The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 1 (of 3)

WHITEFIELD, during the whole of the year 1745, was in America. Charles Wesley spent about thirty-eight weeks in London; and about fourteen in Bristol, Wales, and the west of England. Wesley himself was nearly five months in London and its vicinity; about a month in Bristol and the neighbourhood; two months were spent in a tour to Cornwall; and four months in two journeys to Newcastle and the north of England.

Persecution somewhat abated, especially in the form of printed attacks and scandals; not because Methodism was less hated, but because the attention of the country was turned to the dangers arising from the invasion of the popish Pretender.

In Cornwall, however, Thomas Maxfield was seized for a soldier, and was put into the dungeon at Penzance. Edward Greenfield, of St. Just, a tanner, with a wife and seven children, was arrested under a warrant signed by Dr. Borlase. Wesley asked what objection there was to this peaceable and inoffensive man. The answer was, “The man is well enough in other things; but the gentlemen cannot bear his impudence. Why, sir, he says he knows his sins are forgiven.” This Cornish persecution was principally promoted by men like Borlase and Eustick. The latter came with a warrant for Wesley’s arrest; but sneaked away from its execution, like a blustering poltroon. While Wesley was preaching at Gwennap, two men, raging like maniacs, rode into the midst of the congregation, and began to lay hold upon the people. In the midst of the disturbance, Wesley and his friends commenced singing; when Mr. B. lost his patience, and bawled to his attendants, “Seize him, seize him. I say, seize the preacher for his majesty’s service.” The attendants not moving, he cursed them with the greatest bitterness, leaped off his horse, caught hold of Wesley’s cassock, crying, “I take you to serve his majesty.” Wesley walked with him for three quarters of a mile, when the courage of the bumptious bravo failed him, and he was glad to let the poor parson go. The day after this ignoble capture, Wesley was at Falmouth, where the rabble surrounded the house in which he was lodging, and roared, “Bring out the Canorum! Where is the Canorum?” (an unmeaning word which the Cornish generally used instead of Methodist.) They then forced open the outer door, and setting their shoulders to the inner one, cried out, “Avast, lads, avast!” Away went all the hinges; Wesley stepped into the midst of the privateering mob, and asked one after another, “To which of you have I done any wrong? To you? Or you? Or you?” All seemed speechless, until, thus questioning his furious assailants, Wesley found himself in the open street, where he cried to the assembled crowd, “Neighbours, countrymen! Do you desire to hear me speak?” “Yes, yes,” they answered vehemently; “he shall speak, he shall; no one shall hinder him!” Meanwhile, Mr. Thomas, the clergyman, and some other gentlemen came up; Wesley was rescued; his horse was sent before him to Penryn; he was despatched by water; and an item of nine shillings and some odd pence appeared in the parochial accounts “for driving the Methodists out of the parish.”[554]

Wesley’s troubles, however, were not ended. His enemies ran along the shore to receive him at his landing. Wesley there confronted them, and, speaking to their leader, said, “I wish you a good night;” to which the wretch replied, “I wish you were in hell,” and then turned away with his companions. Wesley mounted his horse, and hurried forward to Tolcarn, where he had to preach the same evening. On the way, five well dressed horsemen were awaiting him, with a special warrant, from the Helstone magistrates, for his arrest. He rode into the midst of them, and announced who he was. A friendly clergyman, Mr. Collins, of Redruth, accidentally came by, and told the gentlemen that he had known Wesley at the Oxford university. Conversation followed, and Wesley was allowed to proceed upon his journey; one of those who had come out for his arrest telling him, that the reason of all this annoyance was, that all the gentlemen round about affirmed, that, for a long time, he had been in France and Spain; was now sent to England by the Pretender, and was raising societies to join him at his coming.

In the midst of all this, Wesley courageously rode to and fro, preaching from, “Love your enemies;” “Watch and pray;” and, “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” At Tolcarn, while he was preaching, the mob assembled, and suddenly pushed him from the high wall on which he was standing. At Trevonan, just after he had begun his sermon, the constable and others came, and read the proclamation against riots. At Stithians, the churchwardens seized one of his hearers, and pressed him for a soldier.

Whilst these outrages were being perpetrated in Cornwall, Richard Moss was arrested at Epworth for preaching; but was delivered through the interference of Mr. Maw, in whose house he prayed and sang hymns till midnight; and then left for Robert Taylor’s, at Burnham, where he and the Epworth Methodists continued praying and praising God, till about four o’clock in the morning. At Betley, near Nantwich, a gentleman threatened to hire a mob to pull down the Methodist meeting-house, and to send all the Methodists for soldiers. At Bristol, a Methodist backslider declared he would “make affidavit that he had seen Wesley administer extreme unction to a woman, and give her a wafer, and say that was her passport to heaven.”[555] At Woodley, in Cheshire, John Bennet and three other Methodists were pressed for soldiers, most of the press gang being Dissenters. The reverend Mr. Henry Wickham, one of the magistrates for the west riding of Yorkshire, issued a warrant to the constable of Keighley, “to convey the body of Jonathan Reeves to his majesty’s gaol and castle of York;” the only crime of which Jonathan was guilty being that of calling sinners to repentance; though the reverend magistrate chose to describe him as “a spy among us, and a dangerous man to the person and government of his majesty King George.”[556] In Exeter, says The London Evening Post, for May 16, 1745, the Methodists had a meeting-house behind the Guildhall; and, on May 6, the mob gathered at the door, and pelted those who entered with potatoes, mud, and dung. On coming out, the congregation were all beaten, without exception; many were trampled under foot; many fled without their hats and wigs; and some without coats, or with half of them torn to tatters. Some of the women were lamed, and others stripped naked, and rolled most indecently in the kennel, their faces being besmeared with lampblack, flour, and dirt. This disgraceful mob consisted of some thousands of cowardly blackguards, and the disturbance was continued till midnight. The same newspaper, in its number issued on May 25, relates, with a sneer, that a Methodist vagrant had been apprehended at Frome; that he was a person of “very ill fame,” and was committed to prison; but another of the same sect, “a Scotchman, a travelling apostle,” had succeeded him, and was meeting with surprising success. He had already wrought several miracles, one of which was making a deaf old woman hear angels playing on celestial harps in the upper regions; and another was that of converting his own oatmeal into cake, and transforming his water into wine. He also cured distempers of the body as well as of the mind; though he often killed the one with his drugs, to save the other with his doctrine. The Westminster Journal for June 8, 1745, narrates that a noted Methodist preacher, named Tolly, had been pressed for a soldier in Staffordshire, and had appeared before the magistrates, attended by many of his “deluded followers of both sexes, who pretended he was a learned and holy man; and yet, it appeared that he was only a journeyman joiner, and had done great mischief among the colliers.” The poor luckless joiner was, therefore, coupled to a sturdy tinker, and sent off to Stafford jail. He had already been pressed once before, and the Methodists had subscribed £40 to obtain his freedom, and were intending to repeat the kindness; but the impeccable editor of the Westminster Journal hopes that the magistrates will be proof against golden bribes; for “such wretches” as Tolly “are incendiaries in a nation,” and greatly to be dreaded.

These were the chief acts of violence committed against the Methodists in 1745. As already stated, the press was still employed, though it was not so bitter as it had been previously. Newspapers and magazines found that news about the Pretender’s invasion was more taking with the public than elaborated diatribes against Wesley and his friends. During the year, however, there was published, by a clergyman unknown to fame, an octavo pamphlet of eighty pages, with the title:—“An Apology for the Clergy, in a Letter to a Gentleman of Fortune and great Reading, lately turned Methodist and Hermit; wherein is shown the weakness of those Objections, which Separatists in general pretend first induced them to leave the Established Church, and to look out for better guides somewhere else. By J. Maud, M.A., vicar of St. Neots, in the county of Huntingdon.” Mr. Maud alleges, that there is a powerful confederacy against the Church,—“a mixed multitude of Socinians, Presbyterians, Independents, Quakers, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Meer Moralists, Jesuits, Free Thinkers, and Methodists, and an infinite tribe of nameless sects, all hallooed on by the vicar of Jesus Christ and his creatures, to tear Christians to pieces, and to make sport for infidels and atheists.” The pamphlet is a spirited defence of the clergy, whom the “Methodist and Hermit” had libelled, and an attempt to show, that it was no trivial matter to be a faultless minister of Christ in an age when it was considered “a rude affront to any polite audience to tell men of their faults, or so much as to mention these harsh and dreadful sounding words, hell, damnation, devil, without a canting paraphrase, or a formal apology.”

A second pamphlet, published in 1745, was, “The Question, Whether it be right to turn Methodist, considered in a Dialogue between two members of the Church of England.” 8vo, 79 pages. The Methodists are branded as “unskilful teachers, doing great mischief to the peace of the Church, and to the souls of poor, ignorant people; by raising vain janglings about regeneration; by resolving all religion into instantaneous faith, and faith itself into impulses and mere animal sensations; by setting aside all necessity for repentance; and by casting off all works, as unnecessary to salvation.” The pamphlet is ably written; but is extremely false.

Another attack on Methodism was one published in the Craftsman, of June 22, and copied in the London Magazine and other periodicals of the period. It was, in fact, an onslaught upon the government of the day, entitled “Ministerial Methodism, or Methodists in Politics;” but, in castigating ministers of state, it grossly calumniates ministers of Christ. The Methodists are an “unaccountable strange sect, whose religion is founded on madness and folly.” They “hold, that there is no justification by good works, but by faith and grace only; and hereby banish that Divine part of our constitution, reason; and cut off the most essential recommendation to heaven, virtue.” By this “depraved doctrine” of “weak and, perhaps, designing teachers, misguided souls are dangerously led astray.” The “men are far gone in their mad principles of religion, suspend the hand of industry, become inactive, and leave all to Providence, without exercising either their heads or hands.”

The article, though neatly written, was supremely silly: Wesley, at the urgent request of his friends, answered it;[557] but the thing was far more contemptible than some other attacks which had been allowed; properly enough, to pass unnoticed.

Another anti-Methodist publication, issued in 1745, was entitled, “An Earnest and Affectionate Address to the People called Methodists.” 12mo, 47 pages. This was published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and was distributed gratuitously.[558] Its author, an old antagonist, was the Rev. Dr. Stebbing.[559] Two editions were exhausted in 1745, and a third sent out in 1746. It allows the Methodists to be honest and well meaning; but they are “greatly imposed upon,” and “ignorantly serve the designs of enthusiasm, and give credit to the most extravagant and groundless pretences.” The writer proceeds, with considerable ability, to examine the Methodist doctrines of regeneration, justification by faith alone, and the operations of the Holy Spirit; and concludes by saying that, though the Methodist teachers at first were only distinguished by “a peculiar strictness and regularity, and a decent observance of the rules of the Church, it was not long that they kept within these bounds. Being admired and followed, they became vain and conceited, and proceeded to open censures and contempt of their brethren. They grew loud and furious in their accusations and railings. They made most presumptuous pretences to Divine communications and directions;” and, when “their errors were pointed out, by some of the highest and most considerable of the clergy, with all possible meekness and temper, their answers were saucy and petulant. Fresh bitterness arose; more arrogant boasting; and more uncharitable revilings. They seized a pulpit or two without leave; and, in defiance of the law, exercised their ministry in fields and commons, and other unlicensed places. They set aside and altered the liturgy at their pleasure, and made use of extempore effusions of their own in the public worship of God.”

Such were some of the allegations brought against Wesley and his friends at the instance of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Another pamphlet, published in the same year, was “A Serious Address to Lay-Methodists to beware of the false pretences of their Teachers. With an Appendix containing an account of the fatal and bloody effects of enthusiasm, in the case of the family of the Dutartres in South Carolina, which was attended with the murder of two persons, and the execution of four for those murders. By a Sincere Protestant.” 8vo, 29 pages.

This was a frothy composition, asserting that “the Methodist preachers are wandering lights, gadding about with canting assurances, and leading people into bogs of delusion.” Its author was Dr. Zachary Grey, already mentioned (page 325) as the author of “The Quakers and Methodists compared.”[560]

Besides all these attacks, Wesley had to endure much Moravian annoyance. At the commencement of the year, desiring to see once more his old friend Gambold, he called at James Hutton’s, and there met Mr. Simpson, “extremely gay, easy, and unconcerned;” “a new creature indeed! but not in the gospel sense.” Mr. Simpson, unhappily, was a specimen of others. The Moravians meant well; but they held and preached the grand old doctrine of salvation by faith only, so unguardedly that, as a matter of course, the rank weed of antinomianism sprung out of the soil of Christian truth. Antinomianism, according to Wesley, was now a torrent; not only in London but out of it. At Bristol, Wesley writes, “the Antinomians had taken true pains to seduce those who were showing their faith by their works; but they reaped little fruit of their bad labour; for, upon the most diligent inquiry, I could not find that seven persons out of seven hundred had been turned out of the old Bible way.” Whitefield, writing from America, remarks: “Antinomianism, I find, begins to show its head, and stalk abroad. May the glorious Redeemer cause it to hide its head again; and prevent His children’s spirits being embittered against each other.”[561] In August, James Hutton, by order of Zinzendorf, published, in the Daily Advertiser, an advertisement, declaring that the Moravians had no connection with the two Wesleys; and subjoining one of the count’s prophecies, that Wesley and his brother would “soon run their heads against the wall.” To this Wesley simply said: “We will not, if we can help it.” Dissensions also had sprung up among the Unitas Fratrum themselves. Richard Viney had denounced Zinzendorf’s “more than papal domination;” and large numbers of the Yorkshire Moravians had sympathised with him. Zinzendorf was furious, and, in February 1744, wrote from Germany as follows:—

This was pitiful tomfoolery; the raging of a lilliputian and disappointed pope.

During the year, a 12mo pamphlet, of forty-one pages, was published, with the title, “Extracts of Letters relating to Methodists and Moravians. By a Layman;” in which the Moravians are censured—1. For laying aside the use of their intellectual faculties in religious matters. 2. For refusing to take oaths before a magistrate. 3. For declining to take up arms in defence of their country, at the command of the civil power. And, 4. For their praying to and praising so constantly the Son of God, and so very seldom the Father. This was supposed to be written by Sir John Thorold; but as it makes no attack upon Wesley and his immediate followers it need not be farther noticed.

Another, and more important publication, was the following:—“Remarks on the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s last Journal, wherein he gives an account of the tenets and proceedings of the Moravians, especially those in England, and of the divisions and perplexities of the Methodists: showing, by the concessions of Mr. Wesley himself, the many errors relating to faith and practice, which have already arisen among these deluded people; and, in a particular manner, explaining the very fatal tendency of denying good works to be conditions of our justification. In a letter to that gentleman. By Thomas Church, A.M., vicar of Battersea, and prebendary of St. Paul’s.” 8vo, 76 pages.

The pamphlet is calmly and ably written, and thus concludes: “The consequences of Methodism, which have hitherto appeared, are bad enough to induce you to leave it. It has introduced many disorders—Enthusiasm, Antinomianism, Calvinism, a neglect and contempt of God’s ordinances and almost all other duties, a great increase of our sects and divisions, and, in fine, presumption and despair in greater abundance than they were known before.”

The letter is dated, November 3, 1744, and has the following postscript:—“If you think proper to return any answer, I hope you will attentively consider the points objected to you, and not put me off with such a slight, superficial, declamatory thing as Mr. Whitefield, without any regard to his own character or the importance of the subject, published last year under the title of an answer to my letter to him; in which he did not vouchsafe to consider any one argument I had urged against him, and which no serious man could think deserved any notice.”

The “Remarks” deserved an answer. Wesley acknowledged, in after years, that Church “wrote as a gentleman.”[563] “Mr. Church,” said he, in 1777, “was another kind of opponent than Mr. Rowland Hill; a gentleman, a scholar, and a Christian; and as such he both spoke and wrote.”[564]

Accordingly, first of all, Mr. Webb published a letter in vindication of Wesley’s Journal, in reply to Mr. Church;[565] and then Wesley himself issued a 12mo pamphlet of forty-six pages, entitled, “An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Church’s Remarks on the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s last Journal.”

Wesley thus begins:—“Reverend sir,—My first desire and prayer to God is, that I may live peaceably with all men: my next, that if I must dispute at all, it may be with a man of understanding. Thus far, I rejoice on the present occasion. I rejoice also, that I have confidence of your sincerity, of your real desire to promote the glory of God, by peace and goodwill among men. I am likewise thankful to God for your calm manner of writing (a few paragraphs excepted); and yet more for this,—that such an opponent should, by writing in such a manner, give me an opportunity of explaining myself on those very heads whereon I wanted an occasion so to do.”

He then proceeds to say, that he wholly disapproved of the doctrines, “that there are no degrees in faith; that, in order to attain faith, we must abstain from all the ordinances of God; that a believer does not grow in holiness; and that he is not obliged to keep the commandments of God;” but, at the same time, he remarks, that he had already cleared the Moravian church from the charge of holding the first of these doctrines; that, with respect to the ordinances of God, their practice was better than their principle; and that he never knew a Moravian, except Molther, who affirmed that a believer does not grow in holiness. “Still,” he adds, “I am afraid their whole church is tainted with quietism, universal salvation, and antinomian opinions.” “As a church, they exalted themselves above measure, and despised others. He had scarce heard one Moravian brother own his church to be wrong in anything. Many of them he had heard speak of it, as if it were infallible; and some of them had set it up as the judge of all the earth, of all persons as well as doctrines. Some had said, there was no true church but theirs, and that there were no true Christians out of it. These were exceeding great mistakes; yet in as great mistakes holy men had both lived and died;—Thomas à Kempis, for instance, and Francis Sales.” He condemns them for “despising and decrying self denial; for their extending Christian liberty beyond all warrant of holy writ; for their want of zeal for good works; and, above all, for their using guile;” but he wishes not to condemn all for the sake of some, and expresses the belief that, next to some thousands in the Church of England, that is mainly the Methodists, the Moravians, with whom he had formed acquaintance, were, upon the whole, the best Christians in the world. They had much evil among them, but more good. They were the most self inconsistent people now existing; and yet he could not help but speak of them with tender affection, were it only for the benefits he had received from them; and, if the stumbling blocks above mentioned were put away, he should desire union with them above all things under heaven.

After this, Wesley gives his latest thoughts upon justification by faith alone, as published in his “Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion,” which will be noticed hereafter.

In reply to Church’s assertion, that Wesley was guilty of enthusiasm to the highest degree, Wesley remarks, that he is no more like Church’s picture of an enthusiast than he is like a centaur. He made the word of God the rule of all his actions, and no more followed any secret impulse instead thereof, than he followed Mahommed or Confucius. He rested not on ecstasies at all, for he never felt them; but judged of his spiritual estate by the improvement of his heart and the tenour of his life conjointly. He desired neither his dreams nor his waking thoughts to be at all regarded, unless just so far as they agreed with the oracles of God.

Before leaving the Moravians, reference must be made to another pamphlet, issued in 1745. “A Short View of the Difference between the Moravian Brethren lately in England and the Rev. Mr. John and Charles Wesley. Extracted chiefly from a late Journal. London: printed by W. Strahan. Sold at the Foundery, etc. 1745.” 12mo, 24 pages. The pamphlet is dated, May 20, 1745, and is signed by both the Wesleys. Appended are six hymns bearing on the subject. The differences are contained in ten propositions; but having been referred to so frequently in the preceding pages, it is scarcely necessary to repeat them here. Suffice it to say, that the publication of these “Differences” was probably owing to the publication of Church’s remarks on Wesley’s Journal; and, that it was one, if not the main, reason of Zinzendorf and Hutton publishing, in the Daily Advertiser, that the Moravians had now no connection with the Wesleys. Wesley, in his pamphlet, uses language more than ordinarily strong. He pronounces several of the Moravian dogmas “utterly false.” He declares, that Zinzendorf’s definition of faith, namely, the historical knowledge that Christ has been a man and suffered death for us, “is a proposition directly subversive of the whole of the Christian revelation;” and that his doctrine, that “a believer is not holy in himself, but in Christ only,” is “a palpable self contradiction, and senseless jargon.” Zinzendorf’s temper was touchy, and it is not surprising, that he resented Wesley’s plain speaking, and commanded Hutton to publish the advertisement just mentioned.

The controversy still continued; and, during 1745, two other tracts were published by Wesley. (1) “A Dialogue between an Antinomian and his friend.” 12mo, 12 pages. (2) “A Second Dialogue between an Antinomian and his friend.” 12mo, 12 pages.

In both these tracts, the monstrousness of the Moravian and other errors is mercilessly exposed and censured. “All that is really uncommon in your doctrine,” says Wesley to his antinomian friend, “is a heap of broad absurdities, in most of which you grossly contradict yourselves, as well as Scripture and common sense. In the meantime, you boast and vapour, as if ye were the men, and wisdom should die with you. I pray God to humble you, and prove you, and show you what is in your heart!”

This was partly written in answer to a Dialogue that had been published by William Cudworth, who was, for some years, a follower of Whitefield, and then became minister of an Independent congregation, in Margaret Street, London, and died in 1763.[566] The biographer of the Countess of Huntingdon states, that Cudworth “died in the comforts of the doctrines of grace, leaving behind him a character for eminent holiness and integrity.”[567] Wesley’s description of the man is widely different; but, if Wesley ever felt the least bitterness towards any of his opponents, it was towards Cudworth. He describes him as an Antinomian; an absolute, avowed enemy to the law of God, which he never preached, or professed to preach, but termed all legalists who did. With him, preaching the law was an abomination. He would preach Christ, as he called it, but without one word either of holiness or good works.[568]

Mr. Cudworth will again cross our path. Suffice it to say here, that, between him and Wesley, no love was lost. Affection for him was at zero; and he abhorred Wesley “as much as he did the pope, and ten times more than he did the devil.”[569]

As already stated, Wesley made, during 1745, two journeys to Newcastle and the north of England.

The first of these was commenced on the 18th of February, and lasted to the 11th of May. Richard Moss was his companion, and not a few were the adventures with which they met. Locomotion was rendered extremely difficult in consequence of snow. In some places, a thaw, succeeded by a frost, had made the ground like glass; and often they were obliged to walk, it being impossible to ride, their horses frequently falling, even while they were leading them. At Gateshead Fell, the whole country appeared a great pathless waste of white; and, but for an honest man who became their guide, they knew not how to reach Newcastle. Wesley writes:—“Many a rough journey have I had before, but one like this I never had; between wind, and hail, and rain, and ice, and snow, and driving sleet, and piercing cold: but it is past; these days will return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been.” This rough journey of two hundred and eighty miles was performed on horseback, in six days, at the rate of nearly fifty miles a day.

The besetting sin of the Newcastle Methodists was the being offended with each other; and Wesley’s first work was to reconcile wrangling neighbours. On the second Sunday after his arrival, a brutal bully, who had been accustomed to abuse the Orphan House family, and to throw stones at them, assaulted Wesley in Pilgrim Street, and cursed and pushed him. The next day the following characteristic note was sent:—

Robert Young immediately came, and meekly begged pardon, and promised to amend his ways.

On the 11th of March, Wesley wrote a long letter to a friend, giving an account of the way in which the Methodist societies had sprung into existence, and then stating succinctly the present position of himself and his coadjutors. They were willing to make any concession, which their conscience would permit, in order to heal the breach between the clergy and themselves; but they could not desist from preaching the doctrine of inward and present salvation, as attainable by faith alone; nor could they promise not to preach in private houses, or in the open air; for, as things were now circumstanced, this would amount to a promise not to preach at all. They could not, with a safe conscience, dissolve their societies, for they apprehended that many souls would be lost thereby; neither could they advise the members one by one, their number rendering this impossible. They could not suffer those who walked disorderly still to mingle with the rest, because evil communications corrupt good manners; nor could they discharge the leaders, because it was through the leaders that disorderly walkers were detected. While they were resolved to behave with reverence towards the bishops of the Church, and with tenderness both to the character and persons of the inferior clergy, they desired not to be admitted to their pulpits, if they believed them to be preachers of false doctrine, or had the least scruple of conscience concerning this; but, at the same time, they desired that those clergymen who believed their doctrines to be true, and had no scruple at all in the matter, should not be either publicly or privately discouraged from inviting them to preach in their churches. If any one thought them heretics or schismatics, and deemed it his duty to preach or print against them, be it so; they had not the least objection; but, before doing so, they desired that he would calmly consider both sides of the question, and not condemn them unheard. If they were guilty of either Popery, sedition, or immorality, they desired no favour; but they also desired, that senseless tales concerning them should not be credited without proof. They desired not any preferment, favour, or recommendation, from authorities either in Church or state; but they asked—1. That, if anything material were laid to their charge, they might be permitted to answer for themselves. 2. That the clergy and magistrates would hinder their dependants from stirring up the rabble against them. And, 3. That they would effectually suppress, and thoroughly discountenance, all riots and popular insurrections, which evidently strike at the foundation of all government, whether of Church or state.

Such was Wesley’s position in 1745. Though the document was not published in his Journal for eight years afterwards, it was, in fact, a manifesto defining his relations to Church and state, and the course of action he felt it his duty to pursue; and, viewed in such a light, it is of great importance.

During his stay at Newcastle, Wesley received and entertained a strange visitor in his Orphan House. This was none other than a popish priest. Twelve months before, a royal proclamation had been published, ordering the laws against papists to be enforced, and commanding all such religionists to depart from the cities of London and Westminster; and likewise forbidding them to leave their country homes, in any direction, for more than five miles’ distance. This proclamation was occasioned by the preparations that were being made by the young Pretender to invade Great Britain. Papists, and especially papistical priests, were regarded, by the general public, with suspicion and abhorrence. This was natural. Their disloyalty to the house of Hanover was a well known fact; and their intrigues, in favour of the Stuart family, were now culminating in the approaching invasion on behalf of the eldest son of James II. Under such circumstances, it was a bold, we think an imprudent, act for Wesley to make a priest of the Church of Rome his guest. Still the visit led to results which, to the writer at least, are interesting.

The priest’s name was Adams, or Watson Adams. His home was at Osmotherley (the author’s native place), a village of about a thousand inhabitants, sixty miles south of Newcastle. The place had been famous as a papistical settlement, and was still resorted to by not a few adherents of that religion. The writer’s grandmother, for a long series of years, walked, every Sunday morning, over a bleak, roadless moor, full of bogs and pitfalls, a distance of at least twelve miles there and back, for the purpose of attending, in Osmotherley chapel, the reading of a few Latin prayers, not a word of which had she scholarship enough to understand. Here had been an important convent of Franciscan friars, the chapel of which was still standing. In the immediate neighbourhood were the ruins of another popish edifice, known by the name of “the Lady’s chapel”; and, within a mile, were the beautiful and extensive remains of Mount Grace, a Carthusian priory, founded in 1396.

Wesley’s account of the priest’s visit is as follows:—

The odd acquaintance thus begun was perpetuated. A week after this (on Easter Monday), Wesley began the day by preaching, at half-past four o’clock, to a large congregation, including “many of the rich and honourable.” He then set out for London, and, at eight o’clock, preached in the open air, to “a large and quiet congregation,” at Chester-le-street. Starting again, he reached Northallerton in the evening, and made the inn his preaching place. The priest, Adams, and some of his neighbours, including Elizabeth Tyerman, a Quakeress, formed part of his congregation. The priest wished Wesley to come and preach in his house at Osmotherley. The invitation was at once accepted; Wesley mounted; and, travelling up hill and down hill, seven miles more, reached the village a little before ten at night; having ridden during the day, over execrable roads, a distance of at least sixty miles, and preached thrice. Of course, at this season of the year, it had long been dark; and, in a village so sequestered, most of the inhabitants had retired to rest; but the priest and his friends went round the place, and, arousing the people, succeeded, in about an hour, in collecting a congregation in the chapel which formerly belonged to the Franciscan friars. Wesley preached to them, and, after midnight, went to bed, feeling, as he expressed it, “no weariness at all.” At five in the morning, he preached again, on Romans iii. 22, a sermon, in a popish chapel, on the great anti-popish doctrine of justification by faith alone, part of the congregation having sat up all night for fear they should not awake in sufficient time to hear him. Many of them either were or had been papists, and one who was present was the Quakeress already mentioned. After the sermon, this unbaptized woman, abruptly addressing Wesley, asked, “Dost thou think water baptism an ordinance of Christ?” Wesley replied, “What saith Peter? ‘Who can forbid water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Ghost even as we?’” Wesley adds: “I spoke but little more, before she cried out, ‘’Tis right! ’tis right! I will be baptized.’ And so she was, the same hour.“[570]

On reaching Leeds, a week afterwards, Wesley wrote, as follows, to his brother Charles.

He then proceeds to give an account of his journey to Northallerton, where he found “a noble people, who received the word with all readiness of mind”; and of his setting out for Osmotherley, where he says: “I preached in a large chapel which belonged, a few years since, to a convent of Franciscan friars. I found I was got into the very centre of all the papists in the north of England. ‘Commessatorem haud satis commodum.’ This also hath God wrought.”[571]

Thus began Methodism in Osmotherley, Wesley preaching the first sermon, in a popish chapel, at eleven o’clock at night, having been brought to the place by a popish priest and a Quaker woman. A society was formed soon after, the original class papers and society book of which, for 1750, and onwards, are still in existence. Four years afterwards, a chapel was erected, which still stands, and which, up to the year 1865, for the long period of one hundred and eleven years, was uninterruptedly occupied as a Methodist place of worship, being, with one exception (Coleford, in Somersetshire), the oldest Methodist chapel in the world, continuously used as such. In it, the writer was converted, and painfully he regrets that, in the present mania for new chapels, the society, without the least necessity, were barbarous enough to quit it for a more modern structure, not a whit more adapted to their church necessities, and, of course, destitute of the unequalled memories belonging to the ugly, but venerable pile, now, we fear, left to rats and ruin.

Osmotherley, nestled beneath moorland mountains, was one of Wesley’s favourite haunts. Though seven miles from the direct road between London and Newcastle, and a place difficult to reach, he paid at least sixteen visits to the place to which he was so strangely introduced. Nor did he forget or neglect his old friend, the popish priest. His house, on some occasions, was Wesley’s home. When he visited him, in 1776, he found him “just quivering over the grave”; and, at his visit a year later, he writes:—“I found my old friend was just dead, after living a recluse life near fifty years. From one that attended him, I learned that the sting of death was gone, and he calmly delivered up his soul to God.”

Leaving a place, for lingering too long at which the writer craves forbearance, we must follow Wesley in his evangelistic wanderings. He made his way to Sykehouse, to Epworth, and to Grimsby, at which last mentioned town he preached to a “stupidly rude and noisy congregation, encouraged thereto by a drunken alehouse keeper.” At Epworth, he preached at the market cross, having most of the adults in the town to hear him. He went to his father’s church, and there heard his old acquaintance, John Romley, preach a sermon which, “from beginning to end, was a railing accusation.” He returned to Leeds, Armley, Birstal, and Bradford.

Leaving the west riding, he made a tour in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire, and then came round to Sheffield, where he preached on the floor of the Methodist meeting-house, “which the good Protestant mob had just pulled down,” to the largest and one of the quietest Sheffield congregations he had ever seen. He then made his way to Nottingham, Wednesbury, and Birmingham, at the last of which places “stones and dirt were flying from every side, almost without intermission, for near an hour.” On Saturday, May 11, he got to London, from which he had been absent about twelve weeks. Here he found things in an unsatisfactory state. There were more than two thousand members, above two thirds of whom were women.[572] “The sower of tares had not been idle. Many were shaken; and some, who once seemed pillars, were moved from their steadfastness.” Numbers were “hugely in love” with what Wesley calls, “that solemn trifle, Robert Barclay’s Apology.” This he and his brother read over with them. “Their eyes were opened; they saw Barclay’s nakedness, and were ashamed.”

Having employed a month in London, Wesley set out for Cornwall, where he spent the next five weeks. The persecutions he encountered have been related at the commencement of the present chapter. Suffice it to remark here, that, during this Cornish tour, he did what he was rarely permitted to do elsewhere; he preached in not fewer than four churches, with the consent, or at the request, of their respective ministers. An odd event also happened to him at St. Just, where, as he himself was about to begin to preach, a kind of gentlewoman took his place, and “scolded, screamed, spit, and stamped, wrung her hands and distorted her face,” most violently. She had been bred a papist, and had been rejoiced to hear that Wesley was one; but, being now undeceived and disappointed, her anger was quite equal to what her joy had been. Like a true philosopher, Wesley let the vociferous lady have all the talking to herself, and “took no notice of her at all, good or bad.” Wesley returned to London on August 16.

Terrible was the national excitement which now existed. A few weeks before, Charles Edward Stuart had embarked from Brittany, with about fifty of his Scotch and Irish adherents, and had set up his standard in Scotland, emblazoned with the motto, “Tandem triumphans.” On the 4th of September, he proclaimed his father in the town of Perth; within a fortnight, he entered Edinburgh; and, a few days afterwards, fought the royal troops at Preston Pans, and was victorious. Under the pretentious title of “regent of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland,” he marched his increasing forces to Carlisle, Lancaster, Manchester, and Derby; and was then driven back to Scotland, where, on April 16, 1746, was fought the decisive battle of Culloden. These brief remarks will help to illustrate Wesley’s Journal.

Five days after the proclamation of the Pretender, namely, on September 9, Wesley set out from London to Newcastle. On his way he called upon Doddridge, the great Dissenter, and addressed his students. His purpose was to go round by Epworth; but, “hearing of more and more commotions in the north,” he hastened to Newcastle. At Leeds, the mob pelted him and his society with dirt and stones, and were “ready to knock out all their brains for joy that the Duke of Tuscany was emperor.” At Osmotherley, he took occasion to visit the Carthusian priory, already mentioned; and, after describing the walls, cells, and gardens, expressed a sentiment which, however just, was at that time far from being popular:—“Who knows but some of the poor superstitious monks, who once served God here according to the light they had, may meet us, by-and-by, in that house of God, ‘not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens’?” On September 18, he reached Newcastle, in, what he calls, an “acceptable time.”

News had just arrived that the Pretender had entered Edinburgh. The inhabitants were in the utmost consternation. Wesley at once commenced preaching, selecting as his text, “Who can tell, if God will return, and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?” The Newcastle Courant, for September 14 to September 21, is before us, containing an account of an association of his majesty’s Protestant subjects in Ireland, pledging their faith and honour, that they will, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes, oppose the abominable and unnatural rebellion now carried on in favour of the popish Pretender. There is also an address to the king by seven hundred and thirty of the merchants of London, and from the lord provost, magistrates, and council of Edinburgh, to the same effect.

The following loyal, if not finished, lines are published:—