
 in her some suspicion as to how matters 
 might turn ; and, before the correspond- 
 ence came to an end, it would seem that 
 a tone of decidedly warmer, more natural, 
 and more confidential friendship gave char- 
 acter to her letters. Her own religious 
 sensibilities, besides, were more awakened ; 
 and, as she became more earnest and con- 
 fidential, the power of Wesley's writing 
 greatly grew. There can be no doubt that 
 he did at one time cherish the aspiration 
 that Mrs. Pendarves might join her lot with 
 his. Her second husband was an Irish 
 dean and divine, neither so well-born and 
 
 ual sufferer from illness or pain, but enjoyed good ordinary- 
 health. The date of the letter last quoted is July 24, 1731. 
 A year later the lady — then, and also at the date of the let- 
 ter quoted, Mrs. Wilson — had died altogether unexpectedly. 
 
ioo The Living Wesley. 
 
 bred nor so distinguished or useful a man 
 as Wesley. But Wesley, wedded in 1732 
 to Mrs. Pendarves, might have become a 
 very different man from what he did be- 
 come. The following passage in a long let- 
 ter of Wesley's, dated July 24, 1731, is the 
 nearest approach to a proposal of marriage 
 contained in this correspondence. One 
 broad hint has been quoted already. 
 
 " Is it no hurt to rob you of your time, 
 for which there is no equivalent but eter- 
 nity? on the use of every moment of which 
 more than a world depends ? to turn your 
 very sweetness of temper against you ? on 
 this very account to encroach on you with 
 so much cruelty? to force you to stand still 
 so many hours, when you are most ardent 
 to press forward ? nay, to strike whole days 
 out of your existence, while He that sitteth 
 in heaven sees that all the kingdoms he 
 hath made are vile compared to the worth 
 of one particle of them ! O God, hath thy 
 wisdom prepared a remedy for every evil 
 under the sun ? and is there none for this ? 
 Must Aspasia ever submit to this insup- 
 
Wesley — Miss KirkJiam — Mrs. Delany. ioi 
 
 portable misfortune ? Every time a gay 
 wretch wants to trifle away part of that in- 
 valuable treasure which Thou hast lent him, 
 shall he force away a part of hers too ? tear 
 another star from her crown of glory ? O, 
 'tis too much indeed ! Surely there is a way 
 to escape; the God whom you serve point 
 it out to you !" 
 
 This was certainly opening the way skill- 
 fully and clearly for future advances, if due 
 responsiveness had been shown by the lady. 
 Her next letter, like the one preceding, is 
 warmly kind and religiously earnest, by no 
 means likely to discourage her correspond- 
 ent. The one following, dated August 26, 
 was written just on the eve of her jour- 
 ney and voyage to Ireland, and is still very 
 kind, although, in the postscript, a stringent 
 injunction is given, not the first she had 
 given of the same kind in her postscripts, 
 that all her letters should be burned, and 
 that Cyrus should make use of no epithet 
 before her name. This letter Wesley an- 
 swered at length, (September 28,) but re- 
 ceived no reply. It can hardly be doubted 
 
102 The Living Wesley.- 
 
 that he wrote other letters afterward not 
 contained in this series, for he often wrote 
 two letters for her one ; and he was the 
 more likely to do so as she was in Ireland, 
 and as the direction in her last had been, 
 11 When you write t-o me, which I hope will 
 be soon, direct your letter to my sister at 
 Gloucester, and she will take care to convey 
 it to me." But he still received no reply, 
 though many months had passed away. 
 Writing to her sister from Dublin the fol- 
 lowing spring, (March n,) when nearly six 
 months had passed away, she says : 
 
 " Cyrus by this time has blotted me out 
 of his memory; or, if he does remember me, 
 it can only be to reproach me. What can I 
 say for myself? What can I indeed say to 
 myself, that have neglected so extraordi- 
 nary a correspondent ? I only am the suf- 
 ferer, but I should be very sorry to have 
 him think my silence proceeded from neg- 
 ligence. I declare 'tis want of time ! Then 
 there's poor Sally* too, who I think of 
 every day, but cannot find a moment to 
 
 * Mrs. Chapone. 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Del any. 103 
 
 tell her so ; though soon I will endeavor to 
 acquit myself in a proper manner to them 
 both. I can't put myself into better hands 
 for making an excuse for me than yours." ** 
 
 Precisely twelve months later, in another 
 letter to her sister, still from Ireland, she 
 thus writes : 
 
 " As for the ridicule Cyrus has been 
 exposed to, I do not at all wonder at it. 
 Religion in its plainest dress suffers daily 
 from the insolence and ignorance of the 
 world ; then how should that person escape 
 who dares to appear openly in its cause? 
 He will meet with all the mortification such 
 rebels are able to give, which can be no 
 other than that of finding them willfully 
 blinding themselves, and running headlong 
 into the gulf of perdition — a melancholy 
 prospect for the honest-hearted man who 
 earnestly desires the salvation of his fellow- 
 creatures." f 
 
 It was not, however, till the summer of 
 1 734, after an interval of nearly three years, 
 
 * Mrs. Delany's "Life and Correspondence," vol. i, p. 343. 
 \ Ibid., p. 410. 
 
104 The Living Wesley. 
 
 that Mrs. Pendarves found time to write to 
 her Oxford friend. By this time she had 
 returned to England. Her first words in- 
 dicate the feeling of the letter : " I never 
 began a letter with so much confusion to 
 any body as I do this to Cyrus/' Her 
 apologies are deep, and no doubt sincere. 
 She had " at last broken through " the 
 shame and reluctance to write which her 
 long delay and neglect had produced, and 
 was ready to " suffer any reproach rather 
 than lose the advantage of Cyrus's friend- 
 ship." Things, however, had gone too far ; 
 and the Cyrus of 1734 was a man of 
 stronger character and more experience, as 
 well as of wider influence and of higher 
 position as a spiritual teacher and leader, 
 than the Cyrus of 173 1. He will not renew 
 the correspondence, and it may be doubted 
 whether Cyrus and Aspasia ever met again* 
 His voyage to America soon intervened, 
 and the whole color of his life was com- 
 pletely changed. 
 
 * Mrs. Delany's "Life and Correspondence," volume i, 
 page 175. 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Ddauy. 105 
 
 The contrast between the beginning and 
 the end of this correspondence is striking, 
 and suggests that a great development had 
 in the meantime taken place in Wesley's' 
 character. The first letter of all bears the 
 signature "J. W.," and begins with the form- 
 al " Madam " of the time. It is tolerably 
 sentimental and high-Mown ; but it is noth- 
 ing to the second, which is addressed to 
 "Aspasia," and which properly begins the 
 Cyrus and Aspasia series. We transcribe 
 a part of it, observing only that it is in 
 reply to one from Aspasia, in which she 
 acknowledged the MS. and letters he had 
 sent her with his first. First he thanks her 
 in elaborate circumlocution for her letter to 
 him — a letter complimentary indeed, but 
 destitute of any real matter or genuine 
 thought whatever — and then proceeds : — 
 
 " It convinces me that it was possible I 
 should enjoy a higher pleasure than even 
 your conversation gave me. If your under- 
 standing could not appear in stronger light 
 than when it brightened the dear hill, the 
 fields, the arbor, I am now forced to confess 
 
106 The Living Wesley. 
 
 your temper could. You even then showed 
 but half your goodness. 
 
 " I spent some very agreeable moments 
 last night in musing on this delightful 
 subject, and thinking to how little disad- 
 vantage Aspasia or Selina would have ap- 
 peared even in that faint light which the 
 moon, glimmering through the trees, poured 
 on that part of our garden in which I was 
 walking. How little would the eye of the 
 mind that surveyed them have missed the 
 absent sun ! What darkness could have 
 obscured gentleness, courtesy, humility — 
 could have shaded the ima^e of God ! Sure 
 none but that which shall never dare to 
 approach them ; none but vice, which shall 
 ever be far away ! " 
 
 Such compliments as these are singularly 
 elaborate, and cumbrous, and obscure ; but 
 yet John Wesley, the master of simple 
 manliness of style, wrote this and much 
 more, in the following letters, not inferior 
 in its kind. Such was Wesley in 1730 
 and 1 73 1, as a "squire of dames," and, in 
 particular, as the fascinated admirer of 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirk ham — Airs. Delany. 107 
 
 Mrs. Pendarves. In one place he even goes 
 so far as to place his orthodoxy in question 
 when paying his excessive tribute to this 
 lady. " Though," he says, " I would fain 
 be nearer you, though I do what I can (I 
 fear not always) to overtake you ; yet so 
 hard is it to lay aside every weight — these 
 follies do so easily beset me — that I find it 
 will not be — the penitent cannot avoid 
 being left behind by the innocent ! " The 
 date of this notable sentiment is July 24, 
 1 73 1, twelve months after the first acquaint- 
 ance. It occurs in a long, earnest, religious, 
 and, on the whole, impressive letter. The 
 following sentiments in an earlier letter 
 (October 24, 1730,) also appear to us to 
 be very curious in an Oxford clergyman 
 and fellow — an Oxford tutor and religious 
 leader : — 
 
 " What the advantage of being present 
 with you must be, may be easily conceived 
 from what you do even when absent. To 
 your good wishes I can't but, in a great 
 measure, impute it that we should exactly 
 find our way through a country in which 
 
108 The Living Wesley. 
 
 we were utter strangers, and for some miles 
 without either human creature or day or 
 moon or stars to direct us. By so many 
 ties of interest, as well as gratitude, am I 
 obliged, whether present or absent, to be, 
 madam, your most obliged and most obe- 
 dient servant." 
 
 Such was the style in which Wesley had 
 paid his epistolary court to Mrs. Pendarves. 
 Of course there was more substantial mat- 
 ter than such as we have quoted. Some 
 of the letters discuss at length questions 
 of religious duty and religious experience, 
 and there is not a little earnest religious 
 exhortation. But yet such writing as I 
 have lately quoted occupies a large space 
 in this correspondence. The letter written 
 by Wesley in 1734, in reply to Mrs. Pen- 
 darves' letter of profound apology, shows 
 a higher style of writing, and much more 
 dignity of character. 
 
 "Alas, Aspasia!" he rejoins, "are you 
 indeed convinced that I can be of any serv- 
 ice to you ? I fear you have not sufficient 
 ground for such a conviction. Experience 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkkam — Mrs. Dclany. 109 
 
 has shown how much my pow r er is short of 
 my will. For some time I flattered myself 
 with the pleasing hope ; but I grew more 
 and more ashamed of having indulged it. 
 You need not the support of so weak a 
 hand. How can I possibly think you do, 
 (though that thought tries now and then 
 to intrude itself still,) since you have so 
 long and resolutely thrust it from you ? I 
 dare not, therefore, blame you for so doing. 
 Doubtless you acted upon cool reflection. 
 You declined the trouble of writing, not 
 because it was a trouble, but because it was 
 a needless one. And if so, what injury 
 have you done yourself? As for me, you 
 do me no injury by your silence. It did, 
 indeed, deprive me of much pleasure, and 
 of a pleasure from which I ought to have 
 received much improvement. But still, as 
 it was one I had no title to but your good- 
 ness, to withdraw it was no injustice. I 
 sincerely thank you for what is past ; and 
 may the God of my salvation return it sev- 
 enfold into your bosom ! And if ever you 
 should please to add to those thousand 
 
no The Living Wesley. 
 
 obligations any new ones, I trust they shall 
 neither be unrewarded by Him nor unwor- 
 thily received by Aspasia's faithful friend 
 and servant, Cyrus. — Araspes, too, hopes 
 you will never have reason to tax him with 
 ingratitude. Adieu!" 
 
 Mr. Tyerman (as I have intimated) 
 misses the full meaning of this interesting 
 and suggestive episode in Wesley's life. 
 He quotes, indeed, Aspasia's first letter in 
 full, as published in the " Wesleyan Times " 
 in 1866; and he adds the interesting fact 
 that on the fly-leaf of that letter Selina 
 added a P.S., informing Wesley that her 
 sister was about to visit Bath, and inti- 
 mating to him that he had best write to 
 her to ascertain her movements ; telling 
 him also that Varanese had sent him a let- 
 ter by the carrier a fortnight before, and 
 wished to know whether it had come safe 
 to hand. But he quite misinterprets the 
 latter part of that letter. Aspasia writes : 
 "If you have any affairs that call you to 
 Gloucester, don't, forget that you have 
 two pupils who are desirous of improving 
 
Wesley — Miss Kirkham — Mrs. Delcuiy. 1 1 1 
 
 their understanding, and that friendship has 
 already taught them to be, sir, your most 
 sincere, humble servants. My companion 
 joins me in all I have said, as well as in 
 service to Araspes." The " companion," 
 Mr. Tyerman says, was probably Mrs. Gran- 
 ville, (with whom also Wesley correspond- 
 ed,) * or Sarah Kirkham. But there is no 
 evidence that Wesley had any particular 
 friendship with Sarah Kirkham, who had, 
 indeed, for years, been Mrs. Capon, Capoon, 
 or Chapone, and Mrs. Granville is clearly 
 out of the question. The " companion " is 
 evidently the other " pupil," and that other 
 was " Aspasia's " sister " Selina." 
 
 I have dwelt thus at length upon this 
 correspondence, not merely because of the 
 curious interest which attaches to the let- 
 ters, but because they reveal a background 
 of natural character which enables us to 
 see in a much truer light the matured, and 
 in good part transformed, Wesley of later 
 
 * Mrs. Delany's " Life and Correspondence," vol. i, p. 269. 
 The date of the one letter to Mrs. Granville, of which we have 
 any knowledge, is "Lincoln College, December 12, 1730." 
 
H2 The Living Wesley. 
 
 years. It reveals to us the extreme natural 
 susceptibility of Wesley to whatever was 
 graceful and amiable in woman, especially 
 if united to mental vigor and moral excel- 
 lence. He was naturally a woman-wor- 
 shiper — at least, a worshiper of such women. 
 He had been brought up in the society of 
 clever and virtuous women, his sisters ; and 
 it seems as if he could at no time of his 
 life dispense with the exquisite and stim- 
 ulating pleasure which he found in their so- 
 ciety and correspondence. An almost rev- 
 erent courtesy, a warm but pure affection, 
 a delicate but close familiarity, marked 
 through life his relations with the good 
 and gifted women — gifted they were, for 
 the most part — with whom he maintained 
 friendship and correspondence. If Miss 
 Wedgwood had been aware of this fact, 
 some points in her estimate of Wesley's 
 character would have varied from what she 
 has presented to her readers. 
 
His Theological Views, etc., at Oxford. 1 1 3 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Wesley's theological views and relig- 
 ious CHARACTER AT OXFORD, 1731-1735. 
 
 Obi 
 
 MUST not pass away from the subject 
 
 i 
 
 of Mr. Wesley's correspondence with 
 Mrs. Pendarves without saying a few words 
 as to the light which the letters throw upon 
 the stage of development at which Wesley 
 had arrived in his doctrinal views at the 
 time (1 730-1 731) when they were written. 
 As we have only, besides, a somewhat insig- 
 nificant sermon or two of this period from 
 which to draw our inferences, they are, in this 
 point of view, very welcome to the student 
 of Wesley's character in its whole unfolding. 
 I may say, then, in general, that the the- 
 ology of these letters is utterly unevangel- 
 ical. There is in them very little savor of 
 Christ's presence ; there is absolutely noth- 
 ing of the righteousness of faith. The way 
 to holiness and happiness is the use of the 
 
 8 
 
H4 The Living Wesley. 
 
 " instituted " means ; all these should be 
 continually used — used to the full — because 
 the more means there are, and are made 
 use of, the more grace must needs come to 
 the teachable and humble Christian who 
 uses them. But of Christ and of faith 
 there is nothing. A servile legalism — a 
 plodding ritualism, which the performer 
 must have continually felt to be in danger 
 of degenerating into perfunctoriness — con- 
 stitutes the whole "way of salvation." As- 
 pasia mentions a case of religious distress 
 in a female friend of hers. Wesley recom- 
 mends the diligent use of all the means of 
 grace — the " instituted " means — as a rem- 
 edy for her state. Aspasia rejoins that she 
 had already tried these and was none the 
 better, but rather the worse. Her spiritual 
 adviser had no genuine remedy to prescribe 
 for such a case as this. He was a "miser- 
 able comforter" and an ignorant physician. 
 Cases of casuistry as to Sunday employ- 
 ments and some other matters Wesley dis- 
 cussed, and more or less resolved with no 
 little skill. His view of religious consecra- 
 
His Theological Views, etc., at Oxford. 1 1 5 
 
 tion, too, was high. But of evangelical faith 
 and experience he knew nothing. Further 
 evidence as to Wesley's theological views at 
 this period of his life is afforded by several 
 sermons which, although not printed at the 
 time, were printed many years afterward, at 
 various times, in the " Methodist Maga- 
 zine," and of which some account is given 
 by Mr. Tyerman. From these it appears 
 that Wesley taught between 1731 and 1734 
 a high doctrine of Christian holiness, both 
 active and passive; that he taught the duty 
 of at least weekly, if not also, when circum- 
 stances allowed, of daily communion ; and 
 that he taught the duty of confession as a 
 preparation for the Communion ; that he 
 also would have the wine in the Holy Com- 
 munion mixed with water ; but that he did 
 not entertain any such view respecting the 
 real and corporeal presence in or under 
 the sacramental elements of the Incarnate 
 Christ, whether by transubstantiation or 
 consubstantiation, as is now taught by 
 high Anglicans. On the point of confes- 
 sion, Mr. Tyerman quotes a very racy pas- 
 
n6 The Living Wesley. 
 
 sage from a letter of Wesley's elder sister 
 Emily, to whose love for her brother we 
 have already referred : — 
 
 " To lay open the state of my soul to 
 you, or any of our clergy, is what I have no 
 inclination to do at present; and I believe I 
 never shall. I shall not put my conscience 
 under the direction of mortal man frail as 
 myself. To my own Master I stand or fall. 
 Nay, I scruple not to say that all such de- 
 sire in you or any other ecclesiastic seems 
 to me like Church tyranny, and assuming 
 to yourselves a dominion over your fellow- 
 creatures which was never designed you by 
 God. ... I further own that I do not hold 
 frequent communion necessary to salvation, 
 nor a means of Christian perfection. But 
 do not mistake my meaning : I only think 
 communing every Sunday, or very fre- 
 quently, lessens our veneration for that 
 sacred ordinance, and, consequently, our 
 profiting by it." * 
 
 There speaks out the keen, strong sense 
 of the eldest of the Wesley sisters, couched 
 
 * "Tyerman," page 94. 
 
His Theological Views, etc., at Oxford. 1 1 7 
 
 in the admirable English, pure, clear, and 
 strong, which the whole family seem to 
 have caught from their mother. Emily 
 would not make a father-confessor of her 
 younger brother or of any man. She had 
 not only Puritan blood in her veins, but 
 some of the Puritan spirit for her inherit- 
 ance. Wesley himself, in a passage quoted 
 by his biographer, has truly pointed out 
 what was the essential defect of his theol- 
 ogy and his preaching from 1727 onward, 
 till his great change : " I preached much, 
 but saw no fruit of my labor. Indeed, it 
 could not be that I should ; for I neither 
 laid the foundation of repentance nor of 
 preaching the Gospel, taking it for granted 
 that all to whom I preached were believers, 
 and that many of them needed no repent- 
 ance." * This was as true of Wesley's 
 teaching and preaching in 1735 as m 1 728. 
 
 Wesley, indeed, went to consult a new 
 teacher, and entered upon a new phase in 
 the formation of his theological views, in 
 1732; but the new teacher was not likely 
 
 * "Tyerman," vol. i, page 57. 
 
1 1 8 The Living Wesley. 
 
 to enlighten his darkness on the points to 
 which I have referred. He visited William 
 Law in the year we have named, and, on 
 his recommendation, read the " Theologia 
 Germanica," Tauler's works, and other mys- 
 tic writings. Thus was mysticism grafted 
 on High-Churchmanship. Under the influ- 
 ence of Law, Wesley seems to have contin- 
 ued until after he went to America. It was 
 in 1726 that Law published his "Christian 
 Perfection" and "Serious Call;" and it 
 must have been about the year 1728 or 
 1729 that Wesley first read these fine devo- 
 tional and practical books ; it was certainly 
 before 1730.* When, in 1732, Wesley vis- 
 ited Law, the latter had just begun to be a 
 student of the mystical writers. It appears 
 to have been about two years later that 
 Law entered upon his course of decided 
 deterioration and increasing confusion by 
 becoming addicted to the study of Behmen. 
 In one respect, Law's influence was an- 
 tagonistic to the errors of externalism — the 
 servile devotion to means and rites — in 
 
 * Wesley's "Works," vol. iii, p. 71. 
 
His Theological Viezvs, etc., at Oxford. 1 19 
 
 which Wesley had been ensnared. " A con- 
 templative man/' says Wesley, meaning, 
 by this contemplative man, his instructor 
 Law, "convinced me, still more than I was 
 convinced before, that outward works are 
 nothing, being alone ; and, in several con- 
 versations, instructed me how to pursue 
 inward holiness, or a union of the soul 
 with God." Nevertheless, the essential self- 
 righteousness of mysticism, its real self- 
 involution, its essentially Christless and 
 unevangelical character, are well shown by 
 Wesley in his criticism of Law's teaching, 
 which immediately follows what we have 
 just quoted. After saying that Law's 
 teachings, in reality, went to discourage him 
 from doing outward works at all, (as is the 
 inevitable tendency of all mysticism,) he 
 adds: "He recommended (to supply what 
 was wanting in them) mental prayer and the 
 like exercises, as the most effectual means 
 of purifying the soul and uniting it with 
 God. Now these were, in truth, as much 
 my own works as visiting the sick or cloth- 
 ing the naked; and the union with God, 
 
120 The Living Wesley. 
 
 thus pursued, was as really my own right- 
 eousness as any I had before pursued under 
 another name."* 
 
 Law's semi-mysticism, however, was at 
 least, under Providence, one means of de- 
 livering him from the excessive traditional- 
 ism in which he had been entangled. 
 
 " I had," he himself says, " bent the bow 
 too far, in that direction, by making antiq- 
 uity a co-ordinate, rather than a subordi- 
 nate, rule with Scripture ; by admitting 
 several doubtful writings ; by extending an- 
 tiquity too far ; by believing more prac- 
 tices to have been universal in the ancient 
 Church than ever were so ; by not consid- 
 ering that the decrees of a provincial synod 
 could bind only that province, and the 
 decrees of a general synod only those prov- 
 inces whose representatives met therein ; 
 that most of those decrees were adapted 
 to particular times and occasions, and con- 
 sequently, when those occasions ceased, 
 must cease to bind even those provinces." 
 "These considerations," Wesley adds, " in- 
 
 * " Works," vol. iii, p. 72. 
 
His Theological Views, etc. y at Oxford. 1 2 1 
 
 sensibly stole upon me as I grew acquainted 
 with the mystic writers, whose noble de- 
 scriptions of union with God, and internal 
 religion, made every thing else appear mean, 
 flat, and insipid. But, in truth, they make 
 good works appear so too." * 
 
 When and how Wesley was brought 
 finally to abandon mysticism does not ap- 
 pear to be determinable with precision ; but 
 it would seem to have been during, or soon 
 after, his voyage to Georgia. For some 
 year or two previously, his opinions and 
 practices must have been a singular amal- 
 gam of High-Church ritualism and of mys- 
 ticism, in which the contemplative tendency 
 and the strenuous and incessant devotion 
 to rites or means and " good works," as the 
 necessary vehicles and exercise of holiness, 
 united in an asceticism at once severe and 
 suave. Rapt abstraction, continual inward 
 prayer, frequent ejaculations, constant at- 
 tendance at prayers, (notwithstanding some 
 temptations to omit the duty as merely an 
 outward work,) daily communion, unceasing 
 
 * " Southey's Wesley," vol. i, page 94. 
 
122 The Living Wesley. 
 
 works of charity, and, in the intervals, close 
 study in many branches of learning, En- 
 glish and foreign, but especially theology 
 and ecclesiastical history and literature, 
 would seem to have made up the life, from 
 day to day, of Wesley and those original 
 Methodists who placed themselves under 
 his guidance. 
 
 "In this refined way," he says, "of 
 trusting to my own works and my own 
 righteousness, (so zealously inculcated by 
 the mystic writers,) I dragged on heavily, 
 finding no comfort or help therein, till 
 the time of my leaving England," in 1735. 
 Some change, however, seems to have be- 
 gun on shipboard, where, he says, " I was 
 again active in outward works." He also 
 learned much from his Moravian compan- 
 ions on the voyage, although, he says, " I 
 understood it not at the first ; I was too 
 learned and too wise." Nevertheless, he 
 was more or less under the old influences 
 all the time he remained in Georgia. "All 
 the time I was at Savannah," he says, " I 
 was thus beating the air. I continued 
 
His Theological Views, etc., at Oxford. 123 
 
 preaching, and following after, and trusting 
 in, that righteousness whereby no flesh can 
 be justified." * 
 
 In the other account we have from his 
 own pen, written on his return to England, 
 of the experiences through which he had 
 passed, he describes his state during these 
 years, and his deliverance from it, as 
 follows : 
 
 " Though I could never fully come into 
 this," (the quietness of mysticism,) " nor 
 contentedly omit what God enjoined, yet, 
 I know not how, I fluctuated between obe- 
 dience and disobedience. I had no heart, 
 no vigor, no zeal in obeying, continually 
 doubting whether I was right or wrong, 
 and never out of perplexities and entangle- 
 ments. Nor can I at this hour give a 
 distinct account how I came back a little 
 toward the right way ; only my present 
 sense is this — all the other enemies of 
 Christianity are triflers ; the mystics f are 
 
 * "Works." vol. iii, p. 72. 
 
 t On November 23, 1736, twelve months after his leaving 
 England. Wesley wrote a letter to his brother Samuel, in 
 which he gives an admirable scheme (in brief) of the mystic 
 
124 The Living Wesley. 
 
 the most dangerous; they stab it in the 
 vitals, and its most serious professors are 
 most likely to fall by them.' * 
 
 So Wesley wrote in the beginning of 
 1738, on his return from America. What 
 has now been shown is the interior view of 
 his character and experience. I shall pro- 
 ceed to give a view of him as seen from 
 the exterior by an intimate and oqfted Chris- 
 tian friend. 
 
 But we must first recapitulate a few 
 dates and facts, as mementos of an often- 
 told history which it is not our intention to 
 repeat in this article, and of which the in- 
 teresting and instructive details are very 
 fully given by Mr. Tverman. 
 
 doctrines, and asks his brother's " thoughts " upon them. It 
 would appear that, at that time, he had but lately made his 
 escape from these subtleties, which, though Mr. Tverman 
 speaks of them as "mystified balderdash," have led astray 
 many hearts and minds of the finest quality. " I think," he 
 says, in introducing the subject to his brother, "the rock on 
 which I had the nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the 
 writings of the mystics ; under which term I comprehend 
 all, and only those, who slight any of the means of grace." 
 It is evident, also, from the style of his earnest application to 
 his brother, that, even as he wrote them, he felt the power 
 of the mystic spell. — Tyerman, vol. i, p. 133. 
 * " Southey's Wesley," vol. i, p. 112. 
 
His Theological Views t etc., at Oxford. 125 
 
 During Wesley's absence from college in 
 1727, while he was serving his father's rec- 
 tory of Wroote, his brother Charles (then 
 at Christ Church) had become serious, and 
 he and a few other serious undergraduates 
 began to meet and consort together. This 
 company it was which, in the absence of 
 John, was first nicknamed variously as Sac- 
 ramentarians, Bible Bigots, Bible Moths, 
 the Holy or the Godly Club, and, finally, 
 Methodists. Returning to Oxford in No- 
 vember, 1729, at the request of the author- 
 ities, to become a college tutor, John Wesley 
 was immediately placed at the head of this 
 company, being styled the Father of the 
 Holy Club. Whitefield, Hervey, Robert 
 Kirkham, and poor Morgan, who died so 
 soon, were among the earliest members of 
 this society* Mr. Gambold also, afterward 
 a Moravian bishop, a man both of deep 
 piety and of fine poetic genius, became a 
 member of it. The best picture extant of 
 what Wesley was at this time, the view to 
 
 * For an exhaustive account of all the original Methodists, 
 see Tyerman's " Oxford Methodists." 
 
126 The Living Wesley. 
 
 which I have referred above, is that delin- 
 eated by Gambold after Wesley had sailed 
 to Georgia. It was given in a letter ad- 
 dressed to a member of Wesley's family. 
 After stating how he became acquainted 
 with Charles Wesley, how Charles Wesley 
 took him to his brother, the profound def- 
 erence and unbounded and tender affection 
 which Charles ever showed toward John, 
 the part which Mr. Morgan had in suggest- 
 ing the society out of which Methodism 
 arose, and that the two Wesleys and Mor- 
 gan were the first members of that society, 
 Gambold further proceeds : — 
 
 "Mr. John Wesley was always the chief 
 manager, for which he was very fit. For he 
 had not only more learning and experience 
 than the rest, but he was blessed with such 
 activity as to be always gaining ground, 
 and such steadiness that he lost none; what 
 proposals he made to any were sure to 
 alarm them, because he was so much in ear- 
 nest ; nor could they afterward slight them, 
 because they saw him always the same. 
 What supported this uniform vigor was the 
 
His Theological Views, etc., at Oxford. 12J 
 
 care he took to consider well of every affair 
 before he engaged in it, making all his de- 
 cisions in the fear of God, without passion, 
 humor, or self-confidence ; for though he 
 had naturally a very clear apprehension, yet 
 his exact prudence depended more on hon- 
 esty and singleness of heart. To this I 
 may add that he had, I think, something of 
 authority in his countenance. Yet he never 
 assumed any to himself above his compan- 
 ions ; any of them might speak their mind, 
 and their wishes were as strictly regarded 
 by him as his were by them. . . . They took 
 great pains with the younger members of 
 the University, to rescue them from bad 
 company, and to encourage them in a sober, 
 studious life. When they had some inter- 
 est with any such, they would get them to 
 breakfast, and over a dish of tea endeavor 
 to fasten some good hint upon them ; they 
 would bring them acquainted with other 
 well-disposed young men ; they would help 
 them in those parts of learning which they 
 stuck at ; they would close with their best 
 sentiments, drive home their convictions, 
 
128 The Living Wesley. 
 
 give them rules of piety when they could 
 receive them, and watch over them with 
 great tenderness." 
 
 After describing their works of Christian 
 love and zeal, especially in visiting the 
 prisons and dealing with the prisoners, in 
 instructing poor, ignorant children and re- 
 lieving the poor, their fasting twice weekly, 
 and their weekly communion, Mr. Gambold 
 proceeds : — 
 
 " They seldom took any notice of the 
 accusations brought against them ; but if 
 they made any reply, it was commonly such 
 a plain and simple one, as if there was 
 nothing more in the case, but that they had 
 just heard some doctrines of their Saviour, 
 and had believed and done accordingly. . . . 
 He thought prayer to be more his business 
 than any thing else, and I have often seen him 
 come out of his closet with a serenity that 
 was next to shining ; it discovered where 
 he had been, and gave me double hope of 
 receiving wise direction in the matter about 
 which I came to consult him. . . . He used 
 many arts to be religious, but none to seem 
 
His Theological Views, etc., at Oxford. 1 29 
 
 so ; with a soul always upon the stretch, 
 and a most transparent sincerity, he addicted 
 himself to every good word and work. . . . He 
 is now gone to Georgia as a missionary. . . . 
 A family picture of him his relations may 
 be allowed to keep by them. And this is 
 the idea of Mr. Wesley which I cherish 
 for the service of my own soul, and which 
 I take the liberty likewise to deposit with 
 you. ■ 
 
 Such was Wesley, the Oxford Methodist. 
 
 * Part of this letter was quoted in Whitehead's " Life of 
 Wesley." Dr. Hoole had, and allowed me to use, a copy of 
 the original transcribed from the short-hand. 
 9 
 
130 The Living Wesley. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WESLEY IN GEORGIA HIS AFFAIR WITH MISS 
 
 HOPKEY. 
 
 fMUST bring this part of my study to 
 a close by a brief reference to Wesley's 
 Georgian history of two years and four 
 months from the time of his leaving till 
 the time of his returning to this country, 
 his departure on his voyage being from 
 Gravesend, on October 21, 1735, his return 
 to Deal on February 1, 1738. Of the voy- 
 age home and back I shall say nothing at 
 this time ; although the outward voyage, in 
 the course of which Wesley was introduced 
 for the first time into Moravian fellowship, 
 produced, as all the world knows, a critical 
 effect in the development of his views and 
 character, and led on to the connection 
 with Bohler, which was the means of work- 
 ing in him so profound and far-reaching a 
 change of spirit and principles. The chief 
 
Wesley i?i Georgia — Miss Hopkey. 131 
 
 matter of general human interest in Wes- 
 ley's Georgian history was his disappoint- 
 ment in love with Miss Sophia Hopkey, 
 (not Causton,) the niece of Mr. Causton, the 
 magistrate of the colony. Into this, how- 
 ever, I shall not go in any detail, because 
 the story is well known, and Mr. Tyerman 
 has told all about it very plainly, and more 
 fully than it was ever told before. There 
 is one point, however, as to which I must 
 say a few words. Henry Moore, in his 
 " Life of Wesley," has a version of one part 
 of this affair, which he professes to have 
 learned from Wesley himself in full distinct- 
 ness, and according to which Wesley never 
 actually proposed marriage to Miss Hop- 
 key. Mr. Tyerman most unceremoniously 
 discredits this version as wholly unworthy 
 of reliance, and as " painfully ludicrous." 
 I confess that I cannot accept this " short 
 and easy method" of dealing with Moore's 
 testimony as to Wesley's own account. I 
 think a little considerate attention given to 
 the matter would have prevented Mr. Tyer- 
 man from making so violent and unceremo- 
 
132 The Living Wesley. 
 
 nious an attack on the credit of either John 
 Wesley or Henry Moore, and have shown 
 him that there is really no contradiction 
 between the sentences which he quotes 
 from Wesley's private Diary and the state- 
 ment of Henry Moore. I should weave 
 the two accounts into one consistent state- 
 ment in some such way as follows : — 
 
 The young chaplain and " ordinary " of 
 the province of Georgia — a clergyman and 
 a gentleman, and withal a man of handsome 
 personal appearance, notwithstanding his 
 smallness of stature — comes to Savannah. 
 Who so likely as he to attract the atten- 
 tion of the magistrate's niece, resident in 
 the magistrate's family? Was he not, next 
 to Governor Oglethorpe, the best gentle- 
 man in the colony, and in influence, after 
 the governor, only second to her uncle, the 
 magistrate ? From the first, she makes 
 him her mark. He has a long and danger- 
 ous illness ; she waits upon him continually, 
 night and day. He has special and dainty 
 taste in dress; the Horatian "simplex mnn- 
 ditiis" expresses his standard of propriety 
 
Wesley in Georgia — Miss Hopkey. 133 
 
 and grace, regarding the matter either as a 
 gentleman or a Christian ; simplicity be- 
 comes accordingly her law, and she appears 
 in plain, but graceful, white before him con- 
 tinually. He is a devotee, and she becomes 
 devout. She wins the minister's heart by 
 her regular attendance at his early morning 
 service, and by taking to light suppers and 
 early hours at night under his advice. She 
 becomes his penitent, and repairs to him 
 when proposing to take the Communion. 
 Quid multa ? We know how unsuspicious 
 and how susceptible to feminine attraction 
 and charm Wesley was ; here was all that 
 he could desire, the very " handmaiden of 
 the Lord." Wesley is deeply in love. 
 Meantime, others have clearer eyes than the 
 fascinated chaplain ; something is known 
 of Miss Hopkey's inner woman ; she has, 
 in effect, courted the minister, and he is 
 about to fall under the arts of an attract- 
 ive, but unsuitable, woman. Delamotte, his 
 brother collegian and brother Methodist, 
 his companion and friend, gives a word of 
 warning to Wesley. Delamotte also lays 
 
134 The Living Wesley. 
 
 the matter before the Moravian e.ders, a 
 venerable body in the eyes of the teachable 
 and single-minded chaplain. These express 
 their judgment that his marriage with this 
 lady would be against the will of God. 
 Wesley, overawed, says, " The will of the 
 Lord be done," and goes away convinced, 
 for the time at least, that it would be wrong 
 in him to prosecute this connection any 
 further. In all this I can see nothing but 
 what is perfectly natural under the circum- 
 stances ; especially considering how Wes- 
 ley was accustomed, at that time and for 
 years afterward, to defer to what he regard- 
 ed as the determinations of Providence, 
 sometimes given in the way of impressions, 
 and sometimes of the lot, and still more to 
 the combined judgment and conclusion of 
 wise and good men. He had been accus- 
 tomed to act in this spirit at Oxford, and 
 to instruct others to do the like. 
 
 I conceive that what followed was prob- 
 ably something like this. Wesley became 
 more constrained in his manner, and inter- 
 mitted his attentions. Miss Hopkey hears 
 
Wesley in Georgia — Miss Hopkcy. 135 
 
 some rumor of consultations with Mora- 
 vians touching her affair. She discovers, 
 at the same time, that Wesley's ritualistic re- 
 quirements are somewhat too severe for her 
 taste and powers. Another admirer is in 
 the field, and she at once discards her cler- 
 ical lover. Wesley, notwithstanding what 
 had occurred, had never lost his own love 
 for the lady, and is grieved accordingly. 
 Nevertheless, he had been thinking that it 
 was his duty to give up the connection, 
 although he had not been able to gather 
 courage to let her understand his feeling ; 
 and so the affair ends. All this surely is 
 quite consistent with Henry Moore's state- 
 ment, that there had never been any definite 
 proposal on Wesley's part. If there had 
 been, it is certain that it would have been 
 made in the first instance to Mr. Causton, 
 the young lady's guardian. Clergymen of 
 Wesley's character and position did not, in 
 those days, slip out proposals of marriage 
 informally and privately to the ward or 
 daughter in the first instance. They ad- 
 dressed themselves, and were bound to 
 
136 The Living Wesley. 
 
 address themselves, in the first instance, 
 and with all formality, to the parent or 
 guardian. The undoubted fact is, that no 
 proposal of marriage to Miss Hopkey was 
 ever addressed by Wesley to her uncle, and 
 that no charge of dishonorable conduct or 
 of breach of engagement was ever preferred 
 against Wesley either by Mrs. Williamson 
 or by Mr. Causton : these considerations 
 settle the question for us. Mr. Tyerman 
 himself informs us, that before the grand 
 jury Mrs. Williamson (Miss Hopkey) "was 
 called, but acknowledged, in the course of 
 her examination, that she had no objection 
 to Wesley's behavior previous to her mar- 
 riage. Mr. and Mrs. Causton were also ex- 
 amined ; when the former confessed that, if 
 Mr. Wesley had asked his consent to marry 
 his niece, he would not have refused it." * 
 
 It is plain enough that Wesley's great 
 offense was, that he did not propose. His 
 hesitation lost him Miss Hopkey — a loss 
 which, no doubt, was a real gain and bless- 
 ing. Mr. Moore's account is not " painfully 
 
 * Tyerman, vol. i, p. 156. 
 
Wesley in Georgia — Miss Hop key. 137 
 
 ludicrous," but is well sustained by all the 
 evidence. It is sustained, indeed, by the 
 very passages which Mr. Tyerman quotes 
 from the unpublished journal. Here is 
 one : — 
 
 "February ^th, 1737. — One of the most 
 remarkable dispensations of Providence to- 
 ward me began to show itself this day. For 
 many days after, I could not at all judge 
 which way the scale would turn ; nor was it 
 fully determined till March 4, on which day 
 God commanded me to pull out my right 
 eye ; and, by his grace, I determined to 
 do so, but, being slack in the execution, on 
 Saturday, March 12, God being very mer- 
 ciful to me, my friend performed what I 
 could not." 
 
 The meaning of this is not hard to deci- 
 pher. Delamotte had spoken to Wesley, 
 as Moore relates, and Wesley felt bound 
 to take advice. He did take advice with 
 David Nitzchmann, as Moore also relates, 
 and his answer was dubious, suggesting 
 grave caution and deliberation. After a 
 month thus passed in painful irresolution, 
 
138 The Living Wesley. 
 
 on the 4th of March, Nitzchmann commu- 
 nicates to Wesley the judgment of his fel- 
 low-elders — I have no doubt a most sound 
 judgment — that he ought not to marry. 
 Wesley receives this as from the Lord, and 
 determines to carry it out, but is " slack in 
 the execution." On the 8th, the matter be- 
 ing blown abroad in gossiping Savannah, 
 Miss Hopkey takes her revenge by en- 
 gaging herself to an altogether unworthy 
 person of the name of Williamson. On the 
 7th, as we learn from the Diary, Wesley had 
 walked with Causton " to his country lot," 
 and had greatly admired the place, but had 
 made no overture of marriage. Wesley's 
 entry in regard to the marriage is as 
 follows : — 
 
 " March 8, Miss Sophy engaged herself to 
 Mr. Williamson, a person not remarkable 
 for handsomeness, neither for greatness, 
 neither for wit, or knowledge, or sense, and 
 least of all for religion ; and on Saturday, 
 March 12, they were married at Parrys- 
 bury — this being the day which completed 
 the year from my first speaking to her. 
 
Wesley iti Georgia — Miss Hopkey. 139 
 
 What Thou doest, God, I know not now, 
 but I shall know hereafter." 
 
 That he had tenderly loved Miss Hopkey 
 is certain ; equally evident it is that he must 
 have been a somewhat trying, and not eas- 
 ily comprehensible, suitor, especially to a 
 vain young lady ; and the hasty marriage 
 shows how bitterly she resented his inde- 
 cision, and the slight which she conceived 
 herself to have suffered. Forty-nine years 
 after, as Mr. Tyerman reminds us, he wrote, 
 in reference to this event : " I remember 
 when I read these words in the church at Sa- 
 vannah : ' Son of man, behold, I take away 
 from thee the desire of thine eyes with a 
 stroke,' I was pierced through as with a 
 sword, and could not utter a word more. 
 But our comfort is that He that made the 
 heart can heal the heart." 
 
 Such was the unprosperous issue of Wes- 
 ley's third love affair. He was not, it must 
 be confessed, fortunate in these affairs ; but 
 they illustrate very strongly the real nature 
 of the man, equally on his weak and on his 
 fine human side. On the whole, we cannot 
 
140 The Living Wesley. 
 
 but love our Wesley the better for these 
 revelations. At the same time, it is a mat- 
 ter of regret that Mr. Tyerman has so in- 
 adequately rendered them, as he has, in my 
 judgment, inadequately, inapprehensively, 
 and therefore with entire (though alto- 
 gether unconscious) unfairness, represented, 
 throughout his volumes, Wesley's relations 
 of affection and confidence with women. 
 
 This affair, as many of my readers know, 
 and all may fully know by consulting Mr. 
 Tyerman's interesting pages, was the begin- 
 ning of troubles to Wesley. The worldly 
 and wicked members of the colony — and, in 
 such a colony as Georgia was, these could 
 not but be the majority — had now the mag- 
 istrate and his family on their side. A suit 
 at law was brought against him, which, how- 
 ever, completely broke down, and Wesley 
 saw that his only course was to leave the 
 colony — " a sadder and a wiser man " than 
 he entered it. 
 
Wesley's Religious Opinions, etc. } in Georgia. 141 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WESLEY'S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS AND CHARAC- 
 TER IN GEORGIA. 
 
 ROM the public indictment against 
 Js&k Wesley in the Savannah court, and 
 his own testimony or comments in his Diary, 
 we know what sort of a Churchman he was 
 in Georgia. The resemblance of his prac- 
 tices to those of modern High Anglicans 
 is, in most points, exceedingly striking. 
 He had early, and also forenoon, service 
 every day; he divided the morning service, 
 taking the Litany as a separate service ; he 
 inculcated fasting, (real, hard fasting, his 
 was,) and confession, and weekly commun- 
 ion ; he refused the Lord's Supper to all who 
 had not been episcopally baptized ; he in- 
 sisted on baptism by immersion ; he rebap- 
 tized the children of Dissenters ; and he 
 refused to bury all who had not received 
 Episcopalian baptism. One only thing was 
 
142 The Living Wesley. 
 
 wanting to make the parallel with our mod- 
 erns complete : there is no evidence that 
 he believed in the conversion of the ele- 
 ments by consecration, or in their doctrine 
 of the "real presence."* 
 
 But, at the same time that he was in 
 some respects an intolerant High-Church 
 ritualist, he was inwardly melting, and the 
 light of spiritual liberty was dawning into 
 his soul. He attended the Presbyterian 
 service at Darien, heard Mr. M'Leod, the 
 minister, to his great astonishment, offer an 
 extemporary prayer and preach a written 
 sermon, on which fact he fails not to remark 
 in his Diary, but was much struck by the 
 Christian devoutness and the exemplary 
 
 * It is well known that Wesley refused the Lord's Supper to 
 one of the most exemplary Christians in the colony, Belzius, the 
 pastor of the Saltzburghers, because he had not been, as he 
 insisted, canonically baptized. His entry in his journal in 
 reference to this matter, written many years later, will not 
 be forgotten, which ends with the words, "Can High-Church 
 bigotry go further than this ? And how well have I since been 
 beaten with mine own staff! " In regard to this matter there 
 is the following entry in Wesley's unpublished journal, under 
 date Sunday, July 17, 1737 : " I had occasion to make a very 
 unusual trial of the temper of Mr. Belzius, pastor of the 
 Saltzburghers, in which he behaved with such lowliness and 
 meekness as became a disciple of Jesus Christ." 
 
Wesley's Religions Opinions, etc., in Georgia. 143 
 
 Christian behavior of the people of his 
 charge ; he was continually learning from 
 the Moravians, with all meekness ; he gath- 
 ered a meeting of the clergy of the prov- 
 ince, at which, he says in his Diary, " there 
 was such a conversation, for several hours, 
 on " Christ our Righteousness and Exam- 
 ple," with such seriousness and closeness as 
 I never heard in England in all the visita- 
 tions I have been present at;" and he thus 
 expresses to a friend his views respecting 
 the innermost nature of religion : — 
 
 " I entirely agree with you that religion 
 is love, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
 Ghost ; that, as it is the happiest, so it is 
 the cheerfulest thing in the world ; that it is 
 utterly inconsistent with moroseness, sour- 
 ness, severity, and indeed with whatever is 
 not according to the softness, sweetness, and 
 gentleness of Christ Jesus. I believe it is 
 equally contrary to all preciseness, stiffness, 
 affectation, and unnecessary singularity. I 
 allow, too, that prudence, as well as zeal, is 
 of the utmost importance in the Christian 
 life. But I do not yet see any possible 
 
144 The Living Wesley. 
 
 case wherein trifling conversation can be 
 an instance of it. In the following Script- 
 ures I take all such to be flatly forbidden : 
 Matt, xii, 36; Eph. v, 4, and iv, 29 ; Col. iv, 6. 
 
 " That I shall be laughed at for this I 
 know; so was my Master. I am not for a 
 stern, austere manner of conversing — no : 
 let all the cheerfulness of faith be there, 
 all the joyfulness of hope, all the amiable 
 sweetness, the winning easiness of love. 
 If we must have art, " Hcec mihi erunt 
 artes. 
 
 So far distant from real Christianity does 
 Wesley, the Georgian missionary, appear to 
 have been, if we look only at his bigotry, 
 his ritualism, his wearisome and punctilious 
 externalism ; so near, notwithstanding, does 
 he come in his inner desires and in his 
 views respecting the nature of religious ex- 
 perience. A similar combination, we can- 
 not doubt, exists to-day in the case of not a 
 few who seem not untruly to be infatuated 
 sticklers for a servile and benighted High- 
 Anglicanism. 
 
 * Tyerman, vol. i, p. 138. 
 
Wesley's Religions Opinions, etc., in Georgia. 145 
 
 I have thus endeavored, beating ground 
 seldom trodden, and known hitherto to very 
 few, to exhibit the living and visible hu- 
 manity of Wesley, the Collegian and the 
 Oxford Anglican, before he entered into 
 the liberty of the children of God. In the 
 Third part of this study I shall endeavor 
 to illustrate the stages and the true char- 
 acter of his evangelical conversion, and his 
 matured character after his conversion, espe- 
 cially on the side of his intellect, so skep- 
 tical, and yet seemingly so credulous ; his 
 wonderful power as a preacher; and his 
 temper and principles as a living companion 
 and administrator. Wesley's intellect, and 
 his character as a preacher, appear to me, 
 
 as yet, to have been little understood. 
 10 
 
PART III. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY AFTEE HIS CONVERSION AID IX THE 
 MATURITY OF HIS POWERS. 
 
PART III. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY AFTER HIS CONVERSION AND IN 
 THE MATURITY OF HIS POWERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WESLEY'S RITUALISM AND MYSTICISM BEFORE 
 HIS EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 
 
 XT will be necessary, in opening what 
 @=> I desire now to say respecting Wesley 
 in his mature and in his later life, that I 
 should recapitulate some of the information 
 contained in the former part of this study. 
 We left Wesley still in Georgia, but on the 
 point of returning to England. The date 
 was 1737-8. 
 
 Wesley had gone to Oxford in 1720, be- 
 ing seventeen years of age. He took his 
 bachelors degree in 1724. He was ordained 
 deacon in 1725, and elected Fellow of Lin- 
 coln College six months later, in March, 
 1726. He had always been a moral youth, 
 
150 The Living Wesley. 
 
 with religious habits and predilections ; but 
 in 1725 he was deeply awakened to a sense 
 of his want of real holiness, and began 
 thenceforth to seek after absolute consecra- 
 tion to God, as the great aim of his life. 
 The main outline of his characteristic teach- 
 ing in future life as to Christian perfection 
 may be traced in the views which he at this 
 time embraced, and which he seems to have 
 learned chiefly from Thomas k Kempis and 
 Jeremy Taylor. In the same year, also, he 
 settled his views in opposition to the Cal- 
 vinistic doctrines of predestination. About 
 the same time, revolting at this point from 
 Jeremy Taylor, he concluded that it must 
 be the privilege and blessing of a Christian 
 to know his acceptance with God. 
 
 In 1727, during Wesley's absence from 
 Oxford at Wroote, where he was serving his 
 fathers rectory, his brother Charles became 
 serious, and the original company of " Meth- 
 odists," so designated in mockery or in 
 pleasantry, was formed ; Charles and a few 
 like-minded friends being the members of 
 the company. In 1730, shortly after his 
 
Wesley's Ritualism and Mysticism. 151 
 
 return to residence at Oxford, John Wesley 
 was placed at the head of this company, 
 being styled the Father of the Holy Club. 
 Wesley, as I have just stated, left Oxford 
 in 1727, and went for a time to reside in 
 Lincolnshire. Not long before his leaving 
 he had visited the family of the Kirkhams, 
 at Stanton, in Gloucestershire ; and there 
 appears, as we have seen, to have been at 
 that time a mutual attachment between 
 himself and Miss Betty Kirkham. Of this, 
 however, we lose the traces for several 
 years afterward. During those years, it is 
 to be observed, Wesley was very far away 
 from Gloucestershire ; they were the years 
 during which he had exchanged his univer- 
 sity life for parochial residence and service 
 in Lincolnshire. Possibly there may have 
 been some reason connected with Stanton 
 which helped in part to keep him so long 
 away from Oxford, though the reason was 
 certainly not that he had become indifferent 
 to the merits of his friend Kirkham's sister. 
 However, to Oxford he returned, as we 
 have noted, at the end of 1729, and became 
 
152 The Living Wesley. 
 
 the chief of the Methodist band. In the 
 summer of that same year he renewed his 
 personal intercourse with the daughter of 
 the Stanton parsonage, although without 
 any hope of marriage being possible ; in- 
 deed, it seems not unlikely that about this 
 time she married and became Mrs. Wilson. 
 Through his connection with her family he 
 was about the same time introduced to 
 Mrs. Pendarves, afterward Mrs. Delany, 
 with whom, during several years following, 
 he kept up the remarkable and now well- 
 known correspondence from which I have 
 given some extracts. His last and parting 
 letter to her was dated 1 734. By that time 
 he had learned that his way and hers 
 through life must be separate and diverg- 
 ent. Three years before he was deeply 
 engaged to her in admiration and affection, 
 and would most gladly have married her if 
 he had been able. At that time she would 
 have been a compensation to him for even 
 the loss of his former hopes as to Miss 
 Kirkham. 
 
 It was precisely during the interval which 
 
Wesley's Ritualism and Mystic ism. 153 
 
 covers the correspondence with Mrs. Pen- 
 darves that Wesley's High-church asceticism 
 developed itself at Oxford. He set himself 
 conscientiously to be an Anglican Church- 
 man, according to the prescriptions of the 
 Rubric; and to be a devout and holy Chris- 
 tian, according to early ecclesiastical exam- 
 ples and traditions. He became, accord- 
 ingly, an ascetic ritualist of the strictest 
 and most advanced class. At this time, to 
 use his own words of himself, he " made an- 
 tiquity a co-ordinate rule with Scripture."* 
 In 1735 he went to Georgia, and there, 
 while inwardly the need and the attainabil- 
 ity of a real consciousness and power of 
 Divine love and holiness, as contradistin- 
 guished from any external services or ob- 
 servances, became with him a matter of 
 deepening and almost passionate convic- 
 tion, outwardly his rule of life and service 
 seemed to become more and more forbid- 
 
 *Mr. Tyerman, in his "Oxford Methodists," has shown 
 that it was in 1733 that Wesley, partly through the influence 
 of his friend and fellow-Methodist, Clayton, left the guidance 
 of the Bible to follow that of tradition, or such pretended 
 tradition as the Apostolical Constitutions. 
 
154 The Living Wesley. 
 
 ding and unevangelical in its legal servility, 
 its rubrical punctiliousness, and its ascetic 
 severity. He was all that a High Anglo- 
 Catholic of the present day is understood 
 to be, except that he seems not to have 
 believed in the " conversion of the ele- 
 ments " in the eucharist. 
 
 Nevertheless, with all his punctilious rit- 
 ualism, there was curiously intermixed, dur- 
 ing nearly the whole of these seven years, 
 (1730 — 1737-8,) a strong tincture of mys- 
 tical tendency and influence. This element 
 represented the reaction, in such a true and 
 earnest soul as Wesley's, of the inward 
 against the merely outward. Through all 
 his life, indeed, Wesley was resolute to 
 maintain the union of outward godliness 
 and religious observance with inward and 
 spiritual contemplation and affection. But 
 during the period of which we are now 
 speaking he had not found, in the " right- 
 eousness of faith," the true nexus and har- 
 mony between these antithetic necessities. 
 Hence, at this period, the intermixture of 
 ritualism and mysticism, the oscillations 
 
Wesley's Ritualism and Mysticism. 155 
 
 from one to the other, of which we spoke 
 in Part Second. Never ceasing to be 
 outwardly the strict and ascetic High- 
 churchman, Wesley, in his inward sympa- 
 thies and longings, found himself strongly 
 attracted by the union of contemplation 
 and passion in the writings of the best class 
 of devotional Mystics, and was himself often 
 a mystic at heart. Indeed, although servile 
 ritualism and mysticism are antagonistic 
 to each other, there is a deep congeniality, 
 as all religious history has shown, between 
 asceticism and mysticism, and, accordingly, 
 on his ascetic side, Wesley found himself 
 verging naturally toward the school from 
 which, as a punctilious legalist, he was re- 
 pelled. Besides which Wesley could not, 
 even for a time, find rest in legalism : ear- 
 nest and sincere spirits never can. Where- 
 as mysticism was a doctrine of rest ; made 
 fair offers to him of " quietness and assur- 
 ance forever." 
 
 It was about 1728 or 1729 that Wesley 
 was deeply impressed by reading Law's 
 ''Christian Perfection" and "Serious Call." 
 
156 The Living Wesley. 
 
 The fruit of these powerful books was seen 
 in his deepened earnestness and " Meth- 
 odist " singularity of religious strictness and 
 devotion on his return to Oxford ; that is, 
 from the beginning of the year 1730. In 
 1732 he paid a personal visit to Law, at 
 Putney ; and from that period seemed to 
 have begun to read the Mystics, chiefly, it 
 would seem, at first, the Germans who pre- 
 ceded and in part prepared the way for the 
 Reformation, such as Tauler, and the au- 
 thor of the " Theologia Germanica;" but 
 afterward, also, such French writers as 
 Madame de Bourignon. Just as he was 
 leaving England for Georgia, Law was 
 going astray, wide and deep, by plunging 
 into the unfathomable confusions of Beh- 
 menism. Into these Wesley never followed 
 him ; but, as I have already shown, appears 
 to have distinctly and intelligently extri- 
 cated himself from the meshes of mysticism 
 toward the end of the year 1736, during his 
 sojourn in Georgia. His criticism on the 
 principles of mysticism, given in a letter to 
 his brother Samuel, from Georgia, under 
 
Wesley's Ritualism and Mysticism. 157 
 
 date November 23, 1736, and already re- 
 ferred to in a note, is worth quoting here, 
 both for its own intrinsic value and as a 
 specimen of his philosophical and critical 
 capacity at this period of his life. 
 
 " I think," he says, " the rock on which I 
 had the nearest made shipwreck of the faith 
 was the writings of the Mystics ; under 
 which term I comprehend all, and only 
 those, who slight any of the means of grace. 
 I have drawn up a short scheme of their 
 doctrines, and beg your thoughts upon it 
 as soon as you can conveniently. Give me 
 them as particularly, fully, and strongly, as 
 your time will permit. They may be of 
 consequence, not only to all this province, 
 but to nations of Christians yet unborn. 
 
 " ' All means are not necessary for all 
 men ; therefore each person must use such 
 means, and such only, as he finds necessary 
 for him. When the end is attained, the 
 means cease." 
 
 "'Men utterly divested of free-will, of 
 self-love, and of self-activity, are entered 
 into the passive state, and enjoy such a con- 
 
158 The Living Wesley. 
 
 templation as is not only above faith but 
 above sight — such as is entirely free from 
 images, thoughts, and discourse, and never 
 interrupted by sins of infirmity or volun- 
 tary distractions.' They have absolutely 
 renounced their reason and understanding ; 
 else they could not be guided by a Divine 
 light. They seek no clear or particular 
 knowledge of any thing ; but only an ob- 
 scure, general knowledge, which is far 
 better.' 
 
 "Having thus attained the end, the 
 means must cease. Hope is swallowed up 
 in love ; sight, or something more than 
 sight, takes the place of faith.' All particu- 
 lar virtues they possess in the essence, and, 
 therefore, need not the distinct exercise of 
 them. They work, likewise, all good works 
 essentially, not accidentally; and use all 
 outward means only as they are moved 
 thereto.' 
 
 " Public prayer, or any forms, they need 
 not, for they pray without ceasing. Sensi- 
 ble devotion in any prayer they despise, 
 it being a great hinderance to perfection. 
 
Wesley } s Ritualism and Mysticism. 159 
 
 The Scripture they need not read, for it is 
 only His letter, with whom they converse 
 face to face." * 
 
 The one really plausible position of all 
 that are here laid down is that set forth in 
 the first paragraph of the summary. How 
 much of truth there is in it it is not my 
 business to inquire at this moment. But I 
 may observe that Wesley's special weak- 
 ness at this time as a ritualist was in pre- 
 cise antithesis to this position. He taught 
 the pernicious error which is in the oppo- 
 site extreme to the no less pernicious mys- 
 tical half-truth. His one prescription for the 
 attainment of holiness and happiness was 
 the use of "the means of grace" — of the 
 instituted means. He taught that the more 
 means there are, and are made use of, the 
 more grace must needs come to the sincere 
 user of them. His doctrine was a servile 
 legalism, a plodding ritualism, less absurd, 
 perhaps, and less open to mischievous abuse, 
 than the extremer developments of the 
 mysticism summarized in the passage we 
 
 [* "Tyerman's Wesley," vol. i, pp. 133, 134.] 
 
160 The Living Wesley. 
 
 have quoted, but not less opposed to Chris- 
 tian truth, and in special contradiction to 
 the liberty wherewith Christ has made his 
 people free. One secret of the strength 
 and attraction of the mystical doctrines for 
 him — that which drew him to them, even 
 while he revolted against them — consisted, 
 doubtless, in the fact that the element of 
 truth which lay at the bottom of all their 
 Antinomian paradoxes and inexplicable sub- 
 tleties, was, if it could only have been dis- 
 involved from the fallacies in which it was 
 embedded, precisely the principle that was 
 needed to correct his own servile doc- 
 trine of "means" — his ritualistic legalism. 
 To this must be added, that the mystical 
 doctrines, under the hands of some of their 
 teachers, become a very cunning web of 
 verbal deductions; a fabric of fallacies very 
 deftly put together, and exceedingly likely 
 to impose upon a verbal logician. Now, 
 Wesley was a most dexterous master of 
 the logical art and method. But if his mas- 
 tery of the logician's craft often stood him 
 in good stead when conducting an argu- 
 
Wesley's Ritualism and Mysticism. 161 
 
 ment, it also was at times a snare to him. 
 If he often easily and happily disentangled 
 verbal subtleties, he was sometimes entan- 
 gled in them. The school in which he was 
 trained was a school of verbal dialectics and 
 of scholastic distinctions. Hence, though he 
 was furnished with the skill and possessed 
 the power finally to penetrate and refute 
 the fallacies of the Mystics, he was for a 
 time bewildered in their plausible mazes. 
 
 The passage I have quoted shows, at 
 any rate, that Wesley had, from the begin- 
 ning, the taste and tendencies of the philo- 
 sophic theologian ; and, moreover, that he 
 had a fine philosophic capacity. The philo- 
 sophic tincture and bias of thought remained 
 with Wesley through life, and was shown in 
 many of his sermons, not only in such of his 
 most finished discourses, published in his 
 ripe maturity of thought, as that on " The 
 Original of the Law," but in many of those 
 which, in the later years of his long life, he 
 wrote for the "Arminian Magazine." His 
 original tendency, in fact, was to be a philo- 
 sophical rather than an evangelical, or even 
 
1 62 The Living Wesley. 
 
 a biblical, theologian. His Moravian guides, 
 especially Bohler, drove him to the New 
 Testament. Bohler had strong reason when 
 he said to him, " Mi f rater, mi f rater, ista 
 philosophia tua excoquenda est." It has often 
 been said that Wesley was not a metaphysi- 
 cian ; and there is truth in the saying, al- 
 though it is by no means so absolutely true 
 as it is commonly assumed to be. But then 
 there can hardly be said to have been any 
 metaphysical science in his earlier days, 
 least of all at Oxford. It might not be un- 
 truly said that even Cudworth was no met- 
 aphysician. But if Wesley was not a met- 
 aphysician, he was a philosophical student 
 in the whole bias of his intellect, addicted, 
 no doubt, like all the students of his age, 
 and in the spirit of all scholastic traditions, 
 to synthesis and deduction rather than to 
 analysis and induction ; but nevertheless 
 open to correction as respects this tendency. 
 The characteristic parts of Wesley's theol- 
 ogy were based on experience and con- 
 sciousness. His Arminianism was founded 
 on the moral intuitions of humanity, in oppo- 
 
Wesley's Ritualism and Mysticism. 163 
 
 sition to the mere deductive logic of Calvin- 
 ism. His doctrines of assurance and of 
 Christian perfection, although molded into 
 a system by the help of his logical faculties 
 — occasionally employed, as we venture to 
 think, with more of verbal truth-seeming 
 than of realistic and truth-reaching insight 
 — yet reposed in their broad power and 
 merits on the basis of living consciousness 
 and experience. Whether as a logical ex- 
 positor, however, or as a witness, and the 
 mouth-piece of other witnesses, Wesley was 
 never a dry, or a merely scholastic and sys- 
 tematic, theologian ; there was always in his 
 teaching as a theologian a living freshness 
 of thought and a philosophic basis and mold 
 of exposition. Even as a boy, he was sin- 
 gularly remarkable for reflectiveness ; and 
 his Oxford discipline in early life — the influ- 
 ence, also, of Plato and Aristotle, of Taylor, 
 and Beveridge, and Law — had contributed 
 their full share to the permanent color and 
 quality of his intellectual character. 
 
 Through all the preparatory stages of his 
 life, Wesley was emphatically a learner. 
 
164 The Living Wesley. 
 
 All through life, indeed, he was a man of a 
 peculiarly open and teachable mind ; as much 
 so in his ninth as in his third decade. But 
 during the first five-and-thirty years of his 
 life he was not only a learner, but he was 
 in quest of a teacher; he was looking out 
 for a school in which to study and graduate ; 
 he was unsettled in his principles. He 
 went to school to the Rubric, and being a 
 loyal son of the Church of England, he 
 worked long and assiduously in that school ; 
 but this, after all, was only grinding at the 
 elements — " beggarly elements " he found 
 them to be in after days ; he went to school 
 to Law, and for some years Law was his 
 oracle, until he found that he durst not any 
 longer follow the hazardous excursions of 
 his teacher ; he sat as a scholar at the feet 
 of the Moravians during his voyage to 
 Georgia, and in the colony, although he 
 could not accept all their teachings ; he 
 wrote from Georgia to his brother Samuel, 
 entreating him for correction and instruc- 
 tion ; in the colony he learned from Lu- 
 theran Salzburghers and from Scottish 
 
Wesley's Ritualism and Mysticism. 165 
 
 Presbyterians, not indeed, as yet, lessons of 
 true ecclesiastical liberality and catholicity, 
 but much which sunk deep into his open and 
 thoughtful mind. All through he felt that 
 his system of theological and ecclesiastical 
 principles remained yet to be formed ; he 
 had not found his center or his basis; he was 
 far from being at rest. Nevertheless, it is 
 notable that, with all this, he felt that he 
 was a teacher likewise, and he acted as such. 
 If he was ever listening that he might learn, 
 he was also ever speaking to instruct. His 
 personal influence was always very great; 
 there was authority in his presence and his 
 words. Especially we must note that he 
 was under the continual conviction that he 
 was destined to be a chief teacher — the 
 teacher not only of a company in his gen- 
 eration, but of multitudes in many genera- 
 tions. This conviction is expressed with 
 startling distinctness in the letter to his eld- 
 er brother which we have quoted. Begging 
 his brother to give him his thoughts respect- 
 ing the principles of the Mystics, as sum- 
 marized in the letter, he says, with singular 
 
1 66 The Living Wesley. 
 
 emphasis, " Give me them as particularly, 
 fully, and strongly, as your time will permit. 
 They may be of consequence, not only to all 
 this province, but to nations of Christians 
 yet unborn." So much did he think might 
 depend on the settlement of his own views 
 respecting Christian doctrine. The same 
 sense of a most important destiny for him- 
 self as a teacher of men was expressed a 
 year or two earlier, in his well-known reason 
 for remaining at Oxford rather than succeed 
 his father in the Epworth rectorate. " The 
 schools of the prophets," he said, " were at 
 Oxford ; and was it not a more extensive 
 benefit to sweeten the fountain than to 
 purify a particular stream ?"* 
 
 * It is not necessary to the scope of the discussion in the 
 text to consider how far Wesley was justified in the view 
 which he took of his duty respecting the matter referred to 
 above. Not a few have thought that he ought to have yield- 
 ed to the urgency of what were pleaded as the claims of fam- 
 ily affection and duty, and have left Oxford for Epworth. 
 Southey appears to have been of this mind. Mr. Tyerman, 
 who gives a clear and full account of the whole question, evi- 
 dently feels that Wesley ought to have yielded to his father's 
 and his family's appeals. He speaks of this part of Wesley's 
 history as " somewhat painfully mysterious ;" and he thinks 
 that he, in fact, clears it up by producing a letter to show 
 that Wesley did, in the end, consent to seek, through his 
 
Wesley's Ritualism and Mysticism. 167 
 
 He seems to have had a settled and gov- 
 erning conviction that there was a great 
 
 friend Broughton, at the hands of Mr. St. John, then in high 
 office, a presentation to the crown living- of Epworth. Miss 
 Wedgwood, on the contrary, holds that Wesley " fully justi- 
 fies " his insuperable reluctance to leave Oxford ; and the 
 Rev. J. Gordon, in his able and well-informed papers on Wes- 
 ley in the " Theologian," * holds, in like manner, that Wesley 
 was perfectly right in his feelings upon the matter. I think 
 that, on such a point, Wesley alone could be the judge in his 
 own case. It was a question of personal conscience and con- 
 viction. " He felt that he had a vocation to teach thinkers 
 and teachers, to teach in the schools of the prophets ;" that to 
 him was duty. He knew what a country parish and parish 
 duty were ; he had served more than two years at Wroote ; 
 and he felt that a country cure was not his vocation. It 
 seems probable, from the evidence which Mr. Tyerman has 
 produced, that, at the last, Wesley did, against his own prop- 
 er judgment and will, allow an application to be made on his 
 behalf for presentation to Epworth in succession to his father. 
 Miss Wedgwood, also, has, from other data, arrived at the 
 same conclusion. " It appears, however," she says, " from 
 an obscure sentence in a letter of Charles Wesley's, that John 
 did at last make an unsuccessful and reluctant application 
 for the living." I do not know to what letter she refers, and 
 Mr. Tyerman, who knows almost every thing about the Wes- 
 leys, makes no reference to any such sentence in any letter of 
 Charles ; but the coincidence between Mr. Tyerman 's and 
 Miss Wedgwood's conclusion is striking. Still this fact, if it 
 be a fact, does not at all change the general aspect of the 
 affair, and it remains true, notwithstanding, that Wesley, to 
 use his own words, " continued in his purpose to live and die 
 at Oxford, till Dr. Burton pressed him to go to Georgia." 
 I may fairly assume that he neither expected nor desired the ap- 
 plication to which he reluctantly consented to be successful. 
 
 ♦For April and July, 1871. 
 
1 68 The Living Wesley. 
 
 work to be done for the Church and the 
 world, for the present and yet more for the 
 future ; a work which God had called him to 
 do. He saw around him the need of such 
 a work — a hollow and heartless world, full 
 of corruption, vanity, and unrest, and a su- 
 pine, undisciplined, insensible Church ; and 
 he felt stirring strongly within him the pow- 
 er and the call to awaken and organize the 
 Church, and to impress and convert the 
 world. 
 
 Such was John Wesley, the Oxford Meth- 
 odist and the Georgian missionary. Such, 
 on the whole, he appears to have remained 
 up to the time of his quitting Georgia. 
 Nevertheless, as we have seen, the intoler- 
 ant High-church ritualist was all the time, 
 and especially toward the end of his stay in 
 Georgia, inwardly beginning to melt ; the 
 light of spiritual liberty, even before he quit- 
 ted Georgia, was beginning to break through 
 the darkness which had so long wrapped 
 him round, and to dawn into his soul ; and 
 during the spiritual solitude of his voyage 
 home he must have learned much, and 
 
Wesley 1 s Ritualism and Mysticism. 169 
 
 learned quickly. When he landed at Deal 
 he was a very different man from what he 
 had been two years and a half before, when 
 he sailed for Georgia. This is shown by 
 the reflections which at that time he wrote 
 in his Journal. It is evident that his inter- 
 course in the colony with Moravians, Saltz- 
 burghers, and Presbyterians, in connection 
 with his experience of his own errors and 
 failures, and with the diligent and prayerful 
 study of the Scriptures, had profited him 
 more, upon recollection and reconsideration, 
 during the voyage, than during the time he 
 was in the colony, and while he was active- 
 ly enforcing his own strongly-held views, and 
 was occupied in the routine of Church serv- 
 ice and rubrical ceremonial. 
 
170 The Living Wesley. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WESLEY'S EVANGELICAL CONVERSION. 
 
 tHE following are the reflections to 
 which I have referred, as written down 
 by Wesley immediately after his return to 
 England. They are so important that, not- 
 withstanding their length, I must give them 
 entire, with the notes which Wesley ap- 
 pended to them in the later editions of his 
 Journal : — 
 
 "It is now two years and almost four 
 months since I left my native country in 
 order to teach the Georgian Indians the 
 nature of Christianity ; but what have I 
 learned myself in the meantime ? Why 
 (what I least of all expected) that I, who 
 went to America to convert others, was 
 never myself converted to God.* ' I am not 
 mad/ though I thus speak ; but ' I speak 
 the words of truth and soberness ;' if haply 
 
 * I am not sure of this. 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. ijl 
 
 some of those who still dream may awake, 
 and see that as I am so are they. 
 
 " Are they read in philosophy ? So was I. 
 In ancient or modern tongues? So was I 
 also. Are they versed in the science of 
 divinity ? I too have studied it many years. 
 Can they talk fluently upon spiritual things? 
 The very same could I do. Are they plen- 
 teous in alms ? Behold, I gave all my goods 
 to feed the poor. Do they give of their 
 labor as well as of their substance ? I have 
 labored more abundantly than they all. 
 Are they willing to suffer for their brethren ? 
 I have thrown up my friends, reputation, 
 ease, country ; I have put my life in my 
 hand, wandering into strange lands ; I have 
 given my body to be devoured by the deep, 
 parched up with heat, consumed by toil 
 and weariness, or whatsoever God should 
 please to bring upon me. But does all this 
 (be it more or less it matters not) make 
 me acceptable to God ? Does all I ever 
 did or can know, say, give, do, or suffer, 
 justify me in his sight ? Yea, or the con- 
 stant use of all the means of grace ? (which, 
 
172 The Living Wesley. 
 
 nevertheless, is meet, right, and our bound- 
 en duty.) Or that I know nothing of my- 
 self; that I am, as touching outward moral 
 righteousness, blameless ? Or, to come 
 closer yet, the having a rational conviction 
 of all the truths of Christianity? Does all 
 this give me a claim to the holy, heavenly, 
 divine character of a Christian ? By no 
 means. If the oracles of God are true, 
 if we are still to abide by ' the law and 
 the testimony ;' all these things, though, 
 when ennobled by faith in Christ,* they 
 are holy, and just, and good, yet without 
 it are ' dung and dross/ meet only to be 
 purged away by ' the fire that never shall 
 be quenched.' 
 
 " This, then, have I learned in the ends of 
 the earth, that I ' am fallen short of the 
 glory of God ;' that my whole heart is ' al- 
 together corrupt and abominable ;' and, con- 
 sequently, my whole life ; seeing it cannot 
 be that an 'evil tree' should 'bring forth 
 good fruit/ that 'alienated' as I am from 
 
 * I had even then the faith of a servant, though not that 
 of a son. 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 173 
 
 the life of God, I am'a child of wrath,' * an 
 heir of hell ; that my own works, my own 
 sufferings, my own righteousness, are so far 
 from reconciling me to an offended God — ■ 
 so far from making any atonement for the 
 least of those sins, which ' are more in num- 
 ber than the hairs of my head ' — that the most 
 specious of them need an atonement them- 
 selves, or they cannot abide his righteous 
 judgment ; that, ' having the sentence of 
 death ' in my heart, and having nothing in 
 or of myself to plead, I have no hope but 
 that of being 'justified freely through the 
 redemption that is in Jesus ;' I have no hope 
 but that if I seek I shall find Christ, and 
 ' be found in him, not having my own right- 
 eousness, but that which is through the faith 
 of Christ, the righteousness which is of God 
 by faith.' Phil, iii, 9. 
 
 " If it be said that I have faith, (for many 
 such things have I heard from many miser- 
 able comforters,) I answer, So have the 
 devils — a sort of faith ; but still they are 
 strangers to the covenant of promise. So 
 
 * I believe not. 
 
174 The Living Wesley. 
 
 the apostles had even at Cana in Galilee, 
 when Jesus first ' manifested forth his glory ; 
 even then they, in a sort, ' believed on him/ 
 but they had not then 'the faith that over- 
 cometh the world.' The faith I want is* 
 'A sure trust and confidence in God, that, 
 through the merits of Christ, my sins are 
 forgiven, and I reconciled to the favor of 
 God.' I want that faith which St. Paul 
 recommends to all the world, especially in 
 his Epistle to the Romans ; that faith which 
 enables every one that hath it to cry out, ' I 
 live not ; but Christ liveth in me ; and the 
 life which I now live, I live by faith in the 
 Son of God, who loved me, and gave him- 
 self for me.' I want that faith which none 
 can have without knowing that he hath it, 
 (though many imagine they have it who 
 have it not,) for whosoever hath it is ' freed 
 from sin,' the whole ' body of sin is de- 
 stroyed' in him: he is 'freed from fear/ 
 'having peace with God through Christ, and 
 rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.' And 
 he is freed from doubt, ' having the love of 
 
 * The faith of a son. 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 175 
 
 God shed abroad in the heart through the 
 Holy Ghost which is given unto him ;' which 
 ' Spirit itself beareth witness with his spirit 
 that he is a child of God.' " 
 
 Here was evidently a spirit prepared of 
 the Lord to receive the glad tidings of " sal- 
 vation by faith," in the simplest and most 
 evangelical form. Wesley was already on 
 the very verge of the truth in its free- 
 dom and fullness. He was " convinced of 
 sin ;" was truly awakened and penitent, and 
 was feeling after, was yearning for, the true 
 11 righteousness of Christ." It was natural 
 that his humbled and chastened spirit, in 
 the depth of its penitential awakening, 
 should " write bitter things " against itself. 
 In after years, writing in the fullness of his 
 wide and mature Christian experience, 
 Wesley revised the language which he had 
 written in his sore trouble of spirit. To the 
 passage which declares that he had never 
 been " converted to God," he appended as 
 a note the words, " I am not sure of this." 
 Evidently the question here is as to the 
 meaning of the word "converted." In one 
 
176 The Living Wesley. 
 
 sense Wesley was truly and deeply " con- 
 verted ;" in another sense he was not yet 
 " converted," not having as yet been made a 
 partaker of the " righteousness of faith," in 
 iis full and true evangelical sense. He also, 
 in his later revisions, corrected the record 
 in his Journal at some other points, by stat- 
 ing that " he had even then the faith of a 
 servant, though not of a son," and that he 
 was not at that time " a child of wrath," 
 although he had not attained to that " faith 
 toward our Lord Jesus Christ," which im- 
 plies filial confidence, and cannot but bring 
 with it filial love, the witness of the Spirit, 
 and all the fruits which belong to the new 
 birth. A controversy has been raised upon 
 this question, into which I do not feel it 
 needful to go. Mr. Wesley's " Notes on the 
 New Testament," especially if the notes are 
 taken in connection with those sermons of 
 his later life in which he discriminates be- 
 tween the faith and experience of a " serv- 
 ant " of God and of a " son," are fully suffi- 
 cient to explain in what sense Mr. Wesley 
 may be truly said to have been, and in what 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 177 
 
 sense not to have been, " converted " at the 
 time of his return from Georgia in the first 
 months of 1738. One thing all must be 
 agreed upon, that Wesley was a man of very 
 different spirit and experience in February 
 1738 from what he had been three years 
 before. He was then sincere and in earnest, 
 but oscillating between an unevangelical 
 mysticism and an equally unevangelical rit- 
 ualistic legalism ; he was " beating the air," 
 and " going about to establish his own right- 
 eousness." Of the true doctrine of grace he 
 seems to have had little perception or feel- 
 ing, any more than of the true doctrine of 
 faith — the one, indeed, must ever imply the 
 other — for salvation is " of grace, through 
 faith;" nor does he appear to have been the 
 subject of a true " evangelical repentance." 
 Now, on the contrary, Wesley was evidently 
 a true and lowly penitent, whom the Spirit 
 of God had emptied of his own self-right- 
 eousness, that he might be prepared for the 
 reception of Christ's righteousness — " the 
 righteousness which is of God through 
 
 faith." 
 12 
 
178 The Living Wesley. 
 
 In one thing, however, Wesley was not 
 changed on his return. He still believed as 
 firmly as ever in his "vocation." He land- 
 ed at Deal at half past four in the morning. 
 That same morning, at a very early hour, 
 before starting for Faversham on his way to 
 London, he read and expounded at the inns, 
 and he did the like after arriving at Faver- 
 sham in the evening. His humbling expe- 
 rience in Georgia had not in the least dis- 
 heartened him, or abated his courage in this 
 respect. Since he left England he had 
 seemed to fail in every thing ; his influence 
 as a clergyman had declined almost to noth- 
 ing in Georgia ; he had become embroiled 
 in law, partly, at least, through his own un- 
 wisdom, if partly through his fidelity ; his 
 reputation as a man of counsel and of action 
 could not but have suffered ; many slanders 
 respecting him were afloat ; his heart, for 
 which it seemed as if no haven of conjugal 
 affection was to be found, had been cruelly 
 wounded. Such was the issue of a voyage 
 and mission which he had undertaken in 
 the fond hope that in a new world he might, 
 
Wesley's Eva?igelical Conversion. 179 
 
 in God's hands, be and do something better 
 and something more in his own time and 
 for generations to come, than he had ever 
 been, had ever done, or could have hoped 
 to be or do, even in Oxford, where were 
 " the schools of the prophets," if he had 
 spent his best days there. 
 
 It could not but frequently recur to Wes- 
 ley, in his meditations on the history of 
 the two hapless-seeming years he had spent 
 in America, that there must somewhere be 
 a vital, a fatal, flaw either in his character, 
 or in his doctrine, or in his methods. His 
 enterprise as a missionary pioneer had 
 broken down in a most humiliating way. 
 
 It is true, indeed, as Mr. Tyerman happily 
 quotes Whitefield's "Journal," written but 
 a few months later, to show that, after all, 
 Wesley had left not a little good behind 
 him in Georgia ; that among the best peo- 
 ple of the colony "his name" was "very 
 precious," and that he had laid a valuable 
 foundation for Whitefield to build upon. 
 But to Wesley's mind on his voyage home 
 his failures would be present, while the 
 
180 The Living Wesley. 
 
 measure of his success would be as yet un- 
 known. Nor, after all, was that measure of 
 success, which we cannot but place in con- 
 trast with the results accomplished in 
 Georgia by Whitefield's own ministry, suf- 
 ficient to do more than qualify, to a limited 
 extent, the picture of failure, on the whole, 
 which has passed under our view. 
 
 His Journal reveals to us, in part, the 
 working of his mind during the voyage. 
 He exerted himself to the utmost for the 
 good of the seamen ; but this could only 
 yield him partial and temporary relief. 
 During the first six weeks of the voyage he 
 was " continually weighed down with fear- 
 fulness and heaviness. ' He writes, in the 
 fullness of his heart, among many other 
 words of lamentation, that he had thus far 
 " evidently built without a foundation." 
 During the last fortnight he had some com- 
 fort ; but yet he writes, five days before the 
 voyage came to an end, " I went to Amer- 
 ica to convert the Indians; but O! who 
 shall convert me ? Who, what, is he that 
 will deliver me from this evil heart of unbe- 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. i8r 
 
 lief? I have a fair summer religion. I can 
 talk well ; nay, and believe myself, while no 
 danger is near ; but let death look me in 
 the face, and my spirit is troubled. Nor 
 can I say, " To die is gain ! " 
 
 " I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun 
 My last thread, I shall perish on the shore !" 
 
 Such was the working 1 of Wesley's mind 
 during his voyage home from Georgia — a 
 period which we may look upon as for him a 
 critical season of searching, gracious, hum- 
 bling experience ; a seed-time overcast with 
 heavy clouds, but rich in promise ; a seed- 
 time of weeping, which was to be followed 
 by a life-long harvest of spiritual fruitfulness. 
 
 Wesley, during the voyage, deliberately 
 reviewed his whole experience, and the 
 phases of thought and feeling through 
 which he had been passing during the 
 twelve years preceding. Of this review we 
 have already availed ourselves, especially in 
 the former Part, in delineating the forma- 
 tion of his opinions and the growth of his 
 character. We have seen how near, before 
 he landed at Deal, Wesley had come to the 
 
1 82 The Living Wesley. 
 
 simplicity and truth of Gospel teaching. 
 This " scribe " certainly was " not far from 
 the kingdom of God." The Providence 
 which had brought him thus far on his way 
 — which had brought " the blind by a way 
 that he knew not, even by paths which he 
 had not known" — had in readiness for him at 
 this very point the human guide who was 
 to lead him into the fullness of evangelical 
 faith and experience. " Darkness " was 
 now to be made "light before him," and 
 " crooked things straight." What Philip 
 was to the Ethiopian eunuch, what Peter 
 was to Cornelius, Bohler was to become to 
 Wesley. 
 
 At the very moment when Wesley landed 
 at Deal his teacher was on his way to En- 
 gland from Germany. He was a Moravian 
 minister; and came to England that he 
 might go forward to the very colonies which 
 Wesley had just left. Within a week after 
 Wesley's landing at Deal, he and Bohler 
 met in London. Bohler, in a letter to Zin- 
 zendorf, gives a description of Wesley as 
 he found him. He describes him as "a 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 1 83 
 
 good-natured man/' * who " knew he did not 
 properly believe on the Saviour, and was 
 willing to be taught." He adds : " Our 
 mode of believing in the Saviour is so easy 
 to Englishmen, that they cannot reconcile 
 themselves to it ; if it were a little more 
 artful, [artificial ?] they would much sooner 
 find their way into it. They justify them- 
 selves ; and therefore they always take it 
 for granted that they believe already, and 
 try to prove their faith by their works, and 
 thus so plague and torment themselves 
 that they are at heart very miserable." f 
 
 Wesley always regarded his intercourse 
 with Bohler as the cardinal point in his 
 spiritual history. Having landed at Deal 
 on February 1, he fell in, six days later, 
 (February 7,) with Bohler, just landed from 
 Germany, and procured him lodgings. He 
 sets a special note against this day in his 
 Journal, as "a day much to be remem- 
 bered ; " and he mentions that, from this 
 
 *The English translation here is, no doubt, inadequate. 
 The meaning probably is — a man of excellent disposition and 
 principles. 
 
 t Tyerman's " Wesley," i, 181, 182. 
 
184 The Living Wesley, 
 
 time, he did not willingly lose any opportu- 
 nity, during his stay in London, of convers- 
 ing with Bohler and his companions. He 
 accompanied his Moravian teacher to Ox- 
 ford on the 17th, and took him with him to 
 visit Mr. Gambold, (who had been led 
 astray by "mystic delusion/') at Stanton- 
 Harcourt, on the 18th. It was during this 
 visit to Oxford that Bohler insisted so sol- 
 emnly to Wesley that " his philosophy " 
 needed to "be purged away." On the 4th 
 of March, returning to Oxford to visit his 
 brother Charles, who had been ill of pleu- 
 risy there, he found Bohler with his brother, 
 and writes that by him on the next day 
 (Sunday) he was " clearly convinced of un- 
 belief, of the want of that faith whereby 
 alone we are saved."* Meantime Bohler 
 exhorted him to preach the true faith and 
 way of faith, though he might not himself 
 as yet have attained thereto. His inter- 
 course with his Moravian guide at Oxford 
 lasted till the ioth,when Bohler returned to 
 
 ♦"With the full Christian salvation," is Wesley's note at 
 this place in the revised edition of his early Journals. 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 185 
 
 London. On the 23d, being in Oxford, he 
 met Bohler there a^ain. We give the 
 whole of the entry in his Journal under this 
 date. " I met Peter Bohler again, who now 
 amazed me more and more by the account 
 he gave of the fruits of living faith — the 
 holiness and happiness which he affirmed 
 to attend it. The next morning I began 
 the Greek Testament again, resolving to 
 abide by ' the law and the testimony,' and 
 being confident that God would hereby 
 show me whether this doctrine was of God." 
 Already the " new wine " of the kingdom 
 was working mightily within his breast. 
 He had been the slave of forms ; he had 
 been greatly surprised, if not shocked, when 
 he heard the Presbyterian minister in the 
 American colony offer an extemporary 
 prayer. But now we find him writing, 
 under date of April 1, " Being at Mr. Fox's 
 society, my heart was so full that I could 
 not confine myself to the forms of prayer 
 which we were accustomed to use there. 
 Neither do I purpose to be confined to 
 them any more, but to pray indifferently, 
 
1 86 The Living Wesley. 
 
 with a form or without, as I may find suit- 
 able to particular occasions." The new 
 wine was threatening to burst the " old bot- 
 tles ;" presently " new bottles " were to be 
 provided, so that the wine should not be 
 lost. Meantime, in the record last quoted, 
 we recognize the main principle of Wes- 
 ley's ecclesiastical course. His singularity, 
 and independence of decision and action, 
 had nothing factious about them ; they re- 
 sulted from the simple, disinterested, para- 
 mount principle of using whatever means 
 or methods of action clearly promised to 
 do the most good. He enters into no ab- 
 stract controversy as to praying with or 
 without forms ; probably his experiences 
 among the Moravians, yet more than his 
 intercourse with the Presbyterian minister 
 and congregation, had served to emancipate 
 him from the bondage of custom and servile 
 ecclesiasticism as to this particular, while 
 an acute Oxford Churchman like him was 
 not likely to adopt a sweeping condemna- 
 tion of forms of prayer, which would not 
 only have prohibited the use of the Liturgy 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 187 
 
 of his own Church, ever by him so deeply 
 loved, but even of the Lord's prayer. But 
 he finds free prayer, under certain condi- 
 tions of feeling, to be more congenial, more 
 adequate, and more affecting, than any form 
 could be ; therefore he determines hence- 
 forth to hold himself at liberty, according 
 to the occasion, to pray with or without 
 forms. As to any reproach of singularity 
 or enthusiasm, while he by no means 
 courted such reproach, the time had long 
 gone by when it could have any terror for 
 him. Here, then, we have a typical in- 
 stance, thus early in his course, of the spirit 
 and principles which governed Wesley's 
 proceedings through life. The ritualist 
 was already greatly changed ; a new inspi- 
 ration was welling up within him. His 
 bonds had been for some time melting 
 away ; there was soon to be an end of them. 
 Already the manacles had dissolved from 
 the hands of devotion ; soon the fetters 
 w T ould be broken which had bound his feet 
 from running in the evangelical way. Al- 
 ready he had been impelled to use the 
 
1 88 The Living Wesley. 
 
 blessed privilege of free utterance in prayer, 
 and to avail himself of the large liberty to 
 pray with "all prayer and supplication in 
 the Spirit ;" the day was very near when, by 
 his preaching also, the Word of the Lord 
 was to " have free course and be glorified." 
 On the 2 2d of April Wesley met Bohler 
 again in London. As to the nature of faith 
 the Moravian had prevailed, and also as to 
 the fruits of faith ; but Wesley still doubted 
 whether there was scriptural authority for 
 the penitent, prayerful, waiting soul, to ex- 
 pect to receive the power and gift of faith 
 immediately through the operation of the 
 Holy Ghost; whether it could really be 
 imparted in a moment. Here, again, he 
 records in his Journal that he was silenced 
 by an appeal to the Scripture, where, to his 
 "utter astonishment," he "found scarce any 
 instances there of other than instantaneous 
 conversions, scarce any so slow as that of 
 St. Paul, who was three days in the pangs 
 of the new birth." Wesley, however, was 
 not by any means easily beaten out of his 
 English and Church-of-England habits of 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 189 
 
 thought in respect to the supernatural 
 faith of a spiritual Christian, who rejoices in 
 the full power and privilege of Christian 
 sonship. He urged that, whatever might 
 have been the case in apostolic times, there 
 was no proof that God worked in the same 
 manner now. From this last hold of doubt 
 and incredulity he was dislodged the next 
 day (Sunday, the 23d) by the evidence of 
 " several living witnesses." " Here," he says, 
 "ended my disputing. I could now only 
 cry out, ' Lord, help thou mine unbelief.'" 
 
 It is evident that up to this time, far as 
 he had been brought on his way toward the 
 great Gospel truth, Wesley had yet never 
 been able to free himself from the feeling 
 that Christian faith was largely an intellect- 
 ual exercise ; and that, where it ceased to be 
 intellectual, it became a humanly moral act ; 
 that it was "of the operation," not "of the 
 Holy Ghost," but of a man's own under- 
 standing and responsible moral inclination 
 or will. The great truth that the power 
 descends from God — that it must be waited 
 and looked for in the way of prayer and 
 
190 The Living Wesley. 
 
 penitent seeking and service — that it is a 
 spiritual, supernatural act and habit of soul, 
 at once the fruit and seed of a Divine life- 
 stirring, uniting in itself the characters of 
 penitent humility, of self-renunciation, of 
 simple trust, of absolute obedience, both of 
 understanding and will, indissolubly joined 
 with loving rapture and self-consecration — 
 that it is, to use Wesley's own words, " the 
 loving, obedient sight of a present and 
 reconciled God " — this was a truth which 
 Wesley had not conceived of, and found it 
 very hard to accept. So true is it, that 
 11 the natural man receiveth not the things of 
 the Spirit of God ; for they are foolishness 
 unto him : neither can he know them, be- 
 cause they are spiritually discerned." Wes- 
 ley, indeed, was not, at the time when he 
 first met Bohler, a merely "natural man," 
 any more than the disciples were before our 
 Lord's resurrection. But he was not yet, 
 in the full and proper sense, " a spiritual 
 man." He was a servant of God ; perhaps, 
 in a certain sense, he might be regarded as 
 virtually a child of God ; but still he was 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 191 
 
 "carnal." He was not yet fully born into 
 the kingdom of heaven, with its spiritual 
 light and blessedness, although he was 
 " brought to the birth," and was very near 
 the hour of his enlargement into the " glo- 
 rious liberty of the children of God." 
 
 Wesley, in his own epitome of what 
 passed between Bohler and himself, thus 
 sums up the final result, so far as it re- 
 spected the change which had been wrought 
 in his doctrinal views : " I was now thor- 
 oughly convinced ; and, by the grace of 
 God, I resolved to seek it (that is, faith) 
 unto the end : 1. By absolutely renouncing 
 all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my 
 own works or righteousness, on which I had 
 really grounded my hope of salvation, though 
 I knew it not, from my youth up. 2. By 
 adding to the constant use of all the other 
 means of grace, continual prayer for this 
 very thing — justifying, saving faith; a full 
 reliance on the blood of Christ shed for me ; 
 a trust in him as my Christ, as my sole jus- 
 tification, sanctification, and redemption."* 
 
 *" Works," vol. iii. p. 7j- 
 
192 The Living Wesley. 
 
 Wesley continued to consort with Bohler. 
 It was on the 22a! of April (Sunday) that 
 he was finally convinced. He was in con- 
 tinual intercourse with his teacher for sev- 
 eral days following, until the 26th, when 
 Bohler accompanied him some miles on 
 his way out of town. His brother's illness 
 brought him back to London on the 1st of 
 May, where he found his friend and guide 
 again. On the 4th Bohler left London to sail 
 to Carolina. Wesley's note in his Journal 
 on Bohler's departure corresponds with the 
 emphatic " Memorandum " inscribed over 
 the date of their first meeting, and reveals 
 also how deep and strong in Wesley's soul 
 was that conviction of his own momentous 
 work and vocation to which we have re- 
 ferred : " O what a work hath God begun 
 since his coming into England ! such a 
 one as shall never come to an end till 
 heaven and earth shall pass away ! " 
 
 Meantime, Wesley had not yet obtained 
 the treasure he had sought for so long and 
 so diligently, though for a long time in 
 wrong directions. He had not himself, as 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 193 
 
 yet, been able to " believe unto salvation." 
 His brother Charles had not yielded to 
 Border's arguments until a fortnight after 
 himself, and, indeed, had for a short time 
 angrily opposed John on this point ; never- 
 theless, partly, as it would seem, through 
 the ministry of sickness, he was made a par- 
 taker of "joy and peace through believing" 
 earlier than John. While John was enter- 
 ing this Bethesda, Charles stepped in before 
 him. This was on Sunday, the 19th of May. 
 It was not until Wednesday, the 24th, that 
 John Wesley, according to the beautiful and 
 familiar account which we have in his own 
 words, " felt his heart strangely warmed, felt 
 that he did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for 
 salvation," and had " an assurance given 
 him that Christ had taken away his sin, and 
 saved him from the law of sin and death." 
 This day, May the 24th, 1738, is a great 
 landmark in the history of the Wesleyan 
 movement. 
 
 Until Wesley learned the doctrine of 
 " salvation by grace, through faith, not of 
 ourselves," but as the " gift of God," he had 
 
 13 
 
194 The Living Wesley. 
 
 been a ritualist ; and it had been his doc- 
 trine that salvation was secured by moral 
 and ritual conformity to what the Church 
 requires. From this time forth he taught 
 that salvation was not by works or rites, 
 but by that faith of the new creation, that 
 faith in " Christ and him crucified," which 
 unites the soul with Christ through his 
 Spirit, which introduces the soul into "new- 
 ness of life," so that the believer is made a 
 child and heir of God and a " joint heir 
 with Christ." Faith he was to teach here- 
 after as the principle and inlet of the Divine 
 and Christian life in the human soul. But 
 this change entirely revolutionized the char- 
 acter and tenor of his ministry. To con- 
 strain, by the authority of Christ and his 
 Church — by virtue, very mainly, of Church 
 discipline and law — men and women to obey 
 the requirements of the Church, had been 
 his vocation heretofore ; he had been an 
 ecclesiastical magistrate, a disciplinary offi- 
 cer, a moral and ritual watchman, in the 
 service of the Church ; his work had been 
 to carry out discipline and instruction in 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 195 
 
 detail. But now he was to be something: 
 very different. It was to be his business to 
 preach salvation through Christ Jesus to all 
 men. His first and chief work now was to 
 point the way to Him. The rest would fol- 
 low for those who repaired to him. He was 
 not to be a priest, observing, enforcing, car- 
 rying out a ritual; but a herald who, in the 
 spirit and language of the Baptist, was to 
 direct sinners away from himself, from the 
 Church, from all else whatsoever, to Christ, 
 as " the Lamb of God, which taketh away 
 the sin of the world." Faith henceforth 
 was to be his doctrine ; he was to teach 
 that men are saved by faith. But " faith 
 cometh by hearing, and hearing by the 
 word of God." From this hour, accord- 
 ingly, this ritualistic priest and ecclesiasti- 
 cal martinet was to be transformed into a 
 flaming preacher, in all its branches and 
 rich and varied experiences. Hence arose 
 Wesleyan Methodism and all the Method- 
 ist Churches. 
 
 In his famous correspondence with Law, 
 which took place during the period of his 
 
196 The Living Wesley. 
 
 intercourse with Bohler, but before he had 
 attained to peace through believing, and 
 which I agree with Mr. Tyerman in think- 
 ing petulant and harsh, although I do not 
 think it deserves to be denounced as " an 
 intolerable outrage," * Wesley has expressed 
 very distinctly what he at the time regard- 
 ed as being the essential defect of his faith 
 up to the period of his receiving Border's 
 instructions. His faith up to this time he 
 
 * Miss Wedgwood's observations on this correspondence 
 are acute, and contain a measure of truth, although here as 
 elsewhere she has misconceived Wesley's character as re- 
 gards the point of insight and sympathy with particular 
 minds. Wesley wrote as he did to Law because he believed 
 himself to be bound both to God and man, and especially to 
 Mr. Law, to do his utmost to point out to him, in full light, 
 what he regarded as his most mischievous doctrinal defect 
 and error. Wesley's manner of doing this was a remnant of 
 his old hierarchical character and temper ; a derivative from 
 the views which he had held so long, and the influences un- 
 der which his character for so many years had been molded. 
 It was not to be expected that the conscientious arrogance 
 and dogmatism which such opinions as he had held can- 
 not fail always to produce, should all at once pass away, even 
 when he had begun to look away from his Church to his 
 Saviour. If Wesley had not embraced the doctrines of grace 
 and salvation by faith, he must have retained, as his official 
 temper, such arrogant austerity as he had already shown in 
 Georgia, notwithstanding the brightness and candor of his 
 natural disposition. 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 197 
 
 describes as a " speculative notional shadow, 
 which lives in the head, not in the heart." 
 He has also described very pointedly the 
 sort of doctrine which, in contrast to his 
 own conceptions heretofore, Bohler had 
 insisted upon. " This faith, indeed," that 
 " holy man " had told him, " is the free gift 
 of God. But seek, and thou shalt find. 
 Strip thyself naked of thine own works, 
 and fly to him. 'For whosoever cometh 
 to him, he will in no wise cast out.'" 
 And his complaint against his former in- 
 structor, Law, is : " Why did I scarce ever 
 hear you name the name of Christ ? Never, 
 so as to ground any thing upon faith in his 
 blood." 
 
 Miss Wedgwood has firmly grasped the 
 significance of Wesley's experience at this 
 critical period of his history. She reads 
 aright the meaning, at least in general, of 
 his experience during the voyage home, 
 and she sees very distinctly the nature of 
 the revolution in his views and aims which 
 was effected by his conversion. " Wes- 
 ley's homeward voyage in 1738," she says, 
 
198 The Living Wesley. 
 
 " marks the conclusion of his High-church 
 period. He abated nothing of his attach- 
 ment to the ordinances of the Church either 
 then or to the last days of his life, and he 
 did not so soon reach that degree of inde- 
 pendence of her hierarchy and some of her 
 rules which marks his furthest point of di- 
 vergence ; but his Journals during this voy- 
 age chronicle for us that deep dissatisfaction 
 which is felt whenever an earnest nature 
 wakes up to the incompleteness of a tradi- 
 tional religion ; and his after life, compared 
 with his two years in Georgia, makes it evi- 
 dent that he passed at this time into a new 
 spiritual region. His Journals are marked 
 by a depression which we never meet with 
 again."* Having referred, a few pages 
 further on, to the religious societies of 
 which Dr. Woodward has left us an account, 
 and which had preceded Methodism, Miss 
 Wedgwood makes the following discriminat- 
 ing and acute observations : " The religious 
 societies of the seventeenth century were 
 in organization a feebler and more liberal 
 
 * " John Wesley," p. 140. 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 199 
 
 Methodism* It was, however, only in or- 
 ganization that the two things were alike. 
 The spirit of the older societies was not 
 only unlike Methodism, but it was the very 
 spirit from which Methodism was a reaction. 
 They were distinctively Church bodies, and 
 they belonged characteristically to the 
 Church at that time ; they embodied the 
 principles of that party whose watchwords 
 were virtue and vice, and who were not 
 afraid to speak of the support of a good 
 conscience, and of the everlasting rewards 
 which ' were worthy of all the care and toil 
 which were to be spent in the pursuit of 
 them.' (Dr. Woodward?) The reader will 
 at once appreciate the chasm which phrases 
 like these indicate between the speakers 
 and the school of Wesley. . . . Adherence to 
 the Church was no longer the first condi- 
 tion of membership in any society with 
 which he was in sympathy. The birthday 
 of a Christian was already shifted from his 
 
 *By "more liberal " Miss Wedgwood means " less strict." 
 But the observations which follow show that being Church 
 societies, these less strict societies were ecclesiastically more 
 exclusive, and therefore less "liberal." 
 
200 The Living Wesley. 
 
 baptism to his conversion, and in that change 
 the partition line of two great systems is 
 crossed? * 
 
 The last sentence quoted admirably ex- 
 presses the master-truth which explains the 
 whole sequel of Wesley's life — which fur- 
 nishes the key to the whole development of 
 Wesleyan Methodism. Mr. Tyerman has 
 given a full and excellent account of Wes- 
 ley's religious experience during the whole 
 of this critical period in his history ; with 
 the minuteness characteristic of a student 
 and preacher of evangelical theology, he has 
 exhibited on the surface of his pages those 
 instructive fluctuations in Wesley's own 
 views and experience, during the early 
 months after his conversion, which Wesley 
 himself sets forth fully in his Journals, and 
 which show that Wesley's views respecting 
 the nature of the Spirit's witness, and the 
 character and extent of regeneration, were, 
 as was to be expected, not fully denned or 
 finally settled until some time after his con- 
 version ; and in particular, as Mr. Tyerman 
 
 * "John Wesley," p. 157. 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 201 
 
 intimates, that they had been not a little 
 disturbed and perplexed by what he had 
 heard among the Moravians during his 
 visit to them in Germany almost immedi- 
 ately after he had " found peace." But Mr. 
 Tyerman fails to show the critical nature 
 of the change which Wesley underwent 
 through the teaching and instrumentality 
 of Bohler. It is possible to maintain, that 
 in a certain and a true sense of the word 
 Wesley had been " converted " — that is, thor- 
 oughly and graciously awakened into sin- 
 cere repentance — before he knew Bohler ; 
 but, nevertheless, what marked and made 
 the absolute revolution in his mind and 
 character, with all his prospects and mo- 
 tives, was his full acceptance of that doc- 
 trine of evangelical faith which the Mora- 
 vian was the means of making known to his 
 spiritual apprehension, and his embrace by 
 that faith of the Saviour as his own in ever- 
 present virtue and plenitude. By making 
 the most of Wesley's antecedent prepara- 
 tion of heart, and by laying too much stress 
 on those fluctuations of spirit and of view, 
 
202 The Living Wesley. 
 
 and of those self-depreciatory statements 
 respecting his own experience soon after 
 his conversion, the like of which are so 
 commonly found in the experience of hum- 
 ble and conscientious young converts, who, 
 as yet, are necessarily wanting in experience 
 of spiritual difficulties, perplexities, and 
 temptations, and whose natural but unwar- 
 ranted expectations of settled joy and tran- 
 quillity have been painfully disappointed, it 
 is possible to diminish the proportions and 
 to obscure the relations of the great cardi- 
 nal change in Wesley's spiritual character on 
 which we have been dwelling. Miss Wedg- 
 wood, however, clearly sees the importance 
 and the critical nature of that change, and 
 has admirably stated it in the passage we 
 have quoted. Wesley had embraced the 
 cardinal doctrine of " salvation by faith." 
 Now, to quote again the classical text which 
 we quoted a short while ago, " faith cometh 
 by hearing, and hearing by the word of 
 God." In other words, the preaching of the 
 truth of God, and not the administration of 
 the sacraments as such, becomes to the 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 203 
 
 evangelical believer the great means of 
 spreading salvation — of conveying life to 
 those who are in a state of spiritual death. 
 Christians are to be "sanctified" by " the 
 truth," even by the " word of God ;" to be 
 " born again, not of corruptible seed, but of 
 incorruptible, by the word of God, which 
 liveth and abideth forever." It is not the 
 sacraments, as rites duly administered, but 
 it is the truth in the sacraments spiritually 
 apprehended and embraced, which fills them 
 with blessing to the believer. The " expul- 
 sive power," accordingly, of the " new prin- 
 ciple " which Wesley had embraced, could 
 not but before long cast out the sacrament- 
 al ritualism which had held him in bondage. 
 He did not, of course, cast all his "grave- 
 clothes " off at once ; but rapidly, though 
 gradually, he did cast them away. Mean- 
 time he preached his new doctrine with new 
 and startling power ; and so entered upon 
 that grand course of preaching which was 
 to lay the foundation for all his organiza- 
 tion — for his whole fellowship and "con- 
 nection." Wesley the Ritualist was trans- 
 
204 The Living Wesley. 
 
 formed into Wesley the Preacher. Wes- 
 leyan Methodism is derived, not from 
 Wesley the Ritualist, but from Wesley the 
 Preacher. 
 
 Let me here be permitted to quote some 
 sentences which have already been pub- 
 lished. " With Wesley's ritualism his High- 
 churchmanship could not but also wither 
 away. A number of old and long custom- 
 ary prejudices and predilections — habits of 
 thought and feeling which had become a 
 second nature — still clave to him for awhile ; 
 but these dropped off one by one, until 
 scarcely a vestige of them was left. All the 
 irregularities of the Methodist leader ; his 
 renunciation of Church-bigotry and exclu- 
 siveness ; his partial, but progressive and 
 fundamental, separation from the Church 
 which imposed shackles on his evangelical 
 activities, and frowned upon his converts, 
 and the ultimate separation, in due se- 
 quence, of the Church he had founded from 
 the Church in which he was nurtured : all 
 these results were involved in this change. 
 Newman renounced justification by faith, 
 
Wesley's Evangelical Conversion. 205 
 
 and clung to apostolic succession, therefore 
 he went to Rome; Wesley embraced justi- 
 fication by faith, and renounced apostolic 
 succession, therefore his people are a sep- 
 arate people from the Church of England."* 
 
 * See " London Quarterly Review," vol. xxx, (July, 1868,) 
 pp. 293-4. Also, Dr. Rigg's " Wesley and the Church of 
 England." Second Edition, p. 39. 
 
2o6 The Living Wesley. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WESLEY THE PREACHER. 
 
 ISwjTE must now turn from Wesley the 
 ^B Ritualist to Wesley the Preacher. 
 In this character he is, perhaps, quite as lit- 
 tle known, as little really understood at the 
 present day, as in his character as a thinker, 
 to which we shall soon have to advert. His 
 character as an organizer has usurped pub- 
 lic attention to such an extent as quite to 
 obscure his character as a preacher. And 
 yet, as I have intimated, the foundation of 
 all his power and success as an organizer 
 was laid in his power and success as a 
 preacher. He was, in simple truth, the 
 most awakening and spiritually penetrative 
 and powerful preacher of his age. White- 
 field was more dramatic, but less intense ; 
 more pictorial, but less close and forcible ; 
 less incisive and conclusive. In Wesley's 
 calmer discourses, lucid and engaging expo- 
 
Wesley the P readier. 207 
 
 sition laid the basis for close and searching 
 application. In his more intense utter- 
 ances, logic and passion were fused into a 
 white heat of mingled argument, denuncia- 
 tion, and appeal, often of a most personal 
 searchingness, often overwhelming in its ve- 
 hement home-thrusts. Some idea may be 
 gained as to the character of his most ear- 
 nest preaching from his " Appeals to Men 
 of Reason and Religion," especially the lat- 
 ter portions of the first of these, and from 
 his celebrated " Sermon on Free Grace." 
 
 I am, of course, aware that the intimation 
 I have now given of the character of Wes- 
 ley's preaching will surprise some, even of 
 my well-informed readers, and that it is not 
 in accordance with the popular conception 
 of his preaching. It is many years since 
 the late beloved James Hamilton, in an ar- 
 ticle in the " North British Review," gave 
 pictorial expression, in his own vivid way, 
 to the mistaken idea which has grown up 
 in some quarters respecting Wesley as a 
 preacher. He sketched him as, " after his 
 morning sermon at the Foundry, mounting 
 
208 The Living Wesley. 
 
 his pony, and trotting, and chatting, and 
 gathering simples, till he reached some 
 country hamlet, where he would bait his 
 charger, and talk through a little sermon 
 with the villagers, and remount his pony 
 and trot away again." A more unfounded 
 and misleading specimen of fancy-painting 
 than this it would be impossible to imagine ; 
 and one can only wonder where good James 
 Hamilton picked up the ideas or the ficti- 
 tious information which he deliberately put 
 into this written form. He was altogether 
 at fault in his picture. As Wesley was, dur- 
 ing the greater part of his life, simply the 
 most assiduous horseman, and one of the 
 most spirited of riders, in the kingdom, rid- 
 ing ordinarily sixty miles (let it be remem- 
 bered what the roads were in the middle of 
 the last century) day by day, besides preach- 
 ing twice or thrice, and not seldom riding 
 eighty or ninety miles in the day; so, for 
 many years, Wesley was frequently a long 
 preacher — was often one of the longest 
 preachers of whom we have ever read or 
 heard — and never stinted himself of time 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 209 
 
 when the feeling of the congregation seemed 
 to invite him to enlarge, and when oppor- 
 tunity favored. Oi course, however, he 
 preached at all times many more short ser- 
 mons than long ones, because he preached 
 commonly three times every w T eek day, and 
 four or five times on the Sunday, and because 
 his earlier sermons on the Sunday needed 
 to be over in time for his hearers to attend 
 Church-service. But when he preached 
 after Church hours, whether in the afternoon 
 or the later evening, and on special occa- 
 sions even on the week evening, he was, as I 
 have said, for many years often a very long 
 preacher. Let me give some instances of 
 this, only premising that all the special 
 instances of protracted preaching which I 
 am about to cite occurred after Wesley 
 had taken to field-preaching. He had been 
 an earnest, and not unfrequently a long 
 preacher before ; but it was not until he 
 began to address crowds of thousands in 
 the open air that his larger and grander 
 powers as a preacher were called forth. 
 About sixteen or seventeen months after 
 
 14 
 
2io The Living Wesley. 
 
 his conversion, Wesley writes in his Journal 
 as follows, under date October 7, 1739, 
 (Sunday) : — 
 
 " Between five and six I called upon all 
 who were present (about three thousand) at 
 Stanley, near Stroud, on a little green, near 
 the town, to accept of Christ as their only 
 'wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and 
 redemption/ I was strengthened to speak 
 as I never did before, and continued speak- 
 ing near two hours ; the darkness of the 
 night and a little lightning not lessening the 
 number, but increasing the seriousness, of 
 the hearers." 
 
 Wesley had already, before this service, 
 preached three times on that day ; and he 
 preached yet once after it, " concluding the 
 day" by "expounding part of our Lords 
 Sermon on the Mount to a small, serious 
 company at Ebley." Five services, there- 
 fore, that day, and among them one in 
 which his sermon alone was nearly two 
 hours lone ! 
 
 On Friday, the 19th of the same month, 
 Wesley preached at Newport, in Mon- 
 
Wesley the Preaelier. 2 1 1 
 
 mouthshire, in the morning, and coming to 
 Cardiff about the middle of the day he 
 preached in the Shire Hall twice — in the 
 afternoon at four and again at six in the 
 evening. He had a large congregation — 
 "almost the whole town" — and preaching 
 from the six last beatitudes, he says, " My 
 heart was so enlarged I knew not how to 
 give over, so that we continued three hours." 
 On Sunday, June 13, 1742, he preached in 
 Epworth churchyard — his own and his fa- 
 ther's Epworth — standing on his father's 
 tomb, and continued the service " for near 
 three hours." This was his fourth service 
 that day. On Wednesday, May 24th, 1745, 
 at Bristol, being the anniversary of his con- 
 version, he " was constrained to continue his 
 discourse near an hour longer than usual, 
 God pouring out such a blessing that he 
 knew not how to leave off." On Whitsun- 
 day, the 14th of May, 1749, at Limerick, he 
 began to preach at five, and, there being 
 no liturgy and no lesson, but only the sim- 
 plest service, three short singings, one short 
 prayer, and a final benediction, besides the 
 
212 The Living Wesley. 
 
 sermon, he yet kept the congregation till 
 near seven, " hardly knowing how the time 
 went." At Whitehaven, on a Saturday 
 evening in September, 1749, he preached 
 from six to eight — a simple week-night 
 service — which must have implied a sermon 
 of not less than an hour and a quarter long; 
 and at eight he met the society. These in- 
 stances may suffice to show how Wesley en- 
 larged under special influences. Even when 
 he was more than seventy years of age, 
 he sometimes, on a week-night evening, 
 was so drawn out as to " preach a full 
 hour" — as for instance, in the market- 
 place of Caermarthen on the 21st of 
 August, 1777. 
 
 In the article to which I have referred it 
 was said, that while Wesley could " talk 
 through a little sermon with the villagers," he 
 "seldom coped with the multitude." In the 
 " Wesleyan Methodist Magazine " for De- 
 cember, 1847, w iH b e found a paper from 
 the pen of the venerable Thomas Jackson, 
 who died recently, in the ninetieth year of 
 his age, which examines and reproves the 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 213 
 
 errors of that article. Mr. Jackson thus 
 deals with the point now under notice: — 
 
 "That he preached to 'villagers,' so as to 
 be understood by them, as his blessed Lord 
 had done, will not be denied ; but that he 
 'seldom coped with the multitude,' is notori- 
 ously at variance with fact. No man was 
 accustomed to address larger multitudes, or 
 with greater success. At Moorfields, Ken- 
 nington Common, Kingswood, Bristol, New- 
 castle, in Cornwall, Staffordshire, and York- 
 shire, immense multitudes of people were 
 accustomed to congregate around him 
 through a long series of years, and that 
 with undiminished interest ; and it may be 
 fairly questioned, whether any minister in 
 modern ages has been instrumental in ef- 
 fecting a greater number of conversions. 
 He possessed all the essential requisites of 
 a great preacher; and in nothing was he 
 inferior to his eminent friend and contem- 
 porary, except in voice and manner. In 
 respect of matter, language, and arrange- 
 ment, his sermons were vastly superior to 
 those of Mr. Whitefield. Those persons 
 
214 The Living Wesley. 
 
 who judge of Mr. Wesley's ministry from 
 the sermons which he preached and pub- 
 lished in the decline of life, greatly mistake 
 his real character. Till he was enfeebled 
 by age, his discourses were not at all re- 
 markable for their brevity. They were 
 often extended to a considerable length, as 
 we learn from his Journal; and yet, accord- 
 ing to his oft-repeated statements, he did 
 not know how to leave off and dismiss the 
 people, for his mind was full of evangelical 
 matter, and his heart was richly charged 
 with heavenly zeal. In a sense higher than 
 ever entered into the thoughts of Archime- 
 des, as he himself states, he was often ready 
 to exclaim, when addressing vast multitudes 
 in his Master's name, ' Give me the where 
 to stand and I will move the world !" 
 
 Such is the testimony of Thomas Jack- 
 son, the author of the full and admirable 
 " Life of Charles Wesley," and the very 
 accurate editor of Wesley's voluminous 
 Works; who was himself born before the 
 death of Wesley ; who made all that related 
 to him his life-study ; who knew well some 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 215 
 
 of the men who had known Wesley best ; 
 and who should himself have accomplished 
 for the life of John Wesley what he has so ex- 
 cellently done as the biographer of Charles. 
 The case being as Mr. Jackson has stated 
 it, and as the extracts from the Journal, 
 which we have given, prove it to have been, 
 it is proper to explain how the erroneous 
 ideas which have been current as to the 
 character of his preaching have originated. 
 Three causes may be assigned to account 
 for them. One is hinted at by Mr. Jackson 
 in the extract we have given. Mr. Wesley's 
 was a very long life. Those of his people 
 w r ho had known him in his prime of strength 
 and energy had died before himself. The 
 traditions as to his preaching, which have 
 been current during the last half century, 
 have been mostly derived from those who 
 had only heard him in his extreme old age, 
 and, in many instances, on his hasty visits 
 from place to place, when he would preach 
 at seven o'clock on the week-night evening, 
 or at five o'clock in the morning. But an- 
 other, and, perhaps, more influential cause 
 
2i6 The Living Wesley. 
 
 has been, that an inference as to the length 
 and style of his spoken sermons has been 
 erroneously drawn from his published ser- 
 mons. How unwarranted any such infer- 
 ence must be, may be shown by a remark 
 of his elder brother Samuel's, made at 
 the very beginning of Wesley's preaching 
 career, and before he had begun field- 
 preaching. In a letter addressed to Charles 
 Wesley, but which refers to both the 
 brothers, Samuel says, under date Decem- 
 ber ist, 1738: "There is a most monstrous 
 appearance of dishonesty among you ; 
 your sermons are generally three quarters 
 of an hour or an hour long in the pulpit, 
 but when printed are short snips ; rather 
 notes than sermons."* If this was the case 
 so soon after the brothers had broken away 
 from the bondage of sermon-reading in the 
 pulpit, it is certain that, in after years, ex- 
 cept in special cases — such as a sermon to be 
 preached before the University — the writ- 
 ten sermon, which was ordinarily a compo- 
 sition having a definite purpose of theo- 
 
 * Jackson's "Life of Charles Wesley," p. 151. 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 217 
 
 logical statement and definition, must be 
 regarded as altogether different in character 
 from the preached sermon, delivered extem- 
 pore, often after little or no written prepara- 
 tion. Wesley the preacher was tethered by 
 no lines of written preparation and verbal 
 recollection ; he spoke with extraordinary 
 power of utterance out of the fullness of his 
 heart. Still another cause of the error we 
 have been exposing must probably be found 
 in the urgency with which Wesley, in vari- 
 ous places, enjoins on his preachers, as a 
 rule, to preach short, and the emphatic way 
 in which he insists to them on the evils of 
 long preaching. But it must be remem- 
 bered that the great majority of Wesley's 
 preachers were men whose stock of knowl- 
 edge was very small, and who had received 
 no intellectual training whatever. They 
 resembled the plainest and most fervid of 
 the Methodist local preachers or exhorters 
 of to-day. The same rule could not be appli- 
 cable to him as to them. But, indeed, the 
 great Methodist preachers of Wesley's day 
 — his most powerful lay-helpers — were, as a 
 
2i8 The Living Wesley. 
 
 matter of fact, none of them short preachers, 
 while most of them were often, if not usual- 
 ly, very long preachers. Such were Walsh, 
 and Bradburn, and Benson, and Clarke. 
 
 The fact, at any rate, is as I have stated 
 it, so far as respects the preaching of Wes- 
 ley ; and although I have carefully abstained 
 hitherto, and must still abstain, from being 
 entangled in this study with the thread of 
 Charles Wesley's life, closely associated as 
 he was w T ith his brother, yet, I may add in 
 passing, that for not a few years Charles 
 Wesley was as long and often as powerful 
 a preacher, even as he was as hard-riding 
 and hard-working an itinerant evangelist, as 
 his brother John. 
 
 In showing that Wesley, instead of being 
 a talker of neat little sermons, was, in his 
 prime of life, frequently a long preacher, 
 and sometimes one of the longest preachers 
 of whom we have any knowledge, I have 
 not only shown how mistaken has been the 
 popular tradition respecting his special 
 characteristics as a preacher, but I have also 
 proved that there must have been a remark- 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 219 
 
 able charm about his preaching. None but 
 a very eloquent speaker could have held 
 thousands of people intently listening to 
 him for two or three hours together in the 
 open air. I have to add, as I have already 
 intimated, that he was a singularly powerful 
 preacher. Southey has given conclusive 
 evidence as to this point, in the interesting 
 chapter in the first volume of his biography 
 of Wesley, entitled, "Scenes of Itinerancy." 
 No one, indeed, has done such justice as 
 Southey to Wesley's gifts as a preacher. 
 Not only in the " Life of Wesley," but in 
 14 The Doctor," and in his " Commonplace 
 Book," he has given evidence of the careful 
 study and the full appreciation with which 
 he has realized the preaching powers of 
 Wesley. The able and eloquent American 
 historian, Stevens, does not appear to have 
 been able to understand the secret of Wes- 
 ley's special power, but he gives some strik- 
 ing instances to show how great that power 
 was. "In the midst of a mob, ' I called,' 
 Wesley writes, ' for a chair ; the winds were 
 hushed, and all was calm and still; my heart 
 
220 The Living Wesley. 
 
 was filled with love, my eyes with tears, and 
 my mouth with arguments. They were 
 amazed ; they were ashamed ; they were 
 melted down ; they devoured every word.' 
 That," says Dr. Stevens, " must have been 
 genuine eloquence." * Doubtless it was, and 
 the very words — the vivid, affecting style 
 of the description here quoted from Wes- 
 himself— may serve to intimate what was 
 part of his special power as a speaker. 
 
 Like many terse, nervous writers, Wes- 
 ley was not only a nervous but a copious 
 speaker. His words flowed in a direct, 
 steady, powerful, sometimes a rapid stream, 
 and every word told, because every word 
 bore its proper meaning. With all the full- 
 ness of utterance, the genuine eloquence, 
 there was no tautology, no diffuseness of 
 style, no dilution. Close, logical, high verbal, 
 adequate philosophic culture had, in the 
 case of Wesley, laid the basis of clear, vivid, 
 direct, and copious extempore powers of 
 speech. Culture and discipline, such as 
 had prepared Cicero for his oratorical suc- 
 
 * Stevens's " History of Methodism," book v, chap. xii. 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 221 
 
 cesses, helped to make Wesley the powerful, 
 persuasive, at times the thrilling and elec- 
 trifying preacher which he undoubtedly was. 
 What a picture is that given of the effects 
 of Wesley's preaching in connection with 
 his famous visit to Epworth ! For eight 
 evenings in succession, in that splendid ear- 
 ly summer season, he preached to vast 
 crowds from his father's tomb, and his last 
 discourse was his most powerful and pro- 
 longed, and was addressed to the largest 
 multitude. The circumstance, however, to 
 which we refer took place not on the last 
 day of his preaching, but the day immedi- 
 ately preceding, (Saturday, J une 1 2th, 1 742.) 
 " While I was speaking, several dropped 
 down as dead ; and among the rest such a 
 cry was heard, of sinners groaning for the 
 righteousness of faith, as almost drowned 
 my voice." " I observed a gentleman there 
 who was remarkable for not pretending to 
 be of any religion at all. I was informed 
 he had not been at public worship of any 
 kind for upward of thirty years. Seeing 
 him stand as motionless as a statue, I asked 
 
222 The Living Wesley. 
 
 him abruptly, 'Sir, are you a sinner?' He 
 replied with a deep and broken voice, ' Sin- 
 ner enough;' and continued staring upward 
 till his wife and a servant or two, who were 
 all in tears, put him into his chaise and car- 
 ried him home." The stricken, staring, 
 statue-like master, the weeping wife and serv- 
 ants — what a picture, we say, have we here ! 
 
 That Wesley's preaching was attended 
 by more powerful and penetrating imme- 
 diate results than that of any of his famous 
 contemporary Methodist preachers, is no- 
 torious ; but it has been thought difficult to 
 understand this. He was not, as I have 
 said, a pictorial or dramatic preacher, like 
 his great preaching contemporary, White- 
 field ; but whereas Whitefield, powerful 
 preacher as he was, was yet more popular 
 than powerful, Wesley, popular preacher as 
 he was, was yet more powerful in compari- 
 son with his fellows than he was popular. 
 
 There is really, however, no special mys- 
 tery about the power of Wesley's preach- 
 ing. All we know of his earlier preaching, 
 under special circumstances, would lead to 
 
Wesley tJie P readier. 223 
 
 the conclusion that he could not but be a 
 singularly powerful preacher. His invaria- 
 ble terseness of phrase and style prevented 
 him from ever being tedious. His full and 
 ready flow of thoughts, as well as of fit 
 words, carried his audience with him. He 
 was most pleasant in manner, pellucid in 
 statement, fresh and lively throughout, and 
 so frequent, so continuous, we might almost 
 say, in his personal application of what he 
 was saying, making his doctrine to tell at 
 every point throughout his discourse, that 
 he never allowed the attention of his con- 
 gregation to slumber. The celebrated Ken- 
 nicott, at that time an undergraduate at 
 Oxford, heard Wesley preach his last ser- 
 mon before his University, in 1744, a flam- 
 ing, searching, intrepidly faithful sermon. 
 Apart from its severity, he admired the ser- 
 mon greatly, and was evidently very much 
 impressed by the personality of the preacher. 
 "His black hair," he says, " quite smooth, 
 and parted very exactly, added to a pecul- 
 iar composure in his countenance, showed 
 him to be an uncommon man." He speaks 
 
224 The Living Wesley. 
 
 of his " agreeable emphasis " in reading. 
 He refers with approval to "many just 
 invectives " in his sermon, but with disap- 
 proval to " the zeal and unbounded satire 
 with which he fired his address when he 
 came to what he called his plain, practical 
 conclusion." If" his censures " had only been 
 " moderated," and certain portions omitted, 
 Kennicott says, " I think his discourse, as 
 to style and delivery, would have been un- 
 commonly pleasing to others as well as to 
 myself." He adds, " He is allowed to be a 
 man of great parts." * 
 
 Cowper's lines on Wesley will not be for- 
 gotten while we are on the subject of his 
 preaching. They were written when the fire 
 and flame of Wesley's early manhood were 
 long gone by. He speaks of him as one — ■ 
 
 " Who, when occasion justified its use, 
 Had wit as bright, as ready to produce. 
 Could fetch from records of an earlier age, 
 Or from Philosophy's enlightened page, 
 His rich materials, and regale your ear 
 With strains it was a privilege to hear. 
 Yet, above all, his luxury supreme, 
 And his chief glory was the Gospel theme : 
 
 * Tyerman's " Wesley," vol. i, p. 449. 
 
Wesley tke Preacher. 22$ 
 
 There he was copious as old Greece or Rome, 
 His happy eloquence seemed there at home ; 
 Ambitious not to shine or to excel, 
 But to treat justly what he loved so well." 
 
 I apprehend that the last four lines give 
 a most true and happy description of Wes- 
 ley's ordinary ministry, while Kennicott's 
 description enables us in some measure to 
 understand the fire and intensity which 
 characterized his preaching on special occa- 
 sions, and in the prime of his life. 
 
 Dr. Stevens has dwelt on the authority 
 with which Wesley spoke, the calm com- 
 mand which belonged to his presence and 
 gave weight and force to his words. No 
 doubt there was this characteristic always 
 about Wesley's person and presence. In 
 the former part of this study I have quoted 
 Gambold's testimony to this effect, in re- 
 gard to Wesley in his early Oxford days. 
 Calm, serene, methodical as Wesley was, 
 there was a deep, steadfast fire of earnest 
 purpose about him; and, notwithstanding 
 the smallness of his stature, there was an 
 elevation of character and of bearing visible 
 to all with whom he had intercourse, which 
 
 15 
 
226 The Living Wesley. 
 
 gave him a wonderful power of command, 
 however quiet were his words, and however 
 placid his deportment. But the extraordi- 
 nary power of his preaching, while it owed 
 something, no doubt, to this tone and pres- 
 ence of calm, unconscious authority, was 
 due mainly, essentially, to the searching and 
 importunate closeness and fidelity with 
 which he dealt with the consciences of his 
 hearers, and the passionate vehemence with 
 which he urged and entreated them to turn 
 to Christ and be saved. He had not the 
 " gift of tears," as Whitefield had, or as his 
 brother Charles had, whose preaching ap- 
 pears to have been, in several respects, 
 intermediate in character between that of 
 his brother John and of his friend White- 
 field ; yet Wesley was often moved to tears 
 as he pleaded with his hearers, and oftener 
 still was the means of moving multitudes 
 that heard him to tears. At times, however, 
 his onset in applying his subject to the 
 lives, the cases, the consciences of his hear- 
 ers, was too intense, too direct, too eclectic- 
 al, to be answered by tears. His words 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 227 
 
 went with a sudden and startling shock 
 straight home into the very core of the 
 guilty sinner's consciousness and heart, and 
 cries, shrieks, sudden fits, cases of fainting 
 and insensibility, men and women "drop- 
 ping down as dead," as if they had been 
 physically struck by a blow from some ter- 
 rible engine, by a stone from a catapult, or 
 a ball from a cannon, were the frequent con- 
 sequence. And yet it was not that Wesley 
 used stronger words than other preachers ; 
 not that he used high word-coloring or ex- 
 aggerated expressions ; the contrary was 
 the case. Rather, it was that, using simpler 
 and fewer words than others to express the 
 truth — going straighter to his purpose, and 
 with less word-foliage, less verbiage, to 
 shroud or overshadow his meaning — the 
 real, essential truth was more easily and 
 directly seen and felt by the hearer. There 
 was less of human art or device ; the lan- 
 guage was simpler and more transparent; 
 and so the truth shone more clearly and 
 fully through. There was less in language 
 of what " man's wisdom teacheth ;" less of 
 
228 The Living Wesley. 
 
 what was fanciful, or elaborate, or artificial, 
 and therefore there was more of the Spir- 
 it's operation ; more of " the demonstra- 
 tion of the Spirit and of power." So far as 
 any mere written composition can give an 
 idea of how Wesley preached, when his aim 
 was specially to convince and awaken, per- 
 haps his last sermon before the University, 
 to which we have lately referred, and the 
 wonderful " applications " contained in his 
 first "Appeal to Men of Reason and Relig- 
 ion," which we have before mentioned, may 
 help us to such an idea ; but it must always 
 be remembered, that no written composi- 
 tions can really approach the energy and 
 directness with which Wesley preached 
 when vast crowds hung upon his lips, to 
 whom he was declaring, as in Epworth 
 church-yard, "the whole counsel of God." 
 
 Of the clear, strong, intense style in which 
 Wesley could, if he felt it to be necessary, 
 combine doctrinal argument with declama- 
 tory invective of the most scathing terrible- 
 ness, we have an instance in his famous ser- 
 mon on " Free Grace." But for the publi- 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 229 
 
 cation of that sermon, we should at the 
 present time have had no conception of 
 what his powers were in that kind ; and it 
 was owing only to very special circum- 
 stances, and much against his liking, that 
 Wesley felt himself constrained to publish 
 that sermon. 
 
 It is well known that Dr. Johnson had a 
 great reverence for Wesley, and much en- 
 joyed his society. In a letter to Wesley 
 himself, he compliments him as " Plato." 
 Cowper, also, in the lines we have quoted, 
 refers to Wesley's power in social conversa- 
 tion, of bringing forth the treasures of 
 ancient philosophy. Let any competent 
 judge read the plainly written but elevated 
 and beautiful sermon on " The Original of 
 the Law," mentioned some pages back, and 
 he will at once recognize the impress of a 
 mind which, while it avoided all display of 
 learning, was deeply imbued with the train- 
 ing and results of philosophy — of the high- 
 est and best philosophy, whether ancient or 
 modern — so far as philosophy had advanced 
 in Wesley's day. 
 
230 The Living Wesley. 
 
 Wesley had been an excellent preacher of 
 his kind, though not as yet evangelical, be- 
 fore he went to America. His beautiful 
 sermon on the " Circumcision of the Heart," 
 preached before the University of Oxford 
 in 1733, is one of several sermons included 
 in his Works, which afford decisive evi- 
 dence on this point. His style, also — a style 
 which the best judges, such as Southey, have 
 agreed in greatly admiring, and which, in- 
 deed, no one who understands and loves 
 clear, pure, pleasant English can fail to ad- 
 mire — seems to have been already formed at 
 that period, although its full power was not 
 as yet developed ; it was awaiting develop- 
 ment under the inspiration of full Christian 
 tenderness and zeal. But it was not until 
 after he had become Border's disciple, that, 
 for reasons we have already stated, preach- 
 ing came to be recognized and felt by him- 
 self to be his great work, or that the char- 
 acteristic power of his preaching was 
 brought out. It was his perception of the 
 doctrine of salvation by faith which not only 
 transformed him thereafter into a preacher, 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 23 1 
 
 as his first and greatest calling, but which also 
 breathed a new soul into his preaching. 
 When he began to preach this doctrine, his 
 hearers generally felt that a new power ac- 
 companied his preaching; and, at the same 
 time, the clergy and the orthodox Pharisaic 
 hearers felt that a dangerous, startling, rev- 
 olutionary doctrine was being proclaimed. 
 Wherever he preached crowds flowed, in 
 larger and larger volume, to hear him ; but, 
 at the same time, church after church was 
 shut against him. As Gambold wrote in a 
 letter to Wesley, it is the doctrine of salva- 
 tion by faith, which seems to constitute the 
 special offense of the cross. This, at any 
 rate, in Wesley's days, was the one doctrine 
 which clergymen and orthodox church-goers 
 would not endure. Short of this almost 
 any thing might be preached, but on no ac- 
 count this. The University of Oxford 
 would endure the high doctrine as to Chris- 
 tian attainment and consecration taught in 
 the sermon on "The Circumcision of the 
 Heart/' but it would not endure the doc- 
 trine of salvation by faith, which, ten years 
 
232 The Living Wesley. 
 
 later, the same preacher would have set 
 forth before his university. The reason 
 would seem to be twofold : the evangel- 
 ical doctrine of salvation by faith strips 
 men altogether of their own righteousness, 
 laying them all low at the same level in 
 presence of God's holiness and of Christ's 
 atonement, as needing Divine pardon and 
 Divine renewal ; and it also teaches the 
 "real presence" of the Divine Spirit, insists 
 upon the present supernatural power of 
 God to inspire repentance and faith, and to 
 renew the soul, the present supernatural 
 power of Jesus Christ to save the sinner. 
 Such a doctrine is " spiritual ;" it enforces 
 the living power and presence of spiritual 
 realities; it is accordingly "foolishness," and 
 " a stumbling-block " to the " natural man." 
 The " natural man " receiveth not these 
 " things of the Spirit of God." The doc- 
 trine of high Christian holiness may be 
 regarded as but another, and the highest, 
 form of moral philosophy, of select and vir- 
 tuous Christian culture. The doctrine of 
 salvation by faith, through grace, is one 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 233 
 
 which humbles utterly the pride of the hu- 
 man understanding, and of merely human 
 virtue. It was when Wesley became the 
 preacher of this doctrine that he became a 
 truly and fully Christian preacher. It was 
 not a new doctrine ; it was the doctrine of 
 the Apostles, the Reformers, and even of 
 the Homilies and Formularies of the Church 
 of England itself; but in a sense-bound and 
 heartless age it had been almost utterly 
 forgotten. To revive it by the ordinance 
 of preaching became henceforth Wesley's 
 great life-work. He became, above all 
 things, himself a preacher, and he founded 
 a preaching institute ; with preaching, how- 
 ever, always associating close personal and 
 individual fellowship. 
 
 The whole of Methodism unfolded from 
 this beginning. To promote preaching and 
 fellowship was the one work ; fellowship itself 
 meaning chiefly a perpetual individual testi- 
 mony of Christian believers as to salvation 
 by grace, through faith. Preaching and fel- 
 lowship — this was all from first to last ; true 
 preaching, and true, vital, Christian fellow- 
 
234 The Living Wesley. 
 
 ship, which involved opposition to untrue 
 preaching, and to fellowship not truly and 
 fully Christian. From this unfolded all 
 Wesley's life and history. His union for a 
 season with the Moravians, and then his 
 separation from them, when their teaching 
 became for the time mixed up and entan- 
 gled with demoralizing error ; the founda- 
 tion of his own society — that of " the people 
 called Methodists ;" his separation from his 
 brother Whitefield and from Calvinism ; 
 his field-preachings ; his separate meeting- 
 houses and separate communions ; his class- 
 meetings, and band-meetings, and all the 
 discipline of his society ; his Conference 
 and his brotherhood of itinerant Methodist 
 preachers ; his increasing irregularities as a 
 Churchman ; his ordinations, and the vir- 
 tual though not formal or voluntary separa- 
 tion of his societies from the Church of 
 England ; all resulted from the same be- 
 ginning—from his embracing " the doctrine 
 of salvation by faith " — from his receiving the 
 instructions of Peter Bohler, the Moravian 
 minister. 
 
Wesley the Preacher. 235 
 
 Into these matters I cannot venture in 
 this study. They demand separate treat- 
 ment. The personal character and inner 
 humanity of the man Wesley is my theme. 
 I shall now turn to his intellectual charac- 
 ter ; a subject to which, so far as I know, 
 no writer has as yet done justice, and which 
 is still more misconceived, perhaps, than the 
 style and character of his preaching. 
 
236 The Living Wesley. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WESLEY AS A THINKER. 
 
 g)ECAUSE Wesley was eminently a 
 man of action, it seems to have been 
 inferred by some writers that he was not a 
 man of contemplation : he is admitted to 
 have been an acute logician, but he is repre- 
 sented as having been comparatively want- 
 ing in the capacity of philosophic reflective- 
 ness. I have no wish to exaggerate Wesley's 
 philosophical capacity or powers; but it is 
 an entire mistake to suppose him to have 
 been at all wanting either in the taste or 
 the capacity for philosophic study and re- 
 flection. His intellectual tastes inclined 
 him very strongly to the study, not only of 
 languages, but of philosophy and theology 
 — of philosophy, perhaps, hardly less than 
 theology. I have had occasion already to 
 furnish one instance of his philosophic taste 
 and capacity. His Journals supply abun- 
 dant evidence that, in the midst of his life 
 
Wesley as a Thinker. 237 
 
 of incessant activity and absorbing care, and 
 devotional intensity of feeling, he yet kept 
 up his interest in philosophic studies. He 
 read and criticised Locke with acute intelli- 
 gence. He not only read, but explained to 
 his preachers, Bishop Browne's great work 
 on "The Procedure of the Human Under- 
 standing," preferring Browne to Locke. In 
 his letters to Mr. John Smith, he says, that 
 " in the midst of all his labors he had abun- 
 dantly more temptation to be a saunterer 
 inter sylvas academicas, a philosophical slug- 
 gard, than an itinerant preacher." His re- 
 flectiveness, indeed, tended even to skep- 
 ticism. In the same remarkable letters, he 
 says that " he had a thousand times doubted 
 of the divinity of the Scriptures after the 
 fullest assurance preceding." 
 
 In his sermon on "The Good Steward," 
 he uses the striking language which we are 
 about to quote: — 
 
 "It is so far from being true that there 
 is no knowledge after we have quitted the 
 body, that the doubt lies on the other side, 
 whether there be any such thing as real 
 
238 The Living Wesley. 
 
 knowledge till then ; whether it be not a 
 plain, sober truth, not a mere poetical fic- 
 tion, that 
 
 " 'All these shadows, which for thing's we take, 
 
 Are but the empty dreams which in death's sleep we make,' 
 
 only excepting those things which God 
 himself had been pleased to reveal to man. 
 I will speak for one. After having sought 
 the truth with some diligence for half a 
 century, I am, at this day, hardly sure of 
 any thing but what I learn from the Bible. 
 Nay, I positively affirm that I know nothing 
 else so certainly that I would dare to stake 
 my salvation upon it." * 
 
 It was, in fact, the strength of the con- 
 templative element in Wesley which largely 
 helped, during not a few years of his ear- 
 lier life, to give mysticism so considerable a 
 power over him. He loved his college, and 
 
 * Here, again, we are struck with that resemblance and 
 yet contrast between Wesley and Newman to which I have 
 referred already. Substitute merely "the Church " for " the 
 Bible," in the above extract, and it expresses fully the views 
 of the author of the Apologia pro Vita Sud and of the 
 "Grammar of Assent." All hinged upon Wesley's accept- 
 ing Scripture teaching instead of traditional influence and 
 prescription. 
 
Wesley as a T/iitiker. 239 
 
 his cloister, and his " academic groves ;" he 
 loved 
 
 " To join with him calm Peace and Quiet, 
 Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet ; 
 And add to these retired Leisure, 
 That in trim gardens takes his pleasure ; 
 But first, and chiefest, with him bring 
 Him that yon soars on golden wing, 
 The cherub Contemplation." 
 
 He seems to have had little love for any 
 philosophy that had not an element of mys- 
 ticism in it ; he would 
 
 " Unsphere 
 The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
 What worlds or what vast regions hold 
 The immortal mind that hath forsook 
 Her mansion in this fleshly nook." 
 
 He found delight in Tauler's philosophic 
 and mystical theology, and in Madame de 
 Bourignon's poetry. It is true, he was of a 
 very social temper, also, when he could find 
 congenial companions; and this balanced 
 his recluseness. It is also true, that while 
 his mere intellect and his tastes craved for 
 solitude or select society, his moral sen- 
 sibilities and his conscience continually 
 prompted him to go abroad and minister 
 to bodily and spiritual need and distress ; 
 
240 The Living Wesley. 
 
 but that did not annul the other side of his 
 nature. It was, doubtless, the strong con- 
 templative element in Wesley which formed 
 so close a link between himself and his 
 friend Gambold, who was first a Methodist, 
 then a Mystic, and then a Moravian, and 
 always predisposed to Quietism. Wesley 
 was very fond of Gambold's poetry — poetry 
 of superior "merit and of great refinement, 
 marked especially by a subtle and spiritual- 
 istic philosophic tendency — and he not sel- 
 dom quotes it. 
 
 I have quoted Wesley's own words in re- 
 gard to the philosophical skepticism which 
 was a leading feature of his intellectual 
 character. So conscious was he of his tend- 
 ency to skepticism that he was afraid, as 
 he tells us, to prosecute the study of math- 
 ematics because he found it to undermine 
 his faith in all moral conclusions. He was 
 one of the keenest and most skeptical of 
 historical critics, as we shall immediately 
 show; but, like Dr. Johnson, while acutely 
 and intrepidly critical in regard to matters 
 which he conceived to lie fully within the 
 
Wesley as a TJiiuker. 241 
 
 scope of his critical understanding and fac- 
 ulty, he durst not carry the same temper of 
 mind, or assume the same right of critical 
 judgment, in regard to the world of spirit- 
 ual powers and realities. The principle on 
 which he acted in judging of things pertain- 
 ing to the world of consciousness, and of 
 invisible spirits and forces, he himself ex- 
 plains in his comments on a certain case 
 which he records in his Journal. I give his 
 words : — 
 
 "One of the strangest accounts I ever 
 read ; yet I can find no pretense to disbe- 
 lieve it. The well-known character of the 
 person excludes all suspicion of fraud ; and 
 the nature of the circumstances themselves 
 excludes the possibility of delusion. It is 
 true, there are several of them which I do 
 not comprehend ; but this with me is a very 
 slender objection ; for what is it which I do 
 comprehend, even of the things I see daily? 
 Truly not ' the smallest grain of sand or 
 spire of grass.' I know not how the one 
 grows, or how the particles of the other co- 
 here together. What pretense, then, have I 
 
 16 
 
242 The Living Wesley. 
 
 to deny well-attested facts, because I cannot 
 comprehend them?"* 
 
 Thus did the philosophical skeptic justify 
 what religious skeptics stigmatized as his 
 credulity. On the other hand, he was not 
 slow to retort against the skeptics of his 
 day the charge of credulity as respected 
 common mundane things. 
 
 As respects historical criticism, Wesley 
 was fifty years in advance of his age ; many 
 illustrations might be given to show how 
 penetrating, independent, and impartial, 
 were his views as a student of history. He 
 recognized fully and immediately the merits 
 of Hooke's " Roman History," pronouncing 
 it far the best he had seen. He says, " I 
 admire him for doing justice to many great 
 men who have been generally misrepre- 
 sented ; Manlius Capitolinus, in particular, 
 as well as the two Gracchi." At the same 
 time he objects that " he recites at large the 
 senseless tales of Clelia swimming: the 
 Tiber, Mucius Scaevola, and twenty more ; 
 and afterward knocks them all on the 
 
 * " Works," vol. iv, p. 279. 
 
Wesley as a Thinker. 243 
 
 head. What need, then, of reciting them? 
 We want history, not romance, though 
 compiled by Livy himself." * 
 
 " To-day," he says, " I read upon the road 
 a very agreeable book, Mr. Dobb's ' Uni- 
 versal History.' . . . But I still doubt of 
 many famous incidents which have passed 
 current for many ages. To instance one : 
 I cannot believe there was ever such a na- 
 tion as the Amazons in the world. The 
 whole affair of the Argonauts I judge to be 
 equally fabulous, as Mr. Bryant has shown 
 many parts of ancient history to be ; and 
 no wonder, considering how allegories and 
 poetic fables have been mistaken for real 
 histories." f 
 
 " I read to-day," he writes, (April 25, 
 1748,) "what is accounted the most correct 
 history of St. Patrick that is extant ; and, 
 on the maturest consideration, I was much 
 inclined to believe that St. Patrick and St. 
 George were of one family. The whole 
 story smells strongly of romance. To touch 
 only on a few particulars : — I object to his 
 
 * " Works," vol. iv, p. 363. t Ibid., p. 672. 
 
244 The Living Wesley. 
 
 first setting out ; the Bishop of Rome had 
 no such power in the beginning of the fifth 
 century as this account supposes ; nor would 
 his uncle, the Bishop of Tours, have sent 
 him in that age to Rome for a commission 
 to convert Ireland, having himself as much 
 authority over that land as any Italian 
 bishop whatever. Again, I never heard be- 
 fore of an apostle sleeping thirty-five years, 
 and beginning to preach at threescore. 
 But his success stagers me the most of all: 
 no blood of the martyrs is here ; no re- 
 proach, no scandal of the cross ; no perse- 
 cution to those that will live godly. Noth- 
 ing is to be heard of, from the beginning to 
 the end, but kings, nobles, warriors, bow- 
 ing down before him. Thousands are con- 
 verted, without any opposition at all ; twelve 
 thousand at one sermon. If these things 
 were so, either there was then no devil in 
 the world, or St. Patrick did not preach the 
 Gospel of Christ."" 
 
 In a similar spirit of wholesome critical 
 skepticism he comments on Dr. Leland's 
 
 * "Works," vol. iii, p. 423. 
 
Wesley as a T J tinker. 245 
 
 " History of Ireland," repudiating altogether 
 the notion that the Irish " were ever a civil- 
 ized nation, till they were civilized by the 
 English." He is bold enough to deny that 
 "Ireland was, in the seventh or eighth cen- 
 tury, the grand seat of learning;" and espe- 
 cially singles out as incredible the pretense 
 that in Armagh, one of the "many famous 
 colleges " of the island, there were seven 
 thousand students. All this he " ranks with 
 the history of ' Bel and the Dragon.'"* 
 
 On the page following these remarks 
 he quotes with approval his friend Dr. By- 
 rom's explanation of the origin of the name 
 of England's patron saint. " I think," he 
 says, " that there can be no reasonable 
 doubt of the truth of his conjecture that 
 Georgius is a mistake for Gregorius ; that 
 the real patron of England is St. Gregory, 
 (who sent Austin, the monk, to convert 
 England,) and that St. George (whom no 
 one knows) came in by a mere blunder." f 
 
 I do not by any means intend to adopt 
 or vouch for all Wesley's trenchant criti- 
 
 * " Works," vol. iii, p. 399. \ Ibid., p. 400. 
 
246 The Living Wesley. 
 
 cisms ; I wish only to show the critical 
 quality of his intellect. His whole treat- 
 ment of the " History of England," of which 
 he wrote himself a succinct epitome, was 
 distinguished by remarkable independence 
 of mind. He held to the side of Horace 
 Walpole in his " Historic Doubts," so far as 
 respected the character of Richard III. 
 He gave up, after investigation, the strong 
 prejudices of his youth in favor of " the 
 Martyr," (Charles I.,) and when his brother 
 Charles, in a letter, remonstrated with him on 
 this account, his reply was that he could not 
 "in conscience say less evil of him." High 
 Tory as he was by nurture and education, 
 he not only revised, but altogether changed, 
 his views respecting the controversies of 
 Charles the Second's reign. Referring to 
 Baxter's life, he says, "In spite of all the 
 prejudice of education, I could not but see 
 that the poor Nonconformists had been 
 used without either justice or mercy ; and 
 that many of the Protestant bishops of 
 King Charles had neither more religion nor 
 humanity than the Popish bishops of Queen 
 
Wesley as a Thinker. 247 
 
 Mary." * And again he says, referring to 
 the persecutions of the Presbyterians in 
 Scotland, " O what a blessed governor was 
 that good-natured man, so-called, King 
 Charles the Second ! Bloody Queen Mary 
 was a lamb, a mere dove, in comparison of 
 him!"f Candor pure and impartial, per- 
 fect honesty of purpose in research and in 
 judging, incorruptible love of truth, this is 
 the prime and highest qualification in an 
 historian or an historical critic. More than 
 any thing else, it helps to the attainment of 
 the truth in history. This quality John 
 Wesley possessed — pure and fearless hon- 
 esty and candor. 
 
 Wesley himself, as I have said, often 
 laughed at the credulity of his skeptical 
 contemporaries. He criticises severely, and 
 in some detail, the Abbe Raynal's " History 
 of the Settlements and Trade of the Euro- 
 peans in the Indies." He stigmatizes "sev- 
 eral of his assertions as false in fact," sin- 
 gling out in particular the assertion that 
 Batavia is a healthy place. He declares 
 
 * " Works," vol. iii, p. 568. \ Ibid., vol. iv, p. 271. 
 
248 The Living Wesley. 
 
 that his account of China is "pure romance, 
 flowing from the Abbe's fruitful brain." He 
 " supposes " that the account of the Peru- 
 vian nation is taken from " that pretty novel 
 of ' Marmontel/ " He inquires if " many of 
 his assertions do not so border upon the 
 marvelous, that none but a disciple of Vol- 
 taire could swallow them ? as the account 
 of milk-white men, with no hair, red eyes, 
 and the understanding of a monkey."* 
 
 He was very keen in his criticism of all 
 contemporary books of travel, very suspi- 
 cious of "travelers' stories." In the bosom 
 of " the lovely family at Balham," he writes, 
 " 1 had leisure on Tuesday, Wednesday, and 
 Thursday to consider thoroughly the ac- 
 count of the Pelew Islands. It is ingenious, 
 but I esteem it a dangerous book. ... I 
 cannot believe that there is such a heathen 
 on earth as Abba Thulle, much less such a 
 heathen nation as is here painted." " But 
 what do you think of Prince Lee Boo ?" " I 
 think he was a good-natured, sensible young 
 man, who came to England with Captain 
 * " Works," vol. iv, pp. 113, 114. 
 
Wesley as a Thinker. 249 
 
 Wilson, and had learned his lesson well ; 
 but just as much a prince as Tomo Chachi 
 was a king." * This entry was made within 
 about fifteen months of Wesley's death, 
 when he was eighty-six years old. 
 
 * "Works," vol. iv, p. 456. 
 
250 The Living Wesley. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WESLEY'S DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER 
 ILLUSTRATED AND VINDICATED. 
 
 HAVE said thus much of Wesley's in- 
 
 i 
 
 tellectual characteristics, because, so far 
 as I know, justice has never been done to 
 them. No biographer has brought out the 
 side of his character on which I have last 
 dwelt. As to his accomplishments as a 
 linguist, in which few men in England ex- 
 celled him — as a logician — as a poetical 
 critic of remarkably true and severe taste, 
 and as himself no mean poet — as to his 
 temper, skill, and admirable talents as a 
 controversialist — his powers as a theologian 
 — and his eminent merits as one of the pur- 
 est and best writers of English in his own 
 or any age — I say nothing in this study. 
 These subjects have been amply dealt with 
 by others. 
 
 It is not necessary, however, to deny that 
 
Disposition and Character Vindicated. 251 
 
 in listening to men's own statements about 
 themselves, Wesley's charity was so ex- 
 treme as fairly to lay him open to the 
 charge of credulity. On his properly intel- 
 lectual side he was no more credulous than 
 Dr. Johnson or Father Newman. On the 
 side of charitable hopes and judgments he 
 may have been open to the charge. His 
 brother Charles, somewhere in his Journal, 
 writes that John "was born for the benefit 
 of knaves." John hardly denied the im- 
 peachment. When it was necessary to 
 investigate or to watch and study a suspi- 
 cious case, he would send for his brother 
 Charles to come and assist him. The great- 
 er suspiciousness of his brother, and his 
 occasionally keener penetration and insight 
 into personal character, were of advantage 
 by the side of John's unsuspicious confid- 
 ingness. Nevertheless we have it on John's 
 own distinct testimony, that, after all, he 
 was more seldom deceived in his estimate 
 of men, and more seldom betrayed by them, 
 than his brother Charles. He had, in fact, 
 and in no ordinary measure, precisely what 
 
252 The Living Wesley. 
 
 Miss Wedgwood thinks that he was lacking 
 in — great faculty of sympathy and insight, as 
 respected individuals ; always, however, see- 
 ing more directly and fully the good or the 
 capacity of good in them than the evil. He 
 was necessarily, indeed, to a very large ex- 
 tent, an absorbed and preoccupied man. 
 He had no leisure to give his mind to trifles, 
 and sometimes, especially in his earlier 
 years, omitted to relate to those interested, 
 pleasant and proper intelligence respecting 
 friends or relatives. But this was not owing 
 to any real want of keen and ready sympa- 
 thy with others. He was, by the testimony 
 of all who knew him — of such witnesses as his 
 friend and follower Henry Moore, and as 
 his friend, the Irish Churchman, Alexander 
 Knox, (a man of high culture and gifts,) — one 
 of the most pleasant, sunny, sociable of com- 
 panions, although he could not give more 
 than two hours at a time to Dr. Johnson, 
 who highly esteemed him and his society, 
 whereat the great dictator was sorely disap- 
 pointed and chagrined. 
 
 Wesley was a quick-tempered man, and 
 
Disposition and Character Vindicated. 253 
 
 sometimes, in his haste, said sharp things ; 
 but he was yet quicker to apologize, if he 
 had spoken too strongly, than to be angry. 
 He was incapable of malice ; he was one of 
 the most forgiving of men. He was any thing 
 but a Stoic, but he never indulged in vain 
 regrets any more than in settled resentment. 
 Scarcely any other man could have carried 
 such vast cares so lightly as he did. " I feel 
 and I grieve," he says, " but, by the grace 
 of God, I fret at nothing." 
 
 He was full of wit and pleasant humor, 
 as all who have read his Journal or any of 
 the larger biographies of him well know. 
 Southey, Stevens, and Tyerman all give 
 excellent instances of this. The one fact 
 which we have found it difficult to reconcile 
 w r ith any sense of humor, and with his gen- 
 eral sunniness and kindliness of disposition, 
 is the seemingly morose asceticism of his 
 rules for the management of Kinofswood 
 School. In an earlier page of this volume 
 I have suggested what appears to be the 
 only solution of this apparently strange 
 incongruity — this monastic unkindliness. 
 
254 The Living Wesley. 
 
 Public schools, in Wesley's time, and for 
 many years afterward, were rude and harsh 
 Spartan republics, where play meant coarse 
 violence, and where free, unfettered inter- 
 course among the boys meant mutual bar- 
 barizing and demoralization. Those who 
 do not know the now happily almost incred- 
 ible truth as to the state of public boarding- 
 schools in the last century, will not be able 
 to do justice to Wesley in this respect. 
 Wesley himself had had a bitter experience 
 at the Charterhouse. As for the mere 
 hardness of the Kingswood regulations, it 
 must be remembered that the regulations 
 of all public schools were hard ; very early 
 rising, regular hours for prayer and worship, 
 rigid fare, semi-monastic rules and usages, 
 and special dress, prevailed every-where 
 alike — in Church of England schools, in 
 Quaker schools, and in Moravian schools. 
 
 Before I close I must needs make some 
 special reference to the manner in which 
 Mr. Tyerman has dealt with the character 
 of Wesley in his maturer and later life. 
 
 I wish to say a word about the history 
 
Disposition and Character Vindicated. 255 
 
 of Mr. M'Nab, and the affair at Bath with 
 respect to this preacher and Mr. Smyth, of 
 Dublin. Mr. Tyerman has given a full and 
 faithful history of the whole affair, for which 
 he deserves our thanks. But while he 
 evidently enters fully into the position and 
 convictions o( the preacher who thought 
 himself aggrieved, he does not seem truly 
 to have realized Mr. Wesley's own position 
 and necessities. While we cannot but 
 strongly sympathize in a certain sense with 
 the case of M'Nab, it is, I think, clear that 
 Wesley could not have acted otherwise 
 than he did, and that his conduct in the 
 whole affair deserves the highest praise. 
 It was a crisis in which Wesley could not 
 have given way. But although he remained 
 firm, he respected the feelings and convic- 
 tions of his preacher; treated him with 
 generous consideration, and, notwithstand- 
 ing the opposition of his brother, received 
 him back into favor. So long as Wesley 
 lived, he could not absolutely part with his 
 power. He used it in this case to provide 
 an opening for an Irish clergyman, (Mr. 
 
:~ The Living Wesley. 
 
 Smyths for whom it was important to pro- 
 vide ; various and important interests, both 
 in England and in Ireland, seeming to re- 
 quire that he should so provide. He could 
 not have submitted himself, and all his pre- 
 rogatives and powers, to the theoretical 
 claims of one of his junior preachers, a 
 strong Scottish doctrinaire, a Presbyterian 
 theorist, however amiable or estimable, 
 without breaking down all his authority and 
 discipline together ; but he showed no vin- 
 dictiveness, and hastened to reinstate his 
 contumacious follower. In this, as in other 
 matters, a larger aeneral view ol Wesley's 
 position and principles — of the whole situa- 
 tion — would, in our judgment, have led Mr. 
 Tyerman to a different conclusion from that 
 which he has pronounced. 
 
 It appears to me that Mr. Tyerman has 
 failed to apprehend fully the position in 
 which Wesley found himself as to the 
 Church of England, or the powerful reasons 
 which made it impossible for him to accept 
 in full the position of the founder of a new 
 and distinct Church ; a Church outside the 
 
Disposition and Character Vindicated. 257 
 
 Church of England, and apart from all 
 other Churches. I do not hesitate to de- 
 clare my own deepening conviction, that 
 Wesley could not, as a wise man — could 
 hardly as a sane man — have taken any other 
 position than that to which he held so fast. 
 He was not called by Providence to or- 
 ganize a distinctly and fully independent 
 Church. If he had undertaken the task 
 he must have undertaken responsibilities 
 which, at his time of life, in his circum- 
 stances, and with his antecedents, he could 
 not possibly have sustained. He did all he 
 could to meet the feelings and views of 
 those who demanded separation. He was 
 not obstinate or immovable ; he was emi- 
 nently candid and open-minded. He yield- 
 ed whenever it was necessary to yield. He 
 moved as far as he was obliged, though no 
 farther. This, I think, was not weak timid- 
 ity on his part, but was dictated by consid- 
 erations of wise Christian expediency. 
 Nothing else in Wesley would have been 
 consistent or tolerable. In the many in- 
 stances, accordinglv, in which Mr. Tverman 
 
 1: 
 
258 The Living Wesley. 
 
 censures Wesley for not fully recognizing 
 the claims of his preachers to the full status 
 of pastors, and to constitute of and by 
 themselves the supreme and independent 
 governing authority for the Societies, I think 
 him to be in error. I do not admit that 
 the Methodist preachers had any necessary 
 Divine right to be ordained as Presbyters, 
 still less to be constituted the supreme and 
 sole governing body and fountain of author- 
 ity for the Societies of Methodism, consti- 
 tuted into an independent and organized 
 Church. 
 
 At the same time I, of course, fully recog- 
 nize the fact (as Wesley himself, with beau- 
 tiful candor, always did, notwithstanding the 
 violent antagonism of his brother Charles,) 
 that, from their point of view, the demands 
 of the preachers were very natural, and not 
 at all unreasonable ; that, apart from Wes- 
 ley's personal history and necessities, and 
 from the prejudices and feelings of many 
 within Methodism, and of many without, 
 much was to be said for the claims they 
 urged. 
 
Disposition cuid Character Vindicated. 259 
 
 In the first part of this volume I have 
 pointed out the austerity, the " sinister fidel- 
 ity," to repeat the language I have there 
 used, with which Mr. Tyerman deals with 
 Wesley in all cases in which the propriety 
 of his conduct seems at all open to contro- 
 versy. This characteristic appears very 
 strongly in his manner of treating the his- 
 tory of Wesley's relations with two emi- 
 nently useful and devoted women, and in 
 his judgments respecting the women them- 
 selves. In the instances to which I refer, 
 he seems to me to have done unintentional 
 but serious injustice, not only to Wesley him- 
 self, but to these excellent women — women 
 with whom Wesley was on intimate relations. 
 
 It will be anticipated that I refer, as one 
 of these cases, to Wesley's relations with 
 Grace Murray. As to this case, Mr. Tyer- 
 man sums up his judgment in these strong 
 words: "John Wesley was a dupe; Grace 
 Murray was a flirt ; John Bennet was a 
 cheat ; Charles Wesley was a sincere, but 
 irritated, impetuous, and officious friend." * 
 
 * Tyerman's " Wesley," vol. ii, p. 55. 
 
260 The Living Wesley. 
 
 I confess that I cannot accept this summary 
 judgment. The case is unquestionably one 
 of no little difficulty and perplexity. But 
 Mr. Tyerman cuts the knot with a coarse 
 knife, whereas it needs to be untied with a 
 skillful hand. Grace Murray is not justly 
 described as " a flirt." All we know of her, 
 apart from this affair, renders it very im- 
 probable that she should have proved her- 
 self to be such in this case. She was a 
 woman not only of singular tact, but of at- 
 tractive modesty, of perfect propriety, and 
 of deep piety* All we know of her would 
 lead to the conclusion that she would have 
 been not an unworthy helpmeet for John 
 Wesley. Wesley worked in her company 
 during many months, and closely watched 
 her for years. We know what his testi- 
 mony is as to her gifts and graces, her whole 
 character and deportment. Her Diary re- 
 mains to us ; and we know the superiority 
 of her character and the savor of her piety 
 
 * There is nothing- in the history of her residence at the 
 Orphan House, as read by a fair interpreter, inconsistent 
 with this conclusion. 
 
Disposition and Character Vindicated. 261 
 
 in her long after-life as the wife and widow 
 of John Bennet. Mr. Tyerman himself has 
 furnished full evidence on this point. Such 
 a woman it is hard to suspect of being 
 guilty of "flirtation" with John Bennet, 
 still more with one so revered as Wesley, 
 and more still with Bennet and Wesley 
 together. The temper of " a flirt " would 
 certainly have shown itself much rather in 
 her relations with inferior men than with 
 Wesley. No doubt she was strongly at- 
 tached to Bennet, on whom she had attended 
 assiduously as a nurse for six months, and 
 who seems to have thought himself secure 
 of her affections and of her acceptance of 
 himself whenever he should be free and at 
 liberty to ask it. But if others had not in- 
 terfered — had not represented to her that 
 she would be sinning against Christ and his 
 Church, that she was under temptation her- 
 self and was making herself a tempter or 
 cause of temptation to Wesley — she would, 
 no doubt, have gratefully and humbly made 
 herself Wesley's helper and cherisher for 
 life. Those who for various reasons were 
 
262 The Living Wesley. 
 
 opposed to Wesley's marrying Grace Mur- 
 ray, played continually upon her sensibility 
 and tenderness of conscience, and thus kept 
 her in most painful oscillation or vacillation. 
 Sometimes, also, they did what they could 
 to sow jealousy and suspicion in her mind, 
 so as to alienate her, if possible, from Wes- 
 ley. These parties all supported Bennet's 
 plea and claim, for obvious reasons. Ben- 
 net himself exerted all his authority and 
 influence in the same direction. It is pos- 
 sible to understand the perplexed history 
 to which I have referred without imputing 
 heartless trifling to Grace Murray, although 
 I do not pretend to deny that she showed 
 weakness in the affair ; but it is impossible 
 to clear either John Bennet or Wesley's 
 brother Charles from all obliquity of con- 
 duct in the part they took in this matter. 
 Throughout, the character of Wesley himself 
 shines most beautifully in connection with 
 this love affair, to him, without question, the 
 most painful trial of his life. His own touch- 
 ing and beautiful poem on the subject re- 
 mains in evidence of his feelings in the case. 
 
Disposition and Character Vindicated. 263 
 
 From Mr. Tyerman's criticisms on the 
 case of Mrs. Ryan I still more strongly dis- 
 sent than from his judgment in the matter 
 of Grace Murray. I think the principles on 
 which he has dealt with this case are alto- 
 gether wrong. The unfavorable anteced- 
 ents of her early life are made much of — 
 far too much of, in my judgment. But not- 
 withstanding those antecedents, whatever 
 they were, her proved character and merits 
 were such as to recommend her to the 
 esteem and intimate friendship of some of 
 the most excellent Christians of her time — 
 Christians of high social propriety and 
 breeding, as well as of pre-eminent Chris- 
 tian character, among whom Miss Bosan- 
 quet, after John Wesley, was one of the 
 most conspicuous. To assume that such a 
 woman, because of her early life and con- 
 nections, ought not to have been employed 
 by Wesley as a housekeeper and a class- 
 leader, is, I think, particularly unworthy of 
 a Methodist historian, and opposed to the 
 spirit of Christ's Gospel of grace. That 
 Wesley was right in the confidence he gave 
 
264 The Living Wesley. 
 
 to Mrs. Ryan was demonstrated by the re- 
 sult. She was eminently useful and respect- 
 ed in situations of important trust, in which 
 Wesley placed her. Where others had 
 failed, she succeeded. No other woman 
 could compare with her, except Grace Mur- 
 ray, who had been so useful to Wesley many 
 years before. She was a remarkably gifted 
 and a most devoted woman. And her life, 
 to its close, justified the confidence which 
 Wesley reposed in her. 
 
 Mr. Tyerman's judgment in these cases is 
 singularly severe, as respects all the parties 
 concerned, not excepting Mr. Wesley. He 
 reflects upon Wesley for taking Grace Mur- 
 ray with him on a pillion in his journeys, 
 several times, when there was special work 
 for her to do. Surely he cannot be igno- 
 rant of the universal custom of Wesley's day 
 for women to ride on pillion behind men, 
 either father, brother, husband, affianced lov- 
 er, trusted and reputable friend, of suitable 
 age, or man-servant. Mrs. Charles Wesley 
 traveled many miles in this way behind 
 preachers or man-servants. To impute inv 
 
Disposition and Character Vindicated. 265 
 
 prudence to Wesley in the matter in ques- 
 tion is exceedingly strange. Mr. Tyerman 
 condemns Grace Murray, again, because in 
 her earlier life, being under terrible tempta- 
 tion at the time — temptation which assailed 
 the very foundations of her faith — she yet 
 persevered in meeting her class, and in all 
 her other public engagements. To those 
 familiar with the memoirs of such men as 
 Richard Baxter, in former times, and Rich- 
 ard Treffry, in later times, and in Methodist 
 circles, a censure of Grace Murray on such 
 an account must seem passing strange. But 
 Mr. Tyerman seems to have very little sym- 
 pathy with spirits exercised by sore doubt 
 and temptation. Wesley's doubts, and fears, 
 and self-condemnation, soon after his con- 
 version, appear to him to be a painful mys- 
 tery ; whereas to us, they appear to have 
 been not only natural in themselves, but an 
 appropriate and valuable part of the disci- 
 pline through which such a teacher and 
 leader as Wesley could not but be expected 
 to pass. 
 
 Mr. Tyerman more than intimates that 
 
266 The Leving Wesley. 
 
 Wesley was imprudent in keeping up an 
 extensive and confidential correspondence 
 with a large number of female disciples. 
 Of those letters many samples have been 
 printed. I would ask any one familiar with 
 those letters, or who has fairly realized what 
 Wesley was to the leading spirits through- 
 out all his societies — their special personal 
 pastor and spiritual father — or in what re- 
 lation his personal instructions and influ- 
 ence stood to the whole work of Methodism 
 throughout all the Kingdom and in Ireland, 
 to judge what Methodism would have lost 
 if such a correspondence had not been 
 kept up. It is scarcely too much to say, 
 that Methodism could hardly have been 
 well sustained without it. Because of the 
 wicked and insane jealousy of Mrs. Wes- 
 ley, Mr. Tyerman decides that Wesley's 
 correspondence with Mrs. Ryan, " pure and 
 pious " as he justly declares it to have been, 
 ought not to have been continued. 
 
 And now I must write my last paragraph. 
 I have offered no adequate criticism of Mr. 
 Tyerman's three volumes ; my object, in- 
 
Disposition and Character Vindicated. 267 
 
 deed, has been, in good part, independent 
 of any special critical view. I have wished 
 to give my own views of Wesley, as looked 
 at in lights in which we think he has been 
 but seldom regarded. I desire, in closing, to 
 repeat that, though I differ from Mr. Tyer- 
 man at not a few points, I fully recognize 
 the great value of his volumes. His un- 
 equaled knowledge in detail of the whole 
 ground over which he leads his readers is a 
 great recommendation. The knowledge is 
 perfectly mastered, and is digested and pre- 
 sented in perfect order and clearness. I do 
 not, indeed, think that miserable and scan- 
 dalous tracts which fell still-born from the 
 press when first published, and never got a 
 hearing — never were remembered or made 
 the slightest impression while he lived — 
 should be resuscitated and rehabilitated in 
 Mr. Tyerman's pages. It lends to such 
 productions an importance which never be- 
 longed to them ; it is, in fact, misleading, 
 because it leaves the impression that there 
 may have been some foundation for them, 
 or, at least, that they attracted some atten- 
 
268 The Living Wesley. 
 
 tion and possessed some importance at the 
 time. But, apart from this feature in Mr. 
 Tyerman's volumes, I can only thank him 
 most heartily for his ample and wonderful 
 research. If he were, in future editions, to 
 spare us needless details of the sort we have 
 indicated, he might save space for such 
 statements, reflections, and general views, 
 here and there, as would more distinctly 
 represent Wesley's character, position, and 
 motives, than has now been done even in 
 these volumes. We want to be made to 
 understand Wesley by the light and sym- 
 pathy proper to his own character, objects, 
 and surroundings ; to judge him as if we 
 had lived, both then and now, with him and 
 his contemporaries, as well as in this pres- 
 ent age. The mere facts Mr. Tyerman 
 gives, and also the correspondence, in part ; 
 but still Wesley is judged too much by the 
 light and feeling of to-day instead of by the 
 light of his own circumstances and age. 
 Nevertheless, with whatever drawbacks, Mr. 
 Tyerman has done a great work, and a 
 work which greatly needed to be done. He 
 
Disposition and Character Vindicated. 269 
 
 has furnished perfect means of knowledge ; 
 the means, indeed, if he is carefully read, of 
 correcting himself where he is wrong. He 
 has given a most interesting narrative — the 
 interest of which is proved by the large sale 
 of his volumes. His narrative of the most 
 important parts of Wesley's life is particu- 
 larly full and good. The last two chapters, 
 for example, are complete and impressive 
 in a high degree ; presenting Wesley's later 
 years and last days as they had never been 
 presented before. In fine, Mr. Tyerman 
 has furnished almost complete materials 
 from which to prepare a remolded history 
 of Wesley, which shall, with perfect realiza- 
 tion, exhibit him as he grew and changed, 
 and was enlarged from stage to stage — as 
 he felt and judged and acted from point to 
 point of his eventful life* 
 
 * The date of Wesley's death was March 2, 1791. His 
 age was eighty-seven. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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