We must proceed to another matter. Wesley writes:—

In another place, he writes:—

No doubt the whole of this is strictly true; but there are other facts to be remembered.

By the preaching of the two Wesleys and of Whitefield, a large number of persons in London had been converted; and most of these had been incorporated in the Moravian bands. When Wesley went to Bristol, at the end of March, the work in London devolved, to a great extent, on his brother Charles. Disputes soon sprung up. On Easter day, Charles had a conversation with Zinzendorf “about motions, visions, and dreams, and was confirmed in his dislike to them.” On April 28, Whitefield preached in Islington churchyard; and, after he had done, Bowers, a Moravian, got up to speak. Charles Wesley says: “I conjured him not; but he beat me down, and followed his impulse.” On the 16th of May, a dispute arose, in the Moravian meeting at Fetter Lane, about lay preaching. Many were zealous for it; but Whitefield and Charles Wesley declared against it. In June, another Moravian, John Shaw, “the self-ordained priest,” as Charles Wesley calls him, “was brimful of proud wrath and fierceness”; and two others, Bowers and Bray, whom Whitefield designated “two grand enthusiasts,” followed Charles to Blendon, “drunk with the spirit of delusion.” In the Moravian society, Shaw “pleaded for his spirit of prophecy”; and charged Charles Wesley “with love of pre-eminence, and with making his proselytes twofold more the children of the devil than they were before.” Many misunderstandings and offences had crept in; and Wesley came from Bristol to put things right. A humiliation meeting was held at Fetter Lane; and “we acknowledged,” says Wesley, “our having grieved God by our divisions; ‘one saying, I am of Paul; another, I am of Apollos’; by our leaning again to our own works, and trusting in them, instead of Christ; by our resting in those little beginnings of sanctification, which it had pleased Him to work in our souls; and, above all, by blaspheming His work among us, imputing it either to nature, to the force of imagination and animal spirits, or even to the delusion of the devil.” Things seem to have proceeded more smoothly till about September, when, in the absence of the two Wesleys, “certain men crept in among them unawares, telling them, that they had deceived themselves, and had no true faith at all. ‘For,’ said they, ‘none has any justifying faith, who has ever any doubt or fear, which you know you have; or who has not a clean heart, which you know you have not; nor will you ever have it, till you leave off running to church and sacrament, and praying, and singing, and reading either the Bible, or any other book; for you cannot use these things without trusting in them. Therefore, till you leave them off, you can never have true faith; you can never till then trust in the blood of Christ.’”[330]

This was a serious heresy; and, on November 1, Wesley hurried up to London to put a check to it. He acknowledges, that the Moravians still held the grand doctrine of justification by faith; and that the fruits of faith were “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” He testifies, that they were free from the sins of swearing, theft, gluttony, drunkenness, and adultery; that they had no diversions but such as become saints; that they regarded not outward adorning, and were not slothful in business. He confesses, that they fed the hungry, and clothed the naked; that their discipline was scarce inferior to that of the apostolic age; and, that every one knew and kept his proper place; but, despite all this, he found them far from perfect.

On first entering the society, he found Mr. Bray “highly commending the being still before God; and speaking largely of the danger that attended the doing of outward works, and of the folly of people running about to church and sacrament.”

On Sunday, November 4, the “society met at seven in the morning, and continued silent till eight.” In the evening, at Fetter Lane, “some of the brethren asserted in plain terms: 1. That, till they had true faith, they ought to be still; that is, to abstain from the means of grace, the Lord’s supper in particular. 2. That the ordinances are not means of grace, there being no other means than Christ.”

Three days later, Wesley had a long conference with Spangenberg, who substantially avowed the same opinions. At night, the Fetter Lane society sat an hour without speaking; and then there followed a warm dispute, to prove that none ought to receive the Lord’s supper till he had “the full assurance of faith.” Every day Wesley met with many “who once knew in whom they had believed, but were now thrown into idle reasonings, and were filled with doubts and fears. Many had left off the means of grace, saying they must now cease from their own works, and must trust in Christ alone; that they were poor sinners, and had nothing to do but to lie at His feet.”

Wesley did his utmost to correct this state of things, and then, on November 21, went back to Bristol. On his way, he came to Wycombe, where he unexpectedly met Mr. Gambold and a Mr. Robson. He writes: “After much consultation and prayer, we agreed—1. To meet yearly at London on the eve of Ascension day. 2. To fix then the business to be done the ensuing year; where, when, and by whom. 3. To meet quarterly there, as many as can; viz., on the second Tuesday in July, October, and January. 4. To send a monthly account to one another, of what God hath done in each of our stations. 5. To inquire whether Messrs. Hall, Sympson, Rogers, Ingham, Hutchins, Kinchin, Stonehouse, Cennick, Oxlee, and Brown will join with us herein. 6. To consider whether there be any others of our spiritual friends, who are able and willing so to do.”[331] This arrangement is important as indicative of Wesley’s purpose at this early period of his history; but it was never put into execution. The rupture with the Moravians made it a dead letter.

Five weeks afterwards, he returned to London with a heavy heart. “Scarce one in ten of the Moravians retained his first love; and most of the rest were in the utmost confusion, biting and devouring one another.” His soul was sick of their “sublime divinity.” He had a long conversation with Molther, one of their ministers, and ascertained that the difference between them was the following:—

1. The Moravians held that there are no degrees of faith; and that no man has any degree of it, before he has the full assurance of faith, the abiding witness of the Spirit, or the clear perception that Christ dwelleth in him. Wesley dissented from this.

2. The Moravians taught that the way to attain faith is to wait for Christ, and be still: that is, not to use the means of grace; not to go to church; not to communicate; not to fast; not to use private prayer; not to read the Scriptures; not to do temporal good; nor to attempt doing spiritual good; because it was impossible for a man to use means like these without trusting in them. Wesley believed just the opposite.

3. The Moravians thought that in propagating faith, guile might be used: (1) By saying what we know will deceive the hearers, or lead them to think the thing which is not; (2) by describing things a little beyond the truth, in order to their coming up to it; (3) by speaking as if we meant what we did not mean. Wesley denounced all this.

4. The Moravians believed that the fruits of their thus propagating the faith in England were: (1) Much good had been done by it; (2) many were unsettled from a false foundation; (3) many were brought into true stillness; (4) some were grounded on the true foundation, who were wrong before. Wesley, on the contrary, thought that very little good, but much hurt, had been done, by such proceedings.

This was the state of things when Wesley “began the first Methodist society in England.” He was dissatisfied with his old Moravian friends, and well he might. He had been prominent in the formation of their society at Fetter Lane, on the 1st of May, 1738; but his hopes and aspirations concerning it were blighted; and hence he formed another society of his own. Moravian heresies had, in London at least, corrupted the Moravian bands; numbers were offended; these and others repaired to Wesley; Wesley took down their names, and met them every Thursday evening for spiritual advice and prayer; success followed; and the Methodist society was instituted. We must return to this subject in the next chapter.

Wesley spent most of the year 1739 in Bristol and the immediate neighbourhood; but, at different times, he rendered important service in other places. At Blackheath, he preached to twelve or fourteen thousand people; and on Kennington Common to twenty thousand. In Moorfields, he had a congregation of ten thousand. In Gloucester he preached to seven thousand;[332] and in Bath, Bradford, and elsewhere, to great multitudes. He also preached, at least once, in the mansion of Lady Huntingdon, taking a bold text for such a fashionable audience: “The cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires of other things, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”

He also met with some adventures and incidents worth mentioning. In riding to Rose Green, his horse suddenly fell, and rolled over and over. A gentleman, at Bradford, who had wished him good luck in the name of the Lord, told him that his fellow collegians at Oxford always considered him “a little crack-brained.” In one instance, the pressgang came when he was in the middle of his sermon, and seized one of his hearers. While preaching in Turner’s Hall, London, the floor gave way, but fortunately the vault below was filled with hogsheads of tobacco, so that the crowded congregation only sunk a foot or two, and he proceeded without further interruption. At Oxford, he was grieved to find that none now visited the workhouse and the prison, and that the Methodist little school was about to be given up. At Stanley, on a little green, he preached for two hours amid the darkness of an October night. At Newport, he addressed “the most insensible, ill behaved people” he had seen in Wales; one old man cursing and swearing incessantly, and taking up a great stone to throw at him. The people of Wales generally he found as ignorant of gospel truth as the Cherokee Indians; and asks, “What spirit is he of, who had rather these poor creatures should perish for lack of knowledge than that they should be saved, even by the exhortations of Howel Harris, or an itinerant preacher?” Words these well worth pondering; for they are added proof, that Wesley, even as early as 1739, was not opposed to the employment of lay evangelists.

The principle upon which Wesley acted was to shrink from nothing that he judged to be conducive to his being made a Christian.[333] On this ground he went to Georgia, and to Germany; and says, “I am ready to go to Abyssinia or China, or whithersoever it shall please God to call me.” He was accused of being an enemy of the Church of England; but maintained that he was not. The doctrines he preached were the doctrines of the Church, as laid down in her prayers, articles, and homilies. He allows that there were five points of difference between him and many of the clergy; but he contends that they, not he, were unfaithful to the Church. The points were these:—1. Those from whom he differed spoke of justification, either as the same thing with sanctification, or as something consequent upon it. He believed it to be wholly distinct from sanctification, and necessarily antecedent to it. 2. They spoke of good works as the cause of justification. He believed the death and righteousness of Christ to be the whole and sole cause of it. 3. They spoke of good works as existing previous to justification. He believed that no good work is possible, previous to justification, and therefore no good work can be a condition of it; till we are justified we are ungodly, and incapable of good works; we are justified by faith alone, faith without works, faith producing all good works, yet including none. 4. They spoke of sanctification as if it were an outward thing. He believed it to be an inward thing,—the life of God in the soul of man; a participation of the Divine nature; the mind that was in Christ. 5. They spoke of the new birth as synonymous with baptism; or, at most, a change from a vicious to a virtuous life. He believed it to be an entire change of nature, from the image of the devil, wherein we are born, to the image of God; a change from earthly and sensual to heavenly and holy affections. “There is, therefore,” says he, “a wide, essential, fundamental, irreconcilable difference between us. If they speak the truth as it is in Jesus, I am found a false witness before God. But if I teach the way of God in truth, they are blind leaders of the blind.”[334] He contends that he “simply described the plain, old religion of the Church of England, which was now almost everywhere spoken against, under the new name of Methodism.”[335]

Wesley was a great reader; and some of the most interesting entries in his Journals are his critiques on books; but, in 1739, he seems to have been too busy preaching to have had time for reading. The only notice of this kind is the following: “1739, October 23. In riding to Bradford, I read over Mr. Law’s book on the new birth. Philosophical, speculative, precarious; Behmenish, void, and vain! ‘O what a fall is there!’” This is a harsh reflection upon an old friend; but, about a year and a half before, there had been the unfortunate quarrel with William Law, already mentioned. See pp. 185–8.

Up to the present, Wesley’s mother had been his chief counsellor. Immediately after his conversion in May, 1738, he went to Germany, and returned to England in September. It so happened, that he and his mother had no interview until nine months after this. Before he went to Herrnhuth, he had related to her the particulars of his conversion, for which “she heartily blessed God, who had brought him to so just a way of thinking.” Meanwhile, however, she had been prejudiced against him, and had entertained “strange fears concerning him, being convinced that he had greatly erred from the faith.” This was not of long continuance. Hence the following entry in Wesley’s journal:—

Ever after this, Susannah Wesley resided chiefly in London, and attended the ministry of her sons John and Charles. She heartily embraced their doctrines, and conversed with the members of their society. Hence the following from one of her letters to Charles, dated December 27, 1739:—

Reference is made in the above extract to the death of Samuel Wesley, which occurred on November 6, 1739, at the early age of forty-nine. Up to the very last, he was strongly opposed to the Methodist movement of his brothers. In a letter to his mother, written only seventeen days before his death, he says:—

Sixteen nights after writing the above, Samuel Wesley went to bed as well as usual. At three next morning, he was seized with illness, and, four hours afterwards, expired. John Wesley, at the time, was in London, and Charles in Bristol; but, as soon as possible, they hastened to Tiverton, where they rejoiced to hear that, several days before he went hence, God had given to their brother a calm and full assurance of his interest in Christ.

In reviewing the events of the year 1739, it only remains to notice Wesley’s publications. These were the following:—

1. “An Abstract of the Life and Death of Mr. Thomas Halyburton. With recommendatory Epistle by George Whitefield, and Preface by John Wesley.” Oswald: London. 1739.

Halyburton was a Scotchman, and was born in 1674. At the age of twenty-six, he became a Presbyterian minister. Ten years afterwards, he was appointed Professor of Divinity in the college of St. Andrews; but almost immediately was seized with pleurisy, and died in the thirty-seventh year of his age.

Wesley’s preface is dated “London, February 9, 1739,” and the book was published within a few weeks afterwards; for Wesley’s brother Samuel, in a letter bearing date, April 16, 1739, says: “I have got your abridgment of Halyburton; and, if it please God to allow me life and strength, I shall demonstrate that the Scot as little deserves preference to all Christians, as the book to all writings but those you mention. There are two flagrant falsehoods in the very first chapter. But your eyes are so fixed upon one point, that you overlook everything else. You overshoot, but Whitefield raves.”[339]

Wesley’s abridged Life of Halyburton is a beautifully written, and most edifying book. Why did Wesley publish it? There can be but little doubt that his chief reasons were:—1. Because it contains a living exemplification of real religion. And 2. Because Halyburton’s struggles, doubts, fears, and general experience, previous to his finding peace with God, through faith in Christ, bear a striking resemblance to the case of Wesley himself. After describing that the kingdom of God, within us, is holiness and happiness, and that the way of attaining it is a true and living faith, Wesley, in his preface, says: “This work of God in the soul of man is so described in the following treatise, as I have not seen it in any other, either ancient or modern, in our own or any other language; so that I cannot but value it, next to the holy Scripture, above any other human composition, except only the ‘Christian’s Pattern,’ and the small remains of Clemens Romanus, Polycarp, and Ignatius.”

In the same preface, Wesley propounds thus early a doctrine, which afterwards held a conspicuous place in the system of truth he taught. In answering the objection, that “the gospel covenant does not promise entire freedom from sin,” he writes: “What do you mean by the word sin? Do you mean those numberless weaknesses and follies, sometimes improperly termed sins of infirmity? If so, we shall not put off these but with our bodies. But if you mean, it does not promise entire freedom from sin, in its proper sense, or from committing it, this is by no means true, unless the Scripture be false. Though it is possible a man may be a child of God, who is not fully freed from sin, it does not follow that freedom from sin is impossible; or that it is not to be expected by all. It is described by the Holy Ghost as the common privilege of all.”

2. Another of Wesley’s publications, in 1739, was entitled: “Nicodemus; or, a Treatise on the Fear of Man. From the German of Augustus Herman Francke. Abridged by John Wesley.” Bristol: S. and F. Farley. 1739.

The subject of the treatise was peculiarly adapted to Wesley’s present position; and the whole is written in his best, nervous, clear, classic style.

3. Wesley’s third publication was two treatises of ninety-nine pages, 12mo; the first on Justification by Faith only; the second on the Sinfulness of Man’s Natural Will, and his utter inability to do works acceptable to God until he be justified and born again of the Spirit of God: by Dr. Barnes. “With Preface, containing some account of the author, extracted from the Book of Martyrs. By John Wesley.”

This was another book congenial to Wesley’s present feelings; inasmuch as it was full of the great doctrine, which was now the theme of his daily ministry.

4. Towards the end of 1739,[340] Wesley published his tract, entitled “The Character of a Methodist.” He states, that the name of Methodists is not one which they have taken to themselves, but one fixed upon them by way of reproach, without their approbation or consent. The tract was written at the urgent request of numbers of people, who were anxious to know what were “the principles, practice, and distinguishing marks of the sect which was everywhere spoken against.” The distinguishing marks of a Methodist are, not his opinions, though the Methodists are fundamentally distinguished from Jews, Turks, and infidels; from Papists; and from Socinians and Arians: neither are the marks of a Methodist “words or phrases:” nor “actions, customs, or usages of an indifferent nature:” nor the laying of the whole stress of religion on any single part of it. “A Methodist is one who has the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him; one who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength. He rejoices evermore, prays without ceasing, and in everything gives thanks. His heart is full of love to all mankind, and is purified from envy, malice, wrath, and every unkind or malign affection. His own desire, and the one design of his life is not to do his own will, but the will of Him that sent him. He keeps not only some, or most of God’s commandments, but all, from the least to the greatest. He follows not the customs of the world; for vice does not lose its nature through its becoming fashionable. He fares not sumptuously every day. He cannot lay up treasures upon earth any more than he can take fire into his bosom. He cannot adorn himself, on any pretence, with gold or costly apparel. He cannot join in any diversion that has the least tendency to vice. He cannot speak evil of his neighbour, no more than he can tell a lie. He cannot utter unkind, or idle words. No corrupt communication ever comes out of his mouth. He does good unto all men; unto neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies.” “These,” says Wesley, “are the principles and practices of our sect; these are the marks of a true Methodist. By these alone do Methodists desire to be distinguished from other men.”

Such were Methodists when Methodism was first founded in 1739. No wonder God was with them, and honoured them with such success. Is John Wesley’s Character of a Methodist descriptive of all the Methodists living now? Would to God it were!

5. Another of Wesley’s publications, in 1739, was entitled: “Hymns and Sacred Poems. Published by John Wesley, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; and Charles Wesley, M.A., Student of Christ Church, Oxford.” London: 12mo, pages 223.

As this book has recently been reprinted by the Methodist Conference Office, (“Wesley Poetry,” vol. i.,) a detailed description of its contents is not necessary. Suffice it to remark, that, besides the productions of his brother, the volume contains at least twenty translations from the German by Wesley himself, and that these are among the finest hymns the Methodists ever sing. In fact, with a few exceptions, the hymns of the two Wesleys are the only productions in the book worth having. Many are devout but literary rubbish, and utterly unworthy of being used in public worship. Some of the poems are passable; a few are beautiful; but others might have been left, without any loss to the Christian public, in the limbo of oblivion. Had the publication consisted only of John and Charles Wesley’s hymns, it would have been one of the choicest productions ever printed; as in other things, so in this, an admixture made it weak.

6. It may be added, that it was probably in 1739 that Wesley published an extract of his journal, from his embarking for Georgia, October 14, 1735, to his return to London, February 1, 1737; but of this we are not certain, the first edition being without date.

The substance of this has been already given, and hence we pass, at once, to the year 1740.