JOHN WESLEY was born at Epworth, in the county of Lincoln, on the 17th of June, 1703,[5] and was the son of Samuel and Susannah Wesley, the former being the learned, laborious, and godly rector of the Epworth parish from about the year 1696 to his death in 1735. The Wesley family consisted of nineteen children, but, of these, nine died in infancy. The name of one of the dead infants was John, and the name of another Benjamin; and when the subject of this biography was born, his mother united the two names by calling him John Benjamin. Second names are of little use, and are often troublesome, and probably for this reason Wesley’s second name was one which he never used.[6]

When Wesley was born, Queen Anne was commencing the twelve years of English sovereignty which some have regarded as the Augustan age of English learning. War was raging on the continent, and, at home, an embittered fight was being fought between fiery Churchmen and fierce Dissenters. Anne warmly favoured the high church party; and to augment Church livings, gave out of the royal income “the first-fruits and the tenths,” amounting to £16,000 a year. While Wesley was yet an infant, the Whigs raised the cry of “the Church in danger,” but Parliament passed a resolution that the cry was unfounded, and that those who gave it birth were enemies to the queen, the Church, and the kingdom. Five years after this, Dr. Sacheverell preached his firebrand sermon in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and threw the nation into a state of unparalleled excitement, the ultimate result of which was, the Tories became more powerful than ever; and Queen Anne, in meeting her Parliament in 1710, no longer condescended to use the word toleration in reference to Dissenters, but spoke of indulgence to be allowed “to scrupulous consciences,” while, after a long continued struggle, the high church party succeeded in passing the obnoxious bill against occasional conformity. All this occurred during Wesley’s childhood.

At the time of Wesley’s birth, his brother Samuel was a sprightly boy, thirteen years of age, and a few months afterwards was sent to Westminster School, where he became distinguished for his scholarship and genius, and soon obtained a host of literary friends, from Lord Oxford, the Mecænas of his age, down to Addison, Atterbury, Pope, and Prior. Emilia Wesley, so gifted and so beautiful, was a year younger than Samuel, and was developing her exquisite sensibility and taste under the mental and moral cultivation of her mother. The ill-fated Susannah was a frolicsome child, eight years old. Mary, already deformed by an early sickness and the carelessness of her nurse, had arrived at the age of seven, and was fast becoming the favourite of her father’s family. The almost unequalled Mehetabel was six, and was so advanced in learning that two years afterwards she read the New Testament in Greek. Anne was yet an infant; and Martha, Charles, and Keziah were still unborn.

In the year of Wesley’s nativity, his father was writing his “History of the Old and New Testament, in Verse;” and also had the pleasure or mortification (we hardly know which) of having his pamphlet on Dissenting academies surreptitiously published by a man to whom it had long before been sent as a private letter. Before Wesley was three years old his father was ruthlessly thrust into gaol for debt; and before he was six the parsonage was destroyed by fire. When the fire occurred, his brother Charles was an infant not two months old, and he, with John, three of their sisters, and their nurse, were all in the same room, and fast asleep. Being aroused, the nurse seized Charles, and bid the others follow. The three sisters did as they were bidden, but John was left sleeping. The venerable rector counted heads, and found John was wanting. At the same instant, a cry was heard. The frantic father tried to ascend the burning stairs, but found it to be impossible. He then dropped upon his knees in the blazing hall, and despairing of the rescue of his child, commended him to God. Meanwhile John had mounted a chest and was standing at the bedroom window. Quick as thought, one man placed himself against the wall, and another stood upon his shoulders, and just a moment before the roof fell in with a fearful crash the child was rescued through the window, and safely “plucked as a brand from the burning” house.

Our information respecting Wesley’s childhood is extremely limited. If we strip off all the luxuriant verbiage in which imaginative writers have indulged, the naked facts are the following.

Wesley, like all the other members of his father’s family, was indebted for his elementary education to his mother. The principles upon which she acted were unique. When the child was one year old, he was taught to fear the rod, and, if he cried at all, to cry in softened tones. Wesley long afterwards, in his sermon on the education of children, enforces his mother’s practice, urging parents never to give a child a thing for which it cries, on the ground that to do so would be a recompence for crying, and he would certainly cry again.

Another of Mrs. Wesley’s principles of action was to limit her children to three meals a day. Eating and drinking between meals was strictly prohibited. All the children were washed and put to bed by eight o’clock, and, on no account, was a servant to sit by a child till it fell asleep.

The whole of the Wesley children were taught the Lord’s Prayer as soon as they could speak, and repeated it every morning and every night. Rudeness was never seen amongst them; and on no account were they allowed to call each other by their proper names without the addition of brother or sister, as the case might be. Six hours a day were spent at school; and loud talking, playing, and running into the yard, garden, or street, without permission, was rigorously forbidden. None of them, except Kezzy, was taught to read till five years old, and then only a single day was allowed wherein to learn the letters of the alphabet, great and small—a task which all of them accomplished except Mary and Anne, who were a day and a half before they knew them perfectly. Psalms were sung every morning when school was opened, and also every night when the duties of the day were ended. In addition to all this, at the commencement and close of every day, each of the elder children took one of the younger and read the Psalms appointed for the day and a chapter in the Bible, after which they severally went to their private devotions.

Mrs. Wesley, assisted by her husband, seems to have been the sole instructor of her daughters, and also of her sons, until the latter were sent to school in London; and never was there a family of children who did their teacher greater credit.

From early childhood, John was remarkable for his sober and studious disposition, and seemed to feel himself answerable to his reason and his conscience for everything he did. He would do nothing without first reflecting on its fitness and propriety. If asked, out of the common way of meals, to have, for instance, a piece of bread or fruit, he would answer with the coolest unconcern, “I thank you; I will think of it.” To argue about a thing seemed instinctive, and was carried to such a length that on one occasion his father almost chid him, saying, “Child, you think to carry everything by dint of argument; but you will find how little is ever done in the world by close reasoning.” “I profess, sweetheart,” said the rector in a pet to Mrs. Wesley, “I profess, sweetheart, I think our Jack would not attend to the most pressing necessities of nature, unless he could give a reason for it.”[7]

With all this meditative reasoning, there was mixed devotion. It is a remarkable fact, scarce paralleled, that such was his consistency of conduct, that his father admitted him to the communion table when he was only eight years old;[8] and he himself informs us that, until he was about the age of ten, he had not sinned away that “washing of the Holy Ghost,” which he received in baptism.[9]

Between the age of eight and nine the small-pox attacked him; but he bore the terrible affliction with manly and Christian fortitude. At the time, his father was in London, and his mother writing him remarks: “Jack has borne his disease bravely, like a man, and indeed like a Christian, without complaint.”[10]

This is all that is known respecting Wesley during his childhood years at Epworth. Imagination might conjure up his early thinkings, passions, and attachments, the localities he loved to visit, and the sports, fun, and frolic in which he occasionally indulged; but history, on such subjects, is entirely silent; and for want of its honest statements we look at him in the grave and sober aspect in which facts present him.

While yet a child, only ten and a half years old, Wesley passed from under the tutelage of his accomplished mother, and became a pupil at the Charterhouse, London. For his son’s admission into this distinguished school, the Epworth rector was indebted to the friendly services of the Duke of Buckingham, at that time the Lord Chamberlain of the royal household.[11]

The privilege was great, and, to the day of his death, John Wesley loved the place of his early education, and was accustomed to walk through its courts and grounds once every year. He was not without hardships; but he bore them bravely. Among other acts of cruelty, the elder boys were accustomed, in addition to their own share of animal food, to take by force that which was apportioned to the younger scholars; and, in consequence of this, for a considerable part of the five years that young Wesley spent at the Charterhouse, the only solid food he got was bread. There was one thing, however, which contributed to his general flow of health,—namely, his invariably carrying out a strict command which his father gave him, to run round the Charterhouse garden three times every morning. It is good for a man “to bear the yoke in his youth,” and Wesley learned, as a boy, to suffer wrongfully with a cheerful fortitude, and to submit to the cruel exactions of his elder tyrants without acquiring either the cringing of a slave or a despot’s imperious temper.

Wesley entered the school as the poor child of an impoverished parish priest, and had to endure wrongs and insults neither few nor small; but, though he was only sixteen years of age when he left, he had, by his energy of character, his unconquerable patience, his assiduity, and his progress in learning, acquired a high position among his fellows. An old Methodist pamphlet[12] relates an anecdote, to the effect that the Rev. A. Tooke,[13] master of the school, was struck with the fact that, though Wesley was remarkably advanced in his studies, yet he constantly associated with the inferior classes, and was accustomed to harangue a number of the smaller boys surrounding him. On one occasion Tooke broke in upon him in the midst of an oration, and interrupted him, by desiring him to follow him into a private room. Wesley reluctantly obeyed, and the master, addressing him, asked how it was that he was so often found among the boys of the lower forms, and sought not the company of the bigger boys, who were his equals? To which the young orator replied, “Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven.”

This story was given by “an old member of society,” on what he calls “the most authentic authority,” for the purpose of showing that Wesley, even as a boy, was ambitious. Be it so. What then? Is ambition always, and under all circumstances, a thing to be denounced? Ambition is widely different from vanity, a paltry passion of petty minds; neither is it necessarily accompanied with the use of improper means to attain its object. Ambition is common to the human species. There are but few without it, and who are not desirous of distinguishing themselves in the circle in which they live. You see the passion in the aristocratic noble toiling after a distinction which he desires to win; and you equally see it in the poorest mechanic, who strives to surround himself with poor admirers, and who delights in the superiority which he enjoys over those who are, in some respects, beneath him. Besides, as a rule, a man’s ambition is always in correspondence with his other tastes, and faculties, and powers. Dr. Johnson wisely remarks, that “Providence seldom sends any into the world with an inclination to attempt great things, who have not abilities likewise to perform them;” and Addison, an equally thoughtful student of human nature, observes that “Men of the greatest abilities are most fired with ambition; and, on the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the least actuated by it.” To account for this may be difficult, but none will deny its truth. Perhaps the difference may be occasioned by a man’s consciousness of his own capacities making him despair of attaining positions which others reach; or perhaps, which is more likely still, Providence, in the very framing of his mind, has freed him from a passion, which would be useless to the world, and a torment to himself.

On such grounds, then, we are quite prepared to argue that, even allowing the above anonymous story to be strictly true, and allowing also that it proves that Wesley as a boy was animated with ambition, there is nothing in it which, for a moment, detracts from Wesley’s honour and honest fame.

We wish that this were the only thing to be alleged against him during his Charterhouse career. Unfortunately there is another fact far more serious; for Wesley, while at this seat of learning, lost the religion which had marked his character from the days of infancy. He writes concerning this period of his history: “Outward restraints being removed, I was much more negligent than before, even of outward duties, and almost continually guilty of outward sins, which I knew to be such, though they were not scandalous in the eye of the world. However, 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.”[14]

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.

It was during his residence at this celebrated school, that the mysterious and preternatural voices were heard in his father’s house. The often told story need not be repeated; but there can be no question that its influence upon himself was powerful and important. He took the trouble of obtaining minute particulars from his mother, from his four sisters, Emily, Mary, Susannah, and Anne, and from Robin Brown. He likewise transcribed his father’s diary, containing an account of the disturbances;[15] thereby showing the intense interest he felt in the affair. In fact, it would seem that, from this period, Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and apparitions. In his twentieth year, we find him writing to his mother, in the gravest manner possible, concerning what he calls “one of the most unaccountable stories he had ever heard;”—namely, that of a lad in Ireland, who ever and anon made an involuntary pilgrimage through the aerial regions, and feasted with demigods in nubibus. In the same letter, Wesley relates an adventure of his own; for, while walking a few days previously in the neighbourhood of Oxford, he had observed a forlorn looking house, which he found was unoccupied by mortals because it was haunted by ghosts. Wesley tells his mother that he purposes to visit this forsaken dwelling, and to assure himself whether what he had heard was true. He further relates that a Mr. Barnesley, and two other of his fellow-students, had recently seen an apparition in a field adjoining Oxford, and that it had since been ascertained that Barnesley’s mother died in Ireland at the very moment when the spectre had been witnessed.[16]

Thus, at this early period of his history, Wesley’s mind, wisely or unwisely, superstitiously or otherwise, was full of the supernatural; and to the calm judgment of his philosophic mother he submits his facts for her opinion. Three weeks afterwards she wrote:[17]—

This was not a solution of Wesley’s difficulty. It was rather making mystery more mysterious. The young student was full of anxious inquiry. Isaac Taylor thinks that the strange Epworth episode so laid open Wesley’s faculty of belief, that ever after a right of way for the supernatural was opened through his mind; and, to the end of life, there was nothing so marvellous that it could not freely pass where “Old Jeffrey” had passed before it. Taylor adds: “Wesley’s most prominent infirmity was his wonder-loving credulity; from the beginning to the end of his course this weakness ruled him.” Other opportunities will occur of testing the truthfulness of Taylor’s statement; but here it may be observed, that for young Wesley to have regarded the noises at Epworth with indifference would have been irreligious and irrational. A metaphysician, vain of his philosophic powers, like Isaac Taylor, may “deal with occult folk, such as Jeffrey, huffingly and disrespectfully;” and may pretend to “catch in the Epworth ghost a glimpse of an idiotic creature” belonging to some order of invisible beings “not more intelligent than apes or pigs,” and which, by some “mischance, was thrown over its boundary, and obtained leave to disport itself among things palpable, and went to the extent of its tether in freaks of bootless mischief;” but, in broaching such a theory, Isaac Taylor, wishing to be witty, makes himself ridiculous. John Wesley believed the noises to be supernatural; and Southey, as great an authority as Taylor, defends his belief; and argues that such occurrences have a tendency to explode the fine-spun theories of men who deny another state of being, and to bring them to the conclusion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy. We have little doubt that the Epworth noises deepened and most powerfully increased Wesley’s convictions of the existence of an unseen world; and, in this way, exercised an important influence on the whole of his future life. His notion,[18] that the disturbance was occasioned by a messenger of Satan, sent to buffet his father for a rash vow alleged to have been made fifteen years before, has been shown to be utterly unfounded;[19] but the impressions it produced, or rather strengthened, respecting invisible realities, were of the utmost consequence in moulding his character, and in making him one of the most earnest preachers of the Christian’s creed that ever lived.

During Wesley’s residence at the Charterhouse, his brother Samuel was the head usher of Westminster School; and in 1719, Wesley seems, for a time, to have become his brother’s guest. Charles was now a pupil under Samuel’s tuition; and the latter, writing to his father, says: “My brother Jack, I can faithfully assure you, gives you no manner of discouragement from breeding your third son a scholar. Jack is a brave boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can.”[20]

In the following year, Wesley was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, one of the noblest colleges in that illustrious seat of learning, and here he continued until after his ordination in 1725. In reference to this period, he writes: “I still said my prayers, both in public and private; and read, with the Scriptures, several other books of religion, especially comments on the New Testament. Yet I had not all this while so much as a notion of inward holiness; nay, went on habitually and, for the most part, very contentedly, in some or other known sin; though with some intermission and short struggles, especially before and after the holy communion, which I was obliged to receive thrice a year.”[21]

Such was Wesley during the first five years he spent at Oxford. He maintained the reputation for scholarship which he had acquired at school; but there was no alteration in his moral and religious character. He said his prayers and read good books, as perhaps most Oxford students did; but, like others, he lived in sin, even habitually, except about thrice a year, when he was compelled to receive the sacrament. No doubt, like all the Wesley family, he was a gay and sprightly companion, and full of wit and humour. He began to amuse himself occasionally with writing verses, a specimen of which is given by Dr. Whitehead and is reproduced by Joseph Nightingale. The verses are six in number, and are merely the translation of a Latin poem respecting a young lady to whom he gives the name of Cloe. As Juno had a favourite peacock and Venus a favourite dove, so Cloe had a favourite flea, whose bliss in being allowed to crawl over the young lady’s person the poet makes it his business to describe. Henry Moore is angry with Dr. Whitehead for having given the verses publicity; but certainly without a cause. Had the piece been written by Wesley in advanced life it might have deserved censure; but being written when he was scarcely beyond his teens, it is only what a smart young fellow, full of vivacity, might be expected to produce.

When Wesley went to Oxford his health was far from being vigorous and robust. He was frequently troubled with bleeding at the nose. In a letter to his mother, in 1723, he tells her that lately, while walking in the country, he had bled so violently that he was almost choked, nor could he at all abate the hæmorrhage till he stripped himself and leaped into the river.

He also had to struggle with financial difficulty, and was not unfrequently in debt. He sometimes had to borrow; and, more than once, when requesting that his sisters would write to him, playfully remarks, that, though he was “so poor, he would be able to spare the postage for a letter now and then.” His friends were kind to him, and his tutors were considerate. Soon after his entrance, his tutor, Mr. Wigan, retired to one of his country livings, and was succeeded by Mr. Sherman, who kindly told him that he would make his fees as low as possible.[22] Of course he had the £40 per annum, which belonged to him as a Charterhouse scholar; but this, with the utmost economy, was hardly sufficient to meet all the expenses of a young Oxford student. These financial embarrassments are often referred to in the subsequent correspondence.

The following is from an unpublished letter, written by his mother.

The following also, from another unpublished letter by his mother, refers to the same subject.

We subjoin an extract from another letter, written shortly after the above, and for the first time published in the Wesleyan Times of January 29, 1866.

Dr. Cheyne, mentioned in the preceding letter, was educated at Edinburgh, where his habits were temperate and sedentary; but, proceeding to London, he associated with a number of young gentry, to retain whose friendship it was necessary to indulge to the utmost in table luxuries. The result was, Cheyne became nervous, scorbutic, short-breathed, lethargic and listless; and was so enormously fat as to be nearly thirty-three stones in weight. His life became an intolerable burden, and, to cure himself, he adopted a milk and vegetable diet, by means of which he recovered his strength, activity, and cheerfulness. He became the author of several interesting works, one of which was the book just noticed. Wesley, to a great extent, adopted Cheyne’s prescription, and forty-six years after he read his book at Oxford, wrote: “How marvellous are the ways of God! How has He kept me even from a child! From ten to thirteen or fourteen, I had little but bread to eat, and not great plenty of even that. I believe this was so far from hurting me, that it laid the foundation of lasting health. When I grew up, in consequence of reading Dr. Cheyne, I chose to eat sparingly, and to drink water. This was another great means of continuing my health, till I was about seven-and-twenty. I then began spitting of blood, which continued several years. A warm climate [Georgia] cured this. I was afterwards brought to the brink of death by a fever; but it left me healthier than before. Eleven years after, I was in the third stage of a consumption; in three months it pleased God to remove this also. Since that I have known neither pain nor sickness, and am now healthier than I was forty years ago.”[23] Cheyne became one of Wesley’s favourites, and no wonder. After reading his “Natural Method of Curing Diseases,” he designates it one of the most ingenious books he had ever seen; but adds, “What epicure will ever regard it? for the man talks against good eating and drinking!”[24] Cheyne died in 1745, calmly giving up his soul to God, says Wesley, without any struggle, either of body or mind.

Except the statement, that his carcass was the only property he had, Wesley makes not the least allusion, in the foregoing letter, to his pecuniary embarrassments. Naturally enough, his mother was more anxious than himself. Hence the following letter, hitherto unpublished, written within a month afterwards.

Mrs. Wesley’s brother, referred to in the foregoing letter, was in the service of the East India Company; and, the public prints having stated that he was returning to England in one of the company’s ships, Mrs. Wesley proceeded to London to await his arrival, and to welcome him. The information, however, was untrue, and both she and her son John were doomed to a disappointment. Samuel, at the time, had a broken leg, and had invited John to meet his mother at Westminster. John jocosely congratulates Samuel, that, like the Dutch seaman who broke his leg by a fall from the mainmast of his ship, he might thank God that he had not broken his neck also; and then he adds that his mother’s letter had made him weep for joy, for the two things he most wished for of almost anything in the world, were again to see his mother, and to see Westminster.[25]

Wesley was still in debt, a fact which gave his mother great anxiety. His father also, as usual, was embarrassed, and yet, though offended at his son’s want of thrift, did his utmost to afford him help. The following are painfully interesting letters, and one of them is now for the first time published—

Some will blame the writer for publishing such letters, on the ground that they cast shadows on young Wesley’s character; but it ought to be borne in mind that the work of a biographer is not to hide facts, but to publish them. Why such an unwillingness to look at the specks as well as sunshine in John Wesley’s history? Is it necessary, in order to establish the high position which has been assigned to Wesley, that the reader should be made to think that from first to last he was sui generis, and altogether free from the infirmities, faults, and sins of ordinary men? If it were, we would rather lower the position than pervert the facts; but we maintain, that no such necessity exists. When we say, that from the age of eleven to the age of twenty-two, Wesley made no pretensions to be religious, and, except on rare occasions, habitually lived in the practice of known sin, we only say what is equally true of many of the greatest, wisest, and most godly men that have ever lived. The fact is humiliating, and ought to be deplored; but why hide it in one case more than in another? Wesley soon became one of the holiest and most useful men living; but, except the first ten years of his childhood, he was up to the age of twenty-two, by his own confession, an habitual, if not profane and flagrant sinner; and to his sin, he added the inconvenient and harassing infirmity of his honest but imprudent father, and thoughtlessly contracted debts greater than he had means to pay. His letters are without religious sentiments, and his life was without a religious aim. We yield to no man living in our high veneration of Wesley’s character; but, at the same time, we cannot hide it from ourselves and others, that, being human, he was frail, and, like all his fellows, had need to repent as in dust and ashes, and to seek, through Christ, the forgiveness of his sins and a change of heart.

But leaving this, we turn to another important matter. There is no evidence to show, that, when Wesley went to Oxford, he intended or wished to become a minister of the Established Church; it might be so, but it might be otherwise. It is true that, by obtaining ordination, he would become entitled to one of the Church livings at the disposal of the Charterhouse governors; but Wesley was far too noble and too high principled to seek admission into so sacred an office as the Christian ministry merely to secure for himself a crust of bread. He might intend to devote himself, like his brother Samuel, to tutorship; or he might contemplate some other mode of maintenance. Certain it is, that it was not until about the beginning of 1725, when he had been more than four years at college, that he expressed a wish to become a minister of Christ. The matter was properly submitted to his parents, and both gave him the best advice they could.

His father told him that his principal motive for entering the ministry must be, not, “as Eli’s sons, to eat a piece of bread,” but the glory of God, and the good of men; and that, as a qualification for its sacred functions, he ought to have a thorough knowledge of the Holy Scriptures in their original languages. He was, however, not in haste for his going into orders, and would give him further advice at some future time.

On February 23, 1725, his mother wrote to him as follows:—

Three weeks after this, his father wrote to him, saying that he was now inclined to his entering orders without delay, and exhorting him to prayer and study in reference to such a step, promising that he would struggle hard to obtain the money for the needful expenses.

Meanwhile, his sister Emilia wrote him a long letter, from which the following extracts are taken:—

Wesley now began to apply himself with diligence to the study of divinity. He writes: “When I was about twenty-two, my father pressed me to enter into holy orders. At the same time the providence of God directing me to Kempis’s ‘Christian’s Pattern,’ I began to see that true religion was seated in the heart, and that God’s law extended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was, however, angry at Kempis for being too strict; though I read him only in Dean Stanhope’s translation. Yet I had frequently much sensible comfort in reading him, such as I was an utter stranger to before. Meeting likewise with a religious friend, which I never had till now, I began to alter the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a new life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I communicated every week. I watched against all sin, whether in word or deed. I began to aim at, and to pray for, inward holiness. So that now, doing so much and living so good a life, I doubted not that I was a good Christian.”[29]

What a confession! It was eleven years since Wesley left the parental roof; but he never had a religious friend till now. No wonder he had gone astray.

Having written to his mother, stating some of the difficulties which he had found in Kempis, she, on the 8th June, 1725, sent him a long letter, which, however adapted to an enlightened Christian, was useless, if not misleading, to an anxious inquirer not yet converted. The entire letter is before us, containing, besides a large amount of Christian casuistry, some family affairs of painful interest. These we pass over, and merely give an extract in reference to Kempis:—